Sharpe's Sword s-14

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  “Moths.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. I hate moths.”

  “Hell?”

  Sharpe sighed. “Father, I do not wish to be offensive, I don’t really want to push you into the bloody river, but I do not want to sit here and be lectured about my soul. Understand?”

  A thunderclap smashed the sky overhead, so sudden that Curtis jumped, and its lightning seared over the river, the smell of ozone sharp in the air, and the sound of the thunder seemed to roll westwards towards the city, bounce back, and then there was just the rain crashing on the water. Curtis looked at the river. “There’ll be a battle tomorrow.” Sharpe said nothing. Curtis spoke louder. “There’ll be a battle tomorrow, and you will win.”

  “Tomorrow we’re running away from the French.” Sharpe’s voice was bored.

  Curtis stood up. His cassock was black against the gloom outside. He stood as close to the river as he could without letting the rain fall on him. He still spoke towards the water, his back turned on Sharpe. “You English have an ancient belief that your great victories come on the day after a night of thunder.” The priest’s hair was white against the black clouds. “Tomorrow you will have your battle, your soldier’s solution, and you will win.” Thunder growled half-heartedly and the priest, to Sharpe, looked like some ancient magician who had conjured this storm from the deep. When the thunder sound had died Curtis looked at Sharpe. “The dead will be legion.”

  Sharpe wondered if he heard the jangling of traces beyond the house. He cocked his head, listened, but he could hear only the rain in the garden, the wind in the trees. He looked at Curtis who had sat down again. “And when does the world end?”

  “That’s God’s business. Men make battles. Wouldn’t you like a battle tomorrow?” Sharpe said nothing. He leaned against the wall. Curtis spread his hands in resignation. “You didn’t want to talk about your soul, so instead I talk about a battle, and still you won’t talk! So. I’ll talk to you.” The elderly priest looked down as if collecting his thoughts, and then the bushy eyebrows came back up to Sharpe, “Let’s suppose that the thunder tells the truth. Let’s suppose there’s a battle tomorrow and the English win. What happens?” He held up a hand to stop Sharpe speaking. “This is what happens. The French will have to retreat, this part of Spain will be free, and Colonel Leroux will be stuck here.” Now he had Sharpe’s attention. The Rifleman had sat up. “Colonel Leroux,” Curtis went on, “is almost certainly inside the city. He’s waiting for the British to leave. Once they do leave, Mr. Sharpe, then he will reappear and no doubt the killing and the torturing will go on. Am I right?”

  “Yes.” Curtis had said nothing that anyone else could not have worked out. “So?”

  “So if Leroux has to be stopped, if the killings have to be stopped, then you must fight and win a battle tomorrow.”

  Sharpe leaned back again. Curtis was merely a living-room strategist. “Wellington has been waiting for a battle for a month. It’s hardly likely that he’ll get one tomorrow.”

  “Why has he waited?”

  Sharpe paused while thunder sounded. He looked out at the river and saw that the rain was still heavy. It was almost dark. He wished the rain would stop, he wished Curtis would go. He forced himself to make conversation. “He’s waited because he wants Marmont to make a mistake. He wants to catch the French wrong-footed.”

  “Exactly!” Curtis nodded vigorously as though Sharpe was a pupil who had grasped a subtle point. “Now, bear with me, Mr. Sharpe. Tomorrow, am I right, Wellington will be south of the river and then he will turn west, to Portugal? Yes?” Sharpe nodded. Curtis was leaning forward, talking urgently. “Suppose he didn’t turn west. Suppose that he decided to hide his army at the turning place and then suppose the French did not know that. What would happen?”

  It was very simple. Tomorrow both armies would cross the river and turn to their right. It was like the bend of a horse-racing course and the British were on the inside. If they wanted to get ahead of Marmont, to win the race to the Portuguese frontier, then they had to come off the bend fast and keep marching. Yet if Curtis was right, and if Wellington hid on the bend, then the French would march past him, their army strung out in a line of march, and it would be easy to trip him up. It would no longer be a race. It would be like a shepherd stringing his flock out in front of a pack of hungry wolves. But it was just conjecture. Sharpe shrugged. “The French get beaten. There’s just one thing wrong.”

