Sharpe's Rifles

CHAPTER 15

No fusillade greeted Sharpe; only silence. The rising sun threw the intricate shadow of the cathedral’s pinnacles onto the palace’s bullet-pocked stone, through the haze of dawn mist that had been thickened by musket smoke. The sound of his footsteps echoed from the buildings. A wounded man moaned and turned over in his own blood.

Sharpe could tell some of the morning’s events from the manner in which the wounded and dead lay in the plaza. Frenchmen, fleeing to the safety of the palace, had been cut down by pursuing Spaniards who, in turn, had been repulsed by volleys from the Frenchmen already safe inside. Those Frenchmen now watched him thread his way through the extraordinary litter of battle.

There were bodies lying with curled fists. A dead horse bared yellow teeth to the dawn. A cuirassier’s half-polished breastplate lay beside a single drumstick. Scraps of cartridge paper lay black and curled on the flagstones. A block of pipeclay had crumbled to white dust. A Spanish spur that had come unscrewed from its boot socket glinted beside a bent ramrod. There was an empty sabre scabbard, a helmet cover, cartouches, and French shakos abandoned among the weeds which thrust through the cracks in the paving. A cat bared its teeth at Sharpe, then slunk quickly away.

Sharpe paced through the litter, conscious of the watching eyes in the palace. He also felt ill-accoutred for the diplomatic task he faced. His boot sole flapped and scraped on the flagstones. He had no hat, the seams of his trousers had opened again, while his face and lips were stained black by Powder. His rifle was slung on his right shoulder, and he supposed he should have discarded the weapon as inappropriate to this mission.

Sharpe noted the rejas of black iron that barred the windows of the palace’s lowest storey; bars that would force an assault to attack the double doors. As he approached, one of those doors was opened a few cautious inches. Loopholes had been smashed in its timbers. Shards of glass, broken when the French punched out the windows with their musket butts, lay on the paving amidst misshapen musket balls. Skeins of powder smoke, stinking like rotten eggs, clung to the palace fagade.

Sharpe stepped carefully through the broken glass. A voice from the doorway demanded something of him in harsh Spanish. “English,” he called in reply, “English.” There was a pause, then the door was pulled back.

Sharpe stepped through, finding himself in a high, pillared hall where a group of French infantrymen faced him with bayonets. The men were stationed behind a makeshift battlement of plump sacks; evidence that they had foreseen that the doors might be assaulted. Surely, Sharpe reasoned, the French would not allow him to see such careful preparations if they had not already decided to surrender. That thought gave him confidence.

“You’re English?” An officer spoke from the shadows to Sharpe’s left.

“I’m English. My name is Sharpe, and I command a detachment of His Majesty’s 95th Rifles present in this city.” It seemed best, at this moment, not to betray his lowly rank which would hardly impress men in such desperate danger as these French.

Not that the small deception mattered, for another voice spoke from the gloom of the big stairway ahead of him. “Lieutenant Sharpe!” It was Vivar’s brother, the Count of Mouromorto. “Are you the best emissary they could find, Lieutenant?”

Sharpe said nothing. He wiped his face on his sleeve, thereby smudging his cheeks with the sootlike powder. Somewhere on the city’s edges a volley of musketry sounded, then, closer to the plaza, a cheer. The French officer pulled his sword belt straight. “This way, Lieutenant.” He led him up the stairs, past the Count who, as always dressed in his black riding coat and odd white topboots, fell into step behind. Sharpe wondered if Louisa was in the palace. He was tempted to ask the officer, but supposed the question was better posed to Colonel de l’Eclin or whoever waited to negotiate the surrender upstairs.

“I must congratulate you, Lieutenant.” The French officer, like Sharpe, had a voice made hoarse from the effort of shouting orders in battle. “I understand it was your Riflemen who made the first assault?”

“Indeed.” Sharpe always found the politeness of such truces incongruous. Men who had been trying to disembowel each other at sunrise talking, an hour later, in flowery compliments.

