Sharpe's Sword

CHAPTER 17

Sometimes the river was silver, a sheen of pitted silver, and sometimes it was dark green like velvet. At dusk it could look like molten gold, heavy and slow, pouring itself richly towards the Roman bridge and then on towards its junction with the River Douro and then, the far off sea. Sometimes it was mirror smooth, so the far bank was perfectly seen upside down on its surface, and at other times it was grey and broken,r but Sharpe never tired of sitting in the pillared shelter that a previous Marques had built right on the water’s edge. It was a private place, entered only through one door, and when the door was shut and bolted, the sounds of the house and garden faded.

He exercised for hours in the shelter, strengthening his sword arm, and he walked further each day so that by the time they had been in the house six nights he could walk the mile to the city and back and the only pain was a dull, tugging ache. He ate prodigiously, wolfing down the beef that, as a true Englishman, he knew to be the only source of strength. Captain Lossow, of the King’s German Legion, contrived to send Sharpe a wooden crate that proved to be full of stone-bottled beer. A letter was nailed to the crate. It was very short. “The French could not kill you, so drink yourself to death. Your Friend. Lossow.” Sharpe could not imagine how Lossow had contrived to find a whole crate of beer in Spain, but he knew how generous was the gift and he was touched by it.

On the fifth day he fired Harper’s rifle, letting the butt kick into his shoulder, forcing his tired arms to hold the barrel steady, and on his tenth shot he smashed one of the empty stone bottles into shards and felt content. He was strengthening. He had written to Hogan on the first day without cruel pain and the Town Major’s office forwarded the reply and Hogan was delighted at Sharpe’s news. The rest of the letter was grim. It told of fruitless marching and counter-marching across the plains, of the army’s discontent because the French seemed to be outmanoeuvring the British, beating them without a battle being fought, and Hogan hinted that soon the army might be retreating on Salamanca.

Hogan apologised in his letter because he had still not reached Teresa. The message, he knew, had travelled as far as Casatejada, but Sharpe’s wife was not there. She was further north harrying the troops of the French General Caffarelli and Hogan did not know how long it would be before she heard the news. He hoped it would be soon. Sharpe felt guilty, because he did not share Hogan’s hope. Once Teresa was in Salamanca then he would be forced to give up the company of La Marquesa. She visited most evenings, coming to the shelter beside the river, and Sharpe found himself looking forward to the visits, needing her company, and Harper kept his wonder to himself.

Major Hogan had spoken of Leroux in his letter. “You are not to concern yourself, Richard, nor to feel responsible for what happened.” That, thought Sharpe, was kind of Hogan because Sharpe was responsible. The failure nagged at him, depressed him, and he tortured himself by imagining what the Frenchman would do to La Marquesa to make her talk. She thought that Leroux was probably in the city, and Hogan agreed. “He will lie low, we think, until Salamanca is again in the hands of the French, (for that, I fear, is a possibility if we cannot bring Marmont to battle) and we must hope that his plans are frustrated. If we do fight Marmont, and win, then Leroux will have to leave Salamanca. Perhaps he has already, we do not know, but in the meantime we have put a guard on El Mirador and you are not to concern yourself with anything except a full recovery.”

The mention of a guard puzzled Sharpe. La Marquesa came alone, except for her coachman, postilion, and chaperone. The coachman and postilion would wait in the servants’ quarters, the chaperone be sent to read a book in the long, gloomy library of the house, while La Marquesa went alone with Sharpe to the pillared shelter beside the river. He showed her the letter and she laughed. “It would be a little obvious, Richard, wouldn’t it? If I rode out here with an armed man riding beside me? Stop worrying.”

The next evening Lord Spears came with her and they could not hide in the small shelter. They walked in the garden, chatting, and Sharpe had to pretend, though he guessed Spears knew otherwise, that he hardly knew La Marquesa, that she had plucked him from the hospital as an object of charity, and he said ‘Ma’am’ and ‘Milady’ and felt tongue-tied and clumsy, just as he had at their first meeting. At one moment in the evening, when the sun was a glorious crimson in the west, La Marquesa went to the low wall beside the river and threw bread scraps to the ducks. Sharpe was alone with Spears. The Rifleman remembered how the cavalryman had so desperately wanted to know the identity of El Mirador; how he had quizzed Sharpe in the Plaza Mayor on the morning after the first assault on the three fortresses. Sharpe grinned at Spears. “So you found out?”

“About you and Helena? You were hardly discreet, my dear Richard, coming here to her lair.”

Sharpe shook his head. “No. I meant about El Mirador.”

An extraordinary look of alarm crossed Spears’ face. It was followed by anger and a question that was almost hissed at Sharpe. “You know?”

Sharpe nodded. “Yes.”

“What the hell do you know?”

Sharpe tried to talk calmly, to quieten Spears’ anger. “I know that we’ve put a guard on El Mirador, and I presumed that you were doing that.“

“How did you know?”

“Hogan wrote to me.” It was not the whole truth. Hogan had written that El Mirador was guarded, but he had not named names. The rest had been Sharpe’s deduction and he had not expected this near violent reaction. He tried to calm Spears again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“No, no offence.” Spears pushed his hair back. “Christ! We’re told this is the biggest bloody secret since turning water into wine and then Hogan has to write to you! How many more people know?” Spears glanced towards La Marquesa, then back at Sharpe. “Yes I am, but for God’s sake don’t tell anyone.”

“I’m hardly likely to.”

“No, no I suppose not.”

Sharpe wished he had not mentioned it. He had traduced Hogan by suggesting that the Irish Major had written everything in his letter, but Spears’ anger had made Sharpe decide not to launch himself on a convoluted explanation.

La Marquesa came back and looked at Spears. “You’re looking positively flustered, Jack.”

Spears smiled at her. “A wasp, Helena, threatening my virtue.”

“Such a tiny thing to threaten.” She looked at Sharpe. “You’re happy here, Captain?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She made polite conversation for Spears’ benefit. “The house is rather pretty. My husband’s great-uncle built it. He was a leper, so he was forced to live outside the city. The house was built here and he could rot away happily on his own. They say he looked perfectly dreadful which is why there are such high walls.”

Spears grinned. “I hope you scrubbed the place before you put Sharpe here.”

She looked at him, smiled, then touched his cheek with her fan. “Such a charming man you are, Jack. Tell my coachman to get ready, will you?”

Spears half bowed. “You’ll be safe with Sharpe?”

„I’ll risk it, Jack. Now begone.“

She watched Spears walk towards the house and then drew Sharpe into the shade of some bushes. A stone bench was set in a small clearing and she ^at on it. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought him.”

“I think you should.”

She seemed unmoved by that. “Why?”

“He is your guard. It’s his job.”

She watched Sharpe for a few seconds. “How do you deduce that, Richard?”

He felt confused. First Spears had reacted almost violently, and now La Marquesa was quizzing him as if he was rendering the accounts for her estates. Then he thought that she must be frightened. If Spears had told Sharpe, then Spears was not to be trusted. He smiled at her. “First, he’s here with you. Second, I asked him. He didn’t offer the information, in fact he was quite angry that I knew.”

She nodded. “Good. What did he say?”

“That he was the guard for El Mirador.” He smiled. “La Miradora.”

She smiled at that. “There’s no such word, I’ve told you. Miradors are masculine in Spanish, they cannot be feminine. He can be trusted?”

“He got quite angry.”

She sighed, then twitched her fan at a fly. “He’s a fool, Richard. He’s no money, he’s gambled it all away, but he is amusing sometimes. Are you jealous?”

“No.”

“Liar.” She smiled at him. “I won’t let him come again. He insisted tonight.” She laughed at him. “You remind me tonight of the first time we met. You bristled with dignity. You were so ready to take offence.”

“And you to give it.”

“And something else, Richard.”

“Yes.” He sat beside her. She could see the new colour in his face.

She sat silent for a moment, her head cocked as if listening for a faraway sound, then she relaxed. “No guns today.”

“No.” No battle, which meant that the French had outmarched Wellington again, that the armies were getting nearer to the city, and that perhaps the time when Sharpe would have to leave Salamanca was getting closer. He looked at her. “Come with us.”

“Perhaps you won’t go.”

“Perhaps.” But his instinct told him otherwise.

She leaned against him, her eyes closed, and then Spears’ voice shouted from the house that her carriage waited. She looked up at Sharpe. Til come early tomorrow.“

“Please.”

She kissed him. “You exercised today?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He grinned.

She gave him a mock salute. “Don’t give up, Captain.”

“Never.”

He followed her to the house and watched as the carriage went through the high gates, Spears’ horse beside it, and then he turned back into the building. It was his last evening with Harper, till God knew when, for on the next day the Sergeant was going north, taking Isabella, going back to the South Essex. Harper was marching with a group of men recovered from their wounds and to mark their final evening the big Irishman and Isabella ate with Sharpe in the formal dining room instead of in the kitchen.

Sharpe spent the next days alone, exercising and walking, and the news from the north went from bad to worse. An officer, posting back to Ciudad Rodrigo, stopped at the house for water and he sat in the garden with Sharpe and spoke of the troops’ anger because they were not allowed to fight. Wellington seemed to be giving ground, to be always retreating from the French, and each new day brought reinforcements to Marmont’s army. The officer claimed that Wellington was being too cautious, that he was losing the campaign, and Sharpe did not understand it. The army had marched from Portugal with such high hopes and now those hopes were frittered away. The campaign was being lost without a battle and each day’s manoeuvring brought the armies nearer to the city, promised that soon Leroux would have the freedom to hunt again, and Sharpe wondered where the Frenchman was, what he was doing, and practised with the big sword in the slim hope that he might see Leroux again.

A month after Sharpe’s wounding the bad news was all confirmed. The day had brought clouds of dust to the east and by the evening Sharpe knew that the armies had reached the Tormes, east of the city, and he knew that Salamanca must change hands again. Another letter came from Hogan, hand delivered by an irritated cavalryman who had gone first to the Irish College, then to the Town Major, and finally had found Sharpe. The letter was brief, its message grim. “Tonight we cross the river and tomorrow we will march westwards. The French outmarch us each day so we must hurry. I fear it will be a race to the Portuguese frontier and I am not certain we can win. You must leave. Pack now! If you have no horse then try to find Headquarters. I will lend you my remount. Say your farewells and go, no later than dawn tomorrow.” The ‘no later’ was underlined. “Next year, perhaps, we can twist Marmont’s tail, but not, alas, this. In haste, Michael Hogan.”

Sharpe had little to pack. He stood in the garden and stared over the river and saw the goats that lived on the far hills filing down to the low ground. It was a sure sign that heavy rain was coming, yet the sun still shone, but he looked overhead and sure enough there were clouds rolling in from the north. The river was silver, shot through with green.

He put his few things into his pack. Two spare shirts, two spare stockings, a mess tin, the telescope, his razor and he filled the oxhide pack to the top with food that he took from the kitchen. He wrapped two loaves, a cheese, and a big ham. The cook gave him wine bottles that he thrust into the pack and poured a third into his spare canteen. He had no rifle to carry, just the big sword on its short slings.

He went back into the garden again and the sky was darker, almost black, and he knew he would wait for the morning before leaving. He told himself that he had become lazy, that he was going soft because he wanted to spare himself a night in the open, but he knew that he waited for morning in the hope that La Marquesa would come this night. Perhaps their last night. He thought of walking to the city, of going to the Palacio Casares, but then he heard the sound of hooves, the opening of the gate, and he knew she was coming. He waited.

There was something curiously beautiful about the landscape. The sun still shone, slanting steeply beneath the clouds, and it gave the land a luminance that the sky had lost. Above was darkness, grey and black, beneath was a glowing scene of green hills, brilliant white buildings, and the river like oiled silk. The air was heavy. The clouds pressed down as if the weight of water was sinking them. He expected the rain to begin at any second, yet it held off; it was conserving its force. The goats, as ever, had been right. There would be a vast rainstorm this night. He walked to the pillared shelter, built, La Marquesa had told him, in imitation of a small Greek shrine, and he stood on the topmost step that led to the door, pulled himself up on the lintel and he could see over the high wall to the city. Perhaps it would be his last glimpse of Salamanca in the evening. The sun silhouetted the fine stone, edged the great Cathedral with red gold, and then he pushed the door open and waited for La Marquesa. The river was almost black, swirling, waiting for the hammering of the rain.

In the morning he would go. He would walk away from this city and the dust of the roads would have been driven and churned into mud. He had failed this summer. He had promised to take a man, and the man had almost killed him, yet Sharpe did not see that as his greatest regret. He had betrayed his wife, and that saddened him, but that was not his regret. He would miss La Marquesa. He would miss the golden hair, the mouth, the eyes, the laughter and the beauty, the magic world of a woman whom hehad glimpsed, wanted, and never thought he could possess. Tonight was the last night. She would stay, in danger, and he would go back to the army. He could recover his full strength in Ciudad Rodrigo and all the time he would wonder about her, remember her, and fear that his enemy had destroyed her.

The first heavy, plangent drop of rain smashed onto the marble ledge that faced the river. It left a mark the size of a penny. He had dreamed once before of a final night in Salamanca, and that hope had ended in the death room. Now fate had given him the night again, though tinged with defeat. He knew he had become obsessed with her, and he had to abandon her, and that was too often the way of women and soldiers. Yet there was this one night.

He heard the footsteps on the grass and he did not turn round. He was suddenly superstitious. To turn round was to tempt fate, but he smiled as he heard the feet on the steps and then he heard the heavy click of a flint being pulled back on a mainspring.

“Good evening, Captain.” The voice was a man’s voice, and the man held a rifle, and the rifle was pointing straight at Sharpe’s stomach as the Rifleman wrenched himself about to face the door.

The first thunder racketed over the sky.

CHAPTER 18

The Reverend Doctor Patrick Curtis, known as Don Patricio Cortes, Rector of the Irish College and Professor of Astronomy and Natural History at the University of Salamanca, held the rifle as though it were a poisonous snake that might, at any second, turn and bite him. Sharpe remembered how Leroux had run to this man’s room, how Spears had described Curtis volunteering to fight against the English, and now the tall priest faced Sharpe. The frizzen that covered the pan of the rifle was up and the elderly Irishman clicked it down into place. He smiled. “You see? It still works. It’s your rifle, Captain.”

The thunder echoed in the sky. It sounded like heavy siege shot being rolled on giant floor boards. The rain was hissing steadily on the river’s surface. Sharpe was five paces from the man. He thought of jumping at him, hoping that the priest would hesitate before pulling the trigger, but he knew that the wound would slow him down. He looked at Curtis’ right hand and raised his voice over the sound of the rain. “You have to have a finger on the trigger to make it work.”

The bushy eyebrows went up in surprise. “It’s not loaded, Captain. I’m merely returning it to you. Here.” He held it out. Sharpe did not move and the Irish priest just shrugged and propped the rifle against the wall.

Sharpe jerked his head towards the weapon. “It’s bad for them to stay cocked. It weakens the spring.”

“You learn something every day.” Curtis picked up the rifle, pulled the trigger, and flinched as the spark cracked on the empty pan. He put the weapon down again. “You don’t seem overjoyed to see me.”

“Should I be?”

“You could be grateful to me. I went out of my way to return your gun. I had to get your address from the Town Major and then smuggle it out under my cassock. It would be bad for my reputation if I were seen going fully armed about the streets.” Curtis gave a deprecating smile.

“You could have returned it earlier.” Sharpe kept his voice cold. He wanted this interfering priest gone. He wanted La Marquesa.

“I wish I could have returned it earlier. It was stolen by one of the College’s stonemasons. His wife told me and I retrieved it for you.” He pointed at the weapon. “And here it is, safely restored.” He waited for Sharpe to speak, but the Rifleman was morose. Curtis sighed, walked to the edge of the shelter and looked at the rain. “Dear oh dear. What weather!” The surface of the river was corruscated by the rain. The sun, perversely, still showed in the west beneath the great cloud bank. Curtis pulled up his cassock and sat down. He gave Sharpe a friendly smile. “Do you mind if I sit it out? There was a time when I rode in all weathers, but I’m seventy-two this year, Mr. Sharpe, and the good Lord may not look kindly on me getting a chill.”

Sharpe was not feeling polite. He wanted to be alone until La Marquesa came, he wanted to think of her, to wallow in the misery of the anticipation of their parting. This last night was precious to him, something to hold against the bad times, and now this damned priest was settling down for a cosy chat. Sharpe kept his voice harsh. “I’m expecting company.”

Curtis ignored him. He waved an expansive hand round the small, pretty shelter. “I know this place well. I used to be the Marques’s confessor and he was always kind to me. He let me use this for some of my observations.” He shifted himself so he was looking at Sharpe. “I watched last year’s comet from in here. Remarkable. Did you see it?”

“No.”

“You missed something, you really did. The Marques was of the opinion that the comet affected the grape harvest, that it was responsible for the good vintage. I don’t understand that, but undoubtedly last year’s wine was excellent. Excellent.”

A great explosion of thunder saved Sharpe the necessity of replying. It echoed across the sky, grew and faded, and the rain seemed to seethe down with more force. Curtis tut-tutted. “I presume you’re waiting for La Marquesa.”

“You can presume what you like.”

“True.” Curtis nodded. “It concerns me, Mr. Sharpe. Her husband is a man I would call a friend. I’m a priest. You are, I know, a married man. I think I’m speaking to your conscience, Mr. Sharpe.”

Sharpe laughed. “You came out here, in this weather, to give me a bloody sermon?” He sat down on the curved bench that ran round the inner wall of the shelter. He was trapped here, while the rain lasted, but he was damned if he was going to let a priest start meddling with his soul. “Forget it, Father. It’s none of your business.”

“It’s God’s, my son.” Curtis spoke mildly. “La Marquesa doesn’t confess to me. She uses the Jesuits. They have such a complicated view of sin. I’m sure it must be very confusing. I have a very simple view of sin and I know that adultery is wrong.”

Sharpe spoke quietly, his head tilted back against the wall. “I don’t want to be offensive, Father, but you’re annoying me.”

“So?”

Sharpe brought his head forward. “So I remember Leroux going to your room, I remember hearing that you fought against the English, and I know that the French have spies in this town, and it would take me about two minutes to tip you into that river and I wonder how many days it would be before they found you.”

