SHARPE’S
HONOUR
Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813
BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1986

Reprinted seven times

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1985

Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1985

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook Edition © July 2009 ISBN: 9780007338696

Version: 2017-05-06

This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Sharpe’s Honour is for Jasper Partington

and Shona Crawford Poole,

who marched from the very start

We’ll search every room for to find rich treasure,

And when we have got it we’ll spend it at leisure.

We’ll card it, we’ll dice it, we’ll spend without measure,

And when it’s all gone, bid adieu to all pleasure.

From: The Grenadier’s March (Anon), Quoted in THE RAMBLING SOLDIER, edited by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books, 1977.

‘Men huddled on hillsides, anxiously surveying the enemy guns trained against them and steeling themselves for some kind of counter-attack. They are beautifully observed and, in their evocation of quiet heroism, pulse with rare humanity’

Sunday Telegraph

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Epilogue

Historical Note

Sharpe’s Story

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

There was a secret that would win the war for France. Not a secret weapon, nor some surprise strategy that would send the enemies of France reeling in defeat, but a sleight of politics that would drive the British from Spain without a musket being fired. It was a secret that must be kept, and must be paid for.

To which end, on a pitiless winter’s day in 1813, two men climbed into the northern hills of Spain. Whenever the road forked they took the lesser path. They climbed by frost-hardened tracks, going ever higher into a place of rocks, eagles, wind, and cruelty, until at last, at a place where the far sea could be seen glittering beneath a February sun, they came to a hidden valley that smelt of blood.

There were sentries at the valley’s head; men wrapped in rags and pelts, men with muzzle-blackened muskets. They stopped the travellers, challenged them, then incongruously knelt to one of the horsemen, who, with a gloved hand, made a blessing over their heads. The two men rode on.

The smaller of the two travellers, the keeper of this secret of secrets, had a thin, sallow face that was pock-marked by the old scars of smallpox. He wore spectacles that chafed the skin behind his ears. He stopped his horse above a rock amphitheatre that had been made when this valley was mined for iron. He looked with his cold eyes at the scene below him. ‘I thought you didn’t fight the bulls in winter.’

It was a crude bullfight, nothing like the splendour of the entertainment provided in the barricaded plazas of the big cities to the south. Perhaps a hundred men cheered from the sides of the rock pit, while, beneath them, two men tormented a black, angry bull that was slick with the blood drawn from its weakened neck muscles. The animal was weak anyway, ill fed through the winter, and its charges were pitiful, easily evaded, and its end swift. It was not killed with the traditional sword, nor with the small knife plunged between its vertebrae, but by a pole-axe.

A huge man, clothed in leather beneath a cloak of wolf’s fur, performed the act. He swung the great axe, its blade glittering in the weak sun, and the animal tried to swerve from the blow, failed, and it bellowed one last useless challenge at the sky as the axe took its life and cut down, through bone and pipes and sinews and muscles, and the men about the rock pit cheered.

The small man, whose face showed distaste for what he saw, gestured at the axeman. ‘That’s him?’

‘That’s him, Major.’ The big priest watched the small, bespectacled man as if enjoying his reaction. ‘That’s El Matarife.’ The nickname meant ‘the Slaughterman’.

El Matarife was a frightening sight. He was big, he was strong, but it was his face that caused fear. He was bearded so thickly that his face seemed half man and half beast. The beard grew to his cheekbones, so that his eyes, small and cunning, appeared in a slit between beard and hair. It was a bestial face that now looked up, over the dead bull, to see the two horsemen above him. El Matarife bowed mockingly to them. The priest raised a hand in reply.

The men about the rock pit. Partisans who followed the Slaughterman, were calling for a prisoner. The carcass of the bull was being dragged up the rocks, going to join the three other dead animals that had left their blood on the white-frosted stone.

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’s 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.’

The fair-headed man had been taken to the base of the rock pit and there his arms were cut free. He flexed his fingers in the raw, cold air, wondering what was to happen to him in this place that stank of blood. There was a mood of expectant enjoyment among the spectators. They were quiet, but they grinned because they knew what was to happen.

A chain was tossed to the pit’s floor.

It lay there, links of rusting iron in the bull’s blood which had steamed in the cold. The prisoner shivered. He took a step back as a man picked up one end of the chain, but then submitted quietly as the links were tied to his left forearm.

The Slaughterman, his huge beard flecked with the blood of the bull, picked up the other end of the chain. He looped it about his own left arm and laughed at the prisoner. ‘I shall count the ways of your death, Frenchman.’

The French prisoner did not understand the Spanish words. He did understand, though, the knife that was tossed to him; a long, wicked-bladed knife that was identical to the weapon in the hands of El Matarife. The chain that linked the two men was ten feet long.

The priest smiled. ‘You’ve seen such a fight?’

‘No.’

‘There is a skill to it.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Ducos said drily.

The skill was all with the Slaughterman. He had fought the linked knife fight many times, and he feared no opponent. The Frenchman was brave, but desperate. His attacks were fierce, but clumsy. He was pulled off balance by the chain, he was tormented, he was cut, and with every slice of El Matarife’s knife the count was shouted out by the watching partisans. ‘Uno!’ greeted a slash that opened the Frenchman’s forehead to his skull. ‘Dos!’ saw his left hand slit between his fingers. The numbers mounted.

Ducos watched. ‘How long does it go on?’

‘Perhaps fifty cuts?’ The priest shrugged. ‘Maybe more.’

Ducos looked at the priest. ‘You enjoy it?’

‘I enjoy all manly pursuits, Major.’

‘Except one, priest,’ Ducos smiled.

Father Hacha looked back at the pit. The priest was a big man, as big as El Matarife himself. He showed no distress as the prisoner was slashed and cut and flayed. Father Hacha was, in many ways, an ideal partner to Major Pierre Ducos. Like the Frenchman he was part spy, part policeman, and wholly politician, except that his politics were those of the Church, and his skills were given to the Spanish Inquisition. Father Hacha was an Inquisitor.

‘Fourteen!’ the Partisans shouted, and Ducos, startled by the loudness of the shout, looked back at the pit.

El Matarife, who had not been touched by the prisoner’s knife, had, with exquisite skill, taken out his opponent’s left eye. El Matarife fastidiously wiped the tip of his blade on his leather sleeve. ‘Come, Frenchman!’

The prisoner had his left hand clapped over his ruined eye. The chain tightened, the links making a small noise in the pit, and the tension of the chain dragged his hand away from the blood and pain. He was shaking his head, half sobbing, knowing that the ways of his death would be long and painful. Such was always the death of the French when captured by the Partisans, and such were the deaths of the Partisans caught by the French.

The Frenchman pulled back on the chain, trying to resist the pressure, but he was powerless against the huge man. Suddenly the chain was thrashed, the Frenchman fell, and he was dragged about the floor of the pit like a landed fish. When the Spaniard paused, the Frenchman tried to get up, but a boot hammered into his left forearm, breaking the bones, and the pulling began again and the watching Partisans laughed at the squeals of pain as the chain pulled on the broken limb.

Ducos’s face showed nothing.

Father Hacha smiled. ‘You’re not upset, Major? He is your countryman.’

‘I hate all unnecessary cruelty.’ Ducos pushed again at the spectacles. These were new glasses, fetched from Paris. His old ones had been broken on Christmas Day by a British officer called Richard Sharpe. That insult still hurt Ducos, but he believed, with the Spanish, that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.

At the count of twenty, the Frenchman lost his right eye.

At the count of twenty-five, he was sobbing for mercy, unable to fight, his ragged, dirty trousers bright with new blood.

At the count of thirty, his breath misting as he sobbed, the prisoner was killed. El Matarife, disgusted with the lack of fight in the man, and bored with the entertainment, slit his throat, and went on cutting until the head came away in his hand. He threw the head to the dogs that had been beaten away from the dead bulls. He unwound the chain from his left forearm, sheathed the wet knife, and looked again at the two horsemen. He smiled at the priest. ‘Welcome, brother! What have you brought me?’

‘A guest.’ The priest said it forcibly.

El Matarife laughed. ‘Take him to the house, Tomas!’

Ducos followed the Inquisitor through rocks stained red by iron ore to a house built of stone with blankets for windows and doors. Within the house, warmed by a fire that filled the damp walls with smoke, a meal waited. There was stew of gristle and grease, loaves, wine, and goat’s cheese. It was served by a scared, thin-faced girl. El Matarife, bringing into the damp warmness of the small room the stink of fresh blood, joined them.

El Matarife clasped the priest in his arms. They were brothers, though it was hard to see how the same womb could have given birth to two such different men. They were alike in their size, but in nothing else. The Inquisitor was subtle, clever, and delicate where El Matarife was crude, boisterous, and savage. The Partisan leader was the kind of man despised by Pierre Ducos, who admired cleverness and hated brute strength, but the Inquisitor would not give the Frenchman his help unless his brother was taken into their confidence and used in their scheme.

El Matarife spooned the greasy stew into his mouth. Gravy dripped onto his huge beard. He looked with his small, red-rimmed eyes at Ducos. ‘You’re a brave man, coming here.’

‘I come with your brother’s protection.’ Ducos spoke Spanish perfectly, as he spoke a half dozen other languages.

El Matarife shook his head. ‘In this valley, Frenchman, you are under my protection.’

‘Then I am grateful.’

‘You enjoyed seeing your countryman die?’

Ducos kept his voice mild. ‘Who would not enjoy your skill?’

El Matarife laughed. ‘You’d like to see another die?’

‘Juan!’ The Inquisitor’s voice was loud. He was the elder brother, and his authority cowed El Matarife. ‘We have come for business, Juan, not pleasure.’ He gestured to the other men in the room. ‘And we will talk alone.’

It had not been easy for Pierre Ducos to come to this place, yet such was the state of the war that he had agreed to the Inquisitor’s demands.

Ducos had agreed to sit at this table with his enemy because the war had turned sour for France. The Emperor had invaded Russia with the greatest army of modern times, an army which, in one winter, had been destroyed. Now northern Europe threatened France. The armies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria scented victory. To fight them, Napoleon was taking troops from Spain, at the very time when the English General Wellington was increasing his forces. Only a fool was now confident of a French military victory in Spain, and Pierre Ducos was no fool. Yet if the army could not defeat the British, politics might.

The thin girl, shivering with fear of her master, poured raw wine into silver-mounted horn cups. The silver was chased with the wreathed ‘N’ of Napoleon, booty taken by the Slaughterman in one of his attacks on the French. Ducos waited until the girl had gone, then, in his quiet, deep voice, he spoke of politics.

In France, in the luxury of the chateau of Valençay, the Spanish King was a prisoner. To his people Ferdinand VII was a hero, the lost King, the rightful King, a symbol of their pride. They fought not just to expel the French invader, but to restore their King to his throne. Now Napoleon proposed to give them back their King.

El Matarife paused. He was slicing the goat’s cheese with the knife that had tormented and killed the prisoner. ‘Give him back?’ He sounded incredulous.

‘He will be restored to the throne,’ Ducos said.

Ferdinand VII, the Frenchman explained, would be sent back to Spain. He would be sent in majesty, but only if he signed the Treaty of Valençay. That was the secret; the Treaty, a treaty which, to Ducos’s clever mind, was an idea of genius. It declared that the state of war that had unfortunately arisen between Spain and France was now over. There would be peace. The French armies would withdraw from Spain and a promise would be made that hostilities would not be resumed. Spain would be a free, sovereign country with its own beloved King. Spanish prisoners in French camps would be sent home, Spanish trophies restored to their regiments, Spanish pride burnished by French flattery.

And in return Ferdinand had only to promise one thing; that he would end the alliance with Britain. The British army would be ordered to leave Spain, and if it hesitated then there would be no forage for its horses, food for its men, or ports for its supply ships. A starved army was no army. Without a shot being fired, Wellington would be forced from Spain and Napoleon could take every one of France’s quarter million soldiers in Spain and march them against the northern foes. It was a stroke of genius.

And, of necessity, a secret. If the British government even dreamed that such a treaty was being prepared then British gold would flow, bribes be offered, and the populace of Spain roused against the very thought of peace with France.

The Treaty, Ducos allowed, would not be popular in Spain. The common people, the peasants whose lands and women had been ravaged by the French, would not welcome a peace with their bitterest enemy. Only their beloved, absent King could persuade them to accept it, and their King hesitated.

Ferdinand VII wanted reassurance. Would the nobility of Spain support him? Would the Spanish Generals? What, most important of all, would the Church say? It was Ducos’s job to provide those answers for the King, and the man who would give Ducos those answers was the Inquisitor.

Father Hacha was clever. He had risen in the Inquisition by his cleverness, and he knew how to use the secret files that the Inquisition kept on all Spain’s eminent men. He could use his fellow Inquisitors in every part of Spain to collect letters from such men, letters that would be passed to the imprisoned Spanish King and assure him that a peace with France would be acceptable to enough nobles, churchmen, officers, and merchants to make the Treaty possible.

To all this El Matarife listened. He shrugged when the story finished, as if to suggest that such politics were not his business. ‘I am a soldier.’

Pierre Ducos sipped wine. A gust of wind lifted one of the damp blankets at a window and fluttered the tallow candle that lit their meal. He smiled. ‘Your family was rich once.’

El Matarife stabbed his cheese-flecked knife at the Frenchman. ‘Your troops destroyed our wealth.’

‘Your brother,’ and Ducos’s voice held a hint of mockery, ‘has put a price upon the assistance he will give me.’

‘A price?’ The bearded face smiled at the thought of money.

Ducos smiled back. ‘The price is the restoration of your family’s fortune, and more.’

‘More?’ El Matarife looked at his brother.

The priest nodded. ‘Three hundred thousand dollars, Juan.’

El Matarife laughed. He looked from his brother to the Frenchman and he saw that neither smiled, that the sum was true, and his laughter died. He stared belligerently at Ducos. ‘You’re cheating us, Frenchman. Your country will never pay that much. Never!’

‘The money will not come from France,’ Ducos said.

‘Where then?’

‘From a woman.’ Ducos spoke softly. ‘But first there has to be a death, then an imprisonment, and that, El Matarife, is your part of this.’

The Partisan leader looked at his brother for confirmation, received it, and looked back at the small Frenchman. ‘A death?’

‘One death. The woman’s husband.’

‘The imprisonment?’

‘The woman.’

‘When?’

Pierre Ducos saw the Partisan’s smile and felt the surge of hope. The secret would be safe and France saved. He would buy, with three hundred thousand Spanish dollars that were not his to spend, the future of Napoleon’s empire.

‘When?’ the Partisan asked again.

‘Spring,’ Ducos said. ‘This spring. You will be ready?’