“The Lieutenant was fool enough to sacrifice his men for my brother’s madness.” The Count of Mouromorto was evidently not disposed to compliments, flowery or otherwise. “I thought the British had more sense.”

Sharpe and the French officer both ignored the comment. Sharpe deduced from the Count’s presence that Colonel de l’Eclin would indeed be waiting at the top of these stairs, and he found himself dreading the meeting. He did not think he could deceive de l’Eclin into surrender; the chasseur officer was too good, and Sharpe knew his own fragile confidence would wane before the Colonel’s knowing and sceptical gaze.

“This way, Lieutenant.” The French officer ushered him past another barricade on the half landing, then up to doors which opened into a tall and once gracious room which served as a passage to other, similar rooms. To their right were the palace windows, where infantrymen crouched with loaded weapons amidst the shards of broken glass. Upturned shakos full of cartridges lay beside the men at the firing positions. The upper part of the room’s rear wall was pitted by musket strikes, as was the fine moulding of the plaster ceiling. A huge mirror above the mantel had been shattered into savage glass spikes which leaned dangerously from the gilt frame. A portrait of a stern man, dressed in an ancient ruff, was punctured with bullet holes. The soldiers turned to watch Sharpe with silent and hostile curiosity.

The next room had a score of soldiers embrasured in its windows, too. Like the men in the first room they were mostly infantry, with just a smattering of dismounted cuirassiers or lancers. No Dragoons, Sharpe noted. The men were protected by cushions and upturned furniture, or by sacks which, struck by musket fire, had leaked flour or grain onto the parquet floor. Sharpe’s confidence that the French would surrender was beginning to erode. He could see that this French headquarters had plenty of both men and ammunition for a siege. His feet scrunched the shards of a shattered chandelier as he was led into the third room where a group of officers awaited his arrival.

To Sharpe’s relief de l’Eclin was not among the Frenchmen who stiffened as he appeared in the doorway. Instead it was a blue-coated Colonel of infantry who stepped forward and gave the smallest bow.

“Sir,” Sharpe acknowledged the courtesy, though his voice was little more than a croak because of his hoarseness.

The Colonel’s left arm was in a sling, while his cheek had been scratched by a splinter that had drawn enough blood to soak the white silk stock at his neck. The left tip of his moustache was similarly discoloured by blood. “Coursot,” he said curtly. “Colonel Coursot. I have the honour to command the Headquarter’s Guard of this city.”

“Sharpe. Lieutenant Sharpe. 95th Rifles, sir.”

The Count of Mouromorto, having followed Sharpe in silence from the stairway, went to one of the windows from which he could stare at the cathedral’s shadowed facade. He seemed to disdain the proceedings, as though the fate of Spain was above such petty negotiations.

Yet Colonel Coursot’s opening struck Sharpe as anything but petty. The Frenchman took a watch from his waistcoat pocket and touched the button which sprang open its lid. “You have one hour to leave the city, Lieutenant.”

Sharpe was non-plussed. He had come expecting to deliver the ultimatum, but instead it was this tall, grey-haired Frenchman who so confidently dictated terms. Coursot snapped the watch shut. “You should know, Lieutenant, that an army corps is approaching this city from the north. It will arrive here in a matter of hours.”

Sharpe hesitated, not knowing what to say. His mouth was dry and, to give himself time, he uncorked his canteen, swilled the taste of salty gunpowder from his tongue, then spat into the ashes of the grate. “I don’t believe you.” It was, and Sharpe knew it, a feeble response, but probably a truthful one. If either Marshal Soult or Marshal Ney had left Corunna, then news would have reached Vivar by now.

“Disbelief is your privilege, Lieutenant,” Coursot said, “but I assure you the army corps is coming.”

“And I assure you,” Sharpe said, “that we shall defeat you before they arrive.”

