“Back! Back!” Sir Thomas Graham was roaring. The bugle sounded again. Redcoats were streaming back from the camp, their work done. Some were being helped by comrades. At least the fort’s cannon fire had stopped, presumably because the gunners were watching the fireworks in the creek. Flaming scraps of wood whirled in the air, new pulses of fire pierced the night, and another cannon exploded. Sharpe stumbled on a Frenchman’s body half sunk at the creek’s edge.
“Count them in!” Major Gough shouted. “Count them in!”
“One, two, three!” Ensign Keogh was touching men on the shoulder as they clambered aboard. A sailor retrieved one of the oars snatched by the French. A crackle of musketry sounded from the marsh and a man of the 87th fell face forward in the mud. “Pick him up!” Keogh shouted. “Six, seven, eight, where’s your musket, you rogue?”
The Hampshire men were boarding the other lighter. General Graham, with his two aides and a group of engineers, was waiting to be the last aboard. The rafts were infernos now. They would never leave the creek. The smoke boiled hundreds of feet into the night sky, but there was enough flame feeding that smoke to illuminate the marsh, and the gunners of San Luis could see the redcoats grouped on the creek bank and they must have known the lighters were there, and suddenly the cannons started firing again. Now they used shell as well as round shot. One shell exploded on the far bank while another, the trail of its fuse a crazed streak of spinning red in the flame-shot night, plunged into the creek. A round shot crashed through the Hampshire’s ranks.
“All here!” Keogh shouted.
“Sir Thomas!” Major Gough yelled. An exploding shell threw up mud, reeds, and a French musket. An ancient cannon banged from the closest raft and Sharpe saw the ball skipping along the water. “Sir Thomas!” Major Gough bellowed again, but Sir Thomas was waiting to make sure all the Hampshires had embarked, and only then did he come to the lighter. A shell exploded just paces behind him, but miraculously the scraps of casing whistled harmlessly past him. Sailors thrust the lighter off the bank and the ebbing tide took it out toward the bay. The fire rafts were now a huge incandescent blaze beneath a thundercloud of smoke. The reflections of their flames rippled on the water, then were broken by a round shot that hurled up a great splash to soak men on the two lighters leaving the northern bank. The fifth lighter was in mid-creek, its sailors heaving on their oars to escape the gunfire.
“Row!” a naval officer shouted in Sharpe’s boat. “Row!”
Three guns fired at once from the San Luis and Sharpe heard a shot rumble overhead. Musket fire flickered in the marsh and some redcoats stood up in the belly of the lighter and fired back. “Hold your fire!” Gough shouted.
“Row!” the naval officer called again.
“Not quite the orderly withdrawal I anticipated,” Sir Thomas said. A shell, fuse whipping the dark with its thread of frantic red light, slapped into the creek. “Is that you, Sharpe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re wet, man.”
“Fell in the water, sir.”
“You’ll catch your death! Strip off. Take my cloak. How’s your head? I forgot you were wounded. I should never have asked you to come.”
Two more guns fired, then two more from the San José Fort to the north, but every pull of the great oars took the lighters away from the flames and into the blackness of the bay. Wounded men moaned in the lighters’ holds. Other men talked excitedly, and Gough allowed it. “What’s your butcher’s bill, Hugh?” Sir Thomas asked the Irishman.
“Three men dead, sir,” Gough said, “and eight wounded.”
“But a good night’s work,” Sir Thomas said, “a very good night’s work.”
Because the fleet was safe and Sir Thomas, when the Spaniards were at last ready, could take his small army south.
SIR THOMAS Graham’s quarters in San Fernando were modest. He had commandeered a boat builder’s workshop that had whitewashed stone walls. He had furnished it with a bed, a table, and four chairs. The workshop had a great hearth in front of which Sharpe’s clothes were put to dry. Sharpe had put his rifle there too, with its lock plate removed so that the heat of the fire could reach the mainspring. He himself was swathed in a shirt and cloak that General Graham insisted on lending him. The general, meanwhile, was dictating his report. “Breakfast soon,” the general said in between sentences.
