‘If you live to give it to him.’ Hogan said it grimly. He licked his fingers that were smeared with the hare’s gravy. ‘Officially you’re dead. You don’t exist. There is no Major Sharpe, and there never will be unless you vindicate yourself.’
Sharpe grinned at him. ‘Yes, Mr Hogan.’
Hogan frowned at Sharpe’s levity. Sweet William laughed and passed Sharpe a heavy skin of wine. The freshening wind stirred the fire, blowing smoke towards the Spanish boy who was too timid to move. Hogan shook his head. ‘You are a god-damned fool. Why did you have to accept his bloody challenge?’
Sharpe said nothing. He could not explain to these friends how his guilt at Teresa’s death had persuaded him to fight the Marques. He could not explain that there was sometimes a joy in taking great risks.
Hogan watched him, then reached into a pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. ‘This is yours.’
The paper crackled as Sharpe unfolded it. He smiled. It was the letter from La Marquesa that sympathised with him after Teresa’s death, the letter he had wanted to produce at the Court-Martial. ‘You hid it?’
‘I had to, didn’t I?’ Hogan sounded defensive. ‘Christ! We had to patch up the bloody alliance. If you’d been found not guilty then the Spanish would never have trusted us again.’
‘But I wasn’t guilty.’
‘I know that.’ Hogan said it testily. ‘Of course you’re not guilty. Wellington knows you’re not guilty, he knows well enough that if you were going to murder someone you’d do it properly and not be caught. If he’d thought you were guilty he’d have put the rope round your neck himself!’
Frederickson laughed softly. Sharpe put the letter on the flames and the sudden gush of light lit his sun-darkened face.
Hogan watched the letter shrivel. ‘So why did she write that pack of lies to her husband?’
Sharpe shrugged. He had wondered about that question for a fortnight. ‘Perhaps she wanted him dead? She’s bound to inherit a god-damned fortune, and I seem to remember she has expensive tastes.’
‘Except in men,’ Hogan said sourly. ‘But if she just wanted him dead, why did she involve you? She had someone else ready to oblige her, it seems.’ He was distractedly breaking a piece of bread into small crumbs. ‘She must have known she was landing you into God’s own trouble. I thought she cared for you?’
Sharpe said nothing. He did not believe that Helene was so careless of him, so unfeeling. He did not understand her, indeed he thought he would never understand the ways of people who lived in the great houses and took privilege as their birthright, but he did not believe that La Marquesa wished him ill.
‘Well?’
Sharpe looked at the Irishman. ‘I don’t think she’d want me dead.’
‘You killed her brother.’
Sharpe shrugged. ‘Helene wasn’t fond of that bastard.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Who in hell knows?’ Sharpe laughed. ‘She never seemed fond of him. He was an arrogant bastard.’
‘While you, of course,’ Hogan said sourly, ‘are the soul of humility. So who’d want a saint like you dead?’
Sharpe smiled and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps,’ Sweet William spoke softly, ‘the French just wanted to upset the Spanish and the British, and along with it get a hero hanged?’ He smiled. ‘The Paris newspapers would make an hurrah about it all. Perhaps they forged the letter from the Marquesa?’
Hogan made a gesture of frustration. ‘I don’t know. I do know that Helene has come back to Spain. God knows why.’ He saw Sharpe’s sudden interest and he knew that his friend was still hooked by the golden woman.
The Spanish boy, who had not spoken since they came into the convent, reached nervously for a wineskin. Frederickson pushed one towards him.
Hogan shivered suddenly. The wind was stronger, sounding on the broken stones and whirling the sparks of the fire up into the darkness. ‘And why in God’s name does an Inquisitor bring her letter?’
‘An Inquisitor?’ Sharpe asked. ‘The Spanish Inquisition?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought they’d run out of people to burn years ago!’
‘They haven’t.’ Hogan had talked long with the Marques’ chaplain and had learned some few things about the mysterious Inquisitor who had brought the incriminating letter. ‘He’s called Father Hacha and he’s got the soul of a snake.’ Hogan frowned at Sharpe. ‘Helene wouldn’t have caught religion, would she?’
Sharpe smiled. ‘I wouldn’t think so.’