“That assumption is also your privilege,” the Colonel said equably, “but it will not make me surrender to you. I assume you have come here to seek my surrender?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a tense silence. Sharpe wondered if some of the officers in this room had urged a surrender on Coursot; these Frenchmen were vastly outnumbered, surrounded, and every moment of continued fighting would make more casualties to join the wounded who lay in the corners of the room. Tf you don’t surrender now,“ Sharpe pressed his case awkwardly, ”we shall give you no further opportunity. You wish the palace to burn down around you?“

Coursot chuckled. “I assure you, Lieutenant, that a stone building does not catch fire easily. You, I think, lack artillery? So what are you hoping for? That St James will send down heavenly fire?”

Sharpe blushed. The Count of Mouromorto translated the jibe and the tension in the room relaxed as the French officers laughed.

“Oh, I know all about your miracle,” Coursot said mock-ingly. “What astonishes me is to find an English officer involved in such nonsense. Ah, the coffee!” He turned as an orderly entered the room with a tray of cups. “Do you have time for coffee?” he asked Sharpe. “Or must you hurry away to pray for a divine thunderbolt?”

Til tell you what I’ll do.“ Sharpe, stung out of his efforts at diplomacy, spoke with a biting savagery. Til put my best Riflemen on those bell towers.” He pointed through the window at the cathedral. “Your muskets aren’t accurate at that range, but my men can pick the eyes out of your French skulls at twice that distance. They’ve got all day to do it, Colonel, and they’ll turn these rooms into a charnel house. Frankly, I don’t give a bugger. I’d rather shoot Frenchmen than talk to them.”

“I do believe you.” If the Colonel was rattled by Sharpe’s threat he did not betray it, but nor did he press his own threat of an approaching army corps which Sharpe sensed had been made purely as a formality. Instead he placed a cup of coffee on the table in front of the Rifleman. “You can kill a lot of my men, Lieutenant, and I can make myself a considerable nuisance to your miracle.” Coursot took a cup from the orderly, then looked with amusement at Sharpe. “The gonfalon of Santiago? Isn’t that right? Don’t you think you’re clutching at straws if you need such a nonsensical bauble for victory?”

Sharpe neither confirmed nor denied it.

The Colonel sipped coffee. “Of course I’m no expert, Lieutenant, but I would imagine miracles are best performed in an atmosphere of reverent peace, wouldn’t you agree?” He waited for a reply, but Sharpe kept silent. Coursot smiled. “I am suggesting a truce, Lieutenant.”

“A truce?” Sharpe could not keep the astonishment from his voice.

“A truce!” Coursot repeated the word as though he was explaining it to a child. “I assume you do not think your occupation of Santiago de Compostela will be forever? I thought not. You have come here to make your little miracle, then you wish to leave. Very well. I promise not to fire on your men, nor on any other person in the city, not even upon St James himself, so long as you promise not to fire on my men, nor make an attack on this building.”

The Count of Mouromorto made a sudden and impassioned protest against the suggestion, then, when Cour-sot ignored it, turned away in disgust. As he drank his coffee, Sharpe thought he could understand the Count’s displeasure. He had tried again and again to capture the gonfalon, now he was supposed to stand idly by while it was unfurled in the cathedral. Yet would these Frenchmen stand idle?

Coursot saw Sharpe’s hesitation. “Lieutenant. I have two hundred and thirty men in this building; some of them wounded. What damage can I do to you? You wish to inspect the palace? You may, indeed you should!”

“I can search it?” Sharpe asked suspiciously.

“From top to bottom! And you will see that I tell the truth. Two hundred and thirty men. There are also some twenty Spaniards who, like the Count of Mouromorto, are friends of France. Do you really think, Lieutenant, that I will surrender those men to the vengeance of their countrymen? Come!” Almost angrily, Coursot threw open a door. “Search the palace, Lieutenant! See just what a paucity of men frighten you!”

Sharpe did not move. “I’m in no position to accept your suggestion, sir.”

“But Major Vivar is?” The Colonel seemed annoyed that Sharpe had not greeted his offer of a truce with immediate enthusiasm. “I assume Major Vivar is in command?” he persisted.

