“Where you turn south.”
The alcalde offered his own house to Vivar and his stables to the, Cazadores, while the Riflemen were billeted in a Cistercian monastery which, sworn to offer hospitality to pilgrims, proved equally generous to the foreign soldiers.
There was freshly killed pork, with beans, bread, and skins of red wine. There were even black bottles of a raw and fierce brandy called aguardiente, offered by a brawny monk whose scars and tattoos made him look like an old soldier. The monk also brought a sack of hard-baked bread, and intimated by dumb show that the food was for their march on the morrow. The monks’ generosity convinced Sharpe that, after the cold horrors of the last weeks, he and his Riflemen would truly reach safety. The danger of the enemy at last seemed far away and, relieved of the need to set picquets against a night’s alarms, Sharpe slept.
Only to be woken in the very depths of the night.
A white-robed monk, holding a lantern, searched among the dark forms of the Riflemen who slept in a cloister’s arcade. Sharpe grunted and propped himself up on an elbow. He could hear noises in the street outside; the rumble of wheels and the crack of hooves.
”Senor! SenorT The monk beckoned urgently to Sharpe who, cursing his broken sleep, scooped up his boots and weapons and followed the monk across the frosted cloister to the monastery’s candle-lit hallway.
Standing in that hallway, with a handkerchief pressed against her mouth as though she feared a contagion, was a woman of fearsome size. She was as tall as Sharpe, as broad in the shoulders as Harper, and as large about the waist as any wine-tun. She wore a multiplicity of cloaks and capes that made her bulk seem even more massive, while her small-eyed, thin-lipped face was surmounted by a tiny bonnet of ludicrous delicacy. She ignored the importunate monks who clamoured at her in pleading tones. The great doors of the monastery stood open behind her and, in the light of torches bracketed in the street, Sharpe could see a carriage. As he arrived, the woman pushed the handkerchief into her sleeve. “Are you an English officer?”
Sharpe was so astonished that he said nothing. It was not the demand that surprised him, nor even the stentorian voice in which it was made, but the fact that the huge woman was clearly English. “Well?” she demanded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I cannot say I am glad to find an officer who has sworn allegiance to a Protestant King in such a place as this. Now put your boots on. Hurry, man!” The woman shrugged off the monks who tried to attract her attention, much as a massive milch-cow might have ignored the bleating of sheep. “Tell me your name,” she ordered Sharpe.
“Sharpe, ma’am. Lieutenant Richard Sharpe of the Rifles.”
“Find me the most senior English officer. And button your jacket.”
“I am the senior officer, ma’am.”
The woman stared with malevolent suspicion at him. “You?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You will have to suffice, then. Take your filthy hands off me!” This was to the Abbot who, with an exquisite politeness, had tried to draw the woman’s attention by a tentative hand placed tremulously on the edge of one of her voluminous cloaks. “Find me some men!” This was to Sharpe.
“Who are you, ma’am?”
“My name is Mrs Parker. You have heard of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker?”
“Indeed, ma’am.”
“He was my husband’s kinsman, before God chose to translate him to glory.” Having established that she outranked Sharpe, at least by marriage, Mrs Parker returned to her more vituperative tone. “Hurry, man!”
Sharpe, pulling on his torn boots, tried to make sense of an Englishwoman appearing at the dead of night in a Spanish monastery. “You want men, ma’am?”
Mrs Parker looked at him as though she would wring his neck. “Are you deaf, man? Touched? Or merely witless? Get your Papist hands off me!” This last admonition was again addressed to the Cistercian Abbot who, as if stung, jumped backwards. “I shall wait in the carriage, Lieutenant. Hurry!” Mrs Parker, to the evident relief of the monks, stalked back to her coach.