Curtis stared at him. “You mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The simple solution, yes? The soldier’s way.” Curtis was mocking him now, his voice hard. “Whenever human beings don’t know what to do they call in the soldiers. Force ends everything, yes? That’s what they did with Christ, Mr. Sharpe, they called in the soldiers. They didn’t know what to do with him so they called on men like you and I don’t suppose they thought twice about what they were doing, they just banged in the nails. You’d have done that, wouldn’t you?”

Sharpe said nothing. He yawned. He looked at the quick ripples where the rain struck the river. The sky was black, the western horizon dark gold, and he wondered if La Marquesa would wait for the storm to end before her coach made its way to the house by the river.

Curtis looked behind him at the rugs and the cushions that La Marquesa had put into the river shelter. “What are you frightened of, Sharpe?”

“Moths.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. I hate moths.”

“Hell?”

Sharpe sighed. “Father, I do not wish to be offensive, I don’t really want to push you into the bloody river, but I do not want to sit here and be lectured about my soul. Understand?”

A thunderclap smashed the sky overhead, so sudden that Curtis jumped, and its lightning seared over the river, the smell of ozone sharp in the air, and the sound of the thunder seemed to roll westwards towards the city, bounce back, and then there was just the rain crashing on the water. Curtis looked at the river. “There’ll be a battle tomorrow.” Sharpe said nothing. Curtis spoke louder. “There’ll be a battle tomorrow, and you will win.”

“Tomorrow we’re running away from the French.” Sharpe’s voice was bored.

Curtis stood up. His cassock was black against the gloom outside. He stood as close to the river as he could without letting the rain fall on him. He still spoke towards the water, his back turned on Sharpe. “You English have an ancient belief that your great victories come on the day after a night of thunder.” The priest’s hair was white against the black clouds. “Tomorrow you will have your battle, your soldier’s solution, and you will win.” Thunder growled half-heartedly and the priest, to Sharpe, looked like some ancient magician who had conjured this storm from the deep. When the thunder sound had died Curtis looked at Sharpe. “The dead will be legion.”

Sharpe wondered if he heard the jangling of traces beyond the house. He cocked his head, listened, but he could hear only the rain in the garden, the wind in the trees. He looked at Curtis who had sat down again. “And when does the world end?”

“That’s God’s business. Men make battles. Wouldn’t you like a battle tomorrow?” Sharpe said nothing. He leaned against the wall. Curtis spread his hands in resignation. “You didn’t want to talk about your soul, so instead I talk about a battle, and still you won’t talk! So. I’ll talk to you.” The elderly priest looked down as if collecting his thoughts, and then the bushy eyebrows came back up to Sharpe, “Let’s suppose that the thunder tells the truth. Let’s suppose there’s a battle tomorrow and the English win. What happens?” He held up a hand to stop Sharpe speaking. “This is what happens. The French will have to retreat, this part of Spain will be free, and Colonel Leroux will be stuck here.” Now he had Sharpe’s attention. The Rifleman had sat up. “Colonel Leroux,” Curtis went on, “is almost certainly inside the city. He’s waiting for the British to leave. Once they do leave, Mr. Sharpe, then he will reappear and no doubt the killing and the torturing will go on. Am I right?”

“Yes.” Curtis had said nothing that anyone else could not have worked out. “So?”

“So if Leroux has to be stopped, if the killings have to be stopped, then you must fight and win a battle tomorrow.”

Sharpe leaned back again. Curtis was merely a living-room strategist. “Wellington has been waiting for a battle for a month. It’s hardly likely that he’ll get one tomorrow.”

“Why has he waited?”

Sharpe paused while thunder sounded. He looked out at the river and saw that the rain was still heavy. It was almost dark. He wished the rain would stop, he wished Curtis would go. He forced himself to make conversation. “He’s waited because he wants Marmont to make a mistake. He wants to catch the French wrong-footed.”

“Exactly!” Curtis nodded vigorously as though Sharpe was a pupil who had grasped a subtle point. “Now, bear with me, Mr. Sharpe. Tomorrow, am I right, Wellington will be south of the river and then he will turn west, to Portugal? Yes?” Sharpe nodded. Curtis was leaning forward, talking urgently. “Suppose he didn’t turn west. Suppose that he decided to hide his army at the turning place and then suppose the French did not know that. What would happen?”

It was very simple. Tomorrow both armies would cross the river and turn to their right. It was like the bend of a horse-racing course and the British were on the inside. If they wanted to get ahead of Marmont, to win the race to the Portuguese frontier, then they had to come off the bend fast and keep marching. Yet if Curtis was right, and if Wellington hid on the bend, then the French would march past him, their army strung out in a line of march, and it would be easy to trip him up. It would no longer be a race. It would be like a shepherd stringing his flock out in front of a pack of hungry wolves. But it was just conjecture. Sharpe shrugged. “The French get beaten. There’s just one thing wrong.”

“What’s that?”

Sharpe thought of Hogan’s letter. “Tomorrow we’re marching west, as fast as we can.”

“No you’re not, Mr. Sharpe.” Curtis’ voice was certain. “Your General is hiding his army at a village called Arapiles. He doesn’t want Marmont to know that. He wants the French to think that he’s simply leaving a rearguard at Arapiles and that the rest of the army is marching as fast as it can.”

Sharpe smiled. “With the greatest respect, Father, I doubt if the French will be fooled. After all, if you’ve heard of this deception, then so must a lot of others.”

“No.” Curtis smiled. The rain still crashed down outside, hidden now by the darkness. “I spent the afternoon at Arapiles. There is one problem only.”

Sharpe was sitting forward again, the rain forgotten. “Which is?”

“How do we tell Marmont’s spies that Wellington is really marching tomorrow?”

Sharpe shook his head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The Rifleman stood up, walked to the door and peered into the garden. There was nothing to be seen except the trees lashing in the storm. He turned round, puzzled by the conversation. “What do you mean ”we“?”

“I mean our side, Captain.”

Sharpe walked back to his seat, picking up his rifle as he went, and he felt as if the ground beneath his feet was crumbling away. At first Curtis had provoked him, then mocked him, now he was making Sharpe feel very stupid. He let his fingers run over the lock of the rifle, liking its solidity, and looked at the priest. “Say what you have to say.”

Curtis thrust his hand into the breast of his cassock and brought out a piece of paper. It was folded into a narrow strip. “This came to me today which is why I went to see Wellington. It came to me, Captain, sewn into the spine of a volume of sermons. It came from Paris.”

Sharpe ran his finger against the rough edge of the rifle flint. He was unaware of the pain in his wound, he just listened to the elderly priest who had suddenly assumed great authority. “Leroux is a dangerous man, Captain, very dangerous, and we wanted to know more about him. I asked one of my correspondents, a friend, a man who works in a Ministry in Paris. This is the answer.” He unfolded the paper. “I won’t read it all, because you’ve heard much of it from Major Hogan. I’ll just read the last line. ”Leroux has a sister, as skilled in languages as himself, and I cannot discover her whereabouts. She was christened Helene’“

Sharpe shut his eyes, then shook his head. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No, no, no.” Thunder drowned his protest. He opened his eyes and the priest was dark in the night. “You’re El Mirador.”

“Yes.”

Sharpe hated to believe it. “No. No.”

Curtis was inexorable. “You may not like it, Captain, but the answer is still ”yes“.”

Sharpe still refused to believe. “Then where’s your guardian?”

“Lord Spears? He thinks I’m hearing confessions in the Cathedral, I often do on Tuesday night. He’s saying his farewells to La Marquesa, Sharpe, which is what is holding her up. Half the cavalry officers in town are paying her court at this moment.”

“No! Her parents were killed by the French! She lived in Zaragoza!”

“Sharpe!” Curtis shouted him down. “She met her husband in Paris just five years ago. He was part of a Spanish government embassy to Napoleon. She says her father was executed in the Terror, but who knows? So many died! Thousands! And no records were kept, Sharpe, no careful ledgers! It’s not difficult for Napoleon’s men to produce a pretty young girl and claim she’s the daughter of Don Antonio Huesca and his English wife. We’d never have known if we hadn’t asked about Leroux.”

“You still don’t know. There are a thousand thousand Helenes and Helenas.”

“Captain Sharpe, please think.”

She had claimed she was El Mirador, she was not. He thought of the telescope on the mirador, the telescope that pointed to the San Cayetano fortress where there had been the second telescope. It would have been so easy for her to signal to Leroux, to talk to him using a system like the army’s telegraph system. Sharpe still hated to believe it. He swept an arm round the shelter. “But all this! She’s been looking after me!”

“Yes.” Curtis stood up and moved about the floor. The rain had slackened, the thunder was further south. “I think, Sharpe, that she is more than a little in love with you. Lord Spears says so and, God knows, he would have sinned with her if she had let him. I think she is in love with you. She’s lonely, she’s far from home. As a priest I disapprove, as a man I’m envious, and as El Mirador I want to use that love.”

“How?”

“You must lie to her, Captain, tonight. You must tell her that Wellington is leaving a rearguard at Arapiles and that he will try to convince Marmont that the rearguard is his whole army. You will tell her that Wellington wants to trick Marmont into staying still, into facing the rearguard while the bulk of the British army escapes. You will tell her that, Captain, and she will believe you because you have never deceived her. And she will tell Marmont, and then tomorrow you can watch the fruit of your labours.”

Sharpe tried to laugh it off. “She tells Marmont? Just like that?”

“No one in Spain stops a messenger who carries the seal of the house of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.”

Sharpe shook his head. “No.” He wanted to see her, to hold her, to listen to her voice, laugh with her.

Curtis sat again, near Sharpe, and he talked as the rain pelted on the river, as the storm moved southwards, and he talked of the letters that came to him, hidden letters, coded letters. He talked of the men who sent them and the ruses they employed to get the messages through. Now, it seemed to Sharpe, Curtis was a magician. He conjured the picture of his correspondents who feared for their lives, who worked only for liberty, who had stretched a web across Napoleon’s empire that led to this elderly priest. “I don’t remember exactly when it started, perhaps four years ago, but I found the letters coming, and I wrote back, and then I began to hide the letters, to put them inside the bindings of books. Then, when the English army came, it seemed sensible to pass the material onwards, so I did, and now I find that I am the most important spy you have.” Curtis shrugged. “I did not mean to be. I’ve trained priests, Sharpe, for years. Many of them write to me, often in Latin, sometimes in Greek, and I have lost only one man. I fear Leroux.” Sharpe remembered La Marquesa telling him how she feared Leroux. She was his sister.

Sharpe looked at Curtis. “You think Leroux is in the city?”

“I think so. I don’t know, but it seems logical that he would hide there until the French came back. Or stay there so he could go on looking for me.” Curtis laughed to himself. “They arrested me once. They took all my books, all my papers, but they found nothing. I persuaded them that as an Irish priest I had little love for the English. I don’t have much. But I do love this country, Sharpe, and I fear France.”

The rain had almost stopped. The thunder was sounding to the south. Sharpe felt utterly alone.

Curtis looked at the Rifleman. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Because I think you’re fond of her?” Sharpe nodded, and Curtis sighed. “Michael Hogan said you would be. He didn’t know if you were her lover, so I probed you to see how you reacted. Lord Spears said you were, but that young man spreads scandal. I think perhaps I envy you.”

“Why?” Sharpe was low; feeling that his life had been dissected. He had been used.

“I’m a professional gelding, Sharpe, but that doesn’t mean I never notice the mares.”

“She’s very noticeable.”

Curtis smiled in the darkness. “Jellification.”

Sharpe put the rifle onto the bench beside him. “What happens if there is a battle tomorrow?”

“We’ll look for Leroux in the evening. I suppose we’ll have to search the Palacio Casares.”

“And her?”

Curtis smiled at him. “Nothing. She’s a member of the Spanish aristocracy, beyond reproach, beyond punishment.” The wind was chilled by the passing rain. Curtis looked into the night. “I must go. If she found me here, then I had the excuse of the rifle, but it’s better that she doesn’t find me.” He stood up. “Convince her tonight, Sharpe, and I absolve you. for this night, for this deed.”

Sharpe did not want absolution, he wanted Helena, or Helene if that was her name, and yet he feared to see her in case she noticed a difference in him. She had used him, and perhaps he should never have believed that an aristocrat could have a genuine purpose in friendship with a man such as he, yet he could not believe that it had all been a pretence. She had needed him at first because he was the man hunting her brother and he had told her everything, so she had told Leroux, but she had come back for him, had rescued him from the hospital, and tonight he wanted her, whatever the darkness might hatch.

Curtis went through the door into a garden that was heavy with rain. The trees dripped after the storm. “Good luck, Sharpe.”

“And you, sir.”

Curtis went. Sharpe felt foolish and alone. He wanted her, to lie to her and with her, and he was alone. He waited. To the south, over the village of Arapiles, the thunder bellowed.

CHAPTER 19

The ridge ran north and south. It had been close cropped by sheep, goats, and by the rabbits whose droppings lay like miniature spent musket balls in the thin, springy grass. The ridge smelt of wild thyme.

The day had dawned with a pale, rinsed sky. The only remnants of the great thunder storm were a few high, ragged clouds and a burden of water on the soil that promised to be burned away by noon. The ridge top was already drying when Sharpe arrived.

She had begged him to stay. She had begged him to protect her against Leroux, and he had joined in the lie by begging her to retreat with the army, to go to Ciudad Rodrigo, but she would not.

She had gone back to the city in the early morning, when it was still dark, and she had promised to send Sharpe a horse, a gift, and he had protested, but the horse came. A servant gave it to him and watched, silent, as the Rifleman rode towards the fords east of the city. She had given him a horse, a saddle, a bridle, and he could not guess how much the gift was worth. Soon she would discover that he had betrayed her, as she had him, and he would return the gift. Now he rode the horse down the great ridge towards the place where the hills ended and the plain began; the turning place. This was the bend where the armies went west and the ridge was like the marker on the inside of the curve. He had explained it all to her, in the darkness, and he had said that the French could march faster than the British and so Wellington planned to steal a march. He would leave a Division at Arapiles and send the rest of the army on a fast march, fifteen miles westward and, by staying with the rearguard himself, Wellington would persuade Marmont that the whole army was still in front of Salamanca. She had listened to him, asked questions, and Sharpe had warmed to the lie.

They had lain together in the shelter and when the time came for them to part she had touched the scar on his face. “I don’t want to go.”

“Then stay.”

“I must go.” She smiled sadly. “I wonder if I’ll ever see you again.”

“You’ll be surrounded by cavalry officers and I’ll be jealous.”

She kissed his cheek. “You’ll bristle with dignity, like the first time you came to the mirador.”

He kissed her back. “We’ll meet again.” The words echoed in his head as his horse, her horse, trotted on the ridge’s spine.

To the east of the ridge was a wide sweeping valley where the ripening wheat had been flattened by the rain and where a few dark trees showed the course of a stream. At the far side of the valley was an escarpment, its steep side facing Sharpe, and he knew that beyond the sheer red-rock bluffs at its crest the French army would be marching. The ridge and the escarpment ended in a great rolling plain and it was on that plain that Marmont would swing westward into the home straight; the race to block the Portuguese road.

At the southern end of the ridge the ground fell steeply away and, a short walk from the ridge’s end to the west, was a village. It was like a thousand other Spanish villages. The cottages were low, made of rough-dressed stone, and a man could not stand upright in most of the small houses. The houses grew into each other and formed a maze of tiny alleyways that surrounded the simple church, no bigger than a storehouse. The church had a small stone arch built on one end of its roof that acted as the belfry for the one counter-weighted bell. A stork’s nest clung to the top of the arch.

The richer peasants, and there were few of them, had painted their cottages white. Roses grew against the walls. Farmyards lay next to some cottages, empty now for the villagers feared the army that the night had brought behind the ridge. The villagers had driven their cattle away, to another village, and the hovels and alleyways had been left to God and the soldiers. The village, which had never been famous, was called Arapiles.

If a man stood at the very bottom of the slope, near to the village, and looked southwards he would have seen an apparently empty, almost level plain. It was covered with wheat and grass. The horizon was dark with trees and jumbled because, beyond the plain, the country was rough and hard. If the man turned to his right he could see the village of Arapiles and, just beyond the village and so close to it that it seemed as if its rocks grew out of the small cottages, was a hill; the Teso San Miguel. Between the southern end of the ridge and the Teso San Miguel was a small valley, just two hundred yards wide at its narrowest point, and if a man were to walk up the valley’s centre, keeping the ridge to his right and the Teso San Miguel to his left, then he could see straight ahead of him, four miles to the north, the big tower of Salamanca’s New Cathedral. If the small valley were wreathed in cannon smoke, silted with musket smoke, then a man might be grateful for that landmark.

In the east was the escarpment, then the wide valley, then the high ridge which smelt of thyme and lavender and was pretty with cabbage white butterflies, and then the small valley, and then the Teso San Miguel with Arapiles at its foot, and beyond the village and the small hill the plain stretched to the west. Yet none of those things were strange in this landscape. Sharpe stood his horse at the southern end of the ridge, and his soldier’s mind took in the escarpment, the valleys, and the village, but his wonder was at the plain that stretched away to the treeline to the south. The plain, which was pale with ripening wheat, was like a great sea that lapped against the escarpment, ridge and Teso San Miguel, and in the sea were two strange islands. Two hills, and to a soldier the two hills were the key to the plain.

The first hill was small, but high. And, being small and high, it was steep, too steep for the growing of crops and so it had been left for the sheep, the rabbits, the scorpions that lived in the rocks that littered the slopes, and the hawks that nested on its flat summit. The small hill lay just to the south of the ridge, so close that the valley between them was like a saddle. From the air the ridge and the small hill would look like an exclamation mark.