“Yes, sir.”

“So tell him!” Coursot waved his hand, as though the errand was negligible. “Finish your coffee, and tell him! In the meantime, I want an assurance from you. I presume you have taken some French prisoners today? Or have you slaughtered them all?”

Sharpe ignored the bitterness in the Frenchman’s tone. “I have prisoners, sir.”

“I want your word, as a British officer, that they will be treated properly.”

“They will be, sir.” Sharpe paused. “And you, sir, have a British family under your protection?”

“We have one English girl in the palace.” Coursot still seemed nettled by Sharpe’s suspicions of his truce. “A Miss Parker, I believe. Her family was sent to Corunna last week, but I assure you Miss Parker is entirely safe. I assume she was sent here to mislead us?”

The calmness of the question did not indicate whether the deception had worked or failed, though Sharpe, at that instant, was only concerned with Louisa’s fate. She was alive and in the city, and thus his hopes were alive too. “I don’t know that she was sent to mislead you, sir,” he said dutifully.

“Well, she did!” Coursot said testily. The Count of Mouro-morto scowled at Sharpe as though the Rifleman was personally responsible.

“Miss Parker deceived you?” Sharpe tried to seek more information without betraying any anxiety.

Coursot hesitated, then shrugged. “Colonel de l’Eclin left at three o’clock this morning, Lieutenant, with a thousand men. He believes you have gone south, and that Major Vivar is at Padron. I congratulate you on a successful ruse de guerre.”

Sharpe’s heart missed a beat. It had worked! He tried to keep his face expressionless, but he was certain it must betray his delight.

Coursot grimaced. “But be assured, Lieutenant, that Colonel de l’Eclin will return by this afternoon, and I advise you to finish your miracle before he does so. Now! Will you seek Major Vivar’s consideration of my proposal?”

“Yes, sir.” Sharpe did not move. “And can I assume you will release Miss Parker to our protection?”

Tf she so wishes, then I will release her to you when you return with Major Vivar’s answer. Remember, Lieutenant! We will not fire on you, so long as you do not fire on us!“ With ill-disguised impatience, the French Colonel conducted

Sharpe towards the doorway. “I give you half an hour to return with your answer, otherwise we shall assume you have turned down our generous offer. Au revoir, Lieutenant.”

Once Sharpe had left the room, Coursot went to stand in one of the deep window bays. He opened his watch again and stared with apparent incomprehension at its filigreed hands. He only looked up when he heard the sound of Sharpe’s footsteps on the plaza’s flagstones. Coursot watched the Rifleman walk away. “Bite, little fish, bite,” he spoke very softly.

“He’s stupid enough to bite,” the Count of Mouromorto had overheard the murmured words, “as is my brother.”

“You mean they have a sense of honour?” Coursot asked with a surprising malevolence, then, sensing he had spoken too sharply, smiled. “I think we need more coffee, gentlemen. More coffee for our nerves.”

Bias Vivar was less astonished at Coursot’s suggestion than Sharpe expected. “It isn’t unusual,” he said. “I can’t say that I’m delighted, but it isn’t such a bad idea.” The Spaniard took advantage of the cease-fire to walk into the plaza and stare at the palace fagade. “Do you think we can capture it?”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, “but we’ll lose fifty men killed and double that with bad wounds. And they’ll be our best men. You can’t send half-trained volunteers against those bastards.”

Vivar nodded agreement. “Colonel de l’Eclin’s gone south?”

“That’s what Coursot said. ”

Vivar turned and shouted towards the civilians who crowded the streets leading from the plaza. A chorus of voices answered, all confirming that yes, French cavalry had left the town in the middle of the night, going south. How many cavalry? he asked, and was told that hundreds and hundreds of mounted men had filed through the city.

