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!'

Sharpe 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.

Whether prompted by the sight of the fire or by the lateness of the hour, Jose decided to leave, and Sharpe, crouching in the shadows at the tree-line, watched as the horsemen wheeled and spurred their horses back to the east. The Company was alone.

'Lieutenant!'

Knowles came from the fire. 'Sir.'

'We're going back. Tonight.' He watched Knowles to see if there was any reaction, but the north countryman nodded as if the news was not unexpected. Sharpe was obscurely disappointed. 'We won't take the wounded. Sergeant Read can take them on to Almeida. Give him three men to help and tell him to find a convoy going back over the Coa. Understand?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And we'll split up tonight. I'll go ahead with the Riflemen; you follow. You'll find us in the graveyard at Casatejada.'

Knowles scratched his head. 'You reckon the gold's in there, sir?'

Sharpe nodded. 'Maybe. I want to look, anyway.' He grinned at the Lieutenant, infecting him with his enthusiasm. 'Arrange that, Robert; then let me know if there are any problems.'

Night dropped swiftly and the darkness seemed to Sharpe to be doubly thick. The moon was hidden behind looming clouds that slowly, infinitely slowly, blotted out the stars, and a small, chill breeze, that came from the north reminded Sharpe that the weather had to break. Let it not be tonight, he thought, for rain would slow them, make the difficult journey even more hazardous, and he needed to be in Casatejada while the darkness still reigned. To his surprise, his pleasure, the news that they were not going on to Almeida seemed to excite the men. They grinned at him, muttered that he was a bastard, but there was a restlessness about the Company that spoke of a need to fulfil their job. Knowles came back, a shadow in the darkness.

'Any problems?'

'Only Read, sir. Wants a paper.'

Sharpe laughed. Sergeant Read was as fussy as a broody hen and doubtless thought that his small band was in more danger from their own side than from the French. If the provosts found a small group wandering away from their battalion they could assume they had found deserters and get out their long ropes. Sharpe scribbled with a pencil on a page from Knowles's notebook, not knowing in the darkness if the words were even legible. 'Give him that.' Knowles did not leave and Sharpe could hear him moving restlessly. 'What is it?'

The Lieutenant's voice was low, worried. 'Do you know the gold is there, sir?'

'You know I don't.'

There was a pause; Knowles shifted from foot to foot. 'It's a risk, sir.'

'How?' Sharpe knew that his Lieutenant was not lacking in courage.

'I thought Major Kearsey ordered you back to the army, sir. If he comes back and finds us poking round Casatejada he won't exactly be happy. And El Catolico won't welcome us with open arms. And…' His voice trailed away.

'And what?'

'Well, sir.' Knowles crouched down so he was closer to Sharpe, his voice even lower. 'Everyone knows you were in trouble with the General after those provosts, sir. If Kearsey complains about you, sir, well…' He ran out of words again.

'I could be in even more trouble, yes?'

'Yes, sir. And it's not just that.' His words suddenly tumbled out as if he had been storing the speech for days, or even weeks. 'We all know the gazette hasn't come through, sir, and it's so unfair! Just because you were once a Private they seem to be doing nothing, and the Eagle counts for nothing.'

'No, no, no.' Sharpe stopped the flow. He was embarrassed, touched, even surprised. 'The army isn't unfair, just slow.'

He did not believe that himself, but if he let himself express his real thoughts, then the bitterness would show. He remembered the elation of the moment, a year before, when the General had gazetted him a Captain, but since then there had been only silence from the Horse Guards. He wondered whether the gazette had already been refused and no one dared tell him; that had happened before and battalion commanders had made up the pay themselves. Damn the army, damn the promotion system. He looked at Knowles.

'How long have you been a Lieutenant?'

'Two years and nine months, sir.' Sharpe was hardly surprised that the answer was given so fully and so quickly. Most Lieutenants counted the days till they had three years' seniority. 'So you'll be a Captain by Christmas?'

Knowles sounded embarrassed. 'My father's paying, sir. He promised me the money after Talavera.'

'You deserve it.' Sharpe felt the pang of jealousy. He could never afford fifteen hundred pounds for a Captaincy, and Knowles was lucky in his father. Sharpe laughed, disguising his mood. 'If my gazette fails, Robert, then by Christmas we'll have changed places!' He stood up, looked across the dark valley. 'Time to go. God knows how we find the way. But good luck.'

 A thousand miles away, north and east, a small man with an untidy hank of hair and an insatiable appetite for work looked at the pile of papers he had dealt with and grunted approvingly as he re-read the last paragraphs of the latest despatch from Marshal Andre Massena. He wondered if the Marshal, whom he himself had made into the Prince of Essling, was losing his touch. The British army was so small - the newspapers from London said a mere twenty-three thousand with twenty-two thousand Portuguese allies – while the French armies were so big, and Massena seemed to be taking the devil of a long time. But the despatch said that he was going forward, into Portugal, and soon the British would have their backs to the sea and would face nothing but terror, shame, and defeat. The small man yawned. He knew everything that happened in his huge Empire, even that the Prince of Essling had taken a young woman to the war to keep his bed warm at night, but he would be forgiven. A man needed that, especially as the years went on, and victory forgave all. He laughed out loud, startling a servant and flickering the candles, as he remembered a secret agent's report that said Massena's mistress was disguised in Hussar uniform. But what did that matter? The Empire was safe and the small man went to his bed, to his Princess, in utter ignorance of the Company that marched through his territory in the hope of giving him many sleepless nights in the months to come.