Riflemen renewed hope.
“So we were told.” Napoleon was supposed to have left Spain already, but that was small reason for optimism. He had no need to stay. Everywhere his enemies were in retreat, and his Marshals, who had conquered Europe, could be trusted to finish Spain and Portugal.
Sharpe walked on past the burned-out houses. The sole of his right boot was hanging loose, and his trousers gaped at his thighs. At least he had repaired the broken scabbard, yet otherwise his uniform hung off him like a scarecrow’s rags. He went to the place where the road climbed up towards the canyon and where, beside a stone trough that the women who had once lived in this village had used as a washing place, a three-man picquet was posted. “See anything?”
“Not a thing, sir. Quiet as a dry alehouse.”
It was Harper who had answered and who now rose up, huge and formidable, from the shadow of the trough. The two men stared at each other, then, awkwardly, the Irishman pulled off his shako in the formal salute. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The Major talked to me, he did. We was frightened, you see, sir, and…“
“I said it doesn’t matter!”
Harper nodded. His broken nose was still swollen and would never again be straight. The big Irishman grinned. “If you’ll not mind me saying it, sir, but you’ve got a punch on you like a Ballinderry heifer.”
The comment might have been offered as a peace-token, but Sharpe’s memory of the fight in the ruined farmhouse was too fresh and too sore to accept it. “I’ve let you off a damned sharp hook, Rifleman Harper, but that does not give you the God-damned right to say whatever comes into your head. So put your bloody hat on, and go back to work.”
Sharpe turned and walked away, ready to whip round instantly if a single insolent sound was uttered, but Harper had the sense to keep silent. The wind made the only noise, a sighing sound as it passed through the trees before lifting the sparks of the big fire high into the night. Sharpe went close to the fire, letting its heat warm his chilled and wet uniform. He supposed he had blundered again, that he should have accepted the friendly words as the peace-offering they were undoubtedly meant to be, but his pride had stung him into savagery.
“You should get some sleep, sir.” It was Sergeant Williams, muffled against the cold, who appeared in the firelight. “I’ll look after the lads.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“No.” The word was said as agreement. “It’s thinking of them dead nippers what does it.”
“Yes.”
“Bastards,” Williams said. He held his hands towards the blaze. “There was one no older than my Mary.”
“How old is she?”
“Five, sir. Pretty wee thing, she is. Not like her father.”
Sharpe smiled. “Did your wife come out to Spain with you?”
“No, sir. Helps in her da’s bakery, she does. He wasn’t too pleased when she married a soldier, but they never are.”
That’s true.“
The Sergeant stretched. “But I’ll have some rare tales to tell when I get back to Spitalfields.” He was silent for a moment, perhaps thinking of home. “Funny, really.”
“What is?”
“Why these bastards came all this way to get supplies. Isn’t that what the Major said, sir?”
“Yes.” French forces were supposed to live off the land, stealing what they could to stay alive, but Sharpe, like
Williams, could not believe that the enemy horsemen had climbed to this remote village when other, more tempting places lay in the valleys. “They were the same men,” he said, “who attacked us on the road.” Which, in a way, had worked to Sharpe’s advantage, because the French Dragoons, unable to resist using the captured rifles, had proved inept with the unfamiliar weapons.
Sergeant Williams nodded. “Bugger in a red coat, right?”
“Yes. And a fellow in black.”
“It’s my belief they’re after that box the Spanish lads are carrying.” Williams lowered his voice as though one of the sleeping Cazadores might hear him. “It’s the sort of box you carry jewels in, isn’t it? Could be a King’s bloody ransom in that thing, sir.”
“Major Vivar says it holds papers.”
“Papers!” The Sergeant’s voice was scornful.
“Well, I don’t suppose we’re going to find out,” Sharpe said. “And I wouldn’t recommend being too inquisitive, Sergeant. The Major doesn’t take kindly to curiosity.”
“No, sir.” Williams sounded disappointed at his lack of enthusiasm.
But Sharpe merely hid his own inquisitiveness for, after a few more moments of desultory conversation and after bidding the Sergeant a good night, he went softly and slowly towards the church. He used the stealth he had learned as a child in the London rookery where, if a boy did not steal, he starved.
He walked round the church, then stood for a long time in the shadows by the door. He listened. He heard the fire’s crackle and the wind’s rising noise, but nothing else. Still he waited, straining to hear a single sound from within the old stone building. He heard nothing. He could smell the fallen and burnt timbers within the building, but he could sense no human presence. The nearest Spaniards were thirty paces away, rolled in their cloaks, asleep.
The church door was ajar. Sharpe edged through and, once inside the church, stopped again.
Moonlight illuminated the sanctuary. The walls were scorched black, the altar was gone, yet Vivar’s men had begun to clear the desecration by forcing the burnt roof timbers aside to make an aisle which led to the altar steps. At the top of those steps, black like the walls, was the strongbox.
Sharpe waited. He looked round the building’s small interior; watching for movement, but there was none. A small black window opened on the church’s southern wall, but that was the only aperture. Nothing showed in the opening, except darkness, suggesting that the small window opened into a cupboard or a deep shelf.
Sharpe walked forward between the fallen timbers, some of which still smouldered. Once his loose right sole crunched a black lump of burnt wood, but that was the only sound he made.
He stopped at the foot of the two steps which had led to the altar and squatted there. Curled on the lid of the strongbox was a jet rosary, its small crucifix shining in the moonlight. Within this box, Sharpe thought, lay something that had drawn French soldiers into the frozen highlands. Vivar had said it was papers, but even the most religious of men would not guard papers with a crucifix.
The chest was wrapped in oilcloth that had been sewn tight. During the fight two bullets had embedded themselves in the big box, breaking the cloth, and Sharpe, fingering under the holes and past the lumpen bullets, felt the hard smoothness of the wood. He traced the shapes of the hasps and padlocks beneath the oilcloth. The padlocks were old-fashioned ball-locks that Sharpe knew he could open in seconds with a rifle’s cleaning pin.
He rocked back on his heels, staring at the chest. Four Riflemen had died because of it and yet more might die, and that, Sharpe decided, gave him the right to know what lay inside. He knew he would not be able to disguise that the box had been opened, but he had no intention of stealing its contents so had no scruples about leaving the oilcloth torn and the locks picked.
He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out the clasp knife he used for food. He opened its blade and reached forward to cut the cloth.
“Touch it, Englishman, and you die.”
Sharpe twisted to his right. The click of a pistol’s lock sounded from the small dark window. “Major?”
“The sick could watch the Mass from this window, Lieutenant.” Vivar’s voice sounded from the blackness. “It’s a good place for a sentry,”
“What is the sentry guarding?”
“Just papers.” Vivar’s voice was cold. “Put your knife away, Lieutenant, and stay there.”
Sharpe obeyed. After a moment the Major appeared in the church doorway. “Don’t do that again, Lieutenant. I will kill to protect what is in that box.”
