Back in the convent he found the refectory, the long tables set with dull metal plates. The Virgin Mary, in a vast picture, raised her eyes to the beamed ceiling. ‘Helene! Helene!’
And this time there was a scream in reply, the first human voice Sharpe had heard since the Mother Superior had lifted the brass bell, and Sharpe crossed the great room to push open a door beside the empty, cold fireplace.
A chicken carcass missed his head by inches. It was only half-plucked and the feathers settled on the shoulder of his Rifleman’s jacket.
He was in a huge kitchen, the vaulted stone ceiling blackened by the centuries of smoke, and facing him were a dozen nuns’ who had none of the demure fear that filled the rest of the convent. The half-plucked chicken had been hurled by a great, ham-faced woman with forearms like pontoon cables, who now seized a second chicken and drew back her arm.
Sharpe ducked. The body thumped on the wall behind him. ‘Helene!’
He saw her, and even here, imprisoned and drab, her beauty checked him. She made the breath stop in his throat and his heart race with the surge of desire.
The widowed Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba stared at him. She was dressed in a shapeless grey shift, her hair caught up and tied by a hank of grey rag, her face devoid of any cosmetic. The nun who held her had a hand over La Marquesa’s mouth, but Helene must have sunk her teeth into the woman’s palm for the hand jerked away and she struggled against the other hand. ‘Richard!’ Her eyes were huge, as though he was a ghost.
A great flabby ball of dough was hurled at him, he ducked again and went forward, and the nun who had started the artillery bombardment picked up a rolling pin that was as big as a cannon’s axle. Sharpe ignored her. He looked at the nun holding La Marquesa. ‘Let her go-‘
The rolling pin was tapped once into a huge hand. The woman, Sharpe thought, looked big enough to be Patrick Harper’s twin. It was a good job she had chosen the Church, he reflected, for otherwise she would have made some poor man’s life a flaming hell. She stepped towards him, no fear on her face, the rolling pin ready to strike.
Yet how to fight a nun? He could not draw the sword, and he dared not strike her with his fists, but one blow from the rolling pin would shatter his skull. La Marquesa still struggled. She seemed to understand his plight and shouted at him in Spanish. ‘Take your trousers down!’
The suggestion checked the woman, and Sharpe used her pause to move right and pick up an unthrown chicken by the neck. He whirled the carcass, threw, and the half-drawn giblets flailed.bloodily across the room and slapped the woman over the face and she snarled, raised the pin, and Sharpe heard the screams of the other nuns. He watched the great weapon, ducked, side-stepped, and ran towards the pinioned Marquesa. His approach scared her captor, she let Helene go, and Helene ran desperately to Sharpe’s side.
‘This way!’
The rolling pin missed his body by inches, brushing his sleeve as the nun hammered it onto the table with a thump that would have stirred the coffined dead.
‘Come on!’ He had the Marquesa’s hand in his, he was running, and then the rolling pin slammed past his head to crack on the door of the kitchen.
They ran. Another chicken thumped on his back, something metallic clanged on the flagstones behind him, but then he was in the refectory, he had Helene’s hand in his hand and he hurried her towards the far end. He was laughing, she was laughing, and somewhere in the convent the bell was ringing still.
It could, he thought, be a difficult retreat. He had penetrated deep into enemy country, seized his prize, and he now had to regain the front door. But no one appeared to bar their withdrawal, and the huge nun of the kitchens was not prepared for pursuit. He looked at the woman beside him, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Did you want to be rescued?’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ She laughed and led him down a long corridor. ‘Christ, Richard! I was told you were dead!’ He laughed with her and her hand was warm in his. ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘An angel told me.’
She led him upstairs. The bell had stopped. ‘I must look awful.’
‘You look wonderful.’
‘The bitches took my clothes! God! You should see the lavatories here, Richard! You have to hold her breath if you want to piss. I’ve been constipated for a week! You can’t bathe, you can’t wash! I haven’t washed my hair since I got here. No wonder they don’t marry, no man could bear them. Oh Lord!’ This last was to greet the Mother Superior who waited in the front hallway. She was alone. She frowned.
‘You cannot go.’
La Marquesa ignored her. ‘Richard? Open that door.’ She pointed at a solid oak door at the side of the hall.
‘Open it?’
‘For Christ’s sake, do it!’
It was locked. The Mother Superior protested, but Helene insisted, and Sharpe kicked it with his heel, shaking it, then kicked again to splinter it open. Helene pushed past him. ‘They took my jewels, my clothes, everything! They’ve got a thousand dollars worth of my jewellery in there!’
Sharpe listened as she raked through drawers and opened cupboards. He heard the rustle of cloth, the chink of coins, and he smiled wanly at the Mother Superior who stood frowning and unable to stop the desecration. Sharpe shrugged. ‘My President will make reparations, madame. Just write to him.’
La Marquesa swore cheerfully in the room, then, holding a bundle, came back to the hall. She smiled at the Mother Superior. ‘I’m going to commit adultery again. Lots of it.’ She laughed, held her hand out to Sharpe, and he went with her to the broken front door.
She stepped over the rock that still blocked the opening. ‘Christ! It’s raining! My hair will be ruined!’
‘You said it needed a wash.’ He remembered to retrieve his shako from the hall table.
She laughed. ‘Are those our horses?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t ridden a horse in years.’ She walked outside and put her face back as if to let the rain drench away the smell of the convent. She laughed with pure delight. ‘Where are we going?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then let’s go there!’ She chose Carbine for herself, unerringly picking the better horse. She mounted, her bundle given to Sharpe, and she waited for him to mount Angel’s horse. Then she turned Carbine towards the open grass of the rain-swept plateau, pushed her heels back, and urged the big, black horse into a gallop.
Sharpe caught up with her. Her face was bright with the rain and with the sudden joy of freedom. This was not the time, he thought, to talk of El Matarife. She looked at him, laughed, then fumbled at her neck. She untied the_ hank_of grey drab rag, tossed it away, and released the great Sen mane of her hair. She was free she was beautiful, and Richard Sharpe followed her into his uncertain future.
CHAPTER 12
He checked La Marquesa at the top of the path. She was cold now. The rain had soaked the woollen shift so that it clung to her body. Sharpe pulled out his cloak that was strapped behind her saddle and draped it about her shoulders, then took his telescope and trained it down the hill. He could see the hairpin bend in the road where Angel was hidden. He could see more. There were two pine branches beside the road. They lay parallel to the track and they told him that at least six men, but less than nine, had climbed past Angel’s hiding place. If they had been at right angles the message would be that the men were waiting in ambush higher on the road, but instead Angel had seen them reach the summit of the hill.
Sharpe closed the telescope. He twisted in the saddle and stared behind him. The convent was out of sight. This northern side of the plateau was broken country, the small trees lashed by the rain, and somewhere in the damp wasteland of rocks, grass and bushes was hidden the enemy. He grinned at her. Her hair was flattened now by rain. ‘We’ve got company.’