Sharpe's Rifles

CHAPTER 10

They journeyed throughout that night, climbing ever higher and always into the teeth of a wind that brought the chill from the snow which lay in the gullies of the upper slopes. Past midnight, from a wooded spur, Sharpe saw the far off gleam of the western sea. Much closer, and beneath him in the dark tangle of the lowlands, a smear of camp fires betrayed where men bivouacked. “The French,” Vivar said softly.

“Who believed I was escorting you southwards,” Sharpe said accusingly.

“Later! Later!” Vivar responded, just as he had to every other attempt Sharpe had made to invite an explanation for the Spaniard’s behaviour. Beyond Vivar the Riflemen, bowed under their heavy packs, trudged up the hill path. The Cazadores led their horses to conserve the strength of the animals for the long journey which lay ahead. Only the wounded were allowed to ride. Even Louisa Parker had been told she must walk. Vivar, seeing the girl go past, scowled at Sharpe. “I leave you alone for two days and you find an English girl?”

Sharpe heard the hostility in the Spaniard’s voice and chose to answer it mildly. “She ran away from her aunt and uncle.”

Vivar spat towards the distant lights. “I heard all about them! The Parkers, yes? They call themselves missionaries, but I think they are English busybodies. I was told that the Bishop was going to eject them from Santiago de Compostela, but I see the French have done that favour for us. Why did she run away?”

“I think she craves excitement.”

“We can provide that,” Vivar said sourly, “but I have never considered soldiers to be fit company for a girl; even a Protestant girl.”

“You want me to shoot her?” Sharpe suggested acidly.

Vivar turned back towards the path. Til shoot her myself, Lieutenant, if she makes any difficulties. We have our own mission, and that must not be put at risk.“

“What mission?”

“Later! Later!”

They climbed higher, leaving the shelter of the trees to emerge onto a wind-scoured slope of thin grass and treacherous rocks. The night was dark, but the cavalrymen knew their path. They crossed a high valley, splashing through a stream, then climbed again. “I’m going,” Vivar said, “to a remote place. Somewhere the French won’t disturb us.” He walked in silence for a few paces. “So you met Tomas?”

Sharpe sensed that it was a great effort for Vivar to make the question sound casual. He tried to respond in the same careless manner. “That’s your brother’s name?”

Tf he is my brother. I can count no traitor as a brother.“ Vivar’s shame and bitterness was now undisguised. He had been unwilling to discuss the Count of Mouromorto earlier, yet the subject was unavoidable. Sharpe had met the Count, and explanations must be offered. Vivar had obviously decided that now, in the clean cold darkness, was the right time. ”How did he seem to you?“

“Angry,” Sharpe said inadequately.

“Angry? He should be filled with shame. He thinks Spain’s only hope is to ally itself with France.” They were walking along a high ridge and Vivar had to shout above the wind’s noise. “We call such men anfrancesados. They believe in French ideas, but in truth they are Godless traitors. Tomas was ever seduced by northern notions, but such things bring no happiness, Lieutenant, only a great discontent. He would cut out Spain’s heart and put a French encyclopaedia in its place. He would forget God, and enthrone reason, virtue, equality, liberty, and all the other nonsenses which make men forget that bread has doubled in price and only tears are more plentiful.”

“You don’t believe in reason?” Sharpe let the conversation veer away from the painful subject of the Count of Mouro-morto’s loyalty.

“Reason is the mathematics of thinking, nothing more. You don’t live your life by such dry disciplines. Mathematics cannot explain God, no more can reason, and I believe in God! Without Him we are no more than corruption. But I forget. You are not a believer.”

“No,” Sharpe said lamely.

“But that disbelief is better than Tomas’s pride. He thinks he is greater than God, but before this year is out, Lieutenant, I will deliver him to the justice of God.”

“The French may think otherwise?”

“I do not give a damn what the French think. I only care about victory. That is why I rescued you. That is why, this night, we travel in the dark.” Vivar would explain no more, for all his energies were needed to cajole the flagging men further and higher. Louisa Parker, exhausted beyond speech, was lifted onto a horse. Still the path climbed.

