Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe's Escape, Sharpe's Fury, Sharpe's Battle

by Bernard Cornwell

  He went into a small room filled with Caterina's clothes. A table with a mirror was cluttered with salves and cosmetics and beauty patches. Behind the mirror was a window and Sharpe, peering into the clearing air, could see the fleet weighing anchor and sailing north out of the bay. The army was on the move. He stared at the ships and thought his place was there, with men, muskets, cannons, and horses stalled in the holds. Men going to war, and here he was in a whore's dressing room.

  The breakfast came a half hour later, by which time the fire was blazing and the bath filled with steaming water. "The servants hate filling the bath," Caterina said, sitting up on banked pillows now, "because it's so much work for them, but I insist on having a bath every day. The water will be too hot now, so it can wait. Have some breakfast."

  Sharpe was ravenous. He sat on the bed and ate, and in between mouthfuls he asked questions. "When did you leave, what did you call it, Florida?"

  "When I was sixteen, my mother died. Daddy had run away long before that. I didn't want to stay there."

  "Why not?"

  "Stay in Florida?" She shuddered at the thought. "It's just a hot swamp filled with snakes, alligators, and Indians."

  "So how did you come here?"

  "By ship," she said, her big eyes serious. "It was much too far to swim."

  "By yourself?"

  "Gonzalo brought me."

  "Gonzalo?"

  "The man who died."

  "The man who was going to sell the letters?"

  She nodded.

  "And you've been working with Gonzalo ever since?"

  She nodded again. "In Madrid, Seville, and now here."

  "The same game?"

  "Game?"

  "Pretend to be well-born, get letters, sell them back?"

  She smiled. "We made a lot of money, Captain Sharpe. More than you could ever dream of."

  "I don't need to dream, darling. I once stole the jewels of an Indian king."

  "So you're rich?" she asked, eyes brightening.

  "Lost it all."

  "Careless, Captain Sharpe."

  "So what will you do without Gonzalo?"

  She frowned. "I don't know."

  "Stay with Henry? Be his mistress?"

  "He's very kind to me," Caterina said, "but I don't think he'd take me back to London. And he will go back eventually, won't he?"

  "He'll go back," Sharpe confirmed.

  "So I'll have to find someone else," she said, "but not you."

  "Not me?"

  "Someone rich," she said with a smile.

  "And you have to stay away from Father Salvador Montseny," Sharpe said.

  She gave another shudder. "He is really a killer? A priest?"

  "He's as nasty as they come, darling. And he wants your letters. He'll kill you to get them."

  "But you want my letters too."

  "I do."

  "And Pumps says you're a killer."

  "I am."

  She seemed to consider her dilemma for a moment, then nodded at the bath. "It's time to get clean," she said.

  "You want me back in that room?" Sharpe asked.

  "Of course not. That bath's for you. You stink. Get undressed, Captain Sharpe, and I'll wash your back."

  Sharpe was a good soldier. He obeyed.

  * * *

  "I LIKE Henry Wellesley," Sharpe said.

  "So do I," Caterina said, "but he is"—she paused, thinking—"earnest."

  "Earnest?"

  "Sad. His wife hurt him. Pumps says she was not beautiful."

  "You can't trust everything Pumps says."

  "But I think he is right. Some women are not beautiful yet they drive men mad. She has driven Henry sad. Are you going to sleep?"

  "No," Sharpe said. The bed was the most comfortable he had experienced. A feather mattress, silk sheets, big pillows, and Caterina. "I have to go."

  "Your uniform isn't dry." She had insisted on washing his uniform in the used bath water and it was now propped on two chairs before the fire.

  "We have to go," Sharpe corrected himself.

  "We?"

  "Montseny wants to find you. And to get the letters he'll hurt you."

  She thought about that. "When Gonzalo died," she said, "I came here because I was frightened. And because this is safe."

  "You think Pumps will protect you?"

  "No one would dare come in here. It's the embassy!"

  "Montseny will dare," Sharpe said. "There's no guard on Lord Pumphrey's front door, is there? And if the servants see a priest they'll trust him. Montseny can get in here easily. I did."

