“But if I go with you,” she said, “how do I live?”
“Same as everyone else.”
“I am not everyone else,” she said indignantly, “and didn’t you tell me you were sailing back to Lisbon?”
“I am, but you’ll be safer in the Isla de León. Lots of British soldiers to defend you. Or you can come back to Lisbon with me.” She rewarded that suggestion with a smile and silence. “I know,” Sharpe went on, “I’m not rich enough. So why did you lie to Henry?”
“Lie to him?” She opened her eyes wide and innocent.
“When you came here, darling, you told him you had no letters. You told him you’d lost the ones Gonzalo didn’t have. You lied.”
“I thought perhaps if things went wrong,” she began, then shrugged.
“You’d still have something to sell?”
“Is that bad?”
“Of course it’s bad,” Sharpe said sternly, “but it’s bloody sensible. So how much do you want for them?”
“Your uniform is scorching,” she said. She climbed out of bed and went to turn the jacket and overalls around. Sharpe watched her. A beauty. She would drive men mad, he thought. She came back to the bed and slid in beside him again.
“So how much?” he asked her.
“Gonzalo said he would make me four hundred dollars.”
“He was cheating you,” Sharpe said.
“I don’t think so. Pumps said he couldn’t get more than seven hundred.”
It took Sharpe a moment to understand what she was saying. “Lord Pumphrey said that?”
She nodded very seriously. “He said he could hide the money in the accounts. He would say it was for bribes, but he could only hide seven hundred.”
“And he’d give you that for the letters?”
She nodded again. “He said he would get seven hundred dollars, keep two, and give me five. But he had to wait till the other letters were found. Mine, he said, weren’t valuable till they were the only letters left.”
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said.
“You’re shocked.” Caterina was amused.
“I thought he was honest.”
“Pumps! Honest?” She laughed. “He tells me his secrets. He shouldn’t, but he wants to know my secrets. He wants to know what Henry says about him so I make him tell me things first. Not that Henry tells me any secrets! So I tell Pumps what he wants to hear. He told me a secret about you.”
“I’ve got no secrets with Lord Pumphrey,” Sharpe said indignantly.
“He has one about you,” she said. “A girl in Copenhagen? Called Ingrid?”
“Astrid.”
“Astrid, that’s the name. Pumps had her killed,” Caterina said.
Sharpe stared at her. “He what?” he asked after a while.
“Astrid and her father. Pumps had their throats cut. He’s very proud of it. He made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“He killed Astrid?”
“He said she and her father knew too many secrets that the French would want to know, and he couldn’t trust them to keep quiet, so he told them to go to England and they wouldn’t so he had them killed.”
It had been four years since Sharpe had been in Copenhagen with the invading British army. He had wanted to stay in Denmark, leave the army, and settle with Astrid, but her father had forbidden the marriage and she was an obedient girl. So Sharpe had abandoned the dream and sailed back to England. “Her father used to send information to Britain,” Sharpe said, “but he got upset with us when we captured Copenhagen.”
“Pumps says he knew a lot of secrets.”
“He did.”
“He doesn’t know any now,” Caterina said callously, “nor does Astrid.”
“The bastard,” Sharpe said, thinking of Lord Pumphrey, “the bloody bastard.”
“You mustn’t hurt him!” Caterina said earnestly. “I like Pumps.”
“You tell Pumps the price for the letters is a thousand guineas.”
“A thousand guineas!”
“In gold,” Sharpe said. “You tell him that, and tell him he can deliver the money to you in the Isla de León.”
“Why there?”
“Because I’ll be there,” Sharpe said, “and so will you. And as long as I’m there you’ll be safe from that murderous priest.”
“You want me to leave here?” she asked.
“You’ve got the letters,” Sharpe said, “so it’s time you made money on them. And if you stay here someone else will make the money. And like as not they’ll kill you to get the letters. So you tell Pumps you want a thousand guineas, and that if you don’t get it you’ll tell me about Astrid.”
“You were in love with her?”
