Sharpe's Fury

CHAPTER 1

YOU WERE NEVER FAR from the sea in Cádiz. The smell of it was always there, almost as powerful as the stink of sewage. On the city’s southern side, when the wind was high and from the south, the waves would shatter on the sea wall and spray would rattle on shuttered windows. After the battle of Trafalgar storms had battered the city for a week and the winds had carried the sea spray to the cathedral and torn down scaffolding about its unfinished dome. Waves had besieged Cádiz and pieces of broken ship had clattered on the stones, and then the corpses had come. But that had been almost six years ago and now Spain fought on the same side as Britain, though Cádiz was all that was left of Spain. The rest of the country was either ruled by France or had no government at all. Guerrilleros haunted the hills, poverty ruled the streets, and Spain was sullen.

February 1811. Nighttime. Another storm beat at the city and monstrous waves shattered white against the sea wall. In the dark the watching man could see the explosions of foam and they reminded him of the powder smoke blasted from cannons. There was the same uncertainty about the violence. Just when he thought the waves had done their worst, another two or three would explode in sudden bursts, the white water would bloom above the wall like smoke, and the spray would be driven by the wind to spatter against the city’s white walls like grapeshot.

The man was a priest. Father Salvador Montseny was dressed in a cassock, a cloak, and a wide black hat that he needed to hold against the wind’s buffeting. He was a tall man, in his thirties, a fierce preacher of saturnine good looks, who now waited in the small shelter of an archway. He was a long way from home. Home was in the north where he had grown up as the unloved son of a widower lawyer who had sent Salvador to a church school. He had become a priest because he did not know what else he should be, but now he wished he had been a soldier. He thought he would have been a good soldier, but fate had made him a sailor instead. He had been a chaplain on board a Spanish ship captured at Trafalgar and in the darkness above him the sound of battle crashed again. The sound was the boom and snap of the great canvas sheets that protected the cathedral’s half-built dome, but the wind made the huge tarpaulins sound like cannons. The canvas, he knew, had once been the sails of Spain’s battle fleet, but after Trafalgar the sails had been stripped from the few ships that had limped home. Father Salvador Montseny had been in England then. Most Spanish prisoners had been put ashore swiftly, but Montseny was chaplain to an admiral and he had accompanied his master to the damp country house in Hampshire where he had watched the rain fall and the snow cover the pastures, and where he had learned to hate.

And he had also learned patience. He was being patient now. His hat and cloak were soaked through and he was cold, but he did not stir. He just waited. He had a pistol in his belt, but he reckoned the priming powder would be sodden. It did not matter. He had a knife. He touched the hilt, leaned on the wall, saw another wave break at the street’s end, saw the spray dash past the dim light from an unshuttered window, and then heard the footsteps.

A man came running from the Calle Compania. Father Montseny waited, just a dark shadow in dark shadows, and saw the man go to the door opposite. It was unlocked. The man went through and the priest followed fast, pushing the door open as the man tried to close it. “Gracias,” Father Montseny said.

They were in an arched tunnel that led to the courtyard. A lantern flickered from an alcove and the man, seeing that Montseny was a priest, looked relieved. “You live here, Father?” he asked.

“Last rites,” Father Montseny said, shaking water off his cassock.

“Ah, that poor woman upstairs,” the man made the sign of the cross. “It’s a dirty night,” he said.

“We’ve had worse, my son, and this will pass.”

“True,” the man said. He went into the courtyard and climbed the stairs to the first-floor balcony. “You’re Catalonian, Father?”

“How did you know?”

“Your accent, Father.” The man took out his key and unlocked his front door and the priest appeared to edge past him toward the steps climbing to the second floor.

The man opened his door, then pitched forward as Father Montseny suddenly turned and gave him a push. The man sprawled on the floor. He had a knife and tried to draw it, but the priest kicked him hard under the chin. Then the front door swung shut and they were in the dark. Father Montseny knelt on the fallen man’s chest and put his own knife at his victim’s throat. “Say nothing, my son,” he ordered. He felt under the trapped man’s wet cloak and found the knife, which he drew and tossed up the passageway. “You will speak,” he said, “only when I ask you questions. Your name is Gonzalo Jurado?”

“Yes.” Jurado’s voice was scarce above a breath.

“Do you have the whore’s letters?”

“No,” Jurado said, then squealed because Father Montseny’s knife had cut through his skin to touch his jawbone.

“You will be hurt if you lie,” the priest said. “Do you have the letters?”

“I have them, yes!”

“Then show them to me.”

Father Montseny let Jurado rise. He stayed close as Jurado went into a room that overlooked the street where the priest had waited. Steel struck flint and a candle was lit. Jurado could see his assailant more clearly now and thought Montseny must be a soldier in disguise because his face did not have the look of a priest. It was a dark, lantern-jawed face without pity. “The letters are for sale,” Jurado said, then gasped because Father Montseny had hit him in the belly.

“I said you will speak only when I question you,” the priest said. “Show me the letters.”

The room was small, but very comfortable. It was evident that Gonzalo Jurado liked his luxuries. Two couches faced an empty fireplace above which a gilt-framed mirror hung. There were rugs on the floor. Three paintings hung on the wall opposite the window, all showing naked women. A bureau stood under the window that looked onto the street and the frightened man unlocked one of its drawers and took out a bundle of letters tied with black string. He put them on the bureau and stepped back.

Father Montseny cut the string and spread the letters on the bureau’s leather top. “Is this all of them?”

“All fifteen,” Jurado said.

“And the whore?” Father Montseny asked. “She has some still?”

Jurado hesitated, then saw the knife blade reflect candlelight. “She has six.”

“She kept them?”

“Yes, señor.”

“Why?”

Jurado shrugged. “Fifteen are enough? Maybe she can sell the others later? Perhaps she is still fond of the man? Who knows? Who understands women? But…” He had been about to ask a question, then feared being hit for speaking out of turn.

“Go on,” Father Montseny said, picking out a letter at random.

“How do you know about the letters? I told no one except the English.”

“Your whore made confession,” Father Montseny said.

“Caterina! She went to confession?”

“Once a year, she told me,” Father Montseny said, scanning the letter, “always on her patron saint’s name day. She came to the cathedral, told God about her many sins, and I granted her absolution on his behalf. How much do you want for the letters?”

“English guineas,” Jurado said, “fifteen letters, twenty guineas each.” He was feeling more confident now. He kept a loaded pistol in the bureau’s bottom drawer. He tested the mainspring every day and changed the powder at least once a month. And his fear had subsided now that he understood Montseny really was a priest. A frightening priest, to be sure, but still a man of God. “If you prefer to pay Spanish money, Father,” he went on, “then the letters are yours for thirteen hundred dollars.”

“Thirteen hundred dollars?” Father Montseny responded absently. He was reading one of the letters. It was written in English, but that was no problem for he had learned the language in Hampshire. The letter’s writer had been deeply in love and the fool had committed that love to paper. The fool had made promises, and the girl to whom he had made the promises had turned out to be a whore, and Jurado was her pimp, and now the pimp wanted to blackmail the letter writer.

“I have a reply.” The pimp dared to speak without invitation.

“From the English?”

“Yes, Father. It’s in here.” Jurado gestured at the bureau’s bottom drawer.

Father Montseny nodded his permission and Jurado opened the drawer, then yelped because a fist had struck him so hard that he reeled backward. He hit the door behind him, which gave way so that he fell on his back in the bedroom. Father Montseny took the pistol from the bureau drawer, opened the frizzen, blew out the powder, and tossed the now useless weapon onto one of the silk-covered couches. “You said you had received a reply?” he asked as though there had been no violence.

Jurado was shaking now. “They said they would pay.”

“You have arranged the exchange?”

“Not yet.” Jurado hesitated. “Are you with the English?”

“No, thank God. I am with the most holy Roman church. So how do you communicate with the English?”

“I am to leave a message at the Cinco Torres.”

“Addressed to whom?”

“To a Señor Plummer.”

The Cinco Torres was a coffeehouse on the Calle Ancha. “So in your next message,” Father Montseny said, “you will tell this Plummer where to meet you? Where the exchange will take place?”

“Yes, Father.”

“You have been very helpful, my son,” Father Montseny said, then held out a hand as if to pull Jurado to his feet. Jurado, grateful for the help, allowed himself to be pulled up, and only at the last second saw that he was being hauled onto the priest’s knife that slashed into his throat. Father Montseny grimaced as he wrenched the blade sideways. It was harder than he had thought, but he gave a grunt as he slashed the sharpened steel through gullet and artery and muscle. The pimp collapsed, making a noise like water draining. Montseny held Jurado down as he died. It was messy, but the blood would not show on his black cloak. Some blood trickled through the floorboards where it would drip into the saddler’s shop that occupied most of the building’s ground floor. It took over a minute for the pimp to die, and all the while the blood dripped through the boards, but at last Jurado was dead and Father Montseny made the sign of the cross over the pimp’s face and said a brief prayer for the departed soul. He sheathed his knife, wiped his hands on the dead man’s cloak, and went back to the bureau. He found a great stack of money in one of the drawers and he pushed the folded notes into the top of his left boot and then he bundled the letters. He wrapped them in a cover he took from a cushion and then, to ensure they stayed dry, he put them next to his skin beneath his shirt. He poured a glass of sherry from a decanter and, as he sipped it, he thought about the girl to whom the letters had been written. She lived, he knew, just two streets away and she still had six letters, but he possessed fifteen. More than enough, he decided. Besides, the girl was almost certainly not at home, but servicing a client in one of Cádiz’s more palatial bedrooms.

He blew out the candle and went back into the night where the waves broke white at the city’s edge and the great sails boomed like guns in the wet dark. Father Salvador Montseny, killer, priest, and patriot, had just ensured the salvation of Spain.

IT HAD all begun so well.

In the moonlit darkness the River Guadiana lay beneath the South Essex Light Company like a misted streak of molten silver pouring slow and massive between black hills. Fort Joseph, named for Napoleon’s brother who was the French puppet on the throne of Spain, was on the hill closest to the company, while Fort Josephine, named after the emperor’s discarded wife, lay at the top of a long slope on the far bank. Fort Joseph was in Portugal, Josephine was in Spain, and between the two forts was a bridge.

Six light companies had been sent from Lisbon under the command of Brigadier General Sir Barnaby Moon. A coming man, Brigadier Moon, a young thruster, an officer destined for higher things, and this was his first independent command. If he got this right, if the bridge was broken, then Sir Barnaby could look to a future as shining as the river that slid between the darkened hills.

And it had all begun so well. The six companies had been ferried across the Tagus in a misted dawn, then had marched across southern Portugal, which was supposedly French-held territory, but the partisans had assured the British that the French had withdrawn their few garrisons and so it proved. Now, just four days after leaving Lisbon, they had reached the river and the bridge. Dawn was close. The British troops were on the Guadiana’s western bank where Fort Joseph had been built on a hill beside the river, and in the last of the night’s darkness the ramparts of the fort were outlined by the glow of fires behind the firestep. The encroaching dawn was dimming that glow, but every now and then the silhouette of a man showed in one of the fort’s embrasures.

The French were awake. The six British light companies knew that because they had heard the bugles calling the reveilles, first in distant Fort Josephine, then in Joseph, but just because the French were awake did not mean they were alert. If you wake men every day in the chill darkness before dawn, they soon learn to carry their dreams to the ramparts. They might look as though they are staring alertly into the dark, ready for a dawn attack, but in truth they are thinking of the women left in France, of the women still sleeping in the fort’s barrack rooms, of the women they wished were sleeping in the fort, of the women they could only dream about, of women. They were dozy.

And the forts had been undisturbed all winter. It was true there were guerrilleros in these hills, but they rarely came close to the forts that had cannon in their embrasures, and peasants armed with muskets quickly learn they are no match for emplaced artillery. The Spanish and Portuguese partisans either ambushed the forage parties of the French troops besieging Badajoz thirty miles to the north or else harried the forces of Marshal Victor who besieged Cádiz a hundred and fifty miles to the south.

There had once been five good stone bridges crossing the Guadiana between Badajoz and the sea, but they had all been blown up by the contending armies, and now there was only this one French pontoon bridge to provide a link between the emperor’s siege forces. It was not used much. Travel in Portugal or Spain was dangerous for the French because the guerrilleros were merciless, but once every two or three weeks the pontoon bridge would creak under the weight of a battery of artillery, and every few days a dispatch rider would cross the river escorted by a regiment of dragoons. Not many local folk used the bridge, for very few could afford the toll and fewer still wanted to risk the animosity of the twin garrisons who were, as a result, mostly left in peace. The war seemed far away, which was why the defenders manning the ramparts in the early morning were dreaming of women rather than looking for the enemy troops who had followed a goat track from the darkened heights into the blackness of the valley to the west of Fort Joseph.

Captain Richard Sharpe, commander of the South Essex Light Company, was not in the valley. He was with his company on a hill to the north of the fort. He had the easiest job of the morning, which was to create a diversion, and that meant none of his men should die and none should even be wounded. Sharpe was glad of that, but he was also aware that he had not been given the easy job as a reward, but because Moon disliked him. The brigadier had made that plain when the six light companies had reported to him in Lisbon. “My name’s Moon,” the brigadier had said, “and you’ve got a reputation.”

Sharpe, taken aback by the offhand greeting, had looked surprised. “I do, sir?”

“Don’t be modest with me, man,” Moon had said, stabbing a finger at the South Essex badge, which showed a chained eagle. Sharpe and his sergeant, Patrick Harper, had captured that eagle from the French at Talavera, and such a feat, as Moon had said, gave a man a reputation. “I don’t want any damn heroics, Sharpe,” the brigadier went on.

“No, sir.”

“Good plain soldiering wins wars,” Moon had said. “Doing mundane things well is what counts.” That was undoubtedly true, but it was odd coming from Sir Barnaby Moon whose reputation was anything but mundane. He was young, only just a year over thirty, and he had been in Portugal for little more than a year, yet he had already made a name for himself. He had led his battalion at Bussaco where, on the ridge where the French had climbed and died, he had rescued two of his skirmishers by galloping through his men’s ranks and killing the skirmishers’ captors with his sword. “No damned frog will take my fusiliers!” he had announced, leading the two men back, and his soldiers had cheered him and he had taken off his cocked hat and bowed to them from the saddle. He was also said to be a gambler and a ruthless hunter of women and, because he was as wealthy as he was handsome, he was reckoned a most successful hunter. London, it was said, was a safer city now that Sir Barnaby was in Portugal, though doubtless there was a score or more of Lisbon ladies who might give birth to babies who would grow up to have Sir Barnaby’s lean face, fair hair, and startling blue eyes. He was, in brief, anything but a plain soldier, yet that was what he required of Sharpe and Sharpe was happy to oblige. “You need make no reputation with me, Sharpe,” Sir Barnaby had said.

“I’ll try hard not to, sir,” Sharpe had said, for which he had received a foul look, and ever since Moon had virtually ignored Sharpe. Jack Bullen, who was Sharpe’s lieutenant, reckoned that the brigadier was jealous.

“Don’t be daft, Jack,” Sharpe had said when this was proposed.

“In any drama, sir,” Bullen had persevered, “there is only room for one hero. The stage is too small for two.”

“You’re an expert on drama, Jack?”

“I am an expert on everything except for the things you know about,” Bullen had said, making Sharpe laugh. The truth, Sharpe reckoned, was that Moon simply shared most officers’ mistrust of men who had been promoted from the ranks. Sharpe had joined the army as a private, he had served as a sergeant, and now he was a captain, and that irritated some men who saw Sharpe’s rise as an affront to the established order, which, Sharpe decided, was fine by him. He would create the diversion, let the other five companies do the fighting, then go back to Lisbon and so back to the battalion. In a month or two, as spring arrived in Portugal, they would march north from the Lines of Torres Vedras and pursue Marshal Masséna’s forces into Spain. There would be plenty enough fighting in the spring, even enough for upstarts.

“There’s the light, sir,” Harper said. He was lying flat beside Sharpe and staring into the valley.

“You’re sure?”

“There it is again, sir. See it?”

The brigadier had a shielded lantern and, by raising one of its screens, could flash a dim light that would be hidden from the French. It glowed again, made faint by the dawn, and Sharpe called to his men. “Now, lads.”

All they had to do was show themselves, not in ranks and files, but scattered across the hilltop so that they looked like partisans. The object was to make the French peer northward and so ignore the attack creeping from the west.

“That’s all we do?” Harper asked. “We just piss around up here?”

“More or less,” Sharpe said. “Stand up, lads! Let the Crapauds see you!” The light company was on the skyline, plainly visible, and there was just enough light to see that the French in Fort Joseph had registered their presence. Undoubtedly the garrison’s officers would be training their telescopes on the hill, but Sharpe’s men were in greatcoats so their uniforms, with their distinctive crossbelts, were not visible, and he had told them to take off their shakos so they did not look like soldiers.

“Can we give them a shot or two?” Harper asked.

“Don’t want to get them excited,” Sharpe said. “We just want them to watch us.”

“But we can shoot when they wake up?”

“When they see the others, yes. We’ll give them a greenjacket breakfast, eh?”

Sharpe’s company was unique in that while most of its men wore the red coats of the British infantry, others were uniformed in the green jackets of the rifle battalions. It was all because of a mistake. Sharpe and his riflemen had been cut off from the retreat to Corunna, had made their way south to the forces in Lisbon, and there been temporarily attached to the redcoated South Essex and somehow they had never left. The greenjackets carried rifles. To most people a rifle looked like a short musket, but the difference was hidden inside the barrel. The Baker Rifle had seven grooves twisting the length of its barrel and those grooves gave the bullet a spin that made it lethally accurate. A musket was quick to load and fast to fire, but beyond sixty paces a man might as well shut his eyes rather than take aim. The rifle could kill at three times that range. The French had no rifles, which meant Sharpe’s greenjackets could lie on the hill, shoot at the defenders, and know that none of the infantry inside Fort Joseph could answer their fire.

“There they go,” Harper said.

The five light companies were advancing up the hill. Their red uniforms looked black in the half-light. Some carried short ladders. They had a nasty job, Sharpe thought. The fort had a dry ditch and from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the parapet was at least ten feet and the top of the parapet was protected by sharpened stakes. The redcoats had to cross the ditch, place the ladders between the stakes, climb into the musket fire of the defenders, and, worse, face cannon fire as well. The French cannons were undoubtedly loaded, but with what? Round shot or canister? If it was canister then Moon’s troops could be hit hard by the first volley, while round shot would do much less damage. Not Sharpe’s problem. He walked along the hilltop, making sure he was silhouetted against the lightening sky, and miraculously the French were still oblivious of the four hundred men approaching from the west. “Go on, boys,” Harper muttered, not speaking to all of the attacking troops, but to the light company of the 88th, the Connaught Rangers, an Irish regiment.

Sharpe was not watching. He had suddenly been seized by the superstition that if he watched the attack, then it would fail. Instead he stared down at the river, counting the bridge’s pontoons that were dark shadows in the mist that writhed just above the water. He decided he would count them and not look at Fort Joseph until the first shot was fired. Thirty-one, he reckoned, which meant there was one pontoon every ten feet, for the river was just over a hundred yards wide. The pontoons were big, clumsy, square-ended barges across which a timber roadway had been laid. The winter had been wet all across southern Spain and Portugal; the Guadiana was running high and he could see the water seething where it broke on the pontoons’ bluff bows. Each boat had anchor chains running into the river and spring lines tensioned between the neighboring barges across which the heavy baulks ran to support the chesses, the planks that made the roadway. It probably weighed over a hundred tons, Sharpe reckoned, and this job would not be over until that long bridge was destroyed.

“They’re dozy bastards,” Harper said in wonderment, presumably speaking of Fort Joseph’s defenders, but still Sharpe would not look. He was staring at Fort Josephine across the river where he could see men clustered about a cannon. They stepped away and the gun fired, belching a dirty smoke above the river’s thinning mist. It had fired a round of canister. The tin can, crammed with bullets, tore itself apart as it left the cannon’s muzzle and the half-inch balls whipped the air about Sharpe’s hilltop. The boom of the cannon rolled and echoed up the river valley. “Anyone hit?” Sharpe called. No one answered.