  "But if I go with you," she said, "how do I live?"

  "Same as everyone else."

  "I am not everyone else," she said indignantly, "and didn't you tell me you were sailing back to Lisbon?"

  "I am, but you'll be safer in the Isla de León. Lots of British soldiers to defend you. Or you can come back to Lisbon with me." She rewarded that suggestion with a smile and silence. "I know," Sharpe went on, "I'm not rich enough. So why did you lie to Henry?"

  "Lie to him?" She opened her eyes wide and innocent.

  "When you came here, darling, you told him you had no letters. You told him you'd lost the ones Gonzalo didn't have. You lied."

  "I thought perhaps if things went wrong," she began, then shrugged.

  "You'd still have something to sell?"

  "Is that bad?"

  "Of course it's bad," Sharpe said sternly, "but it's bloody sensible. So how much do you want for them?"

  "Your uniform is scorching," she said. She climbed out of bed and went to turn the jacket and overalls around. Sharpe watched her. A beauty. She would drive men mad, he thought. She came back to the bed and slid in beside him again.

  "So how much?" he asked her.

  "Gonzalo said he would make me four hundred dollars."

  "He was cheating you," Sharpe said.

  "I don't think so. Pumps said he couldn't get more than seven hundred."

  It took Sharpe a moment to understand what she was saying. "Lord Pumphrey said that?"

  She nodded very seriously. "He said he could hide the money in the accounts. He would say it was for bribes, but he could only hide seven hundred."

  "And he'd give you that for the letters?"

  She nodded again. "He said he would get seven hundred dollars, keep two, and give me five. But he had to wait till the other letters were found. Mine, he said, weren't valuable till they were the only letters left."

  "Bloody hell," Sharpe said.

  "You're shocked." Caterina was amused.

  "I thought he was honest."

  "Pumps! Honest?" She laughed. "He tells me his secrets. He shouldn't, but he wants to know my secrets. He wants to know what Henry says about him so I make him tell me things first. Not that Henry tells me any secrets! So I tell Pumps what he wants to hear. He told me a secret about you."

  "I've got no secrets with Lord Pumphrey," Sharpe said indignantly.

  "He has one about you," she said. "A girl in Copenhagen? Called Ingrid?"

  "Astrid."

  "Astrid, that's the name. Pumps had her killed," Caterina said.

  Sharpe stared at her. "He what?" he asked after a while.

  "Astrid and her father. Pumps had their throats cut. He's very proud of it. He made me promise not to tell anyone."

  "He killed Astrid?"

  "He said she and her father knew too many secrets that the French would want to know, and he couldn't trust them to keep quiet, so he told them to go to England and they wouldn't so he had them killed."

  It had been four years since Sharpe had been in Copenhagen with the invading British army. He had wanted to stay in Denmark, leave the army, and settle with Astrid, but her father had forbidden the marriage and she was an obedient girl. So Sharpe had abandoned the dream and sailed back to England. "Her father used to send information to Britain," Sharpe said, "but he got upset with us when we captured Copenhagen."

  "Pumps says he knew a lot of sec
rets."

  "He did."

  "He doesn't know any now," Caterina said callously, "nor does Astrid."

  "The bastard," Sharpe said, thinking of Lord Pumphrey, "the bloody bastard."

  "You mustn't hurt him!" Caterina said earnestly. "I like Pumps."

  "You tell Pumps the price for the letters is a thousand guineas."

  "A thousand guineas!"

  "In gold," Sharpe said. "You tell him that, and tell him he can deliver the money to you in the Isla de León."

  "Why there?"

  "Because I'll be there," Sharpe said, "and so will you. And as long as I'm there you'll be safe from that murderous priest."

  "You want me to leave here?" she asked.

  "You've got the letters," Sharpe said, "so it's time you made money on them. And if you stay here someone else will make the money. And like as not they'll kill you to get the letters. So you tell Pumps you want a thousand guineas, and that if you don't get it you'll tell me about Astrid."

  "You were in love with her?"

  "Yes," Sharpe said.

