"Ma'am," Sharpe said for want of anything else to say.
"You break into my boathouse?" she said in a grating voice. "You assault my servant? If the world were respectable you would be whipped. My husband would have whipped you."
"Your husband, ma'am?"
"He was the Marquis de Cardenas and he had the misfortune to be ambassador to the Court of St. James for eleven sad years. We lived in London. A horrid city. A vile city. Why did you attack my gardener?"
"Because he attacked me, ma'am."
"He says not."
"If the world were a respectable place, ma'am, then an officer's word would be preferred to a servant's."
"You impudent puppy! I feed you, I shelter you, and you reward me with barbarism and lies. Now you wish to steal my son's boat?"
"Borrow it, ma'am."
"You can't," she snapped. "It belongs to my son."
"He's here, ma'am?"
"He is not, nor should you be. What you will do is march away from here once the doctor has seen your brigadier. You may take the crutches, nothing else."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am," she mimicked him, "so humble." A bell sounded deep in the house and she turned away. "El médico," she muttered.
Private Geoghegan appeared then, running up from the kitchen garden. "Sir," he panted, "there are men there."
"Men where?"
"Boathouse, sir. A dozen of them. All got guns. I think they came from the town, sir. Sergeant Noolan told me to tell you and ask what's to be done, sir?"
"They're guarding the boat?"
"That's it, sir, that's just what they're doing. They're stopping us getting to the boathouse, sir. Just that, sir. Jesus, what was that?"
The brigadier had given a sudden yelp, presumably as the doctor explored the makeshift splint. "Tell Sergeant Noolan," Sharpe said, "that's he's to do nothing. Just watch the men and make sure they don't take the boat away."
"Not to take the boat away, sir. And if they try?"
"You bloody stop them. You fix swords"—he paused, then corrected himself because only the rifles talked about fixing swords—"you fix bayonets and you walk slowly toward them and you point the bayonets at their crotches and they'll run."
"Aye, sir, yes, sir," Geoghegan grinned. "But really, sir, we're to do nothing else?"
"It's usually best."
"Oh, the poor man!" Geoghegan glanced at the door. "And if he'd left it alone it would have been fine. Thank you, sir."
Sharpe swore silently when Geoghegan was gone. It had all seemed so simple when he had discovered the boat, but he should have known nothing was ever that easy. And if the Marquesa had summoned men from the town, then there was a chance of bloodshed, and though Sharpe had no doubt that his soldiers would brush the townsmen away, he also feared that he would take two or three more casualties. "Bloody hell," he said aloud, and, because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the kitchen and rousted Harris from the table. "You're to stand outside the brigadier's room," he told him, "and let me know when the doctor's finished."
He went up to the tower where Harper still stood guard. "Nothing moving, sir," Harper said, "except I thought I saw a horseman up there a half hour ago"—he pointed to the northern heights—"but he's gone."
"I thought I saw the same thing."
"He's not there now, sir."
"We're just waiting for the doctor to finish with the brigadier," Sharpe said, "then we'll go." He said nothing about the men guarding the boathouse. He would deal with them when the time came. "That's a sour old bitch who lives here," he said.
"The Marquesa?"
"A shriveled old bitch. She bloody hit me!"
"There's some good in the woman then?" Harper suggested and, when Sharpe glowered, hurried on. "It's funny, though, isn't it, that the frogs haven't ruined this place? I mean there's food enough here for a battalion! And their foraging parties must have found this place months ago."
"She's made her peace with the bloody frogs," Sharpe said. "She probably sells them food and they leave her alone. She's not on our side, that's for sure. She hates us."
"So has she told the Crapauds we're here?"
"That worries me," Sharpe said. "She might have told them because she's a wicked old bitch, that's what she is." He gazed down the road. Something felt wrong. Everything was too peaceful. Perhaps, he thought, it was the news that the Marquesa was trying to protect the boat that had unsettled him, and the thought of a boat reminded him of what Sergeant Noolan had told the brigadier that morning. The French had crossed the river. Either they had fashioned a usable boat out of one of the undamaged pontoons, or else they had kept a boat in Fort Josephine, but if the French had a boat, any boat, then this road was not their only approach. "Bloody hell," he said softly.
