Spears shrugged. "If you must, Richard. If you must. I did try."
"Thank you, my lord."
Sharpe took one last look at the ballroom, at the circling, brilliant people beneath the great chandeliers, and he knew he had been foolish in coming to this place. La Marquesa was not to be his reward. He had been presumptuous in even coming. He nodded to Spears, turned, and walked onto the upper landing. He stopped behind the shako-hatted statue and stared up at the great, painted ceiling, and he could not imagine owning one hundredth of one hundredth part of all this wealth. He would go back and tell Harper of it.
"Senor?" A servant had appeared beside him. The man was aloof, liveried, and with a supercilious look in his eye.
"Yes?"
"This way, senor." The man plucked Sharpe’s sleeve towards a tapestry against the wall.
Sharpe shook the hand off, growled, and he saw alarm come into the servant’s eyes.
"Senor! Por favor! This way!"
It suddenly occurred to Sharpe that the man only had these two words of English, words he had been coached in, and only one person gave orders in this house. La Marquesa. He followed the man towards the hanging tapestry. The servant glanced around the landing, making sure that no-one was watching, and then he swiftly drew back one heavy corner of the great cloth. Behind it was a low, open doorway. "Senor?"
There was urgency in the man’s voice. Sharpe ducked under the lintel and the footman, staying on the landing, let the tapestry fall back into place. Sharpe was alone, quite alone, in a musty and total darkness.
Chapter 9
He stood quite still, the air cooler on one side of his face, the sound of revelry muffled by the thick tapestry. He put out his left hand slowly, found the open door, and swung it shut. The hinges were well greased. It moved soundlessly until the latch clicked into place and then Sharpe leaned against it and let his eyes adjust slowly to the darkness.
He was on a small, square landing between two staircases. To his right the steps went downwards into utter darkness, to his left they climbed and at their head he could see a pale square that might have been the night sky except that it was curiously mottled and had no stars. He went to his left, climbing slowly, and his boots grated on the stone steps until he came out onto a wide balcony.
He saw now why there were no stars visible. The open side and roof of the balcony were enclosed by a small-latticed screen, dense with climbing plants, and the effect was to make the balcony comfortably cool. The plant stems had been trained so there were wide gaps between them and he crossed to the nearest gap and rested his shako peak on the lattice so he could see out. The lattice moved. He started back, then realised that the screen was a series of hinged doors, any of which could be opened so that the sun could flood onto the flagstones. The city was spread beneath him, grey moonlight on tiles and stone, the glow of fires reddening some of the buildings.
The balcony was deserted. Rush mats lay at its centre, making a path between troughs planted with small shrubs and stone benches supported by carved, crouching lions. He walked slowly along the balcony’s length and his eye caught strange, intermittent flashes of light from his right. They seemed to come from the balcony floor where it met the wall of the Palacio and he stopped, crouched, and saw that the lights came from a series of tiny windows that looked into the ballroom below. They were like spyholes. Beyond the palm-sized panes of glass were tunnels that must go through stone and plaster and each revealed a small patch of the great ballroom. Sharpe saw Lord Spears circle through his spyhole, his pelisse round Maria’s shoulders and his one good arm somewhere beneath the pelisse. Sharpe stood up and walked on.
The balcony turned to the right and Sharpe stopped at the corner. The rush mats on the new stretch were overlaid with rugs and there were doors, shut and shuttered, that led into the Palacio’s interior. At the far end, hard against a blank wall, Sharpe could see a table that was set with food and wine. The crystal and china winked with the reflected light of a single candle, shielded by glass, that stood in a niche of the wall. Only two chairs stood by the table, both empty, and Sharpe felt the stirring of his instinct, of danger, and he wondered why he had been invited to what looked like a very small party indeed. It made no sense, despite Spears’ explanation, for La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba to invite Captain Sharpe to this private, expensive, and luxurious balcony.