‘So long as your troops leave me alone.’ El Matarife laughed.

‘That I promise.’

‘Then I will be ready.’

The bond was sealed by a handshake. The secret would be safe, the Treaty that would defeat Britain made, and, in the course of it, Pierre Ducos would accomplish his revenge on the Englishman who had broken his spectacles. When the spring came, and when the armies prepared to fight a war that would, within a year, be made redundant by the secret treaty, a man called Richard Sharpe, a soldier, would die.

CHAPTER ONE

Major Richard Sharpe, on a damp spring day when a cold wind whipped down a rocky valley, stood on an ancient stone bridge and stared at the road which led southwards to a low pass in the rocky crest. The hills were dark with rain.

Behind him, standing at ease, with their musket locks wrapped with rags and the muzzles plugged with corks to stop the rain soaking into the barrels, stood five companies of infantry.

The crest, Sharpe knew, was five hundred yards away. In a few moments there would be enemy on that crest and his job was to stop them crossing the bridge. A simple job, a soldier’s job. It was made easier because the spring of 1813 was late, the weather had brought these border hills nothing but rain, and the stream beneath the bridge was deep, fast, and impassable. The enemy would have to come to the bridge where Sharpe waited or not cross the watercourse at all.

‘Sir?’ D’Alembord, Captain of the Light Company, sounded apprehensive, as if he did not want to provoke Major Sharpe’s ill temper.

‘Captain?’

‘Staff officer coming, sir.’

Sharpe grunted, but said nothing. He heard the hooves slow behind him, then the horse was in front of him and an excited cavalry Lieutenant was looking down on him. ‘Major Sharpe?’

A pair of dark eyes, hard and angry, looked from the Lieutenant’s gilt spurs, up his boots, up the rich, mud-spattered, blue woollen cloak till they met the excited staff officer’s eyes. ‘You’re in my way, Lieutenant.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

The Lieutenant hastily moved his horse to one side. He had ridden hard, making a circuit of difficult country, and was proud of his ride. His mare was restless, matching the rider’s exhilarated mood. ‘General Preston’s compliments, sir, and the enemy is coming your way.’

‘I’ve got picquets on the ridge.’ Sharpe said it ungraciously. ‘I saw the enemy a half-hour since.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sharpe stared at the ridge. The Lieutenant was wondering whether he ought to quietly ride away when suddenly the tall Rifleman looked at him again. ‘Do you speak French?’

The Lieutenant, who was nervous of meeting Major Richard Sharpe for the first time, nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘How well?’

The cavalryman smiled. ‘Très bien, Monsieur, je parle …’

‘I didn’t ask for a goddamned demonstration! Answer me.’

The Lieutenant was horrified by the savage reproof. ‘I speak it well, sir.’

Sharpe stared at him. The Lieutenant thought that this was just such a stare that an executioner might give a plump and once-privileged victim. ‘What’s your name, Lieutenant?’

‘Trumper-Jones, sir.’

‘Do you have a white handkerchief?’

This conversation, Trumper-Jones decided, was becoming increasingly odd. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’ Sharpe looked back to the ridge, and to the saddle among the rocks where the road came over the skyline.

This had become, he was thinking, a bastard of a day’s work. The British army was clearing the roads eastward from the Portuguese frontier. They were driving back the French outposts and prising out the French garrisons, making the roads ready for the army’s summer campaign.

And on this day of fitful rain and cold wind five British Battalions had attacked a small French garrison on the River Tormes. Five miles behind the French, on the road that would be their retreat, was this bridge. Sharpe, with half a Battalion and a Company of Riflemen had been sent by a circuitous night march to block the retreat. His task was simple; to stop the French long enough to let the other Battalions come up behind and finish them off. It was as simple as that, yet now, as the afternoon was well advanced, Sharpe’s mood was sour and bitter.

‘Sir?’ Sharpe looked up. The Lieutenant was offering him a folded linen handkerchief. Trumper-Jones smiled nervously. ‘You wanted a handkerchief, sir?’

‘I don’t want to blow my nose, you fool! It’s for the surrender!’ Sharpe scowled and walked two paces away.

Michael Trumper-Jones stared after him. It was true that fifteen hundred French were approaching this small force of less then four hundred men, but nothing that Trumper-Jones had heard of Richard Sharpe had prepared him for this sudden willingness to surrender. Sharpe’s fame, indeed, had reached England, from whence Michael Trumper-Jones had so recently sailed to join the army, and the closer he had come to the battle lines, the more he had heard the name. Sharpe was a soldier’s soldier, a man whose approval was eagerly sought by other men, whose name was used as a touchstone of professional competence, and apparently a man who now contemplated surrender without a fight.

Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones, appalled at the thought, looked surreptitiously at a face made dark by sun and wind. It was a handsome face, marred only by a scar that pulled down Sharpe’s left eye to give him a mocking, knowing expression. Trumper-Jones did not know it, but that scar-pulled expression would disappear with a smile.

What astonished Trumper-Jones most was that Major Richard Sharpe bore no marks of rank, neither sash nor epaulettes; indeed nothing except the big battered cavalry sword at his side indicated that he was an officer. He looked, Trumper-Jones thought, the very image of a man who had taken the first French Eagle captured by the British, who had stormed the breach at Badajoz, and charged with the Germans at Garcia Hernandez. His air of confidence made it hard to believe that he had started his career in the ranks. It made it even harder to believe that he would surrender his outnumbered men without a fight.

‘What are you staring at, Lieutenant?’

‘Nothing, sir.’ Trumper-Jones had thought Sharpe was watching the southern hills.

Sharpe was, but he had become aware of the Lieutenant’s gaze, and he resented it. He hated being pointed out, being watched. He was comfortable these days only with his friends. He was also aware that he had sounded unnecessarily harsh to the young cavalry officer. He looked up at him. ‘We counted three guns. You agree?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Four-pounders?’

‘I think so, sir.’

Sharpe grunted. He watched the crest. He hoped the two questions would make him appear friendlier to the officer, though in truth Sharpe did not feel friendly to any strangers these days. He had been oppressed since Christmas, swinging between violent guilt and savage despair because his wife had died in the snows at the Gateway of God. Unbidden into his mind came the sudden picture of the blood at her throat. He shook his head, as if to drive the picture away. He felt guilty that she had died, he felt guilty that he had been unfaithful to her, he felt guilty that her love had been so badly returned, he felt guilty that he had let his daughter become motherless.

He had become poor through his guilt. His daughter, still not two years old, was growing up with her uncle and aunt, and Sharpe had taken all his savings, that he had stolen from the Spanish government in the first place, and given them to Antonia, his daughter. He had nothing left, except his sword, his rifle, his telescope, and the clothes on his back. He found himself resenting this young staff officer with his expensive horse and gilt scabbard furnishings and new leather boots.

There was a murmur in the ranks behind him. The men had seen the small figures who suddenly appeared on the southern crest. Sharpe turned round. ‘’Talion!’ There was silence. ‘’Talion! ’Shun!’

The men’s boots crashed on the wet rocks. They were in two ranks, stretched across the mouth of the small valley which carried the road northwards.

Sharpe stared at them, knowing their nervousness. These were his men, of his Battalion, and he trusted them, even against this outnumbering enemy. ‘Sergeant Huckfield!’

‘Sir!’

‘Raise the Colours!’

The men, Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones thought, grinned most unfittingly for such a solemn moment, then he saw why. The ‘Colours’ were not the usual flags of a Battalion, instead they were scraps of cloth that had been tied to two stripped birch trunks. The rain made them hang limp and flat, so that from any distance it was impossible to see that the flags were nothing more than two cloaks tricked out with yellow facings torn from the jackets of the soldiers. At the head of the two staffs were wrapped more of the yellow cloth to resemble, at least at a distance, the crowns of England.

Sharpe saw the staff officer’s surprise. ‘Half Battalions don’t carry Colours, Mr Trumper-Jones.’

‘No, sir.’

‘And the French know that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So what will they think?’

‘That you have a full Battalion, sir?’

‘Exactly.’ Sharpe looked back to the south, leaving Michael Trumper-Jones curious as to why this deception was a necessary preliminary to surrender. He decided it was best not to ask. Major Sharpe’s face discouraged casual questions.

And no wonder, for Major Richard Sharpe, as he stared at the southern ridge, was thinking that this river valley was a miserable, unfitting, and stupid place to die. He wondered, sometimes, if in death he would meet Teresa again, would see her thin, bright face that had always smiled a welcome; a face that, as her death receded, had lost the detail in his memory. He did not even have a picture of her, and his daughter, growing up in her Spanish family, had no picture of her mother or her father.

The army, Sharpe knew, would march away from Spain one day, and he would march with it, and his daughter would be left to life, just as he had been left orphaned as a small child. Misery begets misery, he thought, and then he remembered the consolation that Antonia’s uncle and aunt were better, more loving parents than he could have been.

A gust of wind slapped rain over the valley, obscuring the view and hissing on the stones of the bridge. Sharpe looked up at the mounted staff officer. ‘What do you see, Lieutenant?’

‘Six horsemen, sir.’

‘They haven’t got cavalry?’

‘Not that we saw, sir.’

‘That’s their infantry officers then. Buggers will be planning our deaths now.’ He smiled sourly. He wished this weather would end, that the sun would warm the land and push the memory of winter far behind him.

Then the skyline, where it was crossed by the road, was suddenly thick with the blue uniforms of the French. Sharpe counted the companies as they marched towards him. Six. They were the vanguard, the men who would be ordered to rush the bridge, but not till the French guns had been fetched into place.

That morning Sharpe had borrowed Captain Peter d’Alembord’s horse and had ridden the French approach route a dozen times. He had put himself into the place of the opposing commander and had argued with himself until he was certain what the enemy would do. Now, as he watched, they were doing it.

The French knew that a large British force was behind them. They dared not leave the road, abandoning their guns to take to the hills, for then they would be meat for the Partisans. They would want to blast away this road-block swiftly, and their tools for the job would be their guns.

A hundred and fifty yards beneath the crest, where the road twisted for the last time towards the valley floor, there was a flat platform of rock that would make an ideal artillery platform. From there the French could plunge their canisters into Sharpe’s two ranks, could twitch them bloody, and when the British were scattered and torn and wounded and dying, the infantry would charge the bridge with their bayonets. From the convenient rock platform the French guns could fire over the heads of their own infantry. The platform was made for the task, so much so that Sharpe had put a working party there this morning and made them clear the space of the boulders that might inconvenience the gunners.

He wanted the French guns there. He had invited the French to put their guns there.

He watched the three gun teams inch their way down the steep road. Infantrymen helped brake the wheels. Lower and lower they came. It was possible, he knew, that the guns might be brought to the flat land across from the bridge, but to stop that he had posted his handful of Riflemen from the South Essex Light Company on the river bank. The French would have seen them there, would fear the spinning accuracy of the bullets, and would, he hoped, choose to place the guns out of the rifles’ range.

They so chose. Sharpe watched with relief as the teams swung onto the platform, as the weapons were unlimbered, and as the ready ammunition was brought forward.

Sharpe turned. ‘Unstop your muzzles!’ The two redcoated ranks pulled the corks from their musket barrels and unwrapped the damp rags from the locks. ‘Present!’

The muskets went into the men’s shoulders. The French would see the movement. The French feared the speed of British musket fire, the well-drilled rhythm of death that had scoured so many battlefields of Spain.

Sharpe turned away from his men. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘Sir?’ Michael Trumper-Jones answered in a squeak. He tried again in a deeper voice. ‘Sir?’

‘Tie your handkerchief to your sabre.’

‘But, sir …’

‘You will obey orders, Lieutenant.’ It was not said so loudly as to reach any ears other than Trumper-Jones’s, but the words were harshly chilling.

‘Yes, sir.’

The six attack companies of the French were two hundred and fifty yards away. They were in column, their bayonets fixed, ready to come forward when the guns had done their work.

Sharpe took the telescope from his haversack, extended the tubes, and looked at the guns. He could see the canisters, the tin cans that spread their balls in a fan of death, being carried to the muzzles of the three guns.

This was the moment when he hated being a Major. He must learn to delegate, to let other men do the dangerous, hard work, yet at this moment, as the French gunners made the last adjustments to the gun trails, he wished he was with the Company of Riflemen that he had been given for this day’s work.

The first canister was pushed into a barrel.

‘Now, Bill!’ Sharpe said it aloud. Michael Trumper-Jones wondered if he was supposed to reply and decided it was best to say nothing.

To the left of the road, from the high rocks that dominated the track, white puffs of smoke appeared. Seconds later came the crack of the rifles. Already three of the gunners were down.

It was a simple ambush. A company of Riflemen hidden close to where the guns would be forced to unlimber. It was a ploy Sharpe had used before; he supposed he would use it again, but it always seemed to work.

The French were never ready for Riflemen. Because they did not use rifles themselves, preferring the smoothbore musket that fired so much quicker, they took no precautions against the green-jacketed men who used cover so skilfully, and who could kill at three or four hundred paces. Half the gunners were down now, the rocks were thick with rifle smoke, and still the cracks sounded and the bullets spun into the gun teams. The Riflemen, changing their positions to aim past the smoke of their previous shots, were shooting the draught horses so the guns could not be moved and killing the gunners so the immobilised guns could not be fired.

The enemy rearguard that was on the road behind the guns was doubled forward. They were formed beneath the rocks and ordered upwards, but the rocks were steep and the Riflemen nimbler than their heavily laden opponents. The French attack did, at least, stop the Riflemen firing at the gunners, and those artillerymen who survived crawled out from the shelter of their limbers to continue the loading.

Sharpe smiled.

There was a man in those hills called William Frederickson, half German, half English, and as fearsome a soldier as any Sharpe knew. He was called Sweet William by his men, perhaps because his eye patch and scarred face were so horrid. Sweet William let the surviving gunners uncover themselves, then he ordered the Riflemen to the right of the road to open fire.

The last gunners dropped. The Riflemen, reacting to Frederickson’s shouts, switched their aim to the mounted officers of the infantry. The enemy, by a few, well-aimed rifle shots, had been denied artillery and thrown into sudden chaos. Now was the time for Sharpe to unleash his other weapon. ‘Lieutenant?’

Michael Trumper-Jones, who was trying to hide the damp white flag that drooped from his sabre tip, looked at Sharpe. ‘Sir?’

‘Go to the enemy, Lieutenant, give them my compliments, and suggest that they lay down their weapons.’

Trumper-Jones stared at the tall, dark-faced Rifleman. ‘That they surrender, sir?’

Sharpe frowned at him. ‘You’re not suggesting that we surrender, are you?’