“Yes,” Sharpe said.
“That’s nice.”
“Tell Lord Pumphrey that if he wants to live he should pay you a thousand guineas. Ask for two thousand and maybe you’ll get it.”
“What if he doesn’t pay?”
“Then I’ll slit his throat.”
“You’re a very nasty man,” she said, putting her left thigh across his legs.
“I know.”
She thought for a few seconds, then made a rueful face. “Henry likes having me here. He’ll be unhappy if I go to the Isla de León.”
“Do you mind that?”
“No.” She looked searchingly into Sharpe’s face. “Will Pumps really pay a thousand guineas?”
“He’ll probably pay more,” he said, then kissed her nose.
“So what do you want?” she asked.
“Whatever you want to give me.”
“Oh, that,” she said.
THE FLEET left, all except the Spanish feluccas that could not beat against the monstrous waves that were the remnant of the storm, so they returned to the bay, pursued by the futile splashes of the French mortar shells. The larger British ships drove through the heavy seas and then went south, a host of sail skirting Cádiz to disappear beyond Cape Trafalgar. The wind stayed in the west and the next day the Spaniards found kinder seas and followed.
San Fernando was empty with most of the army gone. There were still battalions on the Isla de León, but they were manning the long defense works on the marshy creek that protected the island and the city from Marshal Victor’s army, though that army left their siege lines two days after the Spanish feluccas sailed. Marshal Victor knew full well what the allies planned. General Lapeña and General Graham would sail their troops south and then, after landing close to Gibraltar, would march north to attack the French siege works. Victor had no intention of allowing his lines to be assailed from the rear. He took most of his army south, looking for a place where he could intercept the British and Spanish forces. He left some men to guard the French lines, just as the British had left some to protect their own batteries. Cádiz waited.
The wind turned north and cold. The Bay of Cádiz was mostly deserted of shipping, except for the small fishing craft and the mastless prison hulks. The French forts on the Trocadero fired desultory mortar shells, but with Marshal Victor gone the garrisons seemed bereft of enthusiasm. The wind stayed obstinately north so that no ships could sail for Lisbon. Sharpe, back on the Isla de León, waited.
A week after the last of the allied ships had sailed, and a day after Marshal Victor had marched away from the siege works, Sharpe borrowed two horses from Sir Thomas Graham’s stable and rode south along the island’s coast where the sea broke white on endless sand. He had been invited to ride to the beach’s end and he was accompanied by Caterina. “Put your heels down,” she told him. “Put your heels down and hold your back straight. You ride like a peasant.”
“I am a peasant. I hate horses.”
“I love them,” she said. She rode like a man, straddling the horse, the way she had been taught in Spanish America. “I hate riding sidesaddle,” she told him. She wore breeches, a jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat that was held in place by a scarf. “I cannot abide the sun,” she said. “It makes your skin like leather. You should
see the women in Florida! They look like alligators. If I didn’t wear a hat I’d have a face like yours.”
“Are you saying I’m ugly?”
She laughed at that, then touched her spurs to the mare’s flanks and turned into the sea’s fretted edge. The hooves splashed white where the waves seethed up the beach. She circled back to Sharpe, her eyes bright. She had arrived in San Fernando the day before. She had come in a coach hired from the stables just outside the city, close to the Royal Observatory, and behind the coach three ostlers led packhorses piled with her clothes, cosmetics, and wigs. Caterina had greeted Sharpe with a demure kiss, then gestured at the coachmen and ostlers. “They need paying,” she said airily before stepping into the house Sharpe had rented. There were plenty of empty houses now that the army was gone. Sharpe had paid the men, then looked ruefully at the few coins he had left.
“Is the ambassador unhappy with you?” Sharpe had asked Caterina when he joined her in the house.
“Henry is quiet. He always goes quiet when he’s unhappy. But I told him I was frightened to stay in Cádiz. This is a sweet house!”
“Henry wanted you to stay?”
“Of course he wanted me to stay. But I insisted.”
