Dona Louisa, seeing Sharpe stare at his children, must have understood what he was thinking. “I have asked for help everywhere,” she made the appeal to Lucille as much as to Sharpe. “The Spanish authorities won’t help me, which is why I went to London.” Louisa, who perhaps had more faith in her English roots than she would have liked to admit, explained that she had sought the help of the British government because British interests were important in Chile. Merchants from London and Liverpool, in anticipation of new trading opportunities, were suspected of funding the rebel government, while the Royal Navy kept a squadron on the Chilean coast and Louisa believed that if the British authorities, thus well connected with both sides of the fighting parties, demanded news of Don Bias then neither the rebels nor the Royalists would dare refuse them.
“Yet the British say they cannot help!” Louisa complained indignantly. ‘They say Don Bias’s disappearance is a military matter of concern only to the Spanish authorities!” So, in desperation, and while returning overland to Spain, Louisa had called on Sharpe. Her husband had once done Sharpe a great service, she tellingly reminded Sharpe, and now she wanted that favor returned.
Lucille spoke excellent English, but not quite well enough to have kept up with Louisa’s indignant loquacity. Sharpe translated, and added a few facts of his own; how he did indeed owe Bias Vivar a great debt. “He helped me once, years ago,” Sharpe said, deliberately vague, for Lucille never much liked to hear of Sharpe’s exploits in fighting against her own people. “And he is a good man,” Sharpe added, and knew the compliment was inadequate, for Don Bias was more than just a good man. He was, or had been, a generous man of rigorous honesty; a man of religion, of charity, and of ability.
“I do not like asking this of you,” Louisa said in an unnaturally timid voice, “but I know that whoever seeks Don Bias must treat with soldiers, and your name is respected everywhere among soldiers.”
“Not here, it isn’t,” Lucille said robustly, though not without an affectionate smile at Sharpe, for she knew how proud he would be of the compliment just paid him.
“And, of course, I shall pay you for your trouble in going to Chile,” Louisa added.
“Of course Richard will go,” Lucille, understanding that promise, said quickly.
“Though I don’t need any money,” Sharpe said gallantly.
“Yes, you do,” Lucille intervened calmly and, more pointedly, in English so that Louisa would understand. Lucille had already estimated the worth of Dona Louisa’s black dress, and of her carriage, and of her postilions and outriders and horses and luggage, and Lucille knew only too well how desperately her chateau needed repairs and how badly her estate needed the investment of money. Lucille paused to bite through a thread, “But I don’t want you to go alone. You need company. You’ve been wanting to see Patrick, so you should write to Dublin tonight, Richard.”
“Patrick won’t want to come,” Sharpe said, not because he thought his friend would truly refuse such an invitation, but rather because he did not want to raise his own hopes that his oldest friend, Patrick Harper, would give up his comfortable existence as landlord of a Dublin tavern and instead travel to one of the remotest and evidently most troubled countries on earth.
“It would be better if you did take a companion,” Louisa said firmly. “Chile is horribly corrupt. Don Bias believed that men like Bautista were simply extracting every last scrap of profit before the war was lost, and that they did not care about victory, but only for money. But money will open doors for you, so I plan to give you a sum of coin to use as bribes, and it might be sensible to have a strong man to help you protect such a fortune.”
“And Patrick is certainly strong,” Lucille said affectionately.
Thus the two women had made their decisions. Sharpe, with Harper, if his old friend agreed, would sail to Chile. Dona Louisa would provide Sharpe with two thousand gold English guineas, a coinage acceptable anywhere in the world, and a sum sufficient to buy Sharpe whatever information he needed, then she would wait for his news in her Palace of Mouromorto in Orense. Lucille, meanwhile, would hire an engineer from Caen to construct a new weir downstream of the old, the first repair to be done with the generous fee Louisa insisted on paying Sharpe.