"Sir?"
"Where were you last night?"
"In bed, sir, all night, sir," Sharpe said woodenly. It was the tone of voice he had learned as a sergeant, the voice used to tell lies to officers. "Took an early night, sir, on account of my head." He touched his bandage. The two Spaniards looked at him with distaste. Sharpe had just been woken by an embassy servant and he had hurriedly pulled on his uniform, but he was unshaven, weary, dirty, and exhausted.
"You were in bed?" Wellesley asked.
"All night, sir," Sharpe said, staring an inch above the ambassador's head.
The interpreter repeated the exchange in French, the language of diplomacy. The interpreter was only there to translate Sharpe's words, because everyone else said what they had to say in French. Wellesley looked at the delegation and raised an eyebrow as if to suggest that that was as much as they could hope to learn from Captain Sharpe. "I ask you these questions, Sharpe," the ambassador explained, "because there was something of a small tragedy last night. A newspaper was burned to the ground. It was quite destroyed, alas. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it's a sad thing."
"Very sad, sir."
"And the newspaper's proprietor, a man called"—Wellesley paused to look at some notes he had scribbled down.
"Nuñez, Your Excellency," Lord Pumphrey offered helpfully.
"Nuñez, that's it, a man called Nuñez, claims that British men did it, and that the British were led by a gentleman with a bandaged head."
"A gentleman, sir?" Sharpe asked, suggesting that he could never be mistaken for a gentleman.
"I use the word loosely, Captain Sharpe," Wellesley said with a surprising asperity.
"I was in bed, sir," Sharpe insisted. "But there was lightning, wasn't there? I seem to remember a storm, or perhaps I dreamed that?"
"There was lightning, indeed."
"A lightning strike caused the fire, sir, most likely."
The interpreter explained to the delegation that there had been lightning and one of the visiting diplomats pointed out that they had found scraps of shell casing in the embers. The two men stared again at Sharpe as their words were translated.
"Shells?" Sharpe asked in mock innocence. "Then it must have been the French mortars, sir."
That suggestion prompted a flurry of words, summed up by the ambassador. "The French mortars, Sharpe, don't have the range to reach that part of the city."
"They would, sir, if they double-charged them."
"Double-charged?" Lord Pumphrey inquired delicately.
"Twice as much powder as usual, my lord. It will throw the shell much farther, but at the risk of blowing up the gun. Or perhaps they've found some decent powder, sir? They've been using rubbish, nothing but dust, but a barrel of cylinder charcoal powder would increase their range. Most likely that, sir." Sharpe uttered this nonsense in a confident voice. He was, after all, the only soldier in the room and the man most likely to know about gunpowder, and no one disputed his opinion.
"Probably a mortar, then," Wellesley suggested, and the diplomats politely accepted the fiction that the French guns had destroyed the newspaper. It was plain they disbelieved the story and equally plain that, despite their indignation, they did not much care. They had protested because they had to protest, but they had no future in prolonging an argument with Henry Wellesley who, effectively, was the man who funded the Spanish government. The fiction that the French had contrived to extend their mortars' range by five hundred yards would suffice to dampen the city's anger.
The diplomats left with mutual expressions of regret and regard. Once they were gone Henry Wellesley leaned back in his chair. "Lord Pumphrey told me what happened in the cathedral. That was a pity, Sharpe."
"A pity, sir?"
"There were casualties!" Wellesley said sternly. "We don't know how many, and I daren't show too much interest in finding out. At present no one is directly accusing us of causing the damage, but they will, they will."
"We kept the money, sir," Sharpe said, "and they were never going to give us the letters. I'm sure Lord Pumphrey told you that."
"I did," Pumphrey said.
"And it was a priest who tried to cheat you?" Wellesley sounded shocked.
"Father Salvador Montseny," Lord Pumphrey said sourly.
