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Sharpe believed that officers who abandoned their men were officers on their way to defeat, but tact kept him from saying as much to the sardonic Ardiles, so instead he made some harmless comment about being no expert on Spanish shipping arrangements.
‘I think such officers are bastards!’ Ardiles had to shout to be heard over the numbing sound of the huge seas. ‘The only reason they sailed on this ship is because the voyage will be six or eight weeks shorter! Which means they can reach the whorehouses of Valdivia ahead of their sergeants.’ Ardiles spat into the scuppers. ‘They’re good whorehouses, too. Too good for these bastards.’
‘You know Chile well?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Well enough! I’ve visited twice a year for three years. They use my ship as a passenger barge! Instead of letting me look for Cochrane and beating the shit out of him, they insist that I sail back and forth between Spain and Valdivia! Back and forth! Back and forth! It’s a waste of a good ship! This is the largest and best frigate in the Spanish navy and they waste it on ferrying shit like Ruiz!’ Ardiles scowled down into the frigate’s waist where the green water surged and broke ragged about the lashed guns, then he turned his saturnine gaze back to Sharpe. ‘You’re looking for Captain-General Vivar, yes?’
‘I am, yes.’ Sharpe was not surprised that Ardiles knew his business, for he had made no secret of his quest, yet he was taken aback by the abrupt and jeering manner of the Colonel’s asking and Sharpe’s reply had consequently been guarded, almost hostile.
Ardiles leaned closer to Sharpe. ‘I knew Vivar! I even liked him! But he was not a tactful man. Most of the army officers in Chile thought he was too clever. They had their own ideas on how the war should be lost, but Vivar was proving them wrong, and they didn’t like him for that.’
‘Are you saying that his own side killed him?’
Ardiles shook his head. ‘I think he was killed by the rebels. He was probably wounded in the ambush, his horse galloped into deep timber, and he fell off. His body’s still out there; ripped apart by animals and chewed by birds. The oddest part of the whole thing, to my mind, is why he was out there with such a small escort. There were only fifteen men with him!’
‘He was always a brave man.’ Sharpe, who had not heard just how small the escort had been, hid his surprise. Why would a Captain-General travel with such a tiny detachment? Even in country he thought safe?
‘Maybe more foolish than brave?’ Ardiles suggested. ‘My own belief is that he had an arrangement to meet the rebels, and that they double-crossed him.’
Sharpe, who had convinced himself that Don Blas had been murdered by his own people, found this new idea grotesque. ‘Are you saying he was a traitor?’
‘He was a patriot, but he was playing with fire.’ Ardiles paused, as though debating whether to say more, then he must have decided that his revelation could do no harm. ‘I tell you a strange thing, Englishman. Two months after Vivar arrived in Chile he ordered me to take him to Talcahuana. That means nothing to you, so I shall explain. It is a peninsula, close to Concepción, and inside rebel territory. His Excellency’s staff told Don Blas it was not safe to go there, but he scoffed at such timidity. I thought it was my chance to fight against Cochrane, so I went gladly. But two days north of Valdivia we struck bad weather. It was awful! We could not go anywhere near land; instead we rode out the storm at sea for four days. After that Don Blas still insisted on going to Talcahuana. We anchored off Punta Tombes and Don Blas went ashore on his own. On his own! He refused an escort. He just took a fowling-piece! He said he wanted to prove that a nobleman of Spain could hunt freely wherever His Spanish Majesty ruled in this world. Six hours later he returned with two brace of duck, and ordered me back to Valdivia. So what? you are asking. I will tell you what! I myself thought it was merely bravado. After all, he had made me sail for a week through waters patrolled by the rebel navy, but later I heard rumours that Don Blas had gone ashore to meet those rebels. To talk with them. I don’t know if that is true, but on my voyage home with the news of Don Blas’s disappearance, we captured a rebel pinnace with a dozen men aboard and two of them told me that the devil Cochrane himself had been waiting to meet Don Blas, but that after two days they decided he was not coming, and so Cochrane went away.’
‘You believed them?’
Ardiles shrugged. ‘Do dying men tell lies or truth? My belief, Englishman, is that they were telling the truth, and I think Don Blas died when he tried to resurrect the meeting with the rebels. But you believe Don Blas to be alive, yes?’
