The Emperor had won a great victory in the north, and his enemies had signed a truce, yet if Wellington won today then the victory could encourage the other enemies of France to fight again. And if, and Ducos loved the it’s of the future that he explored so ruthlessly, the northern war recommenced, then the treaty would be needed.
He had the treaty now. Last night a messenger from the Inquisitor had delivered letters to Ducos, letters that he now kept in a haversack attached to his belt. They were letters from eminent men of Spain, from soldiers and churchmen, politicians and aristocrats, lawyers and merchants, and the letters all spoke of the desirability of peace with France. For the good of trade, for the good of the Church, for the good of Spain’s empire, and above all, for the glory of Spain, the letters encouraged Ferdinand VII to accept a peace treaty. The Inquisitor, Ducos granted, had performed a wonderful piece of work. And now, Ducos knew, the Inquisitor was coming to ask a favour.
He heard the footsteps on his stairs, waited for the knock on his door, shouted in answer, and leaned back in his chair.
The skirts of the Inquisitor’s cassock bore two white smears of dust where he had knelt in his morning prayer. His dark face was heavy as though he, too, had spent a sleepless night. He glanced out of the window to where the army waited for battle, then sat opposite Ducos. ‘You received the letters?’
‘I received the letters.’
The Inquisitor waited, as though seeking approval for his work. When it did not come he gestured abruptly. ‘Your soldiers are confident.’
‘I imagine the British are too,’ Ducos said drily. In truth he had been astonished by the surge of morale in the French army. The news of the Emperor’s victories had filled them with a desire to do in Spain what Napoleon had done in the north.
‘Victory for you today,’ the Inquisitor said, ‘would make the treaty unnecessary.’
‘For the moment,’ Ducos said, ‘but I would not be so certain of our victory, father.’ He stood and walked towards the window. On a table beside it, in a small bowl, he kept breadcrumbs that he now put on the ledge for the birds. ‘It has been my misfortune to spend much of my life with soldiers. They are boastful creatures, noisy, crude, and unthinking. They believe in victory, father, because they cannot bear the thought of defeat.’ He turned from the window and stared at the priest. ‘I do not think your work will prove to be wasted.’
‘But unrewarded.’
‘Your reward,’ Ducos said as he walked back to his table, ‘is Spain’s glory and the survival of the Inquisition. I congratulate you. You also, I believe, have the Marquesa’s wagons safely locked in your courtyard.’ He said the last words with heavy mockery.
‘The money,’ Father Hacha spoke uncomfortably, ‘is not legally ours.’
‘True. But it is not my fault if you cannot keep a woman locked in a nunnery.’
The Inquisitor said nothing for a few seconds. From the window ledge came the small scratching sounds of beaks and claws. From much further away, made tiny by the distance, came the thin call of a trumpet. The Inquisitor brushed at the dust on his cassock. ‘If there is to be peace between our two countries, then there will also have to be diplomatic relations.’
‘True.’
‘I have hopes that, in those relations, I might be of further use to you.’
Ducos said nothing. He had expected the Inquisitor to offer him a threat that, unless the Marquesa was arrested, he would betray the proposed treaty’s existence to the enemy. Indeed, Ducos had been prepared for that threat, and would have met it with the death of this priest. Instead, though, the Inquisitor was offering a bargain of a different kind. ‘Go on,’ Ducos said.
‘There will be a new beginning in Spain.’ The Inquisitor seemed to be gaining in confidence as he spoke. ‘There will be a need for new men, new advisers, new leadership. With wealth behind me, Major, I can rise to that challenge. But not if the wealth is tainted. Not if a woman is challenging me in the courts, or spreading rumours in the chanceries of Europe. If you let me rise as I intend to rise, Major, then in the years to come you will find France has a friend in the Spanish court.’
Ducos liked the suggestion. He liked such an excursion into the far future, the promise that, in a new Europe, the Inquisitor would be his informant and ally. He shrugged. ‘I cannot have her arrested.’
‘I don’t ask you to.’ From far away came a sound like thorns burning. The Inquisitor looked out of the window, but Ducos dismissed the musketry.
‘They’re clearing their barrels, nothing more.’ He stroked his finger down a quill. ‘You want to kill her?’
‘No!’
The sharpness of the reply made Ducos look up. ‘No?’
‘She will have made her own will. If she dies then her inheritors become my enemy. No.’ The Inquisitor frowned. ‘She must go to a convent. She must learn the humility of religion.’
Ducos smiled thinly. ‘You failed once.’
‘Not again.’
‘Perhaps not.’ Ducos sounded dubious, but he reflected that Richard Sharpe was dead, and could not repeat his impudent rescue of the woman. Sharpe’s death had pleased Ducos. He had been given nightmares by his memory of the fight in Burgos Castle, of the battered, beaten, bleeding Rifleman suddenly roaring his challenge and turning the room into a shambles. Yet Sharpe had died in the explosion and that fact gave Ducos some small happiness. Ducos looked at the priest. ‘Yet it is not the duty of the Emperor’s forces to put women into convents.’
‘I don’t ask that.’
‘Then what do you ask?’
‘Just this.’ The Inquisitor leaned forward and put on the table a piece of paper. ‘That you sign a pass allowing those men into the city today.’
The paper was a list of names. It was headed by the name of the Slaughterman, El Matarife, and Ducos knew that the others would be members of his band. There were thirty names. ‘What do you expect of them?’
The Inquisitor shrugged. ‘Both victory and defeat will bring chaos to the city. Within chaos there is opportunity.
‘A slight hope, I would have thought?’
‘God is with us.’
‘Ah,’ Ducos smiled. ‘It was a pity he was not with your brother in the mountains.’ He took a clean piece of paper, uncapped his ink, and wrote swiftly. ‘Will you want these men to carry weapons in God’s service?’
‘Yes.’
Ducos wrote that the bearers of this paper were servants of the diocese of Vitoria and were to be allowed, with their weapons, into the city. When it was written he stamped it with the seal of King Joseph, then pushed it across the table. ‘I have your word that these men will not bear arms against our forces?’
‘You have my word, unless your forces defend her.’
‘And you will ask nothing more of me in this matter?’
‘Nothing more.’
‘Then I wish you well, father.’
Ducos watched the man go, and when he was alone again he walked to the window, stepping gently so as not to frighten the sparro>vs on the window ledge, and he could see, far on the plain, the waiting French army.
He frowned. It was not right, he thought, that the fate of nations and the affairs of a great empire should be left to the boastful, childish bravery of soldiers. Victory this day would mean the treaty might not be needed, and all this fine work wasted. Yet Ducos did not believe in a French victory today. He almost, and he acknowledged it only to himself, wished for a French defeat, for then, in the chaos of a shattered kingdom, he would produce the treaty as a diplomatic triumph and save France. He would show the soldiers, the foolish, vain, brave soldiers, that their power was as nothing to the subtle mind of a clever, calculating man.
He turned from the window. He had no more duties to do, nothing now to engage him except to wait for the lottery of the day. So, on this day of sunshine and battle, Ducos slept.
The Marquess of Wellington, Generalissimo of the Allied army in Spain, looked at his watch. It showed
