Sharpe’s Gold

The men were enthusiastic. Those who had the wicked saw-backed bayonets attacked cork-oak branches, others gathered kindling, and within minutes the blue wood-smoke rose like a wavering signal in the evening sky. Patrick Harper, standing in dripping shirt-tails and holding his sodden trousers to the fire, cocked an inquisitive look towards his Captain as if suggesting that the blaze was dangerous. It was deliberately so, because seeing it would further convince the Partisans of the ineptness of the British infantry. Any man who lit a fire in countryside patrolled by the enemy could not expect to live long.

  Whether prompted by the sight of the fire or by the lateness of the hour, Jose decided to leave, and Sharpe, crouching in the shadows at the tree-line, watched as the horsemen wheeled and spurred their horses back to the east. The Company was alone.

  'Lieutenant!'

  Knowles came from the fire. 'Sir.'

  'We're going back. Tonight.' He watched Knowles to see if there was any reaction, but the north countryman nodded as if the news was not unexpected. Sharpe was obscurely disappointed. 'We won't take the wounded. Sergeant Read can take them on to Almeida. Give him three men to help and tell him to find a convoy going back over the Coa. Understand?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'And we'll split up tonight. I'll go ahead with the Riflemen; you follow. You'll find us in the graveyard at Casatejada.'

  Knowles scratched his head. 'You reckon the gold's in there, sir?'

  Sharpe nodded. 'Maybe. I want to look, anyway.' He grinned at the Lieutenant, infecting him with his enthusiasm. 'Arrange that, Robert; then let me know if there are any problems.'

  Night dropped swiftly and the darkness seemed to Sharpe to be doubly thick. The moon was hidden behind looming clouds that slowly, infinitely slowly, blotted out the stars, and a small, chill breeze, that came from the north reminded Sharpe that the weather had to break. Let it not be tonight, he thought, for rain would slow them, make the difficult journey even more hazardous, and he needed to be in Casatejada while the darkness still reigned. To his surprise, his pleasure, the news that they were not going on to Almeida seemed to excite the men. They grinned at him, muttered that he was a bastard, but there was a restlessness about the Company that spoke of a need to fulfil their job. Knowles came back, a shadow in the darkness.

  'Any problems?'

  'Only Read, sir. Wants a paper.'

  Sharpe laughed. Sergeant Read was as fussy as a broody hen and doubtless thought that his small band was in more danger from their own side than from the French. If the provosts found a small group wandering away from their battalion they could assume they had found deserters and get out their long ropes. Sharpe scribbled with a pencil on a page from Knowles's notebook, not knowing in the darkness if the words were even legible. 'Give him that.' Knowles did not leave and Sharpe could hear him moving restlessly. 'What is it?'

  The Lieutenant's voice was low, worried. 'Do you know the gold is there, sir?'

  'You know I don't.'

  There was a pause; Knowles shifted from foot to foot. 'It's a risk, sir.'

  'How?' Sharpe knew that his Lieutenant was not lacking in courage.

  'I thought Major Kearsey ordered you back to the army, sir. If he comes back and finds us poking round Casatejada he won't exactly be happy. And El Catolico won't welcome us with open arms. And…' His voice trailed away.

  'And what?'

  'Well, sir.' Knowles crouched down so he was closer to Sharpe, his voice even lower. 'Everyone knows you were in trouble with the General after those provosts, sir. If Kearsey complains about you, sir, well…' He ran out of words again.

  'I could be in even more trouble, yes?'

  'Yes, sir. And it's not just that.' His words suddenly tumbled out as if he had been storing the speech for days, or even weeks. 'We all know the gazette hasn't come through, sir, and it's so unfair! Just because you were once a Private they seem to be doing nothing, and the Eagle counts for nothing.'

  'No, no, no.' Sharpe stopped the flow. He was embarrassed, touched, even surprised. 'The army isn't unfair, just slow.'

  He did not believe that himself, but if he let himself express his real thoughts, then the bitterness would show. He remembered the elation of the moment, a year before, when the General had gazetted him a Captain, but since then there had been only silence from the Horse Guards. He wondered whether the gazette had already been refused and no one dared tell him; that had happened before and battalion commanders had made up the pay themselves. Damn the army, damn the promotion system. He looked at Knowles.