‘No, sir.’ Trumper-Jones shook his head a little too emphatically. He was wondering how to persuade fifteen hundred Frenchmen to surrender to four hundred wet, disconsolate British infantrymen. ‘Of course not, sir.’

‘Tell them we’ve got a Battalion in reserve here, that there’s six more behind them, that we’ve got cavalry in the hills, that we’ve got guns coming up. Tell them any goddamned lie you like! But give them my compliments and suggest that enough men have died. Tell them they have time to destroy their Colours.’ He looked over the bridge. The French were scrambling up the rocks, yet still enough rifle shots, muffled by the damp air, sounded to tell Sharpe that men died wastefully in the afternoon. ‘Go on, Lieutenant! Tell them they have fifteen minutes or I will attack! Bugler?’

‘Sir?’

‘Sound the Reveille. Keep it sounding till the Lieutenant reaches the enemy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The French, warned by the bugle, watched the lone horseman ride towards them with his white handkerchief held aloft. Politely, they ordered their own men to cease firing at the elusive Riflemen in the rocks.

The smoke of the fight drifted away in a shower of windblown rain as Trumper-Jones disappeared into a knot of French officers. Sharpe turned round. ‘Stand easy!’

The five companies relaxed. Sharpe looked to the river bank. ‘Sergeant Harper!’

‘Sir!’ A huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, came from the bank. He was one of the Riflemen who, with Sharpe, had been stranded in this Battalion of redcoats as part of the flotsam of war. Although the South Essex wore red and carried the short-range musket, this man, like the other Riflemen of Sharpe’s old Company, still wore the green uniform and carried the rifle. Harper stopped by Sharpe. ‘You think the buggers will give in?’

‘They haven’t got any choice. They know they’re trapped. If they can’t get rid of us within the hour, they’re done for.’

Harper laughed. If any man was a friend of Sharpe’s it was this Sergeant. They had shared every battlefield together in Spain and Portugal, and the only thing that Harper could not share was the guilt that haunted Sharpe since his wife’s death.

Sharpe rubbed his hands against the unseasonal cold. ‘I want some tea, Patrick. You have my permission to make some.’

Harper grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’ He spoke with the raw accent of Ulster.

The tea was still warm in Sharpe’s cupped hands when Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones returned with the French Colonel. Sharpe had already ordered the fake Colours to be lowered and now he went forward to meet his forlorn enemy. He refused to take the man’s sword. The Colonel, who knew he could not take this bridge without his guns, agreed to the terms. He took consolation, he said, in surrendering to a soldier of Major Sharpe’s repute.

Major Sharpe thanked him. He offered him tea.

Two hours later, when General Preston arrived with his five Battalions, puzzled because he had heard no musketry ahead of him, he found fifteen hundred French prisoners, three captured guns, and four wagons of supplies. The French muskets were piled on the roadway. The plunder they had brought from their garrisoned village was in the packs of Sharpe’s men. Not one of the South Essex, nor one of Frederickson’s Riflemen, was even wounded. The French had lost seven men, with another twenty-one wounded.

‘Congratulations, Sharpe!’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Officer after officer offered him congratulations. He shook them off. He explained that the French really had no choice, they could not have broken his position without guns, yet still the congratulations came until, shy with embarrassment, he walked back to the bridge.

He crossed the seething water and found the South Essex’s Quartermaster, a plump officer named Collip who had accompanied the half Battalion on its night-time march.

Sharpe backed Collip into a cleft of the rocks. Sharpe’s face was grim as death. ‘You’re a lucky man, Mr Collip.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Collip looked terrified. He had joined the South Essex only two months before.

‘Tell me why you’re a lucky man, Mr Collip?’

Collip swallowed nervously. ‘There’ll be no punishment, sir?’

‘There never would have been any punishment, Mr Collip.’

‘No, sir?’

‘Because it was my fault. I believed you when you said you could take the baggage off my hands. I was wrong. What are you?’

‘Very sorry, sir.’

In the night Sharpe and his Captains had gone ahead with Frederickson’s Riflemen. He had gone ahead to show them the path they must take, and he had left Collip, with the Lieutenants, to bring the men on. He had gone back and discovered Collip at the edge of a deep ravine that had been crossed with harsh difficulty. Sharpe had led the Riflemen over, climbing down one steep bank, wading an ice-cold stream that was waist deep with the water of this wet spring, then scrambling up the far bank with dripping, freezing clothes.

When he returned for the five companies he had found failure waiting for him.

Mr Collip, Quartermaster, had decided to make the crossing easier for the redcoats. He had made a rope out of musket slings, a great loop that could be endlessly pulled over the chasm, and on the rope he had slung across the ravine all the men’s weapons, packs, canteens, and haversacks. On the last pass the knotted slings had come undone and all the South Essex’s musket ammunition had gone down into the stream.

When the French approached the bridge only Sharpe’s Riflemen had ammunition. The French could have taken the bridge with one volley of musketry because Sharpe had nothing with which to oppose them.

‘Never, Mr Collip, ever, separate a man from his weapons and ammunition. Do you promise me that?’

Collip nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘I think you owe me a bottle of something, Mr Collip.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

‘Good day, Mr Collip.’

Sharpe walked away. He smiled suddenly, perhaps because the clouds in the west had parted and there was a sudden shaft of red sunlight that glanced down to the scene of his victory. He looked for Patrick Harper, stood with his old Riflemen, and drank tea with them. ‘A good day’s work, lads.’

Harper laughed. ‘Did you tell the bastards we didn’t have any ammunition?’

‘Always leave a man his pride, Patrick.’ Sharpe laughed. He had not laughed often since Christmas.

But now, with this first fight of the new campaign, he had survived the winter, had made his first victory of the spring, and he looked forward at last to a summer untrammelled by the griefs and tangles of the past. He was a soldier, he was marching to war, and the future looked bright.

CHAPTER TWO

On a day of sunshine, when the martins were busy making their nests in the old masonry of Burgos Castle, Major Pierre Ducos stared down from the ramparts.

He was hatless. The small west wind lifted his black hair as he stared into the castle’s courtyard. He fidgeted with the earpieces of his spectacles, wincing as the curved wire chafed his sore skin.

Six wagons were being dragged over the cobbles. The wagons were huge, lumbering fourgons, each pulled by eight oxen. Tarpaulins covered their loads, tarpaulins roped down and bulging with cargo. The tired oxen were prodded to the far end of the courtyard where the wagons, with much shouting and effort, were parked against the keep’s wall.

The wagons had an escort of cavalrymen who carried bright-bladed lances from which hung red and white pennants.

The garrison of the castle watched the wagons arrive. Above their heads, at the top of the keep, the tricolour of France flapped sullenly in the wind. The sentries stared out across the wide countryside, wondering whether the war would once again lap against this old Spanish fortress that guarded the Great Road from Paris to Madrid.

There was a rattle of hooves in the gateway and Pierre Ducos saw a bright, gleaming carriage come bursting into the courtyard. It was drawn by four white horses that were harnessed to the splinter-bar with silver trace chains. The carriage was driven too fast, but that, Ducos decided, was typical of the carriage’s owner.

She was known in Spain as La Puta Dorada, ‘the Golden Whore’.

Beside the carriage, where it stopped beneath Ducos’s gaze, was a General of cavalry. He was a youngish man, the very image of a French hero, whose gaudy uniform was stiffened to carry the weight of his medals. He leaped from his horse, waved the coachmen aside, and opened the carriage door and let down the steps with a flourish. He bowed.

Ducos, like a predator watching its victim, stared at the woman.

She was beautiful, this Golden Whore. Men who saw her for the first time hardly dared believe that any woman was so beautiful. Her skin was as white and clear as the white pearl shells of the Biscay beaches. Her hair was golden. An accident of lip and bone, of eye and skin had given her a look of innocence that made men wish to protect her. Pierre Ducos could think of few women so little in need of protection.

She was French. She was born Helene Leroux and she had served France since her sixteenth year. She had slept in the beds of the powerful and brought from their pillows the secrets of their nations, and when the Emperor had taken the decision to annex Spain to his Empire, he had sent Helene as his weapon.

She had pretended to be the daughter of victims of the Terror. She had married, on instructions from Paris, a man close to the Spanish King, a man privy to the secrets of Spain. She was still married, though her husband was far off, and she bore the title that he had given her. She was the Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba. She was lovely as a summer dream and as treacherous as sin. She was La Puta Dorada.

Ducos smiled. A hawk, high above its victim, might have felt the same satisfaction that the bespectacled French Major felt as he ordered his aide to send his compliments to the Marquesa with a request, which, from Pierre Ducos, was tantamount to an order, that her Ladyship come to his presence immediately.

La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba, smelling of rosewater and smiling sweetly, was ushered into Major Ducos’s bare room an hour later. He looked up from the table. ‘You’re late.’

She blew a kiss from her lace-gloved hand and walked past him to the bastion. ‘The country looks very pretty today. I asked your deliciously timid Lieutenant to fetch me some wine and grapes. We could eat out here, Pierre. Your skin needs some sun.’ She shaded her face with a parasol and smiled at him. ‘How are you, Pierre? Dancing the night away, as ever?’

He ignored her mockery. He stood in the doorway and his deep voice was harsh. ‘You have six wagons in this fortress.’

She pretended awe. ‘Has the Emperor made you his wagonmaster, Pierre? I must congratulate you.’

He took a folded piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket. ‘They are loaded with gold and silver plate, paintings, coins, tapestries, statues, carvings, and a wine cellar packed in sawdust. The total value is put at three hundred thousand Spanish dollars.’ He stared at her in silent triumph.

‘And some furniture, Pierre. Did your spy not find the furniture? Some of it’s rather valuable. A very fine Moorish couch inlaid with ivory, a japanned éscritoire that you’d like, and a mirrored bed.’

‘And doubtless the bed in which you persuaded General Verigny to guard your stolen property?’ General Verigny was the cavalry officer whose men had guarded the wagons on their journey from Salamanca.

‘Stolen, Pierre? It all belongs to me and my dear husband. I merely thought that while Wellington threatens to defeat us I would remove our few household belongings into France. Just think of me as a simple refugee. Ah!’ She smiled at Ducos’s aide who had brought a tray on which stood an opened bottle of champagne, a single glass, and a dish of white grapes. ‘Put it on the parapet, Lieutenant.’

Scowling, Ducos waited till his aide had gone. ‘The property is loaded on French army wagons.’

‘Condemned wagons, Pierre.’

‘Condemned by General Verigny’s Quartermaster.’

‘True.’ She smiled. ‘A dear man.’

‘And I will countermand his condemnation.’

She stared at him. She feared Pierre Ducos, though she would not give him the satisfaction of showing her fear. She recognised the threat that he offered her. She was running from Spain, running from the victory that Wellington threatened, and she was taking the wealth with her that would make her independent of whatever tragedies befell France. Now Ducos menaced that independence. She plucked a grape from the bunch. ‘Tell me, Pierre, do you order your breakfast with a threat? If you want something of me, why don’t you just ask? Or is it that you want to share my plunder?’

He scowled at that. No one could accuse Pierre Ducos of greed. He changed the subject. ‘I wanted to know how you felt about your husband returning from America.’

She laughed. ‘You want me to go back to his bed, Pierre? Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough for France?’

‘Does he still love you?’

‘Love? What an odd word from you, Pierre.’ She stared up at the tricolour. ‘He still wants me.’

‘He knows you’re a spy?’

‘I’m sure someone’s told him, aren’t you? But Luis doesn’t take women seriously, Pierre. He’d think I was a spy because I was unhappy without him. He thinks that once he’s back and I’m neatly tucked up beneath his glass dome then everything will be all right again. He can grunt all over me and then weep to his confessor. Men are so stupid.’

‘Or do you choose stupid men?’

‘What a boudoir conversation we are having.’ She smiled brilliantly at him. ‘So what do you want, Pierre?’

‘Why has your husband come home?’

‘He doesn’t like the climate in South America, Pierre. It gives him wind, he says. He suffers from wind. He once had a servant whipped who laughed when he broke it.’

‘He’s gone to Wellington.’

‘Of course he has! Luis is Spain’s new hero!’ She laughed. Her husband had led a Spanish army against rebels in the Banda Oriental, the area of land north of the River Plate. The rebels, seeing Spain humiliated by France, were trying to wrest their independence from the Spanish. To the Marquesa’s surprise; indeed, to the surprise of many people, the Marqués had defeated them. She flicked a grape pip over the parapet. ‘He must have outnumbered them by a hundred to one! Or perhaps he broke wind in their faces? Do you think that’s the answer, Pierre? A grape?’ She smiled at his silence and poured herself champagne. ‘Tell me why you summoned me here with your usual charm and consideration.’

‘Your husband wants you back?’

‘You know he does. I’m sure you intercept all his letters. His lust exceeds his patriotism.’

‘Then I want you to write a letter to him.’

She smiled. ‘Is that all? One letter? Do I get to keep my wagons then?’ She asked the question in a small girl’s voice.

He nodded.

She watched him, suspecting a bargain so easily made. Her voice was suddenly hard. ‘You’ll let me move my property to France for one letter?’

‘One letter.’

She shrugged. ‘You’ll give me papers?’

‘Of course.’

She sipped the champagne. ‘What do I write?’

‘Inside.’

He had written the letter and she had only to copy it onto the writing paper that bore the crest of her husband’s family. She admired Ducos’s efficiency in stealing the paper so that it was prepared for her. He gave her the only chair in the room, a freshly cut quill, and ink. ‘Do improve the phrasing, Helene.’

‘That won’t be difficult, Pierre.’

The letter told a harrowing tale. It replied to a letter from the Marqués and said that she wanted nothing more than to join him, that her joy at his return had filled her with longing and expectation, but that she feared to come to him so long as he was under Wellington’s command.

She feared because there was an English officer who had pursued her most vilely, insulted her and her husband, who had heaped every indignity upon her. She had complained, she said, to the English Generalisimo, yet nothing could be done because the offending officer was a friend of Wellington’s. She feared for her virtue, and until the officer was removed from Spain she feared to come to her husband’s side. The officer, she wrote, had already attempted to violate her once, in which attempt he had been defeated only by his drunkenness. She did not feel safe while the vile man, Major Richard Sharpe, lived. She signed the letter, carefully dabbing drops of champagne onto the ink so that the writing appeared tear-stained, then smiled at Ducos. ‘You want them to fight a duel?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed. ‘Richard will slaughter him!’

‘Of course.’

