Sharpe blushed. The Count of Mouromorto translated the jibe and the tension in the room relaxed as the French officers laughed.
“Oh, I know all about your miracle,” Coursot said mock-ingly. “What astonishes me is to find an English officer involved in such nonsense. Ah, the coffee!” He turned as an orderly entered the room with a tray of cups. “Do you have time for coffee?” he asked Sharpe. “Or must you hurry away to pray for a divine thunderbolt?”
Til tell you what I’ll do.“ Sharpe, stung out of his efforts at diplomacy, spoke with a biting savagery. Til put my best Riflemen on those bell towers.” He pointed through the window at the cathedral. “Your muskets aren’t accurate at that range, but my men can pick the eyes out of your French skulls at twice that distance. They’ve got all day to do it, Colonel, and they’ll turn these rooms into a charnel house. Frankly, I don’t give a bugger. I’d rather shoot Frenchmen than talk to them.”
“I do believe you.” If the Colonel was rattled by Sharpe’s threat he did not betray it, but nor did he press his own threat of an approaching army corps which Sharpe sensed had been made purely as a formality. Instead he placed a cup of coffee on the table in front of the Rifleman. “You can kill a lot of my men, Lieutenant, and I can make myself a considerable nuisance to your miracle.” Coursot took a cup from the orderly, then looked with amusement at Sharpe. “The gonfalon of Santiago? Isn’t that right? Don’t you think you’re clutching at straws if you need such a nonsensical bauble for victory?”
Sharpe neither confirmed nor denied it.
The Colonel sipped coffee. “Of course I’m no expert, Lieutenant, but I would imagine miracles are best performed in an atmosphere of reverent peace, wouldn’t you agree?” He waited for a reply, but Sharpe kept silent. Coursot smiled. “I am suggesting a truce, Lieutenant.”
“A truce?” Sharpe could not keep the astonishment from his voice.
“A truce!” Coursot repeated the word as though he was explaining it to a child. “I assume you do not think your occupation of Santiago de Compostela will be forever? I thought not. You have come here to make your little miracle, then you wish to leave. Very well. I promise not to fire on your men, nor on any other person in the city, not even upon St James himself, so long as you promise not to fire on my men, nor make an attack on this building.”
The Count of Mouromorto made a sudden and impassioned protest against the suggestion, then, when Cour-sot ignored it, turned away in disgust. As he drank his coffee, Sharpe thought he could understand the Count’s displeasure. He had tried again and again to capture the gonfalon, now he was supposed to stand idly by while it was unfurled in the cathedral. Yet would these Frenchmen stand idle?
Coursot saw Sharpe’s hesitation. “Lieutenant. I have two hundred and thirty men in this building; some of them wounded. What damage can I do to you? You wish to inspect the palace? You may, indeed you should!”
“I can search it?” Sharpe asked suspiciously.
“From top to bottom! And you will see that I tell the truth. Two hundred and thirty men. There are also some twenty Spaniards who, like the Count of Mouromorto, are friends of France. Do you really think, Lieutenant, that I will surrender those men to the vengeance of their countrymen? Come!” Almost angrily, Coursot threw open a door. “Search the palace, Lieutenant! See just what a paucity of men frighten you!”
Sharpe did not move. “I’m in no position to accept your suggestion, sir.”
“But Major Vivar is?” The Colonel seemed annoyed that Sharpe had not greeted his offer of a truce with immediate enthusiasm. “I assume Major Vivar is in command?” he persisted.
“Yes, sir.”
“So tell him!” Coursot waved his hand, as though the errand was negligible. “Finish your coffee, and tell him! In the meantime, I want an assurance from you. I presume you have taken some French prisoners today? Or have you slaughtered them all?”
Sharpe ignored the bitterness in the Frenchman’s tone. “I have prisoners, sir.”
“I want your word, as a British officer, that they will be treated properly.”
“They will be, sir.” Sharpe paused. “And you, sir, have a British family under your protection?”