Halfway down the balcony a huge brass telescope was mounted on a heavy iron tripod. Sharpe walked to it and pushed open a lattice door next to the instrument and saw, as he had guessed, that it pointed toward the night’s battlefield. The wasteland was pale in the moonlight, the fortresses dark, and Sharpe could see the ravine clearly that ran between the San Vincente and the smaller forts. There was the glow of fire tingeing the roofline of the San Vincente’s courtyard and he knew the French were celebrating their victory around the flames, but fearing, too, the next assault. There were other fires, small torches that were hand-held in the wasteland where men searched for the wounded and dead. The French ignored them. Sharpe suddenly shivered. For no reason he remembered the burning of the dead after the assault on Badajoz just a few weeks before. There had been too many bodies to bury so they had been stacked in layers, timber between the stripped corpses, and the fires had burned darkly and he remembered how the corpses on the top layer had sat up in the heat, almost as if they were alive and begging for rescue, and then the corpses below had also begun to bend in the great fire and, as if to blot out the vision, he pulled shut the lattice door with a loud click.
"What are you thinking?" Her voice was husky. He turned and La Marquesa was standing by the table, by a door that had opened silently, and a woman servant was in the doorway offering a shawl. La Marquesa shook her head and the servant disappeared, shutting the door as noiselessly as it had opened. La Marquesa was light in the darkness. Her golden hair seemed glowing to Sharpe, spun with gossamer fine radiance, and her dress was a brilliant white. It left her shoulders and arms bare and he could see the shadows of her collarbones and he wanted to put his hands on that fine, pale skin because she was, in a Palacio of priceless and beautiful objects, the most perfect of them all. He felt clumsy.
"I was told to compliment you on your frock."
"My dress? I suppose that was Jack Spears?"
"Yes, Ma’am."
"He never saw me." She leaned over the table and Sharpe saw her light a small cigar from the candle. He was amazed. He was used to the women of the army smoking their short clay pipes, but he had never seen a woman with a cigar before. She blew a plume of smoke that drifted up to the lattice. "I saw you, though, both of you. You were glowering at the ballroom, hating it all, and he was wondering where he could find an empty bedroom to take that silly girl. Do you smoke?"
"Sometimes. Not now, thank you." Sharpe gestured at the spyholes. "Did you see through those?"
She shook her head. "The palace is full of spyholes, Captain. Riddled with secret passages." She walked towards him, her feet quite silent on the rugs. Her voice seemed different to Sharpe, this was not the same woman who had been excited and enthusiastic at San Christobal. Tonight she spoke crisply, with a confident authority, and all traces of wide-eyed naivete had gone. She sat on a cushioned bench. "My husband’s great-great-grandfather built the Palacio and he was a suspicious man. He married a younger wife, like me, and he feared she would be unfaithful so he built the passages and the peepholes. He would follow her round the building, she in light and he in darkness, and everything she did, he watched." She told the story as if it was a much-told tale, of interest to the listener, but holding boredom for herself. She shrugged, blew smoke upwards, and looked at him. "That’s the story."
"Did he see anything he shouldn’t have?"
She smiled. "It’s said she discovered about the passages and that she hired two masons. One day she waited until her husband was in a long tunnel that bends round the library. It has only one entrance." Her eyes were huge in the dimness. Sharpe watched her, entra
nced by the line of her throat, the shadows on her skin above the low white dress, by the wide mouth. She chopped down with the cigar. "She gave a signal and the masons nailed the entrance shut and then they laid stones over it. After that she made the servants pleasure her, one by one, two by two, and all the time they could hear the husband screaming and scrabbling beyond the wall. She told them it was rats and told them to keep going." She shrugged. "It’s just a nonsense, of course, not true. The pride of this house would not allow it, but the people of Salamanca tell the story and certainly the passages exist."
"It’s a harsh story."
"Yes. It goes on that she died, strangled by the ghost of her husband, and that will be the fate of any mistress of this house who is unfaithful to her husband." She glanced up at Sharpe as she said the last words and there was a curious hostility in her expression, a challenge perhaps.
"You say the story isn’t true?"