The cannon’s fire only made the defenders of the nearer fort stare at the hill more intently. They were aiming one of their own cannon now, trying to elevate it so that the canister would scrape the skyline. “Keep your heads down,” Sharpe said. Then there was a dull rattle of musketry and he dared to look back at the attack.

It was almost over. There were redcoats in the ditch, more on ladders, and even as Sharpe watched he saw the redcoats surge over the parapet and carry bayonets at the blue-uniformed Frenchmen. There was no need of his rifles. “Get out of sight of that damned gun,” he shouted, and his men hurried off the crest. A second cannon fired from the fort across the river. A musket ball plucked at the hem of Sharpe’s greatcoat and another drove up a flurry of dew from the grass by his side, but then he was off the hilltop and hidden from the distant gunners.

No gun fired from Fort Joseph. The garrison had been taken utterly by surprise and there were redcoats in the center of the fort now. A panicked stream of Frenchmen was running from the eastern gate to cross the bridge to the safety of Fort Josephine on the river’s Spanish bank. The musket fire was slowing. Maybe a dozen Frenchmen had been captured, the rest were fleeing, and there seemed to be scores of them running toward the bridge. The redcoats, screaming their war cries in the dawn, carried bayonets that encouraged the panicked flight. The French tricolor was hauled down before the last of the attacking troops had even crossed the ditch and wall. It had all been that quick.

“Our job’s done,” Sharpe said. “Down to the fort.”

“That was easy,” Bullen said happily.

“Not over yet, Jack.”

“The bridge, you mean?”

“Got to be destroyed.”

“The hard bit’s done, anyway.”

“That’s true,” Sharpe said. He liked young Jack Bullen, a bluff Essex boy who was uncomplaining and hardworking. The men liked Bullen too. He treated them fairly, with the confidence that came from privilege, but it was a privilege that was always tempered by cheerfulness. A good officer, Sharpe reckoned.

They filed down the hill, across the rocky valley, over a small stream that fell cold from the hills and so up the next hill to the fort where the ladders were still propped against the parapet. Every now and then a petulant gun fired from Fort Josephine, but the balls were wasted against the earth-filled wicker baskets that topped the parapet. “Ah, you’re here, Sharpe.” Brigadier Moon greeted him. He was suddenly affable, his dislike of Sharpe washed away by the elation of victory.

“Congratulations, sir.”

“What? Oh, thank you. That’s generous of you.” Moon did seem touched by Sharpe’s praise. “It went better than I dared hope. There’s tea on the boil over there. Let your lads have some.”

The French prisoners were sitting in the fort’s center. A dozen horses had been found in the stables and they were now being saddled, presumably because Moon, who had marched from the Tagus, reckoned he had earned the privilege of riding back. A captured officer was standing beside the well, disconsolately watching the victorious British troops who were gleefully searching the French packs captured in the barracks. “Fresh bread!” Major Gillespie, one of Moon’s aides, tossed Sharpe a loaf. “Still warm. The bastards live well, don’t they?”

“I thought they were supposed to be starving.”

“Not here they’re not. Land of milk and honey, this place.”

Moon climbed to the eastern firestep, which faced the bridge, and began looking into the ready magazines beside the guns. The artillerymen in Fort Josephine saw his red coat and opened fire. They were using canister and their shots rattled on the parapet and whistled overhead. Moon ignored the balls. “Sharpe!” he called, then waited as the rifleman climbed to the rampart. “Time you earned your wages, Sharpe,” he said. Sharpe said nothing, just watched as the brigadier peered into a magazine. “Round shot,” Moon announced, “common shell and grapeshot.”

“Not canister, sir?”

“Grapeshot, definitely grapeshot. Naval stores, I suspect. Bastards haven’t got any ships left so they’ve sent their grapeshot here.” He let the magazine lid drop and stared down at the bridge. “Common shell won’t break that brute, will it? There are a score of women down below. In the barracks. Have some of your fellows escort them over the bridge, will you? Deliver them to the French with my compliments. The rest of your men can help Sturridge. He says he’ll have to blow the far end.”

Lieutenant Sturridge was a Royal Engineer whose job was to destroy the bridge. He was a nervous young man who seemed terrified of Moon. “The far end?” Sharpe asked, wanting to be sure he had heard correctly.

Moon looked exasperated. “If we break the bridge at this end, Sharpe,” he explained with exaggerated patience as though he were speaking to a young and not very bright child, “the damn thing will float downstream, but will still be attached to the far bank. The French can then salvage the pontoons. Not much point in coming all this way and leaving the French with a serviceable pontoon bridge that they can rebuild, is there? But if we break it at the Spanish end, the pontoons should end up on this bank and we can burn them.” A barrel load of canister or grapeshot hissed overhead and the brigadier threw Fort Josephine an irritated glance. “Get on with it,” he said to Sharpe. “I want to be away by tomorrow’s dawn.”

A picquet from the 74th’s light company guarded the eighteen women. Six were officers’ wives and they stood apart from the rest, trying to look brave. “You’ll take them over,” Sharpe told Jack Bullen.

“I will, sir?”

“You like women, don’t you?”

“Of course, sir.”

“And you speak some of their horrible language, don’t you?”

“Incredibly well, sir.”

“So take the ladies over the bridge and up to that other fort.”

While Lieutenant Bullen persuaded the women that no harm would come to them and that they must gather their luggage and be ready to cross the river, Sharpe looked for Sturridge and found the engineer in the fort’s main magazine. “Powder,” said Sturridge as he greeted Sharpe. He had prised the lid from a barrel and now tasted the gunpowder. “Bloody awful powder,” he spat it out with a grimace. “Bloody French powder. Nothing but bloody dust. Damp, too.”

“Will it work?”

“It should go bang,” Sturridge said gloomily.

“I’m taking you over the bridge,” Sharpe told him.

“There’s a handcart outside,” Sturridge said, “and we’ll need it. Five barrels should be enough, even of this rubbish.”

“You’ve got fuse?”

Sturridge unbuttoned his blue jacket and showed that he had several yards of slow match coiled around his waist. “You just thought I was portly, didn’t you? Why doesn’t he just blow the bridge at this end? Or in the middle?”

“So the French can’t rebuild it.”

“They couldn’t anyway. Takes a lot of skill to make one of those bridges. Doesn’t take much to undo one, but making a pontoon bridge isn’t a job for amateurs.” Sturridge hammered the lid back onto the opened powder barrel. “The French aren’t going to like us being over there, are they?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“So is this where I die for England?”

“That’s why I’m there. To make sure you don’t.”

“That is a consolation,” Sturridge said. He glanced across at Sharpe who was leaning, arms folded, against the wall. Sharpe’s face was shadowed by his shako’s peak, but his eyes were bright in the shadow. The face was scarred, hard, watchful, and thin. “Actually it is a consolation,” Sturridge said, then flinched because the brigadier was bellowing in the courtyard, demanding to know where Sturridge was and why the damned bridge was still intact. “Bloody man,” Sturridge said.

Sharpe went back to the sunlight where Moon was exercising the captured horse, showing off to the French wives who had gathered by the eastern gate where Jack Bullen had commandeered the handcart for their luggage. Sharpe ordered the bags off and the cart to the main magazine where Harper and a half dozen men loaded it with gunpowder. Then the women’s luggage was placed on top. “It’ll disguise the powder barrels,” Sharpe explained to Harper.

“Disguise it, sir?”

“If the Crapauds see us crossing the bridge with powder, what do you think they’ll do?”

“They won’t be happy, sir.”

“No, Pat, they won’t. They’ll use us for target practice.”

It was mid-morning before everything was ready. The French in Fort Josephine had abandoned their desultory cannon fire. Sharpe had half expected the enemy to send an envoy across the river to inquire about the women, but none had come. “Three of the officers’ wives are from the 8th, sir,” Jack Bullen told Sharpe.

“They’re what?” Sharpe asked.

“French regiment, sir. The 8th. They’ve been at Cádiz, but they were sent to reinforce the troops besieging Badajoz. They’re across the river, sir, but some of the officers and their wives slept here last night. Better quarters, see?” Bullen paused, evidently expecting some reaction from Sharpe. “Don’t you see, sir? There’s a whole French battalion over there. The 8th. Not just the garrison, but a fighting battalion. Oh, dear God.” This last was because two women had detached themselves from the rest and were haranguing him in Spanish. Bullen calmed them with a smile. “They say they’re Spanish, sir,” he explained to Sharpe, “and say they don’t want to go to the other fort.”

“What are they doing here in the first place?”

The women talked to Sharpe, both at the same time, both urgently, and he thought he understood that they were claiming to have been captured by the French and forced to live with a pair of soldiers. That might be true, he thought. “So where do you want to go?” he asked them in bad Spanish.

They both spoke again, pointing across the river and southward, claiming that was where they had come from. Sharpe hushed them. “They can go wherever they bloody like, Jack.”

The fort’s gate was thrown open and Bullen led the way through, holding his arms wide to show the French across the river that he meant no harm. The women followed. The track down to the river was rough and stony and the women went slowly until they reached the wooden roadway laid across the pontoons. Sharpe and his men brought up the rear. Harper, his seven-barreled gun slung next to his rifle, nodded across the river. “There’s a reception party, sir,” he said, referring to three mounted French officers who had just appeared outside Fort Josephine. They were waiting there, watching the approaching women and soldiers.

A dozen of Sharpe’s men were manhandling the cart. Lieutenant Sturridge, the engineer, was with them and he kept flinching because the cart had a skewed axle and constantly lurched to the left. It went more smoothly once they were on the bridge, though the women were nervous of crossing because the whole roadway of planked chesses was vibrating from the pressure of the winter-swollen river as it forced its way between the bargelike pontoons. Dead branches and flotsam were jammed on the upstream side, increasing the pressure and making the water break white about the bluff bows. Each of the big pontoons was held against the current by a pair of thick anchor chains and Sharpe hoped that five barrels of damp powder would prove sufficient to shatter the massive construction. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Harper asked.

“Porto?”

“All those poor bastards,” Harper said, remembering the awful moment when the pontoon bridge across the Douro had snapped. The roadway had been crowded with folk fleeing the invading French, and hundreds of them had drowned. Sharpe still saw the children in his dreams.

The three French officers were riding down to the bridge’s far end now. They waited there and Sharpe hurried past the women. “Jack,” he called to Bullen, “I need you to translate.”

Sharpe and Bullen led the way to the Spanish bank. The women followed hesitantly. The three French officers waited and, as Sharpe drew near, one of them took off his cocked hat in salute. “My name is Lecroix,” he said as he introduced himself. He spoke in English. Lecroix was a young man, exquisitely uniformed, with a lean handsome face and very white teeth. “Captain Lecroix of the 8th,” he added.

“Captain Sharpe.”

Lecroix’s eyes widened slightly, perhaps because Sharpe did not look like a captain. His uniform was torn and dirty and, though he wore a sword, as officers did, the blade was a Heavy Cavalry trooper’s weapon, which was a huge and unwieldy blade better suited for butchering. He carried a rifle too, and officers did not usually carry longarms. Then there was his face, tanned and scarred, a face you might meet in some fetid alley, not in a salon. It was a frightening face and Lecroix, who was no coward, almost recoiled from the hostility in Sharpe’s eyes. “Colonel Vandal,” he said, putting the stress on the name’s second syllable, “sends his compliments, monsieur, and requests that you permit us to recover our wounded”—he paused, glancing at the handcart that had been stripped of the women’s luggage, thus revealing the powder kegs—“before you attempt to destroy the bridge.”

“Attempt?” Sharpe asked.

Lecroix ignored the scorn. “Or do you intend to leave our wounded for the amusements of the Portuguese?”

Sharpe was tempted to say that any French wounded deserved whatever they got from the Portuguese, but he resisted the urge. The request, he reckoned, was fair enough and so he drew Jack Bullen away far enough so that the French officers could not overhear him. “Go and see the brigadier,” he told the lieutenant, “and tell him these buggers want to fetch their wounded over the river before we destroy the bridge.”

Bullen set off back across the bridge while two of the French officers started back toward Fort Josephine, followed by all the women except the two Spaniards who, barefooted and ragged, hurried south down the river’s bank. Lecroix watched them go. “Those two didn’t want to stay with us?” He sounded surprised.

“They said you captured them.”

“We probably did.” He took out a leather case of long thin cigars and offered one to Sharpe. Sharpe shook his head, then waited as Lecroix laboriously struck a light with his tinderbox. “You did well this morning,” the Frenchman said once the cigar was alight.

“Your garrison was asleep,” Sharpe said.

Lecroix shrugged. “Garrison troops. No good. Old and sick and tired men.” He spat out a shred of tobacco. “But I think you have done all the damage you will do today. You will not break the bridge.”

“We won’t?”

“Cannon,” Lecroix said laconically, gesturing at Fort Josephine, “and my colonel is determined to preserve the bridge, and what my colonel wants, he gets.”

“Colonel Vandal?”

“Vandal,” Lecroix corrected Sharpe’s pronunciation, “Colonel Vandal of the 8th of the Line. You have heard of him?”

“Never.”

“You should educate yourself, Captain,” Lecroix said with a smile.

“Read the accounts of Austerlitz and be astonished by Colonel Vandal’s bravery.”

“Austerlitz?” Sharpe asked. “What was that?”

Lecroix just shrugged. The women’s luggage was dropped at the bridge’s end and Sharpe sent the men back, then followed them until he reached Lieutenant Sturridge who was kicking at the planks on the foredeck of the fourth pontoon from the bank. The timber was rotten and he had managed to make a hole there. The stench of stagnant water came from the hole. “If we widen it,” Sturridge said, “then we should be able to blow this one to hell and beyond.”

“Sir!” Harper called. Sharpe turned eastward and saw French infantry coming from Fort Josephine. They were fixing bayonets and forming ranks just outside the fort, but he had no doubt they were coming to the bridge. It was a big company, at least a hundred men. French battalions were divided into six companies, unlike the British who had ten, and this company looked formidable with fixed bayonets. Bloody hell, Sharpe thought, but if the frogs wanted to make a fight of it, then they had better hurry because Sturridge, helped by a half dozen of Sharpe’s men, was prising off the pontoon’s foredeck and Harper was carrying the first powder barrel toward the widening hole.

There was a thunderous sound from the Portuguese side of the bridge and Sharpe saw the brigadier, accompanied by two officers, galloping onto the roadway. More redcoats were coming from the fort, doubling down the stony track, evidently to reinforce Sharpe’s men. The brigadier’s commandeered stallion was nervous of the vibrating roadway, but Moon was a superb horseman and kept the beast under control. He curbed the horse close to Sharpe. “What the devil’s going on?”

“They said they wanted to fetch their wounded, sir.”

“So what are those bloody men doing?” Moon looked at the French infantry.

“I reckon they want to stop us blowing the bridge, sir.”

“Damn them to hell,” Moon said, throwing Sharpe an angry look as if it was Sharpe’s fault. “Either they’re talking to us or they’re fighting us. They can’t do both at the same time! There are some bloody rules in war!” He spurred on. Major Gillespie, the brigadier’s aide, followed him after giving Sharpe a sympathetic glance. The third horseman was Jack Bullen. “Come on, Bullen!” Moon shouted. “You can interpret for me. My frog ain’t up to scratch.”

Harper was filling the bows of the fourth pontoon with the barrels and Sturridge had taken off his jacket and was unwinding the slow match coiled about his waist. There was nothing there for Sharpe to do, so he went to where the brigadier was snarling at Lecroix. The immediate cause of the brigadier’s anger was that the French infantry company had advanced halfway down the hill and were now arrayed in line facing the bridge. They were no more than a hundred paces away, and were accompanied by three mounted officers. “You can’t talk to us about recovering your wounded and make threatening movements at the same time!” Moon snapped.

“I believe, monsieur, those men merely come to collect the wounded,” Lecroix said soothingly.

“Not carrying weapons, they don’t,” Moon said, “and not without my permission! And why the hell have they got fixed bayonets?”

“A misunderstanding, I’m sure,” Lecroix said emolliently. “Perhaps you would do us the honor of discussing the matter with my colonel?” He gestured toward the horsemen waiting behind the French infantry.

But Moon was not going to be summoned by some French colonel. “Tell him to come here,” he insisted.

“Or you will send an emissary, perhaps?” Lecroix suggested smoothly, ignoring the brigadier’s direct order.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Moon snarled. “Major Gillespie? Go and talk sense to the damned man. Tell him he can send one officer and twenty soldiers to recover their wounded. They’re not to bring any weapons, but the officer may carry sidearms. Lieutenant?” The brigadier looked at Bullen. “Go and translate.”

Gillespie and Bullen rode uphill with Lecroix. Meanwhile the light company of the 88th had arrived on the French side of the bridge that was now crowded with soldiers. Sharpe was worried. His own company was on the roadway, guarding Sturridge, and now the 88th’s light company had joined them, and they all made a prime target for the French company that was in a line of three ranks. Then there were the French gunners watching from the ramparts of Fort Josephine who doubtless had their barrels loaded with grapeshot. Moon had ordered the 88th down to the bridge, but now seemed to realize that they were an embarrassment rather than a reinforcement. “Take your men back to the other side,” he called to their captain, then turned around because a single Frenchman was now riding toward the bridge. Gillespie and Bullen, meanwhile, were with the other French officers behind the enemy company.

The French officer curbed his horse twenty paces away and Sharpe assumed this was the renowned Colonel Vandal, the 8th’s commanding officer, for he had two heavy gold epaulettes on his blue coat and his cocked hat was crowned with a white pom-pom, which seemed a frivolous decoration for a man who looked so baleful. He had a savagely unfriendly face with a narrow black moustache. He appeared to be about Sharpe’s age, in his middle thirties, and had a force that came from an arrogant confidence. He spoke good English in a clipped, harsh voice. “You will withdraw to the far bank,” he said without any preamble.

“And who the devil are you?” Moon demanded.

“Colonel Henri Vandal,” the Frenchman said, “and you will withdraw to the far bank and leave the bridge undamaged.” He took a watch from his coat pocket, clicked open the lid, and showed the face to the brigadier. “I shall give you one minute before I open fire.”

“This is no way to behave,” Moon said loftily. “If you wish to fight, Colonel, then you will have the courtesy to return my envoys first.”

“Your envoys?” Vandal seemed amused by the word. “I saw no flag of truce.”

“Your fellow didn’t carry one either!” Moon protested.

“And Captain Lecroix reports that you brought your gunpowder with our women. I could not stop you, of course, without killing women. You risked the women’s lives, I did not, so I assume you have abandoned the rules of civilized warfare. I shall, however, return your officers when you withdraw from the undamaged bridge. You have one minute, monsieur.” And with those words Vandal turned his horse and spurred it back up the track.

“Are you holding my men prisoners?” Moon shouted.

“I am!” Vandal called back carelessly.

“There are rules of warfare!” Moon shouted at the retreating colonel.

“Rules?” Vandal turned his horse, and his handsome, arrogant face showed disdain. “You think there are rules in war? You think it is like your English game of cricket?”

“Your fellow asked us to send an emissary,” Moon said hotly. “We did. There are rules governing such matters. Even you French should know that.”

“We French,” Vandal said, amused. “I shall tell you the rules, monsieur. I have orders to cross the bridge with a battery of artillery. If there is no bridge, I cannot cross the river. So my rule is that I shall preserve the bridge. In short, monsieur, there is only one rule in warfare, and that is to win. Other than that, monsieur, we French have no rules.” He turned his horse and spurred uphill. “You have one minute,” he called back carelessly.

“Good God incarnate,” Moon said, staring after the retreating Frenchman. The brigadier was plainly puzzled, even astonished by Vandal’s ruthlessness. “There are rules!” he protested into thin air.

“Blow the bridge, sir?” Sharpe asked stolidly.