If a stork flew directly south from its nest on Salamanca’s New Cathedral, over the river, and on into the farmland, it would cross the small hill. And if it still flew south, into the great plain, it would cross the second hill just three quarters of a mile from the first. This hill was truly isolated in the wheat. It was bigger than the first, but lower, and it was like a flat-topped slab that lay, like a dash, beneath the exclamation mark. It was as steep as the first hill, just as flat-topped, and the hawks and ravens lived there undisturbed for no man had a good reason to climb the steep sides, no reason unless he had a gun. Then he would have every reason for no infantry could hope to dislodge a force that was on the flat hill-top that stood like a great gun platform in the sea of wheat. The two hills were called by the villagers ‘los Hermanitos’, which means ‘the little brothers’. Their proper name was taken from the village itself. They were the Arapiles; the Lesser Arapile and, out in the plain, the Greater Arapile.

When God made the world he made the big plain just for the cavalry. It was firm, or would be when the sun had dried off the night’s rain, and it was mostly level. The sabres could fall like scythes in the corn. The Arapiles, Greater and Lesser, God made for the gunners. From their summits, conveniently made flat so that the artillery could have a stable platform, the guns could dominate the plain. God had made nothing for the infantry, except a soil easily dug into graves, but the infantry were used to that.

All that Sharpe saw in a few seconds, because it was his trade to see ground and understand its use for killing men, and he knew, too, that if he had deceived La Marquesa then this would be the killing ground. Some men had already died here. In the wide valley between the British ridge and the French escarpment, Riflemen were fighting a desultory battle with French skirmishers. The Rifles had pushed the enemy back to the very crest of the escarpment, killing a handful, but no one was taking that battle very seriously. The second outbreak of fighting was serious. Portuguese troops had been sent to take the Greater Arapile, out in the plain, and the French infantry raced them to its summit, then poured musket fire down the precipitous slope and so the Portuguese had failed. The French had taken one of the two gun platforms that dominated the killing ground and already Sharpe could see French cannon on its summit. Two British guns sat silent on the Lesser Arapile. Their crews let their uniforms dry off from the night’s rain and they wondered what the day would bring. Probably, they thought, another desperate, scrambling march to get away from the French. They wanted to fight, but too many days of this campaign had ended in despondent retreat.

He rode close to the small farmhouse that was built at the southern end of the ridge crest. It was busy with staffofficers and Sharpe stopped the horse and slid uncomfortably to the ground. A voice made him turn round. “Richard! Richard!”

Hogan walked towards him with his arms outstretched, almost as if he wanted to embrace Sharpe. The Major stopped, shook his head. “I never thought to see you again.” He took Sharpe’s hand and pumped it up and down. “Back from the dead! You look better. How is the wound?”

“The doctors say a month, sir.”

Hogan beamed in delight. “I thought you were dead! And when we took you from that cellar.” He shook his head. „How do you feel?“

“Half strong.” Sharpe was embarrased by Hogan’s pleasure. “And you, sir?”

“I’m well. It is good to see you, it is.” He looked at the horse and his eyes widened in surprise. “You’ve come into money?”

“It’s a gift, sir.”

Hogan, who loved horses, peeled back the stallion’s lips to look at its teeth. He felt its legs, its stomach, and his voice was filled with admiration. “He’s a beauty. A gift?”

“From La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.”

“Oh.” Hogan reddened. “Ah.” He patted the stallion’s neck, glanced at Sharpe. “I’m sorry about that, Richard.”

“Why? I suppose I made a fool of myself.”

“I wish I could with her.” Hogan grinned. “Did you tell her?”

“Yes.”

“And she believed you?”

“Yes.”

Hogan smiled. “Good, good.” He could not resist his pleasure. He danced a few ludicrous jig steps on the grass and beamed at Sharpe. “Oh good! We must tell the Peer. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then have more! I’ll have my servant stable your horse.” He stopped and looked at Sharpe. “Was it hard?”

“Yes.”

Hogan shrugged. “I’m sorry. But if it works, Richard…‘

“I know.”

If it worked there would be a battle. The great drying plain south of the village, around the hills, would become a killing ground, spawned in a dark night of thunder, betrayal, and love. Sharpe went for more breakfast.

CHAPTER 20

The sun rose higher, its heat stronger, and it dried the killing ground and baked the rocks till they could not be touched. It hazed the horizon and made the air shimmer above the flat rock summits of the two Arapile hills. The gunners spat on the barrels of their cannon and watched the spittle hiss and boil away, and that was before the guns fired. Insects were busy in the grass and wheat, butterflies flickered above the poppies and cornflowers, and the last ragged clouds of the rainstorm died and disappeared. The land crouched beneath the heat and it was seemingly empty. From the ridge or the escarpment, from any of the hills, a man could not see more than one hundredth of the hundred thousand men who had gathered at the Arapiles that day. Wednesday, July 22nd, 1812.

Auguste Marmont was thirty-six years old. He was Duke of Ragusa, which meant little to him compared with being the youngest Marshal of France, and he was impatient. The Englishman, Wellington, had beaten every French General who had opposed him, but he had not beaten Marmont, nor would he. Auguste Marmont, son of an ironmaster, had outmanoeuvred the Englishman, outmarched him, and all that had to be done now was to outrun him to Portugal. Yet now, as the morning came towards its end, he was uncertain.

He rode his horse to the rear of the Greater Arapile, dismounted, and climbed the steep slope on foot. He used the wheel of a cannon for his telescope rest and he stared long and hard at the Lesser Arapile, at the village, and at the farm buildings at the southern end of the ridge. Other officers were using their glasses and one of them, a staff officer, pointed at the farm on the ridge. “There, sir.”

Marmont squinted as the sun flashed off the brass of his telescope, trained it, and there, clear in the lens’ circle, was a man in a long blue coat, grey trousers, and a plain dark hat. Marmont grunted. Wellington was on the ridge. “So what’s he doing?”

“Lunch, sir?” The staffofficers laughed.

Marmont frowned at the hint. “Going or staying?”

No one answered. Marmont panned the telescope to his left and saw two British guns on the Lesser Arapile and then more guns, perhaps four, on the hill behind the village. That was not many guns and he did not fear them. He straightened up from his glass and stared westward. “How’s the ground?”

‘Dry, sir.“

The plain stretched invitingly to the west. It was empty; a great golden road that might take him ahead of Wellington. Marmont itched to be moving, to be outmarching the British so he could block the road and win the victory that would tell France, Europe, the world, that Auguste Marmont had destroyed Britain’s army. He could taste that victory already. He would choose the battlefield, he would force the red-jacketed infantry to attack up some impossible slope that he would have lined with his beloved artillery, and he could already see the roundshot and canister flailing at the hopeless British lines. Yet now, on the Greater Arapile, he could feel doubt in his mind. He could see redcoats in the village, guns on the hills, but were they just a rearguard, or something more? “Is he going or staying?”

No one answered. A Marshal of France was a fine fellow, second only to the Emperor, and he wore the dark blue uniform edged with golden leaves, and his collar and shoulders were heavy with gilt decorations. A Marshal of France was given privileges, riches, and honour, but they had to be earned by answering the difficult questions. Was he going or staying?

Marmont stumped about the top of the Greater Arapile. He was thinking. His boots were tight and that annoyed him, any man who took one hundred and fifty pairs of boots to war was entitled to find a pair that fitted. He pulled his mind back to the British. Surely they were marching? Wellington had not offered battle in a month, so why should he on this day? And why should Wellington wait? Marmont went back to the gun and peered again through the telescope. He could see the unadorned figure of his enemy talking to a tall man in the green jacket of a Rifleman. The Rifles. Britain’s light troops. Fast marchers, even faster than the French. Suppose Wellington had left his Light Division at this village? Suppose that the rest of the army was already on the road, marching west, escaping the vengeance of the French Gribeauval guns? Marmont put himself in his enemy’s place. He would want to steal this day’s march. He would want the French to stay here, thinking that the British army threatened them, and how would he do that? He would leave his finest troops at the village, stay himself, because if the General is present, then the enemy assumes the army is present, and still Marmont knew he had to make a decision. Damn these boots!

To do something was better than doing nothing. He turned to his staff officers and ordered an attack on the village itself. It was, he knew, a holding move. It would discourage the British rearguard from venturing onto the plain and it would form a screen behind which he could march west; yet he knew he still had to make the decision, the big choice, and he was frightened of it. His servant was spreading a linen tablecloth on the grass, setting it with the silver cutlery that travelled everywhere with the Marshal and his one hundred and fifty pairs of boots, and Marmont decided the war would have to wait till after an early lunch. He rubbed his hands together. “Cold duck! Excellent, excellent!”

A horseman rode down the southern slope of the escarpment, past the troops that waited for the orders that would send them west or keep them waiting for a day. His horse splashed through a shallow ford, past an ancient footbridge that spanned the stream with flat stone slabs, and then he spurred towards the strange Arapile hill where he had been told Marmont waited. He carried a letter in his sabretache. He put the horse at the slope, urged it as high as it could climb, and then he dismounted, threw the reins to an infantryman, and scrambled up the last few steep feet. He ran to the Marshal, saluted, and handed over the folded, sealed paper.

Marmont smiled when he saw the wax seal. He knew that seal, knew it could be trusted, and he tore the paper open and called for Major Berthon. “Decode it. Quick!”

He looked again at the enemy held hills. If only he could see what was on the far side! And maybe the letter would tell him, or maybe, his thoughts became pessimistic, it was merely some piece of political news, or a report on Wellington’s health, and he fretted while Berthon worked at the numbers written on the paper. Marmont pretended to be calm. He offered the cavalryman who had brought the message on the last lap of its journey some wine. He complimented him on his uniform, and then, at last, Berthon brought him the paper. “The British march west today. A single Division remains to persuade you that they plan to fight for Salamanca. They are in a great hurry and fear to be overtaken.”

He had known it! The message merely confirmed his instinct, but he had known it! And then, as if in confirmation of his sudden certainty, he saw the tell-tale plume of dust that was rising in the western sky. They were marching! And he would overtake them! He tore La Marquesa’s note into shreds of paper, finer and finer, and he scattered them on the hilltop and he grinned at his officers. “We’ve got him, gentlemen! At last, we’ve got him!”

Five miles away the British Third Division, which had been left to screen Salamanca on the north bank of the Tormes, marched through the city and across the Roman bridge. It was an uncomfortable march. The citizens of Salamanca jeered them, accused them of running away, and the officers and sergeants kept a tight rein on their men. They marched beneath the small fortress on the bridge and turned right onto the Ciudad Rodrigo road. Out of sight of the city they turned off the road, to their left, and went further south till they had reached a village called Aldea Tejada. They were close now to the great wheat plain that could yet become a killing ground.

It took the Third Division more than two hours to march past a single point on the road. The men were tired, dispirited at a further retreat, and ashamed that they were deserting the city. Some of them, in their tiredness, dragged their feet. The dust began to move. The road had dried and the dust rose, was stirred, and the air over the Ciudad Rodrigo road was misted with fine, white powder. The army’s baggage, sent ahead in case the British did have to retreat, added to the mist that smeared the western horizon.

Marmont had the message, had seen the dust, and now his tight boots were forgotten. He would have his victory!

There was no such elation on the British ridge. The waiting had made Wellington’s officers irritable. Sharpe had slept for a while, for he had had little rest the previous night, and now he stared at the great plain and it was empty beneath the hawks that slid against the steel-blue sky. There was no sign that Marmont had extended his left, that he had fallen into the trap, and Sharpe knew it must be past midday. He had been woken by the cannons firing on the French attack on the village. He had watched for a while as the British roundshot ploughed through the ranks of the enemy Battalions, as the skirmishers met for their private war in the wheat stalks, but the French attack was stopped at the village’s outskirts. Marmont did have one success. His guns on the Greater Arapile drove the British guns off the summit of the Lesser Arapile. Sharpe watched the gunners, helped by infantry, manhandle the great weapons down the steep slope. Round one to France.

The French attack was not heavy. About five thousand men had come from behind the Greater Arapile and advanced on the village. Sharpe could hear the sharper sound of the Baker Rifles from the plain and he knew that the French skirmishers would be cursing the British Riflemen, that Voltigeurs would be dying in the wheat, and it all seemed so far away, like a child’s battle with toy soldiers seen from an upstairs window. The blue uniforms came forward, stopped, and the white smoke rills showed where the musket volleys were fired, puffs showed where shrapnel burst over the enemy, and the sound would come seconds after the smoke appeared.

The attack stopped just outside the village. This was not a true battle, not yet. If the French had been serious, if they had really wanted to capture the miserable cottages, they could have marched in their great columns, the Eagles bright above, and the massed drums would have driven them on and the artillery would have blasted a path ahead of them, and the noise would have swelled to a great crescendo in the afternoon heat while the French wave swept over the village, up the small valley, and then there would be a battle. Sharpe dozed off again.

Hogan woke him with an offer of lunch; two legs of cold chicken and diluted wine. Sharpe ate in the shadow of the farmhouse wall and he listened to the small sounds of the skirmishers bickering by the village. Still the great plain was empty to the west, the French were not taking the bait, and Hogan had gloomily admitted that in a couple of hours the Peer would probably order a full scale retreat. Another day gone.

Wellington was pacing up and down in front of the farm. He had been down to the village once, seen that the defenders were in no trouble, and now he fretted as he ate cold chicken and waited for Marmont to show his hand. He had noticed Sharpe, welcomed him back ‘to the living’, but the Peer was in no mood for small talk. He paced, he watched, and he worried.

“Sir! Sir!” A horseman was spurring up the ridge, coming from the west, and his horse was lathered with sweat. He jumped from the saddle, saluted, and offered a scrap of paper to the General. He was an aide-de-camp to General Leith and he did not wait for Wellington to read the paper. “Sir! They’re extending their left!”

“The devil they are! Give me a glass! Quickly!”

There was dead ground on the rolling plain, hollows in the wheat that hid themselves from the ridge, and the French were in the hollows. General Leith, off to the west, had seen the movement first, but now the French could be seen, climbing a track from the dead ground, and Sharpe, his own telescope extended, saw that the enemy was marching. The sheep were on the wolf-ground. Wellington rammed his glass shut, threw the chicken leg he had been eating over his shoulder, and his face was jubilant. “By God! That will do.!”

His horse was ready, he mounted, and he spurred off to the west, outrunning his staffofficers, and the dust spurted from behind his horse. Sharpe kept staring to the south-west, at the great plain that stretched so invitingly in front of the French, and he saw the troops come out of the dead ground and into plain view. It was a beautiful sight. Battalion after enemy Battalion had turned themselves into the order of march and they were going westward in the blistering heat. The attack on the village was supposed to do no more than pin down the British rearguard while the French left, safe in the knowledge that their foes had already marched, were now eagerly trying to outmarch them. The heat simmered the air above the plain, yet the French were full of heart, full of ambition, and they swung along the dirt tracks between the thistles and the wheat, and their weapons were slung and their hopes high. They marched further and further west, stringing the French army finer and finer, and none of them could know that their enemy was waiting, ready for battle, hidden to their north.

Hogan was replete with happiness. “We’ve got him! At last, Richard we’ve got him!”

CHAPTER 21

Battles rarely start quickly. They grow like grass fires. A piece of musket wadding, red hot, is spat onto grass, it smoulders, is fanned, and a hundred other such tiny sparks flicker on the dry ground. Some fade, others catch into flame and may be stamped out by an irritable skirmisher, but suddenly two will join and the wind catches the fire, blows it, swirls the smoke and then, quite suddenly, the little wadding sparks have become a raging flame that roasts the wounded and eats the dead. There was no battle yet at the Arapiles. There were sparks that could yet turn into an inferno, but the afternoon wore on and the officers watching from the farm at the southern end of the great ridge felt their elation turn to boredom. The French batteries still fired at the village over the heads of their troops who had settled in the grass and wheat, but the cannonade was slower, almost half-hearted, and the British used the lull to manhandle two guns back up the Lesser Arapile.

The afternoon smouldered. Three o’clock passed, then four, and to the men on the ridge, to the Battalions behind the ridge, the sound of battle was like a distant storm that had no effect on them. The French left wing, a quarter of the army, was marching westwards and it heard the guns behind and thought it was merely the bickering of the rearguard.

The British gunners of the Royal Horse Artillery who had dragged and forced two guns to the crest of the Lesser Arapile served their bucking monsters in the muck sweat of the heat. The guns crashed back on their trails, splintered rocks on the other Arapile hill, and after each shot the gunners had to lever the trails back into position, the monster had to be fed, and the smoke stung their eyes and fouled their breath. A gunner pushed a spherical case-shot into the barrel. It was Britain’s secret weapon, invented twenty-eight years before by Lieutenant Shrapnell, and still no other country had succeeded in copying the shell. This was a small case-shot because the gun, a six pounder, was the biggest that could be worked up the steep hill-slope. The hollow iron ball of Shrapnell’s invention had sixty musket balls packed round its central powder charge. The fuse had been cut so that the ball would explode over the Greater Arapile and the rammer thrust it down the gun’s throat, stood back, and the Sergeant who ruled this gun checked his crew, touched fire to fuse, and the gun wheels jarred off the rock, the trail slewed, the smoke slammed forward and the case shot thundered over the plain.

The battle was smouldering. It could ignite at any moment and Fate, who is the soldiers’ Goddess, was taking an interest in the sparks that flickered and threatened about the Arapiles. An artillery officer on the Lesser Arapile saw the case-shot leave the smoke, he saw it as the faintest trace of a grey pencil-like line in the air and then it exploded, just over the far edge of the Greater Arapile, and it was a black-grey air burst shot through with deep red and the ground beneath and ahead of the explosion was spattered by the lead balls and the shattered casing. Most went harmlessly to ground, some ricocheted off the hot stone, but two balls, with Fate’s malevolence, took Auguste Marmont in the side and France’s youngest Marshal was down. He was not killed, but he would not lead his army again this day, an army he had already pointed to destruction.

Wellington was far away. He had ridden to the Third Division and he had pointed them in a new direction, eastwards, and they had begun their march. The French marched west, thinking they were in a race to head off the British, but the British were coming towards them, and waiting behind them, and they could not know it. And the British, soured by the weeks of march and counter-march, of retreat, wanted to fight.

Between the Third Division and the Arapiles, hidden in a deep fold of ground, there were more British. Horsemen. The Heavy Cavalry, newly come from Britain and eager to try out their mounts and their long thirty-five inch straight blades, blades they said were too heavy for a swift parry, but wonderful for killing infantrymen.

