The Frenchman suddenly lunged forward, looping the chain up in an attempt to wrap it about his opponent’s neck.
El Matarife laughed, stepped back, and the knife was a flicker of brightness in the flamelight.
‘Dos!’
The Frenchman was shaking his head. There was blood on his forehead.
The chain swung between them. Once more El Matarife stepped back. The links made a small noise as they tightened and this time El Matarife went on pulling steadily, hauling the Frenchman inexorably forward. The prisoner was licking his lips. He held his knife low, but there was a puzzled look on his face. He was trying to plan this fight and El Matarife was content to let him plan. At this kind of fighting the Slaughterman was an expert. He feared no Frenchman, no man who was not trained to the tied knife fight.
The Frenchman suddenly jerked backwards, jerked with all his weight and El Matarife, laughing, went fast forward so that the Frenchman, taken by surprise, fell backwards.
The Slaughterman hauled on the chain, towing the man on the ground, tugging and pulling, laughing as his prisoner thrashed like a hooked and landed fish, then El Matarift stepped forward, lashed out with his black-booted right foot to kick the Frenchman’s left forearm.
Sharpe heard the crack of the bone and the stifled cry of the prisoner.
‘Tres,’ El Matarife said. He stepped away to let the Frenchman get up. The prisoner looked dizzy. He was in pain. His arm was broken and every pull on the chain would now be agony. The man looked up at his tormentor and suddenly lunged with the knife, throwing himself forward from his knees, but El Matarife simply laughed and moved his knife hand faster than the eye could follow.
‘Cuatro.’
There was blood on the back of the Frenchman’s hand.
Sharpe looked at the guide beside him. ‘How long does it go on?’
‘At least thirty cuts, Englishman. Sometimes a hundred. You don’t like it, eh?’ The man laughed.
Sharpe did not reply. Slowly, very slowly, so that no one could see what he did, he leaned forward and found with his right hand the lock of his rifle that was pushed into a saddle holster. Quietly and slowly he eased the cock back until he felt it seated at the full.
The Frenchman was on his feet now. He knew that he was being played with, that his opponent was a master of this kind of fighting, that the cuts would go on and on till his body was seething with pain and drenched with blood. He attacked the Slaughterman, slicing left and right, stabbing, going into a frenzy of despair, and El Matarife, who, despite his bulk, was as fast on his feet as any man Sharpe had seen, seemed to dance away from each attack. He was laughing, holding his own knife out of the way and then, when the Frenchman’s frenzy had died, the knife seared forward.
‘Cinco!’
There was a cheer from the crowd. The knife, with horrid accuracy, had speared into one of the prisoner’s eyes. The man screamed, twisted, but the knife took his other eye just the same.
‘Seis,’ El Matarife laughed.
‘Seis!’ the men shouted.
The Spaniard beside Sharpe looked at the Rifleman. ‘Now the enjoyment begins, Englishman.’
But Sharpe had pulled the rifle from the holster, brought it to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet went between the blinded eyes, throwing the Frenchman back, dead onto the ground that was smeared with his blood.
Then there was silence.
Sharpe pushed the weapon back into the holster and urged Carbine forward. Angel was tense with fear. A dozen men about the fighting ground had cocked their muskets as the rifle smoke drifted over the dead body.
Sharpe reined in above the bearded angry man. He bowed in his saddle. ‘Now I shall be able to boast that I fought against the French alongside the great Matarife.’
El Matarife stared up at the Englishman who had spoiled his amusement. He knew why the Englishman had shot the man, because the Englishman was squeamish, but in doing it the Englishman had challenged El Matarife in front of his own men. Now, though, this Major Vaughn had offered a saving formula
El Matarife laughed. ‘You hear that?’ He had unlooped the chain and he gestured to his followers. ‘He says he has fought beside me, eh?’ His men laughed and El Matarife stared up at the Englishman. ‘So why are you here?’
‘To bring you greetings from the Generalissimo.’
‘He has heard of me?’ El Matarife had picked up a great poleaxe that he slung on his shoulder.