“I’m starving,” Lord William Russell observed.
“Be a good fellow, Willie, see what’s keeping it,” the general said, then dictated lavish praise of the men he had led to the creek. Dawn was outlining the inland hills, but still the glow of the burning rafts was vivid in the dark marshlands, while the plume of smoke must have been visible in Seville over sixty miles away. “You want me to mention your name, Sharpe,” Sir Thomas asked.
“No, sir,” Sharpe said. “I didn’t do anything, sir.”
Sir Thomas gave Sharpe a shrewd look. “If you say so, Sharpe. So what’s this favor I can do for you?”
“I want you to give me a dozen rounds of shell, sir. Twelve-pounders if you’ve got them, but nine-pounders will do.”
“I’ve got them. Major Duncan does, anyway. What happened to your jacket? Sword cut?”
“Bayonet, sir.”
“I’ll have my man sew it up while we have breakfast. Twelve rounds of shell, eh? What for?”
Sharpe hesitated. “Probably best you don’t know, sir.”
Sir Thomas snorted at that answer. “Write that up, Fowler,” he said to the clerk, dismissing him. He waited for the clerk to leave, then went to the fire and held his hands to its warmth. “Let me guess, Sharpe, let me guess. Here you are, orphaned from your battalion, and suddenly I’m commanded to keep you here rather than send you back where you belong. And meanwhile Henry Wellesley’s love letter is amusing the citizens of Cádiz. Would those two things be connected?”
“They would, sir.”
“There are more letters?” Sir Thomas asked shrewdly.
“There are plenty more, sir.”
“And the ambassador wants you to do what? Find them?”
“He wants to buy them back, sir, and if that doesn’t work he wants them stolen.”
“Stolen!” Sir Thomas gave Sharpe a skeptical look. “Had any experience in that business?”
“A bit, sir,” Sharpe said and, after a pause, realized the general wanted more. “It was in London, sir, when I was a child. I learned the business.”
Sir Thomas laughed. “I was once held up by a footpad in London. I knocked the fellow down. Wasn’t you, was it?”
“No, sir.”
“So Henry wants you to steal the letters and you want a dozen of my shells? Tell me why, Sharpe.”
“Because if the letters can’t be stolen, sir, they might be destroyed.”
“You’re going to explode my shells inside Cádiz?”
“I hope not, sir, but it might come to that.”
“And you’ll expect the Spanish to believe it was a French mortar bomb?”
“I hope the Spanish won’t know what to think, sir.”
“They’re not fools, Sharpe. The dons can be bloody uncooperative, but they’re not fools. If they discover you exploding shells in Cádiz they’ll have you in that pestilential prison of theirs before you can count to three.”
“Which is why it’s best you don’t know, sir.”
“Breakfast is coming,” Lord William Russell burst into the room. “Beefsteak, fried liver, and fresh eggs, sir. Well, almost fresh.”
“I suppose you’ll want the things delivered to the embassy?” Sir Thomas ignored Lord William and spoke to Sharpe.
“If it’s possible, sir, and addressed to Lord Pumphrey.”
Sir Thomas grunted. “Come and sit down, Sharpe. You’re partial to fried liver?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll have the things boxed up and delivered today,” Sir Thomas said, then shot Lord William a reproving look. “No good looking curious, Willie. Mister Sharpe and I are discussing
secret matters.”
“I can be the very soul of discretion,” Lord William said.
“You can be,” Sir Thomas agreed, “but you very rarely are.”
Sharpe’s coat was taken away to be mended. Then he sat to a breakfast of beefsteak, liver, kidneys, ham, fried eggs, bread, butter, and strong coffee. Sharpe, though he was only half dressed, enjoyed it. It struck him, halfway through the meal, that one table companion was the son of a duke and the other a wealthy Scottish landowner, yet he felt oddly comfortable. There was no guile in Lord William, while it was plain Sir Thomas simply liked soldiers. “I never thought I’d be a soldier,” he confessed to Sharpe.
