'Yes, sir.'
Hakeswill and his woman had crossed to the piles of money and he turned with a grin on his face. 'All here, Marshal!'
'Bon!' Pot-au-Feu held out a hand and Hakeswill tossed him one of the golden guineas. The Frenchman held it up, turned it.
Hakeswill waited until the twitching of his face had subsided. 'Want your woman now, Sharpy?'
'That was the agreement.'
'Oh! The agreement!' Hakeswill laughed. He plucked at the girl beside him. 'How about this one, Sharpy? Want this one, do you?' The girl looked at Sharpe and laughed. Hakeswill was enjoying himself. 'This one's Spanish, Sharpy, just like your wife. Still got her, have you? Teresa? Or has she died of the pox yet?'
Sharpe said nothing. He heard Harper move restlessly behind him.
Hakeswill came closer, the girl with him. 'Now why don't you take this one, Sharpy. You'd like her. Look!' He brought his left hand round and plucked at the strings of her bodice. It fell open. Hakeswill cackled. 'You can look, Sharpy. Go on! Look! Oh, of course. Bleeding officer, aren't we? Too high and bloody mighty to look at a whore's tits!'
The men on the edges of the cloister laughed. The girl smiled as Hakeswill fondled her. He cackled. 'You can have her, Sharpy. She's a soldier so the money you've brought means she's yours for life!' She was a soldier because, like the men in the ranks, she would serve for a shilling a day. The girl pursed her painted lips at Sharpe.
Pot-au-Feu laughed, then spoke in French to Dubreton. Dubreton's replies were brief.
Hakeswill had not finished with his game of taunting Sharpe. He pushed the girl towards him, pushed her hard so that she stumbled against the Rifleman, and Hakeswill pointed and laughed. 'She wants him!'
Sharpe slung his rifle. The girl's eyes were hard as flint, her hair dirty. He looked at her and there was something in his eyes that made her ashamed and she dropped her gaze. He pushed her gently away, took the strings of her bodice and pulled it up, tying the knot. 'Go.'
'Major?' Dubreton's voice was low. He gestured beyond Sharpe to where the locked door in the western wall had been opened. Beyond it was another door, a grille, and beyond that Sharpe could see the sunlight of another cloister. 'He wants us to go through there. Just the two of us. I think we should go.' Dubreton shrugged.
Sharpe walked past the raised pool, the Frenchman beside him, and the soldiers at the western side of the cloister parted as the two officers stepped under the arch and into the doorway. The grille swung open to the touch, they were in a short, cold passageway, and then they were on the upper balcony of the inner cloister. Hakeswill followed them, and with him were half a dozen soldiers who stood either side of the officers. Their muskets were cocked, their bayonets pointing at Sharpe and Dubreton.
'Jesus God.' Sharpe's voice was bitter.
This inner cloister had once been beautiful. Water had been channelled through its court to form a maze of small, decorated canals. The shallow channels were brilliant with painted tiles, yet the water had long ceased to flow, the canals were broken, and the stones of the court were cracked.
All that Sharpe saw in a few seconds, as he saw the thorn bushes that grew like weeds in one corner, the vines that straggled winter-dead up the fine, pale stonework, as he saw the soldiers on the courtyard below. They looked up and grinned at their audience. A brazier burned in the cloister's centre, burned so that the air shimmered above it, and in the bright burning bayonets rested.
A woman was tied on her back in the courtyard's centre. Her wrists and ankles had been tied to iron pegs that had been driven between the cracked stones. She was naked to the waist. Her chest was bloody, black marks beneath the blood that trickled down her ribcage. Sharpe looked at Dubreton, fearful that this was his English wife, but the Frenchman gave the smallest shake of his head.
'Watch, Sharpy.' Hakeswill.cackled behind them.
One of the soldiers went to the brazier and, protecting his hand with a hank of rag, he took a bayonet from the flames. He checked that the head was glowing hot, turned with it, and the woman began to jerk, to gasp in panic, and the soldier put his boot on her stomach, half-hiding his work, and the woman screamed. The red hot blade went down, the scream filled the cloister, and then the woman must have fainted. The soldier stepped away.
