Sharpe's Devil

'I know,' Sharpe said.

'He's a devil, that one,' chuckled Blair, unable to resist admiration for a fellow Briton, 'and they're all scared to hell of him. You want to see a dago piss in his breeches? Just mention Cochrane. They think he's got horns and a tail.'

Sharpe dragged the conversation back to his purpose. 'So how do I get permission to visit Puerto Crucero?'

'You have to get a travel permit from army headquarters.'

'Which is where?'

'In the Citadel, of course.' Blair nodded at the great fort which lay on the river's bend at the very heart of Valdivia.

'Who do I see there?'

'A young fellow called Captain Marquinez.'

'Will Marquinez pay more attention to you than to me?' Sharpe asked.

'Oh, Christ, no! Marquinez is just an overgroomed puppy. He doesn't make the decision. Bautista's the one who'll say yea or nay.' Blair jerked a thumb toward his padlocked strong room. 'I hope there's plenty of money in that box you fetched here, or else you'll be wasting your time in Chile.'

'My time is my own,' Sharpe said acidly, 'which is why I don't want to waste it.' He frowned at Harper who was happily devouring Blair's sugar cakes. 'If you can stop feeding yourself, Patrick, we might start work.'

'Work?' Harper sounded alarmed, but hurriedly swilled down the last of his wine and snatched a final sugar cake before following Sharpe out of Blair's house. 'So what work are we doing?' the Irishman asked.

'We're going to dig up Don Bias's body, of course,' Sharpe said, 'and arrange to have it shipped back to Spain.' Sharpe's confident voice seemed to rouse Valdivia's town square from the torpor of siesta. A man who had been dozing on the church steps looked irritably toward the two tall strangers who strode so noisily toward the Citadel. A dozen Indians, their squat faces blank as carvings, sat in the shade of a mounted statue which stood in the very center of the square. The Indians, who were shackled together by a length of heavy chain manacled to their ankles, pretended not to notice Sharpe, but could not hide their astonishment at the sight of Harper, doubtless thinking that the tall Irishman was a giant. 'They're admiring me, so they are!' Harper boasted happily.

'They're working out how many families they could feed off your carcass. If they boiled you down and salted the flesh there probably wouldn't be famine in this country for a century.'

'You're just jealous.' Harper, seeing new sights, was a happy man. The French wars had given him a taste for travel, and that taste was being well fed by Chile, and his only disappointment so far was the paucity of one- legged giants, unicorns or any other mythical beasts. 'Look at that! Handsome, aren't they, now?' He nodded admiringly toward a group of women who, standing in the shade of the striped awnings that protected the shop fronts, returned Harper's curiosity and admiration. Harper and Sharpe were new faces in a small town, and thus a cause for excited speculation. The wind swirled dust devils across the square and napped the ornate Spanish ensign that flew over the Citadel's gatehouse. A legless beggar, swinging along on his hands, followed Sharpe and pleaded for money. Another, who looked like a leper, made a meaningless noise and held out the stump of a wrist toward the two strangers. A Dominican monk, his white robes stained with the red dust that blew everywhere, was arguing with a carter who had evidently failed to deliver a shipment of wine.

'We're going to need a carter,' Sharpe was thinking aloud as he led Harper toward the Citadel's sentries, 'or at least a cart. We're also going to want two riding horses, plus saddlery, and supplies for as long as it takes to get to Puerto Crucero and back. Unless we can sail home from Puerto Crucero? Or maybe we can sail down there! That'll be cheaper than buying a cart.'

'What the hell do we want a cart for?' Harper was panting at the brisk pace set by Sharpe.

'We need a cart to carry the coffin to Puerto Crucero, unless, of course, we can go there by ship.'

'Why the hell don't we have a coffin made in Puerto Crucero?' Harper asked. 'The world's not so short of carpenters that you can't find a man to knock up a bloody box!'

'Because a box won't do the trick!' Sharpe said. 'The thing has to be watertight, Patrick, not to keep the rain out but to keep the decay in. We're going to need a tinsmith, and I don't suppose Puerto Crucero has too many of those! So we'll have a watertight box made here before we go south.'