She gave a crooked, secret smile. "How very indelicate of you, Captain Sharpe." She drew on the cigar, hardening the red point of the tobacco. "What did Lord Spears tell you about me?"
He was startled by the directness of her question, by the inference that she was commanding him to answer. He shook his head. "Nothing."
"How very unlike Jack." She drew on the cigar again. "Did he tell you that I asked him to make you come here?"
"No."
"I did. Aren’t you curious why?"
Heleaned against the frameof the lattice. "I’m curious, yes."
"Thank God for that! I was beginning to think there wasn’t a human feeling in your body." Her voice was harsh. Sharpe wondered what game she was playing. He watched as she tossed the cigar onto the flagstones of the balcony and, as it landed, it showered sparks like a musket pan fired at night. "Why do you think, Captain?"
"I don’t know why I’m here, Ma’am."
"Oh!" Her voice was mocking now. "You find me on my own, ignoring all my guests, not to mention the proprieties, and there’s a table set with wine, and you think nothing?"
Sharpe did not like being toyed with. "I’m only a humble soldier, Ma’am, unused to the ways of my betters."
She laughed, and her face suddenly softened. "You said that with such delicious arrogance. Do I make you uncomfortable?"
"If it pleases you to, yes."
She nodded. "It pleases me. So tell me what Jack Spears whispered to you?" The inflection of command was back in her voice, as if she talked to her postilion.
Sharpe was tired of her games. He let his own voice be as harsh as hers. "That you had low tastes, Ma’am."
She went very still and tense. She was leaning forward on the bench, her hands gripping its edge, and Sharpe wondered if she was about to shout for her servants and have him thrown out. Then she leaned back, relaxed, and waved a hand at the elegant balcony. "I thought I had rather high tastes. Poor Jack thinks everyone is like him." Her voice had changed again, this time she had spoken with a soft sadness. She stood up and walked to the lattice, pushing open one of the doors. "That business tonight was a shambles."
The previous subject seemed to have been forgotten, as if it had never existed. Sharpe turned to look at her. "Yes."
"Why did the Peer order the attack? It seemed hopeless."
Sharpe was tempted to say that she had wanted a battle, almost pleaded with Wellington for one, but this new, crisp woman was not someone he wanted to annoy, not at this moment. "He’s always impetuous at sieges. He likes to get them done."
"Which means many deaths?" Her fingers were beating a swift tattoo on the frame of the lattice.
"Yes."
"What happens now?" She was staring at the forts and Sharpe was staring at her profile. She was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.
"We’ll have to dig trenches. We’ll have to do everything properly."
"Where?"
He shrugged. "Probably in the ravine."
"Show me."
He went to her side, smelling her, feeling her closeness to him and he wondered if she could detect his trembling. He could see a silver comb holding up her piled hair and then he looked away and pointed at the gorge. "Along the right hand side, Ma’am, close to the San Vincente."
She turned her face to his, just inches away, and her eyes were violet in the moonlight that threw shadows beneath the high cheekbones. "How long will that take?"
"It could be done in two days."
She kept her face turned up and her eyes stayed on his eyes. He was aware of her body, of the bare shoulders, of dark shadows that promised softness.
She turned abruptly away and crossed to the table. "You haven’t eaten."
"A little, Ma’am."
"Come and sit. Pour me some wine." There were partridges roasted whole, quails stuffed with meat and peppers, and small slices of fruit, that she said were quinces, that had been dipped in syrup and sugar. Sharpe took off his shako, propped his rifle against the wall, and sat. He did not touch the food. He poured her wine, moved the bottle to his own glass, and she stared at him, half smiling, and spoke in a detached, curious voice. "Why didn’t you kiss me just then?"
The bottle clinked dangerously against his glass. He set it down. "I didn’t want to offend you."
She raised an eyebrow. "A kiss is offensive?"
"If it’s not wanted."
"So a woman must always show that she wants to be kissed?"
Sharpe was feeling desperately uncomfortable, out of his place in a world he did not understand. He tried to shrug the topic away. "I don’t know."