At dawn, beneath a sky scoured clean of cloud in which the morning star was a fading speck above the frosted land, Sharpe saw that they travelled towards a fortress built on a mountaintop.

It was not a modern fort, built low behind sloping earthen walls that would bounce the cannon shot high over ditches and ravelins, but a high fortress of ancient and sullen menace. Nor was it a gracious place. This was not the home of some flamboyant lord, but a stronghold built to defend a land till time itself was finished.

The fort had lain empty for a hundred years. It was too distant and too high to be easily supplied, and Spain had not needed such places. But now, in a cold dawn, Bias Vivar led his tired Cazadores under the old, moss-thick arch and into a cobbled courtyard that was rank with weed and grass. Some of his men, commanded by a Sergeant, had garrisoned the old fortress while the Major was gone, and the smell of their cooking fires was welcome after the chill of the night. Not much else was welcoming; the ramparts were overgrown, the keep was a home for ravens and bats, and the cellar was flooded, but Vivar’s delight, as he led Sharpe about the walls, was infectious.

“The first of the Vivars built this place almost a thousand years ago! It was our home, Lieutenant. Our flag flew from that tower and the Moors never took it.”

He led Sharpe to the northern bastion which, like the eyrie of some massive bird of prey, jutted above immeasurable space. The valley far below was a blur of streams and frosted tracks. From here, for centuries, steel-helmed men had watched for the glint of reflected sunlight from far-off heathen shields. Vivar pointed to a deep shadowed cleft in the northern mountains where the frost lay like snow. “You see that pass? A Count of Mouromorto once held that road for three days against a Muslim horde. He filled hell with their miserable souls, Lieutenant. They say you can still find rusted arrowheads and scraps of their chain mail in the crevices of that place.”

Sharpe turned to look at the high tower. “The castle now belongs to your brother?”

Vivar took the question to be a goad to his pride. “He has disgraced the family’s name. Which is why it is my duty to restore it. With God’s help, I shall.”

The words were a glimpse into a proud soul, a clue to the ambition which drove the Spaniard, but Sharpe had intended to elicit a different response; one that he now sought directly. “Won’t your brother know you’re here?”

“Oh, indeed. But the French would need ten thousand men to surround this hill, and another five thousand to assault the fortress. They won’t come. They are just beginning to discover what problems victory will give them.”

“Problems?” Sharpe asked.

Vivar smiled. “The French, Lieutenant, are learning that in Spain great armies starve, and small armies are defeated. You can only win here if the people feed you, and the people are learning to hate the French.” He led the way down the rampart. “Think of the French position! Marshal Soult pursued your army north-west, to where? To nowhere! He is stranded in the mountains, and around him is nothing but snow, bad roads, and a vengeful peasantry. Everything he eats he must find, and in winter, in Galicia, there is not much to be found if the people wish to hide it. No, he is desperate. Already his messengers are being killed, his patrols ambushed, and so far only a handful of the people are resisting him! When all the countryside rises against him, then his life will be a torment of blood.”

It was a chilling prophecy and spoken with so much verve that Sharpe was convinced by it. He remembered how de l’Eclin had frankly expressed his fear of the night; his fears of peasant knives in the dark.

Vivar turned again to stare at the notch in the mountains where his ancestor had made carnage of a Muslim army. “Some of the people fight already, Lieutenant, but the rest are frightened. They see the French victorious, and they feel abandoned of God. They need a sign. They need, if you like, a miracle. These are peasants. They don’t know reason, but they do know their Church and their land.”

Sharpe felt his skin creep, not with the morning’s cold, nor with fear, but with the apprehension of something beyond his imaginings. “A miracle?”

“Later, my friend, later!” Vivar laughed at the mystery he deliberately provoked, then ran down the steps towards the courtyard. His voice was suddenly mischievous, full of joy and nonsense. “You still haven’t thanked me for rescuing you!”

“Rescuing me! Good God! I was about to destroy those bastards, only you interfered!” Sharpe followed him down the steps. “You haven’t apologized for lying to me.”

