introduction to the French government. And it was there, too, that he met a passionate priest called Father Mallon. Mallon was more of a soldier than a priest and he was doing his best to raise a regiment of volunteers to fight the British, but he wasn't having a whole lot of success so he threw his lot in with Tone instead. Tone was a Protestant, wasn't he? And he never did have much fondness for priests, but he liked Mallon well enough because Mallon was an Irish patriot before he was a priest. And I think Mallon became Tone's friend as well, for he stayed with Tone every step of the way after that first meeting in Philadelphia. He went to Paris with Tone, raised the volunteers with Tone, then sailed to Ireland with Tone. Sailed all the way into Lough Swilly. That was in 1798, Father, in case you'd forgotten, and no one has seen Mallon from that day to this. Poor Tone was captured and the redcoats were all over Ireland looking for Father Mallon, but there's not been a sight nor smell of the man. Are you sure you won't have a pinch of snuff? It's Irish Blackguard and hard to come by.'
'I would rather have a cigar, if you have one,' Sarsfield said calmly.
'I don't, Father, but you should try the snuff one day. It's a grand specific against the fever, or so my mother always said. Now where was I? Oh yes, with poor Father Mallon on the run from the British. It's my belief he got back to France, and I think from there he was sent to Spain. The French couldn't use him against the English, at least not until the English had forgotten the events of 98, but Mallon must have been useful in Spain. I suspect he met the old Lady Kiely in Madrid. I hear she was a fierce old witch! Lived for the church and for Ireland, even though she saw too much of the one and had never seen the other. D'you think Mallon used her patronage as he spied on the Spanish for Bonaparte? I suspect so, but then the French took over the Spanish throne and someone must have been wondering where Father Mallon could be more usefully employed, and I suspect Father Mallon pleaded with his French masters to be employed against the real enemy. After all, who among the British would remember Father Mallon from 98? His hair will be white by now, he'll be a changed man. Maybe he's put on weight like me.' Hogan patted his belly and smiled.
Father Sarsfield frowned at the scapular. He seemed surprised that he was still holding the vestment and so he carefully stowed it in the haversack slung from his shoulder, then just as carefully brought out a small pistol. 'Father Mallon might be a changed man,' he said as he opened the frizzen to check that the gun was primed, 'but I would like to think that if he was still alive he would be a patriot.'
'I imagine he is,' Hogan said, apparently unworried by the pistol. 'A man like Mallon? His loyalty won't change as much as his hair and belly.'
Sarsfield frowned at Hogan. 'And you're not a patriot, Major?'
'I like to think so.'
'Yet you fight for Britain.'
Hogan shrugged. The priest's pistol was loaded and primed, but for the moment it hung loose in Sarsfield's hand. Hogan had played a game with the priest, a game he had expected to win, but this proof of his victory was not giving the Major any pleasure. Indeed, as the realization of his triumph sank in, Hogan's mood became ever bleaker. 'I worry about allegiance,' Hogan said, 'I surely do. I lie awake sometimes and wonder whether I'm right in thinking that what's best for Ireland is to be a part of Britain, but I do know one thing, Father, which is that I don't want to be ruled by Bonaparte. I think maybe I'm not so brave a man as Wolfe Tone, but nor did I ever agree with his ideas. You do, Father, and I salute you for it, but that isn't why you're going to have to die. ' The reason you're going to have to die, Father, is not because you fight for Ireland, but because you fight for Napoleon. The distinction is fatal.'
Sarsfield smiled. '
The sound of the shot pounded across the orchard. The two gravediggers jumped in terror as smoke drifted out from the hedge where the killer had been concealed just twenty paces from where Hogan and Sarsfield had been standing. The priest was now lying on the mound of excavated soil where his body jerked twice and then, with a sigh, lay still.
Sharpe stood up from behind the hedge and crossed to the grave to see that his bullet had gone plumb where he had aimed it, straight through the dead man's heart. He stared down at the, priest, noting how dark the blood looked on the soutane's cloth. A fly had already settled there. 'I liked him,' he told Hogan.