“Why not, sir?”
“Because I was happy as I was, Sharpe, happy as I was. I hunted, I traveled, I read, I played cricket, and I had the best wife in the world. Then my Mary died. I brooded for a time and it occurred to me that the French were an evil presence. They preach liberty and equality, but what are they? They are degraded, barbarous, and inhuman, and it was borne upon me that my duty was to fight them. So I put on a uniform, Sharpe. I was forty-six years old when I first donned the red coat, and that was seventeen years ago. And on the whole, I must say, they have been happy years.”
“Sir Thomas,” Lord William remarked as he savaged the bread with a blunt knife, “did not just put on a uniform. He raised the 90th Foot at his own expense.”
“And a damned expense it was too!” Sir Thomas said. “Their hats alone cost me four hundred and thirty-six pounds, sixteen shillings, and fourpence. I always wondered what the fourpence was for. And here I am, Sharpe, still fighting the French. Have you had enough to eat?”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
Sir Thomas made a point of walking Sharpe to the stables. Just before they reached the building the general stopped Sharpe. “Play cricket, do you, Sharpe?”
“We used to play at Shorncliffe, sir,” Sharpe said cautiously, referring to the barracks where the riflemen were trained.
“I need cricketers,” the general said, then frowned in thought.
“Henry Wellesley’s a damned fool,” he said, abruptly changing the subject, “but he’s a decent damned fool. Know what I mean?”
“I think so, sir.”
“He’s a very good man. He deals well with the Spanish. They can be infuriating. They promise the world and deliver scraps, but Wellesley has the patience to treat with them, and the sensible Spaniards know they can trust him. He’s a good diplomat and we need him as ambassador.”
“I liked him, sir.”
“But he made a bloody fool of himself over that woman. Does she have the letters?”
“I think she has some, sir.”
“So you’re looking for her?”
“I am, sir.”
“You’re not going to blow her up with my shells, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“I hope not, because she’s a pretty wee thing. I saw her with him once and Henry looked like a tomcat that had found a bowl of cream. She looked happy too. I’m surprised she betrayed him.”
“Lord Pumphrey says it was her pimp, sir.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think she saw gold, sir.”
“Of course the thing about Henry Wellesley,” Sir Thomas said, apparently ignoring Sharpe’s words, “is that he’s a forgiving sort of man. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still sweet on her. Ah well, I’m probably just blathering. I enjoyed your company last night, Mister Sharpe. If you finish your business quickly enough, then I hope you’ll give us a game or two. I’ve a clerk who’s a ferocious bowler, but the wretched man has sprained his ankle. And I trust you’ll do me the honor of sailing south with us. We can bowl a few quick ones at Marshal Victor, eh?”
“I’d like that, sir,” Sharpe said, though he knew there was no hope of it coming true.
He went to find Harper and the other riflemen. He found a slop shop in San Fernando and, with the embassy’s money, bought his men civilian clothes and then, beneath the smoke of the burning rafts that hung above Cádiz like a great dark cloud, they went to the city.
In the afternoon the cloud was still there, and twelve common shells, boxed up and labeled as cabbages, had arrived at the embassy.
CHAPTER 6
N OTHING HAPPENED IN THE next three days. The wind turned east and brought persistent February rain to extinguish the burning fire rafts, though the smoke from the rafts still smeared the Trocadero marshes and drifted across the bay toward the city where Lord Pumphrey waited for a message from whoever possessed the letters. The ambassador dreaded another issue of El Correo de Cádiz. None appeared. “It publishes rarely these days,” James Duff, the British consul in Cádiz, reported to the ambassador. Duff had lived in Spain for nearly fifty years and had been consul for over thirty. Some folk reckoned Duff was more Spanish than the Spaniards and even when Spain had been at war with Britain he had been spared any insult and allowed to continue his business of buying and exporting wine. Now that the embassy had been driven to seek refuge in Cádiz, there was no need for a consul in the city, but Henry Wellesley valued the older man’s wisdom and advice. “Nuñez, I think, is struggling,” Duff said, speaking of the owner of El Correo de Cádiz. “He has no readership beyond the city itself now, and what can he print? News of the Cortes? But everyone knows what happens there before Nuñez can set it in type. He has nothing left except rumors from Madrid, lies from Paris, and lists of arriving and departing ships.”
