“So am I, sir.”
“We’ll have you in Cádiz soon enough and a proper doctor can look at your skull. McCann, if you want to steal my coffee you’ll find it on the cabin table.”
“Aye aye, sir,” the doctor said. McCann was evidently amused by his captain’s insult, which suggested to Sharpe that Pullifer was not the grim beast he appeared to be. “Can you walk, Sharpe?” Captain Pullifer asked gruffly.
“I seem to be all right, sir,” Sharpe said, and Pullifer jerked his head, indicating that the rifleman should go with him to the stern rail. Moon watched Sharpe pass by.
“Had supper with your brigadier last night,” Pullifer said when he was alone with Sharpe beneath the great mizzen sail. He paused, but Sharpe said nothing. “And I spoke with your sergeant this morning,” Pullifer went on. “It’s strange, isn’t it, how stories differ?”
“Differ, sir?”
Pullifer, who had been staring at the Thornside’s wake, turned to look at Sharpe. “Moon says it was all your fault.”
“He says what?” Sharpe was not certain he had heard right. His head was filled with a pulsing pain. He tried closing his eyes, but it did not help so he opened them again.
“He says you were ordered to blow a bridge, but you hid the powder under women’s luggage, which is against the rules of war, and then you dillydallied and the frogs took advantage, and he finishes up with a dead horse, a broken leg, and no saber. And the saber was Bennett’s best, he tells me.”
Sharpe said nothing, just stared at a white bird skimming the broken sea.
“You broke the rules of war,” Pullifer said sourly, “but as far as I know the only rule in bloody war is to win. You broke the bridge, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you lost one of Bennett’s best sabers”—Pullifer sounded amused—“so your brigadier borrowed pen and paper off me this morning to write a report for Lord Wellington. It’s going to be poisonous about you. Do you wonder why I’m telling you?”
“I’m glad you’re telling me,” Sharpe said.
“Because you’re like me, Sharpe. You came up the hawse hole. I started as a pressed man. I was fifteen and had spent eight years catching mackerel off Dawlish. That was thirty years ago. I couldn’t read, couldn’t write, and didn’t know a sextant from an arsehole, but now I’m a captain.”
“Up the hawse hole,” Sharpe said, relishing the navy’s slang for a man promoted from the ranks into the officer’s mess. “But they never let you forget, do they?”
“It’s not so bad in the navy,” Pullifer said grudgingly. “They value seamanship more than gentle birth. But thirty years at sea teaches you a thing or two about men, and I have a notion that your sergeant was telling the truth.”
“He bloody was,” Sharpe said hotly.
“So I’m warning you, that’s all. If I were you I’d write my own report and muddy the water a little.” Pullifer glanced up at the sails, found nothing to criticize, and shrugged. “We’ll catch a few mortar rounds going into Cádiz, but they haven’t hit us yet.”
In the afternoon the west wind turned soft so that the Thornside slowed and wallowed in the long Atlantic swells. Cádiz came slowly into sight, a city of gleaming white towers that seemed to float on the ocean. By dusk the wind had died to a whisper that did nothing except fret the frigate’s sails and Pullifer was content to wait till morning to make his approach. A big merchantman was much closer to land and she was ghosting into harbor on the last dying breaths of wind. Pullifer gazed at her through a big telescope. “She’s the Santa Catalina,” he announced. “We saw her in the Azores a year ago.” He collapsed the glass. “I hope she’s getting more wind than we are. Otherwise she’ll never make the southern part of the harbor.”
“Does it matter?” Sharpe asked.
“The bloody frogs will use her for target practice.”
It seemed the captain was right for just after dark Sharpe heard the muffled sound of heavy guns like thunder far away. They were the French mortars firing from the mainland and Sharpe watched their monstrous flashes from the Thornside’s forecastle. Each flash was like sheet lightning, silhouetting a mile of shoreline, gone in a heartbeat, the sudden brilliance confused by the lingering smoke beneath the stars. A sailor was playing a sad tune on a fiddle and a small wash of lantern light showed from the aft cabin’s companionway where the brigadier was dining again with Captain Pullifer. “Were you not invited, sir?” Harper asked. Sharpe’s riflemen and the Connaught Rangers were lounging around a long-barreled nine-pounder on the forecastle.