Wellesley twisted his chair to look out the window. It was a gray day and a thin mist blurred the small garden. "I could, perhaps, have done something about Father Montseny," he said, still looking into the mist. "I could have brought pressure to bear, I might have had him posted to some mission in a godforsaken fever swamp in the Americas, but that's impossible now. Your actions at the newspaper, Sharpe, have made it impossible. Those gentlemen pretended to believe us, but they know damned well you did it." He turned back, his face showing a sudden anger. "I warned you that we must step carefully here. I told you to observe the proprieties. We cannot offend the Spanish. They know that the newspaper was destroyed in an attempt to stop the letters being published, and they will not be happy with us. They might even go so far as to make another press available for the men who have the letters! Good God, Sharpe! We have a house burned, a business destroyed, a cathedral desecrated, men wounded, and for what? Tell me that! For what?"
"For that, sir?" Sharpe said, and laid the copy of El Correo de Cádiz on the ambassador's desk. "I believe it's a new edition, sir."
"Oh, dear God," Henry Wellesley said. He was blushing as he turned the pages and saw column after column filled with his letters. "Oh, dear God."
"That's the only copy," Sharpe said. "I burned the rest."
"You burned"—the ambassador began, then his voice faltered because Sharpe had begun laying the ambassador's imprudent letters on top of the newspaper, one after the other, as if he were dealing cards.
"These are your letters, sir," Sharpe said, still in his sergeant's tone of voice, "and we've ruined the press that printed them, sir, and we've burned their newspapers, and we've taught the bastards not to take us lightly, sir. As Lord Pumphrey told me, sir, we have frustrated their knavish tricks. There, sir." He laid the last letter down.
"Good God," Henry Wellesley said, staring at the letters.
"Dear Lord above," Lord Pumphrey said faintly.
"They might have copies, sir," Sharpe said, "but without the originals they can't prove the letters are real, can they? And, anyway, they don't have a way of printing them now."
"Good God," Wellesley said again, this time looking up at Sharpe.
"Thief, murderer, and arsonist," Sharpe said proudly. The ambassador said nothing, just stared at him. "Have you ever heard of a Spanish officer called Captain Galiana, sir?" Sharpe asked.
Wellesley had looked back to the letters and seemed not to have heard Sharpe. Then he gave a start as if he had just woken. "Fernando Galiana? Yes, he was a liaison officer to Sir Thomas's predecessor. A splendid young man. Are those all the letters?"
"All they had, sir."
"Good God," the ambassador said, then stood abruptly, took hold of the letters and the newspaper, and carried them all to the fire. He threw them on the coals and watched them blaze bright. "How—" he began, then decided there were some questions better not answered.
"Will that be all, sir?" Sharpe asked.
"I must thank you, Sharpe," Wellesley said, still staring at the burning letters.
"And my men, sir, all five of them. I'll be taking then back to the Isla de León, sir, and we'll wait there for a ship."
"Of course, of course." The ambassador hurried across to his bureau. "Your five men helped?"
"Very much, sir."
A drawer was opened and Sharpe heard the sound of coins. He pretended not to be interested. The ambassador, not wanting his generosity or lack of it to be obvious, wrapped the coins in a piece of paper that he brought to Sharpe. "Perhaps you'd convey my thanks to your fellows?"
"Of course, sir, thank you, sir." Sharpe took the coins.
"But you rather look as if you should go back to bed now," Wellesley
said.
"You too, sir."
"I'm well awake now. Lord Pumphrey and I will stay up. There's always work to do!" Wellesley was happy suddenly, suffused with relief and the realization that a nightmare was over. "And of course I shall write to my brother commending you in the very highest terms. Be certain I'll do that, Sharpe."
"Thank you, sir."
"Good God! It's over." The ambassador stared at the last small flames flickering above the blackened mess of the papers lying on the coals. "It's over!"
"Except the lady, sir," Sharpe said, "Caterina. She has some letters, doesn't she?"
"Oh no," the ambassador said happily, "oh no. It really is over! Thank you, Sharpe."
