Sharpe’s Honour: The Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813. Bernard Cornwell

by the loudness of the shout, looked back at the pit.

      El Matarife, who had not been touched by the prisoner’s knife, had, with exquisite skill, taken out his opponent’s left eye. El Matarife fastidiously wiped the tip of his blade on his leather sleeve. ‘Come, Frenchman!’

      The prisoner had his left hand clapped over his ruined eye. The chain tightened, the links making a small noise in the pit, and the tension of the chain dragged his hand away from the blood and pain. He was shaking his head, half sobbing, knowing that the ways of his death would be long and painful. Such was always the death of the French when captured by the Partisans, and such were the deaths of the Partisans caught by the French.

      The Frenchman pulled back on the chain, trying to resist the pressure, but he was powerless against the huge man. Suddenly the chain was thrashed, the Frenchman fell, and he was dragged about the floor of the pit like a landed fish. When the Spaniard paused, the Frenchman tried to get up, but a boot hammered into his left forearm, breaking the bones, and the pulling began again and the watching Partisans laughed at the squeals of pain as the chain pulled on the broken limb.

      Ducos’s face showed nothing.

      Father Hacha smiled. ‘You’re not upset, Major? He is your countryman.’

      ‘I hate all unnecessary cruelty.’ Ducos pushed again at the spectacles. These were new glasses, fetched from Paris. His old ones had been broken on Christmas Day by a British officer called Richard Sharpe. That insult still hurt Ducos, but he believed, with the Spanish, that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.

      At the count of twenty, the Frenchman lost his right eye.

      At the count of twenty-five, he was sobbing for mercy, unable to fight, his ragged, dirty trousers bright with new blood.

      At the count of thirty, his breath misting as he sobbed, the prisoner was killed. El Matarife, disgusted with the lack of fight in the man, and bored with the entertainment, slit his throat, and went on cutting until the head came away in his hand. He threw the head to the dogs that had been beaten away from the dead bulls. He unwound the chain from his left forearm, sheathed the wet knife, and looked again at the two horsemen. He smiled at the priest. ‘Welcome, brother! What have you brought me?’

      ‘A guest.’ The priest said it forcibly.

      El Matarife laughed. ‘Take him to the house, Tomas!’

      Ducos followed the Inquisitor through rocks stained red by iron ore to a house built of stone with blankets for windows and doors. Within the house, warmed by a fire that filled the damp walls with smoke, a meal waited. There was stew of gristle and grease, loaves, wine, and goat’s cheese. It was served by a scared, thin-faced girl. El Matarife, bringing into the damp warmness of the small room the stink of fresh blood, joined them.

      El Matarife clasped the priest in his arms. They were brothers, though it was hard to see how the same womb could have given birth to two such different men. They were alike in their size, but in nothing else. The Inquisitor was subtle, clever, and delicate where El Matarife was crude, boisterous, and savage. The Partisan leader was the kind of man despised by Pierre Ducos, who admired cleverness and hated brute strength, but the Inquisitor would not give the Frenchman his help unless his brother was taken into their confidence and used in their scheme.

      El Matarife spooned the greasy stew into his mouth. Gravy dripped onto his huge beard. He looked with his small, red-rimmed eyes at Ducos. ‘You’re a brave man, coming here.’

      ‘I come with your brother’s protection.’ Ducos spoke Spanish perfectly, as he spoke a half dozen other languages.

      El Matarife shook his head. ‘In this valley, Frenchman, you are under my protection.’

      ‘Then I am grateful.’

      ‘You enjoyed seeing your countryman die?’

      Ducos kept his voice mild. ‘Who would not enjoy your skill?’

      El Matarife laughed. ‘You’d like to see another die?’

      ‘Juan!’ The Inquisitor’s voice was loud. He was the elder brother, and his authority cowed El Matarife. ‘We have come for business, Juan, not pleasure.’ He gestured to the other men in the room. ‘And we will talk alone.’

      It had not been easy for Pierre Ducos to come to this place, yet such was the state of the war that he had agreed to the Inquisitor’s demands.

      Ducos had agreed to sit at this table with his enemy because the war had turned sour for France. The Emperor had invaded Russia with the greatest army of modern times, an army which, in one winter, had been destroyed. Now northern Europe threatened France. The armies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria scented victory. To fight them, Napoleon was taking troops from Spain, at the very time when the English General Wellington was increasing his forces. Only a fool was now confident of a French military victory in Spain, and Pierre Ducos was no fool. Yet if the army could not defeat the British, politics might.

      The thin girl, shivering with fear of her master, poured raw wine into silver-mounted horn cups. The silver was chased with the wreathed ‘N’ of Napoleon, booty taken by the Slaughterman in one of his attacks on the French. Ducos waited until the girl had gone, then, in his quiet, deep voice, he spoke of politics.

      In France, in the luxury of the chateau of Valençay, the Spanish King was a prisoner. To his people Ferdinand VII was a hero, the lost King, the rightful King, a symbol of their pride. They fought not just to expel the French invader, but to restore their King to his throne. Now Napoleon proposed to give them back their King.

      El Matarife paused. He was slicing the goat’s cheese with the knife that had tormented and killed the prisoner. ‘Give him back?’ He sounded incredulous.

      ‘He will be restored to the throne,’ Ducos said.

      Ferdinand VII, the Frenchman explained, would be sent back to Spain. He would be sent in majesty, but only if he signed the Treaty of Valençay. That was the secret; the Treaty, a treaty which, to Ducos’s clever mind, was an idea of genius. It declared that the state of war that had unfortunately arisen between Spain and France was now over. There would be peace. The French armies would withdraw from Spain and a promise would be made that hostilities would not be resumed. Spain would be a free, sovereign country with its own beloved King. Spanish prisoners in French camps would be sent home, Spanish trophies restored to their regiments, Spanish pride burnished by French flattery.

      And in return Ferdinand had only to promise one thing; that he would end the alliance with Britain. The British army would be ordered to leave Spain, and if it hesitated then there would be no forage for its horses, food for its men, or ports for its supply ships. A starved army was no army. Without a shot being fired, Wellington would be forced from Spain and Napoleon could take every one of France’s quarter million soldiers in Spain and march them against the northern foes. It was a stroke of genius.

      And, of necessity, a secret. If the British government even dreamed that such a treaty was being prepared then British gold would flow, bribes be offered, and the populace of Spain roused against the very thought of peace with France.

      The Treaty, Ducos allowed, would not be popular in Spain. The common people, the peasants whose lands and women had been ravaged by the French, would not welcome a peace with their bitterest enemy. Only their beloved, absent King could persuade them to accept it, and their King hesitated.

      Ferdinand VII wanted reassurance. Would the nobility of Spain support him? Would the Spanish Generals? What, most important of all, would the Church say? It was Ducos’s job to provide those answers for the King, and the man who would give Ducos those answers was the Inquisitor.

      Father Hacha was clever. He had risen in the Inquisition by his cleverness, and he knew how to use the secret files that the Inquisition kept on all Spain’s eminent men. He could use his fellow Inquisitors in every part of Spain to collect letters from such men, letters that would be passed to the imprisoned Spanish King and assure him that a peace with France would be acceptable to enough nobles, churchmen, officers, and merchants to make the Treaty possible.