Moon was still gazing after Vandal. “They invited us to talk! The bloody man invited us to talk! They can’t do this. There are rules!”

“You want us to blow the bridge, sir?” Sharpe asked again.

Moon appeared not to hear. “He has to return Gillespie and your lieutenant,” he said. “God damn it, there are rules!”

“He’s not going to return them, sir,” Sharpe said.

Moon frowned from the saddle. He appeared puzzled, as if he did not know how he was to deal with Vandal’s treachery. “He can’t keep them prisoner!” he protested.

“He’s going to keep them, sir, unless you tell me to leave the bridge intact.”

Moon hesitated, but then recalled that his future career, with all its dazzling rewards, depended on the bridge’s destruction. “Blow the bridge,” he said harshly.

“Back!” Sharpe turned and shouted at his men. “Get back! Mister Sturridge! Light the fuse!”

“Bloody hell!” The brigadier suddenly realized he was on the wrong side of a bridge that was crowded with men, and that in about half a minute the French planned to open fire. So he turned his horse and spurred it back along the roadway. The riflemen and redcoats were running and Sharpe followed them, walking backward, keeping his eye on the French, the rifle in his hands. He reckoned he was safe enough. The French company was a long musket shot away and so far they had made no attempt to close the range, but then Sharpe saw Vandal turn and wave to the fort.

“Bloody hell.” Sharpe echoed the brigadier, and then the world shook to the sound of six guns emptying their barrels of grapeshot. Dark smoke whipped the sky, the balls screamed around Sharpe, slapping onto the bridge and slashing into men and churning the river into foam. Sharpe heard a scream behind him, then saw the French company running toward the bridge. There was an odd silence after the guns fired. No muskets had been used yet. The river settled from the strike of the grapeshot and Sharpe heard another scream and snatched a look behind him to see Moon’s stallion rearing, blood seething from its neck, and then the brigadier fell into a knot of men.

Sturridge was dead. Sharpe found him some twenty paces beyond the powder barrels. The engineer, struck in the head by a piece of grapeshot, was lying beside the slow match that had not been lit and now the French were almost at the bridge and Sharpe snatched up Sturridge’s tinderbox and ran toward the powder barrels. He shortened the slow match by tearing it apart just a couple of paces from the charge, then struck the flint on the steel. The spark flew and died. He struck again, and this time a scrap of dried linen caught the spark and he blew on it gently and the tinder flared up and he put the flame to the fuse and saw the powder begin to spark and fizz. The first Frenchmen were obstructed by the women’s abandoned luggage, but they kicked it aside and ran onto the bridge where they knelt and aimed their muskets. Sharpe watched the fuse. It was burning so damn slowly! He heard rifles fire, their sound crisper than muskets, and a Frenchman slowly toppled with a look of indignation on his face and a bright stab of blood on his white crossbelt. Then the French pulled their triggers and the balls flew close around him. The damned fuse was slower than slow! The French were just yards away. Then Sharpe heard more rifles firing, heard a French officer screaming at his men, and Sharpe tore the fuse again, much closer to the powder barrels, and he used the burning end to light the new stub. That new stub was just inches from the barrel, and to make sure it burned fiercely, he blew on it, then turned and ran toward the western bank.

Moon was wounded, but a pair of men from the 88th had picked the brigadier off the roadway and were carrying him. “Come on, sir!” Harper shouted. Sharpe could hear the Frenchmen’s boots on the roadway. Then Harper was beside him and leveled the seven-barrel gun. It was a naval weapon, one that had never really worked well. It was supposed to be carried in the fighting tops where its seven bunched barrels could launch a small volley of half-inch balls at marksmen in the enemy rigging, but the recoil of the volley gun was so violent that few men were strong enough to wield it. Patrick Harper was strong enough. “Down, sir!” he shouted, and Sharpe dropped flat as the sergeant pulled the trigger. The noise deafened Sharpe, and the leading rank of Frenchmen was blown apart by the seven balls, but one sergeant survived and he ran to where the fizzing fuse sparked and smoked at the barrel’s top. Sharpe was still sprawled on the roadway, but he wrenched the rifle clear of his body. He had no time to aim, just point the muzzle and pull the trigger, and he saw, through the sudden powder smoke, the French sergeant’s face turn to a blossom of blood and red mist. The sergeant was hurled backward, the fuse still smoking, and then the world exploded.

Flame, smoke, and timbers erupted into the air, though the chief effect of the exploding powder was to drive the pontoon down into the river. The roadway buckled under the strain, planks snapping free. The French were thrown back, some dead, some burned, some stunned, and then the shattered pontoon violently reared up from the water and its anchor chains snapped from the recoil. The bridge jerked downstream, throwing Harper off his feet. He and Sharpe clung to the planks. The bridge was shuddering now, the river foaming and pushing at the broken gap as scraps of burning timber flamed on the roadway. Sharpe had been half dazed by the explosion and now found it hard to stand, but he staggered toward the British-held shore. The pontoon anchor chains began to snap, one after the other, and the more that parted, the more pressure was put on the remaining chains. The French cannon fired again and the air was filled with screaming grapeshot. One of the men carrying Brigadier Moon jerked forward with blood staining the back of his red coat. The man vomited blood and the brigadier bellowed in agony as he was dropped. The bridge began to shake like a bough in the wind and Sharpe had to fall to his knees and hold on to a plank to stop being thrown into the water. Musket balls were coming from the French company, but the range was too long for accuracy. The brigadier’s wounded horse was in the river, blood swirling as it struggled against the inevitable drowning.

A shell struck the bridge’s far end. Sharpe decided the French gunners were trying to hold the British fugitives on the breaking bridge where they could be flayed by grapeshot. The French infantry had retreated to the eastern bank from where they fired musket volleys. Smoke was filling the valley. Water splashed across the pontoon where Sharpe and Harper clung. Then it shook again and the roadway splintered. Sharpe feared the remnants of the bridge would overturn. A bullet slammed into a plank by his side. Another shell exploded at the bridge’s far end, leaving a puff of dirty smoke that drifted upstream where white birds flew in panic.

Then suddenly the bridge quivered and went still. The central portion of six pontoons had broken free and was drifting down the river. There was a tug as a last anchor chain snapped. Then the six pontoons were circling and floating as a barrel load of grapeshot churned the water just behind them. Sharpe could kneel now. He loaded the rifle, aimed at the French infantry, and fired. Harper slung his empty volley gun and shot with his rifle instead. Rifleman Slattery and Rifleman Harris came to join them and sent two more bullets, both aimed at the French officers on horseback, but when the rifle smoke cleared the officers were still mounted. The pontoons were traveling fast in the current, accompanied by broken and charred timbers. Brigadier Moon was lying on his back, trying to prop himself up on his elbows. “What happened?”

“We’re floating free, sir,” Sharpe said. There were six men of the 88th on the makeshift raft and five of Sharpe’s riflemen from the South Essex. The rest of his company had either escaped the bridge before it broke or else were in the river. So now, with Sharpe and the brigadier, there were thirteen men floating downstream and over a hundred Frenchmen running down the bank, keeping level with them. Sharpe hoped that thirteen was not unlucky.

“See if you can paddle to the western bank,” Moon ordered. Some British officers, using captured horses, were on that bank and were trying to catch up with the raft.

Sharpe had the men use their rifle and musket butts as paddles, but the pontoons were monstrously heavy and their efforts were futile. The raft drifted on southward. A last shell plunged harmlessly into the river, its fuse extinguished instantly by the water. “Paddle, for God’s sake!” Moon snapped.

“They’re doing their best, sir,” Sharpe said. “Broken leg, sir?”

“Calf bone,” Moon said, wincing. “Heard it snap when the horse fell.”

“We’ll straighten it up in a minute, sir,” Sharpe said soothingly.

“You’ll do no such bloody thing, man! You’ll get me to a doctor.”

Sharpe was not certain how he was going to get Moon anywhere except straight down the river, which was curving now about a great rock bluff on the Spanish bank. That bluff, at least, would check the French pursuit. He used his rifle as a paddle, but the raft defiantly took its own path. Once past the bluff the river widened, swung back to the west, and the current slowed a little.

The French pursuers were left behind and the British were finding the going hard on the Portuguese bank. The French cannon were still firing, but they could no longer see the raft so they had to be shooting at the British forces on that western bank. Sharpe tried to steer with a length of scorched, broken plank, not because he thought it would do any good, but to prevent Moon complaining. The makeshift rudder had no effect. The raft stubbornly stayed close to the Spanish bank. Sharpe thought about Bullen and felt a pulse of pure anger at the way in which the lieutenant had been taken prisoner. “I’m going to kill that bastard,” he said aloud.

“You’re going to do what?” Moon demanded.

“I’m going to kill that bastard Frenchman, sir. Colonel Vandal.”

“You’re going to get me to the other bank, Sharpe, that’s what you’re going to do, and you’re going to do it quickly.”

At which point, with a shudder and a lurch, the pontoons ran aground.

THE CRYPT lay beneath the cathedral. It was a labyrinth hacked from the rock on which Cádiz defied the sea, and in deeper holes beneath the crypt’s flagged floor, the dead bishops of Cádiz waited for the resurrection.

Two flights of stone steps descended to the crypt, emerging into a large chapel that was a round chamber twice the height of a man and thirty paces wide. If a man stood in the chamber’s center and clapped his hands once, the noise would sound fifteen times. It was a crypt of echoes.

Five caverns opened from the chapel. One led to a smaller round chapel at the farthest end of the labyrinth, while the other four flanked the big chamber. The four were deep and dark, and they were connected to one another by a hidden passageway that circled the whole crypt. None of the caverns was decorated. The cathedral above might glitter with candlelight and shine with marble and have painted saints and monstrances of silver and candlesticks of gold, but the crypt was plain stone. Only the altars had color. In the smaller chapel a virgin gazed sadly down the long passage to where, across the wider chamber, her son hung on a silver cross in never-ending pain.

It was deep night. The cathedral was empty. The last priest had folded his scapular and gone home. The women who haunted the altars had been ushered out, the floor had been swept, and the doors locked. Candles still burned, and the red light of the eternal presence glowed under the scaffolding that ringed the crossing where the transept met the nave. The cathedral was unfinished. The sanctuary with its high altar had yet to be built, the dome was half made, and the bell towers not even started.

Father Montseny had a key to one of the eastern doors. The key scraped in the lock and the door hinges squealed when he pushed it open. He came with six men. Two of them stayed close to the unlocked cathedral door. They stood in shadow, hidden, both with loaded muskets and with orders to use them only if things became desperate. “This is a night for knives,” Montseny told the men.

“In the cathedral?” one of the men asked nervously.

“I will give you absolution for any sins,” Montseny said, “and the men who must die here are heretics. They are Protestants, English. God will be gladdened by their deaths.”

He took the remaining four men to the crypt and, once in the main chamber, he placed candles on the floor and lit them. The light flickered on the shallow-domed ceiling. He put two men in one of the chambers to the east while he, with the remaining pair, waited in the darkness of the chamber opposite. “No noise now!” he warned them. “We wait.”

The English came early as Father Montseny had supposed they would. He heard the distant squeal of the hinges as they pushed open the unlocked door. He heard their footsteps coming down the cathedral’s long nave and he knew that the two men he had left by the door would have bolted it now and would be following the English toward the crypt.

Three men appeared on the western steps. They came slowly, cautiously. One of them, the tallest, had a bag. That man peered into the big round chamber and saw no one. “Hello!” he shouted.

Father Montseny tossed a packet into the chamber. It was a thick packet, tied with string. “What you will do,” he said in the English he had learned as a prisoner, “is bring the money, put it beside the letters, take the letters, and go.”

The man looked at the black archways leading from the big candlelit chamber. He was trying to decide where Montseny’s voice had come from. “You think I’m a fool?” he asked. “I must see the letters first.” He was a big man, red-faced, with a bulbous nose and thick black eyebrows.

“You may examine them, Captain,” Montseny said. He knew the man was called Plummer and that he had been a captain in the British army, and now he was a functionary in the British embassy. Plummer’s job was to make certain the embassy’s servants did not steal, that the gratings on the windows were secure, and that the shutters were locked at night. Plummer was, in Montseny’s opinion, a nonentity, a failed soldier, a man who now came anxiously into the ring of candles and squatted by the package. The string was tough and knotted tight and Plummer could not undo it. He felt in his pocket, presumably looking for a knife.

“Show me the gold,” Montseny ordered.

Plummer scowled at the peremptory tone, but obliged by opening the bag he had placed beside the package. He took out a cloth bag that he unlaced, then brought out a handful of golden guineas. “Three hundred,” he said, “as we agreed.” His voice echoed back and forth, confusing him.

“Now,” Montseny said, and his men appeared from the dark with leveled muskets. The two men Plummer had left on the steps staggered forward as Montseny’s last two men came down the stairs behind them.

“What the hell are you…” Plummer began, then saw the priest was carrying a pistol. “You’re a priest?”

“I thought we should all examine the merchandise,” Montseny said, ignoring the question. He had the three men surrounded now. “You will lie flat while I count the coins.”

“The devil I will,” Plummer said.

“On the floor,” Montseny spoke in Spanish, and his men, all of whom had served in the Spanish navy and had muscles hardened by years of grueling work, easily subdued the three and put them facedown on the crypt floor. Montseny picked up the string-bound package and put it in his pocket, then pushed the gold aside with his foot. “Kill them,” he said.

The two men accompanying Plummer were Spaniards themselves, embassy servants, and they protested when they heard Montseny’s order. Plummer resisted, heaving up from the floor, but Montseny killed him easily, sliding a knife up into his ribs and letting Plummer heave against the blade as it sought his heart. The other two died just as quickly. It was done with remarkably little noise.

Montseny gave his men five golden guineas apiece, a generous reward. “The English,” he explained to them, “secretly plan to keep Cádiz for themselves. They call themselves our allies, but they will betray Spain. Tonight you have fought for your king, for your country, and for the holy church. The admiral will be pleased with you, and God will reward you.” He searched the bodies, found a few coins and a bone-handled knife. Plummer had a pistol under his cloak, but it was a crude, heavy weapon and Montseny let one of the sailors keep it.

The three corpses were dragged up the steps, down the nave, and then carried to the nearby seawall. There Father Montseny said a prayer for their souls and his men heaved the dead over the stony edge. The bodies smacked down into the rocks where the Atlantic sucked and broke white. Father Montseny locked the cathedral and went home.

The next day the blood was found in the crypt and on the stairs and in the nave, and at first no one could explain it until some of the women who prayed in the cathedral every day declared that it must be the blood of Saint Servando, one of Cádiz’s patron saints whose body had once lain in the city, but had been taken to Seville, which was now occupied by the French. The blood, the women insisted, was proof that the saint had miraculously spurned the French-held city and returned home, and the discovery of three bodies being buffeted by the waves on the rocks below the seawall would not dissuade them. It was a miracle, they said, and the rumor of the miracle spread.

Captain Plummer was recognized and his body was carried to the embassy. There was a makeshift chapel inside and a hurried funeral service was read and the captain was then buried in the sands of the isthmus that connected Cádiz to the Isla de León. The next day Montseny wrote to the British ambassador, claiming that Plummer had tried to keep the gold and take the letters, and his regrettable death had thus been inevitable, but that the British could still have the letters back, only now they would cost a great deal more. He did not sign the letter, but enclosed one bloodstained guinea. It was an investment, he thought, that would bring back a fortune, and the fortune would pay for Father Montseny’s dreams: dreams of Spain, glorious again and free of foreigners. The English would pay for their own defeat.

CHAPTER 2

N OW WHAT?” BRIGADIER MOON demanded.

“We’re stuck, sir.”

“Good God incarnate, man, can’t you do anything right?”

Sharpe said nothing. Instead he and Harper stripped off their cartridge boxes and jumped overboard to find themselves in four feet of water. They heaved on the pontoon, but it was like trying to push the Rock of Gibraltar. It was immovable and they were stranded fifty or sixty feet from the eastern bank on which the French pursued them, and over a hundred and fifty yards from the British-held bank. Sharpe ordered the other soldiers to get in the river and push, but it did no good. The big pontoons had grounded hard on a shingle bank and evidently intended to stay there.

“If we can cut one of the buggers free, sir,” Harper suggested. It was a good suggestion. If one of the pontoons could be loosed from the others then they would have a boat light enough to be forced off the shingle, but the big barges were connected by ropes and by stout timber beams that had carried the plank roadway.

“It’ll take us half a day to do it,” Sharpe said, “and I don’t think the Crapauds will be happy.”

“What the devil are you doing, Sharpe?” Moon demanded from the raft.

“Going ashore, sir,” Sharpe decided, “all of us.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Because, sir,” Sharpe said, forcing himself to stay patient, “the French will be here in half an hour and if we’re in the river, sir, they’ll either shoot us down like dogs or else take us prisoner.”

“So your intentions?”

“Go up that hill, sir, hide there, and wait for the enemy to leave. And when they’ve gone, sir, we’ll cut one of the pontoons free.” Though how he would do that with no tools he was not sure, but he would have to try.

Moon plainly wanted to suggest another course of action, but none came to his mind so he submitted to being carried ashore by Sergeant Harper. The rest of the men followed, carrying their weapons and cartridge boxes over their heads. Once ashore they made a makeshift stretcher from a pair of muskets threaded through the sleeves of two red coats, then Harris and Slattery carried the brigadier up the steep hill. Sharpe, before leaving the riverbank, collected a few short sticks and a scrappy piece of fishing net, all of which had been washed onto the rocks, then he followed the others up to the first crest and saw, looking to his left, that the French had climbed to the top of the bluff. They were nearly half a mile away, which did not stop one of them loosing off his musket. The ball must have fallen into the intervening valley and the report, when it came, was muffled.

“This is far enough,” Moon announced. The jolting of the crude stretcher was giving him agony and he looked pale.

“To the top,” Sharpe said, nodding to where rocks crowned the bare hill.

“For God’s sake, man,” Moon began.

“French are coming, sir,” Sharpe interrupted the brigadier. “If you want, sir, I can leave you for them, sir? They must have a surgeon in the fort.”

Moon looked tempted for a few seconds, but understood that high-ranking prisoners were rarely exchanged. It was possible that a French brigadier might be captured soon and after prolonged negotiations would be exchanged for Moon, but it would take weeks if not months, and all the while his career would be stalled and other men promoted over him. “Up the hill if you must,” he said grudgingly, “but what are your plans after that?”

“Wait for the French to go, sir, detach a pontoon, cross the river, get you home.”

“And why the devil are you carrying firewood?”

The brigadier discovered why at the top of the hill. Private Geoghegan, one of the men from the 88th, claimed his mother had been a bonesetter and said he had often helped her as a child. “What you do, sir,” he explained, “is pull the bone.”

“Pull it?” Sharpe asked.

“Give it a good swift tug, sir, and he’ll like as not squeal like a piglet, and I straightens it then and we bind it up. Would the gentleman be a Protestant, would he, sir?”

“I should think so.”

“Then we don’t need the holy water, sir, and we’ll do without the two prayers as well, but he’ll be straight enough when we’re done.”

The brigadier protested. Why not wait till they were across the river, he wanted to know, and blanched when Sharpe said that could be two days. “Soonest done, soonest mended, sir,” Private Geoghegan said, “and if we don’t mend it soon, sir, it’ll set crooked as can be. And I’ll have to cut your trouser off, sir, sorry, sir.”

“You’ll not damned well cut them!” Moon protested hotly. “They’re Willoughby’s best! There isn’t a finer tailor in London.”

“Then you’ll have to take them off yourself, sir, you will,” Geoghegan said. He looked as wild as any of the Connaught men, but had a soft, sympathetic voice and a confidence that somewhat allayed the brigadier’s apprehensions, yet even so it took twenty minutes to persuade Moon that he should allow his leg to be straightened. It was the thought that he would have to spend the rest of his life with a crooked limb that really convinced him. He saw himself limping into salons, unable to dance, awkward in the saddle, and his vanity at last overcame his fear. Sharpe, meanwhile, watched the French. Forty men had worked their way over the bluff and now they were walking toward the stranded pontoons.

