Sharpe’s Devil: Napoleon and South America, 1820–1821. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ an official despatch which said that His Excellency Don Blas, Count of Mouromorto and Captain-General of the Spanish Forces in His Majesty’s dominion of Chile, had disappeared.

      Don Blas, Louisa said, had ridden to inspect the fortifications at the harbour town of Puerto Crucero, the southernmost garrison in Spanish Chile. He had ridden with a cavalry escort, and had been ambushed somewhere north of Puerto Crucero, in a region of steep hills and deep woods. At the time of the ambush Don Blas had been riding ahead of his escort, and he was last seen spurring forward to escape the closing jaws of the rebel trap. The escort, driven away by the fierceness of the ambushers, had not been able to search the valley where the trap had been sprung for another six hours, by which time Don Blas and his ambushers had long disappeared.

      ‘He must have been captured by the rebels,’ Sharpe had suggested mildly.

      ‘If you were a rebel commander,’ Louisa observed icily, ‘and succeeded in capturing or killing the Spanish Captain-General, would you keep silent about your victory?’

      ‘No,’ Sharpe admitted, for such a feat would encourage every rebel in South America and concomitantly depress all their Royalist opponents. He frowned. ‘Surely Don Blas had aides with him?’

      ‘Three.’

      ‘Yet he was riding alone? In rebel country?’ Sharpe’s soldiering instincts, rusty as they were, recoiled at such a thought.

      Louisa, who had rehearsed these questions and answers for weeks, shrugged. ‘They tell me that no rebels had been seen in those parts for many months. That Don Blas often rode ahead. He was impatient, you surely remember that?’

      ‘But he wasn’t foolhardy.’ A wasp crawled on the table and Sharpe slapped down hard. ‘The rebels have made no proclamations about Don Blas?’

      ‘None!’ There was despair in Louisa’s voice. ‘And when I ask for information from our own army, I am told there is no information to be had. It seems that a Captain-General can disappear in Chile without trace! I do not even know if I am a widow.’ She looked at Lucille. ‘I wanted to travel to Chile, but it would have meant leaving my children. Besides, what can a woman do against the intransigence of soldiers?’

      Lucille shot an amused glance at Sharpe, then looked down again at her sewing.

      ‘The army has told you nothing?’ Sharpe asked in astonishment.

      ‘They tell me Don Blas is dead. They cannot prove it, for they have never found his body, but they assure me he must be dead.’ Louisa said that the King had even paid for a Requiem Mass to be sung in Santiago de Compostela’s great cathedral, though Louisa had shocked the royal authorities by refusing to attend such a Mass, claiming it to be indecently premature. Don Blas, Louisa insisted, was alive. Her instinct told her so. ‘He might be a prisoner. I am told there are tribes of heathen savages who are reputed to keep white men as slaves in the forest. And Chile is a terrible country,’ she explained to Lucille. ‘There are pygmies and giants in the mountains, while the rebel ranks are filled by rogues from Europe. Who knows what might have happened?’

      Lucille made a sympathetic noise, but the mention of white slaves, pygmies, giants and rogues had made Sharpe suspect that his visitor’s hopes were mere fantasies. In the four years since Waterloo Sharpe had met scores of women who were convinced that a missing son or a lost husband or a vanished lover still lived. Many such women had received notification that their missing man had been killed, but they clung stubbornly to their beliefs; supposing that their loved one was trapped in Russia, or kept prisoner in some remote Spanish town, or perhaps had been carried abroad to some far raw colony. Invariably, Sharpe knew, such men had either settled with different women or, more likely, were long dead and buried, but it was impossible to convince their womenfolk of either harsh truth. Nor did he try to persuade Louisa now, but instead asked her whether Don Blas had been popular in Chile.

      ‘He was too honest to be popular,’ Louisa said. ‘Of course he had his supporters, but he was constantly fighting corruption. Indeed, that was why he was travelling to Puerto Crucero. The governor of the southern province was an enemy of Don Blas. They hated each other, and I heard that Don Blas had proof of the governor’s corruption and was travelling to confront him!’

      Which meant, Sharpe wearily thought, that his friend Don Blas had been fighting two enemies: the entrenched Spanish interest as well as the rebels who had captured Santiago and driven the Royalists into the southern half of the country. Don Blas had doubtless been a good enough commander to beat the rebels, but was he a clever enough politician to beat his own side? Sharpe, who knew what an honest man Don Blas was, doubted it, and that doubt convinced him still further that his old friend must be dead. It took a cunning fox to cheat the hunt, while the brave beast that turned to fight the dogs always ended up torn into scraps. ‘So isn’t it likely,’ Sharpe spoke as gently as he could, ‘that Don Blas was ambushed by his own side?’

      ‘Indeed it’s possible!’ Louisa said. ‘In fact I believe that is precisely what happened. But I would like to be certain.’

      Sharpe sighed. ‘If Don Blas was ambushed by his own side, then they are not going to reveal what happened.’ Sharpe hated delivering such a hopeless opinion, but he knew it was true. ‘I’m sorry, Doña Louisa, but you’re never going to know what happened.’ But Louisa could not accept so bleak a verdict. Her instinct had convinced her that Don Blas was alive, and that conviction had brought her into the deep, private valley where Sharpe farmed Lucille’s land. Sharpe wondered how he was going to rid himself of her. He suspected it would not be easy for Doña Louisa was clearly obsessed by her husband’s fate. ‘Do you want me to write to the Spanish authorities?’ he offered. ‘Or perhaps ask the Duke of Wellington to use his influence?’

      ‘What good will that do?’ Louisa challenged. ‘I’ve used every influence I can, till the authorities are sick of my influence! I don’t need influence, I need the truth.’ Louisa paused, then took the plunge. ‘I want you to go to Chile and find me that truth,’ she said to Sharpe.

      Lucille’s grey eyes widened in surprise, while Sharpe, equally astonished at the effrontery of Louisa’s request, said nothing. Beyond the moat, in the elms that grew beside the orchard, rooks cawed loudly and a house martin sliced on sabre wings between the dairy and the horse chestnut tree. ‘There must be men in South America who are in a better position to search for your husband?’ Lucille remarked very mildly.

      ‘How do I trust them? Those officers who were friends of my husband have either been sent home or posted to remote garrisons. I sent money to other officers who claimed to be friends of Don Blas, but all I received in return were the same lies. They merely wish me to send more money, and thus they encourage me with hope but not with facts. Besides, such men cannot speak to the rebels.’

      ‘And I can?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘You can find out whether they ambushed Don Blas, or whether someone else set the trap.’

      Sharpe, from all he had heard, doubted whether any rebels had been involved. ‘By someone else,’ he said diplomatically, ‘I assume you mean the man Don Blas was riding to confront? The governor of, where was it?’

      ‘Puerto Crucero,’ Louisa said, ‘and the governor’s name was Miguel Bautista.’ Louisa spoke the name with utter loathing. ‘And Miguel Bautista is Chile’s new Captain-General. That snake has replaced Don Blas! He writes me flowery letters of condolence, but the truth is that he hated Don Blas and has done nothing to help me.’

      ‘Why did he hate Don Blas?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘Because Don Blas СКАЧАТЬ