She smiled. ‘Tell me, Pierre. Why do you want Richard to kill my husband?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

If her husband, a Grandee of Spain and a sudden, unlikely hero, was killed by an Englishman, then the fragile alliance between Spain and England would be stretched dangerously. The alliance was one of expedience. The Spanish had no love for the English. They resented that they needed a British army to expel the French. It was true that they had made Wellington the Generalisimo of all their armies, but that was a recognition of his talent, and the necessity of the act had only made their need of him more apparent. She watched Ducos dry the ink with sand. ‘You do know that there won’t be a duel, don’t you?’

‘There won’t?’ He shook the sand onto the floor.

‘Arthur won’t allow them.’ ‘Arthur’ was Wellington. ‘What will you do then, Pierre?’

He ignored the question. ‘You know this could be Major Sharpe’s death warrant?’

‘Yes.’

‘It doesn’t worry you?’

She smiled prettily. ‘Richard can look after himself, Pierre. The gods smile on him. Besides, I’m doing this for France, am I not?’

‘For your wagons, dear Helene.’

‘Ah yes. My wagons. When do I get my pass for them?’

‘For the next convoy north.’

She nodded and stood up. ‘You really believe they’ll fight, Pierre?’

‘Does it matter?’

She smiled. ‘I’d rather like to be a widow. A rich widow. La Viuda Dorada.’

‘Then you must hope Major Sharpe obliges you.’

‘He always has in the past, Pierre.’ She filled the room with her perfume.

He folded the letter. ‘Are you fond of him?’

She put her head to one side and seemed to think about it. ‘Yes. He has the virtue of simplicity, Pierre, and loyalty.’

‘Hardly your tastes, I would have thought?’

‘How little you know my tastes, Pierre. Am I dismissed? May I return to my pleasures?’

‘Your seal?’

‘Ah.’ She took off a ring that she wore above her lace glove and handed it to him. He pressed it into hot wax and gave the signet back to her.

‘Thank you, Helene.’

‘Don’t thank me, Pierre.’ She stared at him with a slight, mocking smile on her face. ‘Do you open the Emperor’s letters to me, Pierre?’

‘Of course not.’ He frowned at such a thought, while inside he was wondering how Napoleon sent such letters so that they avoided his men.

‘I thought not.’ She licked her lips. ‘You know he’s still fond of me.’

‘I believe he stays fond of all his lovers.’

‘You’re so very sweet, Pierre.’ She turned her folded parasol in her hands. ‘You know he thinks of me as quite an expert on Spanish matters? He asks my advice even?’

‘So?’ Ducos stared at her.

‘I must congratulate you, Pierre. I told the Emperor that your idea for the Treaty was magnificent.’ She smiled at the shock on his face. ‘Truly, Pierre! Magnificent. That was the very word I used. Of course, I told him we might beat Wellington first, but if we didn’t? Magnificent!’ She smiled a victor’s smile. ‘So you’re not going to stop my little wagons crossing the border, are you?’

‘I have already made my promise.’

‘But to whom, sweet little Pierre? To whom?’ She said the last two words as she opened the door. She smiled again. ‘Good day, Major. It was such a small pleasure.’

He listened to her heels on the stone of the passage and felt bitterly angry. Napoleon, always a fool for a pair of legs in a bed, had told the Golden Whore about Valençay? And now she dared to threaten him? That if her puny wagons did not reach France then she would betray her country by revealing the Treaty’s existence?

He walked onto the ramparts. The letter she had written was in his hand, and it was the key to the Treaty. Today he would give it to the Inquisitor, and tomorrow the Inquisitor, with his brother, would start the journey westwards. Within three days, he decided, the matter would be irreversible, and within another two weeks he would sew up that pretty mouth for ever.

He watched her greet General Verigny beneath him, watched her climb with the General into her carriage, and he thought with what joy he would see that whore brought low. She dared to threaten him? Then she would live to regret the threat throughout eternity.

He turned back to his office. He would defy her. He would save France, defeat Britain, and dazzle the world with his cleverness. For a few seconds, standing with his back to the magnificent view from Burgos’s ramparts, he imagined himself as the new Richelieu, the new bright star in France’s glory. He could not lose, he knew it, for he had calculated the risks, and he would win.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Tents!’ Sharpe spat the word out. ‘Goddamned bloody tents!’

‘For sleeping in, sir.’ Sergeant Patrick Harper kept a rigidly straight face. The watching men of the South Essex grinned.

‘Bloody tents.’

‘Clean tents, sir. Nice and white, sir. We could make flower gardens round them in case the lads get homesick.’

Sharpe kicked one of the enormous canvas bundles. ‘Who needs goddamned tents?’

‘Soldiers, sir, in case they get cold and wet at night.’ Harper’s thick Ulster accent was rich with amusement. ‘I expect they’ll give us beds next, sir, with clean sheets and little girls to tuck us up at night. And chamberpots, sir, with God save the King written on their rims.’

Sharpe kicked the heap of tents again. ‘I’ll order the Quartermaster to burn them.’

‘He can’t do that, sir.’

‘Of course he can!’

‘Signed for, sir. Any loss will be deducted from pay, sir.’

Sharpe prowled round the great heap of obscene bundles. Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, stupid things, the Horse Guards had sent tents! Soldiers had always slept in the open! Sharpe had woken in the morning with his hair frozen to the ground, had woken with his clothes sopping wet, but he had never wanted a tent! He was an infantryman. An infantryman had to march, and march fast, and tents would slow them down. ‘How are we supposed to carry the bloody things?’

‘Mules, sir, tent mules. One to two companies. To be issued tomorrow, sir, and signed for.’

‘Jesus wept!’

‘Probably because he didn’t have a tent, sir.’

Sharpe smiled, because he was enjoying himself, but this sudden arrival of tents from headquarters posed problems he did not need. The tents would need five mules to carry them. Each mule could carry two hundred pounds, plus thirty more pounds of forage that would keep the animal alive for six days. If they marched on a campaign like last summer’s then he would have to assume that forage would be short and extra mules would have to carry extra forage. But the extra mules would need feed too, which meant more mules still, and if he assumed a march of six weeks then that was nine hundred extra pounds of forage. That would need four to five more mules, but those mules would need an extra seven hundred pounds of feed which would mean four more mules, who would also need forage; and so on, until the ridiculous but accurate conclusion was reached that it would take fourteen extra mules simply to keep the five tent-carrying mules alive! He kicked another tent. ‘Christ, Patrick! It’s ridiculous!’

It was three days since the French had surrendered to them in the hills. They had marched north from the bridge, suddenly leaving the approaches to Salamanca and coming into an area of hills and bad tracks. Waiting for them was the bulk of the army, and a white-grey pile of goddamned tents. Sharpe scowled. ‘We’ll leave them in store.’

‘And have them stolen, sir?’

Sharpe swore. What Harper meant, of course, was that the storekeeper would sell the tents to the Spanish, claim that they were stolen, and have them charged to the Battalion’s accounts. ‘You know the storekeeper?’

‘Aye.’ Harper sounded dubious.

‘How much?’

‘Handful.’

Sharpe swore again. He could doubtless get five pounds out of the Battalion accounts to bribe the storekeeper, but the job would be a nuisance. ‘He’s no friend of yours, this storekeeper?’

‘He’s from County Down.’ Harper said it meaningfully. ‘Sell his own bloody mother for a shilling.’

‘You’ve got nothing on the bastard?’

‘No.’ Harper shook his head. ‘He’s tighter than an orangeman’s drum.’

‘I’ll get you the handful.’ He could sell one of the mules that would arrive tomorrow, claim it died of glanders or God knows what, and see if anyone dared question him. He shook his head in exasperation, then grinned at the big Sergeant. ‘How’s your woman?’

‘Grand, sir!’ Harper beamed. ‘Blooming, so she is. I think she’d like to cook you one of those terrible meals.’

‘I’ll come for one this week.’ Isabella was a small, dark Spanish girl whom Harper had rescued from the horror at Badajoz. Ever since that terrible night she had loyally followed the Battalion, along with the other wives, mistresses and whores who formed a clumsy tail to every marching army. Sharpe suspected that Harper would be marrying before the year’s end.

The huge Irishman pushed his shako back and scratched at his sandy hair. ‘Did your dago find you, sir?’

‘Dago?’

‘Officer; a real ribbon-merchant. He was sniffing about this morning, so he was. Looked as if he’d lost his purse. Grim as a bloody judge.’

‘I was here.’

Harper shrugged. ‘Probably wasn’t important.’

But Sharpe was frowning. He did not know why, but his instinct, that kept him alive on the battlefield, was suddenly warning him of trouble. The warning was sufficient to destroy the small moment of happiness that insulting the tents had given him. It was as if, on a day of hope and peace, he had suddenly smelt French cavalry. ‘What time was he here?’

‘Sunrise.’ Harper sensed the sudden alertness. ‘He was just a young fellow.’

Sharpe could think of no reason why a Spanish officer should want to see him, and when something had no reason, it was liable to be dangerous. He gave the tents a parting kick. ‘Let me know if you see him again.’

‘Aye, sir.’ Harper watched Sharpe walk towards the Battalion’s headquarters. He wondered why the mention of the gaudy-uniformed Spaniard had plunged Sharpe into such sudden tenseness. Perhaps, he thought, it was just more of Sharpe’s guilt and grief.

Harper could understand grief, but he sensed that Sharpe’s mood was not simple grief. It seemed to the big Irishman that his friend had begun to hate himself, perhaps blaming himself for his wife’s death and the abandonment of his child. Whatever it was, Harper thought, he hoped that soon the army would march against the French. By that bridge, when the infantrymen had not a shot between them, Harper had seen the old energy and enthusiasm. Whatever Sharpe’s sadness was, it had not stopped his ability to fight.

‘He needs a good battle,’ he said to Isabella that night.

She made a scornful sound. ‘He needs another wife.’

Harper laughed. ‘That’s all you women think about. Marriage, marriage, marriage!’ He had been drinking with the other Sergeants of the Battalion and had come back late to find the food she had cooked for him spoilt.

She pushed the burnt eggs about the pan as if hoping that by rearranging them she would improve their looks. ‘And what’s wrong with marriage?’

Harper, who could sense marriage on his own horizon, decided that discretion was the best part of valour. ‘Nothing at all. Have you got any bread?’

‘You know I have. You fetch it.’

There were limits to discretion, though. A man’s job was not to fetch bread, or be on time for a meal, and Harper sat silent as Isabella grumbled about the billet and as she complained to him about the landlady, and about Sergeant Pierce’s wife who had stolen a bucket of water, and told him that he should see a priest before the campaign began so as to make a good confession. Harper half listened to it all. ‘I smell trouble ahead.’

‘You’re right.’ Isabella scooped the eggs onto a tin plate. ‘Big trouble if you don’t fetch the bread.’ When she spoke English she did it with a northern Irish accent.

‘Fetch it yourself, woman.’

She said something that Harper’s Spanish was not good enough to understand, but went to the corner of the room and unearthed the hidden loaf. ‘What kind of trouble, Patrick?’

‘He’s bored.’

‘The Major?’

‘Aye.’ Harper deigned to cut the loaf with his rifle’s bayonet. ‘He’s bored, my love, and when he’s bored he gets into trouble.’

Isabella poured the ration wine. ‘Rainbows?’

Harper laughed. He was fond of saying that Major Sharpe was always chasing the pot of gold that lay at the end of every rainbow. He found the pots often enough, but, according to Harper, he always discarded them because the pots were the wrong shape. ‘Aye. The bugger’s chasing rainbows again.’

‘He should get married.’

Harper kept a diplomatic silence, but his instinct, like Sharpe’s, suddenly sensed danger. He was remembering Sharpe’s sudden change of mood that day when he had mentioned the ribbon-merchant, and Harper feared because he knew Richard Sharpe was capable of chasing rainbows into hell itself. He looked at his woman, who waited for a word of praise, and smiled at her. ‘You’re right. He needs a woman.’

‘Marriage,’ she said tartly, but he could see she was pleased. She pointed her spoon at him. ‘You look after him, Patrick.’

‘He’s big enough to look after himself.’

‘I know big men who can’t fetch bread.’

‘You’re a lucky woman, so you are.’ He grinned at her, but inside he was wondering just what it was that had alarmed Sharpe. Like the prospect of marriage that he sensed for himself, he sensed trouble coming for his friend.

‘Ah, Sharpe! No problems? Good!’ Lieutenant Colonel Leroy was pulling on thin kid-leather gloves. He had been a Major till a few weeks before, but now the loyalist American had achieved his ambition to command the Battalion. The glove on his right hand hid the terrible burn scars that he had earned a year before at Badajoz. Nothing could hide the awful, puckered, distorting scar that wrenched the right side of his face. He looked into the morning sky. ‘No rain today.’

‘Let’s hope not.’

‘Tent mules coming today?’

‘So I’m told, sir.’

‘God knows why we need tents.’ Leroy stooped to light a long, thin cigar from a candle that, on his orders, was kept alight in Battalion headquarters for just this purpose. ‘Tents will just soften the men. We might as well march to war with milkmaids. Can you lose the bloody things?’

‘I’ll try, sir.’

Leroy put on his bicorne hat, pulling the front low to shadow his thin, terrible face. ‘What else today?’

‘Mahoney’s taking Two and Three on a march. Firing practice for the new draft. Parade at two.’

‘Parade?’ Leroy, whose voice still held the flat intonation of his native New England, scowled at his only Major. Joseph Forrest, the Battalion’s other Major, had been posted to the Lisbon Staff to help organise the stores that poured into that port. ‘Parade?’ Leroy asked. ‘What goddamned parade?’

‘Your orders, sir. Church parade.’

‘Christ, I’d forgotten.’ Leroy blew smoke towards Sharpe and grinned. ‘You take it, Richard, it’ll be good for you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Well, I’m off!’ Leroy sounded pleased. He had been invited to Brigade headquarters for the day and was anticipating equal measures of wine and gossip. He picked up his riding crop. ‘Make sure the parson gives the buggers a rousing sermon. Nothing like a good sermon to put men in a frog-killing mood. I hear there was a ribbon-merchant looking for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He never found me.’

‘Well tell him “no”, whatever he wants, and borrow money off him.’

‘Money?’

Leroy turned in the doorway. ‘The adjutant tells me you owe the Mess sixteen guineas. True?’ Sharpe nodded and Leroy pointed the riding crop at him. ‘Pay it, Richard. Don’t want you dying and owing the goddamn Mess money.’ He walked into the street to his waiting horse, and Sharpe turned to the table of paperwork that waited for him.

‘What the devil are you grinning at?’

Paddock, the Battalion clerk, shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir.’

