LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

VII of Spain’s support of a French treaty.

      The two men met, not in the castle, but in one of the town’s tall, gloomy houses. Ducos winced as his spectacles rubbed his sore skin. On the advice of an army surgeon he had put axle grease behind his ears to protect against the chafing wire, but still the earpieces irritated him. At least he had the consolation of knowing that the man who had broken his other, comfortable spectacles was dead.

      ‘Hanged,’ the Inquisitor said. ‘Hanged quickly.’ He sounded resentful, as though he truly believed Sharpe to have been responsible for the Marqués’s death.

      Ducos had only one regret about Richard Sharpe’s death. He wished that the Englishman had known that it was he, Ducos, who had reached out across a nation and engineered revenge. Ducos liked his victims to understand who had beaten them, and why they had been beaten. Ducos paraded his cleverness as other men displayed their medals. He took some papers from his pocket. ‘La Marquesa’s wagons are in the castle.’

      ‘They will be delivered to us?’

      ‘If you give me an address.’ Ducos smiled. ‘The cathedral perhaps?’

      The Inquisitor did not blink at the taunt. ‘My house, Major.’

      ‘In Vitoria?’

      ‘In Vitoria.’

      ‘And you will give the wealth to the Church?’

      ‘What I do with the wealth is between me and God.’

      ‘Of course.’ Ducos pushed at his spectacles again. ‘They will go north with the next convoy. Of course, father, the wealth is not yours. It belongs to the widow.’

      ‘Not if she leaves Spain.’

      ‘Which we have agreed would be unwise.’ Ducos smiled. He did not want Helene bleating to the Emperor how he had cheated her of his wealth. ‘So you will take care of that business?’

      ‘When it is convenient.’

      ‘Tonight is convenient.’ Ducos pushed the papers across the table. ‘Those are our dispositions. Casapalacio’s men guard the western road.’

      The Inquisitor took the paper and Ducos stared out of the window towards the west. Martins cut the warm air on curved wings. Beyond them, beyond the last houses of the town, the plain looked dry. He could see the village far off where the single tower of a small castle threw its long shadow. That tower was another French garrison, a place where cavalry were based to keep the Great Road clear of Partisans. Tonight, when the martins were back in their nests, and the plain was dark, La Marquesa was travelling to that tower, going to meet her lover, General Verigny.

      Such a journey was safe. The land about Burgos was free of Partisans; the country was too flat and too well patrolled by the French garrisons of the plain. Yet this night there would be no safety for the Marquesa. The troops who guarded the road this night were troops who served France, but were not French. They were Spanish. They were the remnants of the army that had been recruited five years before, an army of Spaniards who believed in French ideas, in liberty, equality and fraternity; but defeat, hopelessness, and desertion had thinned their ranks. Yet there were still two Battalions of Spanish troops, and Ducos had ordered that they be given this duty this night.

      The Inquisitor looked at him. ‘She goes tonight?’

      ‘As last night, and the night before. They have prodigious appetites.’

      ‘Good.’

      ‘And your brother?’

      ‘He waits in the north.’

      ‘Splendid.’ Ducos stood. ‘I wish you joy of it all, father.’

      The Inquisitor stared up at the subtle, clever man. ‘You will have your letters soon.’

      ‘I never doubted it.’ Ducos smiled. ‘Give Helene my regards. Tell her I trust her marriage will be long and very happy.’ He laughed, turned, and went from the room.

      This night the Inquisitor arranged a marriage. Soon La Marquesa would wear, on her left hand, a wedding ring. She would not marry some Grandee of Spain, but a man who had been born in humble circumstances and lived a life of poverty and struggle. She would become a bride of Christ.

      She was rich beyond avarice, yet the Marqués’s will had contained one small and not uncommon stipulation which had not escaped the Inquisition’s notice. If his widow took her vows as a nun, then the Marqués’s wealth reverted to the church.

      To which purpose she would be taken to a convent in the north country, a far, hidden, remote convent, and there she would be buried alive in the silent loneliness of the sisters while the Inquisitor, on behalf of God, took her inheritance.

      It would be legal, there would be no scandal, for who could argue with a woman’s decision to take the veil? Father Hacha felt the beauty of the scheme. It could not fail now. The Marqués was dead, his only legatee would become a nun, and the Inquisition would survive.

      That night a carriage left Burgos at nine o’clock. It was drawn by four horses whose trace-chains were of silver. The horses were white. The carriage was dark blue, polished so that it reflected the stars, and its elegant outline was traced with lines of silver paint. Its windows were curtained.

      Ahead of the carriage went four grooms, each holding a lantern. Two more lanterns were mounted high on the carriage itself. The postilions carried loaded guns.

      The coachman paused at the city’s edge and looked down at the Lieutenant who commanded the guardpost. ‘All well ahead?’

      ‘How far are you going?’

      ‘Two villages.’

      The Spanish Lieutenant waved the coach on. ‘You’ll have no trouble.’ He looked at the intricate coat of arms painted on the carriage door and wondered where La Puta Dorada went this evening. Only an hour before, an Inquisitor had passed the guardpost and the Lieutenant toyed with the fancy that she was selling it to the priests now. He laughed and turned back to his men.

      The moonlight showed the road as a white, straight ribbon that lay across the plain until it came to a village just a mile from the city. There the road twisted between houses, crossed a ford, before running straight towards the lights of the cavalry outpost.

      The carriage moved swiftly, each wheel putting up a plume of dust that drifted pale in the night. The lanterns flickered yellow. The smell of the town was left behind, the thick smell of rotting manure, nightsoil, horses and cooking smoke. Instead there was the scent of grass. One curtain of the carriage was pulled back and a face pressed white against the glass.

      La Marquesa was angry. Pierre Ducos had refused to issue the passport that would release her wagons. He claimed it was a small thing, a clerk’s mistake, but she did not believe that any clerk’s mistake would deter Pierre Ducos from achieving what he wanted. She suspected he planned to take them and she had written as much to the Emperor, but it could be weeks before a reply came, if any came at all; weeks in which the wagons could disappear. This night, she decided, she would persuade General Verigny that he must steal the wagons back. He must defy Ducos, go to the castle with his men, and drag the wagons out. She knew that General Verigny, for all his medals, feared Pierre Ducos. He would need persuading and she wondered whether a hint that perhaps marriage was not so unthinkable after all might work.

      The carriage slowed at a crossroads, bumped over the transverse wheel ruts, then passed a house, its windows broken and doors missing. She heard the brake scrape on the wheel rim and she knew that they approached the ford where the road snaked between houses.

      The brake scraped and the carriage shuddered. She heard the coachman shouting at the horses as the carriage swayed, slowed, and halted. She frowned. She tried to see through the window, but the lantern blinded her with its flame. She lifted the leather strap and let the window fall. ‘What is it?’

      ‘A death, my Lady.’

      ‘Death?’

      She leaned

Скачать книгу