“And Lord Pumphrey?”
“He said he would bring the money.” She had given him a dazzling smile. “Twelve hundred guineas!”
Sergeant Harper had watched Caterina’s arrival with an expressionless face. “On the strength is she now, sir?”
“She’ll stay with us awhile,” Sharpe said.
“Isn’t that a surprise.”
“And if that bloody priest shows his face, kill him.”
Sharpe doubted Montseny would come near the Isla de León. The priest had been beaten and if the man had any sense he would give up the fight. The best hope for his faction now was that Marshal Victor would beat the allied army, for then Cádiz must inevitably fall and the politicians in its walls would want to make peace with France before that disaster occurred.
That was other men’s business. Sharpe was riding on a long sea-beaten beach. To his east were sand dunes and, beyond them, the marshes. To his west was the Atlantic and to the south, where the beach ended at a river’s mouth, were Spanish soldiers in their sky blue uniforms. From far off across the marshes came the grumble of gunfire, the sound of French cannons bombarding the British batteries guarding the Isla de León. The sound was fitful and faint as distant thunder.
“You look happy,” Caterina said.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s clean here,” Sharpe said. “I didn’t like Cádiz. Too many alleys, too much darkness, too much treachery.”
“Poor Captain Sharpe.” She mocked him with a brilliant smile. “You don’t like cities?”
“I don’t like politicians. All those bloody lawyers taking bribes and making pompous speeches. What’s going to win the war is that.” He nodded ahead to where the blue-coated soldiers labored in the shallow water. Two feluccas were anchored in the river’s mouth and longboats were ferrying soldiers to the beach beyond. The feluccas were loaded to the gunwales with baulks of timber, anchors and chains, and piles of planks, the materials needed to make a bridge of boats. There were no proper pontoons, but the longboats would serve, and the resultant bridge would be narrow, though if it was properly anchored it would be safe enough.
Captain Galiana was among the officers. It was Galiana who had invited Sharpe to the beach’s end and he now rode out to greet the rifleman. “How is your head, Captain?”
“It’s getting better. It doesn’t hurt so much as it did. It’s vinegar that cures it. May I present the Señorita Caterina Blazquez? Captain Fernando Galiana.”
If Galiana was surprised that a young woman would have no chaperone he hid it, bowing instead and giving Caterina a welcoming smile. “What we’re doing,” he said in answer to her first question, “is making a bridge and protecting it by building a fort on the other bank.”
“Why?” Caterina asked.
“Because if General Lapeña and Sir Thomas fail to reach the French siege works, señorita, they will need a bridge back to the city. I trust the bridge will not be needed, but General Lapeña thought it prudent to make it.” Galiana gave Sharpe a rueful look as though he deplored such defeatism.
Caterina thought about Galiana’s answer. “But if you can build a bridge, Captain,” she asked, “why take the army south on boats? Why not cross here and attack the French?”
“Because, señorita, this is no place to fight. Cross the bridge here and there is nothing but beach in front of you and a creek to your left. Cross here and the French would trap us on the beach. It would be a slaughter.”
“They sailed south,” Sharpe told her, “so they can march inland and take the French from the rear.”
“And you wish you were with them?” Caterina asked Sharpe. She had heard envy in his voice.
“I wish I was,” Sharpe said.
“Me too,” Galiana put in.
“There’s a regiment in the French army,” Sharpe said, “that I’ve got a quarrel with. The 8th of the line. I want to meet them again.”
“Perhaps you will,” Galiana said.
“No, I’m in the wrong place,” Sharpe said sourly.
“But the army will advance from over there”—Galiana pointed inland—“and the French will march to meet them. I think a determined man could ride around the French army and join our forces. A determined man, say, who knows the country.”
“Which is you,” Sharpe said, “not me.”
“I do know the country,” Galiana said, “but whoever commands the fort here will have orders to stop unauthorized Spanish troops from crossing the bridge.” He paused, looking at Sharpe. “But they will have no orders to stop Englishmen.”