Sharpe hesitated, but Ardiles had favoured him with a revelation, and Sharpe’s truth was nowhere near so dangerous, so he told it. ‘No.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘Because I’ve been paid to look for him. Maybe I shall find his dead body?’ Because even that, Sharpe had decided, would give Louisa some small comfort. It would, at the very least, offer her certainty and if Sharpe could arrange to have the body carried home to Spain then Louisa could bury Don Blas in his family’s vault in the great cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.
Ardiles scoffed at Sharpe’s mild hopes. He waved northwards through the spitting sleet and the spume and the wild waves’ turmoil. ‘That’s a whole continent up there! Not an English farmyard! You won’t find a single body in a continent, Englishman, not if someone else has decided to hide it.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Because if my tale of carrying Don Blas to meet the rebels is right, then Don Blas was not just a soldier, but a soldier playing politics, and that’s a more dangerous pastime than fighting. Besides, if the Spanish high command decides not to help you, how will you achieve anything?’
‘By bribes?’ Sharpe suggested.
Ardiles laughed. ‘I wish you luck, Englishman, but if you’re offering money they’ll just tell you what you want to hear until you’ve no money left, then they’ll clean their knife blades in your guts. Take my advice! Vivar’s dead! Go home!’
Sharpe crouched against a sudden attack of wind-slathered foam that shrieked down the deck and smashed white against the helmsman and his companion. ‘What I don’t understand,’ Sharpe shouted when the sea had sucked itself out of the scuppers, ‘is why the rebels haven’t boasted about Don Blas’s death! If you’re a rebel and you kill or capture your enemy’s commander, why keep it a secret? Why not trumpet your success?’
‘You expect sense out of Chile?’ Ardiles asked cynically.
Sharpe ducked again as the wind flailed more salt foam across the quarterdeck. ‘Don Blas’s widow doesn’t believe it was the rebels who attacked her husband. She thinks it was Captain-General Bautista.’
Ardiles looked grimmer than ever. ‘Then Don Blas’s widow had best keep her thoughts to herself. Bautista is not a man to antagonize. He has pride, a memory, and a taste for cruelty.’
‘And for corruption?’ Sharpe asked.
Ardiles paused, as though weighing the good sense of continuing this conversation, then he shrugged. ‘Miguel Bautista is the prince of thieves, but that doesn’t mean he won’t one day be the ruler of Spain. How else do men become great, except by extortion and fear? I will give you some advice, Englishman.’ Ardiles’s voice had become fierce with intensity. ‘Don’t make an enemy of Bautista. You hear me?’
‘Of course.’ The warning seemed extraordinary to Sharpe; a testimony to the real fear that Miguel Bautista, Vivar’s erstwhile enemy, inspired.
Ardiles suddenly grinned, as though he wanted to erase the grimness of his last words. ‘The trouble with Don Blas, Englishman, was that he was very close to being a saint. He was an honourable man, and you know what happens to honourable men – they prove to be an embarrassment. This world isn’t governed by honourable men, but by lawyers and politicians, and whenever such scum come across an honest man they have to kill him.’ The ship shuddered as a huge wave smashed ragged down the port gunwale. Ardiles laughed at the weather’s malevolence, then looked again at Sharpe. ‘Take my advice, Englishman! Go home! I’ll be sailing back to Spain in a week’s time, which gives you just long enough to visit the chingana behind the church in Valdivia, after which you should sail home to your wife.’
‘The chingana?’ Sharpe asked.
‘A chingana is where you go for a chingada,’ Ardiles said unhelpfully. ‘A chingana is either a tavern that sells whores, or a whorehouse that sells liquor, and the chingana behind the church in Valdivia has half-breed girls who give chingadas that leave men gasping for life. It’s the best whorehouse for miles. You know how you can tell which is the best whorehouse in a Spanish town?’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s the one where all the priests go, and this one is where the bishop goes! So visit the mestiza whores, then go home and tell Vivar’s wife that her husband’s body was eaten by wild pigs!’
But Sharpe had not been paid to go home and tell stories. He had taken Doña Louisa’s money, and he was far from home, and he would not go back defeated. He would find Don Blas, no matter how deep the forest or high the hill. If Don Blas still had form, then Sharpe would find it.
He had sworn as much, and he would keep his promise. He would find Don Blas.
Albatrosses ghosted alongside the Espiritu Santo’s rigging. The frigate, Cape Horn left far behind her, was sailing before a friendly wind on a swirling current of icy water. Dolphins followed the frigate, while whales surfaced and rolled on either flank.