  “What’s that?”

  Sharpe thought of Hogan’s letter. “Tomorrow we’re marching west, as fast as we can.”

  “No you’re not, Mr. Sharpe.” Curtis’ voice was certain. “Your General is hiding his army at a village called Arapiles. He doesn’t want Marmont to know that. He wants the French to think that he’s simply leaving a rearguard at Arapiles and that the rest of the army is marching as fast as it can.”

  Sharpe smiled. “With the greatest respect, Father, I doubt if the French will be fooled. After all, if you’ve heard of this deception, then so must a lot of others.”

  “No.” Curtis smiled. The rain still crashed down outside, hidden now by the darkness. “I spent the afternoon at Arapiles. There is one problem only.”

  Sharpe was sitting forward again, the rain forgotten. “Which is?”

  “How do we tell Marmont’s spies that Wellington is really marching tomorrow?”

  Sharpe shook his head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  The Rifleman stood up, walked to the door and peered into the garden. There was nothing to be seen except the trees lashing in the storm. He turned round, puzzled by the conversation. “What do you mean ”we“?”

  “I mean our side, Captain.”

  Sharpe walked back to his seat, picking up his rifle as he went, and he felt as if the ground beneath his feet was crumbling away. At first Curtis had provoked him, then mocked him, now he was making Sharpe feel very stupid. He let his fingers run over the lock of the rifle, liking its solidity, and looked at the priest. “Say what you have to say.”

  Curtis thrust his hand into the breast of his cassock and brought out a piece of paper. It was folded into a narrow strip. “This came to me today which is why I went to see Wellington. It came to me, Captain, sewn into the spine of a volume of sermons. It came from Paris.”

  Sharpe ran his finger against the rough edge of the rifle flint. He was unaware of the pain in his wound, he just listened to the elderly priest who had suddenly assumed great authority. “Leroux is a dangerous man, Captain, very dangerous, and we wanted to know more about him. I asked one of my correspondents, a friend, a man who works in a Ministry in Paris. This is the answer.” He unfolded the paper. “I won’t read it all, because you’ve heard much of it from Major Hogan. I’ll just read the last line. ”Leroux has a sister, as skilled in languages as himself, and I cannot discover her whereabouts. She was christened Helene’“

  Sharpe shut his eyes, then shook his head. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No, no, no.” Thunder drowned his protest. He opened his eyes and the priest was dark in the night. “You’re El Mirador.”

  “Yes.”

  Sharpe hated to believe it. “No. No.”

  Curtis was inexorable. “You may not like it, Captain, but the answer is still ”yes“.”

  Sharpe still refused to believe. “Then where’s your guardian?”

  “Lord Spears? He thinks I’m hearing confessions in the Cathedral, I often do on Tuesday night. He’s saying his farewells to La Marquesa, Sharpe, which is what is holding her up. Half the cavalry officers in town are paying her court at this moment.”

  “No! Her parents were killed by the French! She lived in Zaragoza!”

  “Sharpe!” Curtis shouted him down. “She met her husband in Paris just five years ago. He was part of a Spanish government embassy to Napoleon. She says her father was executed in the Terror, but who knows? So many died! Thousands! And no records were kept
, Sharpe, no careful ledgers! It’s not difficult for Napoleon’s men to produce a pretty young girl and claim she’s the daughter of Don Antonio Huesca and his English wife. We’d never have known if we hadn’t asked about Leroux.”

  “You still don’t know. There are a thousand thousand Helenes and Helenas.”

  “Captain Sharpe, please think.”

  She had claimed she was El Mirador, she was not. He thought of the telescope on the mirador, the telescope that pointed to the San Cayetano fortress where there had been the second telescope. It would have been so easy for her to signal to Leroux, to talk to him using a system like the army’s telegraph system. Sharpe still hated to believe it. He swept an arm round the shelter. “But all this! She’s been looking after me!”

  “Yes.” Curtis stood up and moved about the floor. The rain had slackened, the thunder was further south. “I think, Sharpe, that she is more than a little in love with you. Lord Spears says so and, God knows, he would have sinned with her if she had let him. I think she is in love with you. She’s lonely, she’s far from home. As a priest I disapprove, as a man I’m envious, and as El Mirador I want to use that love.”

