whistled harmlessly past him. Sailors thrust the lighter off the bank and the ebbing tide took it out toward the bay. The fire rafts were now a huge incandescent blaze beneath a thundercloud of smoke. The reflections of their flames rippled on the water, then were broken by a round shot that hurled up a great splash to soak men on the two lighters leaving the northern bank. The fifth lighter was in mid-creek, its sailors heaving on their oars to escape the gunfire.
“Row!” a naval officer shouted in Sharpe’s boat. “Row!”
Three guns fired at once from the San Luis and Sharpe heard a shot rumble overhead. Musket fire flickered in the marsh and some redcoats stood up in the belly of the lighter and fired back. “Hold your fire!” Gough shouted.
“Row!” the naval officer called again.
“Not quite the orderly withdrawal I anticipated,” Sir Thomas said. A shell, fuse whipping the dark with its thread of frantic red light, slapped into the creek. “Is that you, Sharpe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re wet, man.”
“Fell in the water, sir.”
“You’ll catch your death! Strip off. Take my cloak. How’s your head? I forgot you were wounded. I should never have asked you to come.”
Two more guns fired, then two more from the San Jose Fort to the north, but every pull of the great oars took the lighters away from the flames and into the blackness of the bay. Wounded men moaned in the lighters’ holds. Other men talked excitedly, and Gough allowed it. “What’s your butcher’s bill, Hugh?” Sir Thomas asked the Irishman.
“Three men dead, sir,” Gough said, “and eight wounded.”
“But a good night’s work,” Sir Thomas said, “a very good night’s work.”
Because the fleet was safe and Sir Thomas, when the Spaniards were at last ready, could take his small army south.
SIR THOMAS Graham’s quarters in San Fernando were modest. He had commandeered a boat builder’s workshop that had whitewashed stone walls. He had furnished it with a bed, a table, and four chairs. The workshop had a great hearth in front of which Sharpe’s clothes were put to dry. Sharpe had put his rifle there too, with its lock plate removed so that the heat of the fire could reach the mainspring. He himself was swathed in a shirt and cloak that General Graham insisted on lending him. The general, meanwhile, was dictating his report. “Breakfast soon,” the general said in between sentences.
“I’m starving,” Lord William Russell observed.
“Be a good fellow, Willie, see what’s keeping it,” the general said, then dictated lavish praise of the men he had led to the creek. Dawn was outlining the inland hills, but still the glow of the burning rafts was vivid in the dark marshlands, while the plume of smoke must have been visible in Seville over sixty miles away. “You want me to mention your name, Sharpe,” Sir Thomas asked.
“No, sir,” Sharpe said. “I didn’t do anything, sir.”
Sir Thomas gave Sharpe a shrewd look. “If you say so, Sharpe. So what’s this favor I can do for you?”
“I want you to give me a dozen rounds of shell, sir. Twelve-pounders if you’ve got them, but nine-pounders will do.”
“I’ve got them. Major Duncan does, anyway. What happened to your jacket? Sword cut?”
“Bayonet, sir.”
“I’ll have my man sew it up while we have breakfast. Twelve rounds of shell, eh? What for?”
Sharpe hesitated. “Probably best you don’t know, sir.”
Sir Thomas snorted at that answer. “Write that up, Fowler,” he said to the clerk, dismissing him. He waited for the clerk to leave, then went to the fire and held his hands to its warmth. “Let me guess, Sharpe, let me guess. Here you are, orphaned from your battalion, and suddenly I’m commanded to keep you here rather than send you back where you belong. And meanwhile Henry Wellesley’s love letter is amusing the citizens of Cadiz. Would those two things be connected?”
“They would, sir.”
“There are more letters?” Sir Thomas asked shrewdly.
“There are plenty more, sir.”
“And the ambassador wants you to do what? Find them?”
“He wants to buy them back, sir, and if that doesn’t work he wants them stolen.”
“Stolen!” Sir Thomas gave Sharpe a skeptical look. “Had any experience in that business?”
“A bit, sir,” Sharpe said and, after a pause, realized the general wanted more. “It was in London, sir, when I was a child. I learned the business.”
Sir Thomas laughed. “I was once held up by a footpad in London. I knocked the fellow down. Wasn’t you, was it?”
“No, sir.”
“So Henry wants you to steal the letters and you want a dozen of my shells? Tell me why, Sharpe.”
“Because if the letters can’t be stolen, sir, they might be destroyed.”
“You’re going to explode my shells inside Cadiz?”
“I hope not, sir, but it might come to that.”
“And you’ll expect the Spanish to believe it was a French mortar bomb?”
“I hope the Spanish won’t know what to think, sir.”
“They’re not fools, Sharpe. The dons can be bloody uncooperative, but they’re not fools. If they discover you exploding shells in Cadiz they’ll have you in that pestilential prison of theirs before you can count to three.”
“Which is why it’s best you don’t know, sir.”
“Breakfast is coming,” Lord William Russell burst into the room. “Beefsteak, fried liver, and fresh eggs, sir. Well, almost fresh.”
“I suppose you’ll want the things delivered to the embassy?” Sir Thomas ignored Lord William and spoke to Sharpe.
“If it’s possible, sir, and addressed to Lord Pumphrey.”
Sir Thomas grunted. “Come and sit down, Sharpe. You’re partial to fried liver?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll have the things boxed up and delivered today,” Sir Thomas said, then shot Lord William a reproving look. “No good looking curious, Willie. Mister Sharpe and I are discussing secret matters.”
“I can be the very soul of discretion,” Lord William said.
“You can be,” Sir Thomas agreed, “but you very rarely are.”
Sharpe’s coat was taken away to be mended. Then he sat to a breakfast of beefsteak, liver, kidneys, ham, fried eggs, bread, butter, and strong coffee. Sharpe, though he was only half dressed, enjoyed it. It struck him, halfway through the meal, that one table companion was the son of a duke and the other a wealthy Scottish landowner, yet he felt oddly comfortable. There was no guile in Lord William, while it was plain Sir Thomas simply liked soldiers. “I never thought I’d be a soldier,” he confessed to Sharpe.
“Why not, sir?”
“Because I was happy as I was, Sharpe, happy as I was. I hunted, I traveled, I read, I played cricket, and I had the best wife in the world. Then my Mary died. I brooded for a time and it occurred to me that the French were an evil presence. They preach liberty and equality, but what are they? They are degraded, barbarous, and inhuman, and it was borne upon me that my duty was to fight them. So I put on a uniform, Sharpe. I was forty-six years old when I first donned the red coat, and that was seventeen years ago. And on the whole, I must say, they have been happy years.”
“Sir Thomas,” Lord William remarked as he savaged the bread with a blunt knife, “did not just put on a uniform. He raised the 90th Foot at his own expense.”
“And a damned expense it was too!” Sir Thomas said. “Their hats alone cost me four hundred and thirty-six pounds, sixteen shillings, and fourpence. I always wondered what the fourpence was for. And here I am, Sharpe, still fighting the French. Have you had enough to eat?”
