Sharpe grinned, gave him the rifle to handle. 'Come with us; you could become a Rifleman.' There was a laugh and El Catolico stood there, Kearsey loyally shadowing the tall man, and he watched as Ramon felt with his little finger, poking from the bandage, the seven rifled grooves that spun the ball and made the weapon so accurate.
El Catolico cleared his throat. 'A sad day, Captain.'
'Yes, sir.' Surely he had not come to tell Sharpe it had been a sad day.
El Catolico looked round the graveyard with an imperious eye. 'Too many dead. Too many graves. Too many new graves.'
Sharpe followed his eyes round the small graveyard. There was something strange here, something out of place, but it could have been his reaction to the burials, to the French damage in the graveyard. One wall, beside the hermitage, was made of niches, each sized to receive a coffin, and the French had torn off the sealed doors and spilt the rotting contents to the ground. Had the French heard of the gold, Sharpe wondered, or did they treat all cemeteries this way? To defile the dead was a taunt almost as callous as man could devise, but Sharpe guessed it was commonplace in the war between Partisans and French.
Sergeant Harper, unexpectedly, took a pace forward. 'They didn't open all the graves, sir.' He stated it consolingly, with his surprising compassion.
El Catolico smiled at him, saw that Harper was pointing at a fresh grave, neatly piled with earth and waiting for its headstone. The tall man nodded. 'Not all. Perhaps there was not time. I buried him six days ago. A servant, a good man.'
There was a snap and they all looked at Ramon, who was still fumbling with the Baker rifle. He had the small trap open, in the butt, and seemed impressed by the cleaning tools hidden inside. He handed the rifle back to Sharpe. 'One day I have one, yes?'
'One day I'll give you one. When we're back.'
Ramon lifted his eyebrows. 'You come back?'
Sharpe laughed. 'We'll be back. We'll chase the French all the way to Paris.'
He slung the rifle and walked away from El Catolico, across the cemetery and through a wrought-iron side gate that opened on to the wide fields. If he had hoped for fresh air, untainted with death, he was unlucky. Beside the gate, half hidden by dark-green bushes, was a vast manure heap, stinking and warm, and Sharpe turned back to see that El Catolico had followed him.
'You think the war is not lost, Captain?'
Sharpe wondered if he detected a trace of worry in the Spaniard. He shrugged. 'It's not lost.'
'You're wrong.' If the Spaniard had been worried, it was gone now. He spoke loudly, almost sneeringly. 'You've lost, Captain. Only a miracle can save the British now."
Sharpe copied the sneering tone. 'We're all bloody Christians, aren't we? We believe in miracles.'
Kearsey's protest was stopped by a peal of laughter. It checked them all, swung them round, to see Teresa, her arm through her father's, standing at the hermitage door. The laugh stopped, the face became stern again, but for the first time, Sharpe thought, he had seen that she was not completely bound to the tall, grey-cloaked Spaniard. She even nodded to the Rifleman, in agreement, before turning away. Miracles, Sharpe decided, were beginning to happen.
CHAPTER 11
The elation had worn thin. Failure, like a hangover, imposed its mocking price of depression and regret as Sharpe marched westward from Casatejada towards the two rivers that barred the Light Company from a doomed British army. Sharpe felt sour, disappointed, and cheated. There had been little friendliness in the farewells. Ramon had embraced him, Spanish fashion, with a garlic kiss on both cheeks, and the young man had seemed genuinely sad to be parting from the Light Company. 'Remember your promise, Captain. A rifle.'
Sharpe had made the promise, but he wondered, gloomily, how it was to be kept. Almeida must soon be under siege, the French would dominate the land between the rivers, and the British would be retreating westward towards the sea, to final defeat. And all that stood between survival and a silent, bitter embarkation was his suspicion that the gold was still in Casatejada, hidden as subtly as the Partisans hid their food and their weapons. He remembered Wellington's words. 'Must, do you hear? Must'
There had to be more gold, Sharpe thought: gold in the cellars of London, in the merchant banks, the counting-houses, in the bellies of merchant ships. So why this gold? The question could not be answered and the threat of defeat, like the rain-clouds that still built in the north, accompanied the Light Company on its empty march towards the river Agueda.
