The outside of the Convent of the Heavens was grey and bare. The interior was rich and brilliant. The hallway flodr was of chequered tiles, the walls of gold mosaic, the ceiling painted. There were pictures on the walls. Facing him, alone in the cavernous hallway, was a single woman dressed in white robes.
`Go away.’
It seemed a hopeful thing to say to a man who had just spent twenty minutes breaking down a door. Sharpe stepped over the rock that had fallen in the doorway and smiled at her. `Good morning, ma’am.’ He brushed his jacket down and politedly took off his shako. `I wish to speak with La Marquesa de Casares.’
`She is not here.’ The woman was tall, her face lined with age. She had a splendid dignity that made Sharpe feel shabby.
He took one pace forward, his boots unnaturally loud in the cavernous hallway. `You may force me to bring my men and search the whole convent.’ That struck him as the right thing to say. The woman was frightened, and rightly, by the incursion of one man into this building where no man but a priest was ever supposed to tread. She would surely fear a whole company of soldiers.
She looked at him, frowning, `Who are you?’
The truth would not do. When the tale got about that an Englishman had broken into a convent there would be hell to pay. Sharpe smiled. `Major Vaughn.’
`English?’
He thought how often Wellington had insisted in his orders that the Roman church in Spain must be respected by the British. Nothing, the General believed, was more damaging to the alliance than insults to Spain’s religion. Sharpe smiled. `No, ma’am. American.’ He hoped Colonel Leroy would forgive the lie, and he was glad that he did not wear a red coat that was always thought to be the only uniform of Britain.
She frowned. `American?’
`I have come a long way to see La Marquesa.’
`Why do you wish to see that woman?’
`Matters of policy.’ He hoped his Spanish was correct.
She tossed her head. `She will see no one.’
`She will see me.’
`She is a sinner.’
`So are we all.’ Sharpe wondered why on earth he was swapping theological small talk with a Mother Superior. He supposed she was the Mother Superior.
`She is doing penance.’
`I wish only to talk with her.’
`The Church has ordered that no one should see her.’
`I have come from North America to see her.’ He liked the lie. Even in this remote convent the news must have arrived that the Americans had joined the war that burned about the world. `My President demands that I see her. He will send many coins to Rome if I can see her.’ Why the hell not, he thought? The Americans had declared war on Britain, so why should the Pope not declare war on America? He embroidered the lie. `Many, many gold coins.’
`It is against God’s law to see her.’
`God will forgive me.’
`You are a sinner.’
Sharpe frowned. `I am an American!’
The Mother Superior turned away, her voice superb. `You cannot see her. Go away.’
She had reached a door and Sharpe feared breaking through another barrier in this place, for he needed all the time he could scrape together for his battle against El Matarife.
He ran forward, his boots loud on the chequered tiles, and the noise made the woman turn. For the first time she showed fear. It seemed for a moment that she would try to stop him as she lifted her thin hands from beneath the strip of white cloth that hung from her neck, but as he came close she twisted aside and snatched up a brass bell that stood on a dark oak table. Sharpe thought she was going to hit him with the bell, but instead she began to ring it. She fled from him, through the door, the bell clanging as a warning for the nuns to hide.
He followed. It was as if a wildcat had come into a hen run. He was on the top floor of a double cloister and the sound of the bell was driving white-robed women in desperate flight towards stairs and doors. Despite their panicked, fluttering scattering, they were all silent, only the clanging bell telling Sharpe that he had not been struck deaf as a punishment for his terrible sin. His was the only voice in the place. `Helene!’