Sharpe's Devil

Ardiles suddenly grinned, as though he wanted to erase the grimness of his last words. 'The trouble with Don Bias, Englishman, was that he was very close to being a saint. He was an honorable man, and you know what happens to honorable men—they prove to be an embarrassment. This world isn't governed by honorable men, but by lawyers and politicians, and whenever such scum come across an honest man they have to kill him.' The ship shuddered as a huge wave smashed ragged down the port gunwale. Ardiles laughed at the weather's malevolence, then looked again at Sharpe. 'Take my advice, Englishman. Go home! I'll be sailing back to Spain in a week's time, which gives you just long enough to visit the chingana behind the church in Valdivia, after which you should sail home to your wife.'

'The chingana?' Sharpe asked.

'A chingana is where you go for a chingada,' Ardiles said unhelpfully. 'A chingana is either a tavern that sells whores, or a whorehouse that sells liquor, and the chingana behind the church in Valdivia has half-breed girls who give chingadas that leave men gasping for life. It's the best whorehouse for miles. You know how you can tell which is the best whorehouse in a Spanish town?'

'Tell me.'

'It's the one where all the priests go, and this one is where the Bishop goes! So visit the mestizo whores, then go home and tell Vivar's wife that her husband's body was eaten by wild pigs!'

But Sharpe had not been paid to go home and tell stories. He had taken Dona Louisa's money, and he was far from home, and he would not go back defeated. He would find Don Bias, no matter how deep the forest or high the hill. If Don Bias still had form, then Sharpe would find it.

He had sworn as much, and he would keep his promise. He would find Don Bias.

Albatrosses ghosted alongside the Espiritu Santa's, rigging. The frigate, Cape Horn left far behind her, was sailing before a friendly wind on a swirling current of icy water. Dolphins followed her, while whales surfaced and rolled on either flank.

'Christ, but there's some meat on those bloody fish!' Harper said in admiration as a great whale plunged past the Espiritu Santo. The ship was sailing north along the Chilean coast, out of sight of land, though the proximity of the shore was marked by the towering white clouds that heaped above the Andes. Inshore, the sailors said, were yet stranger creatures—penguins and sea lions, mermaids and turtles—but the frigate was staving well clear of the uncharted Chilean coastline so that Harper, to his regret, was denied a chance of glimpsing such monsters. Ardiles, still hoping to capture his own monster, Lord Cochrane, continued to exercise his guns even though his men were already as well trained as any gunners Sharpe had ever seen.

Yet it seemed there was to be no victory over the devil Cochrane on this voyage, for the Espiritu Santos lookouts saw no other ships till the frigate at last closed on the land. Then the lookouts glimpsed a harmless fleet of small fishing vessels that dragged their nets through the cold offshore rollers. The men aboard the fishing boats claimed not to have seen any rebel warships. 'Though God only knows if they're telling the truth,' Lieutenant Otero told Sharpe. Land was still out of sight, but everyone on board knew that the voyage was ending. Seamen were repairing their clothes, sewing up huge rents in breeches and darning their shirts in readiness to meet the girls of Valdivia. 'One day more, just one day more,' Lieutenant Otero told Sharpe after the noon sight, and sure enough, next dawn, Sharpe woke to see the dark streak of land filling the eastern horizon.

That afternoon, under a faltering wind, a friendly tide helped the Espiritu Santo into Valdivia's harbor. Sharpe and Harper stood on deck and stared at the massive fortifications that guarded this last Spanish stronghold on the Chilean coast. The headland that protected the harbor was crowned by Fort Ingles, which in turn could lock its cannonfire with the guns of Fort San Carlos. Both forts lay under the protection of the artillery in the Choroco-mayo fort which had been built on the headland's highest point. Beyond San Carlos, and still on the headland that formed the harbor's western side, lay Fort Amargos and Corral Castle. The Espiritu Santos First Lieutenant proudly pointed out each succeeding stronghold as the frigate edged her way around the headland. 'In Chile,' Otero explained yet again, 'armies move by sea because the roads are so bad, but no army could ever take Valdivia unless they first capture this harbor, and I just wish Cochrane would try to capture it! We'd destroy him!'