The sun had bleached the plain pale. The killing ground was beginning to fill, as a stage might fill, but still it waited for the spark that would fan into a battle. It came in the west as the Third Division hit the head of the French column and to the men, up on the ridge by the farmhouse, it came as the distant muffled sound of muskets that were like a far-off thornbush fire. Smoke came from the west, and sound, and the dust that added to the smoke, and then the telescopes could make out a little of what was happening. The French column was being crumpled, thrown back, and the battle, that had started in the west was coming east, back to the Arapiles.

The French battalions recoiled. They were outnumbered, outgunned and outgeneralled. They had thought they were the vanguard of a march, and found they were the front line of a battle, and their defeat was about to become disaster.

Sharpe watched it. He hated the cavalry as all infantrymen hated cavalry and he was used to seeing the British cavalry ill-led and ineffective, but Fate was capricious to the French on that hot Spanish afternoon. The British Heavy Dragoons, some from the King’s own bodyguard, came on the French from the north. They wanted to fight. They came up from their dead ground in two ranks, trotting to keep their order, and the black horsetail plumes on their shining crested helmets rippled as they moved. Sharpe, watching through the glass, saw a shiver of light, a glitter, and the swords were up and the horsemen were booted knee to booted knee.

He did not hear the trumpet that put them into the canter, but he saw the line go faster, and still they kept their discipline, and he knew what they must be feeling. All men fear the moment of going into battle, but these men were on their big horses and the smell of the powder was in their nostrils and the trumpet was setting their blood on fire and the swords in their hands were hungry. The French were not ready. Infantry can form square and the textbooks say that no cavalry in the world can break a well-formed square, but the French had not known the danger and they were not in square. They were falling back from a massive infantry attack and they were firing and loading, cursing their General, when the earth shook.

A thousand horses, the best horses in the world, and a thousand swords came from the dust and the trumpets spurred the horsemen into the final charge, the moment when the horse is released to run like the devil and the line will stagger and bend, but it does not matter because the enemy is so close. And the horsemen, who had been given a target that every cavalryman dreamt of, opened their mouths in a triumphant scream and the great, heavy, edged blades came into the French with all the weight of man and horse. The fear had turned to anger, to craziness, and the British killed and killed, split the Battalions, rode down the French and the huge blades fell and the horses bit and reared, and the French, who could do no other, broke and ran.

The horses ran with them. The swords came from behind. The Heavy Dragoons drove paths of blood and dust through the fugitives and there was no difficulty in killing. The French had their backs to the horses so the swords could take them in the neck or over the skull and the horsemen revelled in it, snarled at their enemies, and the swords had so many targets. The musket sound had gone. It was replaced by the thunder of hooves, by screams, and by the cleaving sound of a butcher’s block.

Some French ran for help to the British infantry. The red ranks opened up, helped them in, because all infantry feared that moment when they were not in square and when the cavalry hit them at the full charge. The British soldiers shouted at the French, told them to run to the British lines, and the red-coated men watched in awe what the Heavy Dragoons were doing and knew that Fate could have decreed it otherwise and so they helped their enemy to escape the common enemy of all infantry. The spark had turned into a running flame.

Sharpe watched from the hill, privileged as a spectator, and he saw the French left wing chewed into fragments between the horses and the Third Division. He watched the Heavy Dragoons, superbly led, reform again and again, charge again and again, and they fought till the troopers were too weary to hold the heavy swords.

Eight French Battalions had been broken. An Eagle had been lost, five guns captured, and hundreds of prisoners, their faces blackened by the powder and their heads and arms sliced by the swords, had been taken. The French left had been split, shattered, and massacred. Now the horsemen were spent. Fate was not all on the British side. She had decreed the death of the Heavy Dragoons’ General who would never again be able to show British cavalry how to fight, but their job this day had been done. Their blades were thick with blood, they had ridden to glory, and they would remember the moments for ever when all a man had to do was lean right, cut down, and spur on.

Wellington was launching his attacks, one by one, from the west to the east. The Third Division had marched, then the cavalry, and now more men were launched onto the great plain. They came from both sides of the Teso San Miguel and they drove southwards, aiming at the hinge of the French line, its centre, dominated by the Greater Arapile. Sharpe watched. He saw infantry spread out from the small valley between the ridge and the Teso San Miguel and march past the village. Their colours had been stripped of the leather casings and they flew over the Battalions and Sharpe felt the pang of extraordinary pride that the sight of the colours gave every soldier.

The guns on the Greater Arapile shifted their aim, fired, and the first gaps were blown in the British lines, the Sergeants shouted at men to close up, close up, and they marched on, attacking in line, and Sharpe saw the yellow colour of the South Essex.

It was the first time ever that he had not fought with them and he felt a deep guilt as he watched his men, the skirmishers, run ahead into the wheat. He watched them fearful for them, and he knew that the wound still hurt, that the doctors had said that it could re-open and bleed, and that the next time it might fester and he would die.

Portuguese troops were marching for the Greater Arapile. The Fourth Division, survivors of the main breach at Bada-joz like Sharpe’s own South Essex, were marching to the right of the French hill. The shots kept coming. The French had arrayed guns on the plain beside the hill and the batteries bellowed at the British and Portuguese lines and the gaps appeared, were filled, and small knots of red or blue coated men were left behind on the trampled wheat. The French troops who had been attacking the village fell back in the face of the Fourth Division. It marched on, its colours high, and they threatened the French guns in the plain, the troops who retreated in front of them, and the troops who were coming back from the carnage in the west. Sharpe rested his telescope on Hogan’s shoulder and found his own men, paired in the wheat, and he saw Harper and kept him in the glass. The Sergeant was gesticulating to the Company, keeping them spread out, keeping them moving, and Sharpe felt a terrible guilt that he was not there. They would have to fight without him, and he could not bear the thought that some would die and that he might have saved them. He knew that there was little he could have done that Lieutenant Price and the Sergeants were not already doing, but that was small comfort.

So far, he knew, the battle was falling to the British. The French left had gone, and now the centre was being assailed and Sharpe could npt see how the centre could hold out against the attacks. Surely the Fourth Division would take the ground to the right of the Greater Arapile, the French guns would limber up and go, and it seemed to Sharpe, watching from the thyme-scented hilltop, that the French had somehow lost the will to fight back. The wheat and grass were skeined with smoke, the air thundered with the round-shot, canister and shrapnel, and the thousands and thousands of men marched into the plain and the red jackets, everywhere, beat back the French. It seemed that, this day, Wellington’s men were remorseless, unbeatable, and that only nightfall would save a few Frenchmen. The sun was already sinking towards evening, still bright, but the night was coming.

Marmont did not know what was happening. He had been taken away, treated by the surgeons, and his second in command was wounded, and a third man, General Clausel, took over the army. He could see what was happening and he had not lost the will to fight. He was still a young man and he had been a soldier for half his life and he did not intend to lose this battle. His left was gone, surprised and broken, and the centre was threatened, but he was playing his own game. He had been taught to fight by a master, Napoleon himself, and Clausel was content to let the centre fight while he collected his reserves, massed them, and drew them up behind the shelter of the Greater Arapile. He commanded a massive force, thousands of bayonets, and he held them back, waiting for the moment when he would release them like a huge counterpunch that would be aimed at the very centre of Wellington’s army. The battle was not yet lost, either side could win it.

The Portuguese climbed the steep slope of the Greater Arapile and Clausel watched them and timed his counterattack so that they would be the first to suffer. The signal went. The crest of the hill was lined with infantry, the muskets could not miss at a few paces, and the Portuguese, helpless in the face of the last precipitous feet, were tumbled backwards. No bravery could compensate for those last sheer feet. The Portuguese were blasted away by the French muskets, and even their defeat would not have mattered if the Fourth Division had been able to attack past the hill and surround it, for then the French on the Greater Arapile would have fled.

The Fourth Division did not get past the hill. From behind it, coming out to Sharpe’s right, the counter-attack rose from the small patch of dead ground next to the hill’s western end. The French columns came forward. Twelve thousand men, their Eagles aloft, their blades as thick as the wheat they trampled flat, and Sharpe heard, through the guns, the drums of the French beating the pas-de-charge. This was war as France had taught the world war. This was the mass attack, the irresistible force, driven by blurred drumsticks, the collection of men turned into a great human battering ram that would be marched against the enemy to smash through the enemy’s centre and make a hole through which the cavalry would pour and tear at the flanks.

The British line, two deep, could usually stop the column. Sharpe had seen it happen a dozen times and there was a cold mathematical logic to the process. A column was a great filled rectangle of men and only the men on its outer edges could use their muskets. Each man in the British line could fire and, even though the column had more men than the line, the line would always win the firefight. The frightening thing about the column was its size, and that scared unsteady troops, overawed them, but it was vulnerable to good troops. The column took the punishment, as Sharpe had seen other columns take punishment, and again he was amazed by the French soldiers who stayed so steady under horrific bombardment. Cannon balls struck the columns and successive ranks soaked up the balls’ passages, and shrapnel cracked over their heads, yet still the column moved. The drums never stopped.

This was the might of France, the pride of France, the tactic of the world’s first conscript army, and this column, Clausel’s counter-attack, ignored cold mathematical logic. It was not defeated by the line.

It pushed the Fourth Division back. The British had fired their clockwork volleys, the muskets flashing rhythmically through the smoke cloud, and Sharpe had seen the Light Companies go back to their Battalions, form line, and join in the musket fight. The Fourth Division was awed by the column. Perhaps the British had seen too much blood at Badajoz, had thought that any man who lived through that ditch had no right to die on a summer’s field, and they took a step back before reloading, and the step became two, and the columns still came on and the officers shouted, the Sergeants tried to dress the ranks, but the lines went backwards.

The drummers paused to let the thousands of voices chant their war cry. “Vive 1’Empereur!” And the drums started again, the old rhythm that Sharpe knew so well. Boom-boom, boom-boom, boomaboom, boomaboom, boom-boom. That rhythm had sounded from Egypt to Russia, had driven the columns to rule Europe, and between each phrase the drummers paused, the shout went up, and the column came on as the drummer boys, tight in the column’s centre, let the sticks fall again. With each shout the bayonets went up in the air and splintered the slanting sunlight into twelve thousand shards and to the left of the column, in the space between the two strange hills, the French cavalry hacked into the remnants of the Portuguese.

“No.” Sharpe spoke to himself. Hogan saw his right hand gripping and re-gripping the sword handle.

The Fourth Division were beaten. Some men climbed the lower slopes of the Lesser Arapile, some the slopes of the Teso San Miguel, while some took refuge in the village. The column carved through the defeated Battalions, ignoring them, marching steadily on towards the small valley that led to the very heart of the British line. Some of the Fourth Division, like the South Essex, still went backwards in front of the column, but they were beaten, and the column came to the small valley and the guns, on either side of the French, poured death into their ranks. The British roundshot lanced at the column, the shrapnel exploded above it, but still the Frenchmen closed up, marched on, stepped over their dead, and they left a trail of mangled, shot-torn bodies in their wake like a blood-slime beneath the smoke.

The noise was the noise of French victory. The drums, the cheers, the guns that could not stop them, and the noise filled the valley as the French Battalions went towards the distant landmark of the new Cathedral’s largest tower. The Eagles were bright above their heads.

Wellington’s messengers galloped at break-neck speed down the slope. They went to the Sixth Division, the new Division, the Division that had taken so long to take the fortresses, and it was the only Division between Clausel and victory. The Fourth Division had been beaten and now the Sixth had to win or else Clausel would have plucked victory from disaster.

Battles rarely start quickly. Sometimes it was difficult to know when a skirmish had become a battle, yet the height of a battle was easily determined. When the Eagles were flying and the drums were sounding, when the guns of both sides were in frenzy, then the battle was fully joined. It had yet to be won and Sharpe, who had watched the South Essex go backwards through the smoke-torn valley, could not bear that it might be won or lost without him. He shook off Hogan’s restraining arm, called for his horse, and went down into the smoke.

CHAPTER 22

From the ridge crest there had been a pattern to the battle, often disguised, always shrouded by smoke, but a recognisable pattern. The French left had been broken, the centre had yielded and then delivered a splintering counter-attack, while the French right, like the British left, was still in reserve. Wellington was hooking his attacks from the west, one by one, but Clausel had forced a new pattern and was even now daring to hope for victory. Once in the valley there was no pattern. It was familiar, for Sharpe had been on many battlefields, but for the men who loaded and fired, who looked desperately into the smoke banks for a sign of danger, the valley was a place without pattern or reason. These men could not know that the French left was broken, would not know that the blood was drying to a crust on the flanks of the Heavy Dragoon horses, they only knew that this valley was their fighting place; the ground where they must kill or be killed.

It was a confused place, but it had a simplicity that Sharpe needed. He had been fooled by La Marquesa and his foolishness had led to the escape of his enemy. He had been outwitted by the clever people of the secret war, but in this valley there was a simple job to do. He knew that La Marquesa would be hearing the guns like an echo of last night’s thunder. He knew she must know that he had turned the tables on her, lied through his love as she had lied through hers, and he wondered if she thought of him.

Politics, strategy, cleverness and guile had brought on this battle. Now it was up to the soldiers.

He could see to his right where the Sixth Division marched in small columns towards the great French column. It would be, perhaps, two minutes before the new Division formed its two deep line and the muskets could try again to stop the massive French attack, and he knew there was a job for the South Essex in that short time. The Battalion were at the valley’s end, the Grenadier Company hard against the Teso San Miguel and acting as a hinge. The other nine companies were swinging back in the face of the French and the Light Company, on the left of the line, were swinging fastest and loading slowest. Sharpe could see Major Leroy, commanding the left five Companies, swearing at them and gesturing. Sharpe understood why. If the small Battalion line swung fully back to the hillside then the column could pour out into the open ground of the British rear. Leroy wanted to hold the South Essex, force the column to edge to its right and thus straight onto the muskets of the Sixth Division. The South Essex was like a desperately frail breakwater that had to force a tidal wave away from empty ground and into a channel prepared for it.

The space behind the Battalion was littered with wounded, and the bandsmen were tugging them backwards, away from the heels of the retreating companies, and Sharpe rode there and beckoned to a drummer boy. The lad gaped up at him as he slid from the horse. “Sir?”

“Hold the horse! Understand? Find me when this is over. And don’t bloody lose it!”

He could hear the drums, the cheers of the French, and the crackle of muskets seemed drowned by the great noise. The attack was in the valley, coming forward, and the South Essex thought they were the last obstacle between the French and Salamanca. They fought, but they stepped back after each shot, and Major Leroy galloped his horse behind the thin line and his voice pierced at Sharpe’s ears. “Still, you bastards! Stand still!” The Major was nearing the Light Company, who stepped back the fastest, and he swore at them, cursed them, but while he checked the Light Company the others bent backwards and Leroy was seething in his anger. He saw Sharpe and there was no time for a greeting, for surprise. The American Major pointed at the Company. “Hold them, Sharpe!” He galloped right, to the other Companies, and Sharpe drew his sword.

Harper’s gift. It was the first time he had carried it in battle and the blade was bright in the valley’s gloom. Now he would find if it was lucky.

He stepped past the flank of the Company and the men were red-eyed, their faces smeared black with powder, and at first no one noticed him. They knew Leroy had gone and they were stepping backwards, their ramrods awkward in their hands, and suddenly a voice they knew, a voice they feared never to hear again, was shouting at them. “Still!” They checked in their surprise, began to grin, and then they saw the anger on Sharpe’s face. “Front rank! Kneel!” That would stop the bastards. “Sergeant Harper!”

“Sir!”

“Shoot the next bastard who takes a step back.”

“Yes, sir.”

They stared at him as if he was a ghost. They froze, bullets half rammed down barrels, and he bellowed at them to load, to hurry, and it was the first time he had shouted in a month and the strain tugged at the huge, tender bruise low on his stomach and Harper saw the twinge on his Captain’s face. The front rank was kneeling now, more frightened of Sharpe’s anger than the French, and the Riflemen were tap loading their guns, not bothering with the greased leather patch that gripped the grooves of the barrel. Sharpe knew it was a waste of a good weapon. “Rifles!” He pointed to the open end of the line, nearest the French. “Move! Load properly!”

The sound of the French was close, overwhelming, and he wanted to cringe from it, to turn and watch it, but he dared not. His men were loading again, their training overcoming their fear, and he watched as the ramrods came up and out of the barrels and were propped against mens’ bodies. The muskets were levelled towards the French. He glanced to his left and saw that number Five Company had already fired and he had to trust that no man in the Company disliked him enough to aim deliberately at him. “Fire!”

The balls hammered past him. “Load!” He watched them, daring them to move. The Riflemen were now in a small group at the open end of the line and he looked at them. “Kill their officers. Fire in your own time.” He looked back at the men. “We stay here. Aim at the corner of the column.” He suddenly grinned at them. “Nice to be back.” He turned round, his back to the Company, and now all he could do was stand, to be still, to deny this tiny patch of grassland to the French. He stood with his legs apart, the sword resting on the ground, and the great column was shouting and drumming its way towards them.

The small volleys of the South Essex battered the column’s nearest corner, threw men down so that the ranks behind edged right to avoid the bodies, and still the Company volleys came from the South Essex and the Frenchmen, who had been raked with shrapnel and canister, lanced with roundshot, angled their march so they would go past the single Battalion. The breakwater was holding. The French fired at them as they marched, but it was hard to load a musket and keep walking, harder still to aim in the rhythm of the march, and the column did not win by firepower. It was designed to win by sheer weight, by fear, by glory. The drums hypnotised the valley and drove the Frenchmen on and they passed just fifty yards in front of Sharpe. He watched the packed ranks, saw their mouths open rhythmically when the drums paused and the great shout went up, Vive 1’Empereur!“ Another volley pitted the corner, more men fell, and then an officer tried to drag a group of men out of the column to fire at the Light Company and Daniel Hagman put a bullet through the Frenchman’s throat. Sharpe watched the enemy infantry strip the dead officer as they marched past, successive ranks bending down to go through the officer’s pockets and pouches, and still the drums bore them on and the shout filled the valley, and Sharpe wondered where the Sixth Division were and what was happening on the rest of the field.