‘The weirdest people do,’ Hogan said glumly. ‘But if she had, she’d hardly be plotting murder.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe she would. Religion does odd things to people.’
There was silence. Frederickson took a piece of broken floorboard that he had collected from the shattered chapel and put it on the fire. The Spanish boy looked from man to man, wondering what they spoke of. He stared at Sharpe. He knew all about Sharpe and the boy was worried. He wanted Sharpe to approve of him.
Hogan suddenly looked at the broken gateway. Do you know what a torno is?’
Sharpe took a cigar from Fredericfcson, leaned forward, and lit it from the flames.
‘No.’
Frederickson, who loved old buildings, knew what a torno was, but kept silent.
‘There might have been one here once.’ Hogan gestured at the ruined convent gateway. ‘I’ve only ever seen them in Spain. They’re revolving cupboards built into the outer wall of a convent. You can put something into the cupboard from the outside, ring the bell, and a nun inside turns the torno. It has partitions so you can’t see into the convent as the cupboard turns. Whatever you put there simply disappears and another part of the cupboard faces the street.’ He sipped his wine. ‘They use them for bastards. A girl has a baby, she can’t raise it, so she takes it to the torno. There’s no questions asked, you see. The nuns don’t know who the mother is, and the mother knows the baby’s in good hands. It’s clean. It’s better than letting the wee things die in the gutter.’
‘Or join the army,’ Frederickson said.
Sharpe wondered what the purpose of the story was. but knew better than to ask. The wind was driving clouds to cover the western stars.
Hogan shrugged. ‘Sometimes I feel just like the person inside the convent. The cupboard turns, there’s the baby on the shelf, and I don’t know where it’s come from, or what it’s called, or who put it there, or what bastard had his joy of the girl and dropped her. It’s just a little scrap of mystery, but there’s one difference.’ He looked from the fire to Sharpe. ‘My job is to solve the mystery. The torno has just dumped this thing into my lap, and you’re going to find out who put it there. You understand?’
Sharpe nodded. He should, he thought, be the Major of a Battalion marching to war. He should be preparing his men to stand in the musket line and blast death at an attacking army, but instead he was to be Hogan’s spy. He had earned the job by his foolishness, by accepting the duel. And the result was this secret meeting in the hills and the chance to once more go close to a woman he had once thought unapproachable, a woman who had been his lover for a short, treacherous season in Salamanca. ‘I understand.’
‘Find out, come back, and maybe, Richard, just maybe, the General will give you your rank back.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Wellington doesn’t like fools.’ A spot of rain hissed on the fire. Hogan pulled his cloak about him. ‘You’d better pray that I’m right.’
‘About what?’
The Irishman stared at the fire. ‘I don’t understand it, Richard, I really don’t. It’s too elaborate! To kill a General, send an Inquisitor, mark you as the murderer? Someone thought about it all, someone planned it, and I cannot convince my addled brain that they did it just to have you hanged. Laudable as that aim is, why kill a Marques for it? No.’ He frowned in thought. ‘The bastards are up to something. I can feel it in my bones, but I don’t know what it is. So you find out. And if you don
’t find out, don’t come back.’
He said the last words brutally. No one spoke. More rain hissed on the flames. One of the horses whinnied softly.
Hogan gestured at the Spanish boy. ‘He’s called Angel.’
Sharpe looked at the boy and nodded. Angel smiled timidly back at the Rifleman.
Hogan switched into Spanish. ‘I’m lending him to you, and I want him back in one piece because he’s useful. I don’t care if you don’t come back, but I want Angel.’
Angel smiled nervously. Hogan looked up at the sky. ‘I’ve a horse for you as well; a better one than you deserve. And this.’ He took something from his haversack and handed it to Sharpe.
It was a telescope, Sharpe’s own telescope. It had been a gift to him, given ten years before when he had been commissioned as an officer. There was a small brass plate inset into the curve of the walnut barrel, and inscribed on the brass was ‘In Gratitude. AW. September 23rd, 1803’.
If it was not for that day, Sharpe reflected as he took the glass, he might not be alive now. Wellington had undoubtedly remembered the day when his horse had been piked and he had been pitched forward towards the bayonets of his enemies. A Sergeant called Richard Sharpe had saved the General’s life that day, beating back the enemy until the General was on his feet. It would be hard, Sharpe thought, to see a man who had saved your life condemned to hang for a crime he had not committed.
