"You can't do this!" Sharpe protested so strongly that one of the infantrymen stepped in front of him with a musket and bayonet.
"Of course I can do this!" Bautista mocked. "I am the King's plenipotentiary. I can have men killed, I can have them imprisoned, I can even have them broken down to the ranks, like Private Morillo who is being sent to the mines to learn the virtues of loyalty."
"What has this man done?" Sharpe gestured at Ferdinand.
"He has displeased me, Mister Sharpe," Bautista said, then he beckoned the other men in the room forward so they could watch the execution from the other windows. Bautista's eyes were greedy. "Are you watching?" Bautista asked Sharpe.
"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."
"But you do accept that Mister Sharpe deserves punishment?"
"Alas, Your Excellency, it appears so." Blair nodded obsequiously at the Captain-General, then snatched a sideways glance at Sharpe who wondered just how much of Dona Louisa's money the Consul was taking as a bribe.
Bautista strolled back to the table where he picked up Sharpe's heavy sword. "This was carried at Waterloo?" Sharpe said nothing, but Bautista did not need an answer. "I shall keep it as a trophy! Perhaps I shall have a plaque made for it. Taken from an English soldier who at last met his match'!"
"Fight for it now, you bastard," Sharpe called.
"I don't fight against lice, I just smoke them out." Bautista dropped the sword onto the table, then adopted a portentous tone of voice. "I declare your possessions are forfeited to the Spanish crown, and that the two of you are unwelcome in Chile. You are therefore expelled from these territories, and will embark on the next ship to leave this harbor." Bautista had already prepared the expulsion papers which now, with a theatrical flourish, he offered to Captain Ardiles of the Espiritu Santo. "That would be your frigate, Captain. You have no objections to carrying the prisoners home?"
"None," Ardiles, ready for the request, said flatly.
"Put them to work. No comforts! Sign them on to your crew and make them sweat."
"Indeed, Your Excellency." Ardiles took the papers and pushed them into the tail pocket of his uniform.
Bautista came close to Sharpe. "I would have preferred to put you to work in the mines, Englishman, so think yourself lucky."
"Frightened of the Royal Navy?" Sharpe taunted him.
"Be careful, Englishman," Bautista said softly.
"You're a thief," Sharpe said just as quietly. "And Vivar knew it, which is why you killed him."
At first Bautista looked astonished at the accusation, then it made him laugh. He clapped with delight at his amusement, then waved at Major Suarez. "Take them away! Now!" The audience, in ludicrous sycophancy, began to applaud wildly as the infantrymen who had escorted Sharpe and Harper from their prison now chivied the two men through an archway and onto a flight of wide stone steps that ran down beside the bloody gun battery. The steps, which were very steep and cut from the crag on which the citadel stood, led down to the fortress quay where a longboat from the Espiritu Santo waited.
Ardiles followed, his scabbard's metal tip clattering on the stone steps. "Into the boat!" he ordered Sharpe and Harper when they reached the quay.
"Make them sweat!" Bautista shouted from the gun battery's parapet. "Put them at the oars now! You hear me, Ardiles! Put them at the oars! I want to see them sweat!"
Ardiles nodded to the Bosun who made space for Sharpe and Harper on the bow thwarts. The other oarsmen grinned. Captain Ardiles, cloaked against the cold south wind, sat in the stern sheets where, it seemed to Sharpe, he carefully avoided his two captives' eyes. "Push off!" he ordered.