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

‘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.