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

Sharpe again tried to turn the conversation back to his own business. ‘I need to find the American Consul. Does he live close?’

‘What the hell do you want Fielding for?’ Blair sounded offended, as though Sharpe’s question suggested that Fielding was a better Consul than Blair.

Sharpe had no intention of revealing that he possessed a signed portrait of Napoleon which the American Consul was supposed to smuggle to a British Colonel now living in the rebel part of the country, so instead he made up a story about doing business for an American expatriate living in Normandy.

‘Well, you’re out of luck,’ Blair said with evident satisfaction. ‘Fielding’s away from Valdivia this week. One of his precious whaling boats was impounded by the Spanish navy, so he’s on Chiloe, trying to have the bribe reduced to something under a king’s ransom.’

‘Chiloe?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Island down south. Long way away. But Fielding will be back in a week or so.’

Sharpe hid his disappointment. He had been hoping to deliver the portrait quickly, then forget about the Emperor’s gift, but now, if he was to keep his promise to Bonaparte, he would have to find some other way of reaching Fielding. ‘Have you ever heard of a Lieutenant-Colonel Charles?’ he asked Blair, as casually as he could.

‘Charles? Of course I’ve heard of Charles. He’s one of O’Higgins’s military advisers.’

‘So he’s a rebel?’

‘Of course he’s a bloody rebel! Why else would he have come to Chile? He likes to fight, and Europe isn’t providing any proper wars these days, so all the rascals come over here and complicate my life instead. What do you want with Charles?’

‘Nothing,’ Sharpe said, then let the subject drop.

An hour later he and Harper went to their beds and lay listening to the water sluice off the tiles. The mattresses were full of fleas. ‘Like old times,’ Harper grumbled when they woke early.

Blair was also up at first light. The rain in the night had been so heavy that part of the misted square was flooded, and the inundation had turned the rubbish-choked ditch into a moat in which foul things floated. ‘A horrid day to travel,’ Blair complained when he met them in his parlour where coffee waited on the table. ‘It’ll be raining again within the hour, mark my words.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Down river. To the port.’ Blair groaned and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. ‘I’ve got to supervise some cargo loading, and probably see the Captain of the Charybdis.’

‘What’s the Charybdis?’ Harper asked.

‘Royal Navy frigate. We keep a squadron on the coast just to make sure the bloody dagoes don’t shoot any of our people. They know that if they upset me I’ll arrange to have their toy boats blown out of the water.’ Blair shivered, then groaned with pain. ‘Breakfast!’ he shouted towards the kitchens, then flinched as a muffled rattle of musketry sounded from the Citadel. ‘That’s another rebel gone,’ Blair said thickly. There was a second ragged volley. ‘Business is good this morning.’

‘Rebels?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Or some poor bugger caught with a gun and no money to bribe the patrol. They shove them up against the Angel Tower, say a quick Hail Mary, then send the buggers into eternity.’

‘The Angel Tower?’ Sharpe asked.

‘It’s that ancient lump of stone in the middle of the fort. The Spaniards built it when they first came here, way back in the dark ages. Bloody thing has survived earthquake, fire, and rebellion. It used to be a prison, but it’s empty now.’

‘Why is it called the Angel Tower?’ Harper asked.

‘Christ knows, but you know what the dagoes are like. Some drunken Spanish whore probably saw an angel on its top and the next thing you know they’re all weeping and praying and the priests are carrying round the collection plate. Where’s my goddamned bloody breakfast?’ he shouted towards the kitchen.

Blair, well-breakfasted at last, left for the harbour an hour later. ‘Don’t expect anything from Marquinez!’ he warned Sharpe. ‘They’ll promise you anything, but deliver nothing. You’ll not hear a word from that macaroni until you offer him a fat bribe.’

Yet, no sooner had Blair gone, than a message arrived from the Citadel asking Colonel Sharpe and Mister Harper to do the honour of attending on Captain Marquinez at their earliest opportunity. So, moments later, Sharpe and Harper crossed the bridge, walked through the tunnel that pierced the glacis, crossed the outer parade courtyard and so into the inner yard where two bodies lay like heaps of soiled rags under the bloodstained wall of the Angel Tower. Marquinez, greeting Sharpe in the courtyard, was embarrassed by the bodies. ‘A wagon is coming to take them to the cemetery. They were rebels, of course.’

‘Why don’t you just dump them in the ditch like the Indian babies?’ Sharpe asked Marquinez sourly.

‘Because the rebels are Christians, of course.’ Marquinez was bemused that the question had even been asked.

‘None of the Indians are Christian?’

‘Some of them are, I suppose,’ Marquinez said airily, ‘though personally I don’t know why the missionaries bother. One might as well offer the sacrament to a jabbering pack of monkeys. And they’re treacherous cretures. Turn your back and they’ll stab you. They’ve been rebelling against us for hundreds of years, and they never seem to learn that we always win in the end.’ Marquinez ushered Sharpe and Harper into a room with a high arched ceiling. ‘Will you be happy to wait here? The Captain-General would like to greet you.’

‘Bautista?’ Sharpe was taken aback.

‘Of course! We only have one Captain-General!’ Marquinez was suddenly all charm. ‘The Captain-General would like to welcome you to Chile himself. Captain Ardiles told him how you had a private audience with Bonaparte and, as I mentioned, the Captain-General has a fascination with the Emperor. So, do you mind waiting? I’ll have some coffee sent. Or would you prefer wine?’

‘I’d prefer our travel permits,’ Sharpe said truculently.

‘The matter is being considered, I do assure you. We must do whatever we can to look after the happiness of the Countess of Mouromorto. Now, if you will excuse me?’ Marquinez, with a confiding and dazzling smile, left them in the room which was furnished with a table, four chairs, and a crucifix hanging from a bent horseshoe nail. A broken saddle tree was discarded in one corner, while a lizard watched Sharpe from the curved ceiling. The room’s one window looked onto the execution yard. After an hour, during which no one came to fetch Sharpe and Harper, a wagon creaked into the yard and a detail of soldiers swung the two dead rebels onto the wagon’s bed.

Another hour passed, noted by the chiming of a clock somewhere deep in the fort. Neither wine, coffee, nor a summons from the Captain-General arrived. Captain Marquinez had disappeared, and the only clerk in the office behind the guardroom did not know where the Captain might be found. The rain fell miserably, slowly diluting the bloodstains on the limewashed wall of the Angel Tower.

The rain fell. Still no one came and, as the clock chimed another half hour, Sharpe’s patience finally snapped. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

‘What about Bautista?’

‘Bugger Bautista.’ It seemed that Blair was right about the myriad of delays that the Spanish imposed on even the simplest bureaucratic procedure, but Sharpe did not have the patience to be the victim of such nonsense. ‘Let’s go.’

It was raining much harder now. Sharpe ran across the Citadel’s bridge, while Harper lumbered after. They splashed across the square’s cobbles, past the statue where the group of chained Indians still sat vacant under the cloudburst, to where a heavy wagon, loaded with untanned hides, was standing in front of Blair’s house. The untreated leather stank foully. A uniformed soldier was lounging under the Consul’s arched porch, beside the drooping British flag, apparently guarding the wagon’s stinking cargo. The day-dreaming soldier straightened as Sharpe approached. ‘You can’t go in there, señor