sufficient, but Sharpe demanded to know more.
”Xanes, of course,“ the Spaniard said, then turned and ordered his Sergeant to lead the way.
”Xanes?“ Sharpe stumbled over the odd word.
“Water spirits.” Vivar was entirely serious. “They live in every stream, Lieutenant, and can be mischievous. If we did not scare them away, they might lead us astray.”
“Ghosts?” Sharpe could not hide his astonishment.
“No. A ghost, Lieutenant, is a creature that cannot escape from the earth. A ghost is a soul in torment, someone who lived and offended the Holy Sacraments. A xana was never human. A xana is,” he shrugged, “a creature? Like an otter, or a water rat. Just something that lives in the stream. You must have them in England, surely?”
“Not that I know of.”
Vivar looked appalled, then crossed himself. “Will you go now?”
Sharpe crossed the fast-flowing stream, safe from malicious sprites, and watched as his Riflemen followed. They avoided looking at him. Sergeant Williams, who carried the pack of a wounded man, stepped into deeper water rather than scramble up the bank where the officer stood.
The mule was prodded across the stream and Sharpe noticed with what care the soldiers guarded the oilcloth-covered chest. He supposed it contained Major Vivar’s clothes and belongings. Harper, still tied to the packmule, spat towards him, a gesture Sharpe chose to ignore.
“Now we climb,” Vivar said with a note of satisfaction, as if the coming hardship was to be welcomed.
They climbed. They struggled up a steeply rising valley where the rocks were glossed by ice and the trees dripped snow onto their heads. The wind rose and the sky clouded again.
It began to sleet. The wind howled about their muffled ears. Men were sobbing with the misery and effort, but somehow Vivar kept them moving. “Upwards! Upwards! Where the cavalry can’t go, eh? Go on! Higher! Let’s join the angels! What’s the matter with you, Marcos? Your father would have danced up this slope when he was twice your age! You want the Englishmen to think a Spaniard has no strength? Shame on you! Climb!”
By dawn they had reached a saddle in the hills. Vivar led the exhausted men to a cave that was hidden by ice-sheathed laurels. “I shot a bear here,” he told Sharpe proudly. “I was twelve, and my father sent me out alone to kill a bear.”
He snapped off a branch and tossed it towards the men who were building a fire. “That was twenty years ago.” He spoke with a kind of wonder that so much time had passed.
Sharpe noted that Vivar was exactly his own age but, coming from the nobility was already a Major, while Sharpe came from the gutter and only an extraordinary stroke of fate had made him into a Lieutenant. He doubted if he would ever see another promotion, nor, seeing how badly he had handled these greenjackets, did he think he deserved one.
Vivar watched as the chest was fetched from the mule’s back and placed in the cave-mouth. He sat beside it, with a protective arm over its humped surface, and Sharpe saw that there was almost a reverence in the way he treated the box. Surely, Sharpe thought, no man, having endured the frozen hell that Vivar had been through, would take such care to protect a chest if it only contained clothes? “What’s in it?” Sharpe asked.
“Just papers.” Vivar stared out at the creeping dawn. “Modern war generates papers, yes?”
It was not a question that demanded an answer, but rather a comment to discourage further questions. Sharpe asked none.
Vivar took off his cocked hat and carefully removed a half-smoked cigar that was stored inside its sweatband. He gave an apologetic shrug that he had no cigar to offer Sharpe, then struck a flame from his tinder box. The pungent smell of tobacco teased Sharpe’s nostrils. “I saved it,” Vivar said, “till I was close to home.”
“Very close?”
Vivar waved the cigar in a gesture that encompassed the whole view. “My father was lord of all this land.”
“Will we go to your house?”
“I hope to see you safe on your southern road first.”
Sharpe, piqued by the curiosity the poor have about the lordly rich, felt oddly disappointed. “Is it a large house?”
“Which house?” Vivar asked drily. “There are three, all of them large. One is an abandoned castle, one is in the city of Orense, and one is in the country. They all belong to my brother, but Tomas has never loved Galicia. He prefers to live where there are kings and courtiers so, on his sufferance, I can call the houses mine.”
“Lucky you,” Sharpe said sourly.
“To live in a great house?” Vivar shook his head. “Your house may be more humble, Lieutenant, but at least you can call it your own. Mine is in a country taken by the French.” He stared at Rifleman Harper who, still tied to the mule’s tail, hunched in the wet snow. “Just as his is in a country taken by the English.”
The bitterness of the accusation surprised Sharpe who, beginning to admire the Spaniard, was disconcerted to hear such sudden hostility. Perhaps Vivar himself thought he had spoken too harshly, for he offered Sharpe a rueful shrug. “You have to understand that my wife’s mother was Irish. Her family settled here to escape your persecution.”
“Is that how you learned English?”
“That, and from good tutors.” Vivar drew on the cigar. A slip of snow, loosened by the fire in the cave, slid from the lip of rock. “My father believed that we should speak the language of the enemy.” He spoke with a wry amusement. “It seems strange that you and I should now be fighting on the same side, does it not? I was raised to believe that the English are heathenish barbarians, enemies of God and the true faith, and now I must convince myself that you are our friends.”
“At least we have the same enemies,” Sharpe said.
“Perhaps that is a more accurate description,” he agreed.
The two officers sat in an awkward silence. The smoke from Vivar’s cigar whirled above the snow to disappear in the misting dawn. Sharpe, feeling the silence hang heavy between them, asked if the Major’s wife was waiting in one of the three houses.
Vivar paused before answering, and when he did so his voice was as bleak as the country they watched. “My wife died seven years ago. I was on garrison duty in Florida, and the yellow fever took her.”
Like most men to whom such a revelation is vouchsafed,
Sharpe had not the first idea how to respond. “I’m sorry,” he said clumsily.
“She died,” Vivar went on relentlessly, “as did both of my small children. I had hoped my son would come back here to kill his first bear, as I did, but God willed it otherwise.” There was another silence, even more awkward than the first. “And you, Lieutenant? Are you married?”
“I can’t afford to marry.”
“Then find a wealthy woman,” Vivar said with a grim earnestness.
“No wealthy woman would have me,” Sharpe said, then, seeing the puzzlement on the Spaniard’s face, he explained. “I wasn’t born to the right family, Major. My mother was a whore. What you call aputa.”
“I know the word, Lieutenant.” Vivar’s tone was level, but it could not disguise his distaste. “I’m not sure I believe you,” he said finally.
Sharpe was angered by the imputation of dishonesty. “Why the hell should I care what you believe?”
“I don’t suppose you should.” Vivar carefully wrapped and stored the remains of his cigar, then leaned back against the chest. “You watch now, Lieutenant, and I’ll sleep for an hour.” He tipped the hat over his eyes and Sharpe saw the bedraggled sprig of rosemary that was pinned to its crown. All Vivar’s men wore the rosemary, and Sharpe supposed it was some regimental tradition.
Below them the Irishman stirred. Sharpe hoped that the cold was slicing to the very marrow of Harper’s bones. He hoped the Irishman’s broken nose, hidden beneath a snow-whitened scarf, was hurting like the devil. Harper, as if sensing these malevolent thoughts, turned to stare at the officer and the look in his eyes, beneath their frosted brows, told Sharpe that so long as Harper lived, and so long as nights were dark, he should beware.
Two hours after dawn the sleet turned to a persistent rain that cut runnels in the snow, dripped from trees, and trans-Go formed the bright world into a grey and dirty place of cold misery. The strongbox was put back on the mule and the sentries posted on its flanks. Harper, who had finally been allowed into the cave’s shelter, was
