`You can hardly expect El Matarife not to have a welcome for you, Major? After all it’s not every day that a Frenchman comes here.’ The priest was enjoying the small Frenchman’s discomfiture. `And it might be wise to watch, Major? To refuse would be seen as an insult to his hospitality.’
`God damn his hospitality,’ the small man said, but he stayed nonetheless.
He was not impressive to look at, this small Frenchman whose glasses chafed his skin, yet the appearance was deceptive. Pierre Ducos was called Major, though whether that was his real rank, or whether he held any rank in the French army at all, no one knew. He called no man `sir’, unless it was the Emperor. He was part spy, part policeman, and wholly politician. It was Pierre Ducos who had suggested the secret to his Emperor, and it was Pierre Ducos who must make the secret come true and thus win the war for France.
A fair-headed man, dressed only in a shirt and trousers, was pushed past the bulls’ carcasses. His hands were tied behind his back. He was blinking as though he had been brought from a dark place into the sudden daylight.
`Who is he?’ Ducos asked.
`One of the men he took at Salinas.’
Ducos grunted. El Matarife was a Partisan leader, one of the many who infested the northern hills, and he had lately surprised a French convoy and taken a dozen prisoners. Ducos pushed at the earpiece of his spectacles. `He took two women.’
`He did,’ the priest said.
`What happened to them?’
`You care very much, Major?’
`No.’ Ducos’ voice was sour. `They were whores.’
`French whores.’
`But still whores.’ He said it with dislike. `What happened to them?’
`They ply their trade, Major, but their payment is life instead of cash.’
The fair-headed man had been taken to the base of the rock pit and there his arms were cut free. He flexed his fingers in the raw, cold air, wondering what was to happen to him in this place that stank of blood. There was a mood of expectant enjoyment among the spectators. They were quiet, but they grinned because they knew what was to happen.
A chain was tossed to the pit’s floor.
It lay there, links of rusting iron in the bull’s blood which had steamed in the cold. The prisoner shivered. He took a step back as a man picked up one end of the chain, but then submitted quietly as the links were tied to his left forearm. The Slaughterman, his huge beard flecked with the blood of the bull, picked up the other end of the chain. He looped it about his own left arm and laughed at the prisoner. `I shall count the ways of your death, Frenchman.’
The French prisoner did not understand the Spanish words. He did understand, though, the knife that was tossed to him; a long, wicked-bladed knife that was identical to the weapon in the hands of El Matarife. The chain that linked the two men was ten feet long. The priest smiled. `You’ve seen such a fight?’
`No.’
`There is a skill to it.’
`Undoubtedly,’ Ducos said drily.
The skill was all with the Slaughterman. He had fought the linked knife fight many times, and he feared no opponent. The Frenchman was brave, but desperate. His attacks were fierce, but clumsy. He was pulled off balance by the chain, he was tormented, he was cut, and with every slice of El Matarife’s knife the count was shouted out by the watching partisans. `Uno.r greeted a slash that opened the Frenchman’s forehead to his skull. ‘Dos’ saw his left hand slit between his fingers. The numbers mounted. Ducos watched. `How long does it go on?’
`Perhaps fifty cuts?’ The priest shrugged. `Maybe more.’ Ducos looked at the priest. `You enjoy it?’
`I enjoy all manly pursuits, Major.’
`Except one, priest,’ Ducos smiled. Father Hacha looked back at the pit. The priest was a big man, as big as El Matarife himself. He showed no distress as the prisoner was slashed and cut and flayed. Father Hacha was, in many ways, an ideal partner to Major Pierre Ducos. Like the Frenchman he was part spy, part policeman, and wholly politician, except that his politics were those of the Church, and his skills were given to the Spanish Inquisition. Father Hacha was an Inquisitor.