"He must have been captured by the rebels," Sharpe suggested mildly.

"If you were a rebel commander," Louisa observed icily, "and succeeded in capturing or killing the Spanish Captain-General, would you keep silent about your victory?"

"No," Sharpe admitted, for such a feat would encourage every rebel in South America and concomitantly depress all their Royalist opponents. He frowned. "Surely Don Bias had aides with him?"

"He had a small escort."

"Yet he was riding alone? In rebel country?" Sharpe's soldiering instincts, rusty as they were, rebelled at such a thought.

Louisa, who had rehearsed these questions and answers for weeks, shrugged. "They tell me that no rebels had been seen in those parts for many months. That Don Bias often rode ahead. He was impatient, you surely remember that?"

"But he wasn't foolhardy." A wasp crawled on the table and Sharpe slapped down hard. "The rebels have made no proclamations about Don Bias?"

"None!" There was despair in Louisa's voice. "And when I ask for information from our own army, I am told there is no information to be had. It seems that a Captain-General can disappear in Chile without a trace! I do not even know if I am a widow." She looked at Lucille. "I wanted to travel to Chile, but it would have meant leaving my children. Besides, what can a woman do against the intransigence of soldiers?"

Lucille shot an amused glance at Sharpe, then looked down again at her sewing.

"The army has told you nothing?" Sharpe asked in astonishment.

"They tell me Don Bias is dead. They cannot prove it, for they have never found his body, but they assure me he must be dead." Louisa said that the King had even paid for a Requiem Mass to be sung in Santiago de Compostela's great cathedral, though Louisa had shocked the royal authorities by refusing to attend such a Mass, claiming it to be indecently premature.