‘Christ, but there’s some meat on those bloody fish!’ Harper said in admiration as a great whale plunged past the Espiritu Santo. The ship was sailing north along the Chilean coast, out of sight of land, though the proximity of the shore was marked by the towering white clouds which heaped above the Andes. Inshore, the sailors said, were yet stranger creatures: penguins and sea lions, mermaids and turtles, but the frigate was staying well clear of the uncharted Chilean coastline so that Harper, to his regret, was denied a chance of glimpsing such strange monsters. Ardiles, still hoping to capture his own monster, Lord Cochrane, continued to exercise his guns even though his men were already as well-trained as any gunners Sharpe had ever seen.
Yet it seemed there was to be no victory over the devil Cochrane on this voyage, for the Espiritu Santo’s lookouts saw no other ships till the frigate at last closed on the land. Then the lookouts glimpsed a harmless fleet of small fishing vessels that dragged their nets through the cold offshore rollers. The men aboard the fishing boats claimed not to have seen any rebel warships. ‘Though God only knows if they’re telling the truth,’ Lieutenant Otero told Sharpe. Land was still out of sight, but everyone on board knew that the voyage was ending. Seamen were repairing their clothes, sewing up huge rents in breeches and darning their shirts in readiness to meet the girls of Valdivia. ‘One day more, just one day more,’ Lieutenant Otero told Sharpe after the noon sight, and sure enough, next dawn, Sharpe woke to see the dark streak of land filling the eastern horizon.
That afternoon, under a faltering wind, a friendly tide helped the Espiritu Santo into Valdivia’s harbour. Sharpe and Harper stood on deck and stared at the massive fortifications that guarded this last Spanish stronghold on the Chilean coast. The headland which protected the harbour was crowned by the English fort, which in turn could lock its cannon fire with the guns of Fort San Carlos. Both forts lay under the protection of the artillery in the Chorocomayo Fort which had been built on the headland’s highest point. Beyond San Carlos, and still on the headland which formed the harbour’s western side, lay Fort Amargos and Corral Castle. The Espiritu Santo’s First Lieutenant proudly pointed out each succeeding strongpoint as the frigate edged her way around the headland. ‘In Chile,’ Otero explained yet again, ‘armies move by sea because the roads are so bad, but no army could ever take Valdivia unless they first capture this harbour, and I just wish Cochrane would try to capture it! We’d destroy him!’
Sharpe believed him, for there were yet more defences to add their guns to the five forts of the western shore. Across the harbour mouth, where the huge Pacific swells shattered white on dark rocks, was the biggest fort of all, Fort Niebla, while in the harbour’s centre, head on to any attacking ships, lay the guns and ramparts of Manzanera Island. The harbour would be a trap, sucking an attacker inside to where he would be ringed with high guns hammering heated shot down onto his wooden decks.
Only two of the forts, Corral Castle and Fort Niebla, were modern stone-walled forts. The other forts were little more than glorified gun emplacements protected by ditches and timber walls, yet their cannon could make the harbour into a killing ground of overlapping gunnery zones. ‘If we were an enemy ship,’ Otero boasted of the ring of artillery, ‘we would be in hell by now.’
‘Where’s the town?’ Sharpe asked. Valdivia was supposed to be the major remaining Spanish garrison in Chile, yet, to Sharpe’s surprise, the great array of forts seemed to be protecting nothing but a stone quay, some tarred sheds and a row of fishermen’s hovels.
‘The town’s upstream.’ Otero pointed to what Sharpe had taken for a bay just beside Fort Niebla. ‘That’s the river mouth and the town’s fifteen miles inland. You’ll be dropped at the North Quay where you find a boatman to take you upstream. They’re dishonest people, and they’ll try to charge you five dollars. You shouldn’t pay more than one.’
‘The Espiritu Santo won’t go upstream?’
‘The river’s too shallow.’ Lieutenant Otero, who had charge of the frigate, paused to listen to the leadsman who was calling the depth. ‘Sometimes the boatmen will take you halfway and then threaten to put you ashore in the wilderness if you won’t pay more money. If that happens the best thing to do is to shoot one of the Indian crew members. No one objects to the killing of a savage, and you’ll find the death has a remarkably salutary effect on the other boatmen.’