“Buggers are going to salvage them,” Harper said.

“Take the riflemen halfway down the hill,” Sharpe said, “and stop them.”

Harper left, taking Slattery, Harris, Hagman, and Perkins with him. They were the only men from Sharpe’s company stranded on the pontoons, but it was a consolation that they were all good riflemen. There was no better soldier than Sergeant Patrick Harper, the huge Ulsterman who hated the British rule of his homeland, but still fought like a hero. Slattery was from County Wicklow and was quiet, soft-spoken, and capable. Harris had been a schoolmaster once and was clever, well-read, and too fond of gin, which was why he was now a soldier, but he was amusing and loyal. Dan Hagman was the oldest, well over forty, and he had been a poacher in Cheshire before the law caught him and condemned him to the army’s ranks. There was no better marksman in any rifle company. Perkins was the youngest, young enough to be Hagman’s grandson, and he had been a street urchin in London as Sharpe had once been, but he was learning to be a good soldier. He was learning that discipline tied to savagery was unbeatable. They were all good men and Sharpe was glad to have them, and just then the brigadier gave a yelp that he managed to stifle, though he could not contain a long moan. Geoghegan had eased off the brigadier’s boots, which must have hurt like hell, and somehow managed to take down Moon’s trousers, and now he placed two of Sharpe’s sticks alongside the broken calf and wrapped one of the brigadier’s trouser legs about the limb so that it gripped the sticks. He tightened the pressure by winding the trouser leg as though he wrung water from the material. He tightened it until the brigadier gave a hiss of protest. Then Geoghegan grinned at Sharpe. “Would you help me, sir? Just take the general’s ankle, will you, sir? And when I tell you, sir, give it a good smart pull.”

“For God’s sake,” the brigadier managed to say.

“As brave a man as ever I saw, sir, so you are,” Geoghegan said, and he smiled reassuringly at Sharpe. “Are you ready, sir?”

“How hard do I pull?”

“A good tug, sir, just like pulling a lamb that doesn’t want to be born. Are you ready? Take firm hold, sir, both hands! Now!”

Sharpe pulled, the brigadier gave a high-pitched cry, Geoghegan screwed the material even tighter, and Sharpe distinctly heard the bone grate into place. Geoghegan was stroking the brigadier’s leg now. “And that’s just good as can be, sir, good as new, sir.” Moon did not respond and Sharpe realized the brigadier had either fainted or was in such shock that he could not speak.

Geoghegan splinted the leg with the sticks and the net. “He can’t walk on it, not for a while, but we’ll make him crutches, we will, and he’ll be dancing like a pony soon enough.”

The rifles sounded and Sharpe turned and ran down the hill to where his greenjackets were kneeling on the turf. They were about a hundred and fifty yards from the river and sixty feet above it, and the French were crouching in the water. They had been trying to haul the big barges off the shingle, but the bullets had ended that effort and now the men were using the pontoon hulls as protection. An officer ran into the shallow water, probably shouting at the men to get to their feet and try again, and Sharpe aimed at the officer, pulled the trigger, and the rifle banged into his shoulder as an errant spark from the flint stung his right eye. When the smoke cleared he saw the panicked officer running back to the bank, holding his scabbarded sword clear of the water in one hand and clutching his hat in the other. Slattery fired a second time and a splinter smacked up from one of the pontoons. Then Harper’s next shot threw a man into the river and there was a swirl of blood in which the man thrashed as he drifted away. Harris fired and most of the French waded away from the pontoons to take shelter behind some boulders on the bank.

“Just keep them there,” Sharpe said. “As soon as they try to shift those barges, kill them.”

He climbed back up the hill. The brigadier was propped against a rock now. “What’s happening?” he asked.

“Frogs are trying to salvage the barges, sir. We’re stopping them.”

The boom of the French guns in Fort Josephine echoed down the river valley. “Why are they firing?” the brigadier asked irritably.

“My guess, sir,” Sharpe said, “is that some of our boys are trying to use a pontoon as a boat to look for us. And the frogs are shooting at them.”

“Bloody hell,” Moon said. He closed his eyes and grimaced. “You wouldn’t, I suppose, have any brandy?”

“No, sir, sorry, sir.” Sharpe would have bet a penny against the crown jewels that at least one of his men had brandy or rum in their canteen, but he would be damned before he took it away from them for the brigadier. “I’ve got water, sir,” he said, offering his canteen.

“Damn your water.”

Sharpe reckoned he could trust his riflemen to behave sensibly until they managed to recross the river, but the six fugitives from the 88th were another matter. The 88th were the Connaught Rangers and some men reckoned them the most fearsome regiment in the whole army, but they also had a reputation for wild indiscipline. The six rangers were led by a toothless sergeant and Sharpe, knowing that if the sergeant was on his side then the other men would probably cause no trouble, crossed to him. “What’s your name, Sergeant?” Sharpe asked him.

“Noolan, sir.”

“I want you to watch over there,” Sharpe said, pointing north to the crest of the hill above the bluff. “I’m expecting a battalion of bloody frogs to come over that hill, and when they do, sing out.”

“I’ll sing right enough, sir,” Noolan promised, “sing like a choir, I will.”

“If they do come,” Sharpe said, “we’ll have to go south. I know the 88th is good, but I don’t think there’s quite enough of you to fight off a whole French battalion.”

Sergeant Noolan looked at his five men, considered Sharpe’s statement, then nodded gravely. “Not quite enough of us, sir, you’re right. And what are you thinking of doing, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“What I’m hoping,” Sharpe said, “is that the frogs will get tired of us and bugger off. Then we can try to float one of those pontoons and get across the river. Tell your men that, Sergeant. I want to get them home, and the best way home is to be patient.”

A sudden rattle of rifle fire drew Sharpe back to Harper’s position. The French were making another attempt to free the pontoons, and this time they had made a rope by linking their musket slings together and three men were bravely fastening the line to one of the samsom posts. One man had been hit and was limping back to the shore. Sharpe began reloading his rifle, but before he had rammed the leather-wrapped ball down the barrel, the remaining Frenchmen sprinted back to their shelter, taking the line with them. Sharpe saw the rope come dripping from the river as men hauled on it. The line straightened and tightened and he guessed that nearly all the French were tugging on it, but he could do nothing about it for they were hidden by the big boulder. The line quivered and Sharpe thought he saw the pontoons shift slightly, or perhaps that was his imagination, and then the rope snapped and Sharpe’s riflemen jeered loudly.

Sharpe looked upriver. When the bridge had broken there had been seven or eight pontoons left on the British side and he was sure someone had thought to use one as a rescue craft, but no such boat appeared and by now he suspected the French cannons had either holed those pontoons or else driven the work parties away from the shore. That suggested rescue was a remote hope, leaving him with the need to salvage one of the six stranded barges.

“Does this remind you of anything?” Harper asked him.

“I was trying not to think about it,” Sharpe said.

“What were those other rivers called?”

“The Douro and the Tagus.”

“And there were no bloody boats on those either, sir,” Harper said cheerfully.

“We found boats in the end,” Sharpe said. Two years ago his company had been trapped on the wrong side of the Douro. Then, a year later, he and Harper had been stranded on the Tagus. But both times they had found their way back to the army, and he would again now, but he wished the damned French would leave. Instead the troops hidden beneath him sent a messenger back to Fort Josephine. The man scrambled up the hill and all the riflemen turned to aim at him, hauling back the flints of their weapons, but the man kept looking back, dodging and ducking, and his fear was palpable and somehow funny so that none of them pulled their triggers.

“He was too far away,” Harper said. Hagman might have dropped the man, but in truth all the riflemen had felt sorry for the Frenchman who had shown bravery in risking the rifle fire.

“He’s gone to fetch help,” Sharpe said.

Nothing happened then for a long time. Sharpe lay on his back watching a hawk slide in the high sky. Sometimes a Frenchman would peer round the rocks below, see the riflemen were still there, and duck back. After an hour or so a man waved at them, then stepped cautiously out from the boulder and mimed unbuttoning his breeches. “Bugger wants a pee, sir,” Harris said.

“Let him,” Sharpe said and they raised the rifles so the barrels pointed at the sky. A succession of Frenchmen went to stand by the river and all politely waved their thanks when they were done. Harper waved back. Sharpe went from man to man and found they had nothing but three pieces of biscuit between them. He made one of Sergeant Noolan’s men soften the biscuit with water and divide it equally, but it was a miserable dinner.

“We can’t go without food, Sharpe,” Moon complained. The brigadier had watched the division of the biscuits with a glittering eye and Sharpe had been certain he was planning to claim a larger share for himself, so Sharpe had loudly announced that every man got exactly the same portion. Moon was now in a filthier mood than usual. “How do you propose feeding us?” he demanded.

“We may have to go hungry till morning, sir.”

“Good God incarnate,” Moon muttered.

“Sir!” Sergeant Noolan called and Sharpe turned to see that two companies of the French had appeared by the bluff. They were in skirmish order to make themselves a more difficult target for the rifles.

“Pat!” Sharpe called down the slope. “We’re pulling back! Up you come!”

They went south, carrying the brigadier again, struggling over the steep slopes to keep the river in sight. The French pursued for an hour, then seemed content merely to have driven the fugitives away from the stranded pontoons.

“Now what?” Moon demanded.

“We wait here, sir,” Sharpe said. They were on a hilltop, sheltered by rocks and with a fine view in every direction. The river ran empty to the west while, off to the east, Sharpe could see a road winding through the hills.

“How long do we wait?” Moon asked snidely.

“Till nightfall, sir. Then I’ll go and see if the pontoons are still there.”

“Of course they won’t be,” Moon said, implying that Sharpe was a fool to believe otherwise, “but I suppose you’d better look.”

Sharpe need not have bothered because, in the dusk, he saw the smoke rising above the river and when dark fell there was a glow across the side of the hill. He went north, taking Sergeant Noolan and two men of the 88th, and they saw that the French had failed to free the pontoons, so instead had ensured they were useless. The barges were burning. “That is a pity,” Sharpe said.

“The brigadier will not be happy, sir,” Sergeant Noolan said cheerfully.

“No, he won’t,” Sharpe agreed.

Noolan spoke to his men in Gaelic, presumably sharing his thoughts of the brigadier’s unhappiness. “Don’t they speak English?” Sharpe asked.

“Fergal doesn’t,” Noolan said, nodding at one of the men, “and Padraig will if you shout at him, sir, but if you don’t shout he won’t have a word of it.”

“Tell them I’m glad you’re with us,” Sharpe said.

“You are?” Noolan sounded surprised.

“We were next to you on the ridge at Bussaco,” Sharpe said.

Noolan grinned in the dark. “That was a fight, eh? They kept coming and we kept killing them.”

“And now, Sergeant,” Sharpe went on, “it seems that you and I are stuck with each other for a few days.”

“So it does, sir,” Noolan agreed.

“So you need to know my rules.”

“You have rules, do you, sir?” Noolan asked cautiously.

“You don’t steal from civilians unless you’re starving, you don’t get drunk without my permission, and you fight like the devil himself was at your back.”

Noolan thought about it. “What happens if we break the rules?” he asked.

“You don’t, Sergeant,” Sharpe said bleakly, “you just don’t.”

They went back to make the brigadier unhappy.

SOMETIME IN the night the brigadier sent Harris to wake Sharpe who was half awake anyway because he was cold. Sharpe had given his greatcoat to the brigadier who, being coatless, had demanded that one of the men yield him a covering. “Is there trouble?” Sharpe asked Harris.

“Don’t know, sir. His Excellency just wants you, sir.”

“I’ve been thinking, Sharpe,” the brigadier announced when Sharpe arrived.

“Yes, sir?”

“I don’t like those men speaking Irish. You’ll tell them to use English. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and paused. The brigadier had woken him to tell him that? “I’ll tell them, sir, but some of them don’t speak English, sir.”

“Then they can bloody well learn,” the brigadier snapped. He was sleepless through pain and now wanted to spread his misery. “You can’t trust them, Sharpe. They brew mischief.”

Sharpe paused, wondering how to put sense into Moon’s head, but before he could speak Rifleman Harris intervened. “You’ll forgive me, sir?” Harris said respectfully.

“Are you talking to me, rifleman?” the brigadier asked in astonishment.

“Begging your pardon, sir, I am. If I might, sir, with respect?”

“Go on, man.”

“It’s just, sir, as Mister Sharpe says, sir, that they don’t speak English, being benighted papists, sir, and they were only discussing whether it might be possible to build a boat or a raft, sir, and they do that best in their own language, sir, because they have the words, if you follow me, sir.”

The brigadier, thoroughly buttered by Harris, thought about it. “You speak their wretched language?” he asked.

“I do, sir,” Harris said, “and French, sir, and Portuguese and Spanish, sir, and some Latin.”

“Good God incarnate,” the brigadier said, after staring at Harris for a few heartbeats, “but you are English?”

“Oh yes, sir. And proud of it.”

“Quite right. Then I can depend on you to tell me if the teagues brew trouble?”

“The teagues, sir? Oh, the Irish! Yes, sir, of course, sir, a pleasure, sir,” Harris said enthusiastically.

Just before dawn there came the sound of explosions from upriver. Sharpe stared north but could see nothing. At first light he could see thick smoke above the river valley, but he had no way of knowing what had caused that smoke, so he sent Noolan and two of his men to discover what had happened. “Stay on the hilltops,” he told the 88th’s sergeant, “and keep a lookout for Crapaud patrols.”

“That was a damn fool decision,” the brigadier said when the three rangers had gone.

“It was, sir?”

“You’ll not see those men again, will you?”

“I think we will, sir,” Sharpe said mildly.

“Damn it, man, I know the teagues. My first commission was with the 18th. I managed to escape to the fusiliers when I became a captain.” Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the brigadier had purchased out of the Irish 18th to the more congenial fusiliers of his home county.

“I think you’ll see Sergeant Noolan soon, sir,” Sharpe said stubbornly, “and while we’re waiting I’m going south. I’ll be looking for food, sir.”

Sharpe took Harris and the two of them walked the high ground above the river. “How much Gaelic do you speak, Harris?” Sharpe asked.

“About three words, sir,” Harris said, “and none of them repeatable in high company.” Sharpe laughed. “So what do we do, sir?” Harris went on.

“Cross the bloody river,” Sharpe said.

“How, sir?”

“Don’t know.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Keep going south, I suppose,” Sharpe said. He tried to remember the maps he had seen of southern Spain and had an idea that the Guadiana joined the sea well to the west of Cádiz. There was no point in trying to reach Cádiz by road, for that great port was under French siege, but once at the river’s mouth he could find a ship to carry them north to Lisbon. The only ships off the coast were allied vessels, and he reckoned that the Royal Navy patrolled the shore. It would take time, he knew, but once they reached the sea they would be as good as home. “But if we have to walk to the sea,” he added, “I’d rather do it on the far bank.”

“Because it’s Portugal?”

“Because it’s Portugal,” Sharpe said, “and they’re friendlier than the Spanish, and because there are more frogs on this side.”

Sharpe’s hopes of crossing the river rose after a couple of miles when they came to a place where the hill dropped to a wide basin where the Guadiana broadened so that it looked like a lake. A smaller river flowed from the east, and in the basin where the two rivers joined, there was a small town of white houses. Two bell towers broke the tiled roofs. “There has to be a ferry there,” Harris said, “or fishing boats.”

“Unless the frogs burned everything.”

“Then we float over on a table,” Harris said, “and at least we’ll find food down there, sir, and His Lordship will like that.”

“You mean Brigadier Moon will like that,” Sharpe said in mild reproof.

“And he’ll like that place too, won’t he?” Harris said, pointing to a large house with stables that stood just to the north of the small town. The house was of two stories, was painted white, and had a dozen windows on each floor, while at its eastern end was an ancient castle tower, now in ruins. Smoke drifted from the house’s chimneys.

Sharpe took out his telescope and examined the house. The windows were shuttered and the only signs of life were some men repairing a terrace wall in one of the many vineyards that covered the nearby slopes and another man bending over a furrow in a kitchen garden that lay beside the Guadiana. He edged the glass sideways and saw what looked like a boathouse on the riverbank. Sharpe gave the telescope to Harris. “I’d rather go to the town,” he said.

“Why’s that, sir?” Harris asked, staring at the house through Sharpe’s glass.

“Because that house hasn’t been plundered, has it? Kitchen garden all nice and tidy. What does that suggest?”

“The owner has shaken hands with the French?”

“Like as not.”

Harris thought about that. “If they’re friends with the Crapauds, sir, then perhaps there’s a boat in that shed by the river?”

“Perhaps,” Sharpe said dubiously. A door in the courtyard by the old castle ruin opened and he saw someone emerge into the sunlight. He nudged Harris, pointed, and the rifleman swung the telescope.

“Just a frow hanging out the washing,” Harris said.

“We can get our shirts laundered,” Sharpe said. “Come on, let’s fetch the brigadier.”

They walked back across the high hills to find Moon in a triumphant mood because Sergeant Noolan and his men had failed to return.

“I told you, Sharpe!” Moon said. “You can’t trust them. That sergeant looked decidedly shifty.”

“How’s your leg, sir?”

“Bloody painful. Can’t be helped, eh? So you say there’s a decent-sized town?”

“Large village anyway, sir. Two churches.”

“Let’s hope they have a doctor who knows his business. He can look at this damned leg, and the sooner the better. Let’s get on the march, Sharpe. We’re wasting time.”

But just then Sergeant Noolan reappeared to the north and the brigadier had no choice but to wait as the three men from the 88th rejoined. Noolan, his long face more lugubrious than ever, brought grim news. “They blew up the fort, sir,” he told Sharpe.

“Talk to me, man, talk to me!” Moon insisted. “I command here.”

“Sorry, your honor,” Noolan said, snatching off his battered shako. “Our lot, sir, blew up the fort, sir, and they’ve gone.”

“Fort Joseph, you mean?” Moon asked.

“Is that what it’s called, sir? The one on the other side of the river, sir, they blew it up proper, they did! Guns tipped over the parapet and nothing left on the hill but smitherings.”

“Nothing but what?”

Noolan cast a helpless look at Sharpe. “Scraps, sir,” the sergeant tried again. “Bits and pieces, sir.”

“And you say our fellows are gone? How the hell do you know they’ve gone?”

“Because the Crapauds are over there, sir, so they are. Using a boat. Going back and forth, they are, sir, back and forth, and we watched them.”

“Good God incarnate,” Moon said in disgust.

“You did well, Noolan,” Sharpe said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“And we’re buggered,” the brigadier said irritably, “because our forces have buggered off and left us here.”

“In that case, sir,” Sharpe suggested, “the sooner we get to the town and find some food, the better.”

Harper, because he was the strongest man, carried the front end of the brigadier’s stretcher while the tallest of the Connaught Rangers took the rear. It took three hours to go the short distance and it was late morning by the time they reached the long hill above the big house and the small town. “That’s where we’ll go,” Moon announced the moment he saw the house.

“I think they might be anfrancesados, sir,” Sharpe said.

“Talk English, man, talk English.”

“I think they’re sympathetic to the French, sir.”

“How can you possibly tell?”

“Because the house hasn’t been plundered, sir.”

“You can’t surmise that,” the brigadier said, though without much conviction. Sharpe’s words had given him pause, but still the house drew him like a magnet. It promised comfort and the company of gentle folk. “There’s only one way to find out, though, isn’t there?” he proclaimed. “That’s to go there! So let’s be moving.”

“I think we should go to the town, sir,” Sharpe persisted.

“And I think you should keep quiet, Sharpe, and obey my orders.”