  "That's nice."

  "Tell Lord Pumphrey that if he wants to live he should pay you a thousand guineas. Ask for two thousand and maybe you'll get it."

  "What if he doesn't pay?"

  "Then I'll slit his throat."

  "You're a very nasty man," she said, putting her left thigh across his legs.

  "I know."

  She thought for a few seconds, then made a rueful face. "Henry likes having me here. He'll be unhappy if I go to the Isla de León."

  "Do you mind that?"

  "No." She looked searchingly into Sharpe's face. "Will Pumps really pay a thousand guineas?"

  "He'll probably pay more," he said, then kissed her nose.

  "So what do you want?" she asked.

  "Whatever you want to give me."

  "Oh, that," she said.

  * * *

  THE FLEET left, all except the Spanish feluccas that could not beat against the monstrous waves that were the remnant of the storm, so they returned to the bay, pursued by the futile splashes of the French mortar shells. The larger British ships drove through the heavy seas and then went south, a host of sail skirting Cádiz to disappear beyond Cape Trafalgar. The wind stayed in the west and the next day the Spaniards found kinder seas and followed.

  San Fernando was empty with most of the army gone. There were still battalions on the Isla de León, but they were manning the long defense works on the marshy creek that protected the island and the city from Marshal Victor's army, though that army left their siege lines two days after the Spanish feluccas sailed. Marshal Victor knew full well what the allies planned. General Lapeña and General Graham would sail their troops south and then, after landing close to Gibraltar, would march north to attack the French siege works. Victor had no intention of allowing his lines to be assailed from the rear. He took most of his army south, looking for a place where he could intercept the British and Spanish forces. He left some men to guard the French lines, just as the British had left some to protect their own batteries. Cádiz waited.

  The wind turned north and cold. The Bay of Cádiz was mostly deserted of shipping, except for the small fishing craft and the mastless prison hulks. The French forts on the Trocadero fired desultory mortar shells, but with Marshal Victor gone the garrisons seemed bereft of enthusiasm. The wind stayed obstinately north so that no ships could sail for Lisbon. Sharpe, back on the Isla de León, waited.

  A week after the last of the allied ships had sailed, and a day after Marshal Victor had marched away from the siege works, Sharpe borrowed two horses from Sir Thomas Graham's stable and rode south along the island's coast where the sea broke white on endless sand. He had been invited to ride to the beach's end and he was accompanied by Caterina. "Put your heels down," she told him. "Put your heels down and hold your back straight. You ride like a peasant."

  "I am a peasant. I hate horses."

  "I love them," she said. She rode like a man, straddling the horse, the way she had been taught in Spanish America. "I hate riding sidesaddle," she told him. She wore breeches, a jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat that was held in place by a scarf. "I cannot abide the sun," she said. "It makes your skin like leather. You should see the women in Florida! They look like alligators. If I didn't wear a hat I'd have a face like yours."

  "Are you saying I'm ugly?"

  She laughed at that, then touched her spurs to the mare's flanks and turned into the sea's fretted edge. The hooves splashed white where the waves seethed up the beach. She circled back to Sharpe, her eyes bright. She had arrived in San Fernando the day before. She had come in a coach hired from the stables just outside the city, close to the Royal Observatory, and behind the coach three ostlers led packhorses piled with her clothes, cosmetics, and wigs. Caterina had greeted Sharpe with a demure kiss, then gestured at the coachmen and ostlers. "They need paying," she said airily before stepping into the house Sharpe had rented. There were plenty of empty houses now that the army was gone. Sharpe had paid the men, then looked ruefully at the few coins he had left.

  "Is the ambassador unhappy with you?" Sharpe had asked Caterina when he joined her in the house.

  "Henry is quiet. He always goes quiet when he's unhappy. But I told him I was frightened to stay in Cádiz. This is a sweet house!"

  "Henry wanted you to stay?"

  "Of course he wanted me to stay. But I insisted."

  "And Lord Pumphrey?"

  "He said he would bring the money." She had given him a dazzling smile. "Twelve hundred guineas!"

