Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Gold - The Destruction of Almeida, August 1810

‘Failure?’

Kearsey looked unhappy. ‘Cavalry, Sharpe. My own regiment, too. We sent fifty men and they got caught.’ He chopped his hand up and down as if it were a sabre. ‘Fifty. So we lost face to the Spanish. They don’t trust us, and they think we’re losing the war and planning to take their gold. El Católico wants to move the gold by land, but I’ve persuaded them to give us one more chance!’

After a dearth of information Sharpe was suddenly being deluged with new facts. ‘El Católico, sir?’

‘I told you! The new man. Marrying Moreno’s daughter.’

‘But why El Católico?’

A stork flapped its way up into the sky, legs back, long wings edged with black, and Kearsey watched it for a second or two.

‘Ah! See what you mean. The Catholic. He prays over his victims before he kills them. The Latin prayer for the dead. Just as a joke, of course.’ The Major sounded gloomy. His fingers riffled the pages as if he were drawing strength from the psalms and stories that were beneath his fingertips. ‘He’s a dangerous man, Sharpe. Ex-officer, knows how to fight, and he doesn’t want us to be involved.’

Sharpe took a deep breath, walked to the battlement, and stared at the rocky northern landscape. ‘So, sir. The gold is a day’s march from here, guarded by Moreno and El Católico, and our job is to fetch it, persuade them to let us take it, and escort it safely over the border.’

‘Quite right.’

‘What’s to stop Moreno already taking it, sir? I mean, while you’re here.’

Kearsey gave a single snorting bark. ‘Thought of that, Sharpe. Left a man there, one of the Regiment, good man. He’s keeping an eye on things, keeping the Partisans sweet.’ Kearsey stood up and, in the growing heat of the sun, shrugged off his cloak. His uniform was blue with a pelisse of silver lace and grey fur. At his side was the polished-steel scabbard of the curved sabre. It was the uniform of the Prince of Wales Dragoons, of Claud Hardy, of Josefina’s lover, Sharpe’s usurper. Kearsey pushed the Bible into his slung sabretache. ‘Moreno trusts us; it’s only El Católico we have to worry about, and he likes Hardy. I think it will be all right.’

‘Hardy?’ Sharpe had somehow sensed it, the feeling of an incomplete story.

‘That’s right.’ Kearsey glanced sharply at the Rifleman. ‘Captain Claud Hardy. You know him?’

‘No, sir.’

Which was true. He had never met him, just watched Josefina walk away to Hardy’s side. He had thought that the rich young cavalry officer was in Lisbon, dancing away the nights, and instead he was here! Waiting a day’s march away. He stared westward, away from Kearsey, at the deep, dark-shadowed gorge of the Coa that slashed across the landscape. Kearsey stamped his feet.

‘Anything else, Sharpe?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. We march tonight. Nine o’clock.’

Sharpe turned back. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘One rule, Sharpe. I know the country, you don’t, so no questions, just instant obedience.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Company prayers at sunset, unless the Froggies interfere.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Good Lord!

Kearsey returned Sharpe’s salute. ‘Nine o’clock, then. At the north gate!’ He turned and clattered down the winding stairs and Sharpe went back to the battlement, leaned on the granite, and stared unseeing at the huge sprawl of defences beneath him.

Josefina. Hardy. He squeezed the silver ring, engraved with an eagle, which she had bought for him before the battle, but which had been her parting gift when the killing had finished along the banks of the Portina stream north of Talavera. He had tried to forget her, to tell himself she was not worth it, and as he looked up at the rough countryside to the north he tried to force his mind away from her, to think of the gold, of El Católico, the praying killer, and Cesar Moreno. But to do the job with Josefina’s lover? God damn it!

A midshipman, far from the sea, came on to the turret to man the telegraph, and he looked curiously at the tall, darkhaired Rifleman with the scarred face. He looked, the midshipman decided, a dangerous beast, and he watched as a big, tanned hand fidgeted with the hilt of an enormous, straight-bladed sword.

‘She’s a bitch!’ Sharpe said.

‘Pardon, sir?’ The midshipman, fifteen years old, was frightened.

Sharpe turned, unaware he had been joined. ‘Nothing, son, nothing.’ He grinned at the bemused boy. ‘Gold for greed, women for jealousy, and death for the French. Right?’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

The boy watched the tall man go down the stairs. Once he had wanted to join the army, years before, but his father had simply looked up and said that anyone who joined the army was stark mad. He started untying the ropes that secured the bladders. His father, as ever, had been undoubtedly right.

On foot Kearsey was busy and, to Sharpe’s eyes, ludicrous. He strutted with tiny steps, legs scissoring quickly, while his eyes, above the big, grey moustache, peered acutely at the mass of taller humanity. On horseback, though, astride his huge roan, he was at home as if he had been restored to his true height. Sharpe was impressed by the night’s march. The moon was thin and cloud-ridden, yet the Major led the Company unerringly across difficult country. They crossed the frontier somewhere in the darkness, a grunt from Kearsey announcing the news, and then the route led downhill to the river Agueda, where they waited for the first sign of dawn.

If Kearsey was impressive he was also annoying. The march had been punctuated with advice, condescending advice, as if Kearsey were the only man who understood the problems. He certainly knew the countryside, from the farmlands along the road from Almeida to Ciudad Rodrigo, to the high country that was to the north, the chaos of the valleys and hills that dropped finally to the river Duero, into which the Coa and the Agueda flowed. He knew the villages, the paths, the rivers and where they could be crossed; he knew the high hills and the sheltered passes, and within the lonely countryside he knew the guerrilla bands and where they could be found. Sitting in the mist that ghosted up from the Agueda, he talked, in his gruff voice, about the Partisans. Sharpe and Knowles listened, the unseen river a sound in the background, as the Major talked of ambushes and murders, the secret places where arms were stored, and the signal codes that flashed from hilltop to hilltop.

‘Nothing can move here, Sharpe, nothing, without the Partisans knowing. The French have to escort every messenger with four hundred men. Imagine that? Four hundred sabres to protect one despatch and sometimes even that’s not enough.’

Sharpe could imagine it, and even pity the French for it. Wellington paid hard cash for every captured despatch; sometimes they came to his headquarters with the crusted blood of the dead messenger still crisp on the paper. The messenger who died clean in such a fight was lucky. The wounded were taken not for the information but for revenge, and the war in the hills between French and Spanish was a terrible tale of ghastly pain. Kearsey was riffling the pages of his unseen Bible as he talked.

‘By day the men are shepherds, farmers, millers, but by night they’re killers. For every Frenchman we kill, they kill two. Think what it’s like for the French, Sharpe. Every man, every woman, every child, is an enemy in the countryside. Even the catechism has changed. “Are the French true believers?” “No, they are the devil’s spawn, doing his work, and must be eradicated.”’ He gave his barking laugh.

Knowles stretched his legs. ‘Do the women fight, sir?’

‘They fight, Lieutenant, like the men. Moreno’s daughter, Teresa, is as good as any man. She knows how to ambush, to pursue. I’ve seen her kill.’