`I received the letters.’
The Inquisitor waited, as though seeking approval for his work. When it did not come he gestured abruptly. `Your soldiers are confident.’
`I imagine the British are too,’ Ducos said drily. In truth he had been astonished by the surge of morale in the French army. The news of the Emperor’s victories had filled them with a desire to do in Spain what Napoleon had done in the north.
`Victory for you today,’ the Inquisitor said, `would make the treaty unnecessary.’
`For the moment,’ Ducos said, `but I would not be so certain of our victory, father.’ He stood and walked towards the window. On a table beside it, in a small bowl, he kept breadcrumbs that he now put on the ledge for the birds. `It has been my misfortune to spend much of my life with soldiers. They are boastful creatures, noisy, crude, and unthinking. They believe in victory, father, because they cannot bear the thought of defeat.’ He turned from the window and stared at the priest. `I do not think your work will prove to be wasted.’
`But unrewarded.’
`Your reward,’ Ducos said as he walked back to his table, `is Spain’s glory and the survival of the Inquisition. I congratulate you. You also, I believe, have the Marquesa’s wagons safely locked in your courtyard.’ He said the last words with heavy mockery.
`The money,’ Father Hacha spoke uncomfortably, `is not legally ours.’
`True. But it is not my fault if you cannot keep a woman locked in a nunnery.’
The Inquisitor said nothing for a few seconds. From the window ledge came the small scratching sounds of beaks and claws. From much further away, made tiny by the distance, came the thin call of a trumpet. The Inquisitor brushed at the dust on his cassock. `If there is to be peace between our two countries, then there will also have to be diplomatic relations.’
`True.’
`I have hopes that, in those relations, I might be of further use to you.’
Ducos said nothing. He had expected the Inquisitor to offer him a threat that, unless the Marquesa was arrested, he would betray the proposed treaty’s existence to the enemy. Indeed, Ducos had been prepared for that threat, and would have met it with the death of this priest. Instead, though, the Inquisitor was offering a bargain of a different kind. `Go on,’ Ducos said.
`There will be a new beginning in Spain.’ The Inquisitor seemed to be gaining in confidence as he spoke. `There will be a need for new men, new advisers, new leadership. With wealth behind me, Major, I can rise to that challenge. But not if the wealth is tainted. Not if a woman is challenging me in the courts, or spreading rumours in the chanceries of Europe. If you let me rise as I intend to rise, Major, then in the years to come you will find France has a friend in the Spanish court.’
Ducos liked the suggestion. He liked such an excursion into the far future, the promise that, in a new Europe, the Inquisitor would be his informant and ally. He shrugged. `I cannot have her arrested.’
`I don’t ask you to.’ From far away came a sound like thorns burning. The Inquisitor looked out of the window, but Ducos dismissed the musketry.
`They’re clearing their barrels, nothing more.’ He stroked his finger down a quill. `You want to kill her?’
`No!’
The sharpness of the reply made Ducos look up. `No?’
`She will have made her own will. If she dies then her inheritors become my enemy. No.’ The Inquisitor frowned. `She must go to a convent. She must learn the humility of religion.’
Ducos smiled thinly. `You failed once.’
`Not again.’
`Perhaps not.’ Ducos sounded dubious, but he reflected that Richard Sharpe was dead, and could not repeat his impudent rescue of the woman. Sharpe’s death had pleased Ducos. He had been given nightmares by his memory of the fight in Burgos Castle, of the battered, beaten, bleeding Rifleman suddenly roaring his challenge and turning the room into a shambles. Yet Sharpe had died in the explosion and that fact gave Ducos some small happiness. Ducos looked at the priest. `Yet it is not the duty of the Emperor’s forces to put women into convents.’