Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (16 page)

‘The Partisans?’

‘Si.
You have heard of
El Matarife?
’

Sharpe shook his head. The hills of Spain were filled with Partisan leaders who took fanciful nicknames. He tried to think what the word meant. ‘A man who kills animals?’

‘Yes. A slaughterman. You should have heard of him. He is famous.’

‘And he guards the convent?’

Angel sucked on the disintegrating tube of tobacco. ‘So it is said. He will guard the
mesa,
not the convent.’

‘The table?’

‘The convent is on a mountain, yes? Very high with a flat top, a
mesa.
There are few paths up,
señor,
so it is easy to guard.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Two days’ ride? There.’ He pointed to the north-east.

‘Have you been there?’

‘No.’ Angel disgustedly threw the remains of his cigar into the fire. He had somehow not mastered the knack of twisting the paper and tobacco exactly right. ‘I have heard of it though.’

Sharpe was trying to make sense, any kind of sense, from Angel’s news. The Inquisition? That coincidence made the boy’s tale seem true, but why should the Inquisition want to kidnap Helene? Or why, for that matter, would the Slaughterman be guarding the convent where she was held?

He asked the boy, and Angel shrugged. ‘Who knows? He is not a man you can ask.’

‘What kind of man is he?’

The boy frowned. ‘He kills Frenchmen.’ He paid the compliment dubiously. ‘But he kills his own people, too, yes? He once shot twelve men of a village because the villagers had refused his men food. He rode in at the siesta time and shot them. Even Mina cannot control him.’ Angel spoke of the man who had been made general of all the Partisans. Mina had been known to execute men such as
El Matarife
who persecuted their own countrymen. Angel was making himself another cigar. ‘The French are scared of him. It’s said that he once put the heads of fifty Frenchmen on the Great Road, one every mile through the mountains so the French would find them. That was near Vitoria where he comes from.’ The boy laughed. ‘He kills slowly. They say he has a leather coat made from French skins. Some say he is mad.’

‘Can we find him?’

‘Si.’
Angel said it as though the question was unnecessary. ‘So we ride to the mountains?’

‘We ride to the mountains.’

They rode north east to where the mountains became dizzying crags, the hunting grounds of eagles, a land of awesome valleys and of waterfalls that seethed from the low clouds of morning to fall scores of feet into cold, upland streams.

They rode north east into a land where the inhabitants were few, and those inhabitants so poor and frightened that they fled when they saw two strange horsemen coming. Some of the people here, Angel said, would not even know there was a war on. ‘They’re not even Spanish!’ He said it scathingly.

‘Not Spanish?’

‘They’re Basques. They have their own language.’

‘So who are they?’

Angel shrugged dismissively. ‘They live here.’ He obviously had nothing more to say about them.

Angel, it seemed to Sharpe, was fretting. They had come into these northern mountains and were far from the French. They were far from the war and, from what Angel had heard in Burgos, far from the excitement.

The rumours in Burgos said that the British had at last marched, and were attacking in the north. The French northern army was retreating and Sharpe had seen the vanguard of that army as it approached Burgos. Angel feared the campaign would be over before he could kill again. Sharpe laughed. ‘It won’t be over.’

‘You promise?’

‘I promise. How do we find
El Matarife?
’

‘He finds us,
señor.
Do you think he doesn’t know there’s an Englishman in the hills?’

‘Just remember not to call me Sharpe.’

‘Si, señor.’
Angel grinned. ‘What are you called now?’

Sharpe smiled. He remembered the suave, regretful officer who had conducted his prosecution. ‘Vaughn. Major Vaughn.’

He rode between high rocks, beneath the eagles, and he searched for the Marquesa and for the Slaughterman.

El Matarife,
like Angel, fretted at being so far from the richer pickings that were to be had to the south. These high, deep valleys were poor, there were few French to be ambushed, and little to be stolen from the meagre villages. He had two French prisoners with him, playthings for his entertainment.

The news of the Englishman was brought to him by three of his men.
El Matarife
occupied an inn, or what passed in this miserable place for an inn, and he scowled at the three men as though they were responsible for the Englishman’s coming. ‘He said he wanted to speak with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘He did not say why?’

