Sharpe's Devil

'It isn't my battle,' Sharpe said, 'and besides, you're going to lose it.'

'You didn't believe I'd capture this place.' Cochrane swept a victor's arm around the vista of the citadel's ramparts.

'True,' Sharpe allowed, 'but only because you used a trick to get your attackers in close, and that trick won't work two times.'

'Maybe it will,' Cochrane smiled. For a few seconds the Scotsman was silent, then his desire to reveal his plans overcame his instinct for caution. 'You remember telling me about those artillery officers who crossed the Atlantic with you?'

Sharpe nodded. He had described to Lord Cochrane how Colonel Ruiz and his officers had sailed ahead of their men, which meant, Cochrane now said, that the two slow transports carrying the men and the regiment's guns were probably still lumbering across the Atlantic. 'And I'll wager a wee fortune that if I disguise the Kitty and the O'Higgins, I can get right inside Valdivia Harbor by pretending to be those two transports.' His voice, eager and excited, was filled with amusement at the thought of again deceiving the Spaniards. 'You saw how the garrison collapsed here! You think morale is any better in Valdivia?'

'Probably not,' Sharpe admitted.

'So join me! I promised you a share of the prize money. That bastard Bautista took almost everything of value out of here, so it must all be in Valdivia, and that includes your money, Sharpe. Are you going to let the bastard just take it?'

'I'm going to look for Don Bias,' Sharpe said doggedly, 'then go home.'

'You won't fight for money?' Cochrane sounded astonished. 'Not that I blame you. I tell myself I fight for more than money, but that's the only thing these rogues want.' He nodded down at his men who were scattered about the citadel. 'So, for their sakes, I'll fight for money and pay them their wages, and the lawyers in Santiago can whistle at the wind for all I care.' The thought of lawyers plunged the mercurial Scotsman into instant unhappi-ness. 'Have you ever seen a lawyer apologize? I haven't, and I don't suppose anyone else has. It must be like watching a snake eat its own vomit. You won't help me force a lawyer to apologize?'

'I have to—'

'Find Bias Vivar,' Cochrane finished the sentence sourly.

A week after the citadel's capture the reports of atrocities and ambush began to decline. A few refugees still arrived from the distant parts of the province, and even a handful of the fort's defeated garrison had come back rather than face the vengeful savages, but it seemed to Sharpe that the countryside north of Puerto Crucero was settling back into a wary silence. The savages had gone back to their forests, the settlers were creeping out of hiding to see what was left of their farms and the Spaniards were licking their wounds in Valdivia.

Sharpe decided it was safe to ride north. He assembled what he needed for his journey—guns, blankets, salted fish and dried meat—and earmarked two horses captured in the citadel's stables and two good saddles from among the captured booty. He persuaded Major Suarez to describe the valley where Don Bias had ridden into mystery, and Suarez even drew a map, telling Sharpe what parts of the valley had been most thoroughly searched for Bias Vivar's body. Cochrane made one last feeble effort to persuade Sharpe to stay, then wished him luck. 'When will you leave?'

'At dawn,' Sharpe said. But then, as night fell red across the ocean to touch the sentinels' weapons with a scarlet sheen, everything changed again.

Don Bias was not dead after all. But living.

His name was Marcos. Just Marcos. He was a thin young man with the face of a starveling and the eyes of a cutthroat. He had been an infantryman in the Puerto Crucero garrison, one of the men who had poured such a disciplined fire at Cochrane's attack, but who, after the citadel's fall, had fled northward, only to be driven back by his fears of rampaging Indians. Major Miller had interrogated Marcos, and Miller now fetched Marcos to Sharpe. They spoke around a brazier on Puerto Crucero's ramparts and Marcos, in the strangely accented Spanish of the native Chileans, told his story of how Don Bias Vivar, Count of Mouro-morto and erstwhile Captain-General of Chile, still lived. Marcos told the tale nervously, his eyes flicking from Sharpe to Miller, from Miller to Harper, then from Harper to Cochrane who, summoned by Miller, had come to hear Marcos's story.