“Nor do I intend to. On the other hand, I do forgive you for losing your temper with me when last we met. I told you that you wouldn’t last a day without me!”

Tf you hadn’t sent the damned French after me, I’d be halfway to Oporto by now!“

“But there was a reason for sending them after you!” Vivar had reached the foot of the rampart steps where he waited for Sharpe. “I wanted to clear the French out of Santiago de Compostela. I thought that if they pursued you, then I could enter the town when they were gone. So I spread the rumour, it was believed, but the town was garrisoned anyway. So!” He shrugged.

“In other words, you can’t win a war without me.”

“Think how bored you would be if you’d gone to Lisbon! No Frenchmen to kill, no Bias Vivar to admire!” Vivar linked his arm through Sharpe’s in the intimate Spanish manner. “In all seriousness, Lieutenant, I beg your pardon for my behaviour. I can justify my lies, but not my insults. For those, I apologize.”

Sharpe was instantly excruciated with embarrassment. “I behaved badly, too. I’m sorry.” Then he remembered another duty. “And thank you for rescuing us. We were dead men without you.”

Vivar’s ebullience returned. “Now I have another miracle to arrange. We must work, Lieutenant! Work! Work! Work!”

“A miracle?”

Vivar loosed his arm so he could face Sharpe. “My friend, I will tell you all, if I can. I will even tell you tonight after supper, if I can. But some men are coming here, and I need their permission to reveal what is in the strongbox. Will you trust me till I’ve spoken with those men?”

Sharpe had no choice. “Of course.”

“Then we must work.” Vivar clapped his hands to attract his men’s attention. “Work! Work! Work!”

Everything that Vivar’s men needed had to be carried up the mountain. The cavalry horses became packhorses for firewood, fuel, and fodder. The food came from mountain villages, some of it fetched for miles on the backs of mules or men. The Major had sent word throughout the land which had been his father’s domain that supplies were needed, and Sharpe watched the response in astonishment. “My brother,” Vivar said with grim satisfaction, “ordered his people to do nothing which might hinder the French. Ha!” All that day the supplies arrived in the castle. There were jars of grain and beans, boxes of cheese, nets of bread, and skins of wine. There was hay for the horses. Cords of wood were dragged up the steep path, and bundles of brushwood brought for tinder. Some of the brushwood was made into brooms that were used to clean out the keep. Saddle blankets made curtains and rugs, while fires seeped warmth into cold stone.

The men whom Vivar expected arrived at noon. A trumpet call announced the visitors’ approach, and there was a flourish of celebration in its sound. Some of the Cazadores went down the steep path to escort the two men into the fortress. The newcomers were priests.

Sharpe watched their arrival from the window of Louisa Parker’s room. He had gone to see her to discover why she had fled from her family. She had slept all morning and now seemed entirely recovered from the night’s exertions. She looked past him at the dismounting priests and gave an exaggerated shudder of pretended horror. “I can never properly rid myself of feeling there’s something very sinister about Romish clergy. My aunt is convinced they have tails and horns.” She watched as the priests advanced through a guard of honour to where Bias Vivar waited to greet them. “I expect they do have tails and horns, and cloven hooves. Don’t you agree?”

Sharpe turned away from the window. He felt embarrassed and awkward. “You shouldn’t be here.” Louisa widened her eyes. “You do sound grim.”

“I’m sorry.” Sharpe was speaking more abruptly than he would have liked. “It’s just that…“ His voice tailed away. ”You think your soldiers will be unsettled by my presence?“ Sharpe did not like to say that Bias Vivar had already been unsettled by Louisa’s impulsive act. ”It isn’t a fit place for you,“ he said instead. ”You’re not used to this kind of thing.“ He waved his hand around the room, as though to demonstrate its shortcomings, though in truth Vivar’s Cazadores had done everything they could to make the foreign girl comfortable. Her room, though small, had a fireplace in which logs smouldered. There was a bed of cut bracken and crimson saddle blankets. She had no other belongings, not even a change of linen.