  “How?”

  “You must lie to her, Captain, tonight. You must tell her that Wellington is leaving a rearguard at Arapiles and that he will try to convince Marmont that the rearguard is his whole army. You will tell her that Wellington wants to trick Marmont into staying still, into facing the rearguard while the bulk of the British army escapes. You will tell her that, Captain, and she will believe you because you have never deceived her. And she will tell Marmont, and then tomorrow you can watch the fruit of your labours.”

  Sharpe tried to laugh it off. “She tells Marmont? Just like that?”

  “No one in Spain stops a messenger who carries the seal of the house of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.”

  Sharpe shook his head. “No.” He wanted to see her, to hold her, to listen to her voice, laugh with her.

  Curtis sat again, near Sharpe, and he talked as the rain pelted on the river, as the storm moved southwards, and he talked of the letters that came to him, hidden letters, coded letters. He talked of the men who sent them and the ruses they employed to get the messages through. Now, it seemed to Sharpe, Curtis was a magician. He conjured the picture of his correspondents who feared for their lives, who worked only for liberty, who had stretched a web across Napoleon’s empire that led to this elderly priest. “I don’t remember exactly when it started, perhaps four years ago, but I found the letters coming, and I wrote back, and then I began to hide the letters, to put them inside the bindings of books. Then, when the English army came, it seemed sensible to pass the material onwards, so I did, and now I find that I am the most important spy you have.” Curtis shrugged. “I did not mean to be. I’ve trained priests, Sharpe, for years. Many of them write to me, often in Latin, sometimes in Greek, and I have lost only one man. I fear Leroux.” Sharpe remembered La Marquesa telling him how she feared Leroux. She was his sister.

  Sharpe looked at Curtis. “You think Leroux is in the city?”

  “I think so. I don’t know, but it seems logical that he would hide there until the French came back. Or stay there so he could go on looking for me.” Curtis laughed to himself. “They arrested me once. They took all my books, all my papers, but they found nothing. I persuaded them that as an Irish priest I had little love for the English. I don’t have much. But I do love this country, Sharpe, and I fear France.”

  The rain had almost stopped. The thunder was sounding to the south. Sharpe felt utterly alone.

  Curtis looked at the Rifleman. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Because I think you’re fond of her?” Sharpe nodded, and Curtis sighed. “Michael Hogan said you would be. He didn’t know if you were her lover, so I probed you to see how you reacted. Lord Spears said you were, but that young man spreads scandal. I think perhaps I envy you.”

  “Why?” Sharpe was low; feeling that his life had been dissected. He had been used.

  “I’m a professional gelding, Sharpe, but that doesn’t mean I never notice the mares.”

  “She’s very noticeable.”

  Curtis smiled in the darkness. “Jellification.”

  Sharpe put the rifle onto the bench beside him. “What happens if there is a battle tomorrow?”

  “We’ll look for Leroux in the evening. I suppose we’ll have to search the Palacio Casares.”

  “And her?”

  Curtis smiled at him. “Nothing. She’s a member of the Spanish aristocracy, beyond reproach, beyond punishment.” The wind was chilled by the passing rain. Curtis looked into the night. “I must go. If she found me here, then I had the excuse of the rifle, but it’s better that she doesn’t find me.” He stood up. “Convince her tonight, Sharpe, and I absolve you. for this night, for this deed.”

  Sharpe did not want absolution, he wanted Helena, or Helene if that was her name, and yet he feared to see her in case she noticed a difference in him. She had used him, and perhaps he should never have believed that an aristocrat could have a genuine purpose in friendship with a man such as he, yet he could not believe that it had all been a pretence. She had needed him at first because he was the man hunting her brother and he had told her everything, so she had told Leroux, but she had come back for him, had rescued him from the hospital, and tonight he wanted her, whatever the darkness might hatch.

  Curtis went through the door into a garden that was heavy with rain. The trees dripped after the storm. “Good luck, Sharpe.”

  “And you, sir.”