Sharpe looked at Hogan. ‘You’ve brought my sword?’
‘Yes.’
‘And more ammunition?’ Hogan had sent him north with only his rifle.
‘Yes.’
‘So what do I do with your horse and Angel?’
‘You go and solve my mystery.’ Hogan put snuff onto his hand, sniffed it, paused, then sneezed. For once he did not swear after the sneeze. ‘I could have sent one of my own people, but you have one advantage.’
‘Which is?’
Hogan looked at Sharpe, ‘You know Helene. I just hope to God she’ll want to see you again, and that she’ll talk to you. Find her, curl up with her, find out what the hell is happening, and save your miserable career.’
Frederickson laughed. Sharpe squirted wine from the skin into his mouth.
Hogan nodded at Angel. ‘Angel’s your spy. Don’t worry that he looks young, he’s been working for me since he was thirteen. He can go where you can’t go. And you have one other advantage. Helene is rather noticeable. If the two of you get within twenty miles of her, you’ll hear about it. You know what the Spanish call her?’
‘La Puta Dorada.’ Sharpe said it softly It was a just enough nickname, yet its use always offended him. ‘Will the Partisans help me?’
‘Who knows? They think you’re dead, so use another name.’ He smiled mockingly. ‘Don’t call yourself Major Hogan, please? I suppose you’ll have to look for the Partisans, but they don’t have any love for the Marquesa. Still, they might help you.’
‘Where would you start looking?’
‘Burgos or Vitoria,’ Hogan said decisively. ‘Burgos because it’s the crossroads of the French armies and if she’s in Spain then she’ll have passed through, and Vitoria because that’s where the Inquisitor comes from. It’s not much, God knows, but it’s better than nothing.’ Hogan frowned up at the sky, as if angry with the rain. ‘There’s one other thing.’
Sharpe grinned. ‘You’re saving the bad news till last?’
‘If the French capture you, Richard, they’ll crow their victory from every housetop in Europe. They’ll prove that we cheated the Spanish with an execution, they’ll parade you like a captive bear to prove Britain’s perfidy. Or, if they don’t do that, they’ll simply kill you. You’re officially dead, after all, so they’ve nothing to lose.’ He stared at the Rifleman, ‘So don’t get captured.’ Hogan said it with a seething intensity and, to drive the message home, repeated the words. ‘Don’t get captured.’
That was Hogan’s fear. It had been Wellington’s fear, too, when Hogan had suggested that Sharpe be sent to solve the mystery. The General had bristled at Sharpe’s name. ‘What if the fool gets caught, Hogan? Good God! The French will make hay of us! No. It won’t do, It won’t do.’
‘He won’t get caught, my Lord.’ Hogan had already sent Sharpe to the Gateway of God, and was praying that no stray enemy cavalry patrol had already found the Rifleman.
It had taken Hogan two days to persuade the General, his only argument that no one but Sharpe could safely approach La Marquesa. The General had reluctantly agreed. He had wanted to send Sharpe back to England with orders never to show his face in the army again. ‘If this goes wrong, Hogan, it’ll be your hide as well as his.’
‘It won’t go wrong, my Lord, I promise you.’
Wellington had looked mockingly at his chief of intelligence. ‘One man against an army?’
‘Yes, my Lord.’ And that man would win, Hogan fervently believed, because losing was not part of Richard Sharpe’s world.
He watched Sharpe now, his face lit by the flames in the Gateway of God, and he wondered if Sharpe would live to come back to the army. He was sending him with just one boy deep behind the enemy lines, to find a woman who was as treacherous as she was beautiful, yet Hogan had no choice. This summer the General planned a campaign that could destroy French power in Spain, but the French knew how potent was the threat and they would be fighting back, using every weapon of treachery and subtlety that came to hand. Hogan, with an instinct for trouble far off, had fought to let Sharpe go into enemy territory. There was a mystery to be solved, and only Sharpe knew the woman whose letter had revealed that mystery. And the only hope of success was in Sharpe’s belief, that Hogan knew could be utterly false, that La Marquesa had become fond of the Rifleman when they were lovers.
