A woman was tied on her back in the courtyard’s centre. Her wrists and ankles had been tied to iron pegs that had been driven between the cracked stones. She was naked to the waist. Her chest was bloody, black marks beneath the blood that trickled down her ribcage. Sharpe looked at Dubreton, fearful that this was his English wife, but the Frenchman gave the smallest shake of his head.
‘Watch, Sharpy.’ Hakeswill.cackled behind them.
One of the soldiers went to the brazier and, protecting his hand with a hank of rag, he took a bayonet from the flames. He checked that the head was glowing hot, turned with it, and the woman began to jerk, to gasp in panic, and the soldier put his boot on her stomach, half-hiding his work, and the woman screamed. The red hot blade went down, the scream filled the cloister, and then the woman must have fainted. The soldier stepped away.
‘She tried to run away, Sharpy.’ Hakeswill’s breath was foul over Sharpe’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t like it with us, did she? Can you see what it says, Captain?’
The smell of burned flesh came to the upper storey. Sharpe wanted to haul the great sword free of its scabbard, to give the edge its freedom on the bastards in this convent, but he knew he was powerless. His moment would come, but it was not now.
Hakeswill laughed. ‘Puta. That’s what it says. She’s Spanish, you see, Captain. Lucky she’s not English, isn’t it? Got another letter in English. Whore.’
The woman was scarred for life, branded by evil. Sharpe supposed her to be one of the women from this village, or perhaps a visitor from another village who had tried to run down the long twisting road that led westward from the Gateway of God. It would be as hard to escape from Adrados as it would be to approach the Castle ramparts unseen.
The soldiers pulled the pegs out of the ground, cut the bonds, and two of them dragged the woman across the stones and out of sight beneath the arches of the lower storey.
Hakeswill had walked round the corner of the upper cloister so that he faced the two officers across the angle. He rested his hands on the stone balustrade and sneered at them. ‘We wanted you to see that so you know what will happen to your bitches if you try and come up here.’ The face twitched, the right hand pointed to the bloodstains by the brazier. ‘That!’ Two bayonets still rested in the fire. ‘You see, gentlemen, we have changed our mind. We like having the ladies here, so we’re bleeding keeping them. We don’t want you to have all the trouble of taking the money back, so we’re keeping that too.’ He laughed, watching their faces. ‘You can take a message back instead. You understanding this, Froggie?’
Dubreton’s voice was scornful. ‘I understand. Are they alive?’
The blue eyes opened wide, feigning innocence. ‘Alive, Froggie? Of course they’re bloody alive. They stay alive as long as you keep away from here. I’ll show you one of them in a minute, but you bloody listen first, and listen good.’
He twitched again, the face jerking on its long neck and the pinned cravat slipped, showing the scar on the left side of his neck and he pulled at the cravat till the scar was hidden. He grinned, showing the blackened stumps of his teeth. ‘They ain’t been hurt. Not yet, but they will be. I’ll burn them first, mark them, and then the lads can have them, and then they’ll die! You understand?’ He screamed the question at them. ‘Sharpy! You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Froggie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clever aren’t you!’ He laughed, eyes blinking, tooth-stumps grinding in his mouth. The face twitched suddenly, once, then stopped. ‘Now you’ve brought the money so I’ll tell you what you’ve done. You’ve bought their virtue!’ He laughed again. ‘You’ve kept them safe for a little while. Course we might want more money if we decide their virtue’s expensive, follow me? But we got women now, all we want, so we won’t use your bitches if you pay up.’
Sharpe dreamed some nights of killing this man. Hakeswill had been his enemy for nigh on twenty years and Sharpe wanted to be the man who proved that Hakeswill could be killed. The rage he felt at this moment was impotent.