Vivar looked back at the palace, not seeing its severe beauty, but judging the thickness of its stone walls. He shook his head. “That flag will have to come down,” he gestured at the bullet-riddled tricolour that hung over the doorway, “and they’ll have to agree to close all the window shutters. They can keep observers at a single window on each side of the building, but nothing more.”

“Can you barricade the doors from the outside?” Sharpe asked.

“Why not?” Vivar looked at his watch. “And why don’t I tell them our terms? If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, attack!”

Sharpe wanted to be the one to greet Louisa and draw her safe from the French Headquarters. “Shouldn’t I go back?”

“I think I shall be safe,” Vivar said, “and I want to search the palace for myself. It isn’t that I don’t trust you, Lieutenant, but that I think this responsibility is mine.”

Sharpe nodded his understanding. It was the French willingness to allow the palace to be searched that had convinced him of. their good faith but, if he was Vivar, he would insist on conducting that search himself. His reunion with Louisa would have to wait, and it would be no less piquant because it was delayed.

Vivar did not set out at once; instead he clapped his hands with delight and danced two steps of clumsy joy. “We’ve done it, my friend! We have truly done it!”

They had gained victory.

Victory brought work. Captured muskets and carbines were piled in the plaza south of the cathedral, and the French prisoners were locked into the town jail where they were guarded by greenjackets. The Riflemen’s packs and greatcoats were retrieved from the elm trees north of the city. Corpses were dragged to the city ditch, and defences properly set up. Sharpe went from guardpost to guardpost, ensuring that Vivar’s volunteers were in place. A few French fugitives were still in sight to the south of the city, but a scatter of rifle shots drove them off. The road south, Sharpe superstitious madness. The second, to rescue Louisa, was a personal whim of Sharpe’s and irrelevant to the war. The third, to destroy Soult’s supplies, was the only justification of true value, and it had largely failed.

Yet, if most of the supplies were safe inside the palace, Sharpe could still deny Marshal Soult what was left. The nets of hay were taken for Vivar’s horses, while the flour was given away to the townspeople. He ordered the wine to be thrown away.

“Throw it away?” Harper sounded appalled.

“You want the men drunk if de l’Eclin counterattacks?”

“It’s a sinful waste, sir, so it is.”

“Throw it away!” Sharpe suited action to his words by skewering a pile of wineskins with his sword. The red liquid gushed onto the church flagstones and trickled through the gaps into the crypt beneath. “And if any man does get drunk,” he raised his voice, “he’ll answer to me, personally!”

“Very good, sir!” Harper waited till Sharpe was gone, then summoned Gataker. “Find a tavern keeper, bring him here, and see what cash he offers. Quick now!”

Sharpe took a squad of Riflemen to search for any other French caches of grain or hay. They found none. They did discover a store of French infantry packs, made from oxhide and much better than the standard British ones. The packs were commandeered, as were three dozen pairs of riding boots though, to Sharpe’s disgust, none of the boots was large enough for him. The Riflemen found French cartridges to refill their cartouches; the French musket-ball, fractionally smaller than its British equivalent, could be used in Baker rifles, though enemy ammunition was only used as a last resort because the coarse French powder fouled the rifle barrels. They found greatcoats and stockings, shirts and gloves, but no more grain or hay.

The townspeople were also seeking booty. The citizens of Santiago de Compostela did not care that the bulk of the French forage was safe inside the palace, they cared only that, at least for a day, they were free. They turned the winter’s day into a carnival, costumed by plunder, so that it seemed as if the city was inhabited by a gleeful crowd of half-dressed enemy soldiers. Even the women were dressed in French coats and shakos.

At midday a convoy of mules carried much of the fodder, together with the Riflemen’s packs, to a safe place in the eastern hills. Vivar did not want his men encumbered by personal belongings if the city had to be defended, and so the cache of packs and trophies would wait to be collected after the withdrawal. Once the mules had gone, Sharpe ordered most of his Riflemen to rest while he, fighting off a vast weariness, went in search of Bias Vivar. He walked first to the big plaza which he found almost deserted; all but for a picquet of Cazadores who warily watched the shuttered windows of the palace. There were also a few civilians making a crude barrier of furniture, empty wine vats, and carts which would eventually surround the whole building that was conveniently bounded on its other three sides by streets.