  'How long have you been a Lieutenant?'

  'Two years and nine months, sir.' Sharpe was hardly surprised that the answer was given so fully and so quickly. Most Lieutenants counted the days till they had three years' seniority. 'So you'll be a Captain by Christmas?'

  Knowles sounded embarrassed. 'My father's paying, sir. He promised me the money after Talavera.'

  'You deserve it.' Sharpe felt the pang of jealousy. He could never afford fifteen hundred pounds for a Captaincy, and Knowles was lucky in his father. Sharpe laughed, disguising his mood. 'If my gazette fails, Robert, then by Christmas we'll have changed places!' He stood up, looked across the dark valley. 'Time to go. God knows how we find the way. But good luck.'

  A thousand miles away, north and east, a small man with an untidy hank of hair and an insatiable appetite for work looked at the pile of papers he had dealt with and grunted approvingly as he re-read the last paragraphs of the latest despatch from Marshal Andre Massena. He wondered if the Marshal, whom he himself had made into the Prince of Essling, was losing his touch. The British army was so small - the newspapers from London said a mere twenty-three thousand with twenty-two thousand Portuguese allies – while the French armies were so big, and Massena seemed to be taking the devil of a long time. But the despatch said that he was going forward, into Portugal, and soon the British would have their backs to the sea and would face nothing but terror, shame, and defeat. The small man yawned. He knew everything that happened in his huge Empire, even that the Prince of Essling had taken a young woman to the war to keep his bed warm at night, but he would be forgiven. A man needed that, especially as the years went on, and victory forgave all. He laughed out loud, startling a servant and flickering the candles, as he remembered a secret agent's report that said Massena's mistress was disguised in Hussar uniform. But what did that matter? The Empire was safe and the small man went to his bed, to his Princess, in utter ignorance of the Company that marched through his territory in the hope of giving him many sleepless nights in the months to come.

  Chapter 12

  It was a nightmare journey and only Hagman's instincts, honed by years of poaching dark countryside, took the Riflemen safely back over the paths where they had been escorted earlier in the day. Sharpe wondered how Knowles, with the larger number of men, was surviving, but there were poachers not unlike Hagman in the Redcoats and there was no point in worrying. The Riflemen made good time, cursing through the rocks, stumbling on the streambeds, going faster than the less well-trained men of the South Essex could travel. The Rifles were the elite of the army, the best trained, the best equipped, the finest infantry of an army which boasted the best foot soldiers in the world, but none of their training, their vaunted self-reliance, had prepared them for the job of sneaking into Casatejada under the noses of suspicious Partisans.

  Perversely the moon made an appearance as the green-jacketed men reached the final crest before the village. It sailed clear of the ragged cloud-edge and showed the village, innocent and silent, in the centre of the valley. The men dropped to the ground, pushed their rifles forward, but nothing moved in the moonlight except the barley rippling in the breeze and the maize clattering on its long stalks. Sharpe stared at the village, reliving the hopelessness of trying to get near it unseen, and tonight there would be no hope of persuading its defenders to light fires, dazzle themselves, and thus give the attackers an advantage. He stood up. 'Come on.'

  They made a wide circuit, round the
southern end of the valley, moving fast in the moonlight and hoping that if their shadowed bodies were dimly seen against the dark background of the hills the sentries in the village would think that it was one of the wolf-packs that ran in the uplands. Twice on the journey the Riflemen had heard the wolves near them, once seen a ragged profile on a crest, but they had not been troubled. The cemetery was on the eastern side of the street and the Riflemen had to circle the village so they could approach from the darkness. Sharpe kept looking towards the east, fearing the first sliver of dawn, fearing the approach to the village. 'Down!'

  They dropped again, panting, in a field of half-cut barley that the French had trampled with their horses, criss-crossing the field so that, in the darkness, it was made of fantastic patterns and strangely shadowed curves. 'Come on.' They wriggled forward, the hermitage a quarter-mile away with its bell-tower staring at them, picking paths through the stalks where the crop had been flattened and where standing clumps gave them cover. No one spoke; each man knew his job, and each knew, too, that the Spaniards, who talked to one another with white stones on hilltops, could have watched them for the last five miles. Yet why should they be suspicious? Sharpe was haunted by the question, by the possible answers, by the knife-edge on which he had balanced the Company.

