CHAPTER 6
Wellington was angry, the officers about him nervous of his irritability. They watched Sharpe walk up to the General and salute.
Wellington scowled from the saddle. “By God, you took your time, Mr. Sharpe.”
“I came as fast as I could, my lord.”
“Dammit! Don’t you have a horse?”
“I’m an infantryman, sir.” It was an insolent reply, one that made the aristocratic aides-de-camp that Wellington liked look sharply at the dishevelled, hot Rifleman with the scarred face and battered weapons. Sharpe was not worried. He knew his man. He had saved the General’s life in India and ever since there had been a strange bond between them. The bond was not of friendship, never that, but a bond of need. Sharpe needed a patron, however remote, and Wellington sometimes had reluctant need of a ruthless and efficient soldier. Each man had a respect for the other. The General looked sourly at Sharpe. “So they didn’t fight?”
“No, sir.”
“God damn his French soul.” He was talking of Marshal Marmont. “They march all this bloody way just to pose for us? God damn them! So you met Leroux?” He asked the question in exactly the same tone in which he had damned the French.
“Yes, my lord.”
“You’d recognise him again?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good.” Wellington sounded far from pleased. “He’s not to escape from us, d’you understand? You’re to capture him. Understand?”
Sharpe understood. He would be going back to Salamanca and his job, suddenly, was to trap the pale-eyed French Colonel who even had Wellington worried. “I understand, sir.”
“Thank God somebody does.” The General snapped. “I’m putting you under Major Hogan’s command. He seems to have the knack of making you to the line, God knows how. Good day, Mr. Sharpe.”
“My lord?” Sharpe raised his voice for the General was already wheeling away.
“What is it?”
“I have a whole Company that would recognise him, sir.”
“You do, do you?” Wellington’s bad mood had driven him into clumsy sarcasm. “You want me to strip the South Essex of a Light Company just to make your life easier?”
“There are three forts, my lord, a long perimeter, and one man can’t have eyes everywhere.”
“Why not? They expect it of me.” Wellington laughed, breaking his bad mood with an extraordinary suddenness. “All right, Sharpe, you can have them. But don’t you lose him. Understand? You will not lose him.” The blue eyes conveyed the message.
“I won’t lose him, sir.”
Wellington half smiled. “He’s all yours, Hogan. Gentlemen!”
The staff officers trotted obediently after the General, leaving Hogan alone with Sharpe.
The Irishman laughed quietly. “You have a deep respect for senior officers, Richard, it’s what makes you into such a great soldier.”
“I’d have been here sooner if that bastard had lent me his horse.”
“He probably paid two hundred guineas for it. He reckons it’s worth more than you are. On the other hand that nag cost ten pounds, and you can borrow it.” Hogan was pointing towards his servant who was leading a spare horse towards them. Hogan had anticipated Sharpe arriving on foot and he waited as the Rifleman climbed clumsily into the saddle. “I’m sorry about the panic, Richard.”
“Is there a panic?”
“God, yes. Your piece of paper started it.”
Sharpe hated riding. He liked to be in control of his destiny, but horses seemed not to share that wish. He gingerly urged it forward, hoping it would keep pace with Hogan’s walking animal and, somehow, he managed to stay abreast. “The list?”
“Didn’t it look familiar?”
“Familiar?” Sharpe frowned. He could only remember a list of Spanish names with sums of money beside them. “No.”
Hogan glanced behind to make sure his servant was out of earshot. “It was in my handwriting, Richard.”
“Yours? Good God!” Sharpe’s hands fumbled with the rein while his right boot had come out of the stirrup. He never understood how other people made riding look easy. “How in hell’s name did Leroux get a list in your handwriting?”
“Now there’s a question to cheer up a dull morning. How in hell’s name did he? Horse dealers!” He said the last words scornfully, as if Sharpe had been at fault.
The Rifleman had managed to get his foot back into the stirrup. “So what was it?”
“We have informants, yes? Hundreds of them. Almost every priest, doctor, mayor, shoemaker, blacksmith and anyone else you care to mention sends us snippets of news about the French. Marmont can’t break wind without ten messages telling us. Some of them, Richard, are very good messages indeed, and some of them cost us money.” Hogan paused as they passed a battery of artillery. He returned a Lieutenant’s salute, then looked back at Sharpe. “Most of them do it out of patriotism, but a few need money to keep their loyalty intact. That list, Richard, was my list of payments for the month of April.” Hogan looked and sounded sour. “It means, Richard, that someone in our headquarters is working for the French, for Leroux. God knows who! We’ve got cooks, washerwomen, grooms, clerks, servants, sentries, anyone! God! I thought I’d just misplaced that list, but no.”
“So?”
“So? So Leroux has worked his way through that list. He’s killed most of them in ways that are pretty horrid, and that’s bad enough, but the really bad news is yet to come. One man on that list, a priest, just happened to know something that I’d rather he hadn’t known. And now, I think, Leroux knows it.”
Sharpe said nothing. His horse was ambling happily enough, going westward on the track that led behind the ridge. He would let Hogan tell his unhappy tale at his own pace.
The Irish Major wiped sweat from his face. “Leroux, Richard, is damned close to hurting us really badly. We can afford to lose a few priests and mayors, but that’s not what Leroux wants. We can afford to lose Colquhoun Grant, but that isn’t what Leroux came here to do either. There’s one person, Richard, we can’t afford to lose. That’s the person Leroux came to get.”
Sharpe frowned. “Wellington?”
“Him too, maybe, but no. Not Wellington.” Hogan slapped irritably at a fly. “This is the bit I shouldn’t tell you, Richard, but I’ll tell you a little of it, just enough so you know how important it is for you to stop that bastard getting out of the forts.” He paused again, collecting his thoughts. “I told you we have informants throughout Spain. They’re useful, God knows they’re useful, but we have informants of much more value than that. We have men and women in Italy, in Germany, in France, in Paris itself! People who hate Bonaparte and want to help us, and they do. A regiment of Lancers leaves Milan and we know it within two weeks, and we know where they’re going and how good their horses are, and even the name of their Colonel’s mistress. If Bonaparte bawls out a General, we know about it, if he asks for a map of Patagonia we hear about it. Sometimes I think we know more about Bonaparte’s empire than he does, and all, Richard, because of one person who just happens to live in Salamanca. And that person, Richard, is the person Leroux has come to find. And once he’s found them, he’ll torture them, he’ll find out all the names of the correspondents throughout Europe, and suddenly we’ll be blind.”
Sharpe knew better than to ask who the person was. He waited.
Hogan smiled wryly. “You want to know who it is? Well, I won’t tell you. I know, Wellington knows, and a few Spaniards know because they’re responsible for passing the messages to Salamanca.”
“The priest knew?”