So Sharpe kept quiet as they went down the hill, through the upper vineyards and then beneath the pale leaves of an olive grove. They maneuvered the brigadier’s stretcher over a low stone wall and approached the house through wide gardens of cypress, orange trees, and fallow flower beds. There was a large pond, full of brown leaves and stagnant water, and then an avenue of statues. The statues were all of saints writhing in their death agonies. Sebastian clutched at the stub of an arrow piercing his ribs, Agnes stared serenely heavenward despite the sword in her throat, while next to her Andrew hung upside down on his cross. There were men being burned, women being disemboweled, and all of them preserved in white marble streaked with lichen and bird droppings. The ragged soldiers stared wide-eyed and the Catholics among them made the sign of the cross while Sharpe looked for any sign of life in the house. The windows remained shuttered, but smoke still drifted from a chimney, and then the big door that opened onto a balustraded terrace was thrown open and a man, dressed in black, stepped into the sunlight and waited as though he had been expecting them. “We had best observe the proprieties,” Moon said.

“Sir?” Sharpe asked.

“For God’s sake, Sharpe, gentry live here! They don’t want their drawing room filled with common soldiers, do they? You and I can go in, but the men have to find the servants’ quarters.”

“Do they drop your stretcher outside, sir?” Sharpe asked innocently, and thought he heard a slight snort from Harper.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sharpe,” the brigadier said. “They can carry me in first.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sharpe left the men on the terrace as he accompanied the brigadier into a vast room filled with dark furniture and hung with gloomy pictures, most showing scenes of martyrdom. More saints burned here, or else gazed in rapture as soldiers skewered them, while over the mantel was a life-size painting of the crucifixion. Christ’s pale body was laced with blood while behind him a great thunderstorm unleashed lightning on a cowering city. A crucifix made of a wood so dark it was almost black hung at the other end of the room and beneath it was a private shrine draped in black on which a saber lay between two unlit candles.

The man who had greeted them was a servant who informed the brigadier that the Marquesa would join him very soon, and was there anything that his guests needed? Sharpe did his best to translate, using more Portuguese with the servant than Spanish. “Tell him I need breakfast, Sharpe,” the brigadier commanded, “and a doctor.”

Sharpe passed on the requests, then added that his men needed food and water. The servant bowed and said he would take the soldiers to the kitchen. He left Sharpe alone with Moon who was now lying on a couch. “Damned uncomfortable furniture,” the brigadier said. He grimaced from a stab of pain in his leg, then looked up at the paintings. “How do they live with this gloom?”

“I suppose they’re religious, sir.”

“We’re all bloody religious, man, but that doesn’t mean we hang paintings of torture on our walls! Good God incarnate. Nothing wrong with a few decent landscapes and some family portraits. Did he say there was a Marquesa here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well let’s hope she’s easier on the eye than her damned paintings, eh?”

“I think I ought to make sure the men are properly settled, sir,” Sharpe said.

“Good idea,” Moon said, subtly insinuating that Sharpe would be happier in the servants’ quarters. “Do take your time, Sharpe. That fellow understood I need a doctor?”

“He did, sir.”

“And food?”

“He knows that too, sir.”

“Pray God he gets both here before sundown. Oh, and Sharpe, send that bright young fellow, the one who speaks the languages, to translate for me. But tell him to smarten himself up first.” The brigadier jerked his head, dismissing Sharpe who went back onto the terrace and found his way through an alley, across the stable yard, and so to a whitewashed kitchen hung with hams and smelling of wood smoke, cheese, and baking bread. A crucifix hung above the huge fireplace where two cooks were busy at a blackened stove. A third woman pounded a mass of dough on a long scrubbed table.

Harper grinned at Sharpe, then gestured at the cheeses, hams, and the two fat wine barrels on their stands. “You wouldn’t think there was a war going on, sir, would you now?”

“You’ve forgotten something, Sergeant.”

“And what would that be, sir?”

“There’s a battalion of French infantry within half a day’s march.”

“So there is.”

Sharpe walked to the twin wine barrels and rapped the nearest. “You know the rules,” he told the watching soldiers. “If any of you get drunk I’ll make you wish you hadn’t been born.” They stared at him solemnly. What he should do, he knew, was take the two barrels outside and stave them in, but if they wanted to get drunk they would still find liquor in a house this size. Put a British soldier in a wilderness and he would soon discover a taproom. “We might have to get out of here fast,” he explained, “so I don’t want you drunk. When we get to Lisbon, I promise I’ll fill you all so full of rum that you won’t be able to stand for a week. But today, lads? Today you stay sober.”

They nodded and he slung his rifle on his shoulder. “I’m going to stand watch until you’ve eaten,” he told Harper. “Then you and two others take over from me. You saw that old castle tower?”

“Couldn’t miss it, sir.”

“That’s where I’ll be. And Harris? You’re to be an interpreter for the brigadier.”

Harris shuddered. “Do I have to, sir?”

“Yes, you bloody do. And you’re to smarten yourself up first.”

“Three bags full, sir,” Harris said.

“And Harris!” Sergeant Harper called.

“Sergeant?”

“Make sure to tell His Lordship if us teagues are causing trouble.”

“I’ll do that, Sergeant, I promise.”

Sharpe went to the tower that formed the eastern end of the stable yard. He climbed to the parapet that was some forty feet above the ground and from there he had a good view of the road that ran eastward along the smaller river. It was the road the French would use if they decided to come here. Would they come? They knew a handful of British troops was stranded on the Spanish bank of the river, but would they bother to pursue? Or perhaps they might just send a forage party. It was evident that this large house had been spared the usual French cruelties and that was doubtless because the Marquesa was anfrancesado, and that meant she must be supplying the French garrisons with provisions. So had the French refrained from plundering the town as well? If so, was there a boat? And if there was, then they could cross the river as soon as the brigadier had seen a doctor, if any doctor was available. Though once across the river, what then? The brigadier’s troops had blown up Fort Joseph and were withdrawing westward, going back to the Tagus, and as long as Moon had a broken leg there was no hope of catching them. Sharpe worried for a moment, then decided it was not his problem. Brigadier Moon was the senior officer, so all Sharpe had to do was wait for orders. In the meantime he would have his men make some crutches for the brigadier.

He stared eastward. The sides of the valley were thick with grapevines and a few men worked there, shoring up one of the stone walls holding the terraces in place. A horseman ambled eastward and a child drove two goats down the road, but otherwise nothing moved except a hawk that glided across the cloudless sky. It was winter still, but the sun had a surprising warmth. By turning around he could just see a sliver of the river beyond the house and, on the Guadiana’s far side, the Portuguese hills.

Harper relieved him, bringing Hagman and Slattery. “Harris is back, sir. Seems the lady speaks English so he isn’t needed. Is anything happening?”

“Nothing. The lady?”

“The Marquesa, sir. An old biddy.”

“I think the brigadier was hoping for something young and luscious.”

“We were all hoping for that, sir. So what do we do if we see a Frenchie?”

“We get down to the river,” Sharpe said. He gazed eastward. “If the bastards come,” he said, “this is the road they’ll use, and at least we’ll see them a couple of miles away.”

“Let’s hope they’re not coming.”

“And let’s hope no one’s drunk if they do,” Sharpe said.

Harper threw a puzzled look at Sharpe, then understood. “You needn’t worry about the Connaught men, sir. They’ll do what you tell them.”

“They will?”

“I had a word with Sergeant Noolan, so I did, and said you weren’t entirely bad unless you were crossed, and then you were a proper devil. And I told him you had an Irish father, which might be true, might it not?”

“So I’m one of you now, am I?” Sharpe asked, amused.

“Oh no, sir. You’re not handsome enough.”

Sharpe went back to the kitchen where he discovered Geoghegan pounding the dough and two more of Noolan’s men stacking firewood beside the stove. “They’ll make you eggs and ham,” Sergeant Noolan told him, “and we’ve shown them how to make proper tea.”

Sharpe contented himself with a piece of newly baked bread and a hunk of hard cheese. “Have any of your men got razors?” he asked Noolan.

“I’m sure Liam has,” Noolan said, nodding at one of the men stacking firewood. “Keeps himself looking smart, he does, for the ladies.”

“Then I want every man shaved,” Sharpe said, “and no one’s to leave the stable yard. If the bloody frogs come we don’t want to be searching for lost men. And Harris? Look around the stables. See if you can find some wood to make the brigadier crutches.”

Harris grinned. “He’s already got crutches, sir. The lady had some that belonged to her husband.”

“The Marquesa?”

“She’s a crone, sir, a widow, and hell, has she got a bloody tongue on her!”

“Has the brigadier been given food?”

“He has, sir, and there’s a doctor on his way.”

“He doesn’t need a doctor,” Sharpe grumbled. “Private Geoghegan did a good job on that leg.”

Geoghegan grinned. “I did, sir.”

“I’m going to have a look about,” Sharpe said, “so if the bloody frogs come you must get the brigadier down to the river.” He was not sure what they could do beside the river with the French on their heels, but maybe some escape would offer itself.

“You think they will come, sir?” Noolan asked.

“God knows what the bastards will do.”

Sharpe went back outside, then crossed the terrace and down into the kitchen garden. Two men worked there now, setting out plants in newly turned furrows, and they straightened up and watched him with suspicion as he walked to the boathouse. It was a wooden building on a stone foundation and had a padlocked door. It was an old ball-padlock, the size of a cooking apple, and Sharpe did not even bother trying to pick it, but just put its shackle against the door, then rapped the lock’s base with the brass butt of his rifle. He heard the bolts shear inside, pulled the shackle free, and swung the door outward.

And there was the boat.

The perfect boat. It looked like an admiral’s barge with six rowing benches and a wide stern thwart and a dozen long oars laid neatly up its center line. It floated between two walkways and there was hardly a drop of water in its bilges, suggesting that the boat was watertight. The gunwales, transom, and stern thwart had been painted white once, but the paint was peeling now and there was dust everywhere and cobwebs between the thwarts. A scrabble in the dark beneath the walkways betrayed rats.

He heard the footsteps behind and turned to see that one of the gardeners had come to the boathouse. The man was holding a fowling piece that he trained at Sharpe and then spoke in a harsh voice. He jerked his head and twitched the gun, ordering Sharpe away from the boat.

Sharpe shrugged. The fowling piece had a barrel at least five feet long. It looked ancient, but that did not mean it would not work. The man was tall, well-built, in his forties, and he held the old gun confidently. He ordered Sharpe out of the boathouse again and Sharpe meekly obeyed. The man was reprimanding him, but so fast that Sharpe could hardly understand one word in ten, but he understood well enough when the man emphasized his words by poking his gun barrel into Sharpe’s waist. Sharpe seized the gun with his left hand and hit the man with his right. Then he kicked him between the legs and took the fowling piece away. “You don’t poke guns at British officers,” Sharpe said, though he doubted the man understood him, or even heard him for that matter, for he was crouching in agony and making a mewing sound. Sharpe blew the last remnants of powder from the gun’s pan so it could not fire, then he banged the muzzle against a stone until the shot and powder came tumbling out. He scuffed the powder into the earth and then, just to make sure the weapon could not fire, he wrenched the doghead away from the lock and threw it into the river. “You’re lucky to be alive,” he told the man. He tossed the fowling piece onto the man’s belly and resisted the urge to kick him again. He had not realized how angry he was. The second gardener backed away, bowing.

Sharpe found the brigadier propped up on the couch with a towel wrapped about his neck. A young manservant was shaving him. “There you are, Sharpe,” Moon greeted him. “You’ll be pleased to know I’ve discovered the secret of a good shave.”

“You have, sir?”

“Add some lime juice to the shaving water. Very clever, don’t you think?”

Sharpe was not sure what to say to that. “We’ve posted sentries, sir. The men are cleaning themselves up and I’ve found a boat.”

“What use is a boat now?” Moon asked.

“Cross the river, sir. We can make a horse swim behind sir, if we’ve got the cash to buy one, and if you ride, sir, we’ve a chance to catch up with our lads.” Sharpe doubted there was any chance of catching the six light companies who retreated from Fort Joseph, but he had to give the brigadier hope.

Moon paused as the manservant rinsed his face, then patted it dry with a hot towel. “We’re not going anywhere, Sharpe,” the brigadier said, “until a doctor has seen this leg. The Marquesa says the fellow in the town is perfectly adequate for broken bones. She’s a damned bitter old hag, but she’s being helpful enough, and I assume her physician is better than some teague soldier, don’t you think?”

“I think, sir, that the sooner we’re away from here, the better.”

“Not before a proper doctor has seen this leg,” the brigadier said firmly. “The fellow’s been summoned and should be here soon. We can go after that. Have the men ready.”

Sharpe sent Noolan and his men down to the boathouse. “Guard the damn boat,” he told them, then he climbed the tower and joined Harper, Hagman, and Slattery, who kept watch from the tower’s top. Harper told Sharpe that nothing moved on the road leading eastward. “Be ready to go, Pat,” Sharpe said. “I’ve got a boat. We’re just waiting for the brigadier now.”

“You’ve found a boat? Easy as that?”

“Easy as that.”

“So what do we do with it?”

Sharpe thought for a second. “I doubt we can catch the others,” he said, “so probably the best thing is to go downriver. Find a British ship on the coast. We’ll be in Lisbon in five days, and back with the battalion in six.”

“Now that would be nice,” Harper said fervently.

Sharpe smiled. “Joana?” he asked. Joana was a Portuguese girl whom Harper had rescued in Coimbra and who now shared the sergeant’s quarters.

“I’m fond of the girl,” Harper admitted airily. “And she’s a good lass. She can cook, mend, works hard.”

“Is that all she does?” Sharpe asked.

“She’s a good girl,” Harper insisted.

“You should marry her then,” Sharpe said.

“There’s no call for that, sir,” Harper said, sounding alarmed.

“I’ll ask Colonel Lawford when we’re back,” Sharpe said. Officially only six wives were allowed with the men of each company, but the colonel could give permission to add another to the strength.

Harper looked at Sharpe a long time, trying to work out whether he was being serious or not, but Sharpe’s face gave away nothing. “The colonel’s got enough to worry about, sir, so he does,” Harper said.

“What’s he got to worry about? We do all the work.”

“But he’s a colonel, sir. He’s got to worry.”

“And I worry about you, Pat. I worry that you’re a sinner. It worries me that you’ll be going to hell when you die.”

“At least I can keep you company there, sir.”

Sharpe laughed at that. “That’s true, so maybe I won’t ask the colonel.”

“You escaped, Sergeant,” Slattery said, amused.

“But it all depends on Moon, doesn’t it?” Sharpe said. “If he wants to cross the river and try to catch the others, that’s what we’ll have to do. If he wants to go downriver we go downriver, but one way or another we should get you back to Joana in a week.” He saw a horseman appear on the northern hill from which he had first glimpsed the house and town, and he took out his telescope, but by the time he had trained it the man had gone. Probably a hunter, he told himself. “So be ready to move, Pat. And you’ll have to fetch the brigadier. He’s got crutches now, but if the bloody frogs show we’ll need to get him down to the river fast so you’ll have to carry him.”

“There’s a wheelbarrow in the stable yard, sir,” Hagman said. “A dung barrow.”

“I’ll put it on the terrace,” Sharpe said.

He found the barrow behind a heap of horse manure and wheeled it to the terrace and parked it beside the door. He had done all he could now. He had a boat, it was guarded, the men were ready, and all now depended on Moon giving the orders.

He sat outside the brigadier’s door and took off his hat so the winter sun could warm his face. He closed his eyes in tiredness and within seconds he was asleep, his head tipped back onto the house wall beside the door. He was dreaming, and he was aware it was a good dream, and then someone hit him hard across the head, and that was no dream. He scrambled sideways, reaching for his rifle, and was hit again. “Impudent puppy!” a voice shrieked, and then she hit him again. She was an old woman, older than Sharpe could imagine, with a brown face like sun-dried mud, all cracks and wrinkles and malevolence and bitterness. She was dressed in black with a black widow’s veil pinned to her white hair. Sharpe stood up, rubbing his head where she had hit him with one of the brigadier’s borrowed crutches. “You dare attack one of my servants?” she shrieked. “You insolent cur!”

“Ma’am,” Sharpe said for want of anything else to say.

“You break into my boathouse?” she said in a grating voice. “You assault my servant? If the world were respectable you would be whipped. My husband would have whipped you.”

“Your husband, ma’am?”

“He was the Marquis de Cardenas and he had the misfortune to be ambassador to the Court of St. James for eleven sad years. We lived in London. A horrid city. A vile city. Why did you attack my gardener?”

“Because he attacked me, ma’am.”

“He says not.”

“If the world were a respectable place, ma’am, then an officer’s word would be preferred to a servant’s.”

“You impudent puppy! I feed you, I shelter you, and you reward me with barbarism and lies. Now you wish to steal my son’s boat?”

“Borrow it, ma’am.”

“You can’t,” she snapped. “It belongs to my son.”

“He’s here, ma’am?”

“He is not, nor should you be. What you will do is march away from here once the doctor has seen your brigadier. You may take the crutches, nothing else.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she mimicked him, “so humble.” A bell sounded deep in the house and she turned away. “El médico,” she muttered.

Private Geoghegan appeared then, running up from the kitchen garden. “Sir,” he panted, “there are men there.”

“Men where?”

“Boathouse, sir. A dozen of them. All got guns. I think they came from the town, sir. Sergeant Noolan told me to tell you and ask what’s to be done, sir?”

“They’re guarding the boat?”

“That’s it, sir, that’s just what they’re doing. They’re stopping us getting to the boathouse, sir. Just that, sir. Jesus, what was that?”

The brigadier had given a sudden yelp, presumably as the doctor explored the makeshift splint. “Tell Sergeant Noolan,” Sharpe said, “that’s he’s to do nothing. Just watch the men and make sure they don’t take the boat away.”

“Not to take the boat away, sir. And if they try?”

“You bloody stop them. You fix swords”—he paused, then corrected himself because only the rifles talked about fixing swords—“you fix bayonets and you walk slowly toward them and you point the bayonets at their crotches and they’ll run.”

“Aye, sir, yes, sir,” Geoghegan grinned. “But really, sir, we’re to do nothing else?”

“It’s usually best.”

“Oh, the poor man!” Geoghegan glanced at the door. “And if he’d left it alone it would have been fine. Thank you, sir.”

Sharpe swore silently when Geoghegan was gone. It had all seemed so simple when he had discovered the boat, but he should have known nothing was ever that easy. And if the Marquesa had summoned men from the town, then there was a chance of bloodshed, and though Sharpe had no doubt that his soldiers would brush the townsmen away, he also feared that he would take two or three more casualties. “Bloody hell,” he said aloud, and, because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the kitchen and rousted Harris from the table. “You’re to stand outside the brigadier’s room,” he told him, “and let me know when the doctor’s finished.”

He went up to the tower where Harper still stood guard. “Nothing moving, sir,” Harper said, “except I thought I saw a horseman up there a half hour ago”—he pointed to the northern heights—“but he’s gone.”

“I thought I saw the same thing.”

“He’s not there now, sir.”

“We’re just waiting for the doctor to finish with the brigadier,” Sharpe said, “then we’ll go.” He said nothing about the men guarding the boathouse. He would deal with them when the time came. “That’s a sour old bitch who lives here,” he said.

“The Marquesa?”

“A shriveled old bitch. She bloody hit me!”

“There’s some good in the woman then?” Harper suggested and, when Sharpe glowered, hurried on. “It’s funny, though, isn’t it, that the frogs haven’t ruined this place? I mean there’s food enough here for a battalion! And their foraging parties must have found this place months ago.”

“She’s made her peace with the bloody frogs,” Sharpe said. “She probably sells them food and they leave her alone. She’s not on our side, that’s for sure. She hates us.”

“So has she told the Crapauds we’re here?”

“That worries me,” Sharpe said. “She might have told them because she’s a wicked old bitch, that’s what she is.” He gazed down the road. Something felt wrong. Everything was too peaceful. Perhaps, he thought, it was the news that the Marquesa was trying to protect the boat that had unsettled him, and the thought of a boat reminded him of what Sergeant Noolan had told the brigadier that morning. The French had crossed the river. Either they had fashioned a usable boat out of one of the undamaged pontoons, or else they had kept a boat in Fort Josephine, but if the French had a boat, any boat, then this road was not their only approach. “Bloody hell,” he said softly.