‘Who has not heard of El Matarife?’
The tension had gone. Sharpe was aware that he had failed one test by refusing to watch a blinded man being tortured, but by killing the Frenchman he had proved himself worthy of some respect. Worthy, too, of drink. He was taken into the inn, wine was ordered, and the compliments were profuse and truthless that, of necessity, had to preface the business of the night.
They drank for two hours, the main room of the inn becoming smokier as the evening wore on. A meal was provided; a hunk of goat meat in a greasy gravy that Sharpe ate hungrily. It was at the end of the meal that El Matarife, wrapped in a cloak of wolfs fur, asked again why the Englishman had come.
Sharpe spun a story, half based on truth, a story that told of the British army advancing on Burgos and pushing the French back on the Great Road. He had come, he said, because the Generalissimo wanted assurance that every Partisan would be on the road to harass the retreating French and help kill Frenchmen.
‘Every Partisan, Englishman?’
‘But especially El Matarife.’
El Matarife nodded, and there was nothing in what Sharpe had said to cause suspicion. His men were excited at the thought of a battle happening on the Great Road, of the plunder that would be taken, of the stragglers who could be picked off from the French march. The Slaughterman picked at his teeth with a sliver of wood. ‘When will the British come?’
‘They come now. Their soldiers cover the plains like a flood. The French are running away. They run towards Vitoria.’ That was hardly true. Sharpe had only seen the French retreating to Burgos, and, if this year’s campaign was like the last, they would make their stand at the fortress town. Yet the lie convinced El Matarife.
‘You will tell your General that my forces will help him.’ El Matarife waved a magnanimous hand about the room.
‘He will be relieved.’ Sharpe politely pushed a wineskin over the table. ‘Yet he will be curious about one thing.’
‘Ask.’
‘There are no French in these mountains, yet you are here.’
‘I hide from them, I let them think I am gone, and when they celebrate that I am gone, I return!’ He laughed.
Sharpe laughed with him. ‘You are a clever man.’
‘Tell your General that, Englishman.’
‘I will tell him that.’ Sharpe could feel his eyes stinging from the thick tobacco smoke. He looked at Angel. ‘We must leave.’
‘Already?’ El Matarife frowned. He was more than convinced that the Englishman had not come about the woman, and he was enjoying the flattery that impressed his men. ‘You go already?’
‘To sleep. Tomorrow I must ride to my General with this news. He is impatient to hear of you.’ Sharpe paused as he pushed his chair back, fished in his pocket and brought out a scrap of paper. It was an order from Colonel Leroy about mending camp-kettles, but no one in this room would know that. He read it, frowned, then looked up at the Slaughterman. ‘I almost forgot! You guard La Puta Dorada?’ He could feel the tension in the room, betrayed by the sudden silence that greeted his words. Sharpe shrugged. ‘It is not important, but my General asked me and I am asking you.’
‘What of her?’
Sharpe screwed the piece of paper up and tossed it onto the fire. ‘We heard she had been brought here.’
‘You heard?’
‘Whatever El Matarife does is important to us.’ Sharpe smiled. ‘You see we would like to talk to her. She must know things about the French army that would help us. The Generalissimo is fu
ll of admiration that you should have captured so important a spy.’
The compliments seemed to soothe the bearded, suspicious man. Slowly, very slowly, El Matarife nodded. ‘You want to talk with her, Englishman?’
‘For an hour.’
‘Just talk?’ There was appreciative laughter in the room.
Sharpe smiled. ‘Just talk. One hour, no more. She is in the convent?’
El Matarife was still convinced that Sharpe’s mission was to secure his help with the summer’s campaign. It was a nuisance that the English had heard of the woman’s presence in the mountains, but he believed the Englishman when he said he merely wanted to talk. Besides, how could one Englishman and a Spanish boy rescue her from among his men? El Matarife smiled, knowing that he must send this Major Vaughn away satisfied. To simply deny that the Marquesa was in these mountains was to risk that this Englishman would want to search for himself. He gestured to one of his men, who left the inn’s smoky room, and turned back to Sharpe. ‘You’ve met her before, Major Vaughn?’