A single window was unshuttered in the palace facade, though no observer was visible there. The flag was gone from above the double door which had been barricaded by planks supported by timber buttresses. The French were thus penned inside their huge building.

They were also being taunted by crowds who, prevented by Cazadores from filling the big plaza, jeered from the smaller open spaces to north and south of the cathedral. They cheered when they saw Sharpe, then went back to insulting the hidden Frenchmen. Bagpipes added their squalling to the noise. Children danced derision of the enemy, while the city bells still rang their mad cacophony of victory. Sharpe, smiling his tired happiness at the citizens’ celebrations, climbed the flight of steps which twisted towards the cathedral’s ornate western entrance. He stopped halfway up, not from tiredness, but because he was suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of the facade. Pillars and arches, statues and balustrades, escutcheons and scrolls: all were superbly carved to the glory of Santiago who was buried inside. After the weeks of hardship and cold, of battle and anger, the cathedral seemed to dwarf the ambitions of the men who fought across Spain. Then he thought that this cathedral was like Vivar’s ambition. The Spaniard fought for something he believed in, while Sharpe only fought like a pirate; out of a stubborn and bloody pride.

“Do I perceive admiration in a soldier’s eyes?” The question, asked in a voice of gentle teasing, came from a figure who moved forward on the stone platform at the top of the flight of steps.

Sharpe instantly forgot the cathedral’s glories. “Miss Parker?” He knew he was smiling like a fool, but he could not help it. It was not just a pirate’s pride that had made him fight, but his memory of this girl who, in her blue skirt and rust-coloured cape, smiled back at him. He turned and gestured at the silent French-held palace. “Isn’t it dangerous to be here?”

“My dear Lieutenant, I was inside the ogre’s den for a whole day! You think I am in more peril now that you have gained such a victory?”

Sharpe.smiled at the compliment, then, as he climbed to the top of the steps, returned it. “A victory, Miss Parker, to which you signally contributed.” He bowed to her. “My humblest congratulations. I was wrong, and you were right.”

Louisa, delighted with the praise, laughed. “Colonel de l’Eclin believes he will ambush you in the Ulla valley east of Padron. I watched him at three o’clock this morning.” She walked to the very centre of the cathedral’s platform which made a kind of stage dominating the wide plaza. “He stood in this very place, Lieutenant, and made a speech to his men. They filled the plaza! Rank after rank of helmets gleaming in the torchlight, and all of the men cheering their Colonel. I never thought to see such a thing! They cheered, then they rode off to their great victory.”

Sharpe thought how slender had been this day’s margin of victory. An extra thousand men, under de l’Eclin’s ruthlessly efficient command, would have destroyed Vivar’s attack. Yet the chasseur Colonel, utterly deceived by Louisa, had been lured southwards. “How did you convince him?”

“With copious tears and an evident reluctance to tell him anything. Eventually, though, he wheedled the fatal truth from me.” Louisa seemed to mock her own cleverness. “In the end he gave me a choice. I could stay in the city or rejoin my aunt in Corunna. I think he believed that if I chose to stay here then I must have hopes of rescue, and that to express such a hope would reveal that I lied to him. So I pleaded to rejoin my grieving family, and the Colonel rode away.” She did a pirouette of joy. “I was supposed to leave for Corunna at midday today. Do you see what a fate you have spared me?”

“Weren’t you frightened of staying?”

“Of course, weren’t you frightened of coming?”

He smiled. “I’m paid to be frightened.”

“And to be frightening. You look very grim, Lieutenant.” Louisa walked to some crates that lay open beside the cathedral door, sat on one of them, and pushed an errant curl from her eyes. “These crates,” she said, “were filled with plunder from the cathedral. The French took most of it away last week, but Don Bias has saved some.”