“What, sir?”

“They’re coming downriver.”

“There’s that fellow again,” Slattery said, pointing to the northern hill where, silhouetted against the sky, the horseman had reappeared. The man was standing in his stirrups now and waving his arms extravagantly.

“Let’s go!” Sharpe said.

The horseman must have been watching them all day, but his job was not just to watch, but to tell Colonel Vandal when the forces on the river were close to the house. Then the rest of the 8th would advance. Trapped, Sharpe thought. Some Frenchmen were coming by boat, others by road, and he was between them and then he was running down the crumbling staircase and shouting for the rest of his men who were lolling outside the kitchen to get down to the river. “We’ll fetch the brigadier!” he told Harper.

The Marquesa was in the brigadier’s room, watching as the doctor wrapped a bandage about a new splint that replaced Sharpe’s makeshift contraption. She saw the alarm on Sharpe’s face and gave a cackle. “So the French are coming,” she taunted him, “the French are coming.”

“We’re going, sir,” Sharpe said, ignoring her.

“He can’t finish this?” The brigadier gestured at the half-wrapped bandage.

“We’re going!” Sharpe insisted. “Sergeant!”

Harper pushed the doctor aside and lifted the brigadier. “My saber!” the brigadier protested. “The crutches!”

“Out!” Sharpe ordered.

“My saber!”

“The French are coming!” the Marquesa mocked.

“You sent for them, you sour old bitch,” Sharpe said, and he was tempted to hammer her malevolent face, but instead went outside where Harper had unceremoniously dumped Moon into the wheelbarrow.

“My saber!” the brigadier pleaded.

“Slattery, push the barrow,” Sharpe said. “Pat, get that volley gun ready.” The seven-barrel gun, more than anything, would frighten the men guarding the boat. “Hurry!” he shouted.

Moon was still complaining about his lost saber, but Sharpe had no time for the man. He ran ahead with Harper, through the bushes. Then he was in the kitchen garden and he could see the knot of townsmen standing guard on the boathouse. “Sergeant Noolan!”

“Sir!” That was Harris. “There, sir.”

Bloody hell. Two pontoons, crammed with French troops, drifting downstream. “Shoot at them, Harris! Sergeant Noolan!”

“Sir?”

“Forward march.” Sharpe joined the small rank of Connaught men. They were outnumbered by the townsmen, but the redcoats had bayonets and Harper had joined them with his volley gun. Rifles fired from the upstream bank and French muskets cracked from the pontoons. A bullet struck the boathouse roof and the townsmen flinched. “Váyase,” Sharpe said, hoping his Spanish was understandable, “yo le mataré.”

“What does that mean, sir?” Sergeant Noolan asked.

“Go away or we kill them.”

Another French musket ball hit the boathouse and it was that, more perhaps than the threat of the advancing bayonets, that took the last shred of courage from the civilians. They fled, and Sharpe breathed a sigh of relief. Slattery arrived, pushing the brigadier, as Sharpe hauled the door open. “Get the brigadier in the boat!” he told Slattery, then ran to where Harris and three other riflemen were crouching by the bank. The two French boats, both salvaged pontoons being driven by crude paddles, were coming fast and he put the rifle to his shoulder, cocked it, and fired. The smoke hid the nearest French boat. He started to reload, then decided there was no time. “To the boat!” he called, and he ran back with the other riflemen. They threw themselves into the precious boat. Noolan had already cut the mooring lines and they shoved the boat out into the stream as they untangled the oars. A volley came from the French boats and one of Noolan’s men gave a grunt and fell sideways. Other musket balls thumped into the gunwales. The brigadier was in the bows. Men were scrambling into thwarts, but Harper already had two of the long oars in their rowlocks and, standing up, was hauling on the shafts. The current caught them and turned them downstream. Another shot came from the nearest French boat and Sharpe waded over the men amidships and snatched up Harper’s volley gun. He fired it at the French pontoon and the huge noise of the gun echoed back from the Portuguese hills as at last they began to outstrip their pursuers.

“Jesus Christ,” Sharpe said in pure relief for their narrow escape.

“I think he’s dying, sir,” Noolan said.

“Who?”

“Conor, poor boy.” The man who had been shot was coughing up blood that frothed pink at his lips.

“You left my saber!” Moon complained.

“Sorry about that, sir.”

“It was one of Bennett’s best!”

“I said I’m sorry, sir.”

“And there was dung in that wheelbarrow.”

Sharpe just looked into the brigadier’s eyes and said nothing. The brigadier gave way first. “Did well to get away,” he said grudgingly.

Sharpe turned to the men on the benches. “Geoghegan? Tie up the brigadier’s splint. Well done, lads! Well done. That was a bit too close.”

They were out of musket range now and the two ponderous French pontoons had given up the chase and turned for the bank. But ahead of them, where the smaller river joined the Guadiana, a knot of French horsemen appeared. Sharpe guessed they were the 8th’s officers who had galloped ahead of the battalion. So now those men must watch their prey vanish downriver, but then he saw that some of the horsemen had muskets and he turned toward the stern. “Steer away from the bank!” he told Noolan who had taken the tiller ropes.

Sharpe reloaded the rifle. He could see that four of the horsemen had dismounted and were kneeling at the river’s edge, aiming their muskets. The range was close, no more than thirty yards. “Rifles!” he called. He aimed his own. He saw Vandal. The French colonel was one of the officers kneeling by the river. He had a musket at his shoulder and he seemed to be aiming directly at Sharpe. You bastard, Sharpe thought, and he shifted the rifle, pointing it straight at Vandal’s chest. The boat lurched, his aim wandered, he corrected it, and now he would teach the bastard the advantages of a rifle. He started to pull the trigger, keeping the foresight dead on the Frenchman’s chest, and just then he saw the smoke billow from the musket muzzles and there was an instant when his whole head seemed filled with light, a searing white light that turned bloodred. There was pain like a lightning strike in his brain and then, like blood congealing on a corpse, the light went black and he could see and feel nothing at all. Nothing.

CHAPTER 3

T WO MEN, BOTH TALL, walked side by side on Cádiz’s ramparts. Those defenses were huge, ringing the city to protect it against enemies and the sea. The firestep facing the bay was wide, so wide that three coaches and horses could travel abreast, and it was a popular place for folk to take the air, but no one disturbed the two men. Three of the taller man’s servants walked ahead to part the crowds, and three more walked on either side and still more walked behind to prevent any stranger disturbing their master.

The taller man, and he was very tall, was dressed in the uniform of a Spanish admiral. He had one white silk stocking, red knee breeches, a red sash, and a dark blue tailcoat with an elaborate red collar trimmed with gold lace. His straight sword was scabbarded in black fishskin and had a hilt of gold. His face was drawn, distinguished, and aloof, a face etched by pain and made harsh by disappointment. The admiral’s left calf and foot were missing, so his lower leg was made of ebony, as was the gold-topped cane he used to help him walk.

His companion was Father Salvador Montseny. The priest was in a cassock and had a silver crucifix hanging on his breast. The admiral had been his companion in imprisonment in England after Trafalgar and sometimes, if they did not wish to be understood by nearby folk, they spoke English together. Not today. “So the girl confessed to you?” the admiral asked, amused.

“She makes confession once a year,” Montseny said, “on her saint’s day. January thirteenth.”

“She is called Veronica?”

“Caterina Veronica Blazquez,” Montseny said, “and God brought her to me. There were seven other priests hearing confession in the cathedral that day, but she was guided to me.”

“So you killed her pimp, then you kill the Englishman and his servants. I trust God will forgive you for that, Father.”

Montseny had no doubts about God’s opinions. “What God wants, my lord, is a holy and a powerful Spain. He wants our flag spread across South America, he wants a Catholic king in Madrid, and he wants his glory to be reflected in our people. I do God’s work.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” the admiral said, then paused beside a cannon that faced the bay. “I need more money,” he said.

“You will have it, my lord.”

“Money,” the admiral said in a tone of disgust. He was the Marquis de Cardenas. He had been born to money, and he had made more money, but there was never enough money. He tapped the cannon with the tip of his cane. “I need money for bribes,” he said sourly, “because there is no courage in these men. They are lawyers, Father. Lawyers and politicians. They are scum.” The scum of whom the admiral spoke were the deputies to the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, which now met in Cádiz where its chief business was to construct a new constitution for Spain. Some men, the liberales, wanted a Spain governed by the Cortes, a Spain in which citizens would have a say in their own destiny and such men spoke of liberty and democracy and the admiral hated them. He wanted a Spain like the old Spain, a Spain led by king and church, a Spain devoted to God and to glory. He wanted a Spain free of foreigners, a Spain without Frenchmen and without Britons, and to get it he would have to bribe members of the Cortes and he would have to make an offer to the French emperor. Leave Spain, the offer would say, and we shall help you conquer the British in Portugal. It was an offer, the admiral knew, that the French would accept because Napoleon was desperate. He wanted an end to the war in Spain. To the world’s eyes it looked as if the French had won. They had occupied Madrid and taken Seville so that now the Spanish government, such as it was, clung to the land’s edge at Cádiz. Yet to hold Spain meant keeping hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen in fortresses, and whenever those men left their walls they were harried by partisans. If Bonaparte could make peace with an amenable Spanish government then those garrisons would be freed to fight elsewhere.

“How much money do you need?” Montseny asked.

“With ten thousand dollars,” the admiral said, “I can buy the Cortes.” He watched a British frigate sail past the end of the long mole that protected Cádiz’s harbor from the open Atlantic. He saw the great ensign ripple at the frigate’s stern and felt a pulse of pure loathing. He had watched Nelson’s ships sail toward him off Cape Trafalgar. He had breathed the powder smoke and listened to the screams of men dying aboard his ship. He had been felled by a piece of grapeshot that had shattered his left leg, but the admiral had stayed on the quarterdeck, shouting at his men to fight, to kill, to resist. Then he had watched as a crowd of yelling British sailors, ugly as apes, swarmed across his deck, and he had wept when Spain’s ensign was lowered and the British flag hoisted. He had surrendered his sword, and then been a prisoner in England, and now he was the limping admiral of a broken country that had no battle fleet. He hated the British. “But the English,” he said, still watching the frigate, “will never pay ten thousand dollars for the letters.”

“I think they will pay a great deal,” Father Montseny said, “if we frighten them.”

“How?”

“I shall publish one letter. I shall change it, of course. And the implicit threat will be that we shall publish them all.” Father Montseny paused, giving the admiral time to object to his proposal, but the admiral stayed silent. “I need a writer to make the changes,” Montseny went on.

“A writer?” the admiral asked in a sour tone. “Why can’t you make the changes yourself?”

“I can,” Montseny said, “but once the letters are changed, the English will proclaim them forgeries. We cannot present the originals to anyone, because the originals will prove the English correct. So we must make new copies, in English, in an English hand, which we shall claim as the originals. I need a man who can write perfect English. My English is good, but not good enough.” He fingered his crucifix, thinking. “The new letters need only persuade the Cortes, and most deputies will want to believe them, but the changes must still be convincing. The grammar, the spelling, must all be accurate. So I need a writer who can achieve that.”

The admiral made a dismissive gesture. “I know a man. A horrid creature. He writes well, though, and has a passion for English books. He’ll do, but how do you publish the letters?”

“El Correo de Cádiz,” Father Montseny said, naming the one newspaper that opposed the liberales. “I shall print one letter and I shall say in it that the English plan to take Cádiz and make it a second Gibraltar. The English will deny it, of course, but we will have a new letter with a forged signature.”

“They’ll do more than make denials,” the admiral said vigorously, “they’ll persuade the Regency to close the paper down!” The Regency was the council which ruled what was left of Spain, and ruled it with the help of British gold, which was why they were eager to keep the British friendly. A new constitution, though, could mean a new Regency, one which the admiral could lead.

“The Regency will be powerless if the letter is unsigned,” Montseny pointed out dryly. “The English will not dare own to its authorship, will they? And rumor can do its work for us. Within a day all Cádiz will know that their ambassador wrote the letter.”

The letters had been written by the British ambassador to Spain and they were pathetic outpourings of love. There was even a proposal of marriage in one letter, a proposal made to a girl who was a whore called Caterina Veronica Blazquez. She was an expensive whore, to be sure, but still a whore.

“The owner of the Correo is a man named Nuñez, yes?” the admiral asked.

“He is.”

“And he will publish the letter?”

“There is an advantage to being a priest,” Montseny said. “The secrets of the confessional, or course, are sacred, but gossip persists. We priests talk, my lord, and I know things about Nuñez that he does not want the world to know. He will publish.”

“Suppose the English try to destroy the press?” the admiral suggested.

“They probably will,” Montseny said dismissively, “but for a small sum I can turn the building into a fortress, and your men can help protect it. Then the British will be forced to buy the remaining letters. I’m sure, once we have published one, they will pay very generously.”

“What utter fools men make themselves over women,” the admiral said. He took a long black cigar from a pocket and bit the end off. Then he just stood, waiting until a couple of small boys saw the cigar and came running. Each lad held a length of thick hemp rope that smoldered at one end. The admiral indicated one of the boys who slapped his rope twice on the ground to revive its fire, then held it up so the admiral could light the cigar. He waved the boy toward the men who followed him and one of them tossed a coin. “It would be best,” the admiral said, “if we possessed both the letters and the gold.” He watched the British frigate that was now near the rocks that lay off the bastion of San Felipe and he prayed she would run aground. He wanted to see her masts lurch forward as the hull struck the rocks, he wanted to see her canted and sinking, and he wanted to see her sailors floundering in the heaving seas, but of course she sailed serenely past the danger.

“It would be best,” Father Montseny said, “if we had the English gold and published the letters.”

“It would be treacherous, of course,” the admiral observed mildly.

“God wants Spain great again, my lord,” Montseny said fervently. “It is never treachery to do God’s work.”

A sudden boom of a gun sounded flat across the bay and both men turned to see a far white cloud of smoke. It had come from one of the giant mortars the French had placed in their forts on the Trocadero Peninsula and the admiral hoped the shell had been aimed at the British frigate. Instead the missile fell on the city’s waterfront a half mile to the east. The admiral waited for the shell to explode, then drew on his cigar. “If we publish the letters,” he said, “then the Cortes will turn against the British. The bribes will make that certain, and then we can approach the French. You would be willing to go to them?”

“Very willing, my lord.”

“I shall give you a letter of introduction, of course.” The admiral had already made his proposals to Paris. That had been easy. He was known to hate the British and a French agent in Cádiz had spoken to him, but the reply from the emperor was simple. Deliver the votes in the Cortes and the Spanish king, now a prisoner in France, would be returned. France would make peace and Spain would be free. All the French demanded in return was the right to send troops across Spanish roads to complete the conquest of Portugal and so drive Lord Wellington’s British army into the sea. As an earnest of their goodwill the French had given orders that the admiral’s estates on the Guadiana should not be plundered and now, in return, the admiral must deliver the votes and so sever the alliance with Britain. “By summer, Father,” he said.

“Summer?”

“It will be done. We shall have our king. We shall be free.”

“Under God.”

“Under God,” the admiral agreed. “Find the money, Father, and make the English look like fools.”

“It is God’s will,” Montseny said, “so it will happen.”

And the British would go to hell.

EVERYTHING WAS easy after the shot felled Sharpe.

The boat drifted down the ever widening Guadiana into the night. A hazed moon silvered the hills and lit the long water that shuddered under the small wind. Sharpe lay in the boat’s bilges, senseless, his head broken and bloodied and bandaged, and the brigadier sat in the stern, his leg splinted and his hands on the tiller ropes, and he wondered what he should do. The dawn found them between low hills without a house in sight. Egrets and herons stalked the river’s edge. “He needs a doctor, sir,” Harper said, and the brigadier heard the anguish in the Irishman’s voice. “He’s dying, sir.”

“He’s breathing, isn’t he?” the brigadier asked.

“He is, sir,” Harper said, “but he needs a doctor, sir.”

“Good God incarnate, man, I’m not a conjuror! I can’t find a doctor in a wilderness, can I?” The brigadier was in pain and spoke more sharply than he intended and he saw the flare of hostility on Harper’s face and felt a stab of fear. Sir Barnaby Moon reckoned himself a good officer, but he was not comfortable dealing with the ranks. “If we come to a town,” he said, trying to mollify the big sergeant, “we’ll look for a physician.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

The brigadier hoped they would find a town. They needed food and he wanted to find a doctor who could look at his broken leg that throbbed like the devil. “Row!” he snarled at the men, but they made a poor job of it. The painted blades clashed with every stroke, and the more they rowed, the less headway they seemed to make, and the brigadier realized that they were fighting an incoming tide. They must be miles from the sea, yet the tide was flooding against them and there was still no town or village anywhere in sight.

“Your honor!” Sergeant Noolan shouted from the bows, and the brigadier saw another boat had appeared about a bend in the wide river. She was a rowing boat, about the size of his own commandeered launch, and she was crammed with men who knew how to use their oars, and she had other men with muskets, and the brigadier hauled on the tiller to point the boat toward the Portuguese bank. “Row!” he shouted, then cursed as the oars tangled again. “Dear God,” he said, because the strange boat was coming fast. She was expertly manned and being carried on the flooding tide, and Brigadier Moon cursed a second time just before the man commanding the approaching boat stood and hailed him.

The shout was in English. The officer commanding the boat wore naval blue and had come from a British sloop that patrolled the Guadiana’s long tidal reach. The sloop rescued them, lifted Sharpe from the bottom boards, fed them, and then carried them out to sea where they were rowed to HMS Thornside, a thirty-six-gun frigate, and Sharpe knew none of it. There was just pain.

Pain and darkness, and a creaking sound so that Sharpe dreamed he was back on HMS Pucelle, sailing endlessly across the Indian Ocean, and Lady Grace was with him, and in his delirium he was happy again, but then he would half wake and know she was dead and he wanted to weep for that. The creaking went on and the world swayed and there was pain and darkness and a sudden flash of agonizing brilliance, then darkness again.

“I think he blinked,” a voice said.

Sharpe opened his eyes and the pain in his skull was like white-hot embers. “Sweet Jesus,” he hissed.

“No, it’s just me, sir, Patrick Harper, sir.” The sergeant loomed over him. There was a wooden ceiling partially lit by narrow shafts of sunlight that stabbed through a small grating. Sharpe closed his eyes. “Are you still there, sir?” Harper asked.

“Where am I?”

“HMS Thornside, sir. A frigate, sir.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sharpe groaned.

“He’s had a few prayers this last day and a half, so he has.”

“Here,” another voice said and a hand went beneath Sharpe’s shoulders to lift him so that the pain stabbed into his skull and he gasped. “Drink this,” the voice said.

The liquid was bitter and Sharpe half choked on it, but whatever it was made him sleep and he dreamed again, and woke again, and this time it was night and a lantern in the passageway outside his diminutive cabin swung with the ship’s motion so that the shadows careered all over the canvas walls and dizzied him.

He slept again, half aware of the sounds of a ship, of the bare feet on the planking overhead, the creak of a thousand timbers, the rush of water, and the intermittent clangor of the bell. Soon after dawn he woke and discovered his head was swathed in thick bandages. The pain was still gouging his skull, but it was no longer intense and so he swung his feet out of the cot and was immediately dizzy. He sat on the cot’s swaying edge with his head in his hands. He wanted to vomit except there was nothing but bile in his stomach. His boots were on the floor, while his uniform, rifle, and sword were swaying from a wooden peg on the door. He closed his eyes. He remembered Colonel Vandal firing the musket. He thought of Jack Bullen, poor Jack Bullen.

The door opened. “What the hell are you doing?” Harper asked cheerfully.

“I want to go on deck.”

“The surgeon says you must rest.”

Sharpe told Harper what the surgeon could do. “Help me dress,” he said. He did not bother with boots or sword, just pulled on his French cavalry overalls and his ragged green coat, then held on to Harper’s strong arm as they walked out of the cabin. The sergeant then hauled Sharpe up a steep companionway to the frigate’s deck where he clung to the hammock netting.