'She tried to run away, Sharpy.' Hakeswill's breath was foul over Sharpe's shoulder. 'Didn't like it with us, did she? Can you see what it says, Captain?'
The smell of burned flesh came to the upper storey. Sharpe wanted to haul the great sword free of its scabbard, to give the edge its freedom on the bastards in this convent, but he knew he was powerless. His moment would come, but it was not now.
Hakeswill laughed. 'Puta. That's what it says. She's Spanish, you see, Captain. Lucky she's not English, isn't it? Got another letter in English. Whore.'
The woman was scarred for life, branded by evil. Sharpe supposed her to be one of the women from this village, or perhaps a visitor from another village who had tried to run down the long twisting road that led westward from the Gateway of God. It would be as hard to escape from Adrados as it would be to approach the Castle ramparts unseen.
The soldiers pulled the pegs out of the ground, cut the bonds, and two of them dragged the woman across the stones and out of sight beneath the arches of the lower storey.
Hakeswill had walked round the corner of the upper cloister so that he faced the two officers across the angle. He rested his hands on the stone balustrade and sneered at them. 'We wanted you to see that so you know what will happen to your bitches if you try and come up here.' The face twitched, the right hand pointed to the bloodstains by the brazier. 'That!' Two bayonets still rested in the fire. 'You see, gentlemen, we have changed our mind. We like having the ladies here, so we're bleeding keeping them. We don't want you to have all the trouble of taking the money back, so we're keeping that too.' He laughed, watching their faces. 'You can take a message back instead. You understanding this, Froggie?'
Dubreton's voice was scornful. 'I understand. Are they alive?'
The blue eyes opened wide, feigning innocence. 'Alive, Froggie? Of course they're bloody alive. They stay alive as long as you keep away from here. I'll show you one of them in a minute, but you bloody listen first, and listen good.'
He twitched again, the face jerking on its long neck and the pinned cravat slipped, showing the scar on the left side of his neck and he pulled at the cravat till the scar was hidden. He grinned, showing the blackened stumps of his teeth. 'They ain't been hurt. Not yet, but they will be. I'll burn them first, mark them, and then the lads can have them, and then they'll die! You understand?' He screamed the question at them. 'Sharpy! You understand?'
'Yes.'
'Froggie?'
'Yes.'
'Clever aren't you!' He laughed, eyes blinking, tooth-stumps grinding in his mouth. The face twitched suddenly, once, then stopped. 'Now you've brought the money so I'll tell you what you've done. You've bought their virtue!' He laughed again. 'You've kept them safe for a little while. Course we might want more money if we decide their virtue's expensive, follow me? But we got women now, all we want, so we won't use your bitches if you pay up.'
Sharpe dreamed some nights of killing this man. Hakeswill had been his enemy for nigh on twenty years and Sharpe wanted to be the man who proved that Hakeswill could be killed. The rage he felt at this moment was impotent.
Hakeswill laughed, shuffled sideways down the balustrade. 'Now, I'll show you one bitch and you can talk to her. But!' His finger pointed again at the brazier. 'Remember the spikes. I'll carve a bloody letter on her if you ask her where we keep her. Understand? You don't know which bloody building they're locked in, do you? And you'd like to know, wouldn't you? So don't bloody ask or else I'll mark one of the pretties. You understand?'
Both officers nodded. Hakeswill turned and waved at a man who stood in the courtyard close to where the first woman had been dragged away. The man turned, called to someone behind him.
Sharpe s
ensed Dubreton stiffen as a woman was brought into the courtyard. She was dressed in a long black cloak and she stepped delicately over the broken canals. Two men guarded her, both with bayonets. Her hair, golden and wispy, was piled loosely on her head.
Hakeswill was watching the two officers. 'Chose this one special for you. Chatters away in French and English. Would you believe she's English and married to a Froggie?' He laughed.
The woman was stopped in the centre of the courtyard and one of the soldiers nudged her, pointed upwards, and she looked at the balcony. She gave no sign of recognizing her husband, nor he of her, and Sharpe knew that both were proud people who would not give her captors the satisfaction of knowing anything about her.
Hakeswill sidled back towards the officers. 'Go on, then! Talk!'
'Madame.' Dubreton's voice was gentle.