  Sergeant Harper had watched Caterina's arrival with an expressionless face. "On the strength is she now, sir?"

  "She'll stay with us awhile," Sharpe said.

  "Isn't that a surprise."

  "And if that bloody priest shows his face, kill him."

  Sharpe doubted Montseny would come near the Isla de León. The priest had been beaten and if the man had any sense he would give up the fight. The best hope for his faction now was that Marshal Victor would beat the allied army, for then Cádiz must inevitably fall and the politicians in its walls would want to make peace with France before that disaster occurred.

  That was other men's business. Sharpe was riding on a long sea-beaten beach. To his east were sand dunes and, beyond them, the marshes. To his west was the Atlantic and to the south, where the beach ended at a river's mouth, were Spanish soldiers in their sky blue uniforms. From far off across the marshes came the grumble of gunfire, the sound of French cannons bombarding the British batteries guarding the Isla de León. The sound was fitful and faint as distant thunder.

  "You look happy," Caterina said.

  "I am."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's clean here," Sharpe said. "I didn't like Cádiz. Too many alleys, too much darkness, too much treachery."

  "Poor Captain Sharpe." She mocked him with a brilliant smile. "You don't like cities?"

  "I don't like politicians. All those bloody lawyers taking bribes and making pompous speeches. What's going to win the war is that." He nodded ahead to where the blue-coated soldiers labored in the shallow water. Two feluccas were anchored in the river's mouth and longboats were ferrying soldiers to the beach beyond. The feluccas were loaded to the gunwales with baulks of timber, anchors and chains, and piles of planks, the materials needed to make a bridge of boats. There were no proper pontoons, but the longboats would serve, and the resultant bridge would be narrow, though if it was properly anchored it would be safe enough.

  Captain Galiana was among the officers. It was Galiana who had invited Sharpe to the beach's end and he now rode out to greet the rifleman. "How is your head, Captain?"

  "It's getting better. It doesn't hurt so much as it did. It's vinegar that cures it. May I present the Señorita Caterina Blazquez? Captain Fernando Galiana."

  If Galiana was surprised that a young woman would have no chaperone he hid it, bowing instead and giving Caterina a welcoming smile. "What we're doing," he
said in answer to her first question, "is making a bridge and protecting it by building a fort on the other bank."

  "Why?" Caterina asked.

  "Because if General Lapeña and Sir Thomas fail to reach the French siege works, señorita, they will need a bridge back to the city. I trust the bridge will not be needed, but General Lapeña thought it prudent to make it." Galiana gave Sharpe a rueful look as though he deplored such defeatism.

  Caterina thought about Galiana's answer. "But if you can build a bridge, Captain," she asked, "why take the army south on boats? Why not cross here and attack the French?"

  "Because, señorita, this is no place to fight. Cross the bridge here and there is nothing but beach in front of you and a creek to your left. Cross here and the French would trap us on the beach. It would be a slaughter."

  "They sailed south," Sharpe told her, "so they can march inland and take the French from the rear."

  "And you wish you were with them?" Caterina asked Sharpe. She had heard envy in his voice.

  "I wish I was," Sharpe said.

  "Me too," Galiana put in.

  "There's a regiment in the French army," Sharpe said, "that I've got a quarrel with. The 8th of the line. I want to meet them again."

  "Perhaps you will," Galiana said.

  "No, I'm in the wrong place," Sharpe said sourly.

  "But the army will advance from over there"—Galiana pointed inland—"and the French will march to meet them. I think a determined man could ride around the French army and join our forces. A determined man, say, who knows the country."

  "Which is you," Sharpe said, "not me."

  "I do know the country," Galiana said, "but whoever commands the fort here will have orders to stop unauthorized Spanish troops from crossing the bridge." He paused, looking at Sharpe. "But they will have no orders to stop Englishmen."

  "How many days before they get here?" Sharpe asked.

  "Three? Four?"

  "I'm under orders to take a ship to Lisbon."

  "No ships will be sailing for Lisbon now," Galiana said confidently.

  "The wind might turn," Sharpe said.