A brisk wind was blowing and it felt good. Sharpe saw that the frigate was sliding past a low dull coast dotted with watchtowers. “I’ll get you a chair, sir,” Harper said.

“Don’t need a chair,” Sharpe said. “Where are the men?”

“We’re all snug up front, sir.”

“You’re improperly dressed, Sharpe.” A voice interrupted and Sharpe turned his head to see Brigadier Moon enthroned near the frigate’s wheel. He was sitting in a chair with his splinted leg propped on a cannon. “You haven’t got boots on,” the brigadier observed.

“Much better to go barefoot on deck,” a cheerful voice said, “and what are you doing on your bare feet anyway? I gave orders that you were to stay below.” A plump, cheerful man in civilian clothes smiled at Sharpe. “I’m Jethro McCann, surgeon to this scow.” He introduced himself and held up a closed fist. “How many fingers am I showing you?”

“None.”

“Now?”

“Two.”

“The Sweeps can count,” McCann said. “I’m impressed.” The Sweeps were the Riflemen, so called because their dark green uniforms often looked black as a chimney sweep’s rags. “Can you walk?” McCann asked and Sharpe managed a few paces before a gust of wind lurched the frigate and drove him back to the hammock netting. “You’re walking well enough,” McCann said. “Are you in pain?”

“It’s getting better,” Sharpe lied.

“You’re a lucky bastard, Mister Sharpe, if you’ll forgive me. Lucky as hell. You were hit by a musket ball. Glancing shot, which is why you’re still here, but it depressed a piece of your skull. I fished it back into place.” McCann grinned proudly.

“Fished it back into place?” Sharpe asked.

“Oh, it’s not difficult,” the surgeon said airily, “no more difficult than scarfing a sliver of wood.” In truth it had been appallingly difficult. It had taken the doctor an hour and a half’s work under inadequate lantern light as he teased at the wedge of bone with probe and forceps. His fingers had kept slipping in blood and slime, and he had thought he would never manage to free the bone without tearing the brain tissue, but at last he had succeeded in gripping the splintered edge and pulling the sliver back into place. “And here you are,” McCann went on, “sprightly as a two-year-old. And the good news is that you’ve got a brain.” He saw Sharpe’s puzzlement and nodded vigorously. “You do! Honest! I saw it with my own eyes, thus disproving the navy’s stubborn contention that soldiers have nothing whatsoever inside their skulls. I shall write a paper for the Review. I’ll be famous! Brain discovered in a soldier.”

Sharpe tried to smile in the pretense that he was amused, but only succeeded in a grimace. He touched the bandage. “Will the pain go?”

“We know almost nothing about head wounds,” McCann said,

“except that they bleed a lot, but in my professional opinion, Mister Sharpe, you’ll either drop down dead or be right as rain.”

“That is a comfort,” Sharpe said. He perched on a cannon and stared at the distant land beneath the far clouds. “How long till we reach Lisbon?”

“Lisbon? We’re sailing to Cádiz!”

“Cádiz?”

“That’s our station,” McCann said, “but you’ll find a boat going to Lisbon quick enough. Ah! Captain Pullifer’s on deck. Straighten up.”

The captain was a thin, narrow-faced, and grim-looking man, a scarecrow figure who, Sharpe noticed, was barefooted. Indeed, if it had not been for his coat with its salt-encrusted gilt, Sharpe might have mistaken Pullifer for an ordinary seaman. The captain spoke briefly with the brigadier, then strode down the deck and introduced himself to Sharpe. “Glad you’re on your feet,” he said morosely. He had a broad Devon accent.

“So am I, sir.”

“We’ll have you in Cádiz soon enough and a proper doctor can look at your skull. McCann, if you want to steal my coffee you’ll find it on the cabin table.”

“Aye aye, sir,” the doctor said. McCann was evidently amused by his captain’s insult, which suggested to Sharpe that Pullifer was not the grim beast he appeared to be. “Can you walk, Sharpe?” Captain Pullifer asked gruffly.

“I seem to be all right, sir,” Sharpe said, and Pullifer jerked his head, indicating that the rifleman should go with him to the stern rail. Moon watched Sharpe pass by.

“Had supper with your brigadier last night,” Pullifer said when he was alone with Sharpe beneath the great mizzen sail. He paused, but Sharpe said nothing. “And I spoke with your sergeant this morning,” Pullifer went on. “It’s strange, isn’t it, how stories differ?”

“Differ, sir?”

Pullifer, who had been staring at the Thornside’s wake, turned to look at Sharpe. “Moon says it was all your fault.”

“He says what?” Sharpe was not certain he had heard right. His head was filled with a pulsing pain. He tried closing his eyes, but it did not help so he opened them again.

“He says you were ordered to blow a bridge, but you hid the powder under women’s luggage, which is against the rules of war, and then you dillydallied and the frogs took advantage, and he finishes up with a dead horse, a broken leg, and no saber. And the saber was Bennett’s best, he tells me.”

Sharpe said nothing, just stared at a white bird skimming the broken sea.

“You broke the rules of war,” Pullifer said sourly, “but as far as I know the only rule in bloody war is to win. You broke the bridge, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you lost one of Bennett’s best sabers”—Pullifer sounded amused—“so your brigadier borrowed pen and paper off me this morning to write a report for Lord Wellington. It’s going to be poisonous about you. Do you wonder why I’m telling you?”

“I’m glad you’re telling me,” Sharpe said.

“Because you’re like me, Sharpe. You came up the hawse hole. I started as a pressed man. I was fifteen and had spent eight years catching mackerel off Dawlish. That was thirty years ago. I couldn’t read, couldn’t write, and didn’t know a sextant from an arsehole, but now I’m a captain.”

“Up the hawse hole,” Sharpe said, relishing the navy’s slang for a man promoted from the ranks into the officer’s mess. “But they never let you forget, do they?”

“It’s not so bad in the navy,” Pullifer said grudgingly. “They value seamanship more than gentle birth. But thirty years at sea teaches you a thing or two about men, and I have a notion that your sergeant was telling the truth.”

“He bloody was,” Sharpe said hotly.

“So I’m warning you, that’s all. If I were you I’d write my own report and muddy the water a little.” Pullifer glanced up at the sails, found nothing to criticize, and shrugged. “We’ll catch a few mortar rounds going into Cádiz, but they haven’t hit us yet.”

In the afternoon the west wind turned soft so that the Thornside slowed and wallowed in the long Atlantic swells. Cádiz came slowly into sight, a city of gleaming white towers that seemed to float on the ocean. By dusk the wind had died to a whisper that did nothing except fret the frigate’s sails and Pullifer was content to wait till morning to make his approach. A big merchantman was much closer to land and she was ghosting into harbor on the last dying breaths of wind. Pullifer gazed at her through a big telescope. “She’s the Santa Catalina,” he announced. “We saw her in the Azores a year ago.” He collapsed the glass. “I hope she’s getting more wind than we are. Otherwise she’ll never make the southern part of the harbor.”

“Does it matter?” Sharpe asked.

“The bloody frogs will use her for target practice.”

It seemed the captain was right for just after dark Sharpe heard the muffled sound of heavy guns like thunder far away. They were the French mortars firing from the mainland and Sharpe watched their monstrous flashes from the Thornside’s forecastle. Each flash was like sheet lightning, silhouetting a mile of shoreline, gone in a heartbeat, the sudden brilliance confused by the lingering smoke beneath the stars. A sailor was playing a sad tune on a fiddle and a small wash of lantern light showed from the aft cabin’s companionway where the brigadier was dining again with Captain Pullifer. “Were you not invited, sir?” Harper asked. Sharpe’s riflemen and the Connaught Rangers were lounging around a long-barreled nine-pounder on the forecastle.

“I was invited,” Sharpe said, “but the captain reckoned I might be happier eating with the wardroom.”

“They made a plum duff up here,” Harper said.

“It was good,” Harris added, “really good.”

“We had the same.”

“I sometimes think I should have joined the navy,” Harper said.

“You do?” Sharpe was surprised.

“Plum duff and rum.”

“Not many women.”

“That’s true.

“How’s your head, sir?” Daniel Hagman asked.

“Still there, Dan.”

“Is it hurting?”

“It hurts,” Sharpe admitted.

“Vinegar and brown paper, sir,” Hagman said earnestly. “It always works.”

“I had an uncle that was knocked on the head,” Harper said. The Ulsterman had an endless supply of relatives who had suffered various misfortunes. “He was butted by a nanny goat, so he was, and you could have filled Lough Crockatrillen with his blood! Jesus, it was everywhere. My auntie thought he was dead!”

Sharpe, like the Riflemen and Rangers, waited. “So was he?” he asked after a while.

“Good God, no! He was milking the cows again that night, but the poor goat was never the same. So what do we do in Cádiz, sir?”

Sharpe shrugged. “We’ll get a boat to Lisbon. There must be dozens of boats going to Lisbon.” He turned as two reports rumbled across the water, but there was nothing to see. The far flashes had already faded and the mortar shells gave no light when they landed. Intermittent lamplight glimmered across the city’s white walls, but otherwise the shoreline was dark. Black water lapped against the frigate’s flanks and the sails shivered in the small wind.

By dawn the wind had freshened and the Thornside stood southwest toward the entrance to the Bay of Cádiz. The city was closer now and Sharpe could see the massive gray ramparts above which the houses glowed white, their walls studded with squat watchtowers and church belfries through which smoke drifted. Lights flashed from the towers and at first Sharpe was puzzled by the glints. Then he realized that they were the sun reflecting from the telescopes that watched the Thornside’s approach. A pilot boat cut across the frigate’s course, her captain waving his arms to show he had a pilot who was available to come aboard the frigate, but Pullifer had run this treacherous approach often enough to need no guide. Gulls wheeled about the frigate’s masts and sails as she slid past the heave and wash of broken water that marked the Diamante Rock and then the bay opened before her bows. The Thornside turned due south, heading into the bay and watched by a crowd on the city ramparts. It was evident now that the smoke above the city was not just from cooking fires, but mostly from a merchantman that burned in the harbor. It was the Santa Catalina, her hull crammed with tobacco and sugar. A French mortar shell had plunged between her foremast and mainmast, pierced a hatch cover, and exploded a few feet below the deck. The crew had rigged a pump and poured water onto the fire. It seemed they must have mastered the blaze, but somewhere an ember had lodged deep among the bales and it grew sullenly. The hidden fire spread secretly, its smoke disguised by the steam from the pump’s water. Then, just aft of the mainmast, the deck burst into new flames, sudden and bright, and the blaze caught the tarred rigging so that the whole intricate web of halliards, masts, and sheets was outlined in fire. Smoke boiled across the city’s skyline above which the white gulls keened and the dark smoke drifted.

The Thornside ran within a quarter mile of the burning merchantman. The rest of Cádiz harbor, placid under a gentle wind, seemed unconcerned with the burning ship. A whole fleet of British warships was moored to the south, and Pullifer ordered a salute fired to the admiral. The French mortars were firing at the Thornside now, but the massive shells fell harmlessly on either side, each throwing up a fountain of spray. There were three French forts on the marshy mainland, all with mortars just capable of reaching the waterfront of Cádiz that sat on its isthmus like a clenched fist protecting the bay. Lieutenant Theobald, the Thornside’s second lieutenant, was busy with a sextant, though instead of holding it vertically, as a man would when shooting the sun or trying to snare a star in the instrument’s mirrors, he was using it horizontally. He lowered the sextant and frowned. His lips moved as he made some half-articulated calculations, then he crossed to where Sharpe and Harper leaned on the midships rail. “From the burning ship to the fort,” Theobald announced, “is a distance of three thousand six hundred and forty yards.”

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said, impressed. If the lieutenant was right, then the mortar’s shell had traveled more than two miles.

“I won’t vouch for the forty yards,” Theobald said.

Another mortar fired from the Trocadero Peninsula. The shell vanished in the low clouds as the smoke of the mortar hung above the fort, which was a low, dark mass on the marsh-fringed headland. Then a white splash showed very close to the city’s shore. “Even farther!” Theobald said in astonishment. “Must be close to three thousand seven hundred yards!” That was a thousand yards farther than any British mortar could reach. “The shells are huge too! Couple of feet across!”

Sharpe wondered about that. “Biggest French mortar I’ve ever seen,” he said, “is a twelve-inch.”

“Which is big enough, God knows,” Harper put in.

“They had these specially cast in Seville,” Theobald said, “or so prisoners tell us. Big bastards, anyway. They must use twenty pounds of powder to throw a ball that far. Thank God they’re not accurate.”

“Tell that to those poor bastards,” Sharpe said, nodding to where the Santa Catalina’s crew were climbing into a longboat.

“A lucky shot,” Theobald said. “How’s your skull today?”

“Hurts.”

“Nothing a woman’s touch won’t heal,” Theobald said.

A mortar shell landed off the Thornside’s port quarter, splashing the deck with water and leaving the faintest gray trail from its smoking fuse lingering in the small wind. The next shot was a good hundred yards away, and the one after that even farther, and then the guns stopped firing as it became obvious that the frigate had sailed out of range.

Thornside anchored well south of the city, close to the other British warships and the host of small merchantmen. Brigadier Moon stumped toward Sharpe on crutches that the ship’s carpenter had made. “You’ll stay on board for the moment, Sharpe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Officially British troops aren’t permitted into the city so if we can’t find a ship leaving today or tomorrow, I’ll arrange quarters for you on the Isla de León.” He gestured toward the low land south of the anchorage. “In the meantime I’m going to pay my respects at the embassy.”

“The embassy, sir?”

Moon gave Sharpe a look of exasperation. “You are looking,” he said, “at what is left of sovereign Spain. The French have the rest of the bloody country except for a handful of fortresses, so our embassy is now here in Cádiz instead of in Madrid or Seville. I’ll send you orders.”

Those orders arrived just after midday, sending Sharpe and his men to the Isla de León where they were to wait until a northbound transport left the harbor. The longboat carrying them ashore threaded the anchored fleet, most of which were merchantmen. “Rumor says they’re taking an army south,” the midshipman commanding the longboat told Sharpe.

“South?”

“They want to land somewhere down the coast,” the midshipman said, “march on the French, and attack the siege lines. Bloody hell, they smell!” He pointed to four great prison hulks that stank like open sewers. The hulks had once been warships, but now they were mastless and their open gunports were protected by iron bars through which men watched the small boat pass. “Prison hulks, sir,” the midshipman said, “full of frogs.”

“I remember that one,” the bosun put in, nodding at the nearest hulk. “She were at Trafalgar. We beat her to splinters. There was blood pouring down her side. Never seen the like.”

“The dons were on the wrong side of that one,” the midshipman said.

“They’re on our side now,” Sharpe said.

“We hope they are, sir. We do hope that. Here you are, sir, safe and sound, and I hope your eggshell mends.”

The Isla de León was home to five thousand British and Portuguese soldiers who helped defend Cádiz from the French besiegers. Desultory cannon fire sounded from the siege lines that were some miles eastward. The small town of San Fernando was on the island and Sharpe reported there to a harassed major who seemed bemused that a handful of vagrants from the 88th and the South Essex had landed in his lap. “Your fellows can find space in the tent lines,” the major said, “but you’ll be billeted in San Fernando, of course, with the other officers. Dear God, what’s free?” He looked through the billeting lists.

“It’s only for a night or so,” Sharpe said.

“Depends on the wind, doesn’t it? So long as it blows northwest you aren’t going anywhere near Lisbon. Here we are. You can share a house with Major Duncan. He’s an artilleryman, so he’s not particular. He’s not there now. He’s off hunting with Sir Thomas.”

“Sir Thomas?”

“Sir Thomas Graham. Commands here. Mad about cricket. Cricket and hunting. Of course there aren’t any bloody foxes so they chase after stray dogs instead. They do it between the lines and the French are good enough not to interfere. You’ll want space for your servant, I assume?”

Sharpe had never had a servant, but decided this was the moment to indulge himself. “Harris!”

“Sir?”

“You’re my servant now.”

“What joy, sir.”

“San Fernando’s a decent little place in winter,” the major said. “Too many bloody mosquitoes in the summer, but nice enough at this time of year. Plenty of taverns, a couple with good bordellos. There are worse places to spend the war.”

The wind did not change that night, nor the next. Sharpe gave his and Sergeant Noolan’s men a make-and-mend day. They cleaned and repaired uniforms and weapons, and for every moment of the day Sharpe prayed that the wind would go south or east. He found a regimental surgeon who reckoned that inspecting Sharpe’s wound would do more harm than good. “If that naval fellow fished the bone back into place,” the man said, “then he did all that modern medicine can possibly do. Keep the bandage tight, Captain, keep it wet, say your prayers, and take rum for the pain.”

Major Duncan, whose quarters Sharpe now shared, proved to be an affable Scot. He said there were at least a half dozen ships waiting to make passage to Lisbon. “So you’ll be home in four or five days,” he went on, “just as soon as the wind goes round.” Duncan had invited Sharpe to the nearest tavern, insisting the food was adequate and ignoring Sharpe’s plea that he had no cash. “The dons eat damn late,” Duncan said, “so we’re forced to drink until the cook wakes up. It’s a hard life.” He ordered a jug of red wine, and no sooner had it appeared than a slender young officer in cavalry uniform appeared at the tavern door.

“Willie!” Duncan greeted the cavalryman with evident pleasure. “Are you drinking with us?”

“I am searching for Captain Richard Sharpe, and I assume that you, sir, are he?” He smiled at Sharpe and held out a hand. “Willie Russell, aide to Sir Thomas.”

“Lord William Russell,” Duncan said.

“But Willie suffices,” Lord William put in hastily. “You are Captain Sharpe? In which case, sir, you are summoned. I have a horse for you and we must ride like the very wind.”

“Summoned?”

“To the embassy, Captain! To meet His Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Spain. Good lord, that is rotgut!” He had tried some of Duncan’s wine. “Did someone piss in it? Are you ready, Sharpe?”

“I’m wanted at the embassy?” Sharpe asked, confused.

“You are, and you’re late. This is the third tavern I’ve tried and I had to have a drink in each one, didn’t I? Noblesse oblige and all that.” He drew Sharpe out of the tavern. “I must say I’m honored to meet you!” Lord William spoke generously, then saw Sharpe’s disbelief. “No, truly. I was at Talavera. I got cut up there, but you took an eagle! That was one in the eye for Boney, wasn’t it? Here we are, your horse.”

“Do I really have to go?” Sharpe asked.

Lord William Russell looked thoughtful for a second. “I think you do,” he said seriously, “because it’s not every day that envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary send a summons for a captain. And he’s not a bad fellow for an ambassador. You can ride?”

“Badly.”

“How’s your skull?”

“Hurts.”

“It would, wouldn’t it? I fell off a horse once and bashed my head against a tree stump and I couldn’t think for a month! Not sure I’m cured yet, to be honest. Up you get.”

Sharpe settled himself in the saddle and followed Lord William Russell out of the town and onto the sandy isthmus. “How far is it?” he asked.

“Just over six miles. It’s a nice ride! At low tide we use the beach, but tonight we’ll have to jog along the road instead. You’ll meet Sir Thomas at the embassy. He’s a splendid fellow. You’ll like him. Everyone does.”

“And Moon?”

“I’m afraid he’s there too. Man’s a brute, isn’t he? Mind you, he’s been very civil to me, probably because my father’s a duke.”

“A duke?”

“Of Bedford,” Lord William said, grinning. “But don’t worry, I’m not the heir, not even the one after the heir. I’m the one who has to die for king and country. Moon doesn’t like you, does he?”

“So I hear.”

“He’s been blaming you for all his ills. Says you lost his saber. One of Bennetts’s eh?”

“Never heard of Bennetts,” Sharpe said.

“Cutler in St. James’s, fearfully good, and awfully pricy. They say you can shave yourself on one of Bennetts’s sabers, not that I’ve tried.”

“Is that why they sent for me? To complain?”

