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