The Partisans were also going westward and for the first hour Sharpe had watched the horsemen as they rode on the spine of a low chain of hills to the south. El Catolico had talked of ambushing the French convoys that would be lumbering with ammunition towards Almeida. But, often as Sharpe saw Kearsey's blue coat among the horsemen, he could not see El Catolico's grey cloak. He had asked Jose, one of El Catolico's Lieutenants and the leader of the Company's escort, where the Partisan leader was, but Jose shrugged.
'Went ahead.' The Spaniard spurred his horse away.
Patrick Harper caught up with Sharpe, glanced at his Captain's face. 'Permission to speak, sir?'
Sharpe looked at him sourly. 'You don't usually ask. What is it?'
Harper gestured at the escorting horsemen. 'What do they remind you of, sir?'
Sharpe looked at the long black cloaks, wide hats, and long-stirruped saddlery. He shrugged. 'So tell me.'
Harper looked up at the northern sky, at the heavy clouds. 'I remember, sir, when I was a recruit. It was like this, so it was, marching from Derry.' Sharpe was used to the Sergeant's circumlocutions. If there were a way of imparting information by a story, then the Irishman preferred to use it, and Sharpe, who had learned that it was worth listening, did not interrupt. 'And they gave us an escort, sir, just like this. Horsemen before, beside, behind, and all the way round, so that not one mother's son would get the hell off the road. It was like being a prisoner, sir, so it was, and all the way! Locked up at night, we were, in a barn near Maghera, and on their side, we were!'
The Sergeant's face had the fleeting look of sadness that sometimes came when he talked of home, his beloved Ulster, of a place so poor that he had ended up in the army of its enemy. The look passed and he grinned again. 'Do you see what I'm telling you, sir? This is a bloody escort for prisoners. They're seeing us off their own land, so they are.'
'And what if they are?' The two men had quickened their pace so they were ahead of the Company, out of earshot.
'The bastards are lying through their teeth.' Harper said it with a quiet relish, as if confident that he could defeat their lies as easily as he saw through them.
Jose paused on a ridge ahead and searched the ground before spurring his horse onwards. The Company was isolated in a vastness of pale grass, rocks, and dried streambeds. The sun baked it all, hazed it with shimmering air, cracking the soil open with miniature chasms. Sharpe knew they must stop soon and rest, but his men were uncomplaining, even the wounded, and they trudged on in the heat and dust towards the far blue line that was the hills around Almeida.
'All right. Why are they lying?'
'What did your man say yesterday?' Harper meant El Catolico. But the question did not demand an answer from Sharpe. The Sergeant went on with enthusiasm. 'We were standing by that grave, you remember, and he said that he had buried the man six days before. Would you remember that?'
Sharpe nodded. He had been thinking of that grave himself, but his Sergeant's words were opening up new ideas. 'Go on.'
'Yesterday was a Saturday. I asked the Lieutenant; he can always remember the day and date. So that means he buried his servant on the Sunday.'
Sharpe looked at Harper, mystified by the meaning of his statement. 'So?'
'So he buried the man last Sunday.'
'What's wrong with that?'
'God save Ireland, sir, they would not do that. Not on a Sunday and not on a holy day. They're Catholics, sir, not your heathen Protestants. On a Sunday? Not at all!'
Sha
rpe grinned at his vehemence. 'Are you sure?'
'Am I sure? If my name's not Patrick Augustine Harper, and we were all good Catholics in Tangaveane despite the bastard English. Now would you look at that, sir?'
'What?' Sharpe was alarmed by the Sergeant's suddenly pointing to the north, as if a French patrol had appeared.
'A red kite, sir. You don't see many of those.'
Sharpe saw a bird that looked like a hawk, but to him most birds, from cuckoos to eagles, looked like hawks. He walked on. Harper had reinforced his suspicions, added to them, and he let his mind wander over the vague feelings that were causing him disquiet. The stone over the crypt that had not even prompted the faintest mistrust from Kearsey. Then there was the speed with which El Catolico had killed the Polish Sergeant, forgoing the usual pleasure of torturing the man, and surely, Sharpe reasoned, that had been done so that the man did not have time in his dying to blurt out the awkward fact that the French knew nothing about the gold. It was not much of a reason for suspicion. In the short time that the lancer had been their prisoner Sharpe had not even found a common language, but El Catolico was not to know that.