Otero turned away to tend to the ship. The Niebla Fort was firing a salute which one of the long nine-pounders at the frigate’s bows returned. The gunfire echoed flatly from the steep hills where a few stunted trees were permanently windbent towards the north. Seamen were streaming aloft to furl the sails after their long passage. There was a crash as the starboard anchor was struck loose, then a grating rumble as fathoms of chain clattered through the hawse. The fragrant scents of the land vainly tried to defeat the noxious carapace of the Espiritu Santo’s cesspit-laced-with-powder stench. The frigate, her salute fired, checked as the anchor bit into the harbour’s bottom, then turned as the tide pulled the fouled hull slowly round. The smoke of the gun salute writhed and drifted across the bay. ‘Welcome to Chile,’ Otero said.
‘Can you believe it?’ Harper said with amazement. ‘We’re in the New World!’
An hour later, their seabags and money chest under the guard of two burly seamen, Sharpe and Harper stepped ashore onto the New World. They had reached their voyage’s end in the quaking land of giants and pygmies, of unicorns and ghouls; in the rebellious land which lay under the volcanoes’ fire and the devil’s flail. They were in Chile.
CHAPTER TWO
George Blair, British Consul in Valdivia, blinked short-sightedly at Richard Sharpe. ‘Why the hell should I tell you lies? Of course he’s dead!’ Blair laughed mirthlessly. ‘He’d better bloody be dead. He’s been buried long enough! The poor bugger must be in a bloody bad state if he’s still alive; he’s been underground these last three months. Are you sure you don’t have any gin in your baggage?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘People usually bring me gin from London.’ Blair was a plump, middle-aged man, wearing a stained white shirt and frayed breeches. He had greeted his visitors wearing a formal black tailcoat, but had long discarded the coat as too cumbersome in the day’s warmth. ‘It’s rather a common courtesy,’ he grumbled, ‘to bring gin from London.’
Sharpe was in no state to notice either the Consul’s clothes or his unhappiness, instead his thoughts were a whirlpool of disbelief and shock. Don Blas was not missing at all, but was dead and buried, which meant Sharpe’s whole voyage was for nothing. At least, that was what Blair reckoned. ‘He’s under the paving slabs in the garrison church at Puerto Crucero,’ George Blair repeated in his hard, clipped accent. ‘Jesus Christ! I know a score of people who were at the damned funeral. I wasn’t invited, and a good thing too. I have to put up with enough nonsense in this goddamn place without watching a pack of pox-ridden priests mumbling bloody Latin in double-quick time so they can get back to their native whores.’
‘God in his heaven,’ Sharpe blasphemed, then paused to gather his scattered wits, ‘but Vivar’s wife doesn’t know! They can’t bury a man without telling his wife!’
‘They can do whatever they damn well like! But don’t ask me to explain. I’m trying to run a business and a consulate, not explain the remnants of the Spanish bloody empire.’
Blair was a Liverpool merchant who dealt in hides, tallow, copper and timber. He was a bad-tempered, overworked and harassed man, yet, as Consul, he had little option but to welcome Sharpe and Harper into his house that stood in the main square of Valdivia, hard between the church and the outer ditch of the town’s main fort that was known simply as the Citadel. Blair had placed Louisa’s bribe money, all eighteen hundred golden guineas, in his strongroom that was protected by a massive iron door and by walls of dressed stone blocks a foot and a half thick. Louisa had given Sharpe two thousand guineas, but the customs officials at the wharf in Valdivia had insisted on a levy of ten per cent. ‘Bastards,’ Blair had commented when he heard of the impost. ‘It’s supposed to be just three per cent.’
‘Should I complain?’ Sharpe had already made an unholy fuss at the customs post, though it had done no good.
‘To Captain-General Bautista?’ Blair gave another mirthless laugh. ‘He’s the bastard that pegs up the percentage. You were lucky it wasn’t fifteen per cent!’ Then, over a plate of sugar cakes and glasses of wine brought by his Indian servants, Blair had welcomed Sharpe to Valdivia with the unwelcome news that Vivar’s death was no mystery at all. ‘The bugger was riding way ahead of his escort, was probably ambushed by rebels, and his horse bolted with him when the trap was sprung. Then three months later they found his body in a ravine. Not that there was much left of the poor bugger, but they knew it was him, right enough, because of his uniform. Mind you, it took them a hell of a long time to find his body, but the dagoes are bloody inefficient at everything except levying customs duties, and they can do that faster than anyone in history.’