She seemed crestfallen by Sharpe’s strict tone. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”

“No.” Sharpe tried to dismiss her apology, even though he had elicited it.

“My presence embarrasses you?”

Sharpe turned back to the window and watched the Cazadores gather about the two priests. Some of his Riflemen looked on in curiosity.

“Would you like me to go back to the French?” Louisa asked tartly.

“Of course not.”

“I think you would.”

“Don’t be so damned stupid!” Sharpe turned on her viciously, and was instantly ashamed. He did not want her to know just how glad he was that she had run from her aunt and uncle and, in his effort to disguise that gladness, he had let his voice snap uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, miss.”

Louisa was just as contrite. “No, I’m sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have sworn.”

“I can’t imagine you giving up swearing, even for me.” There was a trace of her old mischievousness, a hint of a smile, and Sharpe was glad of it.

“It’s just that your aunt and uncle will worry about you,” he said lamely. “And we’re probably going to have to fight again, and a fight’s no place for a woman.”

Louisa said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. “The Frenchman, de l’Eclin? He offended me. I think he perceived me as a spoil of war.”

“He was offensive?”

“I imagine he thought he was being very gallant.” Louisa, dressed in the blue skirts and coat in which she had fled the travelling coach, paced about her small room. “Would I offend you by saying that I preferred your protection to his?”

“I’m flattered, miss.” Sharpe felt himself being drawn into her conspiracy. He had come here to warn Louisa that Bias Vivar disapproved of her presence, and to tell her to avoid the Spaniard as much as was possible; instead he felt the attraction of her vivacity.

“I was tempted to stay with the French,” Louisa confessed, “not because of the Colonel’s intrinsic charms, but because Godalming would surely have been agog to hear of my adventures with the army of the Corsican ogre, would it not? Perhaps we would have been sent to Paris and paraded before the mob like Ancient Britons displayed before the Romans.”

“I doubt that,” Sharpe said.

“I rather doubted it, too. Instead I foresaw a most tedious time in which I would be forced to listen to my aunt’s interminable complaints about the war, the lost testaments, her discomforts, French cooking, your shortcomings, her husband’s timidity, my forwardness, the weather, her bunions — do you wish me to continue?”

Sharpe smiled. “No.”

Louisa teased out her dark curls with her fingers, then shrugged. “I came, Lieutenant, because of a whim. Because if I am to be stranded in a war then I would rather be stranded with my own side than with the enemy.”

“I think Major Vivar fears you’ll be a hindrance to us, miss.”

“Oh,” Louisa said with mock foreboding, then walked to the window and frowned down at the Spaniard who still stood with the two priests. “Does Major Vivar not like women?”

“I think he does.”

“He just thinks they get in the way?”

“In battle, they do. If you’ll pardon me, miss.”

Louisa mocked Sharpe with a deprecating smile. “I promise not to stand in the way of your sword, Lieutenant. And I’m sorry if I have caused you inconvenience. Now you can tell me just why we’re here, and what you plan to do. I can’t stay out of the way unless I know exactly where the way leads, can I?”

“I don’t know what’s happening, miss.”

Louisa grimaced. “Does that mean you don’t trust me?”

“It means I don’t know.” Sharpe told her about the strongbox and Vivar’s secretiveness, and about their long journey which had been dogged by the French Dragoons. “All I know is that the Major wants to take the box to Santiago, but why, I don’t know, and what’s in it, I don’t know.”

Louisa was delighted with the mystery. “But you will find out?”

“I hope so.”

“I shall ask Major Vivar directly!”

“I don’t think you should, miss.”

“Of course not. The ogre-ish Papist Spaniard doesn’t want me interfering in his adventure.”

“It’s not an adventure, miss, but war.”

“War is the moment, Mr Sharpe, when we loose the bonds of convention, do you not think so? I do. And they are very constricting bonds, especially in Godalming. I insist upon knowing what is in Major Vivar’s box! Do you think it is jewels?”

“No, miss.”

