SHARPE’S DEVIL. Bernard Cornwell

“You bastard,” Sharpe said.

“Why? This is a quick and painless death, though admittedly messy. You have to understand that the savages believe their souls will not reach paradise unless their bodies are intact for the funeral rites. They consequently have a morbid fear of dismemberment, which is why I devised this punishment as a means of discouraging rebellion among the Indian slaves. It works remarkably well.”

“But this man has done nothing! Morillo did nothing!”

“They displeased me,” Bautista hissed the words, then he looked down to the gun battery and held up a hand.

Ferdinand, his lips drawn back from his filed teeth, seemed to be praying. His eyes were closed. “God bless you!” Sharpe shouted, though the Indian showed no signs of hearing.

“You think God cares about scum?” Bautista chuckled, then dropped his hand.

Dregara reached forward and the linstock touched the firing hole. The sound of the cannon was tremendous; loud enough to rattle the iron chandelier and hurt the eardrums of the men crowded at the windows. Harper crossed himself. Bautista licked his lips, and Ferdinand died in a maelstrom of smoke, fire and blood. Sharpe glimpsed the Indian’s shattered trunk whirling blood as it was blasted away from the parapet, then the smoke blew apart to reveal a splintered stake, a pair of bloody legs, and lumps and spatters of blood and flesh smeared across the cannon’s embrasure. The rest of Ferdinand’s body had been scattered into the outer harbor where screaming gulls, excited by this sudden largesse, dived and tore and fought for shreds of his flesh. Far out to sea, beyond the rocky spit of land, the cannon-ball crashed into the swell with a sudden white plume, while in the nearer waters, scraps of flesh and splinters of bone and drops of blood rained down to the frenzied gulls. Men had rushed to the rail of the American brigantine, fearful of what the gunfire meant, and now they stared in puzzlement at the blood-flecked water. Bautista sighed with pleasure, then turned away as the white-faced gun crew heaved the dead man’s legs over the parapet.

There was a stunned silence in the hall. The stench of powder smoke and fresh blood was keen in the air as Bautista, half smiling, turned to his audience. “Mister Blair?”

“Your Excellency?” George Blair ducked an eager and frightened pace forward.

“You have heard my questions to Mister Sharpe today?”

“Indeed, Your Excellency.”

“Do you confirm that I have treated the prisoners fairly? And with consideration?”

Blair smirked and nodded. “Indeed, Your Excellency.”

Bautista went to the table and held up the signed portrait of Napoleon and the folded message. “You heard the prisoner’s assertion that Napoleon wrote this message?”

“I did, Your Excellency, indeed I did.”

“And you see it is addressed to a notorious rebel?”

“I do, Your Excellency, indeed I do.”

Bautista’s face twitched with amusement. “Tell me, Blair, how your government will respond to the news that Mister Sharpe was acting as an errand boy for Bonaparte?”

“They will doubtless regard any such message as treasonable correspondence, Your Excellency.” Blair bobbed obsequiously.

Bautista smiled, and no wonder, for Sharpe’s possession of the Emperor’s message was enough to condemn Sharpe, not just with the Spanish, but with the British too. The British might possess the greatest navy and the strongest economy in the world, yet they were terrified of the small fat man cooped up in Saint Helena’s Longwood, and maybe they were terrified enough to allow Bautista to tie two British subjects to wooden stakes and blow their souls into eternity at the mouths of loaded cannons. Sharpe, suddenly feeling very abandoned, also felt frightened.

Bautista sensed the fear and smiled. He had won now. He turned again to Blair. “Either Mister Sharpe was carrying a message from Napoleon, which makes him an enemy of his own country, or else this is a message from the British merchants who are my country’s enemies, but either way, Mister Sharpe’s possession of the message calls for punishment. Might I assume, Blair, that your government would not approve if I were to execute Mister Sharpe?”

Blair beamed as though Bautista had made a fine jest. “My government would be displeased, Your Excellency.”

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