Vivar took the question to be a goad to his pride. “He has disgraced the family’s name. Which is why it is my duty to restore it. With God’s help, I shall.”
The words were a glimpse into a proud soul, a clue to the ambition which drove the Spaniard, but Sharpe had intended to elicit a different response; one that he now sought directly. “Won’t your brother know you’re here?”
“Oh, indeed. But the French would need ten thousand men to surround this hill, and another five thousand to assault the fortress. They won’t come. They are just beginning to discover what problems victory will give them.”
“Problems?” Sharpe asked.
Vivar smiled. “The French, Lieutenant, are learning that in Spain great armies starve, and small armies are defeated. You can only win here if the people feed you, and the people are learning to hate the French.” He led the way down the rampart. “Think of the French position! Marshal Soult pursued your army north-west, to where? To nowhere! He is stranded in the mountains, and around him is nothing but snow, bad roads, and a vengeful peasantry. Everything he eats he must find, and in winter, in Galicia, there is not much to be found if the people wish to hide it. No, he is desperate. Already his messengers are being killed, his patrols ambushed, and so far only a handful of the people are resisting him! When all the countryside rises against him, then his life will be a torment of blood.”
It was a chilling prophecy and spoken with so much verve that Sharpe was convinced by it. He remembered how de l’Eclin had frankly expressed his fear of the night; his fears of peasant knives in the dark.
Vivar turned again to stare at the notch in the mountains where his ancestor had made carnage of a Muslim army. “Some of the people fight already, Lieutenant, but the rest are frightened. They see the French victorious, and they feel abandoned of God. They need a sign. They need, if you like, a miracle. These are peasants. They don’t know reason, but they do know their Church and their land.”
Sharpe felt his skin creep, not with the morning’s cold, nor with fear, but with the apprehension of something beyond his imaginings. “A miracle?”
“Later, my friend, later!” Vivar laughed at the mystery he deliberately provoked, then ran down the steps towards the courtyard. His voice was suddenly mischievous, full of joy and nonsense. “You still haven’t thanked me for rescuing you!”
“Rescuing me! Good God! I was about to destroy those bastards, only you interfered!” Sharpe followed him down the steps. “You haven’t apologized for lying to me.”
“Nor do I intend to. On the other hand, I do forgive you for losing your temper with me when last we met. I told you that you wouldn’t last a day without me!”
Tf you hadn’t sent the damned French after me, I’d be halfway to Oporto by now!“
“But there was a reason for sending them after you!” Vivar had reached the foot of the rampart steps where he waited for Sharpe. “I wanted to clear the French out of Santiago de Compostela. I thought that if they pursued you, then I could enter the town when they were gone. So I spread the rumour, it was believed, but the town was garrisoned anyway. So!” He shrugged.
“In other words, you can’t win a war without me.”
“Think how bored you would be if you’d gone to Lisbon! No Frenchmen to kill, no Bias Vivar to admire!” Vivar linked his arm through Sharpe’s in the intimate Spanish manner. “In all seriousness, Lieutenant, I beg your pardon for my behaviour. I can justify my lies, but not my insults. For those, I apologize.”
Sharpe was instantly excruciated with embarrassment. “I behaved badly, too. I’m sorry.” Then he remembered another duty. “And thank you for rescuing us. We were dead men without you.”
Vivar’s ebullience returned. “Now I have another miracle to arrange. We must work, Lieutenant! Work! Work! Work!”
“A miracle?”
Vivar loosed his arm so he could face Sharpe. “My friend, I will tell you all, if I can. I will even tell you tonight after supper, if I can. But some men are coming here, and I need their permission to reveal what is in the strongbox. Will you trust me till I’ve spoken with those men?”
Sharpe had no choice. “Of course.”
“Then we must work.” Vivar clapped his hands to attract his men’s attention. “Work! Work! Work!”
Everything that Vivar’s men needed had to be carried up the mountain. The cavalry horses became packhorses for firewood, fuel, and fodder. The food came from mountain villages, some of it fetched for miles on the backs of mules or men. The Major had sent word throughout the land which had been his father’s domain that supplies were needed, and Sharpe watched the response in astonishment. “My brother,” Vivar said with grim satisfaction, “ordered his people to do nothing which might hinder the French. Ha!” All that day the supplies arrived in the castle. There were jars of grain and beans, boxes of cheese, nets of bread, and skins of wine. There was hay for the horses. Cords of wood were dragged up the steep path, and bundles of brushwood brought for tinder. Some of the brushwood was made into brooms that were used to clean out the keep. Saddle blankets made curtains and rugs, while fires seeped warmth into cold stone.
The men whom Vivar expected arrived at noon. A trumpet call announced the visitors’ approach, and there was a flourish of celebration in its sound. Some of the Cazadores went down the steep path to escort the two men into the fortress. The newcomers were priests.
Sharpe watched their arrival from the window of Louisa Parker’s room. He had gone to see her to discover why she had fled from her family. She had slept all morning and now seemed entirely recovered from the night’s exertions. She looked past him at the dismounting priests and gave an exaggerated shudder of pretended horror. “I can never properly rid myself of feeling there’s something very sinister about Romish clergy. My aunt is convinced they have tails and horns.” She watched as the priests advanced through a guard of honour to where Bias Vivar waited to greet them. “I expect they do have tails and horns, and cloven hooves. Don’t you agree?”
Sharpe turned away from the window. He felt embarrassed and awkward. “You shouldn’t be here.” Louisa widened her eyes. “You do sound grim.”
“I’m sorry.” Sharpe was speaking more abruptly than he would have liked. “It’s just that…“ His voice tailed away. ”You think your soldiers will be unsettled by my presence?“ Sharpe did not like to say that Bias Vivar had already been unsettled by Louisa’s impulsive act. ”It isn’t a fit place for you,“ he said instead. ”You’re not used to this kind of thing.“ He waved his hand around the room, as though to demonstrate its shortcomings, though in truth Vivar’s Cazadores had done everything they could to make the foreign girl comfortable. Her room, though small, had a fireplace in which logs smouldered. There was a bed of cut bracken and crimson saddle blankets. She had no other belongings, not even a change of linen.
She seemed crestfallen by Sharpe’s strict tone. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
“No.” Sharpe tried to dismiss her apology, even though he had elicited it.
“My presence embarrasses you?”
Sharpe turned back to the window and watched the Cazadores gather about the two priests. Some of his Riflemen looked on in curiosity.
“Would you like me to go back to the French?” Louisa asked tartly.
“Of course not.”
“I think you would.”
“Don’t be so damned stupid!” Sharpe turned on her viciously, and was instantly ashamed. He did not want her to know just how glad he was that she had run from her aunt and uncle and, in his effort to disguise that gladness, he had let his voice snap uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, miss.”
Louisa was just as contrite. “No, I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have sworn.”
“I can’t imagine you giving up swearing, even for me.” There was a trace of her old mischievousness, a hint of a smile, and Sharpe was glad of it.