“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, Lieutenant, but that I think this responsibility is mine.”
Sharpe nodded his understanding. It was the French willingness to allow the palace to be searched that had convinced him of. their good faith but, if he was Vivar, he would insist on conducting that search himself. His reunion with Louisa would have to wait, and it would be no less piquant because it was delayed.
Vivar did not set out at once; instead he clapped his hands with delight and danced two steps of clumsy joy. “We’ve done it, my friend! We have truly done it!”
They had gained victory.
Victory brought work. Captured muskets and carbines were piled in the plaza south of the cathedral, and the French prisoners were locked into the town jail where they were guarded by greenjackets. The Riflemen’s packs and greatcoats were retrieved from the elm trees north of the city. Corpses were dragged to the city ditch, and defences properly set up. Sharpe went from guardpost to guardpost, ensuring that Vivar’s volunteers were in place. A few French fugitives were still in sight to the south of the city, but a scatter of rifle shots drove them off. The road south, Sharpe superstitious madness. The second, to rescue Louisa, was a personal whim of Sharpe’s and irrelevant to the war. The third, to destroy Soult’s supplies, was the only justification of true value, an
d it had largely failed.
Yet, if most of the supplies were safe inside the palace, Sharpe could still deny Marshal Soult what was left. The nets of hay were taken for Vivar’s horses, while the flour was given away to the townspeople. He ordered the wine to be thrown away.
“Throw it away?” Harper sounded appalled.
“You want the men drunk if de l’Eclin counterattacks?”
“It’s a sinful waste, sir, so it is.”
“Throw it away!” Sharpe suited action to his words by skewering a pile of wineskins with his sword. The red liquid gushed onto the church flagstones and trickled through the gaps into the crypt beneath. “And if any man does get drunk,” he raised his voice, “he’ll answer to me, personally!”
“Very good, sir!” Harper waited till Sharpe was gone, then summoned Gataker. “Find a tavern keeper, bring him here, and see what cash he offers. Quick now!”
Sharpe took a squad of Riflemen to search for any other French caches of grain or hay. They found none. They did discover a store of French infantry packs, made from oxhide and much better than the standard British ones. The packs were commandeered, as were three dozen pairs of riding boots though, to Sharpe’s disgust, none of the boots was large enough for him. The Riflemen found French cartridges to refill their cartouches; the French musket-ball, fractionally smaller than its British equivalent, could be used in Baker rifles, though enemy ammunition was only used as a last resort because the coarse French powder fouled the rifle barrels. They found greatcoats and stockings, shirts and gloves, but no more grain or hay.
The townspeople were also seeking booty. The citizens of Santiago de Compostela did not care that the bulk of the French forage was safe inside the palace, they cared only that, at least for a day, they were free. They turned the winter’s day into a carnival, costumed by plunder, so that it seemed as if the city was inhabited by a gleeful crowd of half-dressed enemy soldiers. Even the women were dressed in French coats and shakos.
At midday a convoy of mules carried much of the fodder, together with the Riflemen’s packs, to a safe place in the eastern hills. Vivar did not want his men encumbered by personal belongings if the city had to be defended, and so the cache of packs and trophies would wait to be collected after the withdrawal. Once the mules had gone, Sharpe ordered most of his Riflemen to rest while he, fighting off a vast weariness, went in search of Bias Vivar. He walked first to the big plaza which he found almost deserted; all but for a picquet of Cazadores who warily watched the shuttered windows of the palace. There were also a few civilians making a crude barrier of furniture, empty wine vats, and carts which would eventually surround the whole building that was conveniently bounded on its other three sides by streets.
A single window was unshuttered in the palace facade, though no observer was visible there. The flag was gone from above the double door which had been barricaded by planks supported by timber buttresses. The French were thus penned inside their huge building.
They were also being taunted by crowds who, prevented by Cazadores from filling the big plaza, jeered from the smaller open spaces to north and south of the cathedral. They cheered when they saw Sharpe, then went back to insulting the hidden Frenchmen. Bagpipes added their squalling to the noise. Children danced derision of the enemy, while the city bells still rang their mad cacophony of victory. Sharpe, smiling his tired happiness at the citizens’ celebrations, climbed the flight of steps which twisted towards the cathedral’s ornate western entrance. He stopped halfway up, not from tiredness, but because he was suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of the facade. Pillars and arches, statues and balustrades, escutcheons and scrolls: all were superbly carved to the glory of Santiago who was buried inside. After the weeks of hardship and cold, of battle and anger, the cathedral seemed to dwarf the ambitions of the men who fought across Spain. Then he thought that this cathedral was like Vivar’s ambition. The Spaniard fought for something he believed in, while Sharpe only fought like a pirate; out of a stubborn and bloody pride.
“Do I perceive admiration in a soldier’s eyes?” The question, asked in a voice of gentle teasing, came from a figure who moved forward on the stone platform at the top of the flight of steps.
Sharpe instantly forgot the cathedral’s glories. “Miss Parker?” He knew he was smiling like a fool, but he could not help it. It was not just a pirate’s pride that had made him fight, but his memory of this girl who, in her blue skirt and rust-coloured cape, smiled back at him. He turned and gestured at the silent French-held palace. “Isn’t it dangerous to be here?”