The stone, the sudden death of the lancer, and, added to those, Sharpe's first suspicions that the French, if they had found the treasure, would not have lingered in the high valley but would have ridden fast with their booty to Ciudad Rodrigo. Now there was Harper's idea that, if El Catolico had told the truth, the grave in the churchyard had been created on a Sunday, which, by itself, was reason for suspicion. Sharpe walked on, feeling the sweat trickling down his back, and tried to remember El Catolico's words. Had he said something like 'I buried him less than a week ago'? But if Harper was right, exact about the six days? Once again his suspicion was drifting free and had nothing to pin it and justify the plan that was in his mind. Yet El Catolico was lying. He had no proof, just a certainty. He turned back to Harper.
'You think the gold is in that grave?'
'There's something there, sir, and it's as sure as eternal damnation that it's no Christian burial.'
'But he could have buried the man on the Saturday.'
'He could, sir, he could. But there's the point that the thing is not disturbed. Strange.' Again Sharpe did not follow the Irishman's reasoning. Harper grinned at him. 'Say you wanted to steal a few thousand gold coins, sir, and they were hidden in the vault. Now, would you want to share the good news with everyone that you were taking them away? Not if you have a grain of sense, sir, so you move it a short way, hidden by the walls of the burial yard, and you hide it again. In a good fresh grave.'
'And if I was a French officer' – Sharpe was thinking out loud -'the first place I would look for anything hidden -guns, food, anything – is a good fresh grave.'
Harper nodded. He was no longer smiling. 'And if you found the corpse of a British officer, sir? What would you do then?'
The Sergeant had gone way ahead of Sharpe's thinking and he let the idea thread itself into his suspicions. Where the hell was Hardy? If the French found a British officer in a grave they would not disturb it; they would replace the earth, even say a prayer. He whistled softly. 'But -'
'I know, sir.' Harper interrupted him. This was the Sergeant's theory, well thought over, and he raced ahead with it. 'There's the funny thing. They won't bury you heathen English in holy ground in case you spoil it for us good Catholics. But would you think sixteen thousand gold coins might overcome their fear of eternal perdition, sir? I'd be tempted. And you can always move the body when you dig up the gold, and with two Hail Marys you're back on the golden ladder.' Harper nodded in satisfaction with his theory. 'Did you talk, sir, with the girl's father?'
'Yes, but he knew nothing.' Which was not true, Sharpe reflected. He had talked with Cesar Moreno, in the burnt courtyard of the widower's house, and the grey head bowed when Sharpe had asked what had happened to Captain Hardy. 'I don't know.' Moreno had looked up, almost pleading with Sharpe not to go on.
'And the gold, sir?'
Teresa's father had jerked away from Sharpe. 'The gold! Always the gold! I wanted it to go to Lisbon. El Catolico wants it to go by road! The French have it! If your cavalry had not blundered, Captain, it would be on its way to Cadiz. There is no gold any more.'
There had been a note of desperation in the man's voice that had made Sharpe want to go on prying, to let the gentle questions release Moreno's honesty, but El Catolico, Teresa with him, had appeared at the gate and the chance had gone. Yet now Harper was offering a new thought, one that Sharpe would never have found for himself: that the grave in the walled cemetery held the treasure, and, like the mysterious old mounds in the British countryside, the body was surrounded by gold. There was another superstition attached to those mounds, one Sharpe remembered well, that each was guarded by a sleeping dragon, a dragon that would wake at the first scrape of a thieving pickaxe. The dragon would have to be risked.
Sharpe let the idea take wings, spin itself into the air, a fragile sequence of possibilities on which to suspend the hope of victory. Could the gold be in Casatejada? So easy? That the gold was in the graveyard, sitting there till the armies had moved on, and El Catolico could dig it up without fear of French patrols or zealous exploring officers. Then why had El Catolico encouraged Kearsey to stay on with the Partisans? Or, he remembered, invited Sharpe to stay with his rifles? Yet if Harper were right, if his own suspicions were right, then the grave had been dug on a Sunday, which was against the law of the Church, and in it were the gold and the body of Josefina's lover. And perhaps El Catolico had invited them to stay with the Partisans because that only lessened their suspicions, and because El Catolico had all the time in the world and was in no particular hurry to dig up the coins. It was all too fantastic, a delicate web of frail surmise, but he knew that if he did not take a decision, then all would be irrevocably lost. He laughed out loud, at the absurdity of it all, at his worries that he might cause himself trouble if he were in the wrong, as if that mattered against the outcome of the summer's campaign. Jose looked round, startled by the sudden laugh.