Sharpe believed him, for there were yet more defenses to add their guns to the five forts of the western shore. Across the harbor mouth, where the huge Pacific swells shattered white on dark rocks, was the biggest fort of all, Fort Niebla, while in the harbor's center, head on to any attacking ships, lay the guns and ramparts of Manzanera Island. The harbor would be a trap, sucking an attacker inside to where he would be ringed with high guns hammering heated shot down onto his wooden decks.

Only two of the forts, Corral Castle and Fort Niebla, were modern stone-walled forts. The other forts were little more than glorified gun emplacements protected by ditches and timber walls, yet their cannons could make the harbor into a killing ground of overlapping gunnery zones. 'If we were an enemy ship,' Otero boasted of the ring of artillery, 'we would be in hell by now.'

'Where's the town?' Sharpe asked. Valdivia was supposed to be the major remaining Spanish garrison in Chile, yet to Sharpe's surprise, the great array efforts seemed to be protecting nothing but a stone quay, some tarred sheds and a row of fishermen's hovels.

'The town's upstream.' Otero pointed to what Sharpe had taken for a bay just beside Fort Niebla. 'That's the river mouth and the town's fifteen miles inland. You'll be dropped at the north quay where you find a boatman to take you upstream. They're dishonest people, and they'll try to charge you five dollars. You shouldn't pay more than one.'

'The Espiritu Santo won't go upstream?'

'The river's too shallow.' Lieutenant Otero, who had charge of the frigate, paused to listen to the leadsman who was calling the depth. 'Sometimes the boatmen will take you halfway and then threaten to put you ashore in the wilderness if you won't pay more money. If that happens, the best thing to do is to shoot one of the Indian crew members. No one objects to the killing of a savage, and you'll find the death has a remarkably salutary effect on the other boatmen.'

Otero turned away to tend to the ship. Fort Niebla was firing a salute which one of the long nine pounders at the frigate's bow returned. The gunfire echoed flatly from the steep hills where a few stunted trees were permanently windbent toward the north. Seamen were streaming aloft to furl the sails after their long passage. There was a crash as the starboard anchor was struck loose, then a grating rumble as fathoms of chain clattered through the hawse. The fragrant scents of the land vainly tried to defeat the noxious carapace of the Espiritu Santos, cesspit-laced-with-powder stench. The frigate, her salute fired, checked as the anchor bit into the harbor's bottom, then turned as the tide pulled the fouled hull slowly around. The smoke of the gun salute writhed and drifted across the bay. 'Welcome to Chile,' Otero said.

'Can you believe it?' Harper said with amazement. 'We're in the New World!'

An hour later, their seabags and money chest under the guard of two burly seamen, Sharpe and Harper stepped ashore onto the New World. They had reached their voyage's end in the quaking land of giants and pygmies, of unicorns and ghouls, in the rebellious land that lay under the volcanoes' fire and the devil's flail. They were in Chile.

George Blair, British Consul in Valdivia, blinked short-sightedly at Richard Sharpe. 'Why the hell should I tell you lies? Of course he's dead!' Blair laughed mirthlessly. 'He'd better bloody be dead. He's been buried long enough! The poor bugger must be in a bloody bad state if he's still alive; he's been underground these last three months. Are you sure you don't have any gin in your baggage?'

'I'm sure.'

'People usually bring me gin from London.' Blair was a plump, middle-aged man, wearing a stained white shirt and frayed breeches. He had greeted his visitors wearing a formal black tailcoat, but had long discarded the coat as too cumbersome in the day's warmth. 'It's rather a common courtesy,' he grumbled, 'to bring gin from London.'

Sharpe was in no state to notice either the Consul's clothes or his unhappiness; instead his thoughts were a whirlpool of disbelief and shock. Don Bias was not missing at all, but was dead and buried, which meant Sharpe's whole voyage was for nothing. At least, that was what Blair reckoned.

'He's under the paving slabs in the garrison church at Puerto Crucero,' George Blair repeated in his hard, clipped accent. 'Jesus Christ! I know a score of people who were at the damned funeral. I wasn't invited, and a