His first thought was that the Marqués was sleeping on a pillow of red velvet. His second thought was relief. There would be no prayers this morning. He could go to the kitchen and have a leisurely breakfast.
Then he vomited.
The Marqués was dead. His throat had been cut so that the blood had soaked the linen pillowcase and sheets. His head was tilted back, his eyes staring sightless at the headboard. One hand hung over the side of the bed.
The chaplain tried to call out, but no sound came. He tried to move, but his feet seemed stuck to the carpeted floor.
The vomit stained his scapular. Some of it dribbled down the dead man’s plump hand. The Marqués seemed to have two mouths, one wide and red, the other prim and pale.
The chaplain called out again, and this time his voice, thickened by the vomit in his throat, came out as a terrible strangled cry. ‘Guards!’
The servants came in, but to no avail. The body was cold, the blood on the linen caked hard. Major Mendora, the General’s aide, came in with drawn sword, followed by the Inquisitor in his night-robe. Even the Inquisitor’s strong face paled at the carnage on the bed. The Marqués of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had been killed in his sleep, his throat opened, and his soul sent to the judgment of heaven where, the Inquisitor prayed aloud in his dreadful, deep voice, the soul of his murderer would soon follow for awful and condign punishment.
They came for Major Richard Sharpe at eight on the same morning. The Battalion was paraded, the companies already marching off to their tasks.
Richard Sharpe, as so often in the early morning, was in a bad mood. His mouth had the thick sourness of too much wine the night before. He was looking forward to a second breakfast and feeling only mildly guilty that his new rank gave him the freedom for such luxuries. He had scrounged some eggs from Isabella, there was a flitch of bacon that belonged to the Mess, and Sharpe could almost taste the meal already.
For once, this morning, he would not have three mens’ work to do. Colonel Leroy was taking half of the companies on a long march, the others were detailed to help drag the great pontoon bridges up to the high road, ready for the march into French territory. He could, he thought sourly, catch up on his paperwork. He remembered that he must try to sell one of the new mules to the sutler, though whether that sly, wealthy man would want to buy one of the tubed, half-winded animals that had turned up from Brigade was another matter. Perhaps the sutler would buy it for its dead-weight. Sharpe turned to shout for the Battalion clerk, but the shout never sounded. Instead he saw the Provosts.
The Provosts were led, strangely, by Major Michael Hogan. He was no policeman. He was Wellington’s chief of intelligence and Sharpe’s good friend. He was a middle-aged Irishman whose face was normally humorous and shrewd, but who this morning looked grim as the plague.
He reined in by Sharpe. Hogan led a spare horse. His voice was bleak, unnatural, forced. ‘I must ask for your sword, Richard.’
Sharpe’s smile, which had greeted his friend, changed to a puzzlement. ‘My sword?’
Hogan sighed. He had volunteered for this, not because he wanted to do it, but because it was a friend’s duty. It was a duty, he knew, that would become grimmer as this bad day went on. ‘Your sword, Major Sharpe. You are under close arrest.’
Sharpe wanted to laugh. The words were not sinking in. ‘I’m what?’
‘You’re under arrest, Richard. As much as anything else for your own safety.’
‘My safety?’
‘The whole Spanish army is after your blood.’ Hogan held out his hand. ‘Your sword, Major, if you please.’ Behind Hogan the Provosts stirred on their horses.
‘What am I charged with?’ Suddenly Sharpe’s voice was bleak, though he was already obediently unbuckling his sword belt.
Hogan’s voice was equally bleak. ‘You are charged with murder.’
Sharpe stopped unbuckling the belt. He stared up at the small Major. ‘Murder?’
‘Your sword.’
Slowly, as if it was a dream, Sharpe took the sword from his waist. ‘Murder? Who?’
Hogan leaned down and took Sharpe’s sword. He wrapped the slings and belt about the metal scabbard. ‘The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’ He watched Sharpe’s face, reading his friend’s innocence, but knowing just how hopeless things were. ‘There are witnesses.’
‘They’re lying!’