  Curtis went. Sharpe felt foolish and alone. He wanted her, to lie to her and with her, and he was alone. He waited. To the south, over the village of Arapiles, the thunder bellowed.

  CHAPTER 19

  The ridge ran north and south. It had been close cropped by sheep, goats, and by the rabbits whose droppings lay like miniature spent musket balls in the thin, springy grass. The ridge smelt of wild thyme.

  The day had dawned with a pale, rinsed sky. The only remnants of the great thunder storm were a few high, ragged clouds and a burden of water on the soil that promised to be burned away by noon. The ridge top was already drying when Sharpe arrived.

  She had begged him to stay. She had begged him to protect her against Leroux, and he had joined in the lie by begging her to retreat with the army, to go to Ciudad Rodrigo, but she would not.

  She had gone back to the city in the early morning, when it was still dark, and she had promised to send Sharpe a horse, a gift, and he had protested, but the horse came. A servant gave it to him and watched, silent, as the Rifleman rode towards the fords east of the city. She had given him a horse, a saddle, a bridle, and he could not guess how much the gift was worth. Soon she would discover that he had betrayed her, as she had him, and he would return the gift. Now he rode the horse down the great ridge towards the place where the hills ended and the plain began; the turning place. This was the bend where the armies went west and the ridge was like the marker on the inside of the curve. He had explained it all to her, in the darkness, and he had said that the French could march faster than the British and so Wellington planned to steal a march. He would leave a Division at Arapiles and send the rest of the army on a fast march, fifteen miles westward and, by staying with the rearguard himself, Wellington would persuade Marmont that the whole army was still in front of Salamanca. She had listened to him, asked questions, and Sharpe had warmed to the lie.

  They had lain together in the shelter and when the time came for them to part she had touched the scar on his face. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Then stay.”

  “I must go.” She smiled sadly. “I wonder if I’ll ever see you again.”

  “You’ll be surrounded by cavalry officers and I’ll be jealous.”

  She kissed his cheek. “You’ll bristle with dignity, like the first time you came to the mirador.”

  He kissed her back. “We’ll meet again.”
The words echoed in his head as his horse, her horse, trotted on the ridge’s spine.

  To the east of the ridge was a wide sweeping valley where the ripening wheat had been flattened by the rain and where a few dark trees showed the course of a stream. At the far side of the valley was an escarpment, its steep side facing Sharpe, and he knew that beyond the sheer red-rock bluffs at its crest the French army would be marching. The ridge and the escarpment ended in a great rolling plain and it was on that plain that Marmont would swing westward into the home straight; the race to block the Portuguese road.

  At the southern end of the ridge the ground fell steeply away and, a short walk from the ridge’s end to the west, was a village. It was like a thousand other Spanish villages. The cottages were low, made of rough-dressed stone, and a man could not stand upright in most of the small houses. The houses grew into each other and formed a maze of tiny alleyways that surrounded the simple church, no bigger than a storehouse. The church had a small stone arch built on one end of its roof that acted as the belfry for the one counter-weighted bell. A stork’s nest clung to the top of the arch.

  The richer peasants, and there were few of them, had painted their cottages white. Roses grew against the walls. Farmyards lay next to some cottages, empty now for the villagers feared the army that the night had brought behind the ridge. The villagers had driven their cattle away, to another village, and the hovels and alleyways had been left to God and the soldiers. The village, which had never been famous, was called Arapiles.

  If a man stood at the very bottom of the slope, near to the village, and looked southwards he would have seen an apparently empty, almost level plain. It was covered with wheat and grass. The horizon was dark with trees and jumbled because, beyond the plain, the country was rough and hard. If the man turned to his right he could see the village of Arapiles and, just beyond the village and so close to it that it seemed as if its rocks grew out of the small cottages, was a hill; the Teso San Miguel. Between the southern end of the ridge and the Teso San Miguel was a small valley, just two hundred yards wide at its narrowest point, and if a man were to walk up the valley’s centre, keeping the ridge to his right and the Teso San Miguel to his left, then he could see straight ahead of him, four miles to the north, the big tower of Salamanca’s New Cathedral. If the small valley were wreathed in cannon smoke, silted with musket smoke, then a man might be grateful for that landmark.