Bias Vivar paused. Then, in a voice as proud as Spain itself, he told how a small band of Christian knights rode their tired horses against a Muslim army. He told the story so well that Sharpe felt he could actually see the Spanish knights lowering their lances and lumbering into a gallop beneath banners bright as the sun. Swords clashed on scimitars. Men hacked and gouged and lunged. Arrows hissed from strings and banners fell into the bloodied dust. Men, their entrails cut from their bellies, were trampled by war-horses, and the screams of the dying were drowned by the thunder of new attacks and the shouts of pagan victory.
“The heathen were winning, Lieutenant,” Vivar spoke as if he had himself tasted the dust of that far-off battlefield, “but in the last extremities, in the candle’s final flicker, a knight called on Santiago. It was Santiago who had brought the news of Christ to Spain; would the saint now let Christ be driven out? So the knight prayed, and the miracle happened!”
Sharpe’s flesh crawled. He had stared so long at the tapestry bag that the shadows in the chapel seemed to curl and shift like strange beasts all around him.
“Santiago appeared!” Vivar’s voice was triumphant and loud now. “He came on a white horse, Lieutenant, and in his hand was a sword of sharpest steel, and he cut his way through the enemy like an angel of vengeance. They died in their thousands! We filled hell that day with their miserable souls, and we stopped them, Lieutenant! We stopped them dead! It would take centuries to clear Spain of their filth; centuries of battle and siege, yet it all began on that day when Santiago earned his name Matamoros. And this,” Vivar stepped to the box and lightly touched the folded silk within the open bag, “is the banner he carried, Lieutenant. This is Santiago’s banner, his gonfalon, which has been in my family’s trust ever since the day when the first Count of Mouromorto prayed that Santiago would come to snatch a victory from the death of Christ.”
Sharpe looked to his left and saw that Louisa seemed to be in a trance. The priests watched him, judging the effect of the story on the foreign soldier.
Vivar closed the leather box and placed it carefully back in the strongbox. “There are two legends concerning the gonfalon, Lieutenant. The first says that if it is captured by the enemies of Spain, then Spain itself will be destroyed. That is why Father Alzaga does not want your help. He believes the English will ever be our enemies, and that the present alliance is merely an expedience that will not last. He fears you will steal the banner of St James.”
Sharpe turned uneasily towards the tall priest. He did not know if Alzaga spoke English, but he tried in a stumbling way to assure him that he had no intention of doing such a thing. He felt a fool saying it, and Alzaga’s contemptuous silence only deepened Sharpe’s uneasiness.
Vivar, like the priest, ignored his protestation. “The second legend is more important, Lieutenant. It says that if Spain lies endangered, if once again the barbarians are trampling our country, then the banner must be unfurled before the high altar of Santiago’s shrine. Then Matamoros will arise and fight. He will bring victory. It is that miracle I wish to rouse, so that the people of Spain, however many lives they must lose, will know that Santiago rides.”
The hinges creaked as Vivar closed the strongbox lid. The wind seemed suddenly colder and more threatening as it sliced through the narrow window and fluttered the candle flames. “Your brother,” Sharpe stumbled over the words, “wants to take the gonfalon to France?”
Vivar nodded. “Tomas does not believe the legend, but he does understand its power. As does the Emperor Napoleon. If the people of Spain were to learn that the banner of Santiago was just another trophy in Paris, they might despair. Tomas understands that, just as he understands that if the banner can be unfurled in Santiago, then the people of Spain, the good people of Spain, will believe in victory. It will not matter, Lieutenant, if a thousand-thousand Frenchmen ride our roads because, if Santiago is with us, no French Emperor can defeat us.”
Sharpe stepped away from the altar. “So the banner must reach Santiago de Compostela?”
“Yes.”
“Which is held by the French?”
“Indeed.”
Sharpe hesitated, then plunged. “So you want my help to make a raid on the city?” Even as he spoke it sounded like madness, but the atmosphere in the chapel entirely freed his voice of any scepticism. He stared at the strongbox as he continued. “We have to go through their defences, penetrate the cathedral, and hold it long enough for your ceremony? Is that it?”
“No. We need a victory, Lieutenant. Santiago must be seen to have a victory! This will not be some dark deed, done in secret and haste. This will be no raid. No, we will take the city from the French. We’ll capture it, Lieutenant, and we’ll hold it long enough for the people to know that this new enemy can be humiliated. We’ll win a great victory, Lieutenant, for Spain!”
Sharpe stared in disbelief. “Good God.”
“With his help, of course.” Vivar smiled. “And, perhaps, because I cannot find any Spanish infantry, with the help of your Rifles?”
Somehow Sharpe had not thought he was being given a choice. Instead, by the very act of seeing Vivar’s secret, he had assumed he was entering into the conspiracy. Now, standing in the cold chapel, he knew he could refuse. What Vivar wanted was madness. A handful of beaten men, British and Spanish, was supposed to take a city from a conquering enemy, and not just take it but hold it against the bulk of the French army that would be only a day’s march away.
“Well?” Vivar was impatient.
“Of course he’ll help!” Louisa said with a fervour that showed in the brightness of her eyes.
The men ignored her, and still Sharpe said nothing.
“I cannot make you help me,” the Major^said softly, “and if you refuse, Lieutenant, I shall give you supplies and a guide to see you safely to the south. Perhaps the British are still in Lisbon? If not, you will find a ship somewhere along the coast. Good military practice demands that you forget this superstitious nonsense and march south, does it not?”
“Yes,” Sharpe replied bleakly.
“But victory is not always won by sense, Lieutenant. Logic and reason can be tumbled by faith and pride. I have the faith that an ancient miracle will work, and I am driven by pride. I must avenge my brother’s treachery, or else the name Vivar will stink through the annals of Spain.” Vivar spoke these words in a commonplace manner, as if avenging fraternal treachery was an everyday part of any humdrum existence. Now he looked into Sharpe’s eyes and spoke in a very different tone. “So I beg your help. You are a soldier, and I believe God has provided you as an instrument for this work.”
Sharpe knew how difficult it was for Vivar to make the appeal, for he was a proud man, not used to being a supplicant. Father Alzaga protested with an incoherent and throaty growl as Sharpe still hesitated. Nearly half a minute passed before the Englishman at last spoke. “There is a price for my help, Major.”
Vivar bridled immediately. “A price?”
Sharpe told him and, by telling Vivar, he accepted the madness. For the sake of his Riflemen, he would rouse a saint from an eternity’s sleep. He would go to the city of the field of stars and take it from the enemy. But only for a price.
The next day, after the morning parade, Sharpe left the fortress and walked to a place from where he could see for miles across the winter landscape. The far hills were stark and pale, sharp as steel against the sky’s whiteness. The wind was cold; a wind to sap the strength of men and horses. If Vivar did not move soon, he thought, then the Spaniard’s horses would be unable to march. „
Sharpe sat alone at the track’s edge where the hillside fell steeply away. He gathered a handful of pebbles, each about the size of a musket ball, and shied them at a white boulder some twenty paces down the hill. He told himself that if he hit it five times running then it would be safe to march on the cathedral city. The first four pebbles struck clean, bouncing off into the weeds and scree of the slope. He was almost tempted to throw the fifth askew, but instead the pebble bounced plumb from the boulder’s centre. God damn it, but he was mad! Last night, overcome with the solemnity of the occasion, he had allowed himself to be swept away by Vivar’s skilled telling of an ancient myth. The banner of a saint dead two thousand years! He threw another pebble and watched it skim over the boulder to fall into a patch of ragweed which, in Spain, was called St James’s grass.