'Monsieur.' She was probably, Sharpe thought, a beautiful woman, but her face was in shadow, was marked by tiredness, and the strain of captivity had deepened the lines either side of her mouth. She was thin, like her husband, and her voice, as they spoke, was dignified and controlled. One of the soldiers guarding her was French and he listened to the conversation.
Hakeswill was bored. 'In English! English!' Dubreton looked at Sharpe, back to this wife. 'I have the honour to introduce Major Richard Sharpe, Madame. He is of the English army.'
Sharpe bowed, saw her incline her head in acknowledgement, but her words were drowned by a great cackle from Hakeswill. 'Major! They made you a bleeding Major, Sharpy? Christ on the cross! They must be bloody desperate! Major!' Sharpe had not put a Major's stars on his shoulders; Hakeswill had not known till this minute.
Madame Dubreton looked at Sharpe. 'Lady Farthingdale will be pleased to know you were here, Major.'
'Please pass on her husband's solicitations, Ma'am. I trust she, and all of you, are well.' Hakeswill was listening, grinning. Sharpe desperately searched in his head for some form of words, any form of words, that might hint to this woman that she must give some indication of where the hostages were kept. He was determined that he would avenge this day's insults, that he would rescue this woman and the other women, but Hakeswill had been right. If he did not know in which building they were kept, then he was helpless. Yet he could not think of anything that he could say which would not sound suspicious, which would not provoke Hakeswill into ordering the branding of Dubreton's wife.
She nodded slowly. 'We are well, Major, and we have not been hurt.'
'I'm pleased to hear that, Ma'am.'
Hakeswill leaned over the balustrade. 'You're happy here, aren't you, dearie?' He laughed. 'Happy! Say you're happy!'
She looked at him. 'I am withering in my bloom, Colonel. Lost in solitary gloom.'
'Ah!' He grinned. 'Doesn't she speak nice!' He turned to the officers. 'Satisfied?'
'No.' Dubreton's face was harsh.
'Well I am.' He waved at the soldiers. 'Take her away!'
They turned her and, for the first time, her poise went. She pulled at her captors, twisted, and her voice was pleading and desperate. 'I'm withering in my bloom!'
'Take her away!'
Sharpe looked at Dubreton, but still his face was a mask showing no reaction to his wife's distress. The Frenchman watched her until she was gone and then turned, wordlessly, towards the upper cloister.
Harper and Bigeard were standing together and their faces showed relief as their officers came back into the cloister. The door was shut behind them, the soldiers once more were arrayed against the western wall, and Pot-au-Feu, still in his chair, spoke in French to Dubreton. When he had finished he spooned more of the stew from the great earthenware pot.
Dubreton looked at Sharpe. 'He's saying what your man was saying. We've paid for their virtue, that's all. We must go home empty-handed.'
Pot-au-Feu grinned as the Colonel finished, swallowed his mouthful, then waved the soldiers who barred the entrance to the Convent to make way. He gestured with his spoon at the officers. 'Go! Go!'
Dubreton glanced at Sharpe, but Sharpe did not move except to unsling the rifle from his shoulder and thumb back the flint. There was one thing unsaid, one thing that needed to be said, and even though he knew it to be hopeless he would try. He raised his voice, looking around the cloister at the men in red uniforms. 'I have a message for you. Every man here will die except those of you who give yourselves up!' They began jeering him, shouting him down, but Sharpe's voice had been trained on a parade ground. He forced the words through their noise. 'You must present yourselves to our outposts before New Year's Day. Remember that! Before the New Year! Otherwise!' He pulled the trigger.
The shot was a fluke, yet he knew it would work because he had willed it to work, because he would not leave without one small measure of revenge on the scum of this place. It was a shot from the hip, but the range was short and the target big, and the spinning bullet shattered the cooking pot and Pot-au-Feu screamed in pain as the hot sauce and meat exploded over his thighs. The fat man wrenched himself sideways, lost his balance and fell onto the tiles. The soldiers were silent. Sharpe looked round. 'New Year's Day.'