  Two hundred yards to go and he stopped, raised a hand, and turned to Hagman. 'All right?'

  The man nodded, grinned his toothless grin. 'Perfect, sir.'

  Sharpe looked at Harper. 'Come on.'

  Now it was just the two of them, creeping forward into the growing stench of the manure, listening for the tiny sounds that could betray an alert sentry. The barley, crushed and tortuous, grew almost to the wall of the graveyard, but as they twisted their way closer to the high white wall Sharpe knew they could not hope to climb it unseen. He let Harper wriggle alongside and put his mouth close to the Sergeant's ear.

  'You see the bell-tower?"

  Harper nodded.

  'There has to be someone up there. We can't cross here. We'll be seen.'

  The Sergeant put out a hand and curved it to the left. Sharpe nodded. 'Come on.'

  The bell-tower, with its arches facing the four points of the compass, was the most obvious sentry post in the village. Sharpe could see nothing in the shadowed space at the top of the tower, but he knew a man was there, and as they crawled, the stalks of the barley deafening, he felt like a small animal creeping towards a trap. They reached the corner of the cemetery, stood against the wall with a false sense of relief, and then, hidden from the tower, edged slowly down its left-hand side towards the gate, the bushes, and the rank heap of manure.

  Nothing stirred. It was as if Casatejada were deserted, and for a moment Sharpe let his mind dwell on the luxurious possibility that El Catolico had ridden with all his followers and that the village truly was empty. Then he remembered Ramon, who could not yet ride, and his sister, Teresa, who had stayed to look after him, and he knew that the village was lived in, was guarded, yet somehow they had reached the gate into the cemetery and no one had shouted, no one had clicked back the lock of a musket, and still the village had the blank look of a sleeping community. Sharpe peered through the wrought-iron gate. The graves were lit by the moon. It was quiet, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and suddenly the idea of sixteen thousand gold coins hidden in the grave was ridiculous. He twitched Harper's elbow, forcing the Sergeant into the thick shadow of the bushes by the gate.

  'I don't like it,' he whispered. There was no point in trying to dissect his fears; a soldier had to trust instinct and the moment he tried to pin it down it would vanish like smoke in a mist. 'You stay here. I'll go in. If anyone interferes with me use that damned gun.'

  Patrick Harper nodded. He had unslung the seven-barrelled gun and he pulled back the flint, slowly and evenly, so that the heavily greased pawl slid silently into place. The Sergeant shared his officer's apprehension, though whether it was the sight of the empty graveyard in the thin moonlight or that their enemies mockingly watched them he was not sure. He watched Sharpe jump for the top of the wall, not trusting the hinges of the gate, and then he looked into the hills and saw the faintest edge on the horizon, the harbinger of dawn, and felt a chill breeze disturb the thick stench of the manure. He heard Sharpe's scabbard scrape on the stones. There was a thump as he hit the ground; then Harper was alone, in the thick cover of the bush, and gripping the stock of the killer gun.

  Sharpe crouched inside the graveyard, his ears ringing with the noise he had made as he dropped over the wall. He had been a fool! He should have slipped his sword and rifle through the bars of the gate, but he had not thought of it, and he had made a noise like a lover fleeing from a returning husband as he slithered and bumped his way over the high stone barrier. But nothing moved; nothing sounded except a curious deep background sighing where the wind passed through the bell-tower and caressed the huge metal instrument. Across the graveyard he could see the wall sepulchres, little boxes in the thin light, and he thought of the putrefaction dripping down the mortar, and the bodies that lay in this yard, and then he was on his belly and crawling between the graves towards the spot, across the yard, where the fresh grave waited for him. He could be seen, he knew, from the bell-tower as he made his way across, but the die was cast, there was no going back, and he could only hope that the man in the tower was sleeping, his head on his chest, while the enemy sneaked in beneath. His belt buckle, crossbelt, and buttons all snagged on the dry earth as he crawled towards the heap of earth. The grave did look suspicious, he decided, higher than the others and somehow more neatly sculptured into a squared ridge of pale soil. He had smeared his face with a mixture of dirt and spittle, but he dared not look up, much as he wanted to, to see if a face was leaning out of the archway.