“That will please him.”

“Not very much,” Louisa said tartly. “The French desecrated the cathedral. They plundered the treasury and tore down most of the screens. Don Bias is not happy. But the gonfalon arrived safely and is under guard, so the miracle can proceed.”

“Good.” Sharpe sat, drew sword and, with the blade across his knees, scrubbed at the blood which would pit the steel with rust if it were not removed.

“Don Bias is inside. He’s preparing the high altar for his nonsense.” Louisa defused the word with a smile. “Doubtless you wish he would get it over with swiftly, so you can withdraw?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“But he won’t,” Louisa said firmly. “The priests are insisting that the nonsense must be done properly and with due ceremony. This is a miracle, Lieutenant, that must be observed by witnesses who can carry news of it throughout

Spain. We wait for the coming of some monks and friars.“ She laughed delightedly. ”It’s like something out of the Middle Ages, isn’t it?“

“Indeed.”

“But Don Bias is serious, so we must both treat it with the utmost gravity. Shall we go inside to see him?” Louisa spoke with sudden enthusiasm. “You should also see the Gate of Glory, Lieutenant, it really is a very remarkable piece of masonry. Much more impressive than the doors to a Methodist meeting house, though it’s monstrously disloyal of me to say as much.”

Sharpe was silent for a few seconds. He did not want to see the Gate of Glory, whatever that might be, nor share this girl with the Spaniards who prepared the cathedral for the evening’s rigmarole. He wanted to sit here with her, sharing the moment of victory.

“I do believe,” Louisa said, “that these have been the happiest days of my life. I do envy you.”

“Envy me?”

“It’s the lack of restraint, Lieutenant. Suddenly there are no rules any more, are there? You wish to tell a lie? You lie! You desire to tear a town into tatters? You do it! You wish to light a fire? Then strike the flint! Perhaps I should become one of your Riflemen?”

Sharpe laughed. “I accept.”

“But instead,” Louisa folded her arms demurely, “I must travel south to Lisbon, and there take a ship to England.”

“Must you?” Sharpe blurted out.

Louisa was silent for a second. The smell of smoke from one of the burning houses drifted across the plaza, then was dispelled by a gust of wind. “Isn’t that what you’re going to do?” she asked.

The hope soared in him. “It depends on whether we keep a garrison is Lisbon. I’m sure we will,” he added lamely.

“It seems unlikely, after our defeats.” Louisa turned to watch a group of Spanish youths who had succeeded in slipping past the Cazadores who guarded the plaza. The boys held a captured tricolour which they first set alight, then brandished towards the trapped enemy. If they hoped to stir the Frenchmen in the palace by their defiance, they failed.

“So I am doomed to return home,” Louisa gazed at the capering boys as she spoke, “and for what, Lieutenant? In England I shall resume my needlework and spend hours with my watercolours. Doubtless I shall be a curiosity for a while; the squire will want to hear of my quaint adventures. Mister Bufford will resume his courtship and reassure me that never again, so long as there is breath in his body, shall I be exposed to such foul danger! I shall play the pianoforte, and spend weeks deciding whether to buy pink ribbons or blue for next year’s gowns. I shall take alms to the poor, and tea with the ladies of the town. It will all be so very unarduous, Lieutenant Sharpe.”

Sharpe felt adrift in an irony he was not clever enough to understand. “So you have decided to marry Mr Bufford?” he asked in trepidation, fearing that the answer would dash all his fragile hopes.

“I’m not heiress enough to attract anyone more exalted,” Louisa said with a feigned self-pity. She brushed a scrap of fallen ash from her skirts. “But it’s surely the sensible thing for me to do, is it not, Lieutenant? To marry Mr Bufford and live in his very pleasant house? I shall have roses planted against the south wall and once in a while, a very long while, I shall see a paragraph in the newspapers and it will tell of a battle faraway, and I’ll remember how very horrid powder smoke smells and how sad a soldier can look when he’s scraping blood off his sword.”

