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

Lucille made a sympathetic noise, but the mention of white slaves, pygmies, giants and rogues had made Sharpe suspect that his visitor’s hopes were mere fantasies. In the four years since Waterloo Sharpe had met scores of women who were convinced that a missing son or a lost husband or a vanished lover still lived. Many such women had received notification that their missing man had been killed, but they clung stubbornly to their beliefs; supposing that their loved one was trapped in Russia, or kept prisoner in some remote Spanish town, or perhaps had been carried abroad to some far raw colony. Invariably, Sharpe knew, such men had either settled with different women or, more likely, were long dead and buried, but it was impossible to convince their womenfolk of either harsh truth. Nor did he try to persuade Louisa now, but instead asked her whether Don Blas had been popular in Chile.

‘He was too honest to be popular,’ Louisa said. ‘Of course he had his supporters, but he was constantly fighting corruption. Indeed, that was why he was travelling to Puerto Crucero. The governor of the southern province was an enemy of Don Blas. They hated each other, and I heard that Don Blas had proof of the governor’s corruption and was travelling to confront him!’

Which meant, Sharpe wearily thought, that his friend Don Blas had been fighting two enemies: the entrenched Spanish interest as well as the rebels who had captured Santiago and driven the Royalists into the southern half of the country. Don Blas had doubtless been a good enough commander to beat the rebels, but was he a clever enough politician to beat his own side? Sharpe, who knew what an honest man Don Blas was, doubted it, and that doubt convinced him still further that his old friend must be dead. It took a cunning fox to cheat the hunt, while the brave beast that turned to fight the dogs always ended up torn into scraps. ‘So isn’t it likely,’ Sharpe spoke as gently as he could, ‘that Don Blas was ambushed by his own side?’

‘Indeed it’s possible!’ Louisa said. ‘In fact I believe that is precisely what happened. But I would like to be certain.’

Sharpe sighed. ‘If Don Blas was ambushed by his own side, then they are not going to reveal what happened.’ Sharpe hated delivering such a hopeless opinion, but he knew it was true. ‘I’m sorry, Doña Louisa, but you’re never going to know what happened.’ But Louisa could not accept so bleak a verdict. Her instinct had convinced her that Don Blas was alive, and that conviction had brought her into the deep, private valley where Sharpe farmed Lucille’s land. Sharpe wondered how he was going to rid himself of her. He suspected it would not be easy for Doña Louisa was clearly obsessed by her husband’s fate. ‘Do you want me to write to the Spanish authorities?’ he offered. ‘Or perhaps ask the Duke of Wellington to use his influence?’

‘What good will that do?’ Louisa challenged. ‘I’ve used every influence I can, till the authorities are sick of my influence! I don’t need influence, I need the truth.’ Louisa paused, then took the plunge. ‘I want you to go to Chile and find me that truth,’ she said to Sharpe.

Lucille’s grey eyes widened in surprise, while Sharpe, equally astonished at the effrontery of Louisa’s request, said nothing. Beyond the moat, in the elms that grew beside the orchard, rooks cawed loudly and a house martin sliced on sabre wings between the dairy and the horse chestnut tree. ‘There must be men in South America who are in a better position to search for your husband?’ Lucille remarked very mildly.

‘How do I trust them? Those officers who were friends of my husband have either been sent home or posted to remote garrisons. I sent money to other officers who claimed to be friends of Don Blas, but all I received in return were the same lies. They merely wish me to send more money, and thus they encourage me with hope but not with facts. Besides, such men cannot speak to the rebels.’

‘And I can?’ Sharpe asked.

‘You can find out whether they ambushed Don Blas, or whether someone else set the trap.’

Sharpe, from all he had heard, doubted whether any rebels had been involved. ‘By someone else,’ he said diplomatically, ‘I assume you mean the man Don Blas was riding to confront? The governor of, where was it?’

‘Puerto Crucero,’ Louisa said, ‘and the governor’s name was Miguel Bautista.’ Louisa spoke the name with utter loathing. ‘And Miguel Bautista is Chile’s new Captain-General. That snake has replaced Don Blas! He writes me flowery letters of condolence, but the truth is that he hated Don Blas and has done nothing to help me.’

‘Why did he hate Don Blas?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Because Don Blas was honest, and Bautista is corrupt. Why else?’

‘Corrupt enough to murder Don Blas?’ Sharpe asked.

‘My husband is not dead!’ Louisa insisted in a voice full of pain, so much pain that Sharpe, who till now had been trying to pierce her armour of certainty, suddenly realized just what anguish lay behind that self-delusion. ‘He is hiding,’ Louisa insisted unrealistically, ‘or perhaps he is wounded. Perhaps he is with the savages. Who knows? I only know, in my heart, that he is not dead. You will understand!’ This passionate appeal was directed at Lucille, who smiled with sympathy, but said nothing. ‘Women know when their men die,’ Louisa went on. ‘They feel it. I know a woman who woke in her sleep, crying, and later we discovered that her husband’s ship had sunk that very same night! I tell you, Don Blas is alive!’ The cry was pathetic, yet full of vigour, tragic.

Sharpe turned to watch his son who, with little Dominique, was searching inside the open barn door for newly-laid eggs. He did not want to go to Chile. These days he even resented having to travel much beyond Caen. Sharpe was a happy man, his only worries the usual concerns of a farmer, money and weather, and he wished Louisa had not come to the valley with her talk of cavalry and ambush and savages and corruption. Sharpe’s more immediate concerns were the pike that decimated the millstream trout and the crumbling sill of the weir that threatened to collapse and inundate Lucille’s water meadows, and he did not want to think of far-off countries and corrupt governments and missing soldiers.

Doña Louisa, seeing Sharpe stare at his children, must have understood what he was thinking. ‘I have asked for help everywhere.’ She made the appeal to Lucille as much as to Sharpe. ‘The Spanish authorities wouldn’t help me, which is why I went to London.’ Louisa, who perhaps had more faith in her English roots than she would have liked to admit, explained that she had sought the help of the British government because British interests were important in Chile. Merchants from London and Liverpool, in anticipation of new trading opportunities, were suspected of funding the rebel government, while the Royal Navy kept a squadron off the Chilean coast and Louisa believed that if the British authorities, thus well-connected with both sides of the fighting parties, demanded news of Don Blas then neither the rebels nor the Royalists would dare refuse them. ‘Yet the British say they cannot help!’ Louisa complained indignantly. ‘They say Don Blas’s disappearance is a military matter of concern only to the Spanish authorities!’ So, in desperation, and while returning overland to Spain, Louisa had called on Sharpe. Her husband had once done Sharpe a great service, she tellingly reminded him, and now she wanted that favour returned.

Lucille spoke English excellently, but not quite well enough to have kept up with Louisa’s indignant loquacity. Sharpe translated, and added a few facts of his own; how he did indeed owe Blas Vivar a great debt. ‘He helped me once, years ago.’ Sharpe was deliberately vague, for Lucille never much liked to hear of Sharpe’s exploits in fighting against her own people. ‘And he is a good man,’ Sharpe added, knowing the compliment was inadequate, for Don Blas was more than just a good man. He was, or had been, a generous man of rigorous honesty; a man of religion, of charity, and of ability.