The small man frowned. ‘A prisoner?’

‘You can hardly expect El Matarife not to have a welcome for you, Major? After all it’s not every day that a Frenchman comes here.’ The priest was enjoying the small Frenchman’s discomfiture. ‘And it might be wise to watch, Major? To refuse would be seen as an insult to his hospitality.’

‘God damn his hospitality,’ the small man said, but he stayed nonetheless.

He was not impressive to look at, this small Frenchman whose glasses chafed his skin, yet the appearance was deceptive. Pierre Ducos was called Major, though whether that was his real rank, or whether he held any rank in the French army at all, no one knew. He called no man ‘sir’, unless it was the Emperor. He was part spy, part policeman, and wholly politician. It was Pierre Ducos who had suggested the secret to his Emperor, and it was Pierre Ducos who must make the secret come true and thus win the war for France.

A fair-headed man, dressed only in a shirt and trousers, was pushed past the bulls’ carcasses. His hands were tied behind his back. He was blinking as though he had been brought from a dark place into the sudden daylight.

‘Who is he?’ Ducos asked.

‘One of the men he took at Salinas.’

Ducos grunted. El Matarife was a Partisan leader, one of the many who infested the northern hills, and he had lately surprised a French convoy and taken a dozen prisoners. Ducos pushed at the earpiece of his spectacles. ‘He took two women.’

‘He did,’ the priest said.

‘What happened to them?’

‘You care very much, Major?’

‘No.’ Ducos’ voice was sour. ‘They were whores.’

‘French whores.’

‘But still whores.’ He said it with dislike. ‘What happened to them?’

‘They ply their trade, Major, but their payment is life instead of cash.’