Sharpe's Rifles (21 page)

“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!”

if 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.”