  In the stillness, he cursed his stupidity. Should he have marched straight in, bayonets fixed, and insisted on digging up the grave? If he had been certain he could have done that, instead of coming like a thief in the night, but nothing was certain. A suspicion, that was all, a flimsy, damned suspicion that was buttressed by nothing more than Patrick Harper's insistence that a man would not be buried on a Sunday. He suddenly remembered that the Sergeant's middle name was Augustine and he grinned, senselessly, as at last he came up beside the object he had marched so far and hard to explore.

  Nothing moved. The bell moaned gently, but there were no other sounds. It would have been easy to think that he was utterly alone, completely unseen, but his instinct was still sending danger signals that he could do nothing about. He began to dig, awkwardly, lying flat with a crooked arm and dragging back handfuls of earth from the grave. It was harder than he had thought. Every handful of dry earth and flinty stone brought down a miniature landslide from the top of the ridge, and each time it seemed that the noise was deafening, but he dared do nothing except keep scrabbling at the grave while the muscles of his arm, bent unnaturally, shrieked with agony. Once he thought he heard a noise, a foot on stone, but when he froze there was nothing. He looked up, saw the tinge of grey light that limited his time, and he dug deeper, forcing his hand into the soil and trying to make a tunnel down to whatever was buried in this hard, shallow land. The light was improving, disastrously, and what before had been mere humped shadows in the moonlight could now be seen as distinct, ornate gravestones. He could even read the writing on the nearest stone – Maria Uracca – and the carved angel that guarded her rest seemed to leer at him in the thin light. He risked a look upwards, throwing caution away, but there was nothing to be seen in the arched opening at the top of the tower, except for the grey, dim shape of the bell. He pushed his hand in harder, still meeting nothing but soil and stone, and enlarged the crater he had made, which looked as if a dog had been scrabbling for a bone. Then there was a voice, clear and distinct, somewhere in the village, and he knew there was no more time. The voice had not sounded alarmed, just someone getting up, but there was no point in trying to hide any more. He knelt up and used both hands, pulling back the so
il, delving down to whatever was in the grave. And there it was. Sackcloth. He scraped more frantically, the soil caving in on the patch of sacking, and his mind whipped ahead to the thought of gold coins in thin sacks, buried six inches below the surface. He cleared the patch again, could see the sacking clearly, and he thrust at it with stiff fingers, splitting it, forcing his hand into the coins. But there were no coins. Just the filthy, desperate, rotten smell of corpse, and a horrifying slime on his fingers, a gagging in his throat, and he knew instantly that this body, shrouded in plain, brown cloth, was not Captain Hardy but El Catolico's servant, who, for a reason he would never know, had been undisturbed by the marauding Frenchmen. Failure, utter, complete, total failure, the end of a thousand hopes, and fingers covered in rotting tissue. And no gold.

  'Good morning.' The voice was mocking, even and steady, and Sharpe spun round to see El Catolico standing in the door of the hermitage. The Spanish officer was in shadow, but there was no mistaking the long uniform cuffs beneath the grey cloak, the slim sword, or the silken voice. 'Good morning, Captain Sharpe. Were you hungry?'

  Sharpe stood up, conscious of the filth on his uniform. He bent down to pick up his rifle, but checked as he saw a musket barrel point at him from behind El Catolico, and suddenly, on quiet feet, a dozen men were in a line either side of the Spaniard who still looked at Sharpe with a mocking eye.

  'Do you often dig up corpses, Captain Sharpe?'

  There was nothing to say. He let the rifle stay on the ground and straightened up.

  'I asked if you often dug up corpses, Captain.'

  The tall man walked a few more feet into the cemetery. Sharpe wiped the filth from his right hand on his overall trousers. Why the devil had Harper not appeared? Had they found him, too? Sharpe had heard nothing, no footsteps, no creaking door, but he had been scraping at the soil and the noise had been enough to cover El Catolico's quiet approach to the back door of the hermitage.