The Mother Superior turned away, her voice superb. ‘You cannot see her. Go away.’
She had reached a door and Sharpe feared breaking through another barrier in this place, for he needed all the time he could scrape together for his battle against El Matarife.
He ran forward, his boots loud on the chequered tiles, and the noise made the woman turn. For the first time she showed fear. It seemed for a moment that she would try to stop him as she lifted her thin hands from beneath the strip of white cloth that hung from her neck, but as he came close she twisted aside and snatched up a brass bell that stood on a dark oak table. Sharpe thought she was going to hit him with the bell, but instead she began to ring it. She fled from him, through the door, the bell clanging as a warning for the nuns to hide.
He followed. It was as if a wildcat had come into a hen run. He was on the top floor of a double cloister and the sound of the bell was driving white-robed women in desperate flight towards stairs and doors. Despite their panicked, fluttering scattering, they were all silent, only the clanging bell telling Sharpe that he had not been struck deaf as a punishment for his terrible sin. His was the only voice in the place. ‘Helene!’
There were a dozen doors to choose from. Somewhere in the recesses of the building the bell still clanged. He decided to follow it. ‘Helene! Helene!’
He found himself in a long corridor hung with huge, gloomy pictures that showed martyrs undergoing the kind of fate that the bell now warned the nuns against. The corridor smelt foully of soap.
He pushed open doors. In the chapel there was a huddle of nuns, their backs to him, their robes quivering as their hands counted beads. The candles flickered. ‘Helene?’
There was no answer. The bell still tolled. He ran down a flight of stairs and heard the soft sound of slippered feet fleeing on flagstones. He wondered who repaired the old buildings. Did the nuns plaster the walls and put up new beams? Perhaps men were allowed in to do the heavy work, just as a priest undoubtedly visited to give the sacraments. ‘Helene!’
He pushed open doors of empty cells, losing himself in the maze of small passages and musty rooms. He pushed open one door to find himself, aghast, in a bathroom. A woman, dressed in a white linen shift, sat in a tub of water. She stared at him, her mouth dropped, and he shut the door quickly before her scream deafened him.
He went through another door and found himself in a walled kitchen garden. The clouds were grey overhead. It had begun to rain, soaking some scrawny chickens who miserably flocked at one end of the walled garden. ‘Helene!’
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 your 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