‘Mount up, Richard.’ He gestured at the spare horse. The Provosts, blank faced men in red jackets and black hats, stared with hostility at the Rifleman. They carried short carbines in their saddle holsters. Hogan turned his horse. ‘The Spanish say you did it. They’re out for your blood. If I don’t get you under lock and key they’ll be dragging you to the nearest tree. Where’s your kit?’
‘In my billet.’
‘Which house?’
Sharpe told him, and Hogan detailed two of the Provosts to fetch the Rifleman’s belongings. ‘Catch us up!’
Hogan led him away, surrounded by Provosts, and Sharpe rode towards more trouble then he would have dreamed possible. He was accused of murder, and he was led, in the bright sunlight of a new morning, towards a prison cell, a trial and whatever then might follow.
CHAPTER 6
They rode for an hour, threading the valleys towards the army’s headquarters. Major Hogan, out of embarrassment and awkwardness, kept Provosts between himself and Sharpe.
At the town, which they entered by back streets, Sharpe was taken to the house where Wellington himself was quartered. He dismounted, was led to the stable yard, and locked into a small, bare room without windows. It had a stone flagged floor that, like the wall above, was stained with blood. Above the bloodstains on the limewashed wall were large rusty nails. Sharpe presumed that shot hares or rabbits had been hung there, but the conjunction of rusty nails and blood somehow took on a more sinister aspect. The only light came from above and below the ill-fitting door. There was a table, two chairs, and an insidious smell of horse urine.
The door was locked. Beyond it Sharpe could hear the boots of his guard in the stable yard. He could hear, too, the homely sounds of pails clanking, water washing down stone, and horses moving in their stalls. He sat, put his heels on the table, and waited.
Hogan had ridden fast. Once at this house he had made a brief farewell, offered no words of hope, then left Sharpe alone. Murder. Sharpe knew the penalty for that well enough, but it seemed unreal. The Marqués dead? Nothing made sense. If he had been arrested for attempting to fight a duel, he could have understood it. He could have endured one of Wellington’s cold tongue lashings, but this predicament made no sense. He waited.
The sunlight that came beneath the lintel moved about the floor as the morning wore on. He smelt the burning tobacco of his sentry’s pipe. He heard men laugh in the stables. The bell of the village church struck eleven and then there came the scrape of the bolt in the door and Sharpe took his heels from the table and stood upright.
A lieutenant in the bluejacket of a cavalry regiment came into the room. He blinked as his eyes went from the bright sunshine into the makeshift cell’s shadow, and then he smiled nervously as he put a bundle of papers onto the table. ‘Major Sharpe?’
‘Yes.’ Somehow the young man looked familiar.
‘It’s Trumper-Jones, sir, Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones?’
The boy expected Sharpe to recognise him. Sharpe remembered there had been a cavalry Colonel called Trumper-Jones who had lost an arm and an eye at Rolica. ‘Did I meet your father?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’ Trumper-Jones took off his hat and smiled. ‘We met last week.’
‘Last week?’
‘At the battle, sir?’
‘Battle? Oh.’ Sharpe remembered. ‘You’re an aide-de-camp to General Preston?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Trumper-Jones put some papers on the table. ‘And your defending officer.’
‘My what?’ Sharpe growled it, making Trumper-Jones step backwards towards the door which had b
een closed by the guard.
‘I’m your defence, sir.’
Sharpe sat down. He stared at the frightened young man who looked as if he was scarce out of school. He beckoned at the vacant chair. ‘Sit down, Trumper-Jones, for God’s sake. Defend me from what?’ He knew, but he wanted to hear it again.
Trumper-Jones came nervously forward. He put his hat on the table beside his papers and pushed a lock of light brown hair from his forehead. He cleared his throat. ‘You’re charged with the murder of the Spanish General Casares, the Marqués de ...’
‘I know who the hell he is.’ Sharpe watched as Trumper-Jones fidgeted with his papers. ‘Is there a cup of tea in this damned place?’
The question only made Trumper-Jones more nervous. ‘There’s not much time, sir.’
‘Time?’
‘The General Court-Martial is convened for half past noon, sir. Today.’ He added lamely.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Sharpe shouted the words. Trumper-Jones said nothing. He was nervous of the scarred Rifleman who now leaned his elbows on the table. ‘Are you a lawyer, Trumper-Jones?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You’ve done this before?’