Sharpe sat to the pile of work. Paddock, he knew, was grinning because Leroy had told Sharpe to pay his debts, but Sharpe could not pay them. He owed the laundry-woman five shillings, the sutler two pounds, and Leroy, quite rightly, was demanding that Sharpe buy a horse. As a Captain, Sharpe had not wanted a horse, preferring to stay on his boots like his men, but as a Major the added height would be useful on a battlefield, as would the added speed. But a good horse was not to be had for under a hundred and thirty pounds and he did not know where the funds were to come from. He sighed. ‘Can’t you forge my bloody signature?’

‘Yes, sir, but only on pay forms. Tea, Major?’

‘Any breakfast left?’

‘I’ll go and look, sir.’

Sharpe worked through the papers. Equipment reports and weekly reports and new standing orders from Brigade and Army. There was the usual warning from the Chaplain-General to keep an eye on subversive Methodists that Sharpe threw away, and a General Order from Wellington that reminded officers that it was mandatory to remove the hat when the Host was being carried by a priest through a street to a dying man. Do not upset the Spanish was the message of that order and Sharpe noted its receipt and wondered again who the ribbon-merchant was.

He signed his name three dozen times, abandoned the rest of the paperwork, and went out into the spring sunlight to check the picquets and watch the recruits, shipped out from England, fire three rounds of musket fire. He listened to the officer of the day’s usual complaint about the ration beef and dodged round the back of the houses to avoid the Portuguese sutler who was looking for his debtors. The sutler sold tobacco, tea, needles, thread, buttons, and the other small necessities of a soldier’s life. The South Essex’s sutler, who had a small stable of ugly whores, was the richest man with the Battalion.

Sharpe avoided the man. He wondered if the sutler would buy the tent mule, though he knew the man would only pay half value. Sharpe would be lucky to get fifteen pounds from the sutler, less the two pounds he owed and less the five pounds to bribe the storekeeper. Paddock, the clerk, would have to be bribed into silence. Sharpe supposed he would get seven or eight pounds from the deal, enough to keep the Mess happy. He swore. He wished the army was marching and fighting, too busy to worry about such small things as unpaid bills.

The fight at the bridge had been a false alarm. He guessed that it had been meant as a feint, a means to persuade the French that the British were retracing last year’s steps and marching on Salamanca and Madrid. Instead the Battalion had force-marched north to where the main part of the British army gathered. The French were guarding the front door into Spain and Wellington was planning to use the back. But let it start soon, Sharpe prayed. He was bored. Instead of fighting he was worrying about money and having to organise a church parade.

The General had ordered that all Battalions that lacked their own chaplain should receive one sermon at least from a priest borrowed from another unit. Today it was the turn of the South Essex and Sharpe, sitting on Captain d’Alembord’s spare horse, stared at the ten companies of the South Essex as they faced the man of God. Doubtless they were wondering why, after years free of such occasions, they should suddenly be hectored by a bald, plump man telling them to count their blessings. Sharpe ignored the sermon. He was wondering how to persuade the sutler to buy a mule when the man already had a half-dozen to carry his wares.

Then the ribbon-merchant came.

The Reverend Sebastian Whistler was enumerating God’s blessings; fresh bread, mothers, newly brewed tea, and such like, when Sharpe saw the eyes of the Battalion look away from the preacher. He looked himself and saw, coming to the field where the church parade was tactfully held away from Spanish Catholic eyes, two Spanish officers and a Spanish priest.

The ribbon-merchant rode ahead of his two companions. He was a young man uniformed so splendidly, so gaudily, that he had earned the nickname given by the British troops to any fine dandy. The young man wore a uniform of pristine white, laced with gold, decorated with a blue silken sash on which shone a silver star. His coat was edged with scarlet, the same colour as his horse’s leather bridle. Hanging from his saddle was a scabbard decorated with precious stones.

The Battalion, ignoring the Reverend Sebastian Whistler’s injunctions that they should be content with their humble lot and not covet wealth that would only lead them into temptation, watched the superbly uniformed man ride behind the preacher and pause a few paces from Sharpe.

The other two Spaniards reined in fifty yards away. The priest, mounted on a big, fine bay, was dressed in black, a hat over his eyes. The other man, Sharpe saw, was a General, no less. He was a burly, tall Spaniard in gold-laced finery who seemed to stare fixedly at the Rifle officer.

The young man in the gorgeous white uniform had a thin, proud face with eyes that looked disdainfully at the Englishman. He waited until the sermon was finished, until the RSM had brought the parade to attention and shouldered its muskets, then spoke in English. ‘You’re Sharpe?’

Sharpe replied in Spanish. ‘Who are you?’

‘Are you Sharpe?’

Sharpe knew from the ribbon-merchant’s deliberate rudeness that his instinct had been right. He had sensed trouble, but now that it was here he did not fear it. The man spoke with scorn and hatred in his voice, but a man, unlike a formless dread, could be killed. Sharpe turned away from the Spaniard. ‘Regimental Sergeant Major!’

‘Sir?’

‘A general officer is present! General salute!’

‘Sir!’ RSM MacLaird turned to the parade, filled his lungs, and his shout bellowed over the field. ‘’Talion! General salute!’

Sharpe watched the muskets fall from the shoulders, check, slam over the bodies, then the right feet went back, the officers’ swords swept up, and he turned and smiled at the Spaniard. ‘Who are you?’

The Spanish General, Sharpe saw, returned the salute. MacLaird shouted the shoulder arms and turned back to Sharpe. ‘Dismiss, sir?’

‘Dismiss the parade, Sergeant Major.’

The white-uniformed Spaniard spurred his horse forward into Sharpe’s line of vision. ‘Are you Sharpe?’

Sharpe looked at him. The man’s English was good, but Sharpe chose to reply in Spanish. ‘I’m the man who’ll slit your throat if you don’t learn to be polite.’ He had spoken softly and he saw his words rewarded by a tiny flicker of fear in the man’s face. This officer was covering his nervousness with bravado.

The Spaniard straightened in his saddle. ‘My name is Miguel Mendora, Major Mendora.’

‘My name is Sharpe.’

Mendora nodded. For a second or two he said nothing, then, with the speed of a scorpion striking, he lashed with his right hand to strike Sharpe a stinging blow about the face.

The blow did not land. Sharpe had fought in every gutter from London to Calcutta and he had seen the blow coming. He had seen it in Mendora’s eyes. He swayed back, letting the white-gloved hand go past. He saw the anger in the Spaniard, while inside himself he felt the icy calm that came to him in battle. He smiled. ‘I have known piglets with more manhood than you, Mendora.’

Mendora ignored the insult. He had done what he was ordered to do and survived. Now he looked to his right to see the dismissed soldiers straggling towards him. They had seen him try to strike their officer, and their mood was at once excited and belligerent. Mendora looked back to Sharpe. ‘That was from my master.’

‘Who is?’

Mendora ignored the question. ‘You will write a letter of apology to him, a letter that he will use as he sees fit. After that, as you are no gentleman, you will resign your commission.’

Sharpe wanted to laugh. ‘Your General is who?’

Major Mendora tossed his head. ‘The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’

And suddenly the memory of that flawless beauty that masked the flawed woman flooded into him so that the excitement came searing back. Helene! It was with Helene that he had betrayed Teresa, and he knew that the revenge for that betrayal had come to this field. He wanted to laugh aloud. Helene! Helene of the hair of gold, of the white skin on her black sheets, the woman who had used him in the service of death, but who, he thought, had perhaps loved him a little.

He stared past Mendora at the General. He had thought, from Helene’s description, that her husband would be a short, fat man. Fat he was, but it was a burly, muscular fatness. He looked tall. The excitement was still on Sharpe. The Marquesa was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, a woman he had loved for a season, then lost. He had thought her gone forever, but now here was her husband back from the Spanish colonies with the horns on his head. Sharpe smiled at Mendora. ‘How have I offended your master?’

‘You know how, señor.’

Sharpe laughed. ‘You call me señor? You’ve found your manners?’

‘Your answer, Major?’

So the Marqués knew he had been cuckolded? But why in God’s name pick on Sharpe? There must be a half-Battalion of men he would have to fight to retrieve his honour that had been held so lightly by Helene. Sharpe smiled. ‘You will get no letter from me, Major, nor my resignation.’

Mendora had expected the answer. ‘You will name me your second, señor?’

‘I don’t have a second.’ Sharpe knew that Wellington had forbidden all duels. If he took the risk, that was his foolishness, but he would not risk another man’s career. He looked at the Marqués, judging that such a heavy-set man would be slow on his feet. ‘I choose swords.’

Mendora smiled. ‘My master is a fine swordsman, Major. You will stand more chance with a pistol.’

The soldiers were gawping up at the two mounted officers. They sensed, even though they could not hear the words, that something dramatic took place.

Sharpe smiled. ‘If I need advice how to fight, Major, I will seek it from a man.’

Mendora’s proud face looked with hatred at the Englishman, but he held his temper. ‘There is a cemetery on the southern road, you know it?’

‘I can find it.’

‘My master will be there at seven this evening. He will not wait long. I hope your courage will be sufficient for death, Major.’ He turned his horse, looking back at Sharpe. ‘You agree?’

‘I agree.’ Sharpe let him turn away. ‘Major!’

‘Señor?’

‘You have a priest with you?’

The Spaniard nodded. ‘You’re very observant for an Englishman.’

Sharpe deliberately switched back into English. ‘Make sure he knows the prayer for the dead, Spaniard.’

A shout came from the watching men. ‘Kill the bugger, Sharpie!’

The shout was taken up, grew louder, and some wit began shouting ‘a ring! a ring!’, the usual cry when a fight broke out in Battalion lines. Sharpe saw the look of fury cross Mendora’s face, then the Spaniard put his spurs to his horse and galloped it at a knot of men who scattered from his path and jeered at his retreating back. The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba and his attendant priest galloped after him.

Sharpe ignored the shouts of the men about him. He watched the three Spaniards go and he knew, on pain of losing all that he had gained in this army, that he should not go to the cemetery and fight the duel. He would be cashiered; he would be lucky, if he won, not to be accused of murder.

On the other hand, there was the memory of La Marquesa, of her skin against the sheets, her hair on the pillow, her laughter in the shadowed bedroom. There was the thought that the Spanish Major had tried to strike him. There was his boredom, and his inability to refuse a challenge. And, above all, there was the sense of unfinished business, of a guilt that demanded its price, of a guilt that ordered him to pay that price. He shouted at the men for silence and looked through the ragged crowd of soldiers to find the man he wanted. ‘Harps!’

Patrick Harper pushed through the men and stared up at Sharpe. ‘Sir?’

Sharpe took the sword from his slings. It was a sword that Sergeant Harper had re-fashioned for him while Sharpe lay in Salamanca’s hospital. It was a cheap blade, one of many made in Birmingham for Britain’s Heavy Cavalry, nearly a yard of heavy steel that was clumsy and ill-balanced except in the hands of a strong man.

Sharpe tossed the sword to the Irishman. ‘Put an edge on it for me, Harps. A real edge.’

The men cheered, but Harper held the sword unhappily. He looked up at Sharpe and saw the madness on the dark, scarred face.

Sharpe remembered a face of delicate beauty, the face of a woman whom the Spanish now called the Golden Whore. Sharpe knew he could never possess her, but he could fight for her. He could give up all for her, what else was a warrior to do for a beauty? He smiled. He would fight for a woman who was known to be treacherous, and because, in an obscure way that he did not fully understand, he thought that this challenge, this duel, this risk was some expiation for the guilt that racked him. He would fight.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘You’re slow, Sharpe, very slow.’ Captain Peter d’Alembord, who had taken Sharpe’s place as Captain of the Light Company, had run his slim sword past Sharpe’s guard and now the tip quivered an inch beneath the silver whistle holstered on Sharpe’s cross belt. D’Alembord, an impressively elegant and slim man, had volunteered, with some diffidence, to ‘put Sharpe over the jumps’. He had also scouted the opposition and his news was grim. ‘It seems the Marqués is rather good.’

‘Good?’

‘Took lessons in Paris from Bouillet. They say he could beat him. Still, not to worry. Old Bouillet must have been getting on, perhaps he was slow.’ D’Alembord smiled, stepped back, and raised his sword. ‘En garde?’

Sharpe laughed. ‘I’ll just hack the bugger to bits.’

‘Hope springs eternal, my dear Sharpe. Do raise your blade, I’m going to pass it on the left. With some warning you might just be able to stop me. Engage.’

The blades rattled, scraped, disengaged, clanged, and suddenly, with eye-defeating speed, d’Alembord had passed Sharpe’s guard on the left and his sword was poised again to split Sharpe’s trunk. Captain d’Alembord frowned. ‘If I darken my hair with lamp black, Sharpe, and paint a scar on my face, I might just pass for you. It’s really your best hope of survival.’

‘Nonsense. I’ll chop the bastard into mincemeat.’

‘You seem to forget that he has handled a sword before.’

‘He’s old, he’s fat, and I’ll slaughter him.’

‘He’s not yet fifty,’ d’Alembord said mildly, ‘and don’t be fooled by that waist. The fastest swordsman I ever saw was fatter than a hogshead. Why didn’t you choose pistols? Or twelve-pounder cannons?’

Sharpe laughed and hefted his big, straight sword. ‘This is a lucky blade.’

‘One sincerely hopes so. On the other hand, finesse is usually more useful than luck in a duel.’

‘You’ve fought a duel?’

D’Alembord nodded. ‘Rather why I’m here, Sharpe. Life got a little difficult.’ He said it lightly, though Sharpe could guess the ruin that the duel had meant for d’Alembord. Sharpe had been curious as to why the tall, elegant, foppish man had joined a mere line regiment like the South Essex. D’Alembord, with his spotless lace cuffs, his silver cutlery and crystal wine glasses that were carefully transported by his servant from camp ground to camp ground, would have been more at home in a Guards regiment or a smart cavalry uniform.

Instead he was in the South Essex, seeking obscurity in an unfashionable regiment while the scandal blew itself out in England, and an example to Sharpe of how a duel could blight a career. Sharpe smiled. ‘I suppose you killed your man?’

‘Didn’t mean to. Meant to wing him, but he moved into the blade. Very messy.’ He sighed. ‘If you would deign to hold that thing more like a sword and less like a cleaving instrument, one might hold out a morsel of hope. Part of the object of the exercise is to defend one’s body. Mind you, it’s quite possible that he’ll faint with horror when he sees it. It’s positively medieval. It’s hardly an instrument for fencing.’

Sharpe smiled. ‘I don’t fence, d’Alembord. I fight.’

‘I’m sure it’s vastly unpleasant for your opponent. I shall insist on coming as your second.’

‘No seconds.’

D’Alembord shrugged. ‘No gentleman fights without a second. I shall come. Besides, I might be able to persuade you not to go through with this.’

Sharpe was sheathing his sword on which Harper had put a wicked cutting edge. ‘Not to go through with it?’