‘Who buried him?’ Sharpe asked.
The Consul frowned in irritated puzzlement. ‘A pack of bloody priests! I told you!’
‘But who arranged it? The army?’
‘Captain-General Bautista, of course. Nothing happens here without Bautista giving the nod.’
Sharpe turned and stared through Blair’s parlour window which looked onto the Citadel’s outer ditch where two dogs were squabbling over what appeared to be a child’s discarded doll, but then, as the doll’s arm ripped away, Sharpe saw that the dogs’ plaything was the body of an Indian toddler that must have been dumped in the ditch.
‘Why the hell weren’t you invited to the funeral, Blair?’ Sharpe turned back from the window. ‘You’re an important man here, aren’t you? Or doesn’t the British Consul carry any weight in these parts?’
Blair shrugged. ‘The Spanish in Valdivia don’t much like the British, Colonel. They’re losing this fight, and they’re blaming us. They reckon most of the rebellion’s money comes from London, and they aren’t far wrong in thinking that. But it’s their own damned fault if they’re losing. They’re too bloody fond of lining their own pockets, and if it comes to a choice between fighting and profiteering, they’ll take the money every time. Things were better when Vivar was in charge, but that’s exactly why they couldn’t stomach him. The bugger was too honest, you see, which is why I didn’t see too many tears shed when they heard he’d been killed.’
‘The bugger,’ Sharpe said coldly, ‘was a friend of mine.’ He turned to stare again at the ditch where a flock of carrion birds edged close to the two dogs, hoping for a share of the child’s corpse.
‘Vivar was a friend of yours?’ Blair sounded shocked.
‘Yes.’
The confirmation checked Blair, who suddenly had to reassess the importance of his visitors, or at least Sharpe’s importance. Blair had already dismissed Harper as a genial Irishman who carried no political weight, but Sharpe, despite his rustic clothes and weathered face, was suddenly proving a much more difficult man to place. Sharpe had introduced himself as Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe, but the war had left as many Colonels as it had bastards, so the rank hardly impressed Consul Blair, but if Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe had been a friend of Don Blas Vivar, who had been Count of Mouromorto and Captain-General of Spain’s Chilean dominion, then such a friendship could also imply that Sharpe was a friend of the high London lords who, ultimately, gave Blair the privileges and honours that eased his existence in Valdivia. ‘A bad business,’ Blair muttered, vainly trying to make amends for his flippancy.
‘Where was the body found?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Some miles north-east of Puerto Crucero. It’s a wild area, nothing but woods and rocks.’ Blair was speaking in a much more respectful tone now. ‘The place isn’t a usual haunt of the rebels, but once in a while they’ll appear that far south. Government troops searched the valley after the ambush, of course, but no one thought to look in the actual ravine till a hunting party of Indians brought news that a white god was lying there. That’s one of their names for us, you see. The white god, of course, turned out to be Don Blas. They reckon that he and his horse must have fallen into the ravine while fleeing from his attackers.’
‘You’re sure it was rebels?’ Sharpe turned from the window to ask the question. ‘I’ve heard it might have been Bautista’s doing.’
Blair shook his head. ‘I’ve not heard those rumours. I’m not saying Bautista’s not capable of murder, because he is. He’s a cruel son of a whore, that one, but I never heard any tales of his having killed Captain-General Vivar, and, believe me, Chile breeds rumour the way a nunnery breeds the pox.’
Sharpe was unwilling to let the theory slip. ‘I heard Vivar had found out about Bautista’s corruption, and was going to arrest him.’
Blair mocked Sharpe’s naïvety. ‘Everyone’s corrupt here! You don’t arrest a man for breathing, do you? If Vivar was going to arrest Bautista then it would have been for something far more serious than corruption. No, Colonel, that dog won’t hunt.’
Sharpe thumped a fist in angry protest. ‘But to be buried three months ago! That’s long enough for someone to tell the authorities in Europe! Why the hell did no one think to tell his wife?’
It was hardly Blair’s responsibility, though he tried to answer as best he could. ‘Maybe the ship carrying the news was captured? Or shipwrecked? Sometimes ships do take a God-horrible time to make the voyage. The last time I went home we spent over three weeks just trying to get round Ushant! Sick as a dog, I was!’
