Though if the Marquesa was in Burgos, Sharpe reflected as he walked towards Carbine, she would be impossible to reach. The French army was falling back on the city, and by tonight Burgos would be surrounded by the enemy. He could only hope that Angel was safe.

The boy was sixteen. His father, a cooper, had died trying to save his wife from the attentions of French Dragoons. Angel had watched his parents die, had seen his house and his father’s workshop burned to cinders, and that same night, armed only with a knife, he had killed his first Frenchman. He had been lucky to escape. He had twisted into the darkness on his young legs as the bullets of the French sentries thrashed about him in the growing rye. He had told Sharpe the story diffidently. ‘I put the knife in my parents’ grave, senor.’ He had buried his parents himself, then gone to find the Partisans. He had been just thirteen.

Instead of Partisans he had met one of Hogan’s Exploring Officers, the men who, in full uniform, galloped their swift horses deep in enemy country. That officer had passed the boy back to Hogan and, in the last three years, Angel had carried messages between the British and the Partisans. ‘I’m getting old for that now.’

Sharpe had chuckled. ‘Old? At sixteen?’

‘Now the French see I am a man. They think I might be an enemy.’ Angel had shrugged. ‘Before that I was just a boy, they took no notice of me.’

This day, as Sharpe had lain and watched the French army trudge towards Burgos, Angel had gone into the city. His horse, a gift from Hogan, had been left with Sharpe, together with the rifle that the boy carried. He refused wages from Major Hogan, wanting only his food, shelter when he was with the British, and the ‘gun that kills’. He had been offered a smoothbore musket, and had scathingly rejected it. He wanted only a Baker Rifle and, now that one was his, he looked after it lovingly, polishing its woodwork and meticulously cleaning its lock. He claimed that he and the rifle had killed two Frenchmen for every year of his life.

He was incurious about his task with Sharpe. The Golden Whore meant nothing to him, and he did not care if the Marques de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba was dead. Such things were boring to Angel. He cared only that he had been told that this job was important, that success would hurt his enemies, and that the search for the Marquesa would take him where there were more Frenchmen to be killed. He was glad to be working for Sharpe. He had heard that Sharpe had killed many Frenchmen. Sharpe had smiled. ‘There’s more to life than killing Frenchmen.’

‘I know, senor.’

‘You do?’

Angel had nodded. ‘But I do not wish to marry yet.’ He had looked up from the fire into Sharpe’s eyes. ‘You think you will chase the French over the mountains? Back to France?’

Sharpe had nodded. ‘Probably.’

‘I shall join your Rifles then.’ He smiled. ‘I shall march into Paris and remember my parents.’

Angel would not be the first Spanish youth to join the British Rifles; indeed some companies had a dozen Spaniards who had begged to be allowed into the elite ranks. ’Sweet William‘ Frederickson said the only problem with the Spanish recruits was getting them to stop fighting. ‘They want to win the war in a day.’ Sharpe, listening to Angel talk of his parents, understood the zeal with which they fought.

Sharpe rode back to the wooded valley where he would wait for Angel to return from the city. He unsaddled Carbine and tethered him to a pine trunk. He dutifully inspected the horse’s hooves, wishing that Angel, who was so much more efficient at looking after the horses, was here to help, then he carried the saddle up to the small clearing that was their rendezvous.

Sharpe waited. Dusk stretched shadows among the pine trunks and a wind rattled the branches overhead. He scouted the margins of the valley in the twilight, looking for humans, but seeing only a vixen and her cubs who played a snarling game at the foot of a sandy bank. He went back to the horses, put his rifle beside him, and waited for Angel’s return.

The boy came in the dawn, a grey shadow in the trees, bringing with him a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, a new loaf, and his news. Before he would say a word to Sharpe about La Marquesa he insisted on retrieving his rifle and inspecting it in the half-light as though one night’s separation would have somehow changed the weapon. Satisfied, he looked up at the Rifle officer. ‘She’s disappeared.’

Sharpe felt a plunging of his hopes. For these four days since he had parted from Hogan he had feared that Helene would have gone back to France. ‘Disappeared?’

Angel told the story. She had left the city in a carriage and, though the carriage had come back, La Marquesa had not returned. ‘The French were angry. They had cavalry searching everywhere. They looked in all the villages, they offered a reward of gold, but nothing. They increased the reward, but nothing. She’s gone.’

Sharpe swore, and the boy grinned.

‘You don’t trust me, eh?’ He laughed. He was a start-lingly handsome boy, curly haired and strong faced. His dark eyes shone in the light of the fire that Sharpe had lit as dawn came. ‘I know where she is, senor.’

‘Where?’

‘The Convent of the Heavens, Santa Monica.’ Angel held up a hand to ward off Sharpe’s question. ‘I think.’

‘You think?’

Angel took the wine flask and drank. ‘The priests took her, yes? They and the monks. Everyone knows it, but no one talks. They say the Inquisition was here.’ He crossed himself, and Sharpe thought of the Inquisitor who had come with the letter for the Marques. Angel smiled. ‘They don’t know where they took her, but I do.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I am Angel, yes?’ The boy laughed. ‘I saw a man who knows me. He tells the Partisans what troops are marching towards the hills. I trust him.’ The words should have sounded odd coming from a sixteen year old, but they did not seem strange coming from this boy who had risked his life since he was thirteen. Angel took some loose tobacco from a pocket; a scrap of paper, and, in Spanish fashion, rolled a makeshift cigar. He leaned forward and the tip of the cigar flared as he sucked on a flame of the fire. This man says that he has heard that the woman was taken to Santa Monica, to the convent. He heard from the Partisans.’ Angel blew smoke into the air. ‘The Partisans are guarding the convent.’

The Partisans?’

‘Si. You have heard of El Matarife?’

Sharpe shook his head. The hills of Spain were filled with Partisan leaders who took fanciful nicknames. He tried to think what the word meant. ‘A man who kills animals?’

‘Yes. A slaughterman. You should have heard of him. He is famous.’

‘And he guards the convent?’

Angel sucked on the disintegrating tube of tobacco. ‘So it is said. He will guard the mesa, not the convent.’

‘The table?’

The convent is on a mountain, yes? Very high with a flat top, a mesa. There are few paths up, senor, so it is easy to guard.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Two days’ ride? There.’ He pointed to the north-east.

‘Have you been there?’

‘No.’ Angel disgustedly threw the remains of his cigar into the fire. He had somehow not mastered the knack of twisting the paper and tobacco exactly right. ‘I have heard of it though.’

Sharpe was trying to make sense, any kind of sense, from Angel’s news. The Inquisition? That coincidence made the boy’s tale seem true, but why should the Inquisition want to kidnap Helene? Or why, for that matter, would the Slaughterman be guarding the convent where she was held?

He asked the boy, and Angel shrugged. ‘Who knows? He is not a man you can ask.’

‘What kind of man is he?’

The boy frowned. ‘He kills Frenchmen.’ He paid the compliment dubiously. ‘But he kills his own people, too, yes? He once shot twelve men of a village because the villagers had refused his men food. He rode in at the siesta time and shot them. Even Mina cannot control him.’ Angel spoke of the man who had been made general of all the Partisans. Mina had been known to execute men such as El Matarife who persecuted their own countrymen. Angel was making himself another cigar. The French are scared of him. It’s said that he once put the heads of fifty Frenchmen on the Great Road, one every mile through the mountains so the French would find them. That was near Vitoria where he comes from.’ The boy laughed. ‘He kills slowly. They say he has a leather coat made from French skins. Some say he is mad.’