‘Only that his General had sent him.’

El Matarife
grunted. ‘Not before time, eh?’ His lieutenants nodded. Wellington had sent messengers to other Partisan leaders, requesting their co-operation, and the Slaughterman presumed that his turn had come.

But he could not be sure of it. In the convent, thousands of feet above the valley, was
La Puta
Dorada. She had been brought by his brother who had warned
El Matarife
that the French might search for her, but the Inquisitor had said nothing about any Englishman. El
Matarife
could understand a man searching for the woman. He had seen her in the carriage and, even dishevelled and tearful, she had been beautiful. ‘Why give her to the nuns?’ he had asked.

His brother had snapped at him. ‘She has to take the vows, don’t you understand? It must be legal! She must become a nun! She must take her vows, nothing else matters!’

The Inquisitor had left his brother with instructions that no one was to be allowed close to the convent, and that, if anyone asked about the Marquesa, her presence was to be denied. She was to be buried and forgotten and left to Christ.

Now
El Matarife
wondered whether the Englishman had come looking for the whore of gold. ‘What is he called?’

‘Vaughn. Major Vaughn.’

‘He’s alone?’

‘He has a boy with him.’

One of his lieutenants saw the concern on
El Matarife’s
face and shrugged. ‘Just kill him. Who’ll know?’

‘You’re a fool. Your mother sucked an ass.’
El Matarife
jabbed at the fire with a sword point. It was cold in these deep valleys, and the fire in the inn’s main room did little to help. He looked back to the men who had spoken with the Englishman the night before. ‘He said nothing of any woman?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure he’s English? Not a Frenchman?’

The men shrugged.

El Matarife
peered through the window, stooping so he could see to the very top of the huge, grey slab of cliff where the Convent of the Heavens was perched. The presence of La Marquesa in that cold building was supposed to be a secret, though
El Matarife
knew better than most that there were few secrets in Spain’s countryside. Someone would have talked.

He could kill the Englishman, but that was a last resort. The English were the source of gold, guns and ammunition, landing them on the hidden beaches of the northern coast at night. If an Englishman was to be killed, then
El Matarife
had a suspicion that a reckoning might be made; that his men would be hunted and punished by other Partisans, yet, if he had to kill the Englishman, he would, though he would rather send the man away satisfied, suspicion allayed, so he could continue this wearisome watch uninterruptedly.

‘Where is this Major Vaughn?’

‘At the two bridges.’

‘Bring him tonight.’ The Slaughterman looked at one of his lieutenants. ‘Bring the prisoners. We shall entertain our Englishman.’

‘The woman too?’

‘Especially her.’
El Matarife
smiled. ‘If he has come for a woman then he can have her!’ He laughed. He had fooled the French for four years and now he would fool an Englishman. He shouted for wine and waited for the night.

Night fell swiftly in the depths of the valley beneath the Convent of the Heavens. When the peaks were still touched red by the last daylight it was already dark at the inn that
El Matarife
called his headquarters. In front of the inn, and lit by smoking torches, was an area of beaten earth. Sharpe and Angel, brought to the place by silent guides, were led to the lit space.

A chain was thrown onto the patch of earth. It lay there, ten feet of rusting links, and at its far end, nervous and dressed only in ragged trousers, stood a prisoner.

A Partisan picked up the chain and looped one end about the man’s left wrist. He tied it clumsily, jerked on it to make sure it was secure, then stepped back. He took from his belt a long knife and tossed it at the man’s feet.

One of the men who had guided Sharpe to this place grinned at the Rifleman. ‘A Frenchman. You watch his death, Englishman.’

A second man stepped forward, a hulking man who shrugged off a cloak and whose appearance provoked applause from the watching Partisans. The man turned towards Sharpe and the Rifleman saw a face which, at first, seemed unnatural, as though it belonged to a creature that was half-beast and half-man. Sharpe had heard his men tell stories about the strange things that were men by day and beasts by night, and this man could have been such a thing. His beard sprouted from his cheeks, growing as high as the cheekbones, leaving only a small gap beneath his hair, a gap from which two small, cunning eyes looked at Sharpe. The man smiled. ‘Welcome, Englishman.’

