“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
Sir Thomas made a point of walking Sharpe to the stables. Just before they reached the building the general stopped Sharpe. “Play cricket, do you, Sharpe?”
“We used to play at Shorncliffe, sir,” Sharpe said cautiously, referring to the barracks where the riflemen were trained.
“I need cricketers,” the general said, then frowned in thought.
“Henry Wellesley’s a damned fool,” he said, abruptly changing the subject, “but he’s a decent damned fool. Know what I mean?”
“I think so, sir.”
“He’s a very good man. He deals well with the Spanish. They can be infuriating. They promise the world and deliver scraps, but Wellesley has the patience to treat with them, and the sensible Spaniards know they can trust him. He’s a good diplomat and we need him as ambassador.”
“I liked him, sir.”
“But he made a bloody fool of himself over that woman. Does she have the letters?”
“I think she has some, sir.”
“So you’re looking for her?”
“I am, sir.”
“You’re not going to blow her up with my shells, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“I hope not, because she’s a pretty wee thing. I saw her with him once and Henry looked like a tomcat that had found a bowl of cream. She looked happy too. I’m surprised she betrayed him.”
“Lord Pumphrey says it was her pimp, sir.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think she saw gold, sir.”
“Of course the thing about Henry Wellesley,” Sir Thomas said, apparently ignoring Sharpe’s words, “is that he’s a forgiving sort of man. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still sweet on her. Ah well, I’m probably just blathering. I enjoyed your company last night, Mister Sharpe. If you finish your business quickly enough, then I hope you’ll give us a game or two. I’ve a clerk who’s a ferocious bowler, but the wretched man has sprained his ankle. And I trust you’ll do me the honor of sailing south with us. We can bowl a few quick ones at Marshal Victor, eh?”
“I’d like that, sir,” Sharpe said, though he knew there was no hope of it coming true.
He went to find Harper and the other riflemen. He found a slop shop in San Fernando and, with the embassy’s money, bought his men civilian clothes and then, beneath the smoke of the burning rafts that hung above Cadiz like a great dark cloud, they went to the city.
In the afternoon the cloud was still there, and twelve common shells, boxed up and labeled as cabbages, had arrived at the embassy.
CHAPTER 6
NOTHING HAPPENED IN THE next three days. The wind turned east and brought persistent February rain to extinguish the burning fire rafts, though the smoke from the rafts still smeared the Trocadero marshes and drifted across the bay toward the city where Lord Pumphrey waited for a message from whoever possessed the letters. The ambassador dreaded another issue of El Correo de Cadiz. None appeared. “It publishes rarely these days,” James Duff, the British consul in Cadiz, reported to the ambassador. Duff had lived in Spain for nearly fifty years and had been consul for over thirty. Some folk reckoned Duff was more Spanish than the Spaniards and even when Spain had been at war with Britain he had been spared any insult and allowed to continue his business of buying and exporting wine. Now that the embassy had been driven to seek refuge in Cadiz, there was no need for a consul in the city, but Henry Wellesley valued the older man’s wisdom and advice. “Nunez, I think, is struggling,” Duff said, speaking of the owner of El Correo de Cadiz. “He has no readership beyond the city itself now, and what can he print? News of the Cortes? But everyone knows what happens there before Nunez can set it in type. He has nothing left except rumors from Madrid, lies from Paris, and lists of arriving and departing ships.”
“Yet he won’t accept money from us?” Wellesley asked.
“Not a penny,” Duff said. The consul was thin, shrunken, elegant, and shrewd. He visited the ambassador most mornings, invariably complimenting Henry Wellesley on the quality of his sherry, which Duff himself sold to the embassy, though with the French occupying Andalusia the supply was running very short. “I suspect he’s in someone else’s pay,” Duff went on.
“You offered generously?” the ambassador asked.
“As you requested, Your Excellency,” Duff said. He had visited Nunez on Wellesley’s behalf and had offered the man cash if he agreed to publish no more letters. The offer had been refused, so Duff had made an outright bid for the newspaper itself, a bid that had been startlingly generous. “I offered him ten times what the house, press, and business are worth, but he would not accept. He would have liked to, I’m sure, but he’s a very frightened man. I think he dares not sell for fear of his life.”
“And he proposes publishing more of the letters?”
Duff shrugged, as if to suggest he did not know the answer.
“I am so sorry, Duff, to place you in this predicament. My foolishness, entirely my foolishness.”
Duff shrugged again. He had never married and had no sympathy for the idiocies that women provoked in men.
“So we must hope,” the ambassador went on, “that Lord Pumphrey is successful.”
“His Lordship might well succeed,” Duff said, “but they’ll have copies, and they’ll publish them anyway. You cannot depend on their honor, Your Excellency. The stakes are much too high.”
“Dear God.” Henry Wellesley rubbed his eyes, then swiveled in the chair to stare at the steady rain falling on the embassy’s small garden.
“But at least,” Duff said consolingly, “you will then possess the originals and can prove that the Correo has changed them.”
Henry Wellesley winced. It might be true that he could prove forgery, but he could not escape the shame of what was not forged. “Who are they?” he asked angrily.
“I suspect they are people in the pay of Cardenas,” Duff said calmly. “I can smell the admiral behind this one, and I fear he is implacable. I surmise”—he paused, frowning slightly—“I surmise you have thought of more direct action to deter publication?”
Wellesley was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. “I have, Duff, I have. But I would sanction such action most reluctantly.”
“You are wise to be reluctant. I have noted an increase in Spanish patrols around Nunez’s premises. I fear Admiral Cardenas has prevailed on the Regency to keep a watchful eye on the newspaper.”
“You could talk to Cardenas,” Wellesley suggested.
“I could,” Duff agreed, “and he will be courteous, he will offer me excellent sherry, and he will then deny any knowledge of the matter.”
Wellesley said nothing. He did not need to. His face betrayed his despair.
“Our only hope,” Duff went on, “is if Sir Thomas Graham succeeds in lifting the siege. A victory of that sort will confound those who oppose a British alliance. The problem, of course, is not Sir Thomas, but Lapena.”
“Lapena.” Wellesley repeated the name dully. Lapena was the Spanish general whose forces would accompany the British southward.
“He will have more men than Sir Thomas,” Duff went on remorselessly, “so he must have command. And if he is not given command, then the Spanish will not commit troops. And Lapena, Your Excellency, is a timid creature. We must all hope that Sir Thomas can inspire him to valor.” Duff held his glass of sherry to the window light. “This is the ’03?”
“It is.”
“Very fine,” Duff said. He got to his feet and, with the help of a cane, crossed to the table with the inlaid checkered top. He stared for a few seconds at the chess pieces, then advanced a white bishop to take a castle. “I