D’Alembord pushed open the door of the stable yard where, to the amusement of the officers’ servants and grooms, they had been practising. ‘You’ll be sent home in disgrace, Sharpe. The Peer will have your guts for breakfast tomorrow.’

‘Wellington won’t know about it.’

D’Alembord looked pityingly on his superior officer. ‘Half the bloody army knows, my dear Sharpe. I can’t think why you accepted! Is it because the man struck you?’

Sharpe said nothing. The truth was that his pride had been offended, but it was more than that. It was his stubborn superstition that Fate, the soldier’s goddess, demanded that he accept. Besides, he did it for the Marquesa.

D’Alembord sighed. ‘A woman, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

The Light Company Captain smoothed a wrinkle in his sleeve. ‘When I fought my duel, Sharpe, I later discovered that the woman had put us up to it. She was watching, it turned out.’

‘What happened?’

The elegant shoulders shrugged. ‘After I skewered him she went back to her husband. It was all rather tedious and unnecessary. Just as I’m sure this duel is unnecessary. Do you really insist on this duel, Sharpe?’

‘Yes.’ Sharpe would not explain, was not even sure he could explain the tangle of guilt, just, pride and superstition that drove him to folly. Instead he sat and shouted for the Mess servant to bring tea. The servant was a Spaniard who brewed tea foully.

‘I’ll have rum. Has it occurred to you,’ and d’Alembord leaned forward with a small frown of embarrassment on his face, ‘that some people are joining this regiment simply because you’re in it?’

Sharpe frowned at the words. ‘Nonsense.’

‘If you insist, my dear Sharpe, but it is true. There’s at least two or three young fire-eaters who think you’ll lead them to glory, such is your reputation. They’ll be very sad if they discover your paths of glory lead but to a lady’s bedchamber.’ He said the last words with a wry inflexion that hinted to Sharpe that it was a quotation that he ought to know. Yet Sharpe had not learned to read till he was well into his twenties; he had read few books, and none of them poetry.

‘Shakespeare?’ he guessed.

‘Thomas Gray, dear Sharpe. “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” I hope it’s not true, for you.’ He smiled. What his smile did not tell Sharpe was that Captain d’Alembord, who was an efficient, sensible man, had already tried to make sure that this folly did not lead Sharpe either to a grave or to disgrace. D’Alembord had sent Lieutenant Harry Price on one of his own fastest horses to find Colonel Leroy, fetch him back to Battalion, and order Sharpe not to fight the Spaniard. If Major Richard Sharpe was idiotic enough to will his own destruction by fighting a duel against Wellington’s express orders, then Captain d’Alembord would stop him. He prayed that Harry Price would reach Brigade in time, then took his glass of rum from the steward and raised it to Richard Sharpe. ‘To your cleaver, Sharpe, may it hew mightily.’

‘May it kill the bastard!’ Sharpe sipped his tea. ‘And I hope it hurts.’

They went on horseback to the cemetery to outdistance the curious troops of the South Essex who wanted to follow and watch their Major skewer the Spanish aristocrat. D’Alembord, a natural horseman, led Sharpe on a circuitous route. Sharpe, once again mounted on one of d’Alembord’s spare horses, wondered whether he should accept the younger man’s advice and turn back.

He was behaving stupidly and he knew it. He was thirty-six years of age, a Major at last, and he was throwing it all away for mere superstition. He had joined the army twenty years before, straggling with a group of hungry recruits to escape a murder charge. From that inauspicious beginning he had joined that tiny band of men who were promoted from Sergeant into the Officers’ Mess. He had done more. Most men promoted from the ranks ended their days as Lieutenants, supervising the Battalion stores or in charge of the drill-square. Most such men, Wellington claimed, ended as drunkards. Yet Sharpe had gone on rising. From Ensign to Lieutenant, Lieutenant to Captain, and Captain to Major, and men looked at him as one of the few, the very very few, who might rise from the ranks to lead a Battalion.

He could lead a Battalion, and he knew it. The war was not over yet. The French might be retreating throughout Europe, but no enemy army had yet pierced the French frontier. Even if this year’s campaign was as successful as last year’s, and pushed the French back to the Pyrenees, then there would be hard fighting if, unlike last year, the British were to force their way through those cold, high mountains. Fighting in which Lieutenant Colonels would die and leave their Battalions to new commanders.

Yet he risked it all. He twisted his horse through bright-leaved ash trees on a hill top that overlooked their destination, and he thought of the Marquesa, of her eyes on him, and he knew that he risked all for one woman who played with men, and for another who was dead. None of it made sense, he was simply driven by a soldier’s superstition that said not to do this thing was to risk oblivion.

D’Alembord curbed his horse at the hill’s edge. ‘Dear God!’ He pulled a cigar from his boot-top, struck a light with his flint and steel, and jerked his head at the valley. ‘Looks like a day at the races!’

The cemetery, in Spanish fashion, was a walled enclosure built well away from the town. The hugely thick walls, divided into niches for the dead, were thronged with men. There were the colours of the uniforms of Spain and Britain, the Spanish to the west and north, the British to the south and east, sitting and standing on the wall as though they waited for a bullfight. D’Alembord twisted in his saddle. ‘I thought this was supposed to be private!’

‘So did I.’

‘You can’t go through with it, Sharpe!’

‘I have to.’ He wondered whether another man, an old friend like Major Hogan or Captain Frederickson, could have persuaded him to stop this idiocy. Perhaps, because d’Alembord was a newcomer to the Battalion, and was a man of that easy elegance which Sharpe envied, Sharpe was trying to impress him.

D’Alembord shook his head. ‘You’re mad, sir.’

‘Maybe.’

The Captain blew smoke into the evening sky and pointed with his cigar at the sun which was low in the west. He shrugged, as though accepting the inevitability of the fight. ‘You’ll face up north and south, but he’ll try to manoeuvre you so the sun is in your eyes.’

‘I’d thought of that.’

D’Alembord ignored the ungracious acceptance of his advice. ‘Assume we’ll start with you in the south.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s where the British troops are, and that’s where you’ll go to strip off your jacket.’

Somehow Sharpe had not realised how formal this would be, that he would take off his prized Rifleman’s jacket and fight in his grubby shirt. ‘So?’

‘So he’ll be attacking your left, trying to make you go right. He’ll feint right and thrust left. He’ll be expecting you to do the opposite. If I were you, I’d make your feint your attack.’

Sharpe grinned. He had always intended to take fencing lessons, but somehow there had never seemed to be time. In battle a man did not fence, he fought. The most delicate swordsman on a battlefield was usually overwhelmed by the anger of bayonets and savage steel, yet this evening there would be no madness beneath the battlesmoke, just cold skill and death. ‘The last time I fought a skilled swordsman I won.’

‘You did?’ D’Alembord smiled in mock surprise.

‘I got him to run his blade through my thigh. That trapped it and I killed him.’

D’Alembord stared at the Major, whose fame had reached Britain, and saw that he had been told the truth. He shuddered. ‘You are mad.’

‘It helps when you’re fighting. Shall we go down?’

D’Alembord was searching the cemetery and roadway for a sign of Lieutenant Price bringing Colonel Leroy to the duel, but he could see no horsemen. He shrugged inwardly. ‘To our fate, sir, to our fate.’

‘You don’t have to come, d’Alembord.’

‘True, sir. I shall say I was a mere innocent misled by you.’ He spurred his horse down the pastureland of the hillside.

Sharpe followed. It was a beautiful evening, a promise of summer in the blossoms beneath his horse’s hooves and in the warm fragrant air. There was a scattering of high mackerel clouds in the west, each tiny cloud touched with pink as though they were puffs of cannon smoke drifting over a burning field.

The men sitting on the cemetery wall saw the two horsemen coming, recognised the green jacket, and a yell went up as though Sharpe was a prizefighter coming to hammer out a hundred bloody rounds with his naked fists. To his right, coming from the town, he saw a dark coach, windows curtained, and on its doorway, too far away to distinguish the details, was a coat of arms.

He knew that escutcheon. It had been quartered and requartered over the years as the family of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had married more wealth and privilege until now, as the nineteenth century began, the crest was a patchwork of the history of the Spanish nobility. And into that family, marrying the childless widower who had been close to the Spanish throne, had come the golden-haired woman who was a traitor. La Marquesa. She would be pleased, Sharpe thought, to know that two men would face each other with drawn swords on her account.

The cheers were echoed by jeers from the Spaniards as he ducked under the arched gateway of the cemetery. The shadows of the carved graves were long. Flowers wilted in earthenware pots. An old lady, swathed and scarved in black, ignored the unseemly noise that sullied her family’s resting place.

D’Alembord led Sharpe to the south side of the burial ground where they dismounted. The British troops, mixed with some of the tough soldiers of the King’s German Legion, shouted at Sharpe to kill the dago, to teach the bastard a lesson, and then Sharpe heard the far side of the cemetery erupt into celebration and he turned to see his opponent walk into the burial ground. The Marqués had his long sword tucked in Spanish fashion beneath his arm. The priest was beside him, while Major Mendora walked behind. The old woman knelt to the priest who made the sign of the cross over her then touched her scarved head.

D’Alembord smiled at Sharpe. ‘I shall go and make polite conversation. Try and persuade them to back down.’

‘They won’t.’

‘Of course not. Fools never do.’ D’Alembord shrugged and walked towards the party of Spaniards. Major Mendora, the Marqués’s second, came to meet him.

Sharpe tried to ignore the cheering, the insults, and the shouts. There was no turning back now. In less time than it took the sun to go down, he had changed his life. He had accepted the challenge and nothing would be the same again. Only by walking away now, by refusing to fight, could he save his career. Yet to do that was to lose his pride, and deny fate.

He drew the great sword, and the action provoked another huge cheer from his supporters. Some of the South Essex, he saw, had managed to get to the place and were pushing for room on the wall’s broad top. They cheered as he raised the sword and as the sunlight ran up the steel. With this blade, he thought, he had killed La Marquesa’s brother. Was he now to kill her husband?

He looked up. The Marqués had taken off his gold-encrusted jacket. He flexed his sword, the steel moving like a whip. He was a big man, heavily muscled, strong enough to carry his huge weight lightly. Sharpe had still not seen the man’s face. He had often wondered who it was that Helene had married. He remembered that she had often spoken of her husband’s piety. That, Sharpe thought, explained the tall priest who leaned in urgent conversation towards the Marqués.

D’Alembord turned and paced the weed-grown path towards Sharpe. ‘You’ll face north. The fight ends with death or if, in the opinion of the seconds, one man is too badly hurt to continue. Satisfied?’

Sharpe nodded. The evening was warm. He could feel the sweat prickling beneath his shirt. He handed d’Alembord his sword, undid his belt, then peeled off his jacket. He thought suddenly that the fine linen shirt he wore had been a gift from the Marquesa. He took his sword back and held it up to the sun as though some ancient god would bless it and bring him success. ‘Now?’

‘It seems as good a time as any.’

He walked forward, his tall French boots crunching on the stones of the path. They would fight where the paths crossed at the graveyard’s centre, where the Marqués would try to turn Sharpe into the dazzling sun and run him through with the slim, shining blade.

He stopped opposite his enemy. He stared into the blank, expressionless eyes and he tried to imagine Helene marrying this man. There was a weakness in the fleshy, proud face. Sharpe tried to pin it down, tried to analyse this man whose skill he had to beat. Perhaps, he thought, the Marqués was a man born to greatness who had never felt himself worthy. That perhaps was why he prayed so hard and had so much pride.

The Marqués stared at Sharpe, seeing the man whom he believed had insulted his wife and tried to assault her. The Marqués did not just fight for Helene, nor just for his pride, but for the pride of all Spain that had been humbled by needing to make an Englishman its Generalisimo.

The Marqués remembered what the Inquisitor, Father Hacha, had said about this man. Fast, but unskilled. Sharpe, the Marqués knew, would try to kill him as if he was an ox. He twitched the fine sword in his hand. It was odd, he thought, that an Inquisitor should carry Helene’s letter. He pushed the thought away.

‘You are ready, my Lord?’ Mendora called.

The Marqués’s face gave the smallest twitch. He was ready.

‘Major Sharpe?’

‘Yes.’

Major Mendora flexed his sword once so that the steel hissed in the air. The Inquisitor stood with a doctor beside the Marqués’s coach. D’Alembord looked hopefully towards the cemetery entrance, but it was empty. He felt the hopelessness of this idiocy, and then Mendora called them forward. ‘Your swords, gentlemen?’

Sharpe’s boots grated on the gravel. If he got into real trouble, he thought, then he could pretend to fall down, scoop up a handful of the stones, and hurl them to blind the big man who came cautiously forward. What had d’Alembord said? He would feint to the right and go left? Or was it the other way round?

He raised his big, straight sword and it looked dull beside the slim, polished blade that came beside it. The swords touched. Sharpe wondered if he detected a quiver in the other man’s grip, but no, the blades rested quietly as Mendora drew his own sword, held it beneath the raised blades, then swept his weapon up to part the two swords and the duel had begun.

Neither man moved.

They watched each other, waiting. Sharpe’s urge was to shout, as he shouted on a battlefield to frighten his opponents, but he felt cowed by the formality of this setting. He was fighting a duel against an aristocrat and he felt that he must behave as they expected him to behave. This was not like battle. This was so cold-blooded, so ritualistic, and it seemed hard to believe that in this warm evening air a man must fall to bleed his life onto the gravel.

The Marqués’s sword came slowly down, reached out, touched Sharpe’s blade, then flickered in bright, quick motion, and Sharpe took two steps back.

The Marqués still watched him. He had done no more than test Sharpe’s speed. He would test his skill next.

Sharpe tried to shake the odd lethargy away. It seemed impossible that this was real, that death waited here. He saw the Marqués come forward again, his heavy tread no clue to the speed that Sharpe had already seen, and Sharpe went forward too, his sword reaching, and the Marqués stepped back.

The troops jeered. They wanted blood, they wanted a furious mill with their champion standing over the ripped corpse of the other man.

The Marqués tried to oblige. He came forward with surprising speed, his blade flickering past Sharpe’s guard, looping beneath the heavy cavalry sword and lunging to Sharpe’s right.

Sharpe countered desperately, knowing that the speed had beaten him, but with a luck he did not deserve he felt the Marqués’s blade-tip lodge in the tassel hole of his sword’s hilt. It seemed to stick there and Sharpe wrenched his weapon, forcing it towards the Marqués, hoping to break the man’s slim blade, but the Marqués turned, drew his sword away, and the cheers of the spectators were louder. They had mistaken Sharpe’s desperate counters as a violent attack.

