“I think they will pay a great deal,” Father Montseny said, “if we frighten them.”
“How?”
“I shall publish one letter. I shall change it, of course. And the implicit threat will be that we shall publish them all.” Father Montseny paused, giving the admiral time to object to his proposal, but the admiral stayed silent. “I need a writer to make the changes,” Montseny went on.
“A writer?” the admiral asked in a sour tone. “Why can’t you make the changes yourself?”
“I can,” Montseny said, “but once the letters are changed, the English will proclaim them forgeries. We cannot present the originals to anyone, because the originals will prove the English correct. So we must make new copies, in English, in an English hand, which we shall claim as the originals. I need a man who can write perfect English. My English is good, but not good enough.” He fingered his crucifix, thinking. “The new letters need only persuade the Cortes, and most deputies will want to believe them, but the changes must still be convincing. The grammar, the spelling, must all be accurate. So I need a writer who can achieve that.”
The admiral made a dismissive gesture. “I know a man. A horrid creature. He writes well, though, and has a passion for English books. He’ll do, but how do you publish the letters?”
“El Correo de Cádiz,” Father Montseny said, naming the one newspaper that opposed the liberales. “I shall print one letter and I shall say in it that the English plan to take Cádiz and make it a second Gibraltar. The English will deny it, of course, but we will have a new letter with a forged signature.”
“They’ll do more than make denials,” the admiral said vigorously, “they’ll persuade the Regency to close the paper down!” The Regency was the council which ruled what was left of Spain, and ruled it with the help of British gold, which was why they were eager to keep the British friendly. A new constitution, though, could mean a new Regency, one which the admiral could lead.
“The Regency will be powerless if the letter is unsigned,” Montseny pointed out dryly. “The English will not dare own to its authorship, will they? And rumor can do its work for us. Within a day all Cádiz will know that their ambassador wrote the letter.”
The letters had been written by the British ambassador to Spain and they were pathetic outpourings of love. There was even a proposal of marriage in one letter, a proposal made to a girl who was a whore called Caterina Veronica Blazquez. She was an expensive whore, to be sure, but still a whore.
“The owner of the Correo is a man named Nuñez, yes?” the admiral asked.
“He is.”
“And he will publish the letter?”
“There is an advantage to being a priest,” Montseny said. “The secrets of the confessional, or course, are sacred, but gossip persists. We priests talk, my lord, and I know things about Nuñez that he does not want the world to know. He will publish.”
“Suppose the English try to destroy the press?” the admiral suggested.
“They probably will,” Montseny said dismissively, “but for a small sum I can turn the building into a fortress, and your men can help protect it. Then the British will be forced to buy the remaining letters. I’m sure, once we have published one, they will pay very generously.”
“What utter fools men make themselves over women,” the admiral said. He took a long black cigar from a pocket and bit the end off. Then he just stood, waiting until a couple of small boys saw the cigar and came running. Each lad held a length of thick hemp rope that smoldered at one end. The admiral indicated one of the boys who slapped his rope twice on the ground to revive its fire, then held it up so the admiral could light the cigar. He waved the boy toward the men who followed him and one of them tossed a coin. “It would be best,” the admiral said, “if we possessed both the letters and the gold.” He watched the British frigate that was now near the rocks that lay off the bastion of San Felipe and he prayed she would run aground. He wanted to see her masts lurch forward as the hull struck the rocks, he wanted to see her canted and sinking, and he wanted to see her sailors floundering in the heaving seas, but of course she sailed serenely past the danger.
“It would be best,” Father Montseny said, “if we had the English gold and published the letters.”
“It would be treacherous, of course,” the admiral observed mildly.
“God wants Spain great again, my lord,” Montseny said fervently. “It is never treachery to do God’s work.”
A sudden boom of a gun sounded flat across the bay and both men turned to see a far white cloud of smoke. It had come from one of the giant mortars the French had placed in their forts on the Trocadero Peninsula and the admiral hoped the shell had been aimed at the British frigate. Instead the missile fell on the city’s waterfront a half mile to the east. The admiral waited for the shell to explode, then drew on his cigar. “If we publish the letters,” he said, “then the Cortes will turn against the British. The bribes will make that certain, and then we can approach the French. You would be willing to go to them?”
“Very willing, my lord.”
“I shall give you a letter of introduction, of course.” The admiral had already made his proposals to Paris. That had been easy. He was known to hate the British and a French agent in Cádiz had spoken to him, but the reply from the emperor was simple. Deliver the votes in the Cortes and the Spanish king, now a prisoner in France, would be returned. France would make peace and Spain would be free. All the French demanded in return was the right to send troops across Spanish roads to complete the conquest of Portugal and so drive Lord Wellington’s British army into the sea. As an earnest of their goodwill the French had given orders that the admiral’s estates on the Guadiana should not be plundered and now, in return, the admiral must deliver the votes and so sever the alliance with Britain. “By summer, Father,” he said.
“Summer?”
“It will be done. We shall have our king. We shall be free.”
“Under God.”
“Under God,” the admiral agreed. “Find the money, Father, and make the English look like fools.”
“It is God’s will,” Montseny said, “so it will happen.”
And the British would go to hell.
EVERYTHING WAS easy after the shot felled Sharpe.
The boat drifted down the ever widening Guadiana into the night. A hazed moon silvered the hills and lit the long water that shuddered under the small wind. Sharpe lay in the boat’s bilges, senseless, his head broken and bloodied and bandaged, and the brigadier sat in the stern, his leg splinted and his hands on the tiller ropes, and he wondered what he should do. The dawn found them between low hills without a house in sight. Egrets and herons stalked the river’s edge. “He needs a doctor, sir,” Harper said, and the brigadier heard the anguish in the Irishman’s voice. “He’s dying, sir.”
“He’s breathing, isn’t he?” the brigadier asked.
“He is, sir,” Harper said, “but he needs a doctor, sir.”
“Good God incarnate, man, I’m not a conjuror! I can’t find a doctor in a wilderness, can I?” The brigadier was in pain and spoke more sharply than he intended and he saw the flare of hostility on Harper’s face and felt a stab of fear. Sir Barnaby Moon reckoned himself a good officer, but he was not comfortable dealing with the ranks. “If we come to a town,” he said, trying to mollify the big sergeant, “we’ll look for a physician.”