Yet, Hogan thought, Sharpe could be right. The Rifleman provoked great loyalty from all sorts of men and women. From generals and whores to sergeants and frightened recruits. He was a soldier’s soldier, but his friends and lovers saw the vulnerability in him and it made them fond of him. Yet Hogan wondered how much fondness the Golden Whore had in her soul.
The wind gusted, shrieking like a tormented soul in the shattered cloister, and bringing a slapping, rattling burden of rain to lash the broken tiles and seethe in the embers. Hogan shivered beneath his cloak. This was a place of ghosts, the unseen Shee were riding the winds of storm, and he was sending a friend into the unknown to fight an unequal battle.
Chapter 10
Richard Sharpe lay on thin, wiry grass and propped his telescope on his pack. He slid the brass shutter aside from the eyepiece, adjusted the tubes, and stared in awed amazement.
He watched an army marching.
He had seen the smear of dust in the sky, rising higher as the morning moved towards midday’s heat, and the dust had looked like the haze of a great grass fire in the far south.
He had ridden towards the haze, going slowly for fear of enemy cavalry patrols, and now, in the early afternoon, he lay on the low summit of a small hill and stared at the men and animals that had smudged the great plume of dust across the heavens.
The French were marching eastwards. They were marching towards Burgos, towards France.
The road itself was left for the heavy traffic, for the wagons and the guns and the carriages of the generals. Beside the road, trampling the scanty crops, marched the infantry. He moved the telescope right, the far uniforms a blur of colour in his eye, and steadied it where the road came from a small village. Tumbrils and caissons, limbers and ambulances, wagons and more wagons, the horses and oxen dipping their heads with the effort of hauling their loads under the hot Spanish sun. In the village was the tower of an old castle, its grey stone broken by spreading ivy, and Sharpe saw white smoke rising from the tower, mingling with the dust, and knew that the French had looted and now burned the tower. They were abandoning this countryside, going eastward, retreating.
He pushed the telescope left, turning it to look as far to the east as he could see, to where, like a tiny
grey blur on the horizon the topmost stones of Burgos’ fortress showed above some trees, and everywhere the road was crammed with men and horses. The infantry moved slowly, like men who hated to retreat. Their women and children slogged along beside them. Cavalry walked beside their steeds, under orders to save their horses’ strength, while only a few squadrons, lancers mostly, whose pennants were stained white with dust, trotted on the flanks of the huge column to protect it against Spanish sharpshooters.
Sharpe rested the telescope. Without the benefit of the fine glass the French army looked like a black snake winding across the valley. He knew he saw a retreat, but he did not know why the enemy retreated. He had heard no guns like thunder in the distance that would have told him of a great battle that Wellington had won. He just watched the great beast snake in the valley, smearing the sky white, and he had no idea why it was here, 6r where it went, or where his own forces were.
He wriggled back from the skyline, snapped the telescope shut, and turned to the horse which he had tethered to a stone field marker. Hogan had lent him a fine, strong, patient stallion called Carbine, who now watched Sharpe and. twitched his long, black, undocked tail. He was a lucky horse, Sharpe thought, because the rule in the British army was that all horses Should have their tails cut short, but Carbine had been left his intact so that, at a distance, he would seem to the French to be one of their own. He had been corn fed too, strengthened through the winter to carry one of Hogan’s men who would spy deep behind French lines. Now he carried Sharpe to find a lady.
Though if the Marquesa was in Burgos, Sharpe reflected as he walked towards Carbine, she would be impossible to reach. The French army was falling back on the city, and by tonight Burgos would be surrounded by the enemy. He could only hope that Angel was safe.
The boy was sixteen. His father, a cooper, had died trying to save his wife from the attentions of French Dragoons. Angel had watched his parents die, had seen his house and his father’s workshop burned to cinders, and that same night, armed only with a knife, he had killed his first Frenchman. He had been lucky to escape. He had twisted into the darkness on his young legs as the bullets of the French sentries thrashed about him in the growing rye. He had told Sharpe the story diffidently. ‘I put the knife in my parents’ grave, senor.’ He had buried his parents himself, then gone to find the Partisans. He had been just thirteen.