The sun was in Sharpe’s eyes. Fluently, easily, the Marqués had turned him.

The Marqués smiled. He had the speed and the skill of this Englishman, and all that mattered now was to choose the manner of Sharpe’s death.

Sharpe seemed to know it, for he attacked suddenly, lunging at the big man, using all his own speed, but his blade never struck home. It rang against the slimmer blade, scraped, flashed sunlight into the spectators’ eyes, and though the Marqués went back on quick feet, he was having no trouble in avoiding the attacks. Only once, when Sharpe pressed close and tried to ram his sword into the Marqués’s eyes, did the Spaniard twist desperately aside and lose his composure. He regained it at once, elegantly parrying the next thrust, turning Sharpe’s blade and counter-attacking from his back foot.

The counter-attack was quick as a hawk, a slashing stab of steel as the Marqués went under his guard, the point rose, and Sharpe swept his enemy’s blade aside, his hand providentially moving in the right direction, but he was regretting he ever chose swords because the Marqués was a fencer of distinction, and Sharpe lunged again, hit nothing, and he saw the smile on the Marqués’s face as the aristocrat coolly parried the attack.

The smile was a mistake.

God damn the aristocracy, and God damn good manners, this was a fight to the death, and Sharpe growled at the man, cursed, and he felt the anger come on him, an anger that always in battle seemed to manifest itself as cold deliberation. It was as if time slowed, as if he could see twice as clearly, and suddenly he knew that if he was to win this fight then he must attack as he had always attacked. He had learned to fight in the gutter and that was where he must take this big, smiling aristocrat who thought he had Sharpe beaten.

The Marqués came forward, his blade seeking to take Sharpe’s sword one way so that he could slide the steel beneath the Englishman’s guard and finish him.

‘She calls you a pig, Spaniard.’ Sharpe saw the flicker of surprise in the Marqués’s face, heard the hiss of disapproval from Mendora. ‘A fat pig, out of breath, son of a sow, pork-brain.’ Sharpe laughed. His sword was down. He was inviting the attack, goading the man.

Captain d’Alembord frowned. It was hardly decent manners, but he sensed something more. Sharpe was now the master here. The Marqués thought he had the Rifleman beaten, but all he had done was to make the Rifleman fight. This no longer looked like a duel to d’Alembord; it looked like a brawl leading to slaughter.

The Marqués wanted to kill. He did not understand why the Englishman’s guard was down. He tried to ignore the insults, but they raked at his pride.

‘Come on, pig! Come on!’ Sharpe stepped to one side, away from the sun, and the Marqués saw the Englishman lose his balance as his boot struck a large stone in the path. He saw the alarm on Sharpe’s face as he flailed his sword arm to stay upright and the Marqués stamped his right foot forward, shouted in triumph, and the sword was piercing at Sharpe.

Who had known that the pretence of losing his balance would invite the straight lunge and who beat the sword aside with a shout that sounded in every part of the cemetery. He brought up his left knee, shouted again as the Marqués squealed, and punched the heavy guard forward so that the steel thumped into the Spaniard’s breastbone, threw him backwards, and the next scything blow of the sword ripped the Marqués’s blade clean from his hand and Sharpe, the battle anger seething in him, brought the huge, heavy sword back for the killing blow. The shot sounded.

The Marqués knew that death was in the bright, sun-blazing steel. He had never faced a force like this, a sheer animal force that snarled at him and he shook his head and wondered why the great blade did not come. For a second, as he felt his legs shaking, there was the wild hope that the Englishman was going to let him pick up his sword that had been forced out of his hand when the cavalry blade had struck the slimmer sword’s ornate guard.

Then he saw the Englishman lower his sword. Saw him step back and suddenly heard the rush of hooves. The cheers about the cemetery wall had faded. The echo of the pistol shot died into silence.

Four horsemen had ducked under the gate. Now they rode towards the place where the paths crossed in the cemetery’s centre. In the lead was Colonel Thomas Leroy, the inevitable cigar clenched in his mouth. In his hand was a smoking pistol. Behind him rode two Provosts, the army’s policemen, and a Spanish officer.

‘Major Sharpe!’ Leroy’s voice was harsh.

‘Sir?’

‘You choose an odd place to practise your sword arm.’ Leroy swung from his horse and tossed the reins to d’Alembord. His ravaged, burned face made the Marqués frown with distaste. Leroy jerked his head. ‘Come with me, Sharpe.’

Sharpe hesitated, but Leroy ordered it again, his voice more savage still, and Sharpe, his sword in his hand, followed his Colonel up the northern path between the intricate gravestones. ‘You are a goddamned bloody fool, Sharpe.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Christ in his benighted bloody heaven!’ The American seemed lost for words. He took the cigar from his lips, spat a speck of leaf onto the gravel, and stared at his Major. ‘I’ve seen an eight-year-old with more damned sense! What in hell’s name are you doing here?’

‘A matter of honour, sir.’

‘Honour!’ The scarred face twisted in rage. ‘Don’t talk of honour, Sharpe. You’re here because you’re a fool!’ He looked left. ‘Captain d’Alembord?’

‘Sir?’

‘You’ll oblige me by bringing your horses.’

Sharpe frowned. ‘Sir!’

Leroy swung back on him, the cigar jabbed at Sharpe’s face. ‘Quiet! You’re under orders!’ Leroy saw that the Rifleman was about to protest and he jerked his head at the Provosts behind him. ‘And if you disobey orders, Sharpe, I’ll have you arrested. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Fetch your jacket. You’re going.’ Leroy shook his head in frustrated bitterness. ‘I can’t leave the goddamned Battalion for one day!’

‘Señor!’ It was Major Mendora, a sneer on his face, coming on catlike feet towards Leroy and Sharpe. ‘There is a delay?’

Leroy turned to the white-uniformed man, and Sharpe saw the Spaniard recoil from the bubbled, stretched scar tissue. Leroy was trying to govern his anger. ‘Major?’

‘Major Sharpe cannot fight? He is afraid, perhaps?’

Leroy pushed Sharpe aside. He stared with his ravaged face at Mendora. ‘Listen, you son of a whore, you prinked-up bastard. There was no duel, there is no duel, there never was a duel! This was a friendly piece of sword practice! Do you understand me?’

Mendora understood. In the face of the American’s rage he simply nodded. He said nothing as Leroy tartly ordered Sharpe to follow him.

The Spanish soldiers jeered as Sharpe left. They accused him of cowardice, of lacking manhood, of being afraid to fight. It was gall to Sharpe, a shame he had to endure until Leroy had led him out of earshot. Leroy scowled at him. ‘Never again, Sharpe, understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Remember you owe me a career now.’ Leroy was grim. ‘One more goddamn mistake and I’ll have you shipped back to goddamn England. You understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘This is my Battalion now, Sharpe. It is going to be good. You’re going to help me make it good.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And thank God Colonel Alvarez was at Brigade. He’ll talk sense into that stupid fool. Nothing happened, you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The American seemed unimpressed by Sharpe’s contriteness. ‘Christ! If the Peer learned about this he’d tear you into pieces. You goddamn deserve it. You’re a fool.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now go and get drunk. Sergeant Harper says his woman’s cooked you a meal. I don’t want to see your ugly face till tomorrow.’

‘No, sir.’

Chastened, embarrassed, humiliated by the jeers of his enemies, but his career safe, Sharpe watched Leroy ride away. The Provosts, not needed, followed the Colonel.

D’Alembord stayed with Sharpe. ‘It seems our Colonel has a knack of turning up at the right time.’

Sharpe, humiliated by the tongue-lashing, nodded.

D’Alembord smiled. ‘You were right.’

‘Right?’

‘You were about to hack the bugger into bits.’

Sharpe smiled bitterly. ‘The next time I will.’

D’Alembord sighed. ‘With the greatest respect, sir, don’t be a goddamned idiot. You’ve survived a duel with your career intact. Be content.’

‘I’m dishonoured.’

D’Alembord mocked him with laughter. ‘Honour!’ He led Sharpe off the road, up towards the ash trees on the hill. ‘Honour, my dear Sharpe, is just a word behind which we hide our sins. It disappears, I find, whenever a lady’s bedroom door opens.’ He smiled at his Major, remembering the awesome moment when he had seen Sharpe stop trying to fence and begin to fight. He had understood then, even better than at the bridge where they had waited without ammunition, why this man was a soldier’s soldier. ‘Do you think if I bring some wine I might share your dinner?’

‘I’m sure Harps will be pleased.’

‘He’d better be, it’s good wine. We can drink to your restored career in it.’

Sharpe followed him. The anger had gone, he felt foolish. Leroy was right; his job was to make the South Essex into the best it could be, and never had the time been more propitious. The Battalion had a good Colonel, and the new officers, like d’Alembord, promised well. He felt suddenly as though a hanging judge had reprieved him. He had escaped his own foolishness and he rode towards a campaign, a summer, and a future. The madness was gone, the doom lifted, and he was alive.

CHAPTER FIVE

That night, behind thick curtains, in a dark-panelled room lit by heavy candles that threw their flickering light on a crucifix of gold, the Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba prayed.

He had wondered why the Inquisitor had come to him bringing his wife’s letter, curious why the letter should have so eminent a carrier, but now he understood. The Marqués’s lips moved, his fingers shuffled the beads on their string, his eyes stared at the crucifix until the small, gold image seemed to shift and swim before him. He shook his head to clear his vision. ‘What will happen to the Englishman?’

‘Wellington will send him home.’ The Inquisitor had a voice deep as the pit. ‘Wellington needs the Spanish alliance.’

The Marqués groaned as he stood up from his knees. ‘I should have killed him.’

‘Your honour is intact. It was he who fled, not you.’

The Marqués turned to look at Father Hacha. The Inquisitor was all that a priest should be in the Marqués’s estimation; he was a tall, strong man, fierce-faced and grim, a warrior of God who knew that pity was a luxury in the fight against evil. The Marqués, who yearned to have the toughness he saw in the Inquisitor, frowned. ‘I don’t understand what made the man do it! To insult her!’

‘He’s English, he’s from the gutter, he’s heathen.’

‘I should have killed him.’

‘God will do it.’

The Marqués sat opposite the Inquisitor. They were in the Marqués’s bedroom, taken for the night from the mayor of this small town. The candlelight shuddered on the red hangings of the bed, on the picture of the crucified Lord, and on the grim, axe-faced man of the Spanish Inquisition. The Marqués stared at the dark eyes. ‘Helena will come to me?’ He used the Spanish form of his wife’s name.

The Inquisitor nodded. ‘She must do penance, of course.’

‘Of course.’ The Marqués felt the stirring within him. On the table beside the bed there stood her portrait, the portrait that had travelled with him to the Banda Oriental and showed her pure skin, wide eyes, and delicate face. She had spied for the French, and that fact could not be hidden from the Marqués, but the Inquisitor had assured him that her spying was merely a woman’s weakness.

‘She missed you, my Lord, she was tempted by loneliness and unhappiness. She must do public penance.’

‘And she will do it?’

‘She is eager to be in your good graces, my Lord.’

The Marqués nodded. He had had a frank, embarrassingly frank, discussion with his grim Inquisitor. Yes, the priest had said, there were rumours about the Marquesa, but what woman did not attract rumours? And was there truth in the rumours? The priest had shaken his head. There was none.

Perhaps because Father Hacha had freely admitted that his wife had spied for the country of her birth, the Marqués believed the lie about her faithfulness. He wanted to believe it. He knew, guiltily and secretly, that it had been a fault to marry her, but what man would not have wanted to marry the frail, lovely girl? He knew he had married out of lust, out of sinfulness, and he had confessed the sin a hundred hundred times. Now, it seemed, his prayers were answered and she wanted his forgiveness and his love. He would give both to her.

He would give them because the priest had laid before him this night a glittering image of Spain’s future, and a future, the Inquisitor had said, in which the Marqués would play an eminent, a vital part. ‘You were always close to the old King, my Lord.’

‘True.’

‘His son needs you.’

Spain, the Marqués had heard, needed him. This war against the French, the Inquisitor had said, was a mistake. True, it had been started by the French, but they now saw that their best interests lay in peace. They wanted to take their embattled armies from Spain, and only one obstacle lay before them; the British alliance.

The Inquisitor had spoken of the secret treaty. He had done it because he wanted this man’s trust. The Marqués had listened. At first he had felt offence at the secret manoeuvring that would end with a broken promise to Britain, but as he listened more he felt the glory and excitement grow in him.

Spain, the Inquisitor had said, had been given its empire by God. That empire was the reward for defeating the Muslims in Europe. Now, because of the war against France, the empire was slipping away. The Spanish, the priest said, had a duty to their God to keep the empire. If there was peace with France then the army could go abroad as God’s warriors. The secret treaty that was being forged at Valençay would give Spain peace at home and glory abroad.

That appealed to the Marqués. He had no love for the government that ruled that part of Spain not held by the French. It was, in his view, a liberal, dangerous government that would try to introduce a parliament and limit the royal power. Spain should be ruled by the King and the Church in consort, not by a shouting rabble of upstart ambition.

There was more. As he sat and listened to the Inquisitor, the Marqués heard what the Junta in Cadiz now proposed. The liberals, who ruled the country in King Ferdinand VII’s absence, were trying to dismantle the power of the Church in Spain.

‘Surely not!’

In answer the Inquisitor had taken from his pocket and handed to the Marqués a copy of a new law, a law that had, within the last two months, declared that the Spanish Inquisition was abolished.

It still existed in French-held Spain, that body from the protestant nightmares of the sixteenth century; the Inquisition that preached God’s love with the fires of agony and the blades of torture. Now, bereft of their racks and burning irons, they were a moral police force to the Spanish people, granting licences of marriage to those who could prove they were of pure, Christian blood; watching always those who were suspected of being Moors or Jews. They were the spies of God, the secret police of heaven, and their power was threatened. The Junta had dissolved them.

King Ferdinand VII, whose love of women was matched by his fear of God, did not agree that the Inquisition should be abolished. They might spy for God, but their reports came to the King of Spain, and no kingdom on earth had a more efficient body of informers than did the Spanish king with his loyal Inquisitors.

‘If we restore His Majesty,’ the Inquisitor had said, ‘then we preserve our Church. Peace with France, my Lord, is Spain’s only hope.’

With which sentiments the Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba agreed wholeheartedly. ‘So what do you want of me?’

The Inquisitor told his lie smoothly. ‘I want you to gain support among your friends, among the officers of the army, among your admirers, my Lord.’ He shrugged. ‘When the time comes, my Lord, the peasants will not be overjoyed.’

‘They hate the French.’

‘But they love their King. They need firm leadership, strong example, from Church and nobles. From you and I, my Lord.’