‘Of course. Our business will wait?’

Sharpe shrugged. The Partisans watched him, grinning. He sensed that this display was being given for his benefit.

El
Matarife
stooped, took the loose end of the chain, and wrapped it about his upper left arm. He took from his belt a long knife like that carried by the Frenchman. ‘I shall count the ways of your death, pig.’

The Frenchman did not understand the words. He understood that he must fight, and he licked his lips, hefted the knife, and waited as
El Matarife
stepped backwards, lifting the chain from the ground until it was taut between them.
El Matarife
went on pulling, forcing the Frenchman to step forward. The prisoner tugged back and the Partisans laughed.

Sharpe saw that many of the Partisans, instead of watching the strange fight, watched him. They were testing him. They knew that the English treated prisoners with decency; they wanted to see what kind of a man Sharpe was. Would he flinch at the display? If he did, then he would lose face.

El Matarife
looked at Sharpe, then suddenly jerked on the chain, making the prisoner stumble. The Partisan went forward, knife low, and the Frenchman desperately slashed with his own blade and it seemed to Sharpe that the Frenchman must have drawn blood, but when
El Matarife
stepped back he was untouched. The prisoner had a slashed left arm. The blood dripped from the chain.

‘
Uno,
’ El
Matarife
said.

‘Uno,
’ his men echoed.

Sharpe watched. The Partisan leader was fast. He was skilled at this kind of fighting. Sharpe doubted whether he had ever seen a man so quick with a blade. The bearded face was smiling.

The Frenchman suddenly lunged forward, looping the chain up in an attempt to wrap it about his opponent’s neck.

El Matarife
laughed, stepped back, and the knife was a flicker of brightness in the flamelight.

‘
Dos!
’

The Frenchman was shaking his head. There was blood on his forehead.

The chain swung between them. Once more
El Matarife
stepped back. The links made a small noise as they tightened and this time El
Matarife
went on pulling steadily, hauling the Frenchman inexorably forward. The prisoner was licking his lips. He held his knife low, but there was a puzzled look on his face. He was trying to plan this fight and
El Matarife
was content to let him plan. At this kind of fighting the Slaughterman was an expert. He feared no Frenchman, no man who was not trained to the tied knife fight.

The Frenchman suddenly jerked backwards, jerked with all his weight and
El Matarife,
laughing, went fast forward so that the Frenchman, taken by surprise, fell backwards.

The Slaughterman hauled on the chain, towing the man on the ground, tugging and pulling, laughing as his prisoner thrashed like a hooked and landed fish, then
El Matarift
stepped forward, lashed out with his black-booted right foot to kick the Frenchman’s left forearm.

Sharpe heard the crack of the bone and the stifled cry of the prisoner.

‘
Tres,
’
El Matarife
said. He stepped away to let the Frenchman get up. The prisoner looked dizzy. He was in pain. His arm was broken and every pull on the chain would now be agony. The man looked up at his tormentor and suddenly lunged with the knife, throwing himself forward from his knees, but
El Matarife
simply laughed and moved his knife hand faster than the eye could follow.

‘
Cuatro.
’

There was blood on the back of the Frenchman’s hand.

Sharpe looked at the guide beside him. ‘How long does it go on?’

‘At least thirty cuts, Englishman. Sometimes a hundred. You don’t like it, eh?’ The man laughed.

Sharpe did not reply. Slowly, very slowly, so that no one could see what he did, he leaned forward and found with his right hand the lock of his rifle that was pushed into a saddle holster. Quietly and slowly he eased the cock back until he felt it seated at the full.

The Frenchman was on his feet now. He knew that he was being played with, that his opponent was a master of this kind of fighting, that the cuts would go on and on till his body was seething with pain and drenched with blood. He attacked the Slaughterman, slicing left and right, stabbing, going into a frenzy of despair, and
El Matarife,
who, despite his bulk, was as fast on his feet as any man Sharpe had seen, seemed to dance away from each attack. He was laughing, holding his own knife out of the way and then, when the Frenchman’s frenzy had died, the knife seared forward.