“Yet he won’t accept money from us?” Wellesley asked.
“Not a penny,” Duff said. The consul was thin, shrunken, elegant, and shrewd. He visited the ambassador most mornings, invariably complimenting Henry Wellesley on the quality of his sherry, which Duff himself sold to the embassy, though with the French occupying Andalusia the supply was running very short. “I suspect he’s in someone else’s pay,” Duff went on.
“You offered generously?” the ambassador asked.
“As you requested, Your Excellency,” Duff said. He had visited Nuñez on Wellesley’s behalf and had offered the man cash if he agreed to publish no more letters. The offer had been refused, so Duff had made an outright bid for the newspaper itself, a bid that had been startlingly generous. “I offered him ten times what the house, press, and business are worth, but he would not accept. He would have liked to, I’m sure, but he’s a very frightened man. I think he dares not sell for fear of his life.”
“And he proposes publishing more of the letters?”
Duff shrugged, as if to suggest he did not know the answer.
“I am so sorry, Duff, to place you in this predicament. My foolishness, entirely my foolishness.”
Duff shrugged again. He had never married and had no sympathy for the idiocies that women provoked in men.
“So we must hope,” the ambassador went on, “that Lord Pumphrey is successful.”
“His Lordship might well succeed,” Duff said, “but they’ll have copies, and they’ll publish them anyway. You cannot depend on their honor, Your Excellency. The stakes are much too high.”
“Dear God.” Henry Wellesley rubbed his eyes, then swiveled in the chair to stare at the steady rain falling on the embassy’s small garden.
“But at least,” Duff said consolingly, “you will then possess the originals and can prove that the Correo has changed them.”
Henry Wellesley winced. It might be true that he could prove forgery, but he could not escape the shame of what was not forged. “Who are they?” he asked angrily.
“I suspect they are people in the pay of Cardenas,” Duff said calmly. “I can smell the admiral behind this one, and I fear he is implacable. I surmise”—he paused, frowning slightly—“I surmise you have thought of more direct action to deter publication?”
Wellesley was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. “I have, Duff, I have. But I would sanction such action most reluctantly.”
“You are wise to be reluctant. I have noted an increase in Spanish patrols a
round Nuñez’s premises. I fear Admiral Cardenas has prevailed on the Regency to keep a watchful eye on the newspaper.”
“You could talk to Cardenas,” Wellesley suggested.
“I could,” Duff agreed, “and he will be courteous, he will offer me excellent sherry, and he will then deny any knowledge of the matter.”
Wellesley said nothing. He did not need to. His face betrayed his despair.
“Our only hope,” Duff went on, “is if Sir Thomas Graham succeeds in lifting the siege. A victory of that sort will confound those who oppose a British alliance. The problem, of course, is not Sir Thomas, but Lapeña.”
“Lapeña.” Wellesley repeated the name dully. Lapeña was the Spanish general whose forces would accompany the British southward.
“He will have more men than Sir Thomas,” Duff went on remorselessly, “so he must have command. And if he is not given command, then the Spanish will not commit troops. And Lapeña, Your Excellency, is a timid creature. We must all hope that Sir Thomas can inspire him to valor.” Duff held his glass of sherry to the window light. “This is the ’03?”
“It is.”
“Very fine,” Duff said. He got to his feet and, with the help of a cane, crossed to the table with the inlaid checkered top. He stared for a few seconds at the chess pieces, then advanced a white bishop to take a castle. “I fear that is check, Your Excellency. Doubtless by next week you will confound me.”
The ambassador courteously walked Duff to the sedan chair waiting in the courtyard. “If they publish more,” Wellesley said, holding an umbrella over the consul as they approached the chair, “I shall have to resign.”