Sharpe's Enemy by Bernard Cornwell Page A

opened. Beyond it was another door, a grille, and beyond that Sharpe could see the sunlight of another cloister. ‘He wants us to go through there. Just the two of us. I think we should go.’ Dubreton shrugged.
    Sharpe walked past the raised pool, the Frenchman beside him, and the soldiers at the western side of the cloister parted as the two officers stepped under the arch and into the doorway. The grille swung open to the touch, they were in a short, cold passageway, and then they were on the upper balcony of the inner cloister. Hakeswill followed them, and with him were half a dozen soldiers who stood either side of the officers. Their muskets were cocked, their bayonets pointing at Sharpe and Dubreton.
    ‘Jesus God.’ Sharpe’s voice was bitter.
    This inner cloister had once been beautiful. Water had been channelled through its court to form a maze of small, decorated canals. The shallow channels were brilliant with painted tiles, yet the water had long ceased to flow, the canals were broken, and the stones of the court were cracked.
    All that Sharpe saw in a few seconds, as he saw the thorn bushes that grew like weeds in one corner, the vines that straggled winter-dead up the fine, pale stonework, as he saw the soldiers on the courtyard below. They looked up and grinned at their audience. A brazier burned in the cloister’s centre, burned so that the air shimmered above it, and in the bright burning bayonets rested.
    A woman was tied on her back in the courtyard’s centre. Her wrists and ankles had been tied to iron pegs that had been driven between the cracked stones. She was naked to the waist. Her chest was bloody, black marks beneath the blood that trickled down her ribcage. Sharpe looked at Dubreton, fearful that this was his English wife, but the Frenchman gave the smallest shake of his head.
    ‘Watch, Sharpy.’ Hakeswill cackled behind them.
    One of the soldiers went to the brazier and, protecting his hand with a hank of rag, he took a bayonet from the names. He checked that the head was glowing hot, turned with it, and the woman began to jerk, to gasp in panic, and the soldier put his boot on her stomach, half-hiding his work, and the woman screamed. The red hot blade went down, the scream filled the cloister, and then the woman must have fainted. The soldier stepped away.
    ‘She tried to run away, Sharpy.’ Hakeswill’s breath was foul over Sharpe’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t like it with us, did she? Can you see what it says, Captain?’
    The smell of burned flesh came to the upper storey. Sharpe wanted to haul the great sword free of its scabbard, to give the edge its freedom on the bastards in this convent, but he knew he was powerless. His moment would come, but it was not now.
    Hakeswill laughed. ‘ Puta . That’s what it says. She’s Spanish, you see, Captain. Lucky she’s not English, isn’t it? Got another letter in English. Whore.’
    The woman was scarred for life, branded by evil. Sharpe supposed her to be one of the women from this village, or perhaps a visitor from another village who had tried to run down the long twisting road that led westward from the Gateway of God. It would be as hard to escape from Adrados as it would be to approach the Castle ramparts unseen.
    The soldiers pulled the pegs out of the ground, cut the bonds, and two of them dragged the woman across the stones and out of sight beneath the arches of the lower storey.
    Hakeswill had walked round the corner of the upper cloister so that he faced the two officers across the angle. He rested his hands on the stone balustrade and sneered at them. ‘We wanted you to see that so you know what will happen to your bitches if you try and come up here.’ The face twitched, the right hand pointed to the bloodstains by the brazier. ‘That!’ Two bayonets still rested in the fire. ‘You see, gentlemen, we have changed our mind. We like having the ladies here, so we’re bleeding keeping them. We don’t want you to have all