‘No, sir.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I’ve only been out here a month.’
‘Where’s Major Hogan?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘So how do you plan to prove my innocence, Trumper-Jones?’
The young man pushed the lick of hair away from his forehead. He had a voice like d‘Alembord’s, but without the easy confidence. He smiled nervously. ‘I fear it looks bleak, sir.’
‘Tell me.’
Trumper-Jones seemed happier now that he could read from his papers. ‘It seems, sir, that you are acquainted with the Marquesa de Casares el Grande ...’
‘True.’
‘And that you threatened her, sir.’ Trumper-Jones said it timidly.
‘I did what?’
Trumper-Jones nearly jumped out of his chair. ‘You threatened her ...’ He blushed. ‘Well, you threatened her, sir.’
‘I did no such god-damn thing!’
Trumper-Jones swallowed, cleared his throat, and gestured with a piece of paper. ‘There is a letter, sir, from her Ladyship to her husband, and it says ...’
Sharpe leaned back. ‘Spare me, Lieutenant. I know the Marquesa. Let’s accept they have a letter. Go on.’ So she had provoked the duel. D‘Alembord had hinted at it, Sharpe had refused to believe it, but he supposed it made sense. Yet he found it hard to accept that a woman who had loved him could so easily betray him.
Trumper-Jones pushed the hair back again. ‘The letter provoked a duel, sir, that you were prevented from finishing?’
‘True.’ It all sounded so hopeless.
‘And because you were prevented from fighting, sir, the prosecution is alleging that you went to the General’s quarters last night and murdered him.’
‘Not true.’
‘They have a witness, sir.’
‘Really?’ Sharpe said the word scornfully. ‘Who?’
The papers rustled. ‘A Captain Morillos, sir, of the Princessa Regiment. He commanded the guard on General Casares’ house last night and he saw a British Rifle officer leave the house at three in the morning. The officer, he says, wore a straight sword.’
That was a nice touch, Sharpe thought. Rifle officers were issued with curved cavalry sabres, and only Sharpe wore a straight sword. He shook his head. ‘And why didn’t Captain Morillos stop this man?’
‘He was ordered only to stop people from going into the house, sir, not from leaving it.’
‘Go on.’
Trumper-Jones shrugged. ‘That’s it, sir. I thought, sir ...’ He stopped, nervous again.
‘Well?’
‘I thought, sir, that if we presented your record to the court, sir, that they must be lenient. The Eagle, sir, the Forlorn Hope at Badajoz ...’ His voice tailed away.
Sharpe smiled. ‘You want me to plead guilty and trust that they won’t shoot a hero, is that it?’
‘Hang, sir.’ Trumper-Jones blushed. ‘You’ll be stripped of your commission and given a criminal’s death. Only, of course, if they ...’
‘If they find me guilty?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Sharpe stared at the rusty nails on the wall. Of course this wasn’t happening. At any moment he would wake up and feel an extraordinary relief that it was only a dream. He would laugh at it, tell Sergeant Harper that he had dreamt of being court-martialled!
Except it was not a dream. He had been abandoned to this and he could understand why. Understanding did not lessen the bitterness. A Spanish General had been murdered, and Sharpe knew well enough the fragile bond between the British and the Spanish. Spanish pride was upset that they needed the British to drive the invader from their soil, and their gratitude was made prickly by that pride. Wellington, in the wake of this blow to the alliance, was moving swiftly to offer the Spaniards a sacrifice.
Yet someone else was moving swiftly, someone who wanted Sharpe dead, and he looked at the nervous Trumper-Jones and, in a voice that sounded drained and tired, he asked him to read out his copy of La Marquesa’s letter.
None of it was true, of course, but the letter existed as a damning piece of evidence. Sharpe looked at the nervous young man. ‘I want paper, ink and a pen.’
‘But, sir ...’
‘Fetch them!’
