'And you see it is addressed to a notorious rebel?'
'I do, Your Excellency, indeed I do.'
Bautista's face twitched with amusement. 'Tell me, Blair, how your government will respond to the news that Mister Sharpe was acting as an errand boy for Bonaparte?'
'They will doubtless regard any such message as treasonable correspondence, Your Excellency.' Blair bobbed obsequiously.
Bautista smiled, and no wonder, for Sharpe's possession of the Emperor's message was enough to condemn Sharpe, not just with the Spanish, but with the British too. The British might possess the greatest navy and the strongest economy in the world, yet they were terrified of the small fat man cooped up in Saint Helena's Longwood, and maybe they were terrified enough to allow Bautista to tie two British subjects to wooden stakes and blow their souls into eternity at the mouths of loaded cannons. Sharpe, suddenly feeling very abandoned, also felt frightened.
Bautista sensed the fear and smiled. He had won now. He turned again to Blair. 'Either Mister Sharpe was carrying a message from Napoleon, which makes him an enemy of his own country, or else this is a message from the British merchants who are my country's enemies, but either way, Mister Sharpe's possession of the message calls for punishment. Might I assume, Blair, that your government would not approve if I were to execute Mister Sharpe?'
Blair beamed as though Bautista had made a fine jest. 'My government would be displeased, Your Excellency.'
'But you do accept that Mister Sharpe deserves punishment?'
'Alas, Your Excellency, it appears so.' Blair nodded obsequiously at the Captain-General, then snatched a sideways glance at Sharpe who wondered just how much of Dona Louisa's money the Consul was taking as a bribe.
Bautista strolled back to the table where he picked up Sharpe's heavy sword. 'This was carried at Waterloo?' Sharpe said nothing, but Bautista did not need an answer. 'I shall keep it as a trophy! Perhaps I shall have a plaque made for it. Taken from an English soldier who at last met his match'!'
'Fight for it now, you bastard,' Sharpe called.
'I don't fight against lice, I just smoke them out.' Bautista dropped the sword onto the table, then adopted a portentous tone of voice. 'I declare your possessions are forfeited to the Spanish crown, and that the two of you are unwelcome in Chile. You are therefore expelled from these territories, and will embark on the next ship to leave this harbor.' Bautista had already prepared the expulsion papers which now, with a theatrical flourish, he offered to Captain Ardiles of the
'None,' Ardiles, ready for the request, said flatly.
'Put them to work. No comforts! Sign them on to your crew and make them sweat.'
'Indeed, Your Excellency.' Ardiles took the papers and pushed them into the tail pocket of his uniform.
Bautista came close to Sharpe. 'I would have preferred to put you to work in the mines, Englishman, so think yourself lucky.'
'Frightened of the Royal Navy?' Sharpe taunted him.
'Be careful, Englishman,' Bautista said softly.
'You're a thief,' Sharpe said just as quietly. 'And Vivar knew it, which is why you killed him.'
At first Bautista looked astonished at the accusation, then it made him laugh. He clapped with delight at his amusement, then waved at Major Suarez. 'Take them away! Now!' The audience, in ludicrous sycophancy, began to applaud wildly as the infantrymen who had escorted Sharpe and Harper from their prison now chivied the two men through an archway and onto a flight of wide stone steps that ran down beside the bloody gun battery. The steps, which were very steep and cut from the crag on which the citadel stood, led down to the fortress quay where a longboat from the
Ardiles followed, his scabbard's metal tip clattering on the stone steps. 'Into the boat!' he ordered Sharpe and Harper when they reached the quay.
'Make them sweat!' Bautista shouted from the gun battery's parapet. 'Put them at the oars now! You hear me, Ardiles! Put them at the oars! I want to see them sweat!'
Ardiles nodded to the Bosun who made space for Sharpe and Harper on the bow thwarts. The other oarsmen grinned. Captain Ardiles, cloaked against the cold south wind, sat in the stern sheets where, it seemed to Sharpe, he carefully avoided his two captives' eyes. 'Push off!' he ordered.
