SHARPE WAS GIVEN A room in the embassy’s attic. The roof was flat and it had leaked badly at some time for a great patch of plaster was missing and the rest was dangerously cracked. A jug of water stood on a small table and a chamber pot lay beneath the bed. Lord Pumphrey had apologized for the accommodation. “The consul here in Cádiz rented the premises for us. Six houses in all. I have one of them, but I think you’d be happier staying in the embassy itself.”

“I would,” Sharpe had said hurriedly.

“I thought as much. Then I shall meet you at five tomorrow evening.”

“And I need some civilian clothes,” Sharpe had told His Lordship, and when he went to bed he found a pair of trousers, a shirt, and a coat laid out for him. He suspected the clothes had belonged to the unfortunate Plummer. They were black, too big, stiff, and slightly damp, as if they had never dried properly after being washed.

He left the embassy at six in the morning. He knew that because a score of church bells rang the hour, their sound cacophonous in the rising wind. He carried neither sword nor rifle, for both weapons were conspicuous, though he had borrowed a pistol from the embassy. “You won’t need it,” Lord Pumphrey had said the previous night.

“Don’t like being unarmed,” Sharpe had retorted.

“You know best, I’m sure,” Pumphrey had said, “but for God’s sake don’t startle the natives. They mistrust us enough as it is.”

“I’m just exploring,” Sharpe had said. There was nothing else for him to do. Lord Pumphrey was waiting for a message from the blackmailers. Who those blackmailers were, no one knew, but the appearance of the letter in the newspaper pointed to the political faction most desperate to break the British alliance. “If your negotiations fail,” Sharpe had said, “then that newspaper is where we start.”

“My negotiations never fail,” Lord Pumphrey averred grandly.

“I’ll still have a look at the newspaper,” Sharpe insisted, and so he had left in the early morning and, though he had been given careful directions, was soon lost. Cádiz was a maze of narrow dark alleys and high buildings. No one could use a carriage here for few streets were wide enough so the wealthy either rode, were carried in sedan chairs, or walked.

The sun had not yet risen and the city was asleep. The few folk awake had probably not yet gone to bed or else were servants sweeping courtyards or carrying firewood. A cat writhed about Sharpe’s ankles and he stooped to pet it, then headed down another cobbled alleyway at the end of which he found what he wanted outside a church. A beggar slept on the steps, and he woke the man and gave him a whole guinea along with Plummer’s cloak and hat. In return he got the beggar’s cloak and wide-brimmed hat. Both were greasy and matted with filth.

He walked toward his few glimpses of the dawn and found himself on the city rampart. Its outer face fell steeply to the harbor wharves, but the firestep was almost on the same level as the city’s streets. He walked along the wide top where dark cannons hunched behind embrasures. A spark of light showed across the water on the Trocadero Peninsula where the French had their giant mortars. A company of Spanish soldiers was posted on the wall, but at least half were snoring. Dogs foraged along the rampart’s edge.

The whole world, like the city, seemed asleep, but then an explosion of light ripped the eastern horizon in two. The light spread flat, like a disk, sudden and white to silhouette the few ships anchored near the wharves, and then the light faded, the last of it writhing in a great blossom of smoke that billowed above one of the French forts, and then the noise came. A thunder rolled over the bay, startling sleeping sentries awake as the shell landed just across the ramparts, a quarter mile ahead of Sharpe. There was a brief silence before the missile exploded. A wavering trace of smoke, left by the burning fuse, hung in the first daylight. The shell had blown itself apart inside a small grove of orange trees and Sharpe, when he reached the spot, could smell the powder smoke. He kicked a shard of broken casing that skittered down the rampart. Then he jumped down to the scorched grass and crossed the grove into a dark street. The house walls were a dirty white now as dawn glowed in the east.

He was lost, but he was at the city’s northern edge where he wanted to be. By exploring the narrow streets he at last found the church with the red-painted crucifix on its outer wall. Lord Pumphrey had told him the crucifix had been brought from Venezuela and it was believed that on the Feast of Saint Vincent the red paint turned to blood. Sharpe wondered when the saint’s feast day was. He would like to see paint turn to blood.

