Sharpe feared his friend was contemplating suicide. “You have a wife and children!”
Vivar smiled and shook his head. “Not that, Sharpe. I mean that I shall retire from service. I shall go to Orense and look after my estates. I, at least, shall be honorable. I will read, work, pray, and watch the war from a distance.”
And there would be war, Sharpe was certain of that. Europe would not stand idle while the ogre ravaged the Americas. Sharpe imagined the troops sailing from Portsmouth and Plymouth, traveling across a world to catch Bonaparte one last time. Only this time, he supposed, they would hang the Emperor, because Bonaparte would have caused one mischief too many.
The weather was becoming warmer as the ship sailed north, but just when Sharpe was beginning to count the days until they reached home, a series of vicious westerly gales beat the brig hard toward the east. She shortened sail, battened her hatches, and clawed against the weather’s spitefulness. For six days and nights the gales came, one after the other, until Sharpe began to believe that some malevolent spirit was intentionally keeping him from ever seeing Lucille again.
Then, after a sixth night of storm, the weather gentled and the ship wore on to a new tack. Clothes and bedding were brought up to dry on lines rigged between the masts. The Captain of the brig, an elderly and courteous Chilean, came to Sharpe. “I don’t know if any of you gentlemen are interested, sir, but we’ll not be far from Saint Helena. We don’t need to put in there, our supplies are plentiful, but if you want to see the place, sir?”
Sharpe suspected that the Chilean wanted to see Saint Helena for himself, or rather he wanted to discover whether Lord Cochrane’s conspiracy had worked, and so Sharpe sought out Vivar and tentatively suggested the visit. He half expected Vivar to be adamantly opposed to any such exploration, but to Sharpe’s surprise Vivar was as eager as the brig’s Captain. “I’d like to know what happened,” Vivar explained his interest. “The worst thing about being on board a ship is that you never know what’s happening in the world. Maybe Cochrane failed? That’s something worth praying for.”
“He’s not used to failure,” Sharpe observed.
“Maybe no one has prayed hard enough. My God, Sharpe, but I’ve been praying these past few weeks.”
The brig put into the harbor at Jamestown three days later. It was a hot day. The Captain ordered a boat lowered, then accompanied Vivar, Sharpe and Harper toward the small town that was hardly more than a row of houses above a stone quay. The hills, green and lush, climbed to the cloudy summits. A semaphore station stood with drooping arms at the foot of the road where Sharpe had climbed to meet a defeated Emperor.
The brig’s longboat landed them at the water steps where a very young Lieutenant waited to receive them. It was the same young officer who had greeted Sharpe at his first arrival on the island. “It’s Colonel Sharpe, isn’t it, sir?” The Lieutenant seemed pleased to see Sharpe again.
“Yes.” Sharpe could not remember the boy’s name, and he felt guilty. Napoleon never forgot a soldier’s name. Soon, no doubt, the Emperor would be welcoming his veterans to Chile by name, but for the life of him, Sharpe could not recall this one soldier’s name. “I’m sorry,” Sharpe said, “I don’t remember your—”
“Lieutenant Roland Hardacre, sir. The same name as my father.”
“Of course,” Sharpe said. “You remember Mister Harper? And this is General Vivar of the Spanish Army.”
“Sir!” Hardacre offered Vivar a smart salute.
“We came here, Lieutenant,” Vivar said, “to discover what happened when the O’Higgins called here.”
“The O’Higgins?” Hardacre frowned as he tried to recall the particular ship, then his face cleared. “Ah, yes! Our first visitor from the Chilean Navy! She called here a month ago.” He shrugged, as though he could recall nothing significant in the O’Higgins’s visit. “She reprovisioned, sir, then sailed away. To be honest, none of us were very sure why she came this far. There can hardly be any Chilean interests in this part of the world.”