“Good Lord, no! It was the ambassador who sent for you. He wants to get you drunk, I expect.”

The isthmus narrowed. Off to Sharpe’s left was the wide Atlantic, while to the right lay the Bay of Cádiz. The edge of the bay looked white in the dusk, and the whiteness was interrupted by hundreds of shining pyramids. “Salt,” Lord William explained. “Big industry here, lots of salt.”

Sharpe suddenly felt ashamed of his ragged uniform. “I thought British soldiers weren’t allowed in the city?”

“Officers are, but only officers. The Spaniards are terrified that if we put a garrison into the city we’d never leave. They think we’d turn the place into another Gibraltar. Oh, there is one rather important thing you ought to know, Sharpe.”

“What’s that, my lord?”

“Call me Willie, for God’s sake, everyone else does. And the one absolutely important thing, the one never-to-be-forgotten thing, and do not break this rule even if you’re drunk to the roof beams, is never ever mention the ambassador’s wife.”

Sharpe looked at the ebullient Lord William with bemusement. “Why would I?” he asked.

“You mustn’t,” Lord William said energetically, “because it would be in the most frightfully bad taste. She’s called Charlotte and she ran away. Charlotte the Harlot. She scampered off with Harry Paget. It was awful really. A horrible scandal. If you spend any time in the city you’re going to see a few of these”—he fished in a pocket and brought out a brooch. “There,” Lord William said, tossing the object to Sharpe.

The brooch was a cheap little thing made of bone. It showed a pair of horns. Sharpe looked at it and shrugged. “Cow horns?”

“The horns of the cuckold, Sharpe. That’s what they call the ambassador, el Cornudo. Our political enemies wear that badge to mock him, poor man. He takes it well, but I’m sure it hurts. So, for God’s sake, don’t ask about Charlotte the Harlot, there’s a good fellow.”

“I’m not likely to, am I?” Sharpe asked. “I don’t even know the man.”

“But of course you do!” Lord William said cheerfully. “He knows you.”

“Me? How?”

“You really don’t know who His Brittanic Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary to Spain is?”

“Of course I don’t know!”

“Youngest brother to the foreign secretary?” Lord William said, and saw that Sharpe still did not know who he meant. “He’s also Arthur Wellesley’s little brother.”

“Arthur Wellesley’s…you mean Lord Wellington?”

“Lord Wellington’s brother indeed,” Lord William said, “and it gets worse. Charlotte ran off with the ghastly Paget and Henry got a divorce, which meant he had to have an act of Parliament passed and that, believe me, was a deal of trouble, so then Henry comes here and meets this damnably attractive girl. He thought she was respectable and she absolutely wasn’t, and he wrote her some letters. Poor Henry. And she’s a pretty thing, terrifically pretty! Much prettier than Charlotte the Harlot, but the whole thing is completely embarrassing and we all pretend none of it has ever happened. So say nothing, Sharpe, absolutely nothing. Soul of discretion, Sharpe, that’s the thing to be. Soul of discretion.” He fell silent because they had come to the massive gates and huge bastions that guarded the city’s southern entrance. There were sentries, muskets, bayonets, and long-muzzled cannons in embrasures. Lord William had to produce a pass. Only then did the vast gates crash open and Sharpe could thread the walls and arches and tunnels of the ramparts until he found himself in the narrow streets of the sea-bound city. He had come to Cádiz.

SHARPE, TO his surprise, liked Henry Wellesley. He was a slender man in his late thirties and handsome like his elder brother, though his nose was less hooked and his chin was broader. He had none of Lord Wellington’s cold arrogance. Instead he seemed diffident and even gentle. He stood as Sharpe came into the embassy’s dining room and appeared to be genuinely pleased to see the rifleman. “My dear fellow,” he said, “have a seat here. You know the brigadier, of course?”

“I do, sir.”

Moon gave Sharpe a very cold look and not so much as a nod.

“And allow me to name Sir Thomas Graham,” Henry Wellesley said. “Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Graham who commands our garrison on the Isla de León.”

“Honored to make your acquaintance, Sharpe,” Sir Thomas said. He was a tall, well-built Scotsman with white hair, a sun-beaten face, and very shrewd eyes.

“And I believe you already know William Pumphrey,” Wellesley said as he introduced the last man at the table.

“Good lord,” Sharpe said involuntarily. He did know Lord Pumphrey, but was still astonished to see him. Lord Pumphrey, meanwhile, blew Sharpe a kiss off the tips of his fingers.

“Don’t embarrass our guest, Pumps,” Henry Wellesley said, though too late because Sharpe was already embarrassed. Lord Pumphrey had that effect on him, and on a good number of other men too. He was Foreign Office, that much Sharpe knew, and Sharpe had met his lordship in Copenhagen and then in northern Portugal, and Pumphrey was still as outrageous as ever. This night he was dressed in a lilac-colored coat embroidered with silver thread, and on his thin cheek was a black velvet beauty patch. “William is our principal secretary here,” Henry Wellesley explained.

“Actually, Richard, I was posted here to astonish the natives,” Lord Pumphrey said languidly.

“At which you’re bloody successful,” Sir Thomas said.

“You are too kind, Sir Thomas,” Lord Pumphrey said, giving the Scotsman an inclination of his head, “altogether too kind.”

Henry Wellesley sat and pushed a dish toward Sharpe. “Do try the crab claws,” he urged. “They’re a local delicacy, collected from the marshes. You crack them and suck the flesh out.”

“I’m sorry I’m late, sir,” Sharpe said. It was plain from the wreckage on the table that the dinner was over, and equally obvious that Henry Wellesley had eaten nothing. He saw Sharpe glance at his clean plate.

“I have a formal dinner to attend, Sharpe,” the ambassador explained, “and Spanish dinners start extraordinarily late, and I really can’t eat two dinners every night. Still, that crab does tempt me.” He took a claw and used a nutcracker to open the shell. Sharpe realized that the ambassador had only split the claw to show him how it was done, and he gratefully picked up a pair of nutcrackers himself. “So how is your head, Sharpe?” Henry Wellesley asked.

“Mending, sir, thank you.”

“Nasty things, head wounds,” the ambassador said. “I had an assistant in India who cracked his head open and I thought the poor fellow was dead. But he was up and about, quite cured, in a week.”

“You were in India, sir?” Sharpe asked.

“Twice,” Henry Wellesley said. “On the civil side, of course. I liked the place.”

“I did too, sir,” Sharpe said. He was ravenous and cracked open another claw, which he dipped into a bowl of melted butter. Lord William Russell, thankfully, was just as hungry and the two of them shared the dish as the other men took cigars.

It was February, but warm enough for the windows to be open. Brigadier Moon said nothing, content to glower at Sharpe while Sir Thomas Graham complained bitterly about his Spanish allies. “The extra ships haven’t come from the Balearics,” he grumbled, “and I’ve not seen any of the maps they promised.”

“I’m sure both will come,” Henry Wellesley said.

“And the ships we’ve already got are threatened by fire rafts. The French are building five of the things.”

“I’m certain you and Admiral Keats will be delighted to deal with the fire rafts,” Henry Wellesley said firmly, then changed the topic by looking at Sharpe. “Brigadier Moon tells me you got rid of the bridge over the Guadiana?”

“We did, sir.”

“That’s a relief. All in all, Sir Barnaby”—Wellesley looked at the brigadier—“a most successful operation.”

Moon shifted in his chair, then winced as pain stabbed at his leg. “It could have gone better, Your Excellency.”

“How so?”

“You’d need to be a soldier to understand,” Moon said abruptly. Sir Thomas frowned in disapproval of the brigadier’s rudeness, but Moon would not yield an inch. “At best,” he went on, “it was only a flawed success. A very flawed success.”

“I served in the 40th Foot,” Henry Wellesley said. “It was not, perhaps, my finest hour, but I am not ignorant of soldiering. So tell me why it was flawed, Sir Barnaby?”

“Things could have gone better,” Moon said as though that closed the matter.

The ambassador took a cut cigar from a servant, then bent to light it from the proffered taper. “And there I was,” he said, “inviting you to tell us of your triumph. You’re as reticent as my brother, Sir Barnaby.”

“I’m flattered to be compared with Lord Wellington, Your Excellency,” Moon said stiffly.

“Mind you, Arthur did once tell me of an exploit of his,” Henry Wellesley said, “and it’s not one from which he emerges with very much credit.” The ambassador blew a plume of smoke toward the crystal chandelier. Sir Thomas and Lord Pumphrey were sitting very still, as if they knew something was brewing in the room, while Sharpe, sensing the strained atmosphere, left the crab claws alone. “He was unhorsed at Assaye,” the ambassador went on. “I think that’s the name of the place. Whatever, he was pitched into the enemy ranks, and everyone else had galloped on and Arthur told me he knew he was going to die. He was surrounded by the enemy, all of them fierce as thieves, and then from nowhere a British sergeant appears. From nowhere, he says!” Henry Wellesley waved the cigar as though he were a magician who had suddenly made it appear. “And what followed, Arthur says, was the finest piece of soldiering he ever witnessed. He reckons that sergeant put down five men. At least five men, he told me. The fellow slaughtered them! All on his own.”

“Five men!” Lord Pumphrey said in unfeigned admiration.

“At least five,” the ambassador said.

“Recollection of battle,” Moon said, “can be very confusing.”

“Oh! You think Arthur embellished the tale?” Henry Wellesley asked with exaggerated politeness.

“One man against five?” Moon suggested. “I’d be very surprised, Your Excellency.”

“Then let us ask the sergeant who fought against them,” Henry Wellesley said, springing his trap. “How many men do you remember, Sharpe?”

Moon looked as if he had been stung by a wasp while Sharpe, embarrassed again, just shrugged.

“Well, Sharpe?” Sir Thomas Graham prompted him.

“There were a few, sir,” Sharpe said uncomfortably. “But of course the general was fighting beside me, sir.”

“Arthur told me he was dazed,” Henry Wellesley said. “He told me he was quite incapable of defending himself.”

“Fighting away, sir, he was,” Sharpe said. In truth Sharpe had pushed a dizzied Sir Arthur Wellesley under one of the Indian cannons and had sheltered him there. Was it truly five men? He could not remember. “And help came very fast, sir,” he went on hurriedly, “very fast.”

“But as you say, Sir Barnaby”—Henry Wellesley’s voice was silky now—“recollections of battle can be very confusing. I would take it as a favor if you would permit me to see the report on your great triumph at Fort Joseph.”

“Of course, Your Excellency,” Moon said, and Sharpe understood then what had happened. His Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary had intervened on Sharpe’s behalf, letting Moon know that Lord Wellington was beholden to Sharpe and that it would be sensible if the brigadier were to change his report accordingly. That was a favor, and it was a generous one, but Sharpe knew that favors were given so that other favors could be returned.

A clock on the mantelpiece struck ten and Henry Wellesley sighed. “I must put on fancy dress for our allies,” he said. There was a scraping of chairs as the guests stood. “Do finish the port and the cigars,” the ambassador said as he moved toward the door where he paused. “Mister Sharpe? Might I have a word?”

Sharpe followed Henry Wellesley down the passage and into a small room lit by candles. A coal fire burned in the hearth, books lined the walls, and a leather-topped desk stood under the window that the ambassador pushed open. “The Spanish servants insist on keeping me warm,” he said. “I tell them I prefer cold air, but they don’t believe me. Did I embarrass you back there?”

“No, sir.”

“It was for Brigadier Moon’s benefit. He told me you had let him down, which I somehow doubt. He is a man who is unable to share credit, I think.” The ambassador opened a cupboard and took out a dark bottle. “Port, Sharpe. It’s Taylor’s best and you won’t get finer this side of paradise. May I pour you a glass?”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And there are cigars in the silver box. You should have one. My doctor says they’re good for the wind.” Henry Wellesley poured a single glass of port, which he handed to Sharpe. Then he walked to an elegant round table that served as a chess board. He stared at the pieces, which were in midgame. “I think I’m in trouble,” he said. “Do you play?”

“No, sir.”

“I play with Duff. He was consul here and he’s rather good.” The ambassador touched a black castle with a tentative finger, then abandoned the game to sit behind his desk from where he gave the rifleman a shrewd inspection. “I doubt my brother ever thanked you adequately for saving his life.” He waited for an answer, but Sharpe was silent. “Obviously not. That sounds like Arthur.”

“He gave me a very fine telescope, sir,” Sharpe said.

“Doubtless one that had been given to him,” Henry Wellesley suggested, “and that he didn’t want?”

“I’m sure that’s not true, sir,” Sharpe said.

Wellesley smiled. “My brother has many virtues, but the ability to express sentiment is not among them. If it is any consolation, Sharpe, he has frequently expressed his admiration of your qualities.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said awkwardly.

The ambassador sighed, suggesting that the pleasantest part of the conversation was now done. He hesitated, as if looking for words, then opened a drawer and found a small object that he tossed across the desk’s leather top. It was one of the horned brooches. “Know what that is, Sharpe?”

“I’m afraid I do, sir.”

“I rather thought Willie Russell would tell you. And how about this?” He pushed a newspaper across the desk. Sharpe picked it up, saw it was called El Correo de Cádiz, but the light was too dark and the print too small to attempt to read the ill-printed sheet. He put the paper down. “Have you seen that?” the ambassador asked.

“No, sir.”

“It appeared on the streets today and it purports to print a letter I am supposed to have sent to a lady. In the letter I tell her that the British plan to annex Cádiz and make it into a second Gibraltar. It does not name me, but in a city as small as Cádiz it hardly needs to. And I need hardly tell you that His Majesty’s government has no designs on Cádiz either.”

“So the letter’s a forgery, sir?” Sharpe asked.

Henry Wellesley paused. “Not entirely,” he said cautiously. He was not looking at Sharpe now, but had twisted in his chair to stare into the dark garden. He drew on his cigar. “I imagine Willie Russell told you of my circumstances?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So I shall not describe them further except to say that some months ago I met a lady here and was persuaded that she was of gentle birth. She came from the Spanish colonies and assured me her father was wealthy, respectable indeed, but he was not. And before I discovered that truth I was foolish enough to express my sentiments in letters.” He paused, still staring through the open window, waiting for Sharpe to speak, but Sharpe was silent. “The letters were stolen from her,” the ambassador went on, “and it was not her fault.” He turned and gazed at Sharpe defiantly, as if he half expected Sharpe to disbelieve him.

“And the thief, sir, tried to blackmail you?”

“Exactly,” Henry Wellesley said. “The wretch made an arrangement to sell the letters to me, but my envoy was murdered. He and his two companions. The money, of course, vanished and the letters are now in the hands of our political enemies.” Wellesley spoke bitterly and gave the newspaper a blow with his hand. “You must understand, Sharpe, that there are men in Cádiz who believe, quite sincerely, that Spain’s future would be a great deal brighter if they were to make peace with Napoleon. They believe that Britain is the more formidable enemy. They think we are intent on destroying Spain’s colonies and on taking her Atlantic trade. They do not believe that my brother can expel the French from Portugal, let alone from Spain, and they are working diligently to fashion a political future that does not include a British alliance. My job is to persuade them otherwise, and those letters are going to make the task much harder. It may even make it impossible.” Again he paused as if inviting some comment from Sharpe, but the rifleman sat very still and silent. “Lord Pumphrey tells me you are an able man,” the ambassador said quietly.

“He’s very kind, sir,” Sharpe said woodenly.

“And he says you have a piquant past.”

“Not sure what that is, sir.”

Henry Wellesley half smiled. “Forgive me if I’m wrong and believe my assurance that I am not trying to give offense, but Lord Pumphrey tells me you were once a thief?”

“I was, sir,” Sharpe admitted.

“What else?”

Sharpe hesitated, then decided the ambassador had been honest with him so he would return the compliment. “Thief, murderer, soldier, sergeant, rifleman,” he said the list flatly, though Henry Wellesley detected pride in the words.

“Our enemies, Sharpe,” Wellesley said, “have printed one letter, but say they are willing to sell the rest to me. The price, I have no doubt, will be extortionate, but they have intimated that they will publish no more if I pay their price. Lord Pumphrey is negotiating on my behalf. If an agreement is reached, then I would be most grateful if you would serve as his escort and his protector when the letters are exchanged for the money.”

Sharpe thought about it. “You say that your previous fellow was murdered, sir?”

“He was called Plummer. The thieves claimed he tried to take the letters without surrendering the gold, and I have to say that sounds plausible. Captain Plummer was a belligerent man, God rest his soul. They knifed him and his two companions in the cathedral, then threw their bodies over the seawall.”

“What’s to say they won’t do it again, sir?”

Wellesley shrugged. “Captain Plummer may have antagonized them. And he certainly wasn’t an accredited diplomat. Lord Pumphrey is. Murdering Lord Pumphrey, I can assure you, would invoke a most vigorous response. And your presence, I dare say, might deter them.”

Sharpe ignored that compliment. “One other question, sir. You mentioned I was a thief. What’s that to do with keeping Lord Pumphrey alive?”

Henry Wellesley looked embarrassed. “If Lord Pumphrey fails to reach an agreement I was hoping the letters could be stolen back.”

“You know where they are, sir?”

“I assume at the place where the newspaper is printed.”

It seemed a huge assumption to Sharpe, but he let it go. “How many letters are there, sir?”

“They have fifteen.”

“There are more?”

“I wrote more, I fear, but they only stole fifteen.”

“So the girl has more, sir?”

“I’m sure she doesn’t,” Henry Wellesley said stiffly. “Perhaps only fifteen survived.”

Sharpe was aware that something was not being said, but he reckoned that pushing the ambassador would not reveal it. “Thieving’s a skilled trade, sir,” he said instead, “and blackmail’s a nasty one. I need men. We’re dealing with killers, sir, so I need my own killers.”

“I have no men to offer,” the ambassador said, shrugging, “with Plummer dead.”

“I’ve five riflemen with me, sir, and they’ll do. But they need to be here, in the city, and they need civilian clothes, and they need a letter from you to Lord Wellington saying that they’re here on duty. I need that most of all, sir.”

“All agreed,” Henry Wellesley said with relief in his voice.

“And I need to speak to the lady, sir. No point in stealing one set of letters if there’s another lot waiting.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know where she is,” the ambassador said. “If I knew then I would, of course, tell you. She appears to have hidden herself.”

“I still need her name, sir.”

“Caterina,” Henry Wellesley said wistfully. “Caterina Blazquez.” He rubbed his face with a hand. “I feel very foolish telling you all this.”

“We’ve all made fools of ourselves over women, sir,” Sharpe said.

“We wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t.”

Wellesley smiled ruefully at that. “But if Lord Pumphrey negotiates successfully,” he said, “then it will all be over. A lesson learned.”

“And if he doesn’t, sir, then you want me to steal the letters?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Wellesley said. He stood and spun his cigar into the night where it hit the dark lawn with a shower of sparks. “I really must get dressed. Full court uniform, sword and all. But one last thing, Sharpe.”

“Sir?” Sharpe asked. He knew he should call the ambassador “Your Excellency,” but he kept forgetting and Wellesley did not seem to mind.

“We live, breathe, and have our very being in this city by permission of the Spanish. That is as it should be. So whatever you do, Sharpe, do it carefully. And please don’t mention this to anyone but Lord Pumphrey. He alone is privy to the negotiations.” That was not true. There was another man who might help, who would help, though Henry Wellesley doubted that he would succeed. Which left him dependent on this scarred and bandaged rogue.

“I won’t mention it, sir,” Sharpe said.

“Then good night, Sharpe.”

“Good night, sir.”

Lord Pumphrey, smelling faintly of violets, was waiting in the hall. “Well, Richard?”

“It seems I’ve got a job here.”

“I’m so pleased. Shall we talk?” Lord Pumphrey led Sharpe down the candlelit corridor. “Was it really five men, Richard? Be truthful. Five?”

“Seven,” Sharpe said, though he could not remember. Nor did it matter. He was a thief, he was a murderer, he was a soldier, and now he had a blackmailer to settle.