'Captain?'
'We must take a rest. Ten minutes.'
The men sat down gratefully, stripped off their packs, and lay full length on the ground. Sharpe walked back along the line to talk to the wounded men who were being helped by their comrades. He heard Batten grumbling and stopped.
'Don't worry, Batten, there's not much farther to go.'
The suspicious eyes looked up at Sharpe. 'It's a hot day, sir.'
'You'd complain if it was any colder.' The men nearby grinned. 'Anyway, you'll be in Almeida tomorrow and back with the Battalion the day after."
He spoke loudly for the escort's benefit, and as he spoke he knew that the decision had been taken. They would not be in Almeida tomorrow, or the day after, but back in Casatejada, where there was some grave digging to do. It was the only way to allay the suspicions, but by doing it Sharpe knew he was taking on enemies that were more dangerous than the French. If the gold were there, and for a second his mind sneered away from the terrifying prospect that it was not, then the Company would have to carry it across twenty miles of hostile country, avoiding the French, but, worse than that, fighting off the Partisans, who knew the territory and how to fight it. For the moment all he could do was to convince the surly Jose that he had every intention of going straight back to the army, and Sharpe, to his men's surprise, suddenly waxed voluble and jolly.
'Boiled beef tomorrow, lads. No more vegetable stew! Army rum, your wives, the Regimental Sergeant Major, all the things you've missed. Aren't you looking forward to it?' They grinned at him, happy that he was happy. 'And for us unmarried men the best women in Portugal!' There were rude cheers for that and the Partisan, resting in his saddle, looked on disapprovingly.
'Your men fight for women, Captain?'
Sharpe nodded cheerfully. 'And for drink. Plus a shilling a day with deductions.'
Knowles walked up from the rear with his watch open. 'Ten minutes are up, sir.'
>
'On your feet!' Sharpe clapped his hands. 'Come on, lads! Let's go home. Parades, rations, and Mrs Roach to do the washing!'
The men stood up in good moods, heaved on their packs, shouldered their weapons, and Sharpe saw Jose's disdainful look. He had created the impression, a fairly accurate impression, that the Light Company cared only for drink and women, and such allies were not to Jose's taste. Sharpe wanted to be despised, to be under-rated, and if the Spaniard went back to Casatejada thinking that the men of the South Essex were clumsy, crude, and hell-bent on reaching the cat-houses of Lisbon, then that suited Sharpe.
Patrick Harper, the seven-barrelled gun hitched high on his shoulder, fell into step with Sharpe once more. 'So we're going back?'
Sharpe nodded. 'Not that anyone else needs to know. How did you guess?'
Harper laughed. He looked shrewdly at Sharpe, as if gauging the wisdom of his answer, but he seemed to think it safe. 'Because you want the bastard's woman.'
Sharpe smiled. 'And the gold, Patrick. Don't forget the gold."
They reached the Agueda at dusk, when gnats gathered in clouds over the slow northward flow of the river. Sharpe was tempted to bivouac on the eastern bank, but knew that such an action would arouse the Partisans' suspicions, so the Light Company waded the river and went half a mile into the trees that fringed the western hills. The escort did not leave but stood on the far bank watching them, and for a moment Sharpe wondered if the Spaniards suspected that the British soldiers would try to return to Casatejada in the night. He turned to a shivering Lieutenant Knowles. 'Light a fire.'
'A fire?' Knowles looked astonished. 'But the French -'
'I know. Light it. A big one.'
The men were enthusiastic. Those who had the wicked saw-backed bayonets attacked cork-oak branches, others gathered kindling, and within minutes the blue wood-smoke rose like a wavering signal in the evening sky. Patrick Harper, standing in dripping shirt-tails and holding his sodden trousers to the fire, cocked an inquisitive look towards his Captain as if suggesting that the blaze was dangerous. It was deliberately so, because seeing it would further convince the Partisans of the ineptness of the British infantry. Any man who lit a fire in countryside patrolled by the enemy could not expect to live long.
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