He watched the enemy soldiers, so close, and except that they liked moustaches, they looked little different to his own men. Sometimes a Frenchman would catch Sharpe’s eye and there was a curious moment of recognition as though the enemy face was that of an old half-remembered comrade. He saw the mouths open again. “Vive 1’Empereur!” One man caught Sharpe’s eye as he chanted the words, shrugged and Sharpe could not help grinning back. It was ridiculous.

“Fire!” Lieutenant Price’s voice shouted. The Company pulled their triggers and the column jerked spasmodically away from the balls. Sharpe was glad to see the man who had shrugged at him was still alive. He turned round. “Stop firing!”

There was no point in firing now. They might kill a few men on the column’s flanks, but their job had been to push the ponderous column a few yards to its right, and they had done it. They could save their loaded muskets for the column’s retreat, if it did retreat, and Sharpe nodded to Price. “The Company can retire, Lieutenant, as far as the hill.”

The rear of the column was marching past now and Sharpe saw the wounded limping behind, trying to catch up with their comrades, and some of them fell to add to the droppings of the great attack. He looked south, into the smoke, and he could see no cavalry yet, no guns, but they could come. He turned and walked towards his Company and the men grinned at him, called out to him, and he was ashamed because he had feared that one might aim for him. He nodded to them. “How are you?”

They pounded his back, shouted at him, and they all seemed to have inane grins on their faces as though they had won a great victory. He pushed through them, noticing how foul was their breath after his month away from troops, but it was good to be back. Lieutenant Price saluted. “Welcome back, sir.”

“It’s nice to be back. How is it?”

Price glanced at the closest men, then grinned at Sharpe. “Still the best Company in the Battalion, sir.”

“Without me?”

“They had me, sir.” They both laughed to cover a mutual pleasure. Price glanced at Sharpe’s stomach. “And you, sir?”

“The doctors say another month.”

“Harps said it was a miracle.”

Sharpe smiled. “He performed it, then.” He turned to watch the column go on. It was like some mindless machine that was grinding its way northwards, aiming at the city, and he knew that soon the valley would fill with French guns and cavalry unless the column could be stopped. One of his men shouted over the swell of drums and French cheers.

“Harps says you was living in a palace with Duchess!”

“Harps is a bloody liar!” Sharpe pushed through the knot of men and grinned at the big Sergeant. “How are you?”

“I’m doing all right. Yourself, sir?”

“It’s fine.” Sharpe looked north to where the valley was littered with bodies. “ Casualties?”

Harper shook his head. He sounded disgusted. “Two wounded. We went back too bloody fast.” He nodded at Sharpe’s shoulder. “You got the rifle back?”

“Yes. But I need ammunition.”

„I’ll fix that for you, sir.“ Harper turned as a new sound filled the valley. It was like a hundred children dragging sticks along park railings, the sound of the volleys that the Sixth Division were slamming into the column’s head. The Sixth swore that this day they would restore the reputation that had been sullied by the time they took to capture the three fortresses. They had approached the great column in small columns and then, in the enemy’s face, they swung into line and waited for the French to come into musket range.

The two-deep line curled round the head of the column. The men fought like automatons, biting the cartridges, loading, ramming, firing on command so that the volleys’ flames ran down the face of the line, again and again, and the bullets twitched at the fog of powder smoke and hammered the French. The British volleys made the column’s head into a pile of dead and wounded men. Frenchmen who had thought themselves safe in the fourth or fifth rank suddenly had to cock their muskets and fire desperately into the smoke bank. The column checked. The drums still sounded, but they no longer paused for the great shout. The drummer boys worked their sticks as if they could force the men over the barricade of the dead and onto the Sixth Division, but the men at the column’s front were flinching from the murderous fire. The men behind pressed forward, the column crushed and bulged, and the drummer boys faltered. Some officers, brave beyond duty, tried to take men forward, but it was hopeless. The bravest died, the others shrank back from the British fire, and the column heaved and jerked like some I giant snared animal.

There was a pause in the British volleys. It was filled with a new sound, a scraping and clicking as the hundreds of long bayonets were taken from belt-scabbards and fixed on the muskets. Then a cheer, a British cheer, and the long line came forward with their blades level and the great column, that had so nearly turned the battle, turned instead into a panicked crowd. They ran.

The French had tried to send galloper guns through the small valley to blast the Sixth Division away, but the guns had been broken by the British artillery. The French gunners who still lived put their wounded horses out of their agony with their short carbines. The valley floor was thick with the remains of battle. Bodies, guns, canteens, pouches, haver-sacks, spent cannon balls, dead horses, the wounded. Everywhere the wounded. The French column was a running mass of fugitives, fleeing the steady line of the Sixth Division that came forward into the small valley which was covered by a tenuous awning of smoke. The sun touched the smoke layer with red. The Fourth Division reformed itself, drew bayonets, and went on with the Sixth. The British went forward, the French back, and Clausel’s centre was gone. It had extracted a price for its defeat, a high price, but it was over. The Eagles/Went back, they left the Greater Arapile, the French were^running from the field. The French left had been destroyed, utterly destroyed, in just forty minutes. The centre had tried and failed, and now all that could be done was for the French right to form a barrier on the edge of the plain to stop the British pursuit.

The sun was sinking into a cushion of gold and scarlet, it touched the killing ground with crimson and it promised to give enough light for a little time more. Time enough for more blood to be spilt on an earth that already reeked with the stench of it.

CHAPTER 23

To the spectators on the great ridge the battle had appeared as something like a surging spring tide seething into a place that was usually above the high water mark. The tide had surged from the west, running swiftly over the plain, and then it had struck the obstacles of the Arapiles. The righting had churned. For a moment it had looked as if the French centre would flow irresistibly towards the city, through the small valley, but it had been held, the two Divisions in column broken, and the fighting had surged back, past the Arapiles, and now the fighting drained off to the south and east; away from the city.

The fighting was not done, yet already the scavengers were on the field. The wives and children of the British were stripping enemy corpses. When it was darker they would start on men of their own side, slitting the throats of the wounded who resisted them, but for the moment they plundered the French while the Bandsmen cared for the British wounded. The South Essex followed the Sixth Division for a small way, but then orders came for them to rest and the men dropped where they were.

The drummer boy, with the worried intensity of a child given a great responsibility, had clung to Sharpe’s horse and the Rifleman was grateful for the saddle. The wound throbbed, he was tired, and he forced himself to respond to the greetings of Leroy and Forrest, of the other officers, and they teased him for having a horse. He was tired, but still restless.

Musketry came from the south. The fighting still went on.

Sharpe sat on his horse, her horse, and he watched, without really seeing, as a small child tugged at the ring on a ringer of a naked corpse. The child’s mother was stripping another Frenchman nearby, slicing open the seams, and she snapped at the child to hurry because there were so many corpses and so many looters. The child, dressed only in a cut-down skirt of her mother’s, picked up a discarded French bayonet and began hacking at the ring finger. Prisoners were being herded, disarmed, and led to the rear.

The French had been beaten. Not just beaten, they had been utterly defeated. Half their army had been broken and the survivors were running for the road that led eastwards through the southern woods. Only a rearguard stopped the vengeful British and German cavalry from hacking into the fugitives, but the cavalry pursuit could wait. The French were stumbling, discipline lost, back through the cork woods and oak trees to the town of Alba de Tormes. The battle had been fought in a huge bend of the river and Alba was the only town with a bridge that could take the French east to safety. Many men would use the fords, but most, with all the baggage, the guns, the pay chest, and the wounded, would make for the mediaeval bridge at Alba de Tormes. And there stop. The Spanish had a garrison in the town, a garrison that commanded the bridge, and the French were trapped in the great river bend. The cavalry could ride in the morning and round up the fugitives. It was a great victory.

Sharpe stared at the smoke that lay above the battlefield in long pink ribbons. He should be feeling the elation of this day. They had waited all summer for a battle, wanted it, and no one had dared hope it would be this decisive. This year they had taken Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and now they had defeated the so-called Army of Portugal. Yet Sharpe was haunted by failure. He had protected La Marquesa, who was his enemy, and he had failed to capture Leroux. He had been beaten by the Frenchman. Leroux had put Sharpe in the death room, he had broken Sharpe’s sword, and Sharpe wanted revenge. There was a man alive who could boast of beating Sharpe, and that hurt; it throbbed like the wound, and Sharpe wanted the pain to go. He was restless. He wanted one more chance to face the Kligenthal, to possess it, and he touched the hilt of his new sword as if it were a talisman. It had yet to be blooded.

The South Essex were piling their arms, going to the village to steal doors and furniture that could be broken into fires, and Sharpe did not want to rest. There was unfinished business, and it frustrated him because he did not see how to finish it, and he wondered if the Palacio Casares was even now being searched for Leroux. He could go back to Salamanca now, but he could not face La Marquesa.

Major Forrest walked over to Sharpe’s horse and looked up. “You look like a statue, Sharpe.” He held up a captured bottle of brandy. “Join us?”

Sharpe looked to the southern edge of the battlefield where smoke was still rising from the fight. “Do you mind if I see the end of it, sir?”

“Help yourself.” Forrest grinned at him. “Take care, I don’t want to lose you again.”

„I’ll take care, sir.“ He let the horse find its own way between the grass fires and the wounded. The sun was almost gone, already a pale moon was high in the evening sky, and he could see where the French rearguard sparkled the dusk with their muskets. A dog whimpered beside the dead body of its master, barked as Sharpe’s horse came too close, and then ran back to its vigil.

Sharpe was depressed. He had always known that he could not possess La Marquesa, yet he missed her, and he was saddened because they had both deceived, there was so much left unsaid. It too was unfinished business. He rode slowly towards the gunfire.

The last French Division had arrayed itself on a small, steep ridge that blocked the tracks into the wood. The ridge allowed six and sometimes seven ranks of men to fire at the British, each rank firing over the heads of the ranks in front, and the twilight was stabbed by the French flames.

The Sixth Division, that had already defeated Clausel’s brave hopes, advanced against the obstacle. They had already won a great victory and now they thought that this rearguard, this impudent line, would melt before their musket fire in the dusk. The musket duel began. Line against line, and the cartridges were bitten open, the powder tipped, and the flints snapped forward, and the French line held. It fought gloriously, hopelessly, in the knowledge that if they collapsed and ran for the road that led eastwards through the woods, the cavalry would come after them. Darkness was their hope, their salvation, and the last French Division stood on their small steep ridge and they galled the Sixth Division, flayed it, and the Battalions shrunk man by man.

British artillery jangled its way over the plain, turned, and unlimbered on the Sixth Division’s flanks. The horses were led away, the guns’ trails unhooked from the limbers, and the red-bagged ammunition was piled beside the weapons. Canister. The gun-layers eyed the French line dispassionately; at this range they could not miss.

Nearly every ball from the splitting tin containers would count on the French ridge. The guns jumped backwards, smoke belching, and Sharpe saw the French fall sideways like wheat hit by buckshot. Still they fought. Fires had started in the grass, adding to the smoke, and their flames were lurid on the underside of the battle smoke that hung in skeins over the spitting muskets. The French held their place, the dead fell on the slope, the wounded struggled to keep firing. They must have been terrified, Sharpe thought as he watched them, because they knew that the battle was lost, that instead of marching to the gates of Portugal they would have a long harried retreat into Spain’s centre, yet still they fought and their discipline under the onslaught of musket and canister was awesome. They were buying time with their lives, time for their shattered companions to make their way eastwards towards the bridge at Alba de Tormes. And there, the British knew, a Spanish garrison waited to complete the destruction.

The fight could not last, whatever the bravery of the French, and the end was signalled as the Fifth Division, which had attacked the French left beside the cavalry earlier in the day, were marched onto the French rearguard’s flank. Two British Divisions fought a single French Division. More guns came in a slew of dust and chains and their canister split apart in the heart of the guns’ great flames. More fires caught in the grass, their flames throwing wavering black shadows as the twilight turned to night, and the end had to come. There was a pause in the musket fire of the Sixth, an order was repeated from Company to Company, and there was the great noise of the scraping bayonets coming from scabbards. The line flickered with reflections from the seventeen inch blades.

“Forward!” The last light was draining in the west over Portugal, there was a cheer from the British, the line surged forward towards the battered French, but the battle had one surprise left.

Sharpe heard the hooves behind him, and took no notice, and then the urgency of the sound, the speed of the single horse, made him turn. A lone cavalry officer, resplendent in blue and silver, his sabre drawn, was galloping at the French line. He was shouting like a maniac. “Wait! Wait!”

The Company nearest Sharpe heard the sound, checked, and a Sergeant forced a gap in the files. Officers shouted at the cavalryman, but he took no notice, just urged on his horse that was labouring with the effort, raked by spurs, and the turf flew in clods behind the hooves. “Wait! Wait!” The officer went for the gap and the French; on the ridge, were just shadows as they turned and ran for the safety of the dark woods.

The cavalryman went through the gap in the British infantry and he still screamed defiance at the French as they disappeared. He set his horse at the bank of the ridge, scrambled up, and his sabre flailed like a whip as he forced his horse after the enemy. Sharpe urged his own horse forward. The cavalryman was Lord Spears.

Spears had disappeared into the dark trees and Sharpe, pulling his clumsy sword free of the scabbard, went round the flank of the British line, in front of the silent, smoking guns, and the slope of the small ridge was horrid with French dead. Officers of the Sixth Division shouted at him, cursed him, because he was in their line of fire, but then his horse tipped over the crest and he was riding for the deep shadows. He could hear shouts ahead, then musket fire, and Sharpe ducked his head as La Marquesa’s horse went into the trees.

Spears was in a small clearing among the trees, fighting a crazy lone battle with French fugitives, and Sharpe came too late. The cavalryman had ridden the length of the clearing, chopping down with his sabre, and as Sharpe arrived he was turning the horse, hacking down, and a French Sergeant was on his other side, musket raised, and Sharpe saw the flash, saw Spears go rigid, and then the French fled into the trees. Spears’ mouth opened, silently, he seemed to shake, and then he slumped in the saddle. The sabre hung beside him, his arm limp, and he was gasping for breath.

Sharpe rode to his side. Spears’ right hand was clasped to the silver and blue of his uniform and, between the fingers, dark blood stained the cloth. He looked at Sharpe. “I was almost too late.”

“You’re a fool.”

“I know.” Spears looked past Sharpe to the three bodies he had made in the clearing. “It was good swordwork, Richard. You know that, don’t you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Call me Jack.” Spears was fighting to control his breath. He looked disbelievingly at the blood that stained his hand and jacket. He shook his head. “Oh, God.”

Sharpe could hear the infantry of the Sixth Division coming into the trees. “Come on, my lord. A doctor.”

“No.” Spears’ eyes glistened. He blinked rapidly and seemed ashamed. “Must be the musket smoke, Richard.”

“Yes.”

“Get me out of here.”

Sharpe sheathed his sword for the second time that day, and both times it had been unblooded, and he took the reins of Spears’ horse and led it out of the trees. He skirted the advancing infantry, not wanting to be fired on by a nervous man, and they came out onto the small ridge a hundred yards from where the last fighting of the day had happened.

“Stop here, Richard.” They were at the top of the bank. The fires and the darkness of the battlefield were spread out in front of them.

Sharpe still held the reins of Spears’ horse. “You need a doctor, my lord.”

“No.” Spears shook his head. “No, no, no. Help me down.”

Sharpe tethered both horses to a misshapen, stunted tree. Then he lifted Spears from the saddle, and laid him on the bank. He made a pillow from his own greatcoat. He could hear the Sixth Division hacking at branches with bill-hooks and bayonets, making their fires, and the battle, at last, was truly over. Sharpe opened Spears’ jacket, his shirt, and he had to tug the linen away from the wound. The bullet had driven some threads of the shirt into the chest and they stuck out, matted and obscene, like thick hairs. The hole seemed very small. Blood welled in it, glistened black in the moonlight, then spilt dark on Spears’ pale skin. Spears grimaced. “It hurts.”

“Why the hell did you do it?”

“I didn’t want to miss the battle.” Spears put his fingers on the blood, lifted them away and looked at his fingertips in horror.

“It was a crazy thing to do. The battle was over.” Sharpe cut with his pocket knife at Spears’ shirt, tearing away the clean linen to make a pad for the wound.

Spears gave a lopsided grin. “All heroes are crazy.” He tried to laugh and the laugh turned into a cough. He put his head back on the pillow. “I’m dying.” He said it very calmly.

Sharpe put the pad on the wound, pressed gently and Spears flinched because the bullet had broken a rib. Sharpe took his hand away. “You won’t die.”

Spears twisted his head and watched Sharpe’s face. His voice had some of his old, impish charm. “Actually, Richard, at the risk of sounding frightfully heroic and dramatic, I rather want to die.” The tears that were in his eyes belied his words. He sniffed and turned his head back so he stared upwards. “That’s awfully embarrassing, I know. Apologies.” Sharpe said nothing. He stared at the fires that threaded the battlefield, grass fires, and at the mysterious lumps that were broken bodies. A wind came off the field and brought the smell of victory; smoke, powder, blood, and burning flesh. Sharpe had known other men want to die, but never someone who was a lord, who was handsome, charming, and who now apologised again. “I did embarrass you. Forget I spoke.”

Sharpe sat beside him. “I’m not embarrassed. I don’t believe you.”

For a moment neither man spoke. Musket shots came flat over the battlefield; either looters being discouraged or men putting other men out of their misery. Spears turned his head again. “I never slept with La Marquesa.”

Sharpe was startled by the sudden, strange confession. He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Spears nodded slowly. “Say thank you.”

Sharpe, not understanding, humoured him. “Thank you.”

Spears looked up again. “I tried, Richard. God, I tried. That wasn’t very decent of me.” His voice was low, directed at the stars.

It seemed a strange guilt and Sharpe still did not understand why Spears had raised the subject. “I don’t think she took offence.”

“No she didn’t.” Spears paused. “Crazy Jack.”

Sharpe drew his feet in, as if to get up. “Let me fetch a doctor.”

“No. No doctor.” Spears put a hand on Sharpe’s arm. “No doctor, Richard. Can you keep a secret?”

Sharpe nodded. “Yes.”

Spears took his hand away. His breath was heavy in his throat. He seemed to be making up his mind whether to speak or not, but finally he said it. His voice was very bitter. “I’ve got the Black Lion. Dear God! The Black Lion.”