He slammed the butt of the rifle down, felt in his pouch for a cartridge and then, before their eyes, reloaded the rifle with quick professional movements. He bit the bullet out of the paper cartridge, primed the pan, closed it, then poured the rest of the powder into the barrel, followed it with the wadding, and then he spat the bullet into the greased leather patch that gripped the rifling of the barrel and made the Baker Rifle into the most accurate weapon on the battlefield. He did it fast, his eyes not on his work, but on the men who watched him, and he rammed the bullet down the seven spiralling grooves, slotted the ramrod into its brass tubes, and the gun was loaded. 'Sergeant!'
'Sir!'
'What will you do to these bastards in the New Year?'
'Kill them, sir!' Harper sounded confident, happy.
Dubreton grinned, spoke softly, his eyes on Pot-au-Feu who was struggling to his feet helped by two of the girls. 'That was dangerous, my friend. They might have fired back.'
'They're scared of the Sergeants.' Anyone would be scared of those two.
'Shall we go, Major?'
A crowd had gathered outside the Convent, men, women and children, and they shouted insults at the two officers, insults that died as the two vast Sergeants appeared with their weapons held ready. The two big men walked down the steps and pushed the crowd back by their sheer presence. They seemed to like each other, Harper and Bigeard, each one amused, perhaps, by meeting another man as strong. Sharpe hoped they never met on a battlefield.
'Major?' Dubreton was standing on the top step, pulling on thin leather gloves.
'Sir?'
'Are you planning to rescue the hostages?' His voice was low, though no enemy was in earshot.
'If it can be done, sir. You?'
Dubreton shrugged. 'This place is much further from our lines than yours. You move through the country a good deal easier than us.' He half smiled. He was referring to the Partisans who ambushed the French in the northern hills. 'We needed a full Regiment of cavalry to bring us within two miles of this place.' He tugged the gloves comfortable. 'If you do, Major, may I make a request of you?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I know, of course, that you would return our hostages. I would be grateful if you could also return our deserters.' He held up an elegant hand. 'Not, I assure you, to fight again. I would like them to pay their penalty. I assume yours will meet the same fate.' He walked down the steps, looked back at Sharpe. 'On the other hand, Major, the difficulties of rescue may be too great?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Unless you know where the women are kept?'
'Yes, sir.'
Dubreton smiled. Bigeard was waiting with the horses. The Colonel looked up at the sky as if checking the weather. 'My wife has great dignity, Major, as you saw. She did not give those bastards the satisfaction of knowing I was her husband. On the other hand she sounded a little hysterical at
the end, yes?'
Sharpe nodded. 'Yes, sir.'
Dubreton smiled happily. 'Strange she should be overwrought in rhyme, Major? Unless she's a poet, of course, but can you think of a woman poet?' He looked pleased with himself. 'They cook, they make love, they play music, they can talk, but they are not poets. My wife, though, reads a lot of poetry.' He shrugged. 'Withering in my bloom, lost in solitary gloom? Will you remember the words?'
'Yes, sir.'
Dubreton peeled off a newly donned glove and held out his hand. 'It has been my privilege, Major.1'
'Mine too, sir. Perhaps we'll meet again.'
'It would be a pleasure. Would you give my warmest regards to Sir Arthur Wellesley? Or Lord Wellington as we must now call him.'
Sharpe's surprise showed on his face, to Dubreton's delight. 'You know him, sir?'
'Of course. We were at the Royal Academy of Equitation together, at Angers. It's strange, Major, how your greatest soldier was taught to fight in France.' Dubreton was pleased with the remark.
Sharpe laughed, straightened to attention, and saluted the French Colonel. He liked this man. 'I wish you a safe journey home, sir.'
'And you, Major.' Dubreton raised a hand to Harper. 'Sergeant! Take care!'
The French went east, skirting the village, and Sharpe and Harper went west, dropping over the crest of the pass, trotting down the winding road towards Portugal. The air suddenly seemed clean here, the madness left behind, though Sharpe knew they would be going back. A Scottish Sergeant-Major, an old and wise soldier, had once talked to Sharpe through the dark night before battle. He had been embarrassed to tell Sharpe an idea, but he said it finally and Sharpe remembered it now. A soldier, the Scotsman had said, is a man who fights for people who cannot fight for themselves. Behind Sharpe, in the Gateway of God, were women who could not fight for themselves. Sharpe would go back.
Chapter 6
'So you didn't see her?'