‘No.’
‘You’ll like her.’ The Slaughterman laughed. ‘But she’s not in the convent.’
‘No?’
More wine was put in front of Sharpe. The Slaughterman was smiling contentedly. ‘She is here.’
‘Here?’
‘I heard you were coming, Englishman, and I thought I would help your General by letting you talk with her. She has much to tell you about your enemies. I waited to see if you would ask, if you had not, then I would have surprised you!’
Sharpe smiled. ‘I will tell my General of your help. He will want to reward you.’ He was struggling not to show his excitement, nor his consternation. The thought of Helene in the power of this beast was foul, the thought of how he was to take her away from here was daunting, yet he dared not show it. Present too in his head was the recurring fear that she would know nothing, that she would find the death of her husband as great a mystery as Sharpe, yet if he had any hopes of regaining his rank and his career, he had to ask her his questions. ‘You are bringing her to this room?’
‘I will give you a room to talk with her, Englishman.’
‘I am grateful to you, Matarife.’
‘A private room, Major!’ El Matarife laughed and made an obscene gesture. ‘Perhaps when you see her you will want to do more than talk, yes?’
El Matarife’s gust of laughter was interrupted by a shout from outside the inn and the sound of feet running. The back door was thrown open and a voice shouted that El Matarife should come and come quickly.
The Slaughterman pushed towards the door, Sharpe beside him, and the room was full of men shouting for lanterns, and then Sharpe ducked under the lintel and saw a light coming from a broken down shed that was being used as a stable. Men ran towards the shed, lanterns bright, and Sharpe went with them. He pushed through them and stopped at the doorway. He wanted to vomit, so sudden was the shock, and his next urge was to draw the big sword and scythe these beasts who pressed in the small yard around him.
A girl hung in the shed. She was naked. Her body was a tracery of gleaming rivulets of blood, blood new enough to shine, yet not so new that it still flowed.
She turned on the rope that was about her neck.
El Matarife swore. He cuffed at a man who claimed that the girl had committed suicide.
The body turned, slim and white. The thighs and stomach showed dark bruises beneath the blood that had reached her ankles. Her hands were slim and pale, the nails broken, but still with flecks of red where they had once been painted. There was straw in her hair.
A dozen men shouted. They had locked the girl in here and she must have found the rope. El Matarife’s voice drowned them all, cursing them for this stupidity, their carelessness. He looked up at the tall Englishman. ‘They are fools, señor. I will punish them.’
Sharpe noticed how, for the first time, the Slaughterman called him señor. He stared up at the face that had once been lovely. ‘Punish them well.’
‘I will! I will!’
Sharpe turned away. ‘And give her Christian burial!’
‘Yes, señor.’ The Slaughterman watched the Englishman closely. ‘She was beautiful, yes?’
‘She was beautiful.’
‘The Golden Whore.’ El Matarife said the words slowly, as though he pronounced an epitaph. ‘You can’t talk to her now, señor.’
Sharpe looked at the hanging body. There were scratches on the breasts. He nodded and forced calmness into his voice. ‘I shall ride south this night.’ He turned away. He knew El Matarife’s men watched him, but he would show nothing. He shouted for Angel to bring the horses.
He stopped a mile from the small village. The memory of the hanging, turning body was foul in him. He thought of his wife dead, of the blood on her throat. He thought of the torture that the dead woman in the stable had endured, of the horrid last moments of a life. He closed his eyes and shuddered.
‘We go back now, señor?’ Sharpe heard the sadness in Angel’s voice that their mission had been wasted.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘We go to the convent.’ They had seen it before the dusk, a building clinging impossibly to a plateau’s edge. ‘We climb there tonight.’ He opened his eyes, twisted in the saddle, and stared behind him. No one had followed them from the inn.
‘We go to the convent? But she’s dead!’
‘She’s called the whore of gold.’ Sharpe’s voice was savage. ‘Gold because of her hair, Angel, not her money. Whoever that girl was, she wasn’t La Marquesa.’