“My dear Lieutenant, I was inside the ogre’s den for a whole day! You think I am in more peril now that you have gained such a victory?”
Sharpe.smiled at the compliment, then, as he climbed to the top of the steps, returned it. “A victory, Miss Parker, to which you signally contributed.” He bowed to her. “My humblest congratulations. I was wrong, and you were right.”
Louisa, delighted with the praise, laughed. “Colonel de l’Eclin believes he will ambush you in the Ulla valley east of Padron. I watched him at three o’clock this morning.” She walked to the very centre of the cathedral’s platform which made a kind of stage dominating the wide plaza. “He stood in this very place, Lieutenant, and made a speech to his men. They filled the plaza! Rank after rank of helmets gleaming in the torchlight, and all of the men cheering their Colonel. I never thought to see such a thing! They cheered, then they rode off to their great victory.”
Sharpe thought how slender had been this day’s margin of victory. An extra thousand men, under de l’Eclin’s ruthlessly efficient command, would have destroyed Vivar’s attack. Yet the chasseur Colonel, utterly deceived by Louisa, had been lured southwards. “How did you convince him?”
“With copious tears and an evident reluctance to tell him anything. Eventually, though, he wheedled the fatal truth from me.” Louisa seemed to mock her own cleverness. “In the end he gave me a choice. I could stay in the city or rejoin my aunt in Corunna. I think he believed that if I chose to stay here then I must have hopes of rescue, and that to express such a hope would reveal that I lied to him. So I pleaded to rejoin my grieving family, and the Colonel rode away.” She did a pirouette of joy. “I was supposed to leave for Corunna at midday today. Do you see what a fate you have spared me?”
“Weren’t you frightened of staying?”
“Of course, weren’t you frightened of coming?”
He smiled. “I’m paid to be frightened.”
“And to be frightening. You look very grim, Lieutenant.” Louisa walked to some crates that lay open beside the cathedral door, sat on one of them, and pushed an errant curl from her eyes. “These crates,” she said, “were filled with plunder from the cathedral. The French took most of it away last week, but Don Bias has saved some.”
“That will please him.”
“Not very much,” Louisa said tartly. “The French desecrated the cathedral. They plundered the treasury and tore down most of the screens. Don Bias is not happy. But the gonfalon arrived safely and is under guard, so the miracle can proceed.”
“Good.” Sharpe sat, drew sword and, with the blade across his knees, scrubbed at the blood which would pit the steel with rust if it were not removed.
“Don Bias is inside. He’s preparing the high altar for his nonsense.” Louisa defused the word with a smile. “Doubtless you wish he would get it over with swiftly, so you can withdraw?”
“Indeed, yes.”
“But he won’t,” Louisa said firmly. “The priests are insisting that the nonsense must be done properly and with due ceremony. This is a miracle, Lieutenant, that must be observed by witnesses who can carry news of it throughout
Spain. We wait for the coming of some monks and friars.“ She laughed delightedly. ”It’s like something out of the Middle Ages, isn’t it?“
“Indeed.”
“But Don Bias is serious, so we must both treat it with the utmost gravity. Shall we go inside to see him?” Louisa s
poke with sudden enthusiasm. “You should also see the Gate of Glory, Lieutenant, it really is a very remarkable piece of masonry. Much more impressive than the doors to a Methodist meeting house, though it’s monstrously disloyal of me to say as much.”
Sharpe was silent for a few seconds. He did not want to see the Gate of Glory, whatever that might be, nor share this girl with the Spaniards who prepared the cathedral for the evening’s rigmarole. He wanted to sit here with her, sharing the moment of victory.
“I do believe,” Louisa said, “that these have been the happiest days of my life. I do envy you.”
“Envy me?”
“It’s the lack of restraint, Lieutenant. Suddenly there are no rules any more, are there? You wish to tell a lie? You lie! You desire to tear a town into tatters? You do it! You wish to light a fire? Then strike the flint! Perhaps I should become one of your Riflemen?”
Sharpe laughed. “I accept.”
“But instead,” Louisa folded her arms demurely, “I must travel south to Lisbon, and there take a ship to England.”
“Must you?” Sharpe blurted out.
Louisa was silent for a second. The smell of smoke from one of the burning houses drifted across the plaza, then was dispelled by a gust of wind. “Isn’t that what you’re going to do?” she asked.
The hope soared in him. “It depends on whether we keep a garrison is Lisbon. I’m sure we will,” he added lamely.
“It seems unlikely, after our defeats.” Louisa turned to watch a group of Spanish youths who had succeeded in slipping past the Cazadores who guarded the plaza. The boys held a captured tricolour which they first set alight, then brandished towards the trapped enemy. If they hoped to stir the Frenchmen in the palace by their defiance, they failed.
“So I am doomed to return home,” Louisa gazed at the capering boys as she spoke, “and for what, Lieutenant? In England I shall resume my needlework and spend hours with my watercolours. Doubtless I shall be a curiosity for a while; the squire will want to hear of my quaint adventures. Mister Bufford will resume his courtship and reassure me that never again, so long as there is breath in his body, shall I be exposed to such foul danger! I shall play the pianoforte, and spend weeks deciding whether to buy pink ribbons or blue for next year’s gowns. I shall take alms to the poor, and tea with the ladies of the town. It will all be so very unarduous, Lieutenant Sharpe.”
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