Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (12 page)

The Provost Sergeant, safely off his ladder, pulled on the noose to make sure that the hook was secure. It held his weight. The rope, released from his grip, turned slowly in the small breeze.

Father Hacha, his black priest’s robes stained white with dust from the square, pushed through the officers to Mendora’s side. ‘They should have handed him to us for punishment.’

The Major looked at the harsh faced priest. ‘Sir?’

‘Hanging’s too quick.’ His deep voice dominated the room. ‘Spain won’t be happy, gentlemen, till these heathens are gone from us.’

There were some murmurs of agreement, but not many. Most of the Spaniards present were glad to serve under the Generalissimo Wellington. They had learned from him how to organize an army, and the new regiments of Spain were troops that any officer could take pride in. But no one, not the most fervent supporter of the British alliance, was willing to cross an Inquisitor. The Junta might have abolished the Spanish Inquisition, but until it finally disappeared, no man wanted to have his name listed in its secret ledgers. The Inquisitor stared at the rope. ‘They should have garotted him.’

Some of the Spanish soldiers in the square would have agreed with the Inquisitor. Hanging, they said, was too quick. They should have brought one of the garottes that travelled with the Spanish army, sat the Englishman in its chair, and slowly, slowly tightened the screw that would break his neck. A good executioner could draw a garotting out for an hour, sometimes relaxing the pressure of the thread to give the victim false hope, before finally turning the screw and breaking the neck as the doomed man’s head snapped backwards.

Others said that a hanging could last just as long. It all depended, they said, on the drop. If the man was simply hanged, without a drop, then he could last half a day. Whatever, it was better to be in this dusty square waiting for a hanging than to be training in the hills.

‘La Puta Dorada,’
a Spanish Colonel observed, ‘is now a very rich widow.’ There was laughter at the thought.

‘How rich?’ an artillery Major asked.

‘Christ knows how much he was worth! Millions.’

‘She won’t get the land,’ someone observed. ‘She won’t dare show her face in Spain once the French are gone.’

‘Even so,’ the Colonel shrugged. ‘She must be worth a few hundred thousand in coin and plate. What happens to the title?’

Major Mendora, embarrassed by the conversation, coldly named a Duke, a cousin, to whom the title reverted. He refused to give an estimate of his dead master’s fortune.

The Inquisitor listened to the talk, hearing the greed and jealousy. He turned to the window and looked at the makeshift gallows on which an innocent man must die. That was regrettable, but the Inquisitor was satisfied that the Englishman, Sharpe, was a sinner whose death would not distress the Almighty. The hanging rope cast a sharp, black shadow on the limewashed wall.

The death of the Marqués was more distressing. The Marqués, at least, had been a Christian, though a weak man. Now he was in heaven where weakness was a virtue.

He had died quickly, hardly a flutter on his face as the Slaughterman, with a strong hand, had sliced his throat. The Inquisitor had prayed as his brother killed, his words soft, committing the soul to heaven as the knife cut through the tendons and windpipe and muscle and down to the great artery that had gouted blood as the Marqués’ body gave one, desperate heave. The man had hardly woken as he died.
El Matarife
had eyed the golden crucifix greedily and been hurried from the room by his brother.

The Marqués’ death would save Spain. It released his fortune that would go to the Church. These officers who discussed his will did so in ignorance, for now, with this one death behind him, the Inquisitor would legally take the fortune that was embarked on the Marquesa’s wagons. Three hundred thousand dollars worth of fortune there alone, with millions more in land and property. He smiled.

The Inquisitor’s family had been impoverished by the war, and now, with this fortune, it would rank with the greatest in Spain which was only fitting for a man who intended to be the leader behind Spain’s weak King. With the fortune of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba behind him, the Inquisitor knew, he would rise to be a bishop, then an archbishop, and finally a cardinal. He would stand behind the throne and before the high altar. He would be powerful and Spain would be great. His ambitions, not set for himself, but for the Church and for the Inquisition, would be realised, and all for the price of one death.