He squatted on the bottom step of the church entrance. The filthy cloak swathed him and the wide hat hid his face. The street here was just five paces wide, and almost opposite him was a four-storied house marked by a stone scallop shell cemented into the white facade. An alley ran down the side of the house that had an ornate front door flanked by two windows. The windows were shuttered on the inside while outside the glass were thick black-painted grilles. The upper floors had three windows apiece facing onto narrow balconies. This, Pumphrey had assured him, was where El Correo de Cádiz was printed. “The house belongs to a man called Nuñez, who owns the newspaper. He lives above the printing premises.”

No one stirred in the Nuñez house. Sharpe squatted, unmoving, with a wooden bowl taken from the embassy kitchen beside him on the step. He had put a handful of coins in the bowl, remembering that that was the way to encourage generosity, though as the street stayed empty there was no generosity to encourage. He thought about the beggars of his childhood. Blind Michael, who could see like a hawk, and Ragged Kate, who hired babies for tuppence an hour and plucked at the shawls of well-dressed women in the Strand. She had carried a hat pin to make the babies cry and on a good day she had sometimes made two or three pounds that she would drink away in an evening. There had been Stinking Moses who claimed to have been a parson before he fell into debt. He would tell folks’ fortunes for a shilling. “Always tell them they’ll be lucky in love, boy,” he had advised Sharpe, “’cuz they’d rather be lucky in bed than get to heaven.”

It was oddly restful. Sharpe squatted and, when the first pedestrians appeared, he mumbled the words Pumphrey had suggested. “Por favor, Madre de Dios.” He said the words over and over, occasionally muttering thanks when a copper coin rattled into the bowl. And all the time he watched the house with the scallop shell, and he noted that the big front door was never used and that the shutters behind the heavy window grilles were never opened even though the other houses in the street opened their shutters to take advantage of what small light found its way between the high buildings. Six men came to the house and all used a side door down the alley. Late in the morning Sharpe moved there, muttering his incantation as he went, and he squatted again, this time just inside the alley’s mouth, and watched a man go to the side door and knock. A hatch slid open, a question was asked, it was evidently answered satisfactorily, and the door opened. In the next hour three porters delivered crates and a woman brought a bundle of laundry. The same hatch was slid open each time before the visitors were allowed inside. The laundress dropped a coin in Sharpe’s bowl. “Gracias,” he said.

Around midmorning a priest came out of the alley door. He was tall and lantern-jawed. He dropped a coin in Sharpe’s bowl and at the same time gave a command that Sharpe did not understand, but the priest pointed to the church and Sharpe assumed he had been ordered to move out of the alleyway. He picked up his bowl and shuffled toward the church, and there saw trouble waiting.

Three beggars had taken his place on the steps. All were men. At least half the male beggars in Cádiz were cripples, survivors of battles against the British or the French. They were limbless, scarred, and ulcerous. Some wore placards with the names of the battles where they had been wounded, while others proudly wore the remnants of their uniforms, but none of the three waiting men was crippled or wore uniforms, and all three were watching Sharpe.

He had trespassed. The beggars in London were as organized as any battalion. If a man took post where other beggars had their usual pitches, then the man would be warned, and if he did not heed the warning, the beggar-lords would be summoned from their lairs. Stinking Moses had always worked the church of St. Martins in the Fields, and he had once been robbed by two sailors who had kicked him across the street to the door of the workhouse, where they had taken his coins, then taken his place on the church steps. Next morning Stinking Moses was back at the church and two corpses were found in Moons Yard.

These three men were on a similar mission. They said nothing as Sharpe emerged from the alley, but just surrounded him. One took his bowl and the remaining two held his elbows and hurried him westward until they reached a shadowed archway. “Madre de Dios,” Sharpe mumbled. He was still crouching as though he had a wounded spine.

The man holding the bowl demanded to know who Sharpe was. Sharpe did not understand the man’s fast and colloquial Spanish, but guessed that was what the man wanted to know, just as he guessed what was coming next. It was a knife that came from under the man’s ragged cloak and flashed up toward Sharpe’s throat. At that moment the apparently crippled beggar turned into a soldier. Sharpe seized the man’s wrist and kept the knife moving upward, but now toward its owner, and Sharpe was smiling as the blade slid easily into the soft flesh under the man’s chin. He gave the wrist one last jerk so that the knife went through the man’s tongue into his palate. The man made a mewling noise as blood spilled from his lips. Sharpe, who had easily freed his right arm, now pulled his left free as the man on that side launched a massive kick and Sharpe seized the boot and pushed it upward so that the man flew back, to fall hard on the cobbles, his skull making a sound like a musket butt dropped on stone. Sharpe elbowed the third man between the eyes. It had taken seconds. The first man was staring with wide eyes at Sharpe, who now drew his pistol. The man who had fallen was now on his knees, groggy. The second man had blood pouring from his nose and the pistol was pointing at the leader’s groin. Sharpe cocked the gun and, in the archway, the sound was ominous.