The Marqués nodded. The future was suddenly golden. His wife, whom he had married for lust, was willing to do penance. She would come back to him chastened and humbled, loving and loyal, to be the helpmate of a man who would assist his King in steering Spain into a brilliant, holy future. And to help the Marqués, to steer him, comfort him, support him, there would be this grim, tough Inquisitor with his subtle mind and sharp purpose. Suddenly the events of the day, the abortive duel and the Marqués’s escape from death, seemed trivial compared to that future.

The Inquisitor smiled. ‘You did us all a service today, my Lord.’

‘A service?’

Father Hacha stood. ‘The Englishman backed down from you. You are a hero to the army, you beat the Englishman in their sight. Where you lead, my Lord, others will now follow.’

The Marqués saw himself leading the army away from the British alliance. He saw himself welcoming King Ferdinand VII at the gates of Spain, he saw glory.

He bowed his head for the blessing of the Inquisitor who had been offered, and who had accepted, the bedroom next door. The hands of the priest were firm on the Marqués’s head.

The Inquisitor, who had told lies all night, pronounced the blessing. He meant the words he spoke. He wished God to bless this man who had married so disastrously, and who was now a pawn in the struggle to defend the Inquisition. He blessed the Marqués in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and he hoped that his Lordship would sleep well.

‘Thank you, father.’

‘I bid you a good night, my Lord.’

In his own room the Inquisitor knelt and prayed God’s forgiveness for the lies he had told and the deception he had practised. God would understand. What Father Hacha did this night he did to preserve God’s church. There was no more noble purpose. He rose from his knees, opened his missal, and settled down to wait for the witching hour when his brother, who was thought to be the Inquisitor’s servant, would play his part to restore the glory of God’s kingdom of Spain.

The Marqués’s private chaplain was forced to be up every morning at half past four to waken his master at five o’clock. Then, until half past six, the two men would share private devotions. After that the Marqués would take breakfast, then go to his first Mass of the day. The chaplain’s dream of heaven was a place where no one stirred from their bed until midday. He yawned.

He kissed his scapular, then draped it about his neck. He wondered if the Inquisitor would join them this morning, and hoped not. Father Tomas Hacha rather frightened the Marqués’s private chaplain; there was too much force in the man. Besides, the Inquisition was frightening anyway, its power secret and pervasive, its judgments harsh. The chaplain preferred a milder religion.

The servants who slept outside their master’s room jerked awake as the chaplain’s footsteps sounded on the stairs. One of them sat up, rubbing his cheek. ‘Morning, father.’

‘Good morning, my son.’ The chaplain opened one of the shutters on the landing and saw the grey dawn spreading up from the dark hills. ‘It’s going to be a fine day!’

Dogs barked in the town. Somewhere a cockerel crowed. The chaplain could see, dim in the shadows of the street, the shapes of the British guns. The Spanish and British armies collected here, waiting to plunge into French-held Spain. He was glad that it was none of his business. Fighting the rebels in the Banda Oriental north of the River Plate had been bad enough, but the thought of those great guns bellowing at each other was terrifying. He turned to the Marqués’s room and knocked softly on the door. He smiled at the servants. ‘A quiet night?’

‘Very quiet, father.’

He knocked again. One of the servants unbuttoned himself above the chamberpot on the landing’s corner. ‘He was up late, father. He’s probably still asleep.’

‘Late?’

‘Father Hacha was with him.’ The servant yawned as he pissed. ‘Say a prayer for me, father.’

The chaplain smiled, then pushed the door open. It was dark in the room, all light blocked out by the great velvet hangings over the windows. ‘My Lord?’

There was no answer from behind the curtained bed. The chaplain closed the door quietly behind him then groped uncertainly through the strange, heavy furniture until he reached the window. He reflected how wealthy these provincial merchants were who could afford such furnishings, then pulled the curtain back, flooding the room with a sickly grey light.

‘My Lord? It’s I, Father Pello.’

Still no sound. The Marqués’s uniform was carefully hung on a cupboard door, his boots, stretchers inside, parked carefully beneath. The chaplain pulled back the curtains of the bed. ‘My Lord?’

His first thought was that the Marqués was sleeping on a pillow of red velvet. His second thought was relief. There would be no prayers this morning. He could go to the kitchen and have a leisurely breakfast.

Then he vomited.

The Marqués was dead. His throat had been cut so that the blood had soaked the linen pillowcase and sheets. His head was tilted back, his eyes staring sightless at the headboard. One hand hung over the side of the bed.

The chaplain tried to call out, but no sound came. He tried to move, but his feet seemed stuck to the carpeted floor.

The vomit stained his scapular. Some of it dribbled down the dead man’s plump hand. The Marqués seemed to have two mouths, one wide and red, the other prim and pale.

The chaplain called out again, and this time his voice, thickened by the vomit in his throat, came out as a terrible strangled cry. ‘Guards!’

The servants came in, but to no avail. The body was cold, the blood on the linen caked hard. Major Mendora, the General’s aide, came in with drawn sword, followed by the Inquisitor in his night-robe. Even the Inquisitor’s strong face paled at the carnage on the bed. The Marqués of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had been killed in his sleep, his throat opened, and his soul sent to the judgment of heaven where, the Inquisitor prayed aloud in his dreadful, deep voice, the soul of his murderer would soon follow for awful and condign punishment.

They came for Major Richard Sharpe at eight on the same morning. The Battalion was paraded, the companies already marching off to their tasks.

Richard Sharpe, as so often in the early morning, was in a bad mood. His mouth had the thick sourness of too much wine the night before. He was looking forward to a second breakfast and feeling only mildly guilty that his new rank gave him the freedom for such luxuries. He had scrounged some eggs from Isabella, there was a flitch of bacon that belonged to the Mess, and Sharpe could almost taste the meal already.

For once, this morning, he would not have three men’s work to do. Colonel Leroy was taking half of the companies on a long march, the others were detailed to help drag the great pontoon bridges up to the high road, ready for the march into French territory. He could, he thought sourly, catch up on his paperwork. He remembered that he must try to sell one of the new mules to the sutler, though whether that sly, wealthy man would want to buy one of the tubed, half-winded animals that had turned up from Brigade was another matter. Perhaps the sutler would buy it for its dead-weight. Sharpe turned to shout for the Battalion clerk, but the shout never sounded. Instead he saw the Provosts.

The Provosts were led, strangely, by Major Michael Hogan. He was no policeman. He was Wellington’s chief of intelligence and Sharpe’s good friend. He was a middle-aged Irishman whose face was normally humorous and shrewd, but who this morning looked grim as the plague.

He reined in by Sharpe. Hogan led a spare horse. His voice was bleak, unnatural, forced. ‘I must ask for your sword, Richard.’

Sharpe’s smile, which had greeted his friend, changed to puzzlement. ‘My sword?’

Hogan sighed. He had volunteered for this, not because he wanted to do it, but because it was a friend’s duty. It was a duty, he knew, that would become grimmer as this bad day went on. ‘Your sword, Major Sharpe. You are under close arrest.’

Sharpe wanted to laugh. The words were not sinking in. ‘I’m what?’

‘You’re under arrest, Richard. As much as anything else for your own safety.’

‘My safety?’

‘The whole Spanish army is after your blood.’ Hogan held out his hand. ‘Your sword, Major, if you please.’ Behind Hogan the Provosts stirred on their horses.

‘What am I charged with?’ Suddenly Sharpe’s voice was bleak, though he was already obediently unbuckling his sword belt.

Hogan’s voice was equally bleak. ‘You are charged with murder.’

Sharpe stopped unbuckling the belt. He stared up at the small Major. ‘Murder?’

‘Your sword.’

Slowly, as if it was a dream, Sharpe took the sword from his waist. ‘Murder? Who?’

Hogan leaned down and took Sharpe’s sword. He wrapped the slings and belt about the metal scabbard. ‘The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’ He watched Sharpe’s face, reading his friend’s innocence, but knowing just how hopeless things were. ‘There are witnesses.’

‘They’re lying!’

‘Mount up, Richard.’ He gestured at the spare horse. The Provosts, blank-faced men in red jackets and black hats, stared with hostility at the Rifleman. They carried short carbines in their saddle holsters. Hogan turned his horse. ‘The Spanish say you did it. They’re out for your blood. If I don’t get you under lock and key they’ll be dragging you to the nearest tree. Where’s your kit?’

‘In my billet.’

‘Which house?’

Sharpe told him, and Hogan detailed two of the Provosts to fetch the Rifleman’s belongings. ‘Catch us up!’

Hogan led him away, surrounded by Provosts, and Sharpe rode towards more trouble than he would have dreamed possible. He was accused of murder, and he was led, in the bright sunlight of a new morning, towards a prison cell, a trial and whatever then might follow.

CHAPTER SIX

They rode for an hour, threading the valleys towards the army’s headquarters. Major Hogan, out of embarrassment and awkwardness, kept Provosts between himself and Sharpe.

At the town, which they entered by back streets, Sharpe was taken to the house where Wellington himself was quartered. He dismounted, was led to the stable yard, and locked into a small, bare room without windows. It had a stone-flagged floor that, like the wall above, was stained with blood. Above the bloodstains on the limewashed wall were large rusty nails. Sharpe presumed that shot hares or rabbits had been hung there, but the conjunction of rusty nails and blood somehow took on a more sinister aspect. The only light came from above and below the ill-fitting door. There was a table, two chairs, and an insidious smell of horse urine.

Beyond the locked door Sharpe could hear the boots of his guard in the stable yard. He could hear, too, the homely sounds of pails clanking, water washing down stone, and horses moving in their stalls. He sat, put his heels on the table, and waited.

Hogan had ridden fast. Once at this house he had made a brief farewell, offered no words of hope, then left Sharpe alone. Murder. Sharpe knew the penalty for that well enough, but it seemed unreal. The Marqués dead? Nothing made sense. If he had been arrested for attempting to fight a duel, he could have understood it. He could have endured one of Wellington’s cold tongue lashings, but this predicament made no sense. He waited.

The sunlight that came beneath the lintel moved about the floor as the morning wore on. He smelt the burning tobacco of his sentry’s pipe. He heard men laugh in the stables. The bell of the village church struck eleven and then there came the scrape of the bolt in the door and Sharpe took his heels from the table and stood upright.

A lieutenant in the blue jacket of a cavalry regiment came into the room. He blinked as his eyes went from the bright sunshine into the makeshift cell’s shadow, and then he smiled nervously as he put a bundle of papers onto the table. ‘Major Sharpe?’

‘Yes.’ Somehow the young man looked familiar.

‘It’s Trumper-Jones, sir, Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones?’

The boy expected Sharpe to recognise him. Sharpe remembered there had been a cavalry Colonel called Trumper-Jones who had lost an arm and an eye at Rolica. ‘Did I meet your father?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ Trumper-Jones took off his hat and smiled. ‘We met last week.’

‘Last week?’

‘At the battle, sir?’

‘Battle? Oh.’ Sharpe remembered. ‘You’re an aide-de-camp to General Preston?’

‘Yes, sir. And your defending officer.’

‘My what?’ Sharpe growled it, making Trumper-Jones step backwards towards the door which had been closed by the guard.

‘I’m your defence, sir.’

Sharpe sat down. He stared at the frightened young man who looked as if he was scarce out of school. He beckoned at the vacant chair. ‘Sit down, Trumper-Jones, for God’s sake. Defend me from what?’ He knew, but he wanted to hear it again.

Trumper-Jones came nervously forward. He put his hat on the table beside his papers and pushed a lock of light brown hair from his forehead. He cleared his throat. ‘You’re charged with the murder of the Spanish General Casares, the Marqués de …’

‘I know who the hell he is.’ Sharpe watched as Trumper-Jones fidgeted with his papers. ‘Is there a cup of tea in this damned place?’

The question only made Trumper-Jones more nervous. ‘There’s not much time, sir.’

‘Time?’

‘The General Court-Martial is convened for half past noon, sir. Today,’ he added lamely.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Sharpe shouted the words. Trumper-Jones said nothing. He was nervous of the scarred Rifleman who now leaned his elbows on the table. ‘Are you a lawyer, Trumper-Jones?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You’ve done this before?’

‘No, sir.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I’ve only been out here a month.’

‘Where’s Major Hogan?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘So how do you plan to prove my innocence, Trumper-Jones?’

The young man pushed the lick of hair away from his forehead. He had a voice like d’Alembord’s, but without the easy confidence. He smiled nervously. ‘I fear it looks bleak, sir.’

‘Tell me.’

Trumper-Jones seemed happier now that he could read from his papers. ‘It seems, sir, that you are acquainted with the Marquesa de Casares el Grande …’

‘True.’

‘And that you threatened her, sir.’ Trumper-Jones said it timidly.

‘I did what?’

Trumper-Jones nearly jumped out of his chair. ‘You threatened her …’ He blushed. ‘Well, you threatened her, sir.’

‘I did no such goddamn thing!’

Trumper-Jones swallowed, cleared his throat, and gestured with a piece of paper. ‘There is a letter, sir, from her Ladyship to her husband, and it says …’

Sharpe leaned back. ‘Spare me, Lieutenant. I know the Marquesa. Let’s accept they have a letter. Go on.’ So she had provoked the duel. D’Alembord had hinted at it, Sharpe had refused to believe it, but he supposed it made sense. Yet he found it hard to accept that a woman who had loved him could so easily betray him.

Trumper-Jones pushed the hair back again. ‘The letter provoked a duel, sir, that you were prevented from finishing?’

‘True.’ It all sounded so hopeless.

‘And because you were prevented from fighting, sir, the prosecution is alleging that you went to the General’s quarters last night and murdered him.’

‘Not true.’

‘They have a witness, sir.’

‘Really?’ Sharpe said the word scornfully. ‘Who?’

The papers rustled. ‘A Captain Morillos, sir, of the Princessa Regiment. He commanded the guard on General Casares’s house last night and he saw a British Rifle officer leave the house at three in the morning. The officer, he says, wore a straight sword.’

That was a nice touch, Sharpe thought. Rifle officers were issued with curved cavalry sabres, and only Sharpe wore a straight sword. He shook his head. ‘And why didn’t Captain Morillos stop this man?’

‘He was ordered only to stop people from going into the house, sir, not from leaving it.’

‘Go on.’

Trumper-Jones shrugged. ‘That’s it, sir. I thought, sir …’ He stopped, nervous again.

‘Well?’

‘I thought, sir, that if we presented your record to the court, sir, that they must be lenient. The Eagle, sir, the Forlorn Hope at Badajoz …’ His voice tailed away.

Sharpe smiled. ‘You want me to plead guilty and trust that they won’t shoot a hero, is that it?’

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