And now that the Marqués was dead the Inquisitor would give to Major Ducos the assurances of support that would convince Ferdinand VII to sign his name to the secret treaty. The British would go from Spain, the French would leave peaceably, and Spain would be strong again. Its empire would be restored, its King would be glorious on a throne, and the Church would take back its power. All that for one small death. One death to give his family the money that meant power, power that would be used for God’s glory. The Inquisitor forgave himself the death; it had been for God.

A murmur came from the throng of soldiers who packed the plaza. It rose, became an excited shout, and the noise coincided with the door opening into the large room where the Spanish officers gathered. Lord Wellington, grim-faced, came into the room. He frowned at the assembled men, nodded coldly, then looked through one of the windows. His aides crowded close to him. Mendora could see the General’s hands were clasped behind his back, the fingers fidgeting. The Spanish officers fell silent, embarrassed by the cold face of their commanding officer.

The prisoner, bare-headed so that the wind stirred his long, black hair, was being marched through the narrow corridor that had been made through the crowd. He was pushed up the makeshift steps to the wagon bed. He was taller than his red-jacketed guards.

He wore a grubby white shirt and the baggy white trousers of the English infantry so that, to the Spaniards watching from the headquarters, he seemed to be dressed as a penitent. The Inquisitor was saying a prayer, his deep voice harsh in the room. Wellington looked in irritation at the priest, but said nothing. Some of the Spanish officers knew that Richard Sharpe had once saved the General’s life, rescued him from the bayonets of Indian troops years ago, and now the General was watching the man hanged. Yet Wellington’s face, with its hooked, eagle’s nose, showed no trace of emotion.

The prisoner’s hands were tied. He seemed to look with disinterest at the great crowd. He was too far away for the Spanish officers to see his face clearly, yet it seemed as if he grinned at them in defiance. The watching soldiers were silent.

A second, shorter ladder had been placed against the white-washed wall and the guards pushed the prisoner towards it. He found it difficult to climb the rungs with his hands tied, but the soldiers helped him up. The Provost Sergeant climbed the longer ladder, reached out for the noose, and pushed it over the prisoner’s black hair. He tightened the knot, then went back down to the wagon.

Some of the Spanish officers watched the alleyways that led into the plaza. They were thinking of the rumour that Sharpe’s men might try to rescue their officer, but there were no angry men beyond the sentries. No dogs barked, there was no tramp of feet, just the sunlight on the thick, red tiles and the wisps of smoke from kitchen fires silting the air above the town.

The condemned man was standing precariously on the ladder, the rope about his neck looping downwards. The Provost Sergeant looked at his officer.

The Lieutenant of the Provosts disliked this task, but orders were orders. Major Sharpe was to be hanged in full view of the Spanish troops. He looked up at the man standing on the ladder, his body leaning on the wall, and he caught the dark eyes in a final glance, wondered at a man who could grin at him at this moment, then the Lieutenant gave the order.

‘Carry on, Sergeant.’ The words came out as a croak.

The crowd gasped, then cheered.

The Provosts pulled the ladder from beneath the doomed man.

For a second the booted feet stayed on the falling rung, then they slipped off, he dropped, and the rope jerked tight. He bounced, dropped again, and then was swaying and turning from the high hook. His body seemed to arch as he dangled. His feet flailed the air, kicked the wall, and he twisted so that his unhooded face stared at the packed plaza.

The eyes bulged, the tongue pushed at the lips, the neck was grotesquely stretched to the tilted head. The Spanish watched in fascination. He jerked again, fighting upwards as if for air, and then the English Sergeant jumped up, caught one of the man’s ankles, and jerked his weight down.

The extra weight snapped his neck. The Sergeant let go of the man’s ankles and slowly, as the body swung, the legs drew themselves up a few inches. He was dead.

A coffin waited on the wagon bed; pine boards, rough planed, nailed together. The body was cut down. The hair had been smeared white by the limewash as the body thrashed in death.

They took the boots from the corpse, but nothing else was worth saving. They lifted him into the coffin, but he was too tall for the box and so the Sergeant took a musket from one of his men and smashed the butt down, sweating and grunting, smashed again, and the broken shinbones let the legs be forced inside. The lid was nailed shut.