‘Goddamn it.’ Sharpe turned back to the window. Was it all a misunderstanding? Was this whole benighted expedition merely the result of the time it sometimes took for news to cross between the old and new worlds? Had Don Blas been decently buried all this time? It was more than possible, of course. A ship could easily take two or three months to sail from Chile to Spain, and if Louisa had been in England when the news arrived in Galicia then it was no wonder that Sharpe and Harper had come on a fool’s errand. ‘Don’t you bury the dead in this town?’ he asked bad-temperedly.
Blair was understandably bemused by the sudden question, but then saw Sharpe was staring at the dead child in the Citadel’s ditch. ‘We don’t bury that sort of rubbish. Lord, no. It’s probably just the bastard of some Indian girl who works in the fortress. Indians count for nothing here!’ Blair chuckled. ‘A couple of Indian families won’t fetch the price of a decent hunting dog, let alone the cost of a burial!’
Sharpe sipped the wine, which was surprisingly good. He had been astonished, while on the boat coming from the harbour to the town, to see lavish vineyards terraced across the riverside hills. Somehow, after the grotesque shipboard tales, he had expected a country full of mystery and horror, so the sight of placid vineyards and lavish villas had been unexpected, rather like finding everyday comforts in the pits of hell. ‘I’ll need to go to Puerto Crucero,’ he now told Blair.
‘That could be difficult.’ Blair sounded guarded. ‘Very difficult.’
‘Why?’ Sharpe bristled.
‘Because it’s a military area, and because Bautista doesn’t like visitors going there, and because it’s a port town, and the Spaniards have lost too many good harbours on this coast to let another one go, and because they think all Englishmen are spies. Besides, the citadel at Puerto Crucero is the place where the Spanish ship their gold home.’
‘Gold?’ Harper’s interest sparked.
‘There’re one or two mines left; not many and they don’t produce much, and most of what they do produce Bautista is probably thieving, but what little does go back to Madrid leaves through the wharf of Puerto Crucero’s citadel. It’s the nearest harbour to the mines, you see, which is why the dagoes are touchy about it. If you ask to visit Puerto Crucero they might think you’re spying for Cochrane. You know who Cochrane is?’
‘I know,’ Sharpe said.
‘He’s a devil, that one,’ Blair, unable to resist admiration for a fellow Briton, chuckled, ‘and they’re all scared to hell of him. You want to see a dago piss in his breeches? Just mention Cochrane. They think he’s got horns and a tail.’
Sharpe dragged the conversation back to his purpose. ‘So how do I get permission to visit Puerto Crucero?’
‘You have to get a travel permit from army headquarters.’
‘Which is where?’
‘In the Citadel, of course.’ Blair nodded at the great fort which lay on the river’s bend at the very heart of Valdivia.
‘Who do I see there?’
‘A young fellow called Captain Marquinez.’
‘Will Marquinez pay more attention to you than to me?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Oh, Christ, no! Marquinez is just an over-groomed puppy. He doesn’t make the decision. Bautista’s the one who’ll say yea or nay.’ Blair jerked a thumb towards his padlocked strongroom. ‘I hope there’s plenty of money in that box you fetched here, or else you’ll be wasting your time in Chile.’
‘My time is my own,’ Sharpe said acidly, ‘which is why I don’t want to waste it.’ He frowned at Harper who was happily devouring Blair’s sugar cakes. ‘If you can stop feeding yourself, Patrick, we might start work.’
‘Work?’ Harper sounded alarmed, but hurriedly swilled down the last of his wine and snatched a final sugar cake before following Sharpe out of Blair’s house. ‘So what work are we doing?’ the Irishman asked.
‘We’re going to dig up Don Blas’s body, of course,’ Sharpe said, ‘and arrange to have it shipped back to Spain.’ Sharpe’s confident voice seemed to rouse Valdivia’s town square from the torpor of siesta. A man who had been dozing on the church steps looked irritably towards the two tall strangers who strode so noisily towards the Citadel. A dozen Indians, their squat faces blank as carvings, sat in the shade of a mounted statue which stood in the very centre of the square. The Indians, who were shackled together by a length of heavy chain manacled to their ankles, pretended not to notice Sharpe, but could not hide their astonishment at the sight of Harper; doubtless thinking that the tall Irishman was a giant. ‘They’re admiring me, so they are!’ Harper boasted happily.
‘They’re working out how many families they could feed off your carcass. If they boiled you down and salted the flesh there probably wouldn’t be famine in this country for a century.’