Her last words, which seemed so very intimate, restored Sharpe’s optimism. He looked up at her.

“You see, Lieutenant,” Louisa forestalled anything he might say, “there comes a moment in anyone’s life when a choice presents itself. Isn’t that true?”

The hope, so ill-based, so impractical, so irresistible, soared inside Sharpe. “Yes,” he said. He did not know exactly how she could stay with the army, or how the finances, which were the bane of most impractical romances, would be worked through, but other officers’ wives had houses in Lisbon, so why not Louisa?

“I’m not convinced I want the roses and the embroidery.” Louisa seemed nervous and febrile suddenly, like an untrained horse edging skittishly towards the skirmish line. “I know that I should want those things, and I know I am most foolish in despising them, but I like Spain! I like the excitement here. There isn’t much excitement in England.”

“No.” Sharpe hardly dared move for fear he would scare away her acceptance.

“You think I am wrong to crave excitement?” Louisa did not wait for an answer, but instead asked another question. “Do you really think a British army will stay to fight in Portugal?”

“Of course!”

“I don’t think it will.” Louisa turned to stare at the youths who were stamping on the ashes of the burnt French flag. “Sir John Moore is dead,” she continued, “his army is gone, and we don’t even know if the Lisbon garrison still remains. And if it does, Lieutenant, how can such a small garrison hope to resist the armies of France?”

Sharpe stubbornly clung to his belief that the British army had not surrendered its hopes. “The last news we heard from Lisbon was that the garrison was in place. It can be reinforced! We won two battles in Portugal last year, why not more this year?”

Louisa shook her head. “I think we British have been trounced, Lieutenant, and I suspect we shall abandon Spain to its fate. It’s been a hundred years since a British army was successful in Europe, what makes us think we can be successful now?”

Sharpe at last sensed that Louisa’s ambitions and his own hopes were not, after all, in step. Her nervousness was not that of a girl shyly accepting a proposal, but of a girl anxious not to cause hurt by her rejection. He looked up at her. “Do you believe that, Miss Parker? Or is that Major Vivar’s opinion?”

Louisa paused, then spoke so softly that her voice scarcely carried to Sharpe over the din of the church bells. “Don Bias has asked me to stay in Spain, Lieutenant.”

“Oh.” Sharpe closed his eyes as though the sunlight in the plaza was hurting him. He did not know what to say. There was nothing so foolish, he thought, as a man rejected.

“I can take instruction in the faith,” Louisa said, “and I can become a part of this country. I don’t want to run away from Spain. I don’t want to go back to England and think of all the excitement that beckons here. And I cannot…“ She stopped in embarrassment.

She did not need to finish. She could not throw herself away on a common soldier, an ageing Lieutenant, a pauper in a tattered uniform whose only prospect was to decay in some country barracks. “Yes,” Sharpe said helplessly.

“I cannot ignore the moment,” she said dramatically.

“Your family…“ Sharpe began.

“Will hate it!” Louisa forced a laugh. “I am trying to persuade myself that is not the sole reason why I intend to accept Don Bias’s offer.”

Sharpe made himself look up at her. “You will marry?”

She looked very gravely at him. “Yes, Mr Sharpe, I shall marry Don Bias.” There was relief in her voice now that the truth was out. “It is a sudden decision, I know, but I must have the bravery to seize the moment.”

“Yes.” He could think of nothing else to say.

Louisa watched him in silence. There were tears in her eyes, but Sharpe did not see them. “I’m sorry,” she began.

“No.” Sharpe stood. “I had no expectations, none.”

“I am pleased to hear that,” Louisa said very formally. She stepped back as Sharpe walked to the platform’s edge, then frowned as he went down the cathedral steps. “Didn’t you have to see Don Bias?”

“No.” Sharpe did not care any longer. He sheathed his sword and walked away. He felt he had fought for nothing, there was nothing left worth fighting for, and his hopes were like the ashes of the burnt flag in the empty plaza. It was all for nothing.