Wellington stared at the whole thing with distaste. When it was done, when the Spanish Battalions were being marched from the plaza and the pine box was being carried away, he turned his cold eyes on the assembled officers ‘That’s over, gentlemen. Perhaps we can now get on with this war?’

They filed silently from the room. The murder of the Marques had failed to split the British and Spanish. The Generalissimo had made his blood sacrifice to keep the alliance alive and now there was a war to fight.

By a roadside, beneath the high mountains where the wolves roamed between grey rocks, they buried the broken-legged corpse. The Provosts heaped rocks over the shallow grave to stop predators digging up the body, and then they left it without any marker. That night a peasant put a nailed cross on the spot, not out of reverence, but to frighten the protestant spirit and keep it underground. The Inquisitor and
El Matarife,
riding north and east, passed the grave. The Slaughterman reined in. ‘I should have watched him die.’

‘It was better that no one saw you, Juan.’

The Slaughterman shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen a man hanged.’

The Inquisitor looked incredulous. ‘Never?’

‘Never.’
El Matarife
sounded ashamed.

‘Then find one and hang him.’

‘I will.’

‘But first look after our next business.’ The priest put spurs to his horse. ‘And hurry!’

They carried papers that would pass them through the British and French lines, and they carried news that would end this war and restore Spain to its old glory. The Inquisitor gave thanks to God and hurried on.

The valley was a pass through the mountains. It was high. From its western rim, where it spilt down to a river far, far beneath, a man could see into Portugal. The hills of the Tras os Montes, the “land beyond the mountains”, looked like purple-blue ridges that became dimmer and more indistinct until the horizon was a mere blur like a smear of dark water colour on a painter’s canvas.

The sides of the valley were thick with thorn. The blossoms were white in the sunlight. The road, that climbed the steep pass and went through the high valley, was edged with yellow ragwort that the Spanish called St James’s grass. The pasture at the valley bottom was close cropped by sheep and rabbits. Ravens nested on stone ledges, foxes hunted the thorn’s margins, while wolves roamed the rock strewn hills that barred the sky in a jagged barrier.

There was a village in the high valley, but it was deserted. The doors of the cottages had been torn from their hinges and burned by one of the armies that fought in Spain.

At the western end of the valley, where the crest showed the magnificent view of the land beyond the mountains, were two great buildings. Both were ruins.

On the north side, low and squat, was an old convent. Its two cloisters still stood, though the upper cloister had been grievously torn by a great explosion that had destroyed the old chapel. The convent had long been deserted. Weeds grew on its patterned tiles, leaves choked the channels that had once carried water in its lower garden.

To the south, barring the pass, was a castle. A man could still climb to the top of the keep, or stand on the gatehouse, but it had been centuries since a lord lived in the castle. Now it was a home for the ravens, and bats hung in its high dark rooms.

Further east, and higher still, dominating the land for miles around, was an old watchtower. That, too, could be climbed, though the winding stair led only to a broken battlement.

The high valley was called the Gateway of God. By the castle, on the grass that was littered with rabbit droppings like miniature musketballs, was a long, low mound. It was a grave, and in the grave were the bodies of the men who had died defending this pass in the winter. They had been few, and their enemies many, yet they had held the pass until relief came. They had been led by a soldier, by a Rifleman, by Richard Sharpe.

The French who had died, and there had been many, had been buried more hurriedly in a mass grave by the village. In the winter the scavenging beasts had scraped the earth from the grave and eaten what flesh they could find. Now, as the spring days turned to summer and the small stream in the Gateway of God shrank, the bones of the dead Frenchmen were littered about the village. Skulls lay like a monstrous crop of mushrooms.

In the south there was a war, armies marching to this year’s campaign, but in the Gateway of God, where Sharpe had fought his war against an army, there was nothing but death and the wind moving the thorns and the skulls grinning from the cropped grass. It was a place of no use to either army, a place of ghosts and death and loneliness, a place forgotten.