"What, sir?"
"They're coming downriver."
"There's that fellow again," Slattery said, pointing to the northern hill where, silhouetted against the sky, the horseman had reappeared. The man was standing in his stirrups now and waving his arms extravagantly.
"Let's go!" Sharpe said.
The horseman must have been watching them all day, but his job was not just to watch, but to tell Colonel Vandal when the forces on the river were close to the house. Then the rest of the 8th would advance. Trapped, Sharpe thought. Some Frenchmen were coming by boat, others by road, and he was between them and then he was running down the crumbling staircase and shouting for the rest of his men who were lolling outside the kitchen to get down to the river. "We'll fetch the brigadier!" he told Harper.
The Marquesa was in the brigadier's room, watching as the doctor wrapped a bandage about a new splint that replaced Sharpe's makeshift contraption. She saw the alarm on Sharpe's face and gave a cackle. "So the French are coming," she taunted him, "the French are coming."
"We're going, sir," Sharpe said, ignoring her.
"He can't finish this?" The brigadier gestured at the half-wrapped bandage.
"We're going!" Sharpe insisted. "Sergeant!"
Harper pushed the doctor aside and lifted the brigadier. "My saber!" the brigadier protested. "The crutches!"
"Out!" Sharpe ordered.
"My saber!"
"The French are coming!" the Marquesa mocked.
"You sent for them, you sour old bitch," Sharpe said, and he was tempted to hammer her malevolent face, but instead went outside where Harper had unceremoniously dumped Moon into the wheelbarrow.
"My saber!" the brigadier pleaded.
"Slattery, push the barrow," Sharpe said. "Pat, get that volley gun ready." The seven-barrel gun, more than anything, would frighten the men guarding the boat. "Hurry!" he shouted.
Moon was still complaining about his lost saber, but Sharpe had no time for the man. He ran ahead with Harper, through the bushes. Then he was in the kitchen garden and he could see the knot of townsmen standing guard on the boathouse. "Sergeant Noolan!"
"Sir!" That was Harris. "There, sir."
Bloody hell. Two pontoons, crammed with French troops, drifting downstream. "Shoot at them, Harris! Sergeant Noolan!"
"Sir?"
"Forward march." Sharpe joined the small rank of Connaught men. They were outnumbered by the townsmen, but the redcoats had bayonets and Harper had joined them with his volley gun. Rifles fired from the upstream bank and French muskets cracked from the pontoons. A bullet struck the boathouse roof and the townsmen flinched. "Váyase," Sharpe said, hoping his Spanish was understandable, "yo le mataré."
"What does that mean, sir?" Sergeant Noolan asked.
"Go away or we kill them."
Another French musket ball hit the boathouse and it was that, more perhaps than the threat of the advancing bayonets, that took the last shred of courage from the civilians. They fled, and Sharpe breathed a sigh of relief. Slattery arrived, pushing the brigadier, as Sharpe hauled the door open. "Get the brigadier in the boat!" he told Slattery, then ran to where Harris and three other riflemen were crouching by the bank. The two
French boats, both salvaged pontoons being driven by crude paddles, were coming fast and he put the rifle to his shoulder, cocked it, and fired. The smoke hid the nearest French boat. He started to reload, then decided there was no time. "To the boat!" he called, and he ran back with the other riflemen. They threw themselves into the precious boat. Noolan had already cut the mooring lines and they shoved the boat out into the stream as they untangled the oars. A volley came from the French boats and one of Noolan's men gave a grunt and fell sideways. Other musket balls thumped into the gunwales. The brigadier was in the bows. Men were scrambling into thwarts, but Harper already had two of the long oars in their rowlocks and, standing up, was hauling on the shafts. The current caught them and turned them downstream. Another shot came from the nearest French boat and Sharpe waded over the men amidships and snatched up Harper's volley gun. He fired it at the French pontoon and the huge noise of the gun echoed back from the Portuguese hills as at last they began to outstrip their pursuers.