“We have one English girl in the palace.” Coursot still seemed nettled by Sharpe’s suspicions of his truce. “A Miss Parker, I believe. Her family was sent to Corunna last week, but I assure you Miss Parker is entirely safe. I assume she was sent here to mislead us?”
The calmness of the question did not indicate whether the deception had worked or failed, though Sharpe, at that instant, was only concerned with Louisa’s fate. She was alive and in the city, and thus his hopes were alive too. “I don’t know that she was sent to mislead you, sir,” he said dutifully.
“Well, she did!” Coursot said testily. The Count of Mouro-morto scowled at Sharpe as though the Rifleman was personally responsible.
“Miss Parker deceived you?” Sharpe tried to seek more information without betraying any anxiety.
Coursot hesitated, then shrugged. “Colonel de l’Eclin left at three o’clock this morning, Lieutenant, with a thousand men. He believes you have gone south, and that Major Vivar is at Padron. I congratulate you on a successful ruse de guerre.”
Sharpe’s heart missed a beat. It had worked! He tried to keep his face expressionless, but he was certain it must betray his delight.
Coursot grimaced. “But be assured, Lieutenant, that Colonel de l’Eclin will return by this afternoon, and I advise you to finish your miracle before he does so. Now! Will you seek Major Vivar’s consideration of my proposal?”
“Yes, sir.” Sharpe did not move. “And can I assume you will release Miss Parker to our protection?”
Tf she so wishes, then I will release her to you when you return with Major Vivar’s answer. Remember, Lieutenant! We will not fire on you, so long as you do not fire on us!“ With ill-disguised impatience, the French Colonel conducted
Sharpe towards the doorway. “I give you half an hour to return with your answer, otherwise we shall assume you have turned down our generous offer. Au revoir, Lieutenant.”
Once Sharpe had left the room, Coursot went to stand in one of the deep window bays. He opened his watch again and stared with apparent incomprehension at its filigreed hands. He only looked up when he heard the sound of Sharpe’s footsteps on the plaza’s flagstones. Coursot watched the Rifleman walk away. “Bite, little fish, bite,” he spoke very softly.
“He’s stupid enough to bite,” the Count of Mouromorto had overheard the murmured words, “as is my brother.”
“You mean they have a sense of honour?” Coursot asked with a surprising malevolence, then, sensing he had spoken too sharply, smiled. “I think we need more coffee, gentlemen. More coffee for our nerves.”
Bias Vivar was less astonished at Coursot’s suggestion than Sharpe expected. “It isn’t unusual,” he said. “I can’t say that I’m delighted, but it isn’t such a bad idea.” The Spaniard took advantage of the cease-fire to walk into the plaza and stare at the palace fagade. “Do you think we can capture it?”
“Yes,” Sharpe said, “but we’ll lose fifty men killed and double that with bad wounds. And they’ll be our best men. You can’t send half-trained volunteers against those bastards.”
Vivar nodded agreement. “Colonel de l’Eclin’s gone south?”
“That’s what Coursot said. ”
Vivar turned and shouted towards the civilians who crowded the streets leading from the plaza. A chorus of voices answered, all confirming that yes, French cavalry had left the town in the middle of the night, going south. How many cavalry? he asked, and was told that hundreds and hundreds of mounted men had filed through the city.
Vivar looked back at the palace, not seeing its severe beauty, but judging the thickness of its stone walls. He shook his head. “That flag will have to come down,” he gestured at the bullet-riddled tricolour that hung over the doorway, “and they’ll have to agree to close all the window shutters. They can keep observers at a single window on each side of the building, but nothing more.”
“Can you barricade the doors from the outside?” Sharpe asked.
“Why not?” Vivar looked at his watch. “And why don’t I tell them our terms? If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, attack!”
Sharpe wanted to be the one to greet Louisa and draw her safe from the French Headquarters. “Shouldn’t I go back?”
“I think I shall be safe,” Vivar said, “and I want to search the palace for myself. It isn’t that I don’t trust you,