“The crown of Spain! The sceptre and orb! Of course it is, Mr Sharpe. Napoleon wishes to put the crown on his head, and your friend is denying it him! Don’t you see? We are carrying a dynasty’s regalia to safety!” She clapped her hands with delight. “I shall insist upon seeing these treasures. Major Vivar is going to reveal everything to you, is he not?”

“He said he might tell me after supper. I think it rather depends on those priests.”

Tn that case we might never know.“ Louisa grimaced. ”But I can have supper with you?“

The request embarrassed Sharpe, for he doubted whether Vivar would want Louisa present, but nor did he know a tactful way of telling the girl that she was being too persistent. “I don’t know,” he said weakly.

“Of course I can dine with you! You don’t expect me to starve, do you? Tonight, Mr Sharpe, we shall look upon the jewels of an empire!” Louisa was enchanted with the whole idea. “If only Mr Bufford could see me now!”

Sharpe recalled that Mr Bufford was the ink-manufacturing Methodist who hoped to marry Louisa. “He would doubtless pray for you?”

“Most devoutly.” She laughed. “But it is cruel to mock him, Mr Sharpe, especially as I merely delay the time when I must accept his hand.” Her enthusiasm visibly evaporated in the face of reality. “I presume that once you have solved this mystery, you will go to Lisbon?”

“If there’s still a garrison there, yes.”

“And I shall have to go with you.” She sighed, as a child might sigh for the ending of a treat that had yet to begin. Then her face cleared, reverting to an expression of mischievous delight. “But you will ask Major Vivar’s permission for me to dine with the gentlemen? I promise to behave myself.”

To Sharpe’s surprise, Bias Vivar was not at all disconcerted by Louisa’s request. “Of course she may have supper with us.”

“She’s very curious about the strongbox,” Sharpe warned.

“Naturally, aren’t you?”

Thus Louisa was present that night when Sharpe at last discovered why Bias Vivar had lied to him, why the Cazadores had ridden to rescue him, and why the Spanish Major had journeyed so obsessively westward through the chaos of winter and defeat.

That night, too, Sharpe felt himself drawn ever more deeply into a world of mystery and weirdness; a world where the estadea drifted like flames in the night and sprites inhabited streams; Bias Vivar’s world.

Sharpe, Louisa, Vivar and Lieutenant Davila dined in a room punctuated by thick pillars which supported a barrel-vaulted ceiling. They were joined by the two priests. A fire was lit, blankets were spread on the floor, and dishes of millet, beans, fish, and mutton were served. One of the priests, Father Borellas, was a short, plump man who spoke passable English and seemed to enjoy practising it on Sharpe and Louisa. Borellas told them that he had a parish in Santiago de Compostela; a small, very poor parish. Pouring Sharpe wine and ever eager that the Rifleman’s plate did not empty, he seemed at pains to exaggerate his humble status. The other priest, he explained, was a rising man, a true hidalgo, and a future prince of the church.

That other priest was the sacrist of Santiago’s cathedral, a canon and a man who, from the very first, made it plain that he disliked and distrusted Lieutenant Richard Sharpe. If Father Alzaga spoke English then he did not betray that skill to Sharpe. Indeed, Alzaga barely acknowledged his presence, confining his conversation to Bias Vivar whom he perhaps perceived as his social equal. His hostility was so blatant, and so jarring, that Borellas felt constrained to explain it. “He does not love the English.”

“Many Spaniards don’t,” Louisa, who seemed unnaturally subdued by the evident hostility in the room, commented drily.

“You’re heretics, you see. And your army has run away.” The priest spoke in soft apology. “Politics, politics. I do not understand the politics. I am just a humble priest, Lieutenant.”

But Borellas was a humble priest whose knowledge of Santiago de Compostela’s alleyways and courtyards had saved the sacrist from the French. He told Sharpe how they had hidden in a plasterer’s yard while the French cavalrymen searched the houses. “They shot many people.” He crossed himself. “If a man had a fowling gun, they said he was an enemy. Bang. If someone protested at the killing, bang.” Borellas crumbled a piece of hard bread. “I did not think I would live to see an enemy army on Spanish soil. This is the nineteenth century, not the twelfth!”