"Jesus Christ," Sharpe said in pure relief for their narrow escape.
"I think he's dying, sir," Noolan said.
"Who?"
"Conor, poor boy." The man who had been shot was coughing up blood that frothed pink at his lips.
"You left my saber!" Moon complained.
"Sorry about that, sir."
"It was one of Bennett's best!"
"I said I'm sorry, sir."
"And there was dung in that wheelbarrow."
Sharpe just looked into the brigadier's eyes and said nothing. The brigadier gave way first. "Did well to get away," he said grudgingly.
Sharpe turned to the men on the benches. "Geoghegan? Tie up the brigadier's splint. Well done, lads! Well done. That was a bit too close."
They were out of musket range now and the two ponderous French pontoons had given up the chase and turned for the bank. But ahead of them, where the smaller river joined the Guadiana, a knot of French horsemen appeared. Sharpe guessed they were the 8th's officers who had galloped ahead of the battalion. So now those men must watch their prey vanish downriver, but then he saw that some of the horsemen had muskets and he turned toward the stern. "Steer away from the bank!" he told Noolan who had taken the tiller ropes.
Sharpe reloaded the rifle. He could see that four of the horsemen had dismounted and were kneeling at the river's edge, aiming their muskets. The range was close, no more than thirty yards. "Rifles!" he called. He aimed his own. He saw Vandal. The French colonel was one of the officers kneeling by the river. He had a musket at his shoulder and he seemed to be aiming directly at Sharpe. You bastard, Sharpe thought, and he shifted the rifle, pointing it straight at Vandal's chest. The boat lurched, his aim wandered, he corrected it, and now he would teach the bastard the advantages of a rifle. He started to pull the trigger, keeping the foresight dead on the Frenchman's chest, and just then he saw the smoke billow from the musket muzzles and there was an instant when his whole head seemed filled with light, a searing white light that turned bloodred. There was pain like a lightning strike in his brain and then, like blood congealing on a corpse, the light went black and he could see and feel nothing at all. Nothing.
CHAPTER 3
T WO MEN, BOTH TALL, walked side by side on Cádiz's ramparts. Those defenses were huge, ringing the city to protect it against enemies and the sea. The firestep facing the bay was wide, so wide that three coaches and horses could travel abreast, and it was a popular place for folk to take the air, but no one disturbed the two men. Three of the taller man's servants walked ahead to part the crowds, and three more walked on either side and still more walked behind to prevent any stranger disturbing their master.
The taller man, and he was very tall, was dressed in the uniform of a Spanish admiral. He had one white silk stocking, red knee breeches, a red sash, and a dark blue tailcoat with an elaborate red collar trimmed with gold lace. His straight sword was scabbarded in black fishskin and had a hilt of gold. His face was drawn, distinguished, and aloof, a face etched by pain and made harsh by disappointment. The admiral's left calf and foot were missing, so his lower leg was made of ebony, as was the gold-topped cane he used to help him walk.
His companion was Father Salvador Montseny. The priest was in a cassock and had a silver crucifix hanging on his breast. The admiral had been his companion in imprisonment in England after Trafalgar and sometimes, if they did not wish to be understood by nearby folk, they spoke English together. Not today. "So the girl confessed to you?" the admiral asked, amused.
"She makes confession once a year," Montseny said, "on her saint's day. January thirteenth."
"She is called Veronica?"
"Caterina Veronica Blazquez," Montseny said, "and God brought her to me. There were seven other priests hearing confession in the cathedral that day, but she was guided to me."
"So you killed her pimp, then you kill the Englishman and his servants. I trust God will forgive you for that, Father."
Montseny had no doubts about God's opinions. "What God wants, my lord, is a holy and a powerful Spain. He wants our flag spread across South America, he wants a Catholic king in Madrid, and he wants his glory to be reflected in our people. I do God's work."
"Do you enjoy it?"
"Yes."
"Good," the admiral said, then paused beside a cannon that faced the bay. "I need more money," he said.
"You will have it, my lord."