“How many days before they get here?” Sharpe asked.
“Three? Four?”
“I’m under orders to take a ship to Lisbon.”
“No ships will be sailing for Lisbon now,” Galiana said confidently.
“The wind might turn,” Sharpe said.
“It’s nothing to do with the wind,” Galiana said, “but with the possibility that General Lapeña is defeated.”
From what Sharpe had heard, everyone expected Lapeña, Doña Manolito, to be thrashed by Victor. “And if he is defeated?” he asked tonelessly.
“Then they will want every available ship ready to evacuate the city,” Galiana said, “which is why no ship will be permitted to leave until the thing is decided.”
“And you expect defeat?” Sharpe asked brutally.
“What I expect,” Galiana said, “is that you will repay the favor you owe me.”
“Get you across the bridge?”
Galiana smiled. “That is the favor, Captain Sharpe. Get me across the bridge.”
And Sharpe thought he might yet meet Colonel Vandal again.
PART THREE
THE BATTLE
CHAPTER 9
I T WAS CHAOS. BLOODY chaos. It was infuriating. “It is,” Lord William Russell said calmly, “entirely to be expected.”
“God damn it!” Sir Thomas Graham exploded.
“In each and every particular,” Lord William said, sounding far wiser than his twenty-one years, “precisely what we expected.”
“And damn you too,” Sir Thomas said. His horse pricked back its ears at its master’s vehemence. “Bloody man!” Sir Thomas said, slapping his right boot with his whip. “Not you, Willie, him. Him! That bloody man!”
“What bloody man is that?” Major John Hope, Sir Thomas’s nephew and senior aide, asked solemnly.
Sir Thomas recognized the line from Macbeth, but was in too much of a temper to acknowledge it. Instead he put spurs to his horse, beckoned to his aides, and started toward the head of the column where General Lapeña had called yet another halt.
It should all have been so simple. So damned simple. Land at Tarifa and there meet the British troops sent from the Gibralt
ar garrison, and that had happened as planned, at which point the whole army was supposed to march north. Except they could not leave Tarifa because the Spanish had not arrived, and so Sir Thomas waited two days, two days of consuming rations that were supposed to be reserved for the march. And when Lapeña’s troops did arrive, their boats would not risk crossing the surf on the beach, so the Spanish troops had been forced to wade ashore. They landed soaking, shivering, and starving, in no condition to march, and so another day was wasted.
Yet still it should have been easy. There were just fifty miles to march, which, even with the guns and baggage, should not have taken more than four days. The road went northward, following a river beneath the Sierra de Fates. Then, once out of those hills, they should have crossed the plain by a good road that led to Medina Sidonia where the allied army would turn west to attack the French siege lines that were anchored on the town of Chiclana. That is what should have happened, but it did not. The Spaniards led the march and they were slow, painfully slow. Sir Thomas, riding at the head of the British troops, which formed the rearguard, noted the boots that had torn themselves to pieces and been discarded beside the road. Some weary Spaniards had fallen out of their ranks, joining the broken boots, and they just watched the red-coated and green-jacketed men march by. And maybe that would not have mattered if enough Spaniards, barefoot or not, had reached Medina Sidonia to chase out whatever garrison the French had placed in the town.
General Lapeña had seemed as eager as Sir Thomas when the march started. He understood the necessity of hurrying north and turning west before Marshal Victor could find a place to make a stand. The allied army was supposed to erupt like a storm on the unprotected rear of the French siege lines. Sir Thomas envisaged his men rampaging through the French camps, ravaging the artillery parks, exploding the magazines, and harrying the broken army out of its earthworks and onto the guns of the British line protecting the Isla de León. All it needed was speed, speed, speed, but then, on the second day, Lapeña had decided to rest his footsore troops and instead march through the next night. And even that might have served, except that the Spanish guides had become lost and the army wandered in a great circle under the hard brightness of the stars. “God damn it!” Sir Thomas had exclaimed. “Can’t they see the North Star?”