CHAPTER 24

“Oh, God.” Sharpe did not know what to say.

The two men were on the edge of the battlefield, the edge of an immense expanse of misery. Shadows crossed in front of the intermittent flames, dogs howled at the half moon that silvered the humped shapes of the wounded and dead. The guns that had shattered the French rearguard were left where they had fired, and their barrels cooled in the night wind. From far across the dark field came the sound of singing. A group of men round a fire were celebrating their survival. Sharpe looked at Spears. “How long have you known?”

Spears shrugged. “Two years.”

“Oh, God.” Sharpe felt the hopelessness of it. All men feared it, of course, it lurked in the shadows like the dark beast that the army nicknamed it. The Black Lion, the worst kind of pox, the pox that killed a man through senility, blindness, and gibbering madness. Sharpe had once paid his pennies to walk through Bedlam, the mad-house in London’s Moorfields, and he had seen the syphilitic patients in their small, foul cages. The patients could earn a small pittance, thrown farthings, by capering and displaying themselves. The Insane of Bedlam were one of the sights of London, more popular even than the public executions. Spears faced a long, filthy, agonising death. Sharpe looked at him. “Is that why you did this?”

The handsome face nodded. “Yes. You won’t tell?”

“No.”

Spears’ sabretache was lying on the bank and he reached for it, failed, and flapped a hand at it. “There are cigars in there. Would you?”

Sharpe opened the flap. A pistol lay on the top, which he put to one side, and beneath it were wrapped cigars and a tinder box. He blew the charred linen into a small flame, lit two cigars, and handed one to Spears. Sharpe rarely smoked, but tonight, in this sadness, he wanted a cigar. The smell reminded him of La Marquesa. The smoke drifted away on the breeze from the dead.

Spears made a small sound that could have been a laugh. “I didn’t even have to be here.”

“At the battle?”

“No.” He drew on the cigar, making the tip bright. “In the army.” He sighed, shifted himself. “My elder brother got the inheritance. He was such a tedious man, Richard, so utterly tedious. We had a mutual, brotherly hatred. Then two weeks before he was to get married, God answered my prayers. He fell off his bloody nag and broke his fat neck. And I got everything. Money, estate, houses, the lot.” His voice was low, almost hoarse. He seemed to want to talk. “I was already over here and I didn’t want to go back.” He turned towards Sharpe and grinned. “There’s too much joy in this war. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” Sharpe knew the joy of war. No other thing gave such excitement, or asked such a price. He stared at the grass fires which scorched the flesh of the wounded and dead. War had brought Sharpe promotion, a wife, La Marquesa, and it could yet kill him as it Was killing Spears. Capricious Fate.

Spears coughed and this time he wiped blood from his lips. “I gambled the whole lot away. Jesus God! Every bloody penny.”

“All?”

“Twice over. You don’t gamble, do you?”

“No.”

Spears grinned. “You’re very tedious for a hero.” He coughed and turned his head to spit blood on the grass. Most of it went onto Sharpe’s greatcoat. “It’s like standing on a clifftop and knowing you can fly. There’s nothing like it, nothing. Except war and women.”

The wind was cooler now, chilling the skin of Sharpe’s face. He pulled Spears’jacket over the wound. He wished he had known this man better; Spears had offered friendship and Sharpe had been wary of it. Now he felt very close to Spears as the blood seeped into the lungs.

Spears pulled on the cigar, coughed again, and the blood flecked his cheeks. He turned his face towards Sharpe. “Will you do something for me?”

“Of course.”

“Write to my sister. Hogan’s got her address. Tell her I died well. Tell her I died a hero.” He smiled in self-deprecation. “Do you promise?”

“I promise.” Sharpe looked upwards. The stars were the camp fires of a limitless heavenly army. Beneath them, the fires of the victorious British were dull. The muskets sounded far away as men dispatched the wounded.

Spears blew out a spume of smoke. “Her name’s Dorothy. Ugly name. I do like her. I want her to know I died well. It’s the least I can do now.”

„I’ll tell her.“

Spears seemed to ignore Sharpe’s words. “I’ve ruined her life, Richard. No money, no inheritance, no dowry. She’ll have to marry some bloody tradesman to get his money and in return he’ll get her body and some noble blood.” His voice was very bitter. “Poor Dorothy.” He took a deep breath that rasped in his throat. “I’m broke, I’m poxed, and I’ve disgraced the family. But if I die a hero, then at least she has that. A lot of people won’t cash my notes of hand. Bad behaviour when a fellow has just died for King and Country.” Spears laughed, and the blood was dark on his skin. “You can live as bad as you like, Richard, as long as you can, but if you die for your country you’ll be forgiven everything. Everything.” Spears turned away from Sharpe so he could stare into the immensity of the battlefield’s sadness. “I used to get dragged to bloody church every Sunday. We went into the private pew and all the peasants tugged their forelocks. Then the bloody preacher got up on his back trotters and warned us about gambling, drunkenness, and fornication. He gave me all my ambitions in life.” He coughed again, worse this time, and there was a pause as he forced air into his lungs. “I just want Dorothy to know I was a hero. They can put a marble plaque in the church. The last of the Spears, dead at Salamanca.”

„I’ll write.“ Sharpe took off his shako and pushed a hand through his hair. ”I’m sure the Peer will write.“

Spears turned his head to look at Sharpe again. “And tell Helena she broke my heart.”

Sharpe smiled. He did not know if he would ever see La Marquesa again, but he nodded. „I’ll tell her.“

Spears sighed, smiled ruefully, and stared at the battlefield.“ I could havedone my bit for England. Given her the pox.”

Sharpe grinned dutifully. He supposed that it must be near eleven o’clock. So many people in England would be going to bed and they would be quite ignorant that at tea-time the Third Division had smashed the French left, and that by the time the bone china was cleared away the French had lost a quarter of their army. In a few days, though, the bells would ring out in all the villages and parsons would give thanks to God as though the deity were some kind of superior General of Division. The squires would pay for hogsheads of beer and make speeches about the Tyrant Broken by Honest Englishmen. There would be a fresh crop of plaques in the churches, for those who could afford it, but on the whole England would not show much gratitude for the men who had done their bit this day. Then he remembered what Spears had said. “Given her the pox‘, ”done my bit for England’ and Sharpe was suddenly cold inside. Spears knew she was French and he had betrayed it because he could not resist the joke. Sharpe kept his voice calm. “How long have you known about her?”

Spears twisted to look at him. “You know?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus. The things people say in bed.” He wiped blood off his cheek.

Sharpe stared into the darkness. “How long have you known.”

Spears tossed his cigar down the slope. “A month.”

“Did you tell Hogan?”

There was a pause. Sharpe looked at Spears. The cavalryman was watching him, conscious suddenly that he had said too much. Slowly, Spears nodded. “Of course I did.” He smiled suddenly. “How many do you think died today?”

Sharpe did not reply. He knew Spears was lying. Hogan had only discovered that La Marquesa was once Helene Leroux yesterday. Curtis had received the letter in the morning, seen Hogan in the afternoon, and then come to Sharpe. Spears had never told Hogan, nor did Spears know that Curtis had seen Sharpe. “How did you find out?”

“It doesn’t matter, Richard.”

“It does.”

There was a flash of anger in Spears. “I’m a bloody Exploring Officer, remember? It’s my job to find things out.”

“And to tell Hogan. You didn’t.”

Spears breathed heavily. He watched Sharpe, then shook his head. His voice was weary. “Christ! It doesn’t matter now.”

Sharpe stood up, tall against the night sky, and he hated what he had to do, but it did matter now, whatever Spears thought. The sword hissed out of the scabbard, came free, and the steel was pale in the half-moon.

Spears frowned. “What the hell are you doing?”

Sharpe put the blade beneath Spears, pushed away a protesting arm, and then levered with the steel so that the cavalryman was half rolled over, facing away from Sharpe, and then the Rifleman put one foot on Spears’ waist and the sword blade against Spears’ back. There was anger in Sharpe’s voice, a cold, frightening anger. “Heroes don’t have scarred backs. You talk to me, my lord, or I’ll carve your back into bloody ribbons. I’ll tell your sister you died as a poxed coward, with your wounds behind.”

“I know nothing!”

Sharpe leaned on the blade, enough for its razor point to go through cloth. His voice was loud, strong. “You know, you bastard. You knew she was French, no one else did. You knew she was Leroux’s sister, didn’t you?” There was silence. He pushed the sword.

“Yes.” Spears choked, spat blood. “Stop it, for God’s sake, stop it.”

“Then talk.” There was silence again, except for the wind rustling the leaves of the trees behind them, the crackle of flames from the fires of the Sixth Division, and the desultory, far-away musket shots. Sharpe lowered his voice. “Your sister will be disgraced. She’ll have nothing. No money, no prospects, not even a dead hero as a brother. She’ll have to marry some ironmonger with dirty hands and a great belly and she’ll whore herself for his money. You want me to save your bloody honour, my lord? You talk.”

Spears talked. His words were punctuated by the coughing, the spitting of blood. He whined at times, tried to wriggle, but the sword was always close and, bit by horrid bit, Sharpe took the story from him. It depressed Sharpe, it saddened him. Spears pleaded for understanding, forgiveness even, but it was a tale of honour sold. Spears had told Sharpe, weeks before, that he had been nearly captured by Leroux. He had told of escaping through a window, tearing his arm to shreds, but the story was not true.

Lord Spears had never escaped from Leroux. He had been captured and had signed his parole. Leroux, he said, had talked to him through a long night, had drunk with him, and found the weakness. They had made a bargain. Information for money. Spears sold Colquhoun Grant, the army’s finest Exploring Officer, and Leroux gave him five hundred Napoleons and all had been gambled away. “I thought I might get the town house back, at least.”

“Go on.”

He had sold the list stolen from Hogan’s papers; the list of men paid by Britain for information. He had made ten gold coins a head, then lost it at the tables, and then, he said, Sharpe spoiled everything. He had chased Leroux into the fortresses and Spears thought his paymaster was gone, trapped, and then Helena had asked for him, talked with him, and the money had started coming again. And all the while Leroux had Spears’ parole, the piece of paper that proved Spears was a liar, that he had been a prisoner once, and the paper was held against Spears. If he double-crossed them, he said, then Leroux threatened to send the paper to Wellington. Leroux had made a slave of Spears, a well-paid slave, and who would ever suspect an English lord? The clerks, the grooms, the servants, the cooks, the lesser people of the Headquarters had all been under suspicion, but not Lord Spears, Crazy Jack, the man who livened parties and used his wit and charm to entrance the world, and all the time he was a spy.

There was more. Sharpe knew there would be more. He had taken his sword away, was sitting beside Spears, and the cavalryman confessed all, almost glad to spill it out, yet there was a reticence at the end of his story. The grass fires were dying. The moaning and the musket shots were lower and fewer from the battlefield, the wind had reached its night chill. Sharpe looked at the grey blade that stretched in front of him. “El Mirador?”

“He’s safe.”

“Where?”

Spears shrugged. “He’s in a monastery today. Bowing and scraping.”

“You didn’t sell him?”

Spears laughed, and the sound was harsh and bubbling because of the blood in his throat. He swallowed and grimaced. “I didn’t need to. Leroux had already found out.”

As Hogan had suspected. “Sweet God.” Sharpe stared at the field after battle. He had once feared for La Marquesa’s body beneath Leroux’s torture, now he flinched from the thought of the elderly priest racked on a blood soaked table. “But you said he’s safe?”

Curtis was safe, but he was an old man. Old men worry, Spears said, about dying before their work is done, and so Curtis had written the names and addresses of all his correspondents in a small, leather book. It was disguised as one of his notebooks of astronomical observations, filled with star charts and Latin names, but the codes could be broken.

Leroux had bided his time. He had planned to take Curtis when the British had gone, but then came news of a great British victory, and he had demanded that Spears fetch the priest. Spears’ voice was small now. “I couldn’t do that. So I fetched him the book instead.”

Leroux no longer needed El Mirador. With the book in his hands he could find all the correspondents who wrote faithfully from throughout Europe and he could take them one by one, kill them, and Britain would be blind. Sharpe shook his head in disbelief. “Why didn’t you just lie? Why did you have to give them the book? They didn’t know about it!”

“I thought they’d reward me.” Lord Spears was pathetic.

“Reward you! More blood money?”

“No.” Blood was dark on his cheek. “I wanted her body just once. Just once.” He made a choking sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “I didn’t get it. Leroux gave me back my parole instead. He returned me my honour.” The bitterness was rank in his voice.

The dark bulk of the Greater Arapile was topped by two small fires. It blocked Sharpe’s view of the lights of Salamanca. “Where’s Leroux now?”

“He’s riding for Paris.”

“Which way?”

“He’s going to Alba de Tormes.”

Sharpe looked at Spears, dying on the ground. “You didn’t tell him the Spanish were there?”

“He didn’t seem to care.”

Sharpe swore softly. He must go. He swore again, louder, because he liked Spears and he hated this sudden weakness, this collapse of a man, this sale of honour. “You sold all our agents for one parole?”

No. There had been money, too, Spears said, but the money was to be paid when Leroux reached Paris and it would go to Dorothy in England. A dowry, Spears’ last treacherous gift, and he pleaded with Sharpe, told Sharpe he could not understand; family was all, and Sharpe stood up. “I’m going.”

Spears lay on the ground, defeated, broken. “One last promise?”

“What?”

“If you find him she won’t get the money.”

“No.”

“Then keep my honour for her.” The voice was husky, close to breaking. “Tell her I was a hero.”

Sharpe lifted the sword, put the point in the scabbard, and drove it home. “I’ll tell her you died a hero. Your wounds in front.”

Spears rolled onto his side because it was easier to void the blood. “And one thing more.”

“I’m in a hurry.” Sharpe had to find Hogan. He would rouse Harper first, because the Sergeant would want to join this final hunt, this last chance against their enemy. Leroux had killed Windham, killed McDonald, he had come close to killing Sharpe, he had tortured Spanish priests, and he had taken the honour of Lord Spears. Sharpe had been given one more chance in the wreckage after the battle.

“I’m in a hurry, too.” Spears waved a feeble hand towards the battlefield. “I don’t want those bloody looters to kill me, Richard. Do that much for me.” He blinked. “It hurts, Richard, it hurts.”

Sharpe remembered Connelley. Die well, lad, die well. “You want me to kill you?”

“The last office of a friend?” It was a plea.

Sharpe picked up Spears’ pistol, cocked it, and crouched beside the supine cavalryman. “Are you sure?”

“It hurts. Tell her I died well.”

Sharpe had liked this man. He remembered the chicken being tossed like a howitzer shell at the ball, he remembered the great shout in the big Plaza on the morning after the first night on the mirador. This man had made Sharpe laugh, had shared wine with him, and now he was a miserable, broken man who had given his honour first to Leroux, and now to Sharpe. „I’ll tell her you died well. I’ll tell her you were a hero. I’ll make you into Sir Lancelot.“ Spears smiled. His eyes were on Sharpe. The Rifleman brought the pistol close to Spears’ neck. „I’ll tell her to build a new church big enough for the bloody plaque.” Spears smiled wider and the bullet went beneath his chin, up through the skull, and erupted at the top of his head. It was the kind of wound that a hero, on horseback, might fetch. He died instantly, smiling, and Sharpe’s greatcoat was spattered by the wound. He pulled it out, then threw it down, hating it. He turned and hurled the pistol into the trees, heard it crash through branches and twigs, and then there was silence. He looked down on Spears and cursed himself that he had ever become involved. Spears had talked ofthejoy that war could bring, theirresponsibility of unshackled youth, but there was little joy in this secret war.

He bent down and picked up his greatcoat, shook it out, and walked to the horses. He mounted his own, led Spears’ by the reins, and went down the bank. He paused at its foot, looked back, and the body was a dark shadow against the grass. He told himself that the tears in the corners of his eyes were just irritation from the smoke of battle; something any man could expect.

Revenge was at Alba de Tormes, his heels scraped the horse’s flanks, and the Cathedral clock, above the Palacio Casares, struck twelve.

CHAPTER 25

Alba de Tormes was a town on a hill to the east of the River Tormes. The hill was crowned with an ancient castle and covered with jumbled roofs that led down to the magnificent convent where the body of St. Teresa of Avila was revered by pilgrims. Beside the convent was the bridge.

The French needed the bridge to take their shattered army to the relative safety of the eastern bank and away from the pursuit that they knew would come with sabres in the dawn, but Wellington had denied them the bridge. Weeks before, when his army first came to Salamanca, he had put a Spanish garrison into the Castle and into the defence works at the bridge’s eastern end. The Spanish guns could rake the length of the bridge, rattle its stones with canister, and so the French were trapped in the great river bend.

From Alba de Tormes the river flowed nine miles north and then, in a great curve, it turned westwards and flowed for ten miles before its waters passed beneath the arches of Salamanca’s Roman bridge. Within that great bend the French fled eastward through the night. Hundreds crossed by the ford, but most went towards the town that had the only bridge they could use. The French guns, baggage, pay-chest, wounded, all went to Alba de Tormes and to the bridge that was guarded by the guns of the Spanish.

Except the Spanish were not there. They had fled three days before; fled without sight of an enemy. They knew the French were coming south, feared a British defeat, and so the Spanish garrison packed its baggage and marched south.

They deserted their post. The bridge was left open to the French and, all night, Marmont’s men went eastward. A great victory had been devalued. The stragglers of the defeated army were collected on the eastern bank, formed into ranks, and marched away. A rearguard, that had not fought the previous day, barred the eastward road a little beyond the town and its empty bridge.

The news reached Wellington’s Headquarters at the same time that Sharpe was persuading Hogan that Britain’s spy-ring had been betrayed. One notebook, just that, and a hundred doors would be beaten down from Madrid to Stettin, El Mirador’s correspondents would be dragged away and the French firing squads would be busy. Hogan shook his head. “But how do you know?”

“Lord Spears found it missing, sir.” Sharpe had already described a hero’s death for Jack Spears.

Hogan stared suspiciously. “Just that? Nothing else?”

“Isn’t it enough, sir? He died before he could say anything else.”