'It's allowed, Richard,' Hogan said. The Major was upset and pale, so pale that for a moment he looked as if he might be sick. 'One of mankind's higher authorities enjoins us to love our enemies and He said nothing about them ceasing to be enemies just because we love them. Nor can I recall any specific injunction in Holy Scripture against shooting our enemies through the heart.' Hogan paused and suddenly all his usual flippancy seemed to drain out of him. 'I liked him too,' he said simply.
'But he was going to shoot you,' Sharpe said. Hogan, talking privately with Sharpe on their way to the burial, had warned the rifleman what might happen and Sharpe, disbelieving the prediction, had nevertheless watched it happen and then done his part.
'He deserved a better death,' Hogan said, then he pushed the corpse with his foot and thus toppled it into the grave. The priest's body landed awkwardly so that it seemed as if he was sitting on the shrouded head of Kiely's corpse. Hogan tossed the counterfeit newspaper after the body, then took a small round box from his pocket. 'Shooting Sarsfield doesn't fetch you any favours, Richard,' Hogan said sternly as he prised the lid off the box. 'Let's just say I now forgive you for letting Juanita go. That damage has been contained. But you still might need to be sacrificed for the happiness of Spain.'
'Yes, sir,' Sharpe said resentfully.
Hogan caught the resentment in the rifleman's voice. 'Of course life isn't fair, Richard. Ask him.' He nodded down at the dead, white-haired priest then sprinkled the contents of his small box onto the corpse's faded and bloodied soutane.
'What's that?' Sharpe asked.
'Just soil, Richard, just soil. Nothing important.' Hogan tossed the empty pillbox onto the two bodies, then summoned the grave-diggers. 'He was a Frenchman,' he told them in Portuguese, certain that such an explanation would make them sympathize with the murder they had just witnessed. He gave each man a coin, then watched as the double grave was filled with earth.
Hogan walked back with Sharpe towards Fuentes de Onoro. 'Where's Patrick?' the Major asked.
'I told him to wait in Vilar Formoso.'
'At an inn?'
'Aye. The one where I first met Runciman.'
'Good. I need to get drunk, Richard.' Hogan looked bleak, almost as if he might weep. 'One less witness of your confession in San Isidro, Richard,' he said.
'That's not why I did it, Major,' Sharpe protested.
'You did nothing, Richard, absolutely nothing.' Hogan spoke fiercely. 'What happened in that orchard never happened. You saw nothing, heard nothing, did nothing. Father Sarsfield is alive, God knows where, and his disappearance will become a mystery that will never be explained. Or perhaps the truth is that Father Sarsfield never even existed, Richard, in which case you can't possibly have killed him, can you? So say no more about it, not a word.' He sniffed, then looked ahead at the blue evening sky which was unbruised by any gunsmoke. 'The French have given us a day of peace, Richard, so we shall celebrate by getting bloody drunk. And tomorrow, God help us sinners both, we'll bloody fight.'
The sun sank behind layers of western cloud so that the sky seemed shot with glory. For a time the shadows of the British guns reached monstrously across the plain as they stretched towards the oaks and the French army and it was then, in the dying minutes of the full light, that Sharpe rested his telescope on the chill barrel of a nine-pounder gun and trained the glass across the low-lying land until he could see the enemy soldiers around their cooking fires. It was not the first time that day he had searched the enemy lines through the glass. All morning he had wandered restlessly between the ammunition park and the gun line where he had stared fixedly at the enemy and now, back from Vilar Formoso with a sour belly and a head thick with too much wine, he looked once again into Massйna's lines.
'They won't come now,' a gunner lieutenant said, thinking that the rifle Captain feared a dusk assault. 'Froggies don't like fighting at night.'
'No,' Sharpe agreed, 'they won't come now,' but he kept his eye to the telescope as he inched it along the shadowed line of trees and fires and men. And then, suddenly, he checked the glass.