'We could plop him in a vat of brandy?' Harper suggested helpfully. 'There's a fellow who drinks in my place that was a gunner's mate on the Victory at Trafalgar, and he says that after the battle they brought Nelson back in a barrel of brandy. My fellow had a look at the body when they unstowed it, and he says the Admiral was as fresh as the day he died, so he was, with flesh soft as a baby, and the only change was that all the man's hair and nails had grown wild. He tasted the brandy too, so he did. He says it was a bit salty.'

'I don't want to put Don Bias in brandy,' Sharpe said irritably. 'He'll be half-rotted as it is, and if we put him in a cask of bloody liquor he'll like as not dissolve altogether, and instead of burying the poor man in Spain we'll just be pouring him away. So we'll put him in a tin box, solder him up tight, and take him back that way.'

'Whatever you say,' Harper said grimly, the tone provoked by the unfriendly faces of the sentries at the fort's gate. The Citadel reminded Sharpe of the Spanish fortresses he had assaulted in the French wars. It had low walls over which the muzzles of the defenders' guns showed grimly, and a wide, dry moat designed to be a killing ground for any attackers who succeeded in crossing the earthen glacis which was banked to ricochet assaulting can-nonfire safely up and over the defenders' heads. The only incongruity about Valdivia's formidable Citadel was an ancient-looking tower that stood like a medieval castle turret in the very center of the fortifications.

A Sergeant accosted Sharpe and Harper on the bridge, then reluctantly allowed them into the fort itself. They walked through the entrance tunnel, across a wide parade ground, then through a second gateway into a cramped and shadowed inner courtyard. One wall of the yard was made by the ancient lime-washed tower which was pockmarked by bullet holes. There were smears of dried blood near some of the bullet marks, suggesting that this cheerless place was where Valdivia's prisoners met their firing squads.

They enquired at the inner guardroom for Captain Marquinez who, arriving five minutes later, proved to be a tall, strikingly handsome and extraordinarily fashionable young man. His uniform seemed more appropriate for the jeweled halls of Madrid than for this far, squalid colony. He wore a Hussar jacket so frogged with gold braid that it was impossible to see the cloth beneath, a white kid-skin pelisse edged with black fur, and skintight sky-blue cavalry breeches decorated with gold embroidery and silver side-buttons. His epaulette chains, sword sling, spurs and scabbard furnishings were all of shining gold. His manners matched his uniform's tailoring. He apologized to have kept his visitors waiting, welcomed them to Chile on behalf of Captain-General Bautista, then invited Sharpe and Harper to his quarters where, in a wide, comfortable room, his servant brought cups of steaming chocolate, small gold beakers of a clear Chilean brandy and a plate of sugared grapes. Marquinez paused in front of a gilt- framed mirror to check that his wavy black hair was in place, then crossed to his wide-arched window to show off the view. 'It really is a most beautiful country,' the Captain spoke wistfully, as though he knew it was being lost.

The view was indeed spectacular. The window looked eastward across the town's thatched roofs, then beyond the shadowy foothills to the far snow-topped mountains. One of those distant peaks was pluming a stream of brown smoke to the south wind. 'A volcano,' Marquinez explained. 'Chile has a number of them. It's a tumultuous place, I fear, with frequent earthquakes, but fascinating despite its dangers.' Marquinez's servant brought cigars, and Marquinez hospitably offered a burning spill to Harper. 'So you're staying with Mister Blair?' he asked when the cigars were well lit. 'Poor Blair! His wife refused to travel here, thinking the place too full of dangers! Still, if you keep Blair filled with gin or brandy he's a happy enough man. Your Spanish is excellent, permit me to congratulate you. So few of your countrymen speak our language.'

'We both served in Spain,' Sharpe explained.

'You did! Then our debt to you is incalculable. Please, seat yourselves. You said you had a letter of introduction?'

Marquinez took and read Dona Louisa's letter which did not specifically describe Sharpe's errand, but merely asked any Spanish official to offer whatever help was possible. 'Which of course we will offer gladly!' Marquinez spoke with what seemed to be a genuine warmth. 'I never had the pleasure of meeting Don Bias's wife. He died, of course, before she could join him here. So very tragic, and such a waste. He was a good man, even perhaps a great man! There was something saintly about him, I always thought.' The last compliment, uttered in a very bland