“At dawn,” Sharpe said. But then, as night fell red across the ocean to touch the sentinels’ weapons with a scarlet sheen, everything changed again.
Don Bias was not dead after all. But living.
His name was Marcos. Just Marcos. He was a thin young man with the face of a starveling and the eyes of a cutthroat. He had been an infantryman in the Puerto Crucero garrison, one of the men who had poured such a disciplined fire at Cochrane’s attack, but who, after the citadel’s fall, had fled northward, only to be driven back by his fears of rampaging Indians. Major Miller had interrogated Marcos, and Miller now fetched Marcos to Sharpe. They spoke around a brazier on Puerto Crucero’s ramparts and Marcos, in the strangely accented Spanish of the native Chileans, told his story of how Don Bias Vivar, Count of Mouro-morto and erstwhile Captain-General of Chile, still lived. Marcos told the tale nervously, his eyes flicking from Sharpe to Miller, from Miller to Harper, then from Harper to Cochrane who, summoned by Miller, had come to hear Marcos’s story.
Marcos had been stationed in Valdivia’s Citadel when Bias Vivar disappeared. He knew some of the cavalrymen who had formed part of the escort that had accompanied Captain-General Vivar on his southern tour of inspection. That escort had been commanded by a Captain Lerrana, who was now Colonel Lerrana and one of Captain-General Bautista’s closest friends. Marcos accompanied this revelation with a meaningful wink, then paused to scratch vigorously at his crotch. An interval of silence followed, during which he pursued and caught a particularly troublesome louse that he squashed bloodily between his thumb and fingernail before hitching the rent in his breeches roughly closed.
“Hurry now! Don’t keep the Colonel waiting!” Miller barked.
Marcos flinched as if he expected to be hit, then reminded Sharpe that Captain-General Vivar had been riding on a tour of inspection that was supposed to end at the citadel in Puerto Crucero. “From there, serior, he would go back to Valdivia by ship. But no one came back! Neither the Captain-General, nor Captain Lerrana. No one. Not even the troopers! No one came back till after we heard the Captain-General had vanished, then General Bautista arrived from Puerto Crucero, and Captain Lerrana came with him, but by then he was a Colonel and in a new uniform.” Marcos clearly felt that the detail of Lerrana’s new uniform was exceedingly telling. He described it in detail, how it had thickly cushioned epaulettes from which hung gold chains, and how it had gold-colored lace on the coat, and high boots that were new and shining.
“Tell him about the prisoner!” Miller interrupted the admiring description of the uniform.
“Ah, yes!” Marcos snatched another bite from his sausage. “General Bautista was the senior officer in the province, so he came to take over the Captain-General’s duties. He came by ship, you understand, and his men came by boat up the river to the Citadel in Valdivia. They came by day, and we made an honor guard for the General. But one boat came at night. In it, senor, was a prisoner who had come from Puerto Crucero, a prisoner so secret that no one even knew his name! The prisoner was hurried into the Angel Tower in the Citadel. You have to understand, senor, that the Angel Tower is very old, very mysterious! It used to be a terrible prison! They say the ghosts of all the dead cling to its stones. Once a man was put in there he only came out as a corpse or an angel.” Marcos superstitiously crossed himself. ‘They stopped using the tower as a prison in my grandfather’s time, and now no one will step inside for fear of the spirits, but that is where the Captain-General’s prisoner was taken and, so far as I know, senor, he is still there. Or he was when I left.” Marcos ended the tale in a rush, then looked eagerly at Miller as though seeking praise for the telling.
“And you think Captain Vivar is that prisoner?” Sharpe asked Marcos.
Marcos nodded energetically. “I saw his face, senor. I was on duty at the inner gate, and they brought him past me to the door of the tower. I was ordered to turn around and not look, but I was in shadow and they did not see me. It was the Captain-General, I swear it.”