He wrote for an hour, ignoring Lieutenant Trumper-Jones, writing to Major Hogan his own version of the night’s events, describing the lies in La Marquesa’s letter, warning his friend that there was a plot of some kind, he knew not what. Even if Sharpe was dead then Hogan could not say he had not been warned. Yet what was the plot? What purpose did Sharpe’s death serve? He could understand the murder of the Marqués because such a murder would weaken a fragile alliance, but he saw no purpose in a plot that had his own death as its ending, nor did he believe that the Marquesa would seek his death.
He folded the letter. ‘That’s to go to Major Hogan.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Then came the boots in the yard, the scrape of the bolt, and the sudden wash of bright sunlight as the door was opened. A Sergeant, heading Sharpe’s escort, grinned at the Rifleman. ‘Good luck, sir.’
Sharpe smiled, but said nothing. Luck, he thought had deserted him. He had had none since that day in the Gateway of God when Teresa died, and he remembered how, on the night before that death, he had been cursed by Obadiah Hakeswill. He had been cursed, his name buried on a stone.
Sergeant Hakeswill, who had recruited Sharpe into the army, who had succeeded in having Sharpe flogged so that the scars still marred his back, and who had become Sharpe’s bitterest enemy, was dead, shot by Sharpe, and in his grave. Sharpe wondered how many hours would pass before he, too, was rolled into a shallow trench and had the dry soil of Spain shovelled onto his corpse. He followed the Sergeant to his fate.
A Major Vaughn, Welsh and suave, was the prosecuting officer. His tone, silky and musical, managed to imbue his words with a sincere regret that he had, as he said, this unfortunate duty to prosecute an officer so famed for his gallantry.
The British officers behind the table did not look at Sharpe. General Sir Edward Pakenham, the Adjutant General and Wellington’s brother-in-law, presided. Three Spanish officers, their faces like masks stared at the prisoner.
Major Vaughn, despite his regrets, offered the court a swift and damning version of the night’s events. Major Sharpe had been prevented from defending his honour in a duel. That failure rankled. He had gone, by night, and murdered the husband of a woman whom he had pursued vilely. He much regretted bringing in this evidence, but he had no choice, and he produced the letter written and sealed by the Marquesa.
Ned Pakenham lifted the letter as though it was plague-ridden and handed it back to Vaughn. The letter was read into the records of the Court-Martial.
Vaughn brought the letter to Sharpe. ‘You recognise the handwriting, Major? Do remember
you are under oath.’
Sharpe looked up into the plump, clever face. ‘La Marquesa is a Frenchwoman, a spy, and ...’
‘Thank you, Major, I only asked if you recognised the handwriting. Do you?’
He did, but he saw no sense in making things grimmer for himself than they already were. ‘I can’t tell.’
Vaughn walked back to his table. ‘Fortunately we have witnesses who can.’
Sharpe raised his voice. ‘I have another letter from ...’
‘We are concerned with this letter, Major!’ Vaughn turned sharply, but Pakenham held up a hand. He looked into Sharpe’s eyes for the first time since the Rifleman had entered the room.
‘You have another letter from this lady?’
Sharpe nodded. He had not told Trumper-Jones of the letter because Sharpe had no faith in the young man’s ability. ‘She wrote to me, sir, after the death of my wife. She wanted to offer me her condolences. She regretted she would not convey them to me in person.’ He could not resist a small smile. Such a letter was hardly likely to have come from a woman he had persecuted. He saw the flicker of hope on Lieutenant Trumper-Jones’ face. ‘I’d like that letter read into the record too, sir.’
The general officers behind the table smiled, sensing a victory for Sharpe. Pakenham leaned back. ‘You have the letter, Major Sharpe?’
‘It’s in my pack, sir.’
‘Major Vaughn?’ Pakenham turned to the Welshman.
‘You have no objection?’
‘No, sir, none. But I must tell the court that we have already impounded the prisoner’s belongings, searched them, and no such letter has been found.’
‘It’s in my pack!’ Sharpe said stubbornly.
Vaughn sighed. ‘Major Michael Hogan conducted the search, sir. No letter was discovered.’
The officers behind the table stared again at the green cloth on which their papers lay. Sharpe’s sword, its scabbard and hilt battered by war, was at the table’s front.