“I was invited,” Sharpe said, “but the captain reckoned I might be happier eating with the wardroom.”
“They made a plum duff up here,” Harper said.
“It was good,” Harris added, “really good.”
“We had the same.”
“I sometimes think I should have joined the navy,” Harper said.
“You do?” Sharpe was surprised.
“Plum duff and rum.”
“Not many women.”
“That’s true.
“How’s your head, sir?” Daniel Hagman asked.
“Still there, Dan.”
“Is it hurting?”
“It hurts,” Sharpe admitted.
“Vinegar and brown paper, sir,” Hagman said earnestly. “It always works.”
“I had an uncle that was knocked on the head,” Harper said. The Ulsterman had an endless supply of relatives who had suffered various misfortunes. “He was butted by a nanny goat, so he was, and you could have filled Lough Crockatrillen with his blood! Jesus, it was everywhere. My auntie thought he was dead!”
Sharpe, like the Riflemen and Rangers, waited. “So was he?” he asked after a while.
“Good God, no! He was milking the cows again that night, but the poor goat was never the same. So what do we do in Cádiz, sir?”
Sharpe shrugged. “We’ll get a boat to Lisbon. There must be dozens of boats going to Lisbon.” He turned as two reports rumbled across the water, but there was nothing to see. The far flashes had already faded and the mortar shells gave no light when they landed. Intermittent lamplight glimmered across the city’s white walls, but otherwise the shoreline was dark. Black water lapped against the frigate’s flanks and the sails shivered in the small wind.
By dawn the wind had freshened and the Thornside stood southwest toward the entrance to the Bay of Cádiz. The city was closer now and Sharpe could see the massive gray ramparts above which the houses glowed white, their walls studded with squat watchtowers and church belfries through which smoke drifted. Lights flashed from the towers and at first Sharpe was puzzled by the glints. Then he realized that they were the sun reflecting from the telescopes that watched the Thornside’s approach. A pilot boat cut across the frigate’s course, her captain waving his arms to show he had a pilot who was available to come aboard the frigate, but Pullifer had run this treacherous approach often enough to need no guide. Gulls wheeled about the frigate’s masts and sails as she slid past the heave and wash of broken water that marked the Diamante Rock and then the bay opened before her bows. The Thornside turned due south, heading into the bay and watched by a crowd on the city ramparts. It was evident now that the smoke above the city was not just from cooking fires, but mostly from a merchantman that burned in the harbor. It was the Santa Catalina, her hull crammed with tobacco and sugar. A French mortar shell had plunged between her foremast and mainmast, pierced a hatch cover, and exploded a few feet below the deck. The crew had rigged a pump and poured water onto the fire. It seemed they must have mastered the blaze, but somewhere an ember had lodged deep among the bales and it grew sullenly. The hidden fire spread secretly, its smoke disguised by the steam from the pump’s water. Then, just aft of the mainmast, the deck burst into new flames, sudden and bright, and the blaze caught the tarred rigging so that the whole intricate web of halliards, masts, and sheets was outlined in fire. Smoke boiled across the city’s skyline above which the white gulls
keened and the dark smoke drifted.
The Thornside ran within a quarter mile of the burning merchantman. The rest of Cádiz harbor, placid under a gentle wind, seemed unconcerned with the burning ship. A whole fleet of British warships was moored to the south, and Pullifer ordered a salute fired to the admiral. The French mortars were firing at the Thornside now, but the massive shells fell harmlessly on either side, each throwing up a fountain of spray. There were three French forts on the marshy mainland, all with mortars just capable of reaching the waterfront of Cádiz that sat on its isthmus like a clenched fist protecting the bay. Lieutenant Theobald, the Thornside’s second lieutenant, was busy with a sextant, though instead of holding it vertically, as a man would when shooting the sun or trying to snare a star in the instrument’s mirrors, he was using it horizontally. He lowered the sextant and frowned. His lips moved as he made some half-articulated calculations, then he crossed to where Sharpe and Harper leaned on the midships rail. “From the burning ship to the fort,” Theobald announced, “is a distance of three thousand six hundred and forty yards.”