"Money," the admiral said in a tone of disgust. He was the Marquis de Cardenas. He had been born to money, and he had made more money, but there was never enough money. He tapped the cannon with the tip of his cane. "I need money for bribes," he said sourly, "because there is no courage in these men. They are lawyers, Father. Lawyers and politicians. They are scum." The scum of whom the admiral spoke were the deputies to the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, which now met in Cádiz where its chief business was to construct a new constitution for Spain. Some men, the liberales, wanted a Spain governed by the Cortes, a Spain in which citizens would have a say in their own destiny and such men spoke of liberty and democracy and the admiral hated them. He wanted a Spain like the old Spain, a Spain led by king and church, a Spain devoted to God and to glory. He wanted a Spain free of foreigners, a Spain without Frenchmen and without Britons, and to get it he would have to bribe members of the Cortes and he would have to make an offer to the French emperor. Leave Spain, the offer would say, and we shall help you conquer the British in Portugal. It was an offer, the admiral knew, that the French would accept because Napoleon was desperate. He wanted an end to the war in Spain. To the world's eyes it looked as if the French had won. They had occupied Madrid and taken Seville so that now the Spanish government, such as it was, clung to the land's edge at Cádiz. Yet to hold Spain meant keeping hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen in fortresses, and whenever those men left their walls they were harried by partisans. If Bonaparte could make peace with an amenable Spanish government then those garrisons would be freed to fight elsewhere.
"How much money do you need?" Montseny asked.
"With ten thousand dollars," the admiral said, "I can buy the Cortes." He watched a British frigate sail past the end of the long mole that protected Cádiz's harbor from the open Atlantic. He saw the great ensign ripple at the frigate's stern and felt a pulse of pure loathing. He had watched Nelson's ships sail toward him off Cape Trafalgar. He had breathed the powder smoke and listened to the screams of men dying aboard his ship. He had been felled by a piece of grapeshot that had shattered his left leg, but the admiral had stayed on the quarterdeck, shouting at his men to fight, to kill, to resist. Then he had watched as a crowd of yelling British sailors, ugly as apes, swarmed across his deck, and he had wept when Spain's ensign was lowered and the British flag hoisted. He had surrendered his sword, and then been a prisoner in England, and now he was the limping admiral of a broken country that had no battle fleet. He hated the British. "But the English," he said, still watching the frigate, "will never pay ten thousand dollars for the letters."
r /> "I think they will pay a great deal," Father Montseny said, "if we frighten them."
"How?"
"I shall publish one letter. I shall change it, of course. And the implicit threat will be that we shall publish them all." Father Montseny paused, giving the admiral time to object to his proposal, but the admiral stayed silent. "I need a writer to make the changes," Montseny went on.
"A writer?" the admiral asked in a sour tone. "Why can't you make the changes yourself?"
"I can," Montseny said, "but once the letters are changed, the English will proclaim them forgeries. We cannot present the originals to anyone, because the originals will prove the English correct. So we must make new copies, in English, in an English hand, which we shall claim as the originals. I need a man who can write perfect English. My English is good, but not good enough." He fingered his crucifix, thinking. "The new letters need only persuade the Cortes, and most deputies will want to believe them, but the changes must still be convincing. The grammar, the spelling, must all be accurate. So I need a writer who can achieve that."
The admiral made a dismissive gesture. "I know a man. A horrid creature. He writes well, though, and has a passion for English books. He'll do, but how do you publish the letters?"
"El Correo de Cádiz," Father Montseny said, naming the one newspaper that opposed the liberales. "I shall print one letter and I shall say in it that the English plan to take Cádiz and make it a second Gibraltar. The English will deny it, of course, but we will have a new letter with a forged signature."
"They'll do more than make denials," the admiral said vigorously, "they'll persuade the Regency to close the paper down!" The Regency was the council which ruled what was left of Spain, and ruled it with the help of British gold, which was why they were eager to keep the British friendly. A new constitution, though, could mean a new Regency, one which the admiral could lead.
"The Regency will be powerless if the letter is unsigned," Montseny pointed out dryly. "The English will not dare own to its authorship, will they? And rumor can do its work for us. Within a day all Cádiz will know that their ambassador wrote the letter."