Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Honour - The Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813

‘That’s him, Major.’ The big priest watched the small, bespectacled man as if enjoying his reaction. ‘That’s El Matarife.’ The nickname meant ‘the Slaughterman’.

El Matarife was a frightening sight. He was big, he was strong, but it was his face that caused fear. He was bearded so thickly that his face seemed half man and half beast. The beard grew to his cheekbones, so that his eyes, small and cunning, appeared in a slit between beard and hair. It was a bestial face that now looked up, over the dead bull, to see the two horsemen above him. El Matarife bowed mockingly to them. The priest raised a hand in reply.

The men about the rock pit. Partisans who followed the Slaughterman, were calling for a prisoner. The carcass of the bull was being dragged up the rocks, going to join the three other dead animals that had left their blood on the white-frosted stone.

The small man frowned. ‘A prisoner?’

‘You can hardly expect El Matarife not to have a welcome for you, Major? After all it’s not every day that a Frenchman comes here.’ The priest was enjoying the small Frenchman’s discomfiture. ‘And it might be wise to watch, Major? To refuse would be seen as an insult to his hospitality.’

‘God damn his hospitality,’ the small man said, but he stayed nonetheless.

He was not impressive to look at, this small Frenchman whose glasses chafed his skin, yet the appearance was deceptive. Pierre Ducos was called Major, though whether that was his real rank, or whether he held any rank in the French army at all, no one knew. He called no man ‘sir’, unless it was the Emperor. He was part spy, part policeman, and wholly politician. It was Pierre Ducos who had suggested the secret to his Emperor, and it was Pierre Ducos who must make the secret come true and thus win the war for France.

A fair-headed man, dressed only in a shirt and trousers, was pushed past the bulls’ carcasses. His hands were tied behind his back. He was blinking as though he had been brought from a dark place into the sudden daylight.

‘Who is he?’ Ducos asked.

‘One of the men he took at Salinas.’

Ducos grunted. El Matarife was a Partisan leader, one of the many who infested the northern hills, and he had lately surprised a French convoy and taken a dozen prisoners. Ducos pushed at the earpiece of his spectacles. ‘He took two women.’

‘He did,’ the priest said.

‘What happened to them?’

‘You care very much, Major?’

‘No.’ Ducos’s voice was sour. ‘They were whores.’

‘French whores.’

‘But still whores.’ He said it with dislike. ‘What happened to them?’

‘They ply their trade, Major, but their payment is life instead of cash.’

The fair-headed man had been taken to the base of the rock pit and there his arms were cut free. He flexed his fingers in the raw, cold air, wondering what was to happen to him in this place that stank of blood. There was a mood of expectant enjoyment among the spectators. They were quiet, but they grinned because they knew what was to happen.

A chain was tossed to the pit’s floor.

It lay there, links of rusting iron in the bull’s blood which had steamed in the cold. The prisoner shivered. He took a step back as a man picked up one end of the chain, but then submitted quietly as the links were tied to his left forearm.

The Slaughterman, his huge beard flecked with the blood of the bull, picked up the other end of the chain. He looped it about his own left arm and laughed at the prisoner. ‘I shall count the ways of your death, Frenchman.’

The French prisoner did not understand the Spanish words. He did understand, though, the knife that was tossed to him; a long, wicked-bladed knife that was identical to the weapon in the hands of El Matarife. The chain that linked the two men was ten feet long.

The priest smiled. ‘You’ve seen such a fight?’

‘No.’

‘There is a skill to it.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Ducos said drily.

The skill was all with the Slaughterman. He had fought the linked knife fight many times, and he feared no opponent. The Frenchman was brave, but desperate. His attacks were fierce, but clumsy. He was pulled off balance by the chain, he was tormented, he was cut, and with every slice of El Matarife’s knife the count was shouted out by the watching partisans. ‘ Uno! ’ greeted a slash that opened the Frenchman’s forehead to his skull. ‘ Dos! ’ saw his left hand slit between his fingers. The numbers mounted.

Ducos watched. ‘How long does it go on?’

‘Perhaps fifty cuts?’ The priest shrugged. ‘Maybe more.’

Ducos looked at the priest. ‘You enjoy it?’

‘I enjoy all manly pursuits, Major.’

‘Except one, priest,’ Ducos smiled.

Father Hacha looked back at the pit. The priest was a big man, as big as El Matarife himself. He showed no distress as the prisoner was slashed and cut and flayed. Father Hacha was, in many ways, an ideal partner to Major Pierre Ducos. Like the Frenchman he was part spy, part policeman, and wholly politician, except that his politics were those of the Church, and his skills were given to the Spanish Inquisition. Father Hacha was an Inquisitor.

‘Fourteen!’ the Partisans shouted, and Ducos, startled by the loudness of the shout, looked back at the pit.

El Matarife, who had not been touched by the prisoner’s knife, had, with exquisite skill, taken out his opponent’s left eye. El Matarife fastidiously wiped the tip of his blade on his leather sleeve. ‘Come, Frenchman!’

The prisoner had his left hand clapped over his ruined eye. The chain tightened, the links making a small noise in the pit, and the tension of the chain dragged his hand away from the blood and pain. He was shaking his head, half sobbing, knowing that the ways of his death would be long and painful. Such was always the death of the French when captured by the Partisans, and such were the deaths of the Partisans caught by the French.

The Frenchman pulled back on the chain, trying to resist the pressure, but he was powerless against the huge man. Suddenly the chain was thrashed, the Frenchman fell, and he was dragged about the floor of the pit like a landed fish. When the Spaniard paused, the Frenchman tried to get up, but a boot hammered into his left forearm, breaking the bones, and the pulling began again and the watching Partisans laughed at the squeals of pain as the chain pulled on the broken limb.

Ducos’s face showed nothing.

Father Hacha smiled. ‘You’re not upset, Major? He is your countryman.’

‘I hate all unnecessary cruelty.’ Ducos pushed again at the spectacles. These were new glasses, fetched from Paris. His old ones had been broken on Christmas Day by a British officer called Richard Sharpe. That insult still hurt Ducos, but he believed, with the Spanish, that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.

At the count of twenty, the Frenchman lost his right eye.

At the count of twenty-five, he was sobbing for mercy, unable to fight, his ragged, dirty trousers bright with new blood.

At the count of thirty, his breath misting as he sobbed, the prisoner was killed. El Matarife, disgusted with the lack of fight in the man, and bored with the entertainment, slit his throat, and went on cutting until the head came away in his hand. He threw the head to the dogs that had been beaten away from the dead bulls. He unwound the chain from his left forearm, sheathed the wet knife, and looked again at the two horsemen. He smiled at the priest. ‘Welcome, brother! What have you brought me?’

‘A guest.’ The priest said it forcibly.

El Matarife laughed. ‘Take him to the house, Tomas!’

Ducos followed the Inquisitor through rocks stained red by iron ore to a house built of stone with blankets for windows and doors. Within the house, warmed by a fire that filled the damp walls with smoke, a meal waited. There was stew of gristle and grease, loaves, wine, and goat’s cheese. It was served by a scared, thin-faced girl. El Matarife, bringing into the damp warmness of the small room the stink of fresh blood, joined them.