‘Can we find him?’

‘Si.’ Angel said it as though the question was unnecessary. ‘So we ride to the mountains?’

‘We ride to the mountains.’

They rode north east to where the mountains became dizzying crags, the hunting grounds of eagles, a land of awesome valleys and of waterfalls that seethed from the low clouds of morning to fall scores of feet into cold, upland streams.

They rode north east into a land where the inhabitants were few, and those inhabitants so poor and frightened that they fled when they saw two strange horsemen coming. Some of the people here, Angel said, would not even know there was a war on. ‘They’re not even Spanish!’ He said it scathingly.

‘Not Spanish?’

‘They’re Basques. They have their own language.’

‘So who are they?’

Angel shrugged dismissively. ‘They live here.’ He obviously had nothing more to say about them.

Angel, it seemed to Sharpe, was fretting. They had come into these northern mountains and were far from the French. They were far from the war and, from what Angel had heard in Burgos, far from the excitement.

The rumours in Burgos said that the British had at last marched, and were attacking in the north. The French northern army was retreating and Sharpe had seen the vanguard of that army as it approached Burgos. Angel feared the campaign would be over before he could kill again. Sharpe laughed. ‘It won’t be over.’

‘You promise?’

‘I promise. How do we find El Matarife?’

‘He finds us, sehor. Do you think he doesn’t know there’s an Englishman in the hills?’

‘Just remember not to call me Sharpe.’

‘Si, sehor.’ Angel grinned. ‘What are you called now?’

Sharpe smiled. He remembered the suave, regretful officer who had conducted his prosecution. ‘Vaughn. Major Vaughn.’

He rode between high rocks, beneath the eagles, and he searched for the Marquesa and for the Slaughterman.

El Matarife, like Angel, fretted at being so far from the richer pickings that were to be had to the south. These high, deep valleys were poor, there were few French to be ambushed, and little to be stolen from the meagre villages. He had two French prisoners with him, playthings for his entertainment.

The news of the Englishman was brought to him by three of his men. El Matarife occupied an inn, or what passed in this miserable place for an inn, and he scowled at the three men as though they were responsible for the Englishman’s coming. ‘He said he wanted to speak with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘He did not say why?’

‘Only that his General had sent him.’

El Matarife grunted. ‘Not before time, eh?’ His lieutenants nodded. Wellington had sent messengers to other Partisan leaders, requesting their co-operation, and the Slaughterman presumed that his turn had come.

But he could not be sure of it. In the convent, thousands of feet above the valley, was La Puta Dorado. She had been brought by his brother who had warned El Matarife that the French might search for her, but the Inquisitor had said nothing about any Englishman. El Matarife could understand a man searching for the woman. He had seen her in the carriage and, even dishevelled and tearful, she had been beautiful. ‘Why give her to the nuns?’ he had asked.

His brother had snapped at him. ‘She has to take the vows, don’t you understand? It must be legal! She must become a nun! She must take her vows, nothing else matters!’

The Inquisitor had left his brother with instructions that no one was to be allowed close to the convent, and that, if anyone asked about the Marquesa, her presence was to be denied. She was to be buried and forgotten and left to Christ.

Now El Matarife wondered whether the Englishman had come looking for the whore of gold. ‘What is he called?’

‘Vaughn. Major Vaughn.’

‘He’s alone?’

‘He has a boy with him.’

One of his lieutenants saw the concern on El Matarife’s face and shrugged. ‘Just kill him. Who’ll know?’

‘You’re a fool. Your mother sucked an ass.’ El Matarife jabbed at the fire with a sword point. It was cold in these deep valleys, and the fire in the inn’s main room did little to help. He looked back to the men who had spoken with the Englishman the night before. ‘He said nothing of any woman?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure he’s English? Not a Frenchman?’

The men shrugged.

El Matarife peered through the window, stooping so he could see to the very top of the huge, grey slab of cliff where the Convent of the Heavens was perched. The presence of La Marquesa in that cold building was supposed to be a secret, though El Matarife knew better than most that there were few secrets in Spain’s countryside. Someone would have talked.

He could kill the Englishman, but that was a last resort. The English were the source of gold, guns and ammunition, landing them on the hidden beaches of the northern coast at night. If an Englishman was to be killed, then El Matarife had a suspicion that a reckoning might be made; that his men would be hunted and punished by other Partisans, yet, if he had to kill the Englishman, he would, though he would rather send the man away satisfied, suspicion allayed, so he could continue this wearisome watch uninterruptedly.

‘Where is this Major Vaughn?’

‘At the two bridges.’

‘Bring him tonight.’ The Slaughterman looked at one of his lieutenants. ‘Bring the prisoners. We shall entertain our Englishman:‘

‘The woman too?’

‘Especially her.’ El Matarife smiled. ‘If he has come for a woman then he can have her!’ He laughed. He had fooled the French for four years and now he would fool an Englishman. He shouted for wine and waited for the night.

Night fell swiftly in the depths of the valley beneath the

Convent of the Heavens. When the peaks were still touched red by the last daylight it was already dark at the inn that El Matarife called his headquarters. In front of the inn, and lit by smoking torches, was an area of beaten earth. Sharpe and Angel, brought to the place by silent guides, were led to the lit space.

A chain was thrown onto the patch of earth. It lay there, ten feet of rusting links, and at its far end, nervous and dressed only in ragged trousers, stood a prisoner.

A Partisan picked up the chain and looped one end about the man’s left wrist. He tied it clumsily, jerked on it to make sure it was secure, then stepped back. He took from his belt a long knife and tossed it at the man’s feet.

One of the men who had guided Sharpe to this place grinned at the Rifleman. ‘A Frenchman. You watch his death, Englishman.’

A second man stepped forward, a hulking man who shrugged off a cloak and whose appearance provoked applause from the watching Partisans. The man turned towards Sharpe and the Rifleman saw a face which, at first, seemed unnatural, as though it belonged to a creature that was half-beast and half-man. Sharpe had heard his men tell stories about the strange things that were men by day and beasts by night, and this man could have been such a thing. His beard sprouted from his cheeks, growing as high as the cheekbones, leaving only a small gap beneath his hair, a gap from which two small, cunning eyes looked at Sharpe. The man smiled. ‘Welcome, Englishman.’

‘El Matarife?’

‘Of course. Our business will wait?’

Sharpe shrugged. The Partisans watched him, grinning. He sensed that this display was being given for his benefit.

El Matarife stooped, took the loose end of the chain, and wrapped it about his upper left arm. He took from his belt a long knife like that carried by the Frenchman. ‘I shall count the ways of your death, pig.’

The Frenchman did not understand the words. He understood that he must fight, and he licked his lips, hefted the knife, and waited as El Matarife stepped backwards, lifting the chain from the ground until it was taut between them. El Matarife went on pulling, forcing the Frenchman to step forward. The prisoner tugged back and the Partisans laughed.