'Oars!' the Bosun shouted. From the high arched windows above the battery of heavy guns, a row of faces stared down at Sharpe's humiliation.
'Stroke!' the Bosun shouted, and Sharpe momentarily thought of rebelling, but knew that such mutiny would lead nowhere. Instead, like Harper, he pulled clumsily. Their oar-blades splashed and clattered on the other oars as they dragged the heavy boat away through the blood-flecked water. A gull, disturbed by the longboat's proximity, flapped up from the water with a length of Ferdinand's intestines in its beak. Other gulls screamed as they fought for the delicacy.
'Pull!' the Bosun shouted, and Sharpe felt a pang of impotent anger. The rage was not directed at his tormentors, but at himself. He had been in the Americas little more than a week, yet now he would have to crawl back to Europe, confess his failure, and try to return Louisa her money. Which effort, he much feared, would mean bankruptcy. Except he knew that Louisa would forgive him, and that clemency hurt almost as much as bankruptcy. Goddamn and Goddamn and Goddamn! He had been rooked like a child wandering into a cutpurse's tavern! It was that knowledge that really hurt, that he had been treated like a fool, and deservedly so. And to have lost his sword! The sword was only a cheap Heavy Cavalry blade, ugly and ill-balanced, but it had been a gift from Harper and it had kept Sharpe alive in some grim battles. Now it would be a trophy on Bautista's wall. Christ! Sharpe stared at the fortress where Bautista ruled, and he felt the horrid impotence of failure, and the horrid certainty that he could never have his revenge. He was being taken away, across a world and back to ignominy, and he was helpless.
He was helpless, he was penniless, and he had just come ten thousand bloody miles for nothing.
The frigate, with its cargo of gold, sailed on that evening's tide. Sharpe and Harper were put to work on a capstan that raised one of the anchors, then sent down to the gundeck where they helped to stack nine- and twelve-pounder shots in the ready racks about the frigate's three masts. They worked till their muscles were sore and sweat was stinging their eyes, but they had no other choice. The dice had rolled badly, there was no other explanation, and the two men must knuckle under. Which did not mean they had to be subservient. A huge scarred beast of a man, a one-eyed seaman who was an evident leader of the forecastle, came to look them over, and such was the man's power that the Bosun's mates quietly edged back into the shadows when he gestured them away.
'My name's Balin,' the huge man said, 'and you're English.'
'I'm English,' Sharpe said, 'he's Irish.'
Balin jerked his head to order Harper aside. 'I've no quarrel with the Irish,' he said, 'but I've no love for Englishmen. Though mind you,' he took a step forward, ducking under the deck beams, 'I like English clothes. That's a fine coat, Englishman. I'll take it.' He held out a broad hand. Two score of seamen made a ring to hide what happened from any officers who might come down to the deck. 'Come on!' Balin insisted.
'I don't want trouble,' Sharpe spoke very humbly, 'I just want to get home safely.'
'Give me your coat,' Balin said, 'and there's no trouble.'
Sharpe glanced left and right at the unfriendly faces in the gundeck's gloom. Night had fallen, and the only lights were a few glass-shielded lanterns that hung above the guns, and the flickering flames made the seamen's faces even more grim than usual. 'If I give you the coat,' Sharpe asked, 'you'll keep me from trouble?'
'I'll cuddle you to sleep, diddums,' Balin said, and the men laughed.
Sharpe nodded. He took off the fine green coat and held it out to the massive man. 'I don't want trouble. My friend and I just want to get home. We didn't ask to be here, we don't want to be here, and we don't want to make enemies.'
'Of course you don't,' Balin said scornfully, reaching for the good kerseymere coat, and the moment his hand took hold of the material Sharpe brought up his right boot, hard and straight, the kick hidden by the coat until the instant it slammed into Balin's groin. The big man grunted, mouth open, and Sharpe rammed his head forward,