"You do. You think that a woman must always invite a man, yes? And that then leaves you guiltless." Sharpe said nothing, and she laughed. "I forgot. You’re just a humble soldier and you don’t understand the ways of your betters."
Sharpe looked at the beauty across the table and he tried to tell himself that this was just another woman, and he a man, and that there was nothing more to it than that. He could behave as if she was any woman he had ever known, but he could not convince himself. This was a Marquesa related to Emperors, and he was Richard Sharpe, related to no one apart from his daughter. The difference was like a screen between them and he could not shift it. Others might, but not he. He shrugged inwardly. That’s right, Ma’am. I don’t understand."
She picked another cigar from the box on the table and leaned over the candle in the niche to light it. She sat down and stared at the cigar glow as if she had never seen it before. Her voice was soft again. "I’m sorry, Captain Sharpe. I don’t mean to offend." She looked up at him. "How many people do understand? How many, do you think, live like this? One in a hundred thousand? I don’t know." She looked at the thick rugs, at the crystal on the table. "You think I’m fortunate, don’t you." She smiled to herself. "I am. Yet I speak five languages, Captain, and all I am expected to do with them is order the daily meals. I look in a mirror and I know just what you see. I open my doors and all those pretty staff-officers flood in and they flatter me, charm me, amuse me, and they all want something of me." She smiled at him, and he smiled back. She shrugged. "I know what they want. Then there’s my servants. They want me to be lax, to be undemanding. They want to steal my food, my money. My Confessor wants me to live like a nun, to give to his charities, and my husband wants me to sail to South America. Everyone wants something. And now I want something."
"What?"
She pulled on the cigar, looking at him through the smoke. "I want you to tell me if there’s going to be a battle."
Sharpe laughed. He sipped the wine. He had been brought up to this balcony to tell her something that any officer, British or Spanish, German or Portuguese, could tell her? He looked at her and her face was serious, waiting, so he nodded. "Yes. There has to be. We haven’t come this far to do nothing, and I can’t see Marmont giving up the west of Spain."
She spoke with deliberation. "So why didn’t Wellington attack yesterday?"
He had almost forgotten that it was only yesterday that they had sat on the hilltop and watched the two ar
mies. "He wanted Marmont to attack him."
"I know that. But he didn’t, and the Peer outnumbered him, so why didn’t he attack?"
Sharpe reached forward and cut at a partridge. The skin was crisp and honeyed. He gestured with the slice of meat towards the lights of the spyholes. "There are a dozen generals down there, three dozen staff officers, and you ask me? Why?"
"Because it pleases me!" Her voice was suddenly harsh. She paused to draw on the cigar. "Why do you think? If I ask one of them they’ll smile politely, become charming, and tell me, in so many words, not to worry my head about soldiering. So I’m asking you. Why didn’t he attack?"
Sharpe leaned back, took a deep breath, and launched into his thoughts. "Yesterday the French had their back to a plain. Marmont could have retreated endlessly, in good order, and the battle would have stopped by nightfall. There’d have been, oh…" he shrugged, "say, five hundred dead on each side? If our cavalry was better there might have been more, but it would decide nothing. The armies would still have to fight again. Wellington doesn’t want a series of small indecisive skirmishes. He wants to trap Marmont, he wants him in a place where there’s no escape, or where he’s wrong footed, and then he can crush him. Destroy him."
She watched the sudden passion in Sharpe, the cruelty of his face as he imagined the battle.
"Go on."
"There isn’t any more. We take the forts and then we go after Marmont."
"Do you like the French, Captain Sharpe?"
It struck him as a curious question, the wrong question. She meant, surely, did he dislike the French? He made a gesture of indecision. "No." He smiled. "I don’t dislike them. I don’t have reason to dislike them."
"Yet you fight them?"
"I’m a soldier." It was not that simple. He was a soldier because there was nothing else for him to be. He had discovered all those years ago that he could do the job and do it well, and now he could not imagine another life.