Sharpe let himself out. He went into the courtyard where he sniffed the air. It was a dull morning, exhausted after the night's rain. The weathervane on the embassy's watchtower betrayed that the wind was from the west. A cat rubbed itself against his ankles and he leaned down to stroke it, then unwrapped the coins. Fifteen guineas. He guessed he was supposed to give one each to his men and keep the rest. He pushed them into a pocket, not sure whether it was a generous reward or not. Probably not, he decided, but his men would be happy enough. He would give them two guineas apiece and that would buy them a lot of rum. "Go and find a mouse," he told the cat, "because that's what I'm doing."
He walked through the archway to the smaller courtyard where servants were sweeping steps and the embassy cow was being milked. The back door to Lord Pumphrey's house was open and a woman came down the steps to fetch milk. Sharpe waited till her back was turned, then ran up the steps and through the kitchen where the stove had just been relit. He took the next stairs two at a time and opened the door at the top to find himself in a tiled hallway. He climbed more stairs, these deep carpeted, past pictures of Spanish landscapes of white houses, yellow rocks, and blue skies. A white marble statue of a naked boy stood on the landing. The statue was life-size and had a cocked hat on its head. A door stood open and Sharpe saw a woman dusting a bedroom, which he supposed was His Lordship's. He crept past and she did not hear him. The next flight of stairs was narrower and led to a landing with three closed doors. The first opened onto another stairway, which presumably climbed to the servants' quarters. The second was the door to a box room that was heaped with unused furniture, valises, and hat boxes. The last door led into a bedroom.
Sharpe crept inside and closed the door. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, for the shutters on both tall windows were closed, but then he could see an empty tin bath in front of the hearth where the remnants of the night's fire smoldered. There was a bureau, two sofas, a great wardrobe with mirrored doors, and a four-poster bed that had its embroidered curtains drawn.
He crossed the deep rugs and pulled open the nearest shutters to find himself staring across the roofs to the Bay of Cádiz where errant slants of watery sunlight were finding their way through gaps in the cloud to silver the small waves.
Someone grunted in the bed, then moaned slightly, as if resenting being woken by the new light filtering past the bed's curtains. Sharpe went to the second window and opened its shutters. Arrayed on the window seat, mounted on mahogany stands, were six golden wigs. A blue dress had been discarded on one of the sofas along with a necklace of sapphires and a pair of sapphire earrings. The moan sounded again and Sharpe went to the bed and yanked back the curtains. "Good morning," he said cheerfully.
And Caterina Veronica Blazquez opened her mouth to scream.
* * *
"MY NAME is Sharpe," Sharpe said before she could alarm the household.
Caterina closed her mouth.
"Richard Sharpe," he added.
She nodded. She was clutching the bedclothes to her chin. The bed was wide and it was plain a second person had occupied it through the night, for the pillows still showed the mark of his head. The ambassador's head, Sharpe was certain. Brigadier Moon had seen him come to the house, and Sharpe could not blame Henry Wellesley for being unable to surrender his whore because Caterina Blazquez was a beauty. She had short golden curls that were pretty even in disarray, wide blue eyes, a small nose, a generous mouth, and a smooth pale skin. In a land of dark-eyed, dark-haired, dark-skinned women she glowed like a diamond.
"I've been looking for you," Sharpe said, "and I'm not the only one."
She gave the smallest shake of her head, which, together with her scared expression, conveyed that she was frightened of whoever looked for her.
"You do understand me, don't you?" Sharpe asked.
A tiny nod of the head. She pulled the covers higher, covering her mouth. This was a good place to hide her, Sharpe thought. She was in no danger here, certainly in no danger from Lord Pumphrey, and she lived in the comfort that a man would want his mistress to enjoy. She was safe enough, at least until the servants' gossip betrayed her presence in Pumphrey's house. Caterina was examining Sharpe, her eyes traveling down his shabby uniform, seeing the sword, rising again to his face, and her eyes, if anything, were now slightly wider.
"I was busy last night," Sharpe said. "I was fetching some letters. Remember those letters?"
Another tiny nod.
"But I got them back. Gave them to Mister Wellesley, I did. He burned them."
