Everyone wants something. And now I want something.”
“What?”
She pulled on the cigar, looking at him through the smoke. “I want you to tell me if there’s going to be a battle.”
Sharpe laughed. He sipped the wine. He had been brought up to this balcony to tell her something that any officer, British or Spanish, German or Portuguese, could tell her? He looked at her and her face was serious, waiting, so he nodded. “Yes. There has to be. We haven’t come this far to do nothing, and I can’t see Marmont giving up the west of Spain.”
She spoke with deliberation. “So why didn’t Wellington attack yesterday?”
He had almost forgotten that it was only yesterday that they had sat on the hilltop and watched the two armies. “He wanted Marmont to attack him.”
“I know that. But he didn’t, and the Peer outnumbered him, so why didn’t he attack?”
Sharpe reached forward and cut at a partridge. The skin was crisp and honeyed. He gestured with the slice of meat towards the lights of the spyholes. “There are a dozen generals down there, three dozen staff officers, and you ask me? Why?”
“Because it pleases me!” Her voice was suddenly harsh. She paused to draw on the cigar. “Why do you think? If I ask one of them they’ll smile politely, become charming, and tell me, in so many words, not to worry my head about soldiering. So I’m asking you. Why didn’t he attack?”
Sharpe leaned back, took a deep breath, and launched into his thoughts. “Yesterday the French had their back to a plain. Marmont could have retreated endlessly, in good order, and the battle would have stopped by nightfall. There’d have been, oh…“ he shrugged, ”say, five hundred dead on each side? If our cavalry was better there might have been more, but it would decide nothing. The armies would still have to fight again. Wellington doesn’t want a series of small indecisive skirmishes. He wants to trap Marmont, he wants him in a place where there’s no escape, or where he’s wrong footed, and then he can crush him. Destroy him.“
She watched the sudden passion in Sharpe, the cruelty of his face as he imagined the battle.
“Go on.”
“There isn’t any more. We take the forts and then we go after Marmont.”
“Do you like the French, Captain Sharpe?”
It struck him as a curious question, the wrong question. She meant, surely, did he dislike the French? He made a gesture of indecision. “No.” He smiled. “I don’t dislike them. I don’t have reason to dislike them.”
“Yet you fight them?”
“I’m a soldier.” It was not that simple. He was a soldier because there was nothing else for him to be. He had discovered all those years ago that he could do the job and do it well, and now he could not imagine another life.
Her eyes were curious, huge and curious. “What do you fight for?”
He shook his head, not knowing what to tell her. If he said ‘England’ it would sound pompous, and Sharpe had a suspicion that if he had been born French then he would have fought for France with as much skill and ferocity as he served England. The Colours? Perhaps, because they were a soldier’s pride, and pride is valuable to a soldier, but he supposed the real answer was that he fought for himself to stop himself sliding back into the nothingness where he began. He met her eyes. “My friends.” It was as good an answer as he could think of.
“Friends?”
“They’re more important on a battlefield.”
She nodded, then stood up and walked down the balcony trailing smoke behind her. “What do you say to the charge that Wellington can’t fight an attacking battle? Only a defensive battle?”
“Assaye.”
She turned. “Where he crossed a river in the face of the enemy?”
“Yesterday you knew nothing about Assaye.”
“Yesterday I was in public.” The cigar glowed again.
“He can attack.” Sharpe was impressed by her intelligence, by her knowledge, but he was also mystified. There was something catlike about La Marquesa. She was quiet in her movements, beautiful, but she had claws, he knew, and now he knew she had the intelligence to use them skilfully. “Believe me, Ma’am, he can attack.”
She nodded. “I believe you. Thank you, Captain Sharpe, that’s all I wanted to know.”
“All?”
She turned to the lattice and opened a window in it. “I want to know if the French are coming back to Salamanca. I want to know if Wellington will fight to stop that happening.
You’ve told me he will. You weren’t boasting, you weren’t trying to impress me, you gave me what I wanted; a professional opinion. Thank you.“
Sharpe stood up, not sure if the visit was done and he was being dismissed. He walked towards her. “Why did you want to know?”
“Does it matter?” She still stared at the fortresses.
“I’m curious.” He stopped behind her. “Why?”
She looked back at the table. “You forgot your musket.”
“Rifle. Why?”
She turned round to face him and gave him another of her hostile stares. “How many men have you killed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Truly?”
“Truly. I’ve been a soldier for nineteen years.”
“Do you get frightened?”
He smiled. “Of course. All the time. It gets worse, not better.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. I sometimes think because the older you get, the more you have to live for.”
She laughed at that. “Any woman will tell you otherwise.”
“No, not any woman. Some, maybe. Some men, too.” He gestured at the faraway sound of the party. “Cavalry officers don’t like getting old.”
“You’re suddenly very wise for a humble soldier.” She was mocking him. She put the cigar to her mouth and smoke drifted between them.
She had still not answered his question and he still did not understand why he had been brought to this balcony where the leaves stirred in the night breeze. “You could have asked a thousand people in this town the questions you’ve asked me, and got the same answers. Why me?”
“I told you.” She pointed with the cigar to his rifle. “Now why don’t you pick up the rifle and go?”
Sharpe said nothing. He did not move. Somewhere in the town there were raised voices, drunken soldiers fighting in all probability, and a dog howled at the moon from another street, and he saw her eyes look at his cheek. “What are those black stains?”
Sharpe was becoming used to her sudden questions that had no relevance to the previous conversation. She seemed to like to tease him, bring him almost to the point of anger, and then deflect him with some irrelevance. He brushed his right cheek. “Powder stains, Ma’am. The gunpowder explodes in the rifle pan and throws them up.”
“Did you kill someone tonight?”
“No, not tonight.”
They were standing just two feet apart and Sharpe knew that either could have moved away. Yet they stayed still, challenging each other and he knew that she was challenging him to touch her and he was tempted suddenly, to break the rules. He was tempted to walk away, as Marmont had simply walked away from Wellington’s army, but he could not do it. The full mouth, the eyes, the cheekbones, the curve of her neck, the shadows above the white lace-frilled dress had caught him. She frowned at him. “What does it feel like? To kill a man?”
“Sometimes good, sometimes nothing, sometimes bad.”
“When is it bad?”
He shrugged. “When it’s unnecessary.” He shook his head, remembering the bad dreams. “There was a
