“No,” Sharpe admitted, for such a feat would encourage every rebel in South America and concomitantly depress all their Royalist opponents. He frowned. “Surely Don Bias had aides with him?”
“He had a small escort.”
“Yet he was riding alone? In rebel country?” Sharpe’s soldiering instincts, rusty as they were, rebelled at such a thought.
Louisa, who had rehearsed these questions and answers for weeks, shrugged. “They tell me that no rebels had been seen in those parts for many months. That Don Bias often rode ahead. He was impatient, you surely remember that?”
“But he wasn’t foolhardy.” A wasp crawled on the table and Sharpe slapped down hard. “The rebels have made no proclamations about Don Bias?”
“None!” There was despair in Louisa’s voice. “And when I ask for information from our own army, I am told there is no information to be had. It seems that a Captain-General can disappear in Chile without a trace! I do not even know if I am a widow.” She looked at Lucille. “I wanted to travel to Chile, but it would have meant leaving my children. Besides, what can a woman do against the intransigence of soldiers?”
Lucille shot an amused glance at Sharpe, then looked down again at her sewing.
“The army has told you nothing?” Sharpe asked in astonishment.
“They tell me Don Bias is dead. They cannot prove it, for they have never found his body, but they assure me he must be dead.” Louisa said that the King had even paid for a Requiem Mass to be sung in Santiago de Compostela’s great cathedral, though Louisa had shocked the royal authorities by refusing to attend such a Mass, claiming it to be indecently premature. Don Bias, Louisa insisted, was alive. Her instinct told her so. “He might be a prisoner. I am told there are tribes of heathen savages who are reputed to keep white men as slaves in the forest. And Chile is a terrible country,” she explained to Lucille, “there are pygmies and giants in the mountains, while the rebel ranks are filled by rogues from Europe. Who knows what might have happened?”
Lucille made a sympathetic noise, but the mention of white slaves, pygmies, giants and rogues made Sharpe suspect that his visitor’s hopes were mere fantasies. In the five years since Waterloo Sharpe had met scores of women who were convinced that a missing son or a lost husband or a vanished lover still lived. Many such women had received notification that their missing man had been killed, but they stubbornly clung to their beliefs; supposing that their loved one was trapped in Russia, or kept prisoner in some remote Spanish town, or perhaps had been carried abroad to some far raw colony. Invariably, Sharpe knew, such men had either settled with different women or, more likely, were long dead and buried, but it was impossible to convince their womenfolk of either harsh truth. Nor did he try to persuade Louisa now, but instead asked her whether Don Bias had been popular in Chile.
“He was too honest to be popular,” Louisa said. “Of course he had his supporters, but he was constantly fighting corruption. Indeed, that was why he was traveling to Puerto Crucero. The Governor of the southern province was an enemy of Don Bias. They hated each other, and I heard that Don Bias had proof of the Governor’s corruption and was traveling to confront him!”
Which meant, Sharpe wearily thought, that his friend Don Bias had been fighting two enemies: the entrenched Spanish interest as well as the rebels who had captured Santiago and driven the Royalists into the southern half of the country. Don Bias had doubtless been a good enough commander to beat the rebels, but was he a clever enough politician to beat his own side? Sharpe, who knew what an honest man Don Bias was, doubted it, and that doubt convinced him still further that his old friend must be dead. It took a cunning fox to cheat the hunt, while the brave beast that turned to fight the dogs always ended up torn into scraps. “So isn’t it likely,” Sharpe spoke as gently as he could, “that Don Bias was ambushed by his own side?”