Hogan nodded slowly. “We must tell the Peer.” Then there was the explosion of anger, of cursing, because Wellington in the next room was hearing from a cavalry patrol that the French were crossing the bridge at Alba de Tormes. The defeated army were escaping, not trapped as he had thought, because the Spanish had fled. The door between the two rooms was flung open.

Sharpe had seen Wellington’s anger before. It was a cold anger, hidden by stillness, expressed in bitter politeness. Not this night. The Peer hit the table with his fist. “God damn them! God damn their bloody souls! Their bloody, rotten, filthy souls!” He looked at Hogan. “They deserted Alba de Tormes. Why didn’t we know?”

Hogan shrugged. “Because they didn’t see fit to tell us, sir.”

“Alava!” Wellington bellowed the name of the Spanish General who was the liaison officer with the British. The staff officers were very still in the face of the General’s anger. He hit the table again. “They think we fight for their bloody country because we love it? They deserve to bloody lose it!” He stalked from the room, slammed the door, and Hogan let out a long, slow breath.

“I don’t think the Peer’s in any mood for your news, Richard.”

“So what do we do, sir?”

Hogan turned to a staff officer. “What’s the nearest cavalry?”

“KGL Light, sir.”

Hogan turned for his hat. “Get them.” He looked at Sharpe. “Not you, Richard. You’re not well.”

Sharpe rode, despite Hogan, and Harper rode beside him on Spears’ horse. Captain Lossow, with his troop, were their escort, and the German officer greeted Sharpe with undisguised pleasure. The pleasure was dissipated by the long, chafing ride. Hogan was at home on a horse, he rode straight backed and long stirruped, while Harper had been bred in a valley of the Donegal Moors, had ridden the ponies bareback as a child, and he sat easily on Spears’ horse. Sharpe was in a nightmare: He ached in every bone, the wound throbbed, and three times he nearly fell as sleep tried to claim him. Now, at dawn, he sat in agony above the Tormes and stared at a grey landscape through which the river twisted, sinewy and silver, past the silent town with its castle, convent, and empty bridge. The French had gone.

And Leroux? Sharpe did not know. Perhaps the French Colonel had lied to Lord Spears. Perhaps Leroux planned to stay in Salamanca until the British moved on again, this time eastwards, but somehow Sharpe doubted it. Leroux wanted to take his treasure back to Paris, decode it, and then loose the cruel men against the names inside. Leroux had ridden, Sharpe was sure, but where? Alba de Tormes? Or had he gone directly east from Salamanca towards Madrid? Hogan doubted it. Leroux, Hogan was certain, would try to find the security of the French army, surround himself with muskets and sabres, and the great doubt in Hogan’s mind was simply whether Leroux had been given too great a start. They spurred down the hill towards the river that slid chill beneath the mockingly empty bridge.

Sharpe had been given his last chance. He had ridden for it through the night and in this dawn his hopes were at their lowest. He wanted to take his sword, his unblooded sword, against the Kligenthal. He wanted Leroux because Leroux had beaten him, and if a man thought that was a bad reason, then a man had no pride. Yet how could they discover a lone rider in this immense countryside, skeined with early mist? Sharpe wanted revenge for the deaths of the crucified Spaniards, for the deaths of Windham and McDonald, for the pistol shot on the upper cloister, and for Spears whom Sharpe had liked, whom Sharpe had killed, and whose honour he protected.

Hogan twisted in his saddle. He looked tired and irritable. “Do you think we’ve overtaken him?”

“I don’t know, sir.” In the dawn there was no certainty.

They clattered over the bridge, the sabres of Lossow’s Germans drawn in case the French had left a rearguard in the town, and then the iron of the horses’ hooves filled the narrow streets with echoing din. As they breasted the hill at the town’s head they saw the horizon, that till now had been grey touched with spreading pink, suddenly blaze with the top edge of the rising sun. It was scarlet gold, dazzling, and the western wall of the castle keep was coloured rose. The new day.

“Sir!” Harper was pointing, exultant. “Sir!”

In the sunrise, in the glory of the new day, the doubts were put to rest. A rider, alone, going eastwards, and in the telescope, through the flare of the light, Sharpe saw green and black overalls, boots, a red jacket, and an unmistakeable black fur hat. A Chasseur of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, alone, trotting eastwards. It had to be Leroux! The lone figure turned dark and blurred against the dawn, then dropped into a dip of the road. He had not looked back.

They followed, urging the horses into a fast trot for their strength had to be conserved even though the riders all wanted to sound the pursuit, go into a gallop, and bring their sabres against the fugitive. Twice more they saw the Chasseur, each time closer, and on the second glimpse Leroux turned round, saw his pursuers, and the chase was on. Lossow’s trumpeter let go with the challenge, the spurs went back, and Sharpe tried to tug the huge sword from its clumsy scabbard.

He was easily outstripped by the Germans, good riders all, and he cursed as his scabbard flapped and banged against his thigh. He lurched, unbalanced by the sudden gallop, then the blade came free, was shining in the dawn, and he saw Leroux once more. The Frenchman was less than half a mile ahead, his horse jaded, and Sharpe forgot his aching thighs, his sore seat, and clapped his heels to persuade more speed from his horse.

The Germans were still ahead of Sharpe. They rode through a small village where Leroux, mysteriously, had turned left. They followed his northward course, the horses plunging a shallow bank into a stream, scattering the water silver bright in the dawn, then onto fields of the far bank. There were hills ahead, shallow hills, and Sharpe wondered if Leroux was hoping for a hiding place. It seemed a forlorn hope.

Then Lossow was shouting, holding a hand up and signalling a stop, the troop pulled left, slowed, and Sharpe caught them up and his protest at abandoning the pursuit died in his throat. Their horses slowed to a walk, stopped. Leroux was safe.

Leroux would reach Paris, the notebook would be decoded, and the Frenchman would win. If they had been given another two miles they might have caught him, but not now.

Leroux was trotting his horse along the face of a shallow hill that sloped up from the wide valley. Lined on the slope was the French rearguard, a thousand cavalrymen, and Lossow spat in disgust. “We can’t do anything.” He sounded apologetic as if he thought Sharpe might truly expect him to charge a thousand enemy with just a hundred and fifty men. He shrugged at Sharpe. “I’m sorry, my friend.”

Sharpe was watching Leroux. “What’s he doing?”

The Frenchman was not joining his cavalry. He trotted along the face of the ranks and Sharpe could see that he raised his sword in salute to the French squadron commanders. Leroux was still going north, past the cavalry, and Sharpe urged his horse into a trot so he could follow the Frenchman. Sharpe led Lossow’s troop north, a half mile to the west of the French line and watched as Leroux went on riding, past his cavalry, and dropped into a valley at the end of the hill. Leroux was now in dead ground, invisible to them, and Sharpe pushed his tired horse into a canter.

There was a hill ahead of them that would overlook the dead ground, and they rode up its slope, the dew sparkling where the hooves hammered the turf, and then it was Sharpe’s turn to hold up his hand, to slow, and to curse. He had half hoped that Leroux was planning to ride on, to go eastwards again with his own cavalry behind him, but Leroux had reached true safety. In the small valley were French infantry. Three Battalions in square and, some way behind them, another two Battalions who guarded the rear of the hill where the French cavalry barred the road east.

Leroux was walking his horse towards the Battalions in square. Sharpe swore again, pushed his sword into its scabbard, and slumped in his saddle.

Hogan leaned on his pommel. “That’s that.”

One of the French squares opened its ranks, Leroux walked his horse inside, and for all Sharpe could have done Leroux might as well be in Paris already.

Patrick Harper flexed his borrowed sabre and shook his head. “I was just beginning to look forward to a cavalry charge.”

“Not today.” Hogan stretched his arms, yawned.

Further eastwards, perhaps three miles away, the road was filled with retreating troops. Going east to safety. Leroux had reached the rearguard, was safe, and would soon be escorted by this infantry to the rest of the French army. Lossow had just a hundred and fifty men. The French rearguard was at least two and a half thousand men, infantry and cavalry, and Sharpe’s last hope vanished like the mist that faded from the landscape.

It promised to be another beautiful day. The meadows of the gentle hills were lush with pasture, lavish with wild flowers, and the first warmth of the climbing sun was on Sharpe’s face. He hated to give up this pursuit, yet what else was there to do? They could ride back to Alba de Tormes, sit by the river’s edge, and drink harsh red wine till all the disappointment was drowned in the vintage of last year’s comet. There would be other days to fight, other enemies, and Curtis’ men were not the only brave people who sent messages to England. There was hope, and if the hope was not bright then there was always wine in Alba de Tormes.

It was pointless, of course, to deal in what might have been, yet Sharpe cursed because they had not left the battlefield an hour earlier. He imagined what he could do if he had just a single battery of nine-pounder guns. He could open those squares with shot after shot, and if he had just two good British Battalions he could finish them off! Hogan must have thought the same for he looked gloomily at the three French squares. “We’ll have no guns or infantry till this afternoon. At the earliest!”

“They’ll be long gone by then, sir.”

“Aye.”

This rearguard would stay just long enough to hold up the cavalry pursuit while the rest of Marmont’s army stole a march on the British. Without guns or infantry the squares could not be broken. Leroux was safe.

Lossow’s men rested their horses. They were north of the enemy now, on a hillside that gave them a wide view of the countryside. The enemy cavalry were on another hill a half mile to the south, the infantry closer, in the small hidden valley, while to Sharpe’s right stretched the wide valley where the two roads met from the river. The furthest road was the one Leroux had led them on, from Alba de Tormes, and where it passed through the small village it was met by the closest road that came from the fords across the river. The enemy dominated both roads, blocking the pursuit. Leroux was safe.

There was movement on the Alba de Tormes road. British Light Dragoons, three hundred sabres, trotted towards the French, saw them, and stopped. The horses bent their necks and cropped at the grass. They formed a single line, facing the French cavalry, and Sharpe imagined their officers squinting through the rising sun at the outnumbering enemy.

Then, from the north west, from the fords, came more cavalry. Four hundred and fifty men walked their horses into the valley behind the British, and the newcomers looked strange. They wore red jackets, like infantry jackets, and on their heads they wore old fashioned black bicorne hats held on by brass-plated straps. It was like seeing a regiment of infantry Colonels. Each man was armed with the long, straight sword like that at Sharpe’s side. They were Heavy Cavalry, the Heavy Dragoons of the King’s German Legion. They stopped behind the British Light Dragoons, slightly to their left, and Hogan looked from them to the enemy and shook his head. “They can’t do a thing.”

He was right. Cavalry cannot break a well-formed infantry square. It was a rule of war, proved time and again, that as long as the infantry were solidly ranked, their muskets tipped with bayonets, horses will not charge home. Sharpe had stood in squares and watched the cavalry charge, seen the sabres raised and the mouths open, and then the muskets had fired, the horses fell, and the surviving cavalry sheered away down the sides of the square, were blasted by the muskets. The squares could not be broken. Sharpe had seen them broken, but never when they were well formed. He had seen a Battalion attacked as they formed square, seen the enemy penetrate the unclosed gap and slaughter the ranks from the inside, but it would never have happened if the gap had been closed. He had seen a square break itself, when the men panicked and ran, but that was the fault of the infantry themselves. The South Essex had broken once, three years before at Valdelacasa, and then it had been because the survivors of another square had run to them, clawed at the tight ranks, and the French cavalry had ridden in with the fugitives. Yet these French squares, below him, would not break. Each was of four ranks, the front rank kneeling, and each was solid, calm, and ringed with bayonets. Leroux was safe.

Leroux was safe because he had taken shelter with the infantry. The enemy cavalry, facing west on the hillside, were vulnerable to a British pursuit. Their safety lay in their greater numbers, yet Wellington’s men had the greater morale. Sharpe heard the far-away sound of a trumpet, he looked right, and he saw the British Light Dragoons begin their charge. Three hundred men against a thousand, an uphill charge, and Captain Lossow whooped at them with glee.

The cavalry were charging.

CHAPTER 26

A cavalry charge begins slowly. The horses walk. The troopers have time to see the advertisement engraved on their sabres, “Warranted Never to Fail“, and feel the fear that the same guarantee does not apply to men.

Dust showed behind the walking horses. It drifted across the lush valley. The shadow of the Light Dragoons was long behind them, the sabres were upright, curved, slashing light from the rising sun. The valley was quiet, the enemy still.

A second trumpet. The horses went into the trot and still the men were knee to knee. The triangular banners, guidons, were high above the line of blue and silver uniforms. The faint drumming of hooves came to the hilltop where Sharpe watched. The French cavalry did not move.

Lossow wanted to take his men into the valley to join the charge, but Major Hogan shook his head. “We must watch Leroux. He might make a run for it.” He knew it was unlikely. Leroux was in the safest place; in a square’s centre.

Harsh voices came thin from the valley; orders. Sharpe looked right and saw four hundred and fifty heavy, clumsy swords drawn into the light. The German Heavy Dragoons were in six squadrons, three ahead, three behind, and each squadron was in two ranks. The ranks were forty yards apart so that, should they charge, the second line would have plenty of space to swerve or jump over the dead of the first. The Germans were behind and to the left of the British Light Dragoons who trotted towards the enemy cavalry on the hill.

A trumpet sounded, much closer, and Lossow’s horses moved impatiently. The German squadrons were advancing at the walk and Sharpe frowned. He looked to his left. “They can’t see them!”

“What?” Hogan looked at Sharpe.

“The infantry!” Sharpe pointed. “They can’t bloody see them!” It was true. The French squares were shadowed in the small valley, hidden by a spur of hillside, and the German Heavy Cavalry were unaware qf their presence. The Germans were riding towards ambush. Their line of charge against the French cavalry would take them past the small valley, inside musket range, and the first they would know of the presence of French infantry would be the flaming muskets.

Hogan swore. They were too far from the KGL squadrons to give them warning, they could only watch as the cavalrymen walked towards disaster.

The British Light Dragoons were ahead, trotting towards the hill, and their advance was well beyond the infantry’s range. Sharpe drew his sword. “We can’t just sit here!”

Hogan knew they could not warn the Heavy Cavalry, but to do nothing was worse than making a hopeless attempt. He shrugged. “Go.”

Lossow’s trumpeter blew the full charge, no time now for a decorous walk that would gradually speed up into the full gallop, and Lossow’s men threw themselves into a reckless downhill gallop. If their Heavy comrades just saw them, if they just wondered why they came so fast and waved so frantically, then they might avert disaster. But the six squadrons of the Heavy German Cavalry went on stolidly, the trumpet sounded and they went into the trot, and Sharpe knew they were too late.

Another trumpet sounded, far ahead, and the British Light Dragoons went into the canter. They would stay at the canter until the final few yards when they would be released into the full gallop. A cavalry charge works best when all the horses arrive at once; a solid, moving wall of men, horses and steel. The British reached the bottom of the hill, began to climb it, and still the French did not move.

The German Heavy Cavalry still trotted, still ignorant of the ambush that waited fifty yards ahead. Some of the faces beneath their strange black bicornes looked curiously at Lossow’s men. Sharpe was lurching in his saddle, praying that he would not fall, and the sword was in his right hand and he wished that there were no squares, that he could face Leroux in open battle, but Leroux was safe.

The British trumpet released the Light Dragoons. It threw them forward, shouting, in the final gallop that put the weight of a charging horse behind the sabre. They were outnumbered, they charged uphill, yet they urged their horses on. The French, at last, moved.

They ran. They ran without a fight. Perhaps no man wanted to die after the previous day’s carnage. There was little glory in defeating this cavalry pursuit, no man would win his Legion of Honour medal today, and so the French turned, spurred eastwards, and the British Dragoons chased them, swore at them to fight, but there was no fight in the French cavalry. They would run to fight another day.

The German Heavy Dragoons saw the French run, saw their chance of a fight fading, and so the trumpet put them into the canter. The notes of the call sounded close to Sharpe and then they were drowned by the sound he had been dreading, the sound of an infantry volley. The nearest faces of the squares disappeared in smoke, the leading German squadrons tumbled in dust, falling horses, and cartwheeling swords. Men died beneath their horses, crushed, men screamed. The ambush had worked.

There was no need to warn them now. The French squares had turned one squadron into a shambles, hurt two more, and the other Germans must know they were beaten. Suddenly they had found infantry, well formed infantry, and cavalry cannot break well-formed squares.

The black bicorne hats turned left, the cavalry saw the squares with horror, and the trumpets pealed above the defeated charge. Sharpe knew the squadrons were being called away, called off, that they would ride away from the squares. He looked at Harper and grinned ruefully. “No cavalry charge today, Patrick.”

The Irishman did not reply. He slammed his heels back, whooped with mad joy, and Sharpe jerked his head back to the Germans. They were pulling at their reins, but not to ride away. They were turning towards the squares, were charging them, and the trumpets were pushing them on. It was madness.

Sharpe pulled at his reins, kicked back, and let the horse ride with the others. The sword felt good in his hand. He saw the French infantry reloading, calm and professional, and he knew this charge was doomed.

The German squadrons were still at the canter. They wheeled left, they aligned their ranks, and the madness came on them. The trumpets threw them on.

Lossow, his men, Sharpe and Harper, came up behind the Heavy Squadrons as they began the final charge. Sharpe knew this was madness, knew this was doomed, but it was irresistible. The sword was long in his hand, his blood sang with the trumpet’s challenge, and they went on; galloping into the impossible charge.

CHAPTER 27

The German Heavy Dragoons were jealous. The day before the British Heavy Cavalry had charged to glory, had bloodied their swords to the hilts against French infantry that had not had time to form square. The Germans did not like the British having all the glory.

The Germans were also disciplined, the most disciplined of all Wellington’s cavalry. Not for them the British habit of charging once and then going berserk in a mad chase that left the horses blown and their riders vulnerable to the enemy’s reserves. The Germans were coolly efficient about war. But not now. Now they were suddenly enraged, enough to attempt the impossible. Four hundred and fifty men, less those who had already died, were charging fifteen hundred well formed infantry. The trumpet hurled them into the gallop.