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said, impressed. If the lieutenant was right, then the mortar’s shell had traveled more than two miles.
“I won’t vouch for the forty yards,” Theobald said.
Another mortar fired from the Trocadero Peninsula. The shell vanished in the low clouds as the smoke of the mortar hung above the fort, which was a low, dark mass on the marsh-fringed headland. Then a white splash showed very close to the city’s shore. “Even farther!” Theobald said in astonishment. “Must be close to three thousand seven hundred yards!” That was a thousand yards farther than any British mortar could reach. “The shells are huge too! Couple of feet across!”
Sharpe wondered about that. “Biggest French mortar I’ve ever seen,” he said, “is a twelve-inch.”
“Which is big enough, God knows,” Harper put in.
“They had these specially cast in Seville,” Theobald said, “or so prisoners tell us. Big bastards, anyway. They must use twenty pounds of powder to throw a ball that far. Thank God they’re not accurate.”
“Tell that to those poor bastards,” Sharpe said, nodding to where the Santa Catalina’s crew were climbing into a longboat.
“A lucky shot,” Theobald said. “How’s your skull today?”
“Hurts.”
“Nothing a woman’s touch won’t heal,” Theobald said.
A mortar shell landed off the Thornside’s port quarter, splashing the deck with water and leaving the faintest gray trail from its smoking fuse lingering in the small wind. The next shot was a good hundred yards away, and the one after that even farther, and then the guns stopped firing as it became obvious that the frigate had sailed out of range.
Thornside anchored well south of the city, close to the other British warships and the host of small merchantmen. Brigadier Moon stumped toward Sharpe on crutches that the ship’s carpenter had made. “You’ll stay on board for the moment, Sharpe.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Officially British troops aren’t permitted into the city so if we can’t find a ship leaving today or tomorrow, I’ll arrange quarters for you on the Isla de León.” He gestured toward the low land south of the anchorage. “In the meantime I’m going to pay my respects at the embassy.”
“The embassy, sir?”
Moon gave Sharpe a look of exasperation. “You are looking,” he said, “at what is left of sovereign Spain. The French have the rest of the bloody country except for a handful of fortresses, so our embassy is now here in Cádiz instead of in Madrid or Seville. I’ll send you orders.”
Those orders arrived just after midday, sending Sharpe and his men to the Isla de León where they were to wait until a northbound transport left the harbor. The longboat carrying them ashore threaded the anchored fleet, most of which were merchantmen. “Rumor says they’re taking an army south,” the midshipman commanding the longboat told Sharpe.
“South?”
“They want to land somewhere down the coast,” the midshipman said, “march on the French, and attack the siege lines. Bloody hell, they smell!” He pointed to four great prison hulks that stank like open sewers. The hulks had once been warships, but now they were mastless and their open gunports were protected by iron bars through which men watched the small boat pass. “Prison hulks, sir,” the midshipman said, “full of frogs.”
“I remember that one,” the bosun put in, nodding at the nearest hulk. “She were at Trafalgar. We beat her to splinters. There was blood pouring down her side. Never seen the like.”
“The dons were on the wrong side of that one,” the midshipman said.
“They’re on our side now,” Sharpe said.
“We hope they are, sir. We do hope that. Here you are, sir, safe and sound, and I hope your eggshell mends.”
The Isla de León was home to five thousand British and Portuguese soldiers who helped defend Cádiz from the French besiegers. Desultory cannon fire sounded from the siege lines that were some miles eastward. The small town of San Fernando was on the island and Sharpe reported there to a harassed major who seemed bemused that a handful of vagrants from the 88th and the South Essex had landed in his lap. “Your fellows can find space in the tent lines,” the major said, “but you’ll be billeted in San Fernando, of course, with the other officers. Dear God, what’s free?” He looked through the billeting lists.
“It’s only for a night or so,” Sharpe said.