Marcos had been stationed in Valdivia's Citadel when Bias Vivar disappeared. He knew some of the cavalrymen who had formed part of the escort that had accompanied Captain-General Vivar on his southern tour of inspection. That escort had been commanded by a Captain Lerrana, who was now Colonel Lerrana and one of Captain-General Bautista's closest friends. Marcos accompanied this revelation with a meaningful wink, then paused to scratch vigorously at his crotch. An interval of silence followed, during which he pursued and caught a particularly troublesome louse that he squashed bloodily between his thumb and fingernail before hitching the rent in his breeches roughly closed.

'Hurry now! Don't keep the Colonel waiting!' Miller barked.

Marcos flinched as if he expected to be hit, then reminded Sharpe that Captain-General Vivar had been riding on a tour of inspection that was supposed to end at the citadel in Puerto Crucero. 'From there, serior, he would go back to Valdivia by ship. But no one came back! Neither the Captain-General, nor Captain Lerrana. No one. Not even the troopers! No one came back till after we heard the Captain-General had vanished, then General Bautista arrived from Puerto Crucero, and Captain Lerrana came with him, but by then he was a Colonel and in a new uniform.' Marcos clearly felt that the detail of Lerrana's new uniform was exceedingly telling. He described it in detail, how it had thickly cushioned epaulettes from which hung gold chains, and how it had gold-colored lace on the coat, and high boots that were new and shining.

'Tell him about the prisoner!' Miller interrupted the admiring description of the uniform.

'Ah, yes!' Marcos snatched another bite from his sausage. 'General Bautista was the senior officer in the province, so he came to take over the Captain-General's duties. He came by ship, you understand, and his men came by boat up the river to the Citadel in Valdivia. They came by day, and we made an honor guard for the General. But one boat came at night. In it, senor, was a prisoner who had come from Puerto Crucero, a prisoner so secret that no one even knew his name! The prisoner was hurried into the Angel Tower in the Citadel. You have to understand, senor, that the Angel Tower is very old, very mysterious! It used to be a terrible prison! They say the ghosts of all the dead cling to its stones. Once a man was put in there he only came out as a corpse or an angel.' Marcos superstitiously crossed himself. 'They stopped using the tower as a prison in my grandfather's time, and now no one will step inside for fear of the spirits, but that is where the Captain-General's prisoner was taken and, so far as I know, senor, he is still there. Or he was when I left.' Marcos ended the tale in a rush, then looked eagerly at Miller as though seeking praise for the telling.

'And you think Captain Vivar is that prisoner?' Sharpe asked Marcos.

Marcos nodded energetically. 'I saw his face, senor. I was on duty at the inner gate, and they brought him past me to the door of the tower. I was ordered to turn around and not look, but I was in shadow and they did not see me. It was the Captain-General, I swear it.'

'God save Ireland,' Harper said under his breath.

Sharpe leaned back. 'I wish I could believe him,' he spoke in English, to no one in particular.

'Of course you can believe him!' Cochrane said stoutly. 'Who the hell else do you think Bautista's got in there? The Virgin Mary?'

Marcos greedily bit into a hunk of bread, then looked alarmed as Sharpe leaned forward again.

'Did you ever see your cavalry friends from the Captain-General's escort again?' Sharpe spoke Spanish again.

'Yes, senor.'

'What do they say happened to General Vivar?'

Marcos swallowed a half-chewed lump of bread, scratched his crotch, looked sideways at Miller, then shrugged. 'They say that the Captain-General disappeared in a valley. There was a road that went down the valley's side like this,' Marcos made a zig-zag motion with his right hand, 'and that the Captain-General ordered them to wait at the top of the road while he went down into the valley. And that was it!'

'No gunfire?' Sharpe asked.

'No, senor.'

Sharpe turned to stare at the dark ocean. The sea's roar came from the outer rocks. 'I don't know if I trust