But whoever the black-haired girl was whose body hung bloody and slim in the stable, she was dead, and newly dead at that, and Sharpe knew the girl had died because he had asked about La Marquesa. She had died so that Sharpe would leave this valley quietly, convinced that La Marquesa was dead. He pushed back with his heels, turning Carbine, and rode towards the dark mountain. He felt a thickness in his throat because the unknown girl was dead, and he promised her spirit, wherever it was, that he would avenge her. He rode with anger, he climbed to the Convent of the Heavens, and he planned a rescue and a battle.
CHAPTER 11
It could have been winter, so cold and misty was the plateau. At this height the mist was low cloud that threatened rain. Only the dripping leaves of the few stunted birches witnessed that summer had some to this high, strange, chilling place.
Sharpe had not slept. He had planned the fight he knew he would face once El Matarife discovered that he had not passed his sentinels at the two bridges. In the dawn he had scouted the plateau’s edge, peering through the mist down the tumbled, precipitous slopes of the great hill.
Sharpe had not brought Angel all the way to the flat summit of the great hill. He had left the boy on the track with both rifles and careful, painstaking instructions.
Angel had been worried. ‘It’s a holy place, señor.’
‘Trust me, Angel, just trust me.’
Sharpe had climbed to the plateau with the two horses, and with the fear that this dreadful, desperate deed that he planned could all be for nothing. He would fight Partisans, he would offend the Church, and all for a woman who might not have the answers to save his career and solve Hogan’s mystery.
Angel had wished him luck, but the boy had been distressed. ‘We have to fight them, señor?’ He spoke of the Partisans.
‘To defeat France, yes.’ It was a lie, or at the very least Sharpe did not know if it was a truth. Yet Angel, who trusted the English, had believed him.
Now, as the dawn showed the grass wet on the plateau, and as the grey clouds sifted through the small trees, Sharpe galloped towards the convent. He was alone in the high place.
The Convent of the Heavens deserved its name. It was built at the highest point of this steep range of hills, a building that clung alarmingly to the edge of a precipice. It had been built in the days when the Muslims hunted the Christians north, when the prayers of Christians had to be offered in high places that could b
e defended by Christian swords. The walls of the convent showed no windows. They were grey like the rocks, stained by the rain, a fortress of women. There was only one door in its prison-like walls.
Sharpe knocked and waited. He knocked again, then hammered the door with a stone, making sparks fly from the square-headed iron nails that studded the great planks of wood. He could hear the sound reverberating within the building, but no answer came.
He waited. The mist drifted over the plateau. The two horses, tethered to a great stone, watched him. Their saddles were beaded with moisture.
He kicked the door, cursing, then found a larger stone that he smashed onto the timber, smashed again, until the hollow echoes were like the sound of a battery of field artillery in full fight.
There was a click.
In one of the door’s two leaves was a small shutter, protected by a rusted iron grille, and the shutter had slid back. He could see an eye staring at him. He smiled and spoke in his most polite voice. ‘I have come to see La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’
The eye blinked, the shutter slid shut, then nothing.
He waited.
There was silence from the great building. No bolts were shot back on the door, no footsteps or voices sounded from the far side. For a moment he wondered if the eye beyond the shutter had been a dream, so silent was the grey building. It seemed to have slept here for a thousand empty years and his knocking was an offence against eternity.
He found himself an even larger rock, one that he needed to lift with both hands, and he carried it to the door, measured his swing, and thumped it at the place where the two leaves met. He swung it again and again, seeing the right hand leaf jar back a fraction with each blow, and the noise was huge again, echoing from the hallway within, and he wondered what Patrick Harper would think if he knew that his friend was breaking into a convent. Sharpe could almost hear the Ulster voice. ‘God save Ireland.’
The rock swung and crashed, the door jerked back, and he saw an iron bar that was bent but still holding. He hammered it again, cursing with the effort, and despite the chill morning he could feel the sweat on his body and he drove the huge rock with all his strength at the weak spot and the door, at last, shattered back, the iron bar broken, and he could see into the convent.