She lowered the bedclothes an inch and rewarded him with a flicker of a smile. He tried to work out how old she was. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Young, anyway. Young and flawless as far as he could see.
"But there are more letters, darling, aren't there?"
There was a slight rising of her eyebrows when he called her darling, then a barely discernible shake of her head.
Sharpe sighed. "I know I'm a British officer, darling, but I'm not daft. You know what daft means?"
A nod.
"So let me tell you a bedtime story. Henry Wellesley wrote you a lot of letters that he shouldn't have written and you kept them. You kept them all, darling. But your pimp took most of them, didn't he? And he was going to sell them and share the money with you, but then he got murdered. Do you know who murdered him?"
She shook her head.
"A priest. Father Salvador Montseny."
The slight rise of eyebrows again.
"And Father Montseny murdered the man sent to buy them back," Sharpe went on, "and last night he tried to murder me, only I'm a much harder man to kill. So he lost the letters and he lost the newspaper that printed them and he's now a very angry priest, darling. But he knows one thing. He knows you didn't destroy all the letters. He knows you kept some. You kept them in case you needed the money. But when your pimp got murdered you became scared, didn't you? So you ran to Henry and told him a pack of lies. You told him the letters were stolen, and told him there weren't any more. But there are more, and you've got them, darling."
The tiniest and most unconvincing denial, just enough to shiver her curls.
"And the priest is angry, my love," Sharpe went on. "He wants those other letters. One way or another he'll find a printing press, but first he has to get the letters, doesn't he? So he's coming after you, Caterina, and he's a wicked man with a knife. He'll slit your pretty belly from bottom to top."
Another shiver of the curls. She pulled the bedclothes higher to hide her nose and mouth.
"You think he can't find you?" Sharpe asked. "I found you. And I know you've got the letters."
This time there was no reaction, just the wide eyes watching him. There was no fear in those eyes. This was a girl, Sharpe realized, who had learned the enormous power of her looks and she already knew that Sharpe was not going to hurt her.
"So tell me, darling," Sharpe said, "just where the other letters are, and then we'll be done."
Very slowly she drew the sheet and blankets down to uncover her mouth. She stared at Sharpe solemnly, apparently thinking about her answer, then she frowned. "Tell me," she said, "what did you do to your head?"
"It got in the way of a bullet."
"That was very silly of you, Captain Sharpe." The smile flickered a
nd was gone. She had a languorous voice, her vowels American. "Pumps told me about you. He said you're dangerous."
"I am, very."
"No, you're not." She smiled at him, then half rolled over to look at the face of an ornate clock that ticked on the mantel. "It's not even eight o clock!"
"You speak good English."
She lay back on the pillow. "My mother was American. Daddy was Spanish. They met in Florida. Have you heard of Florida?"
"No."
"It's south of the United States. It used to belong to Britain, but you had to give it back to Spain after the war of independence. There's nothing much there except Indians, slaves, soldiers, and missionaries. Daddy was a captain in the garrison at St. Augustine." She frowned. "If Henry finds you here he'll be angry."
"He's not coming back this morning," Sharpe said. "He's working with Lord Pumphrey."
"Poor Pumps," Caterina said. "I like him. He talks to me such a lot. Turn around."
Sharpe obeyed, then edged sideways so that he could see her in the mirrors of the wardrobe doors.
"And move away from the mirrors," Caterina said.
Sharpe obeyed again.
"You can turn around now," she said. She had pulled on a blue silk jacket that she laced to her chin, giving him a smile. "When they bring breakfast and water you'll have to wait in there." She pointed to a door beside the wardrobe.
"You drink water for breakfast?" Sharpe asked.
"It's for the bath," she said. She pulled on a ribbon that rang a bell deep in the house. "I'll have them revive the fire as well," she went on. "You like ham? Bread? If the chickens have laid then there'll be eggs. I'll tell them I'm very hungry." She listened until she heard footsteps on the stairs. "Go and hide," she ordered Sharpe.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe's Escape, Sharpe's Fury, Sharpe's Battle Page 61