They had no chance, Sharpe knew, but the madness was driving sense out of his head. Artillery could break a square, infantry could break a square, but cavalry could not. There was a mathematical logic that proved it. A man on horseback needed some four feet of width in which to charge. Facing him, in four ranks, were eight men. An infantryman only needed two feet, slightly less, and so the horseman was charging down a narrow corridor at the end of which waited eight bullets and eight bayonets. And even if the infantry were unloaded, if they only had their bayonets, then the charge would still fail. A horse would not charge home that solid wall of men and steel. It would go so far, then swerve, and Sharpe had stood in squares often enough to know how safe they were. This was an impossible charge.

There was terror and madness in the air. The Germans had turned into this charge in a sudden explosion of anger. Their long heavy swords were raised for the first stroke, the hooves slung up great clods of turf, and the French square nearest to the charge fired again. Eighty yards to go.

Screams came from ahead of Sharpe. He had a glimpse of a horse sliding on its belly, head up and yellow teeth bared to the sky. A man rolled over and over, blood whipping from his neck, his sword stuck straight up and quivering in the ground. The trumpet again, incoherent challenges, and everywhere the hammering of hooves that filled the valley.

A horse drummed the earth with its legs, dying on its side, blood frothing as it lashed its neck and screamed in pain. The second rank gathered itself, jumped, and the French had saved one rank’s muskets for the moment. Smoke pumped from the square, bullets lashed at the charge, and a man was hit at full jump. He came backwards from his horse, a halo of blood about his face, and the horse went on alone. A standard bearer was down, his horse dead, and he ran with the standard, holding it aloft, and another German leaned left from the saddle, took the staff at the full gallop, and again the banner was high and taking them on in the impossible charge.

The earth quivered with the heavy horses, with the hammer of their hooves. The ranks had loosened in this madness so the valley seemed filled with big men on big horses, the sunlight catching their swords, the brass-plated straps of the bicornes, and the gleaming hooves that drove them on. The hooves threw up earth that stung Sharpe’s face. The horses seemed to strain towards the enemy, their eyes wild, their teeth bared, and Sharpe let the madness flow up in him to conquer the terror. He rode past a dead horse, its rider crouching for safety behind the corpse, and Sharpe had never done this. He had never ridden with the cavalry in a charge and there was a splendour to it that he could not have dreamt. This was the moment when a man became a god, when the air was noise, when speed lent its strength to the sword, a glorious feeling in those minutes before a bullet turned the god into dead meat.

A cavalryman, wounded, was being dragged by his stirrup. He screamed.

At fifty yards another rank of the square brought up their muskets, looked into the storm of anger, and fired. A horse and rider tumbled, hooves high in the sunlight, falling, and the blood streaked impossibly far on the grass, then the next rank was past, manes flying, and still the French had one more loaded rank.

The square blossomed smoke. A bullet hammered past Sharpe, but he did not hear it. He could only hear the hooves. An officer ahead of Sharpe was hit. He saw the man shaking with the pain, imagined the scream that he could not hear in this valley of noise, and saw the long sword dangle useless by its wrist strap. The man’s horse was hit too, jerking its head in sudden pain, yet it charged on. A dying man on a dying horse leading the charge.

The trumpet hurled them at the enemy. One trumpeter was down, his legs broken, yet he played on, played the charge again and again, the notes that could drive a man into wild glory. These screams in the valley, horses and men, screams of pain drowned by the trumpets. The guidons were lowered like lances, it was the final moment, and crossfire took them from another square and one guidon went down, point first into the earth and the man who had held it seemed to fall so slowly, then suddenly he was rolling and screaming, streaking the grass with his blood, and still the charge was led by a dying man on a dying horse. The man died first. He fell forward onto the neck of his horse, yet the horse still obeyed its last command. It charged. It used up its blood, its great heart pumping to the dying limbs, and the horse fell to its knees. Still it tried to charge as it slid on the grass, slick with blood that pumped from its chest, and it slid with its dead burden and died itself. And as it died, and could not turn, it slid like a great missile of dead meat into the front face of the square. Man and horse, in death, smashing the ranks back, opening the gap, and the next rank of Germans saw it.

They saw daylight. They twitched the reins, they screamed, and the French tried desperately to remake the line. Too late. A horse was there, the first sword came sobbing down, and then the horse was hit by a musket ball, it fell, made more space, and two more horses were in the gap, the swords hissed, and the horses leaped the pile of dead and were within the square. The French were dead men.

Some ran, some surrendered, others fought. The Germans came at them with their long swords and the horses fought as they were trained to fight. The horses killed with their hooves, hammering at skulls, they bit so that a man could lose his face in one horrid second of bowel-loosening fear, and the dust rose with the screams as the last German squadrons tugged right and went for another square.

Survivors of the first clawed at the second square, they tore into its ranks and the horsemen came too. Harper was there, the sabre fast in his hand, and Spears’ horse was trained for this. It moved constantly so no infantryman could hamstring it, it lined up the targets for the sabre, and the Irishman was chanting his Gaelic war cries, the slaughter-madness on him, and the valley was filled with the horsemen, the swords, and the hopeless infantry.

The second square collapsed, broke apart, and the Germans grunted as they brought the heavy blades down in the killing blows. The trumpeter, his legs broken, still lashed them into a fury, though now the notes were of pure triumph. Sharpe’s horse, not trained for war, swerved from the chaos and he swore at it, tugged at the reins, and then a mounted French infantry officer came for him, sword held like a lance, and Sharpe lashed with his great sword, missed, and he cursed this horse that would not take him to the target. Leroux?

Where in God’s name was Leroux?

He could see Harper. The Irishman was in among the fugitives from the second square. One man came at the Sergeant with a bayonet and Harper kicked up with his foot, caught the bayonet, and then sliced down with the sabre. The man fell, and his shako was ludicrously stuck on Harper’s sabre. It stayed there through two more strokes, then shook itself offas the huge Sergeant killed a French officer.

Sharpe could see Hogan. The Major, his sword not even drawn, was circling among the infantry shouting at them to surrender. The muskets were being thrown down, the hands going up, but still Sharpe could not see Leroux.

The third square was retreating up the hillslope. Back there somewhere, Sharpe knew, were two more French Battalions. A new trumpet call rang out, reforming two squadrons, and then Sharpe saw Leroux. He was in the third square. He had been on foot, but now swung himself into his saddle, and Sharpe kicked with his heels and rode towards the unbroken square. Its men were nervous, panicked by the smell of blood and fear, and as Sharpe rode so did the trumpet throw the reformed squadrons against the square.

The first two squares were ended. Most had surrendered, many were dead, and the Germans, who had done a fine thing, wanted to do more. Individual riders spurred towards the unbroken square.

The square fired, not at the cavalry, but at survivors of the first squares who wanted to break into its ranks. The infantry were frantic with fear, stumbling as the square inched backwards, and the first Germans came, were blasted from the saddles, while one man rode down the face of the square, his face a mask of blood, and his long sword beat uselessly at the bayonets, rattled against muskets, and then a shot threw him onto the ground.

More Germans charged home, the swords fell, and there was no reason for the square to break, yet its men were terrified of the fate of their comrades. Some threw down their muskets, raised their hands, and Sharpe could see the mounted officers in the square’s interior tearing at their standard. This Battalion did not carry the Regiment’s Eagle, they carried a flag which they tore into strips to hide in their uniforms. The square was dying and Sharpe saw the surrender and still he charged, wanting to break through the ranks to get his enemy, Leroux.

Leroux had not yet given up. He had not expected this — what man could? He had ridden all night, looping far to the south to avoid British cavalry patrols, and at Alba de Tormes, in the dawn, he had pulled off the heavy cassock that had been his disguise. He had thought himself safe in the square. He had never seen a square broken, never, not even when he had charged with the Emperor himself. And now this!

Leroux could see the German horsemen all around the surrendering square, yet there were not many. Most had ridden on to the two French Battalions in the rear. It would still be possible for the Frenchman to break out, to ride north for a mile before turning east, and he rode to the north side of the square, shouted at the ranks to split, and then he saw Sharpe coming directly at him. That damned Rifleman! He had thought Sharpe dead, wished him dead, had treasured his memory of the screams on the upper cloister, and then his idiot sister had taken a fancy to the man, protected him, and the bastard was back. This time he would kill him. He drew the pistol, the deadly, rifled pistol, from its chest holster and levelled it over the ranks of the square. He could not miss. He pulled the trigger.

Sharpe hauled on the rein, leaned back, and La Marquesa’s horse reared up, hooves flailing, and the bullet took the horse in the throat. Sharpe kicked the stirrups free, pushed desperately away from the saddle, and then he was rolling on the grass as the horse fell at the French ranks. The men shrank back, pushed back, and Sharpe snarled at them, picked up his sword, and plunged into their ranks.

They could have killed him, any one of them, yet they wanted only to surrender. They let Sharpe through, their faces dull, and he snatched a musket from a man in the rear rank. The French soldiers watched the tall Rifleman, feared him, and not one lifted a finger against him.

Leroux was shouting at another face of the square, beating with the flat of his Kligenthal, and Sharpe propped his own sword against his leg, checked the unfamiliar pan of the musket, and levelled it. His rifle was on his back, still without ammunition, and this heavy, strange musket would have to suffice. He pulled the trigger.

Powder stung his face, the kick slammed his shoulder, the smoke blinded him. He tossed the musket down, picked up his sword, and Leroux was hit! He was clutching his left leg, blood showing, and the ball must have passed through the flesh of his thigh, through the saddle, and stung the horse. It reared up in sudden pain and Leroux had to snatch at its mane, he tried to control it, but it reared again and he was falling.

The square had surrendered. Some Germans already pushed their way into its centre and one of them took a strip of the tasselled gold cloth that had been the French standard and waved it high, shouting at his comrades. The French soldiers sat down, muskets beside them, resigned to their fate.

Leroux struck the ground, was winded, and the pain in his left leg made him wince. He had dropped the Kligenthal and he could not see because his big, round, fur hat had slipped over his eyes. He knelt up, pushed the hat back, and the Kligenthal was on the ground. A boot was across the blade. Leroux slowly looked up, past the black trousers, past the tattered green jacket, and he saw his own death in the eyes of the Rifleman.

Sharpe saw the fear in the pale eyes. He stepped back a pace, releasing the Kligenthal, and smiled at Leroux. “Get up, you bastard.”

CHAPTER 28

The two French Battalions at the rear were not shaken by the breaking of the squares. They fired coolly, their discipline tight, and the German horsemen were cut down by the volleys.

In the small valley the squares had been broken. Prisoners were being herded, many with the dreadful cuts on their heads and shoulders where the great blades had fallen. The horses heaved to get their breath. Cavalrymen stood still, disbelieving what they had done, and their swords were held low and blood dripped from the tips. They had done the impossible. Some men laughed in relief, an almost wild laughter, and the French prisoners, now passion was spent, offered the victors wine from their canteens.

Patrick Harper threaded his way into the third square and looked down on Sharpe and Leroux. The Frenchman still knelt, the Kligenthal was still on the ground. Harper looked at Sharpe. “What’s his trouble?”

“Won’t fight.” Sharpe’s sword was still clean.

Leroux stood up, wincing as the wound in his left leg hurt. “I surrender.”

Sharpe swore at him, then gestured at the sword. “Pick it up.”

“I surrender.” Leroux’s pale eyes looked right for help, but Harper blocked the view.

Sharpe tried to see a likeness between this man and La Marquesa, but he could not. What in her was beauty had become hard in her brother. “Pick up the sword.”

Leroux brushed grass from the fur trim of his red jacket. “I have surrendered.”

Sharpe swung the flat of his sword so it hit the fur hat, knocking it off. “Fight, you bastard.” Leroux shook his head. Sharpe would not take the surrender. “You surrendered before, remember? Not this time, Captain Delmas.”

Leroux smiled, gestured at the Kligenthal. “You have my sword.”

Sharpe crouched, his eyes still on Leroux, and picked up the Kligenthal in his left hand. It was beautiful, balanced to perfection, a weapon made by a master. He tossed it towards Leroux. “Fight.”

Leroux let the blade fall. “I am your prisoner.”

“Kill the bastard, sir.” Harper growled.

“I’m going to.” Sharpe levelled his sword, put it to Leroux’s breast, and pushed. The Frenchman went backwards. Sharpe stooped and picked the Kligenthal up once more. He held it out, handle towards the Frenchman, and went forward again and again. Leroux went backwards. The French soldiers watched.

Then Leroux could go no further. He was backed into a corner of the square and Sharpe brought his sword up so that the tip was at Leroux’s throat. The Rifleman smiled. “I’m going to kill you. I don’t give a damn whether you fight or not.” He pressed with the sword, Leroux’s head went back, and suddenly the pale eyes showed alarm. He really was to die and his arm came up, snatched at the Kligenthal, and Sharpe stepped backwards. “Now fight, you bastard.”

Leroux fought. He fought because he thought that if he won this fight, then he could surrender. He knew Sharpe would kill him, he had recognised that, so he must kill Sharpe. And if he succeeded in killing the Rifleman then there was always hope. He might escape again, make his way back to France, and it would always be possible to arrange for Curtis’ capture. He fought.

The Kligenthal felt good. He gave two short, hard strokes that loosened his wrist, and he felt the shock of the blades’ meeting, and then he settled into a rhythm, probing the Rifleman’s weakness, letting the Kligenthal tease the older blade to one side in preparation for the lunge. The point always beats the edge.

Sharpe went backwards, letting Leroux get out of the corner, and Harper rode alongside just as if he were the referee at a prize fight. Some of the French shouted for Leroux, but not many, and some of the Germans came to watch.

Sharpe watched Leroux’s pale eyes. The man was strong, and faster than Sharpe remembered. The blades rang like anvils. Sharpe was content to let his long, straight sword do the work for him, he let its weight soak up the attacks, and he planned this man’s death. La Marquesa, Leroux’s sister, had asked him once if he enjoyed killing, had even accused him of enjoying it, but that was not true. Some deaths a man can enjoy, the death of an enemy, and Sharpe was paid to have enemies. Yet he did not wish death on the French. There was more satisfaction in seeing a surrendered enemy, a defeated enemy, than in seeing a slaughtered enemy. A field after battle was a more horrid place than anything the people in England, who would soon celebrate Salamanca, could imagine. Death stopped war from being a game, it gave it glory and horror, and soldiers could not be squeamish about death. They might regret the moment when rage conquers fear, when it banishes all humanity and makes a man into a killer, but that rage could keep a man from being dead and so the regret was mixed with relief and a knowledge that, to be a good soldier, the rage would one day be back.

Sharpe parried a lunge, twisted his sword over the Kligenthal so the blades scraped, and lunged himself, checked, lunged again, and he saw the pain in the pale eyes as Leroux was forced onto his back foot. Sharpe would kill this man, and he would enjoy it. He would enjoy the retribution as a man could enjoy the death of a child-murderer at Tyburn, or the shooting of a deserter after battle. Death was sometimes public because people needed death, they needed retribution, and Tyburn’s gallows gave more pleasure than pain. That might be bad, but that is the way of people, and Sharpe’s sword tip hit the guard of the Kligenthal, forced it wide, came free when Leroux’s arm was off balance and Sharpe brought the blade scything back so it cut across Leroux’s chest, then back again so the sword cut Leroux’s forearm, and Sharpe knew this man would die.

He would die for McDonald, for Windham, for the unnamed Spaniards, for Spears, for El Mirador, for Sharpe himself, and Leroux knew it, for he became desperate. His right arm was wounded so he held his wrist with his left hand and scythed the Kligenthal in a glittering, air singing blow and Sharpe stepped back, let the blade pass, and then shouted his exultation as he lunged forward, picking his spot, and he did not hear Hogan shouting at him, nor Harper’s cry of acclamation, for the blade was going into Leroux’s body at the exact place where Leroux had wounded Sharpe, and Leroux let the Kligenthal go, his mouth opened, and his hands clutched at the blade that still pierced him, a flesh-hook that tortured him, that went through skin and muscle and tore the scream from him.

He fell. He was not dead yet. The pale eyes were wide. He drew up his legs as Sharpe had drawn up his legs, he gasped air into his lungs so that the scream could fight the pain that he had made Sharpe fight for two weeks, and then Sharpe twisted the sword free, held the point above Leroux’s throat, and finished him off.

He left his sword swaying above the lifeless Frenchman and stepped back. Leroux was dead.

Hogan had watched Sharpe’s anger. He rarely saw the Rifleman fight. He had been awed by Sharpe’s skill, troubled by the turbulence of his friend, and he saw the distaste that crossed Sharpe’s face when it was all done. Leroux was no longer the enemy, no longer Napoleon’s man, he was a pathetic, cringeing corpse. Hogan’s voice was mild. “Wouldn’t he surrender?”

“No, sir.” Sharpe shook his head. “He was a stubborn bastard.”

Sharpe picked up the Kligenthal, the sword he had wanted so much, and it could have been made for him. It settled in his right hand like a part of himself. It was a beautiful and deadly weapon.

He undipped Leroux’s snake-clasp belt, tugged the sword slings free from the body, and strapped the scabbard over his own scabbard. He pushed the Kligenthal home. His Kligenthal.

Leroux’s black sabretache was spotted with blood. Sharpe lifted the flap and there, on top, was a small leather notebook. He opened it, saw a star chart surrounded by a strange language, and tossed it to Hogan.“ That’s what we wanted, sir.”

Hogan looked at the dead in the valley, at the prisoners, and he looked at the survivors of the King’s German Legion Heavy Dragoons who walked their horses back from the unsuccessful attack on the remaining two French Battalions. The Germans had won a great victory, at great price, and the valley was stinking of blood. Hogan looked at the book, then at Sharpe. “Thank you, Richard.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

Sharpe was taking Leroux’s overalls. He had worn overalls exactly like these until the fight in the Irish College. Now he had killed another Chasseur Colonel. Leroux’s overalls still had the silver buttons down their legs and Sharpe grinned as he held them up. He wiped his sword clean on them.

Leroux’s sister had once asked Sharpe if he enjoyed killing and he had given her no answer. He could have replied that sometimes it was terrible, that often it was sad, that usually it happened without any emotion, but that sometimes, rarely, like this day, there were no regrets. He picked up his own sword, the crude sword that had won the fight, and smiled at Harper. “Breakfast?”