“Depends on the wind, doesn’t it? So long as it blows northwest you aren’t going anywhere near Lisbon. Here we are. You can share a house with Major Duncan. He’s an artilleryman, so he’s not particular. He’s not there now. He’s off hunting with Sir Thomas.”
“Sir Thomas?”
“Sir Thomas Graham. Commands here. Mad about cricket. Cricket and hunting. Of course there aren’t any bloody foxes so they chase after stray dogs instead. They do it between the lines and the French are good enough not to interfere. You’ll want space for your servant, I assume?”
Sharpe had never had a servant, but decided this was the moment to indulge himself. “Harris!”
“Sir?”
“You’re my servant now.”
“What joy, sir.”
“San Fernando’s a decent little place in winter,” the major said. “Too many bloody mosquitoes in the summer, but nice enough at this time of year. Plenty of taverns, a couple with good bordellos. There are worse places to spend the war.”
The wind did not change that night, nor the next. Sharpe gave his and Sergeant Noolan’s men a make-and-mend day. They cleaned and repaired uniforms and weapons, and for every moment of the day Sharpe prayed that the wind would go south or east. He found a regimental surgeon who reckoned that inspecting Sharpe’s wound would do more harm than good. “If that naval fellow fished the bone back into place,” the man said, “then he did all that modern medicine can possibly do. Keep the bandage tight, Captain, keep it wet, say your prayers, and take rum for the pain.”
Major Duncan, whose quarters Sharpe now shared, proved to be an affable Scot. He said there were at least a half dozen ships waiting to make passage to Lisbon. “So you’ll be home in four or five days,” he went on, “just as soon as the wind goes round.” Duncan had invited Sharpe to the nearest tavern, insisting the food was adequate and ignoring Sharpe’s plea that he had no cash. “The dons eat damn late,” Duncan said, “so we’re forced to drink until the cook wakes up. It’s a hard life.” He ordered a jug of red wine, and no sooner had it appeared than a slender young officer in cavalry uniform appeared at the tavern door.
“Willie!” Duncan greeted the cavalryman with evident pleasure. “Are you drinking with us?”
“I am searching for Captain Richard Sharpe, and I assume that you, sir, are he?” He smiled at Sharpe and held out a hand. “Willie Russell, aide to Sir Thomas.”
“Lord William Russell,” Duncan said.
“But Willie suffices,” Lord William put in hastily
. “You are Captain Sharpe? In which case, sir, you are summoned. I have a horse for you and we must ride like the very wind.”
“Summoned?”
“To the embassy, Captain! To meet His Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Spain. Good lord, that is rotgut!” He had tried some of Duncan’s wine. “Did someone piss in it? Are you ready, Sharpe?”
“I’m wanted at the embassy?” Sharpe asked, confused.
“You are, and you’re late. This is the third tavern I’ve tried and I had to have a drink in each one, didn’t I? Noblesse oblige and all that.” He drew Sharpe out of the tavern. “I must say I’m honored to meet you!” Lord William spoke generously, then saw Sharpe’s disbelief. “No, truly. I was at Talavera. I got cut up there, but you took an eagle! That was one in the eye for Boney, wasn’t it? Here we are, your horse.”
“Do I really have to go?” Sharpe asked.
Lord William Russell looked thoughtful for a second. “I think you do,” he said seriously, “because it’s not every day that envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary send a summons for a captain. And he’s not a bad fellow for an ambassador. You can ride?”
“Badly.”
“How’s your skull?”
“Hurts.”
“It would, wouldn’t it? I fell off a horse once and bashed my head against a tree stump and I couldn’t think for a month! Not sure I’m cured yet, to be honest. Up you get.”
Sharpe settled himself in the saddle and followed Lord William Russell out of the town and onto the sandy isthmus. “How far is it?” he asked.
“Just over six miles. It’s a nice ride! At low tide we use the beach, but tonight we’ll have to jog along the road instead. You’ll meet Sir Thomas at the embassy. He’s a splendid fellow. You’ll like him. Everyone does.”
“And Moon?”
“I’m afraid he’s there too. Man’s a brute, isn’t he? Mind you, he’s been very civil to me, probably because my father’s a duke.”
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