The man, with his own knife still pinning his mouth shut, put down the bowl. He held his hands out as if to ward off trouble. “Bugger off,” Sharpe said in English and, though they did not understand, they obeyed. They backed away slowly until Sharpe leveled the pistol, and then they ran.

“Bugger,” Sharpe said. His head was throbbing. He touched the bandage and flinched from the pain. He crouched and scooped up the coins. When he stood, there was a heartbeat and he felt faint, so he leaned at the archway’s side and looked up, because that seemed to alleviate the pain. There was a cross incised into the keystone of the arch. He stared at it until the pain receded. He put away the pistol, which, carelessly, he was still holding, though the arch was deep enough to hide him from the few pedestrians who passed. He noticed weeds growing at the foot of the gates, which were secured by a big old-fashioned ball padlock, like the one that had guarded the Marquesa’s boathouse. This padlock was rusted. He went out into the street and saw that the building’s windows were shuttered and barred. A watchtower rose above the building, and more weeds grew between the tower’s stones. The building was abandoned and no more than forty paces from Nuñez’s house. “Perfect,” he said aloud, and a woman leading a goat on a length of rope made the sign of the cross because she thought he was mad.

It was close to midday. He spent a long time searching the streets for the merchant he wanted, and had to bundle the filthy cloak and hat under his arm before going into the shop, where he bought a new padlock. The lock had been made in Britain and had wards inside the steel case to protect the levers from picks. The shopkeeper charged him too much, probably because his customer was English, but Sharpe did not argue. The money was not his, but had been given him by Lord Pumphrey from the embassy’s cash box.

He went back to the miraculous crucifix and settled on the steps under its stone canopy. He knew the three men would be back, or two of them would be back, but not until they had rousted up reinforcements, and he reckoned that gave him an hour or two. A dog investigated the interesting smells of his borrowed cloak, then pissed against the wall. Women came and went to the church and most dropped small coins into his bowl. Another beggar, a woman, whined at the far side of the steps. She tried to engage Sharpe in conversation, but all he would say was “Mother of God,” and she abandoned her attempts. He just watched the house and wondered how he could ever hope to steal anything from inside, if indeed, the letters were even there. The place was plainly well guarded, and he suspected that the front door and the ground-floor windows had been blocked. A monk had been calling house to house, probably collecting for charity, and the man had hammered unavailingly on the door until the lantern-jawed priest had appeared from the alleyway. He shouted at the monk to go away. So the front door could not be opened, and that suggested it had been barricaded, as had the two barred windows. The French mortars fired twice more, but neither of the shells came anywhere near the street where Sharpe was waiting. He sat on the steps until the streets emptied as folk went for their siesta, then he shuffled back to the abandoned building where the three men had tried to rob him. He cracked the ball padlock with a loose cobblestone, unthreaded the chain, and went inside.

He found himself in a small cloistered courtyard. One part of the cloisters had collapsed and the stonework of the rest was scorched. There was a small chapel to one side and something had plunged through its roof and burned everything inside. A French mortar shell? Except, as far as Sharpe could see, the big French mortars did not have the range to reach this far into the city and, besides, this damage was old. There was mold growing on the scorch marks and weeds between the flagstones of the chapel floor.

He climbed the watchtower steps. The city’s skyline was punctuated by the towers, close to two hundred of them, and Sharpe supposed they had been built so merchants could watch for their ships beating in from the Atlantic. Or perhaps the first of them had been built when Cádiz was young, when the Romans had garrisoned the peninsula and watched for Carthaginian pirates. Then the Moors had taken Cádiz and they had watched for Christian raiders, and when the Spaniards at last took the city for themselves they had watched for English buccaneers. They had called Sir Francis Drake el Draco, and the dragon had come to Cádiz and burned most of the old city, and so the towers had been rebuilt, tower after tower, because Cádiz was never short of enemies.

