“Does that strike you as odd?”
“Spears is dead, sir. He died well.”
Hogan nodded. “I hear his body was some way from all the others. Some way from the fighting, in fact. Odd?”
Sharpe shook his head. “He could have crawled away, sir.”
“Yes. With a hole in his head. I’m sure you’re right, Richard.” Hogan swirled the wine in his glass. His voice was still neutral. “The only reason I ask is that I do have a responsibility for finding whoever was the spy in our headquarters. I can make myself unpleasant, I suppose, turn over a lot of stones, but you do understand me, I’m sure.”
“I don’t think you need to be unpleasant, sir.”
“Good, good.” Hogan grinned at Sharpe, raised his glass. “Well done, Richard.”
“What for, sir?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Hogan toasted him all the same.
Hogan rode away that afternoon, going eastwards to the army that now marched towards Madrid. Harper left with him, mounted on one of Hogan’s spare horses, and for the second time that day Sharpe found himself on the Roman Bridge. He looked up at Harper. “Good luck.”
“We’ll see you soon, sir?”
“Very soon.” Sharpe touched his stomach. “It hardly hurts.”
“You’ve got to be careful, sir. I mean it killed that Frenchman.”
Sharpe laughed. “He wasn’t careful.”
Hogan bent down and shook Sharpe’s hand. “Take your time, Richard! There won’t be another battle.”
“No, sir.”
Hogan smiled at him. “And how long are you going to wear two swords, eh? You look ridiculous!”
Sharpe grinned and unclasped the Kligenthal. He offered it to Hogan. “You want it?”
“Good Lord, no! It’s yours, Richard. You won it.”
But a man only needs one sword. Harper watched Sharpe, he knew how Sharpe had craved after the Kligenthal, he had seen Sharpe hold the sword last night. The Kligenthal had been forged by a genius, shaped by a master, a weapon of contained beauty. To look at it was to fear it, to see it in the hands of a man who could use it, like Sharpe, was to understand the mind that had made this sword. It seemed to weigh nothing in Sharpe’s hand, so perfectly balanced was the steel, and the Rifleman drew it out now, slowly, so the steel shone like oiled silk in the sun.
The sword at his side, the sword that Harper had given him, was crude and ill-balanced. It was too long for an infantryman, it was clumsy, and it was stamped out with hundreds more in an ill-lit Birmingham factory. Beside the Kligenthal it was raw, cheap, and crude.
Yet Harper had worked the cheap sword as a talisman against Sharpe’s death. Something more than friendship had gone into the blade. It did not matter that it was cheap. The cheap sword had beaten the Kligenthal, the expensive sword, and there was luck in the blade. Dozens of similar swords had simply been left at Garcia Hernandez after the charge, not worth the bother of picking up, and the peasants would fashion them into long knives. Yet Sharpe’s sword was lucky. There was a soldiers’ goddess and her name was Fate and she had liked the sword Harper made for Sharpe. The Kligenthal was stained with the blood of friends, with the torture of flayed priests, and the beautiful sword contained not luck, but evil.
Harper watched as Sharpe drew his arm back, checked for a second, and then threw. The Kligenthal wheeled up into the sunlight, circling, dazzling with quick flashes as the steel caught the light. It seemed to hang for a second at the top of its arc, speared light at the three men, and then fell. It fell towards the Tormes’ deepest part, still turning, and then the sun left it so the steel was grey and then it struck the sheen of the water, broke it, and was gone.
Harper cleared his throat. “You’ll frighten the fishes.”
“That’s more than you ever did.”
Harper laughed. “I caught some.”
The goodbyes were said again, the hooves sounded on the bridge’s stones, and Sharpe walked slowly back to the town. He did not want this leave to be long. He wanted to be back with the South Essex, in the skirmish line where he belonged, but he would wait a week and eat his food and rest as he had been ordered.
He pushed open the door of the small courtyard of the house that was his new address, registered with the Town Major, and he stopped. She looked up. “I thought you were dead.”
“I thought you were lost.” He had been right. Memory was the worst souvenir. Memory told him she had long dark hair, a face like a hawk, a body that was slim and muscled from the days of riding the high border hills. Memory forgot the movement of a face, the life of a person.
Teresa put the cat on the ground, smiled at her husband, and came towards him. “I’m sorry. I was far north. What happened?”
„I’ll tell you later.“ He kissed her, held her, kissed her again. There was guilt inside him.
She looked up at him, puzzled. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Where’s Antonia?”
“Inside.” She jerked her head towards the kitchen where Hogan’s ‘motherly old soul’ was singing. Teresa shrugged. “She’s found someone else who wants to look after her. I suppose I shouldn’t have brought her, but I thought she ought to be near her father’s grave.”
“Not yet.” They both laughed because they were embarrassed.
The sword scraped on the ground and he took it off, laid it on the table, then hugged her again. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“Worrying you.”
“Did you think this marriage would be calm?” She smiled.
“No.” He kissed her again, and this time he let his relief pour out of him, and she held him tight so that the wound hurt, but it did not matter. Love mattered, but that was so hard to learn, and he kissed her again and again till she drew away.
She smiled up at him, happiness in her eyes. “Hello, Richard.”
“Hello, wife.”
“I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“So’m I.”
She laughed, then looked at the sword. “New?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the old one?”
“It wore out.” Not that it mattered. From now on this old sword, with its dull scabbard, would be his sword and Fate’s weapon; Sharpe’s sword.
HISTORICAL NOTE
It may seem wilful, even perverse of me to introduce yet more Irish characters into Sharpe’s adventures, yet Patrick Curtis and Michael Connelley existed and, in Sharpe’s Sword, play the roles they played in 1812. The Reverend Doctor Patrick Curtis, known as Don Patricio Cortes to the Spanish, was Rector of the Irish College and Professor of Natural History and Astronomy at the University of Salamanca. He was also, at the age of 72, the spy chief of his own network that extended throughout French-held Spain and well north of the Pyrenees. The French did suspect his existence, did want to destroy him, but they discovered his identity only after the Battle of Salamanca. As modern spy novels would say, Curtis’ cover was ‘blown’, and when the French did make a brief reappearance in the city he was forced to flee for British protection. In 1819, when the wars were over, he received a British Government pension. He finally left Spain to become the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, and he died in Drogheda at the good age of 92.
Archbishop Curtis died of the cholera, Sergeant Michael Connelley of the soldiers’ hospital in Salamanca