Sharpe looked at the haughty-faced Alzaga who clearly had not expected, nor liked, to see protestant English soldiers on Spanish soil. “What is a sacrist?”

“He is the cathedral’s treasurer. Not a clerk, you understand,” Borellas was eager that Sharpe should not underesti-mate the tall priest, “but the man responsible for the cathedral’s treasures. That is not why he is here, but because he is a most important churchman. Don Bias would have liked the Bishop to come, but the Bishop would not talk to me, and the most important man I could find was Father Alzaga. He hates the French, you see.” He flinched as the sacrist’s voice was raised in anger and, as if to cover his embarrassment, offered Sharpe more dried fish and began a long explanation of the kinds offish caught on the Galician coast.

Yet no discussion offish could hide the fact that Vivar and Alzaga were involved in a bitter altercation; each man deeply entrenched in opposing views which, equally plainly, involved Sharpe himself. Vivar, making some point, would gesture at the Rifleman. Alzaga, refuting it, seemed to sneer in his direction. Lieutenant Davila concentrated on his food, evidently wanting no part in the fierce argument while Father Borellas, abandoning his attempts to distract Sharpe’s attention, reluctantly agreed to explain what was being said. “Father Alzaga wants Don Bias to use Spanish troops.” He spoke too softly for the other to overhear.

“Spanish troops for what?”

“That is for Don Bias to explain.” Borellas listened for another moment. “Don Bias is saying that to find Spanish infantry would mean persuading a Captain-General, and all the Captain-Generals are in hiding; and anyway a Captain-General would hesitate, or he would say he must have the permission of the Galician Junta, and the Junta has fled Corunna, so he might apply to the Central Junta in Seville instead, and in one or two months’ time the Captain-General might say that perhaps there were men, but then he would insist that one of his own favourite officers be placed in charge of the expedition, and anyway by that time Don Bias says it would be too late.” Father Borellas shrugged. “I think Don Bias is right.”

“Too late for what?”

“That is for Don Bias to explain.”

Vivar was speaking adamantly now, chopping his hand down in abrupt, fierce gestures that appeared to mute the priest’s opposition. When he finished, Alzaga seemed to yield reluctantly on some part of the argument, and the concession made Bias Vivar turn towards Sharpe. “Would you mind very much describing your career, Lieutenant?”

“My career?”

“Slowly? One of us will translate.”

Sharpe, embarrassed by the request, shrugged. “I was born…“

“Not that bit, I think,” Vivar said hastily. “Your fighting career, Lieutenant. Where was your first battle?”

“In Flanders.”

“Start there.”

For ten uncomfortable minutes Sharpe described his career in terms of the battles he had fought. He spoke first of Flanders, where he had been one of the Duke of York’s unfortunate ten thousand, then, with more confidence, of India. The pillared room, lit by its pinewood fire and cheap rushlights, seemed an odd place to be talking of Seringapa-tam, Assaye, Argaum, and Gawilghur. Yet the others listened avidly, and even Alzaga seemed intrigued by the translated tales of far-off battles on arid plains. Louisa, her eyes shining, followed the story closely.

When Sharpe had finished his description of the savage assault on the mud walls of Gawilghur, no one spoke for a few seconds. Resin flared in the fire. Alzaga, in his harsh voice, broke the silence and Vivar translated. “Father Alzaga says he heard that the Tippoo Sultan had a clockwork model of a tiger mauling an Englishman to death.”

Sharpe looked into the priest’s eyes. “A lifesize model, yes.”

Vivar translated again. “He would dearly like to have seen that model.”

“I believe it’s in London now,” Sharpe said.

The priest must have recognized the challenge in those words for he said something which Vivar did not interpret.

“What was that?” Sharpe asked.

“It was nothing,” Vivar said a little too carelessly. “Where did you fight after India, Lieutenant?”

“Father Alzaga said, ”Louisa astonished the room by raising her voice, and by her evident knowledge of Spanish which she had concealed till this moment, “that this night he will pray for the soul of the Tippoo Sultan, because the Tippoo Sultan slew many Englishmen.”