This tower was six stories high. The top floor was a roofed platform with a stone balustrade and Sharpe eased his head over the parapet very slowly so that no one watching would see a sudden movement. He peered eastward and saw he had been right and that this was the perfect place to watch Nuñez’s house, which was just fifty paces away and joined to the abandoned building by other houses, all with flat roofs. Most of the city’s houses had flat roofs, places to enjoy the sun that rarely reached into the deep, narrow, balcony-blocked ravines of the streets. The chimneys cast black shadows and it was in one of those shadows that Sharpe saw the sentinel on Nuñez’s house: one man, dark cloaked, sitting with a musket across his knees.

Sharpe watched for the best part of an hour during which the man hardly moved. The French mortars had stopped firing, but far off to the south and east there was the bloom of gunsmoke beyond the marshes where the French besiegers faced the small British army that protected Cádiz’s isthmus. The sound of the guns was muted, a mere grumble of distant thunder, and then that too died away.

Sharpe went back to the street where he closed the gates, put the chain back, and used his new padlock to secure it. He thrust the key into a pocket and walked east and south, away from Nuñez’s house. He kept the ocean on his right, knowing that would bring him to the cathedral where he was to meet Lord Pumphrey. He thought about Jack Bullen as he walked. Poor Jack, a prisoner, and he remembered the burst of smoke from Vandal’s musket. There was a revenge waiting. His head hurt. Sometimes a stab of pain blackened the sight in his right eye, which was odd, because the wound was on the left side of his scalp. He arrived early at the cathedral, so he sat on the seawall and watched the great rollers come from the Atlantic to break on the rocks and suck back white. A small band of men was negotiating the jagged reef that extended west from the city and ended in a lighthouse. He could see they were carrying burdens, presumably fuel for the fire that was lit nightly on the lighthouse platform. They hesitated between rocks, jumping only when the sea drew back and the white foam drained from the stones.

A clock struck five and he walked to the cathedral, which, even unfinished, loomed massively above the smaller houses. Its roof was half covered in tarpaulins so it was hard to tell what it would look like when it was complete, but for now it looked ugly, a brutal mass of gray-brown stone broken by few windows and spidery with scaffolding. The entrance, which fronted onto a narrow street piled with masonry, was approached by a fine flight of stairs where Lord Pumphrey waited, fending off the beggars with an ivory-tipped cane. “Good God, Richard,” His Lordship said as he greeted Sharpe, “where did you get that cloak?”

“Off a beggar.”

Lord Pumphrey was soberly dressed, though a smell of lavenders wafted from his dark coat and long black cloak. “Have you had a useful day?” he asked lightly, as he used the cane to part the beggars and reach the door.

“Maybe. All depends, doesn’t it, whether the letters are in that newspaper place?”

“I trust it doesn’t come to that,” Lord Pumphrey said. “I trust our blackmailers will contact me.”

“They haven’t yet?”

“Not yet,” Pumphrey said. He dipped a forefinger in the stoup of holy water and wafted it across his forehead. “I’m no papist, of course, but it does no harm to pretend, does it? The message hinted that our opponents are willing to sell us the letters, but only for a great deal of money. Isn’t it ghastly?” This last question referred to the cathedral interior, which did not seem ghastly to Sharpe, just splendid and ornate and huge. He was staring down a long nave flanked by clusters of pillars. Off the side aisles were rows of chapels bright with painted statues, gilded altars, and candles lit by the faithful. “They’ve been building it for ninety-something years,” Lord Pumphrey said, “and work has now more or less stopped because of the war. I suppose they’ll finish it all one day. Hat off.”

Sharpe snatched off his hat. “Did you write to Sir Thomas?”

“I did.” Lord Pumphrey had promised to write a note requesting that Sharpe’s riflemen be kept on the Isla de León rather than be put on a ship heading north to Lisbon. The wind had gone southerly during the day and some ships had already headed north.

“I’ll fetch my men tonight,” Sharpe said.

“They’ll have to be quartered in the stables,” Pumphrey said, “and pretend to be embassy servants. We are going to the crossing.”

“The crossing?”

“The place where the transept crosses the nave. There’s a crypt beneath it.”

“Where Plummer died?”

“Where Plummer died. Isn’t that what you wanted to see?”

The farther end of the cathedral was still unbuilt. A plain brick wall rose where, one day, the sanctuary and high altar would stand. The crossing, just in front of the plain wall, was an airy high space with soaring pillars at each corner. Above Sharpe now was the unfinished dome where a few men worked on scaffolding that climbed each cluster of pillars and then spread about the base of the dome. A makeshift crane was fixed high in the dome’s scaffolding and two men were hauling up a wooden platform loaