The Price Of Honour. Mary Nichols

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I suppose you caught it and strangled it with your bare hands. Why must you lie?’

      ‘I always tell the truth. Now, how about a fire, while I skin and clean it? I take it you have no aversion to eating it?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Double standards,’ he muttered to himself as he took a knife from his saddle-bag and set to work on the animal. ‘What is the difference between eating hare and eating kid?’

      ‘The hares do not belong to anyone.’

      ‘Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that kids are soft, adorable creatures who love their mothers.’

      ‘Not at all.’

      He laughed and began to hum a marching song as he worked.

      ‘Why didn’t you shoot it?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you shoot the boar?’

      ‘Why waste a bullet when it is unnecessary? Besides, the guerrilleros might hear a shot. You said yourself that sound carries a long way in the mountains.’ He turned to face her. ‘And you had best put a shelter round that fire; that might be seen too.’

      ‘Do you know where the Spaniards are?’

      ‘Not far away.’

      She did as he suggested and moved quietly about her tasks, and when their meal was over she wrapped herself in Philippe’s coat and settled down to sleep. He sat down with his back to a tree, his rifle across his knee and stared into the dying fire as if he could see pictures in its embers. What could he see, she wondered, things past or things yet to come? Were his thoughts on things he had done or those he had left undone? Was he even aware of her as a woman? She brought herself up short, reminding herself of her determination to remain free. Her apparent dependence on him tonight was just a momentary lapse and best forgotten.

      He was still sitting in the same position when a new day showed itself in a lighter sky above the tree-tops and woke her.

      ‘Have you been awake all night?’ she demanded.

      ‘No, I slept. Come now, we must be on our way.’

      She rose drowsily. There was no opportunity for a toilette but she wished she had water to wash. Almost as if he could read her mind, he produced yesterday’s wine bottle now filled with fresh water. ‘Where did you get that?’

      He laughed. ‘The same place as I found the hare. Drink a little and use the rest to wash. With luck we shall be back in civilisation before we need more.’

      She accepted it gratefully and five minutes later they set off again through the trees, picking their way along an ill-defined path and then out on to an open hillside where the sound of rushing water told them they had found the river again. He had been right about cutting off the bend. Why did he have to be right about everything? Her musing was brought to an abrupt halt by the sound of gunfire. He stopped just ahead of her and she drew alongside him. ‘What is it?’

      ‘I don’t know. Stay here.’ He moved off ahead of her towards the sound. She waited a moment or two and then curiosity drove her to disobey and follow him.

      They could see the river again, narrower than it was but cut even deeper into the mountain rock, so that it lay at the bottom of a precipitous gorge. Straddling it, high above the foaming water, was a narrow wooden bridge. On the other side of the bridge, its walls continuing the face of the cliff as if it were part of it, was a monastery, guarding the bridge and the approach road. On the road was a French supply train, which had halted just short of the monastery.

      They watched from their vantage-point on the other side of the river as the escort to the wagons exchanged fire with unseen protagonists hidden in the rocks and trees of the mountainside.

      ‘Guerrilleros,’ Olivia said.

      ‘I told you to stay back.’

      She ignored his censure. ‘They got ahead of us.’

      ‘It’s hardly surprising; they know the terrain like their own backyards.’

      ‘But what is a supply train doing so high up in the mountains?’

      He smiled. ‘Like us, they have been driven up here by the blowing of the lower bridge. Now Don Santandos has them where he wants them. Anyone holding the monastery holds the pass. Nothing can get through.’

      He seemed to be right, because the murderous gunfire had killed most of the French troops and the rest had thrown down their arms and surrendered. The partisans poured out of their hiding places and surrounded them. Olivia could see Don Santandos giving orders to his men to drag the wagons into the monastery and then he turned to his prisoners. She cried out in horror when she saw him deliberately shoot them as they knelt on the ground.

      ‘Monster!’ she cried. ‘Barbaric monster. They had surrendered.’

      ‘I told you he was ruthless. Perhaps you will believe me now.’

      ‘Oh, I believe you. And will you admit I was right and we should have turned south?’

      ‘I admit nothing.’

      ‘No, because you are pigheaded.’

      He laughed aloud. ‘I must be a very strange animal; a leopard with a pig’s head. Perhaps if I have no claws I might be permitted to have tusks.’

      ‘It is no laughing matter. What are we going to do?’

      ‘Wait until dark. Then I will go down and look.’

      ‘Not without me, you don’t.’

      ‘You will stay behind even if I have to tie you up, do you hear? Good God, woman, you don’t know how to keep silent and I mean to go as close as I dare.’

      ‘To what purpose?’

      ‘We have to cross the bridge.’

      ‘Right under their noses. I suppose you have a plan to make us invisible?’

      He did not consider the question worth answering but turned and made his way slowly along the top of the cliff, looking for somewhere to shelter. She followed, very aware that they were exposed to the view of anyone who might happen to glance across the river. Luckily the Spaniards seemed more concerned with taking the wagons into the courtyard of the monastery than in posting look-outs. The path grew very narrow and they were obliged to dismount and lead the animals. ‘I hope you know where you are going,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I do not fancy a cold bath, even supposing I survive the fall.’

      His answer was to lead the way into a cave. This will do. Now we wait.’

      They settled down in the mouth of the cave, with their mounts safely behind them, and in minutes he was sound asleep, which convinced her he had stayed awake all the previous night, in spite of what he had told her. She sat there looking at him. In sleep he looked young. Perhaps he was young, but there was nothing like a war for ageing a man. Tom had been immature and gullible when he’d enlisted, but within months, if not weeks, he had grown up, had become hardened, like well-worn leather, brown and creased, but tough. СКАЧАТЬ