Till now Sharpe had been embarrassed in describing his career, but the priest’s scorn touched his soldier’s pride. “And I killed the Tippoo Sultan.”

“You did?” Father Borellas’s voice was sharp with disbelief.

“In the water gate’s tunnel at Seringapatam.“

“He had no bodyguard?” Vivar asked.

“Six men,” Sharpe said. “His picked warriors.” He looked from face to face, knowing he need say no more. Alzaga demanded a translation, and grunted when he heard it.

Vivar, who had been pleased with Sharpe’s performance, smiled at the Rifleman. “And where did you fight after India, Lieutenant? Were you in Portugal last year?”

Sharpe described the Portuguese battlefields of Rolica and Vimeiro where, before he was recalled to England, Sir Arthur Wellesley had trounced the French. “I was only a Quartermaster,” he said, “but I saw some fighting.”

Again there was silence and Sharpe, watching the hostile priest, sensed he had passed some kind of a test. Alzaga spoke grudgingly, and the words made Vivar smile again. “You have to understand, Lieutenant, that I need the blessing of the church for what I have to do, and, if you are to help me, then the Church must approve of you. The Church would prefer that I use Spanish troops, but that, alas, is not possible. With some reluctance, therefore, Father Alzaga accepts that your experience of battle will be of some small use.”

“But what…“

“Later.” Vivar held up a hand. “First, tell me what you know of Santiago de Composteta.”

“Only what you’ve told me.”

So Vivar described how, a thousand years before, shepherds had seen a myriad of stars shining in a mist above the hill on which the city was now built. The shepherds reported their vision to Theudemirus, Bishop of Iria Flavia, who recognized it as a sign from heaven. He ordered the hill to be excavated and, in its bowels, was found the long lost tomb of Santiago, St James. Ever since the city had been known as Santiago de Compostela; St James of the field of stars.

There was something in Vivar’s voice that made Sharpe shiver. The taper flames shimmered uncertain shadows beyond the pillars. Somewhere on the ramparts a sentry stamped his boots. Even Louisa seemed unnaturally subdued by the chill in the Spaniard’s voice.

A shrine had been built above the long lost tomb and, though the Muslim armies had captured the city and destroyed the first cathedral, the tomb itself had been spared. A new cathedral had been built when the heathen were repulsed, and the city of the field of stars had become a destination second only to Rome for pilgrims. Vivar looked at Sharpe. “You know who Santiago is, Lieutenant?”

“You told me he was an apostle.”

“He is far more.” Vivar spoke softly, reverently, in a voice that made Sharpe’s skin creep. “He is St James, brother of St John the Evangelist. St James, the patron saint of Spain. St James, Child of the Thunder. St James the Great. Santiago.” His voice had been growing louder, and now it rang out to fill the high-arched ceiling with the last, the greatest, and the most resonant of all the saint’s titles: ‘Santiago Matamoros!“

Sharpe was utterly still. “Matamoros?”

“The Slayer of Moors. Slayer of Spain’s enemies.” From Vivar, it sounded like a challenge.

Sharpe waited. There was no sound except for the fire’s crackle and the grate of boots on the ramparts. Davila and Borellas stared down at their empty plates, as if to move or speak would be to jeopardize the moment.

It was Alzaga who broke the silence. The sacrist made some protest which Vivar interrupted harshly and swiftly.

The two men argued for a moment, but it was plain that Vivar had won the night. As if signalling his victory, he stood and crossed to a dark archway. “Come, Lieutenant.”

Beyond the archway was the fortress’s ancient chapel. On its stone altar a cross of plain wood stood between two candles.

Louisa hurried to see the mystery revealed, but Vivar barred her entrance to the chapel until she had covered her head. She hastily pulled a shawl over her dark curls.

Sharpe stepped past her and stared at the object which lay in front of the altar, the object he had known must be here: the very heart of the mystery, the lure which had drawn French Dragoons across a frozen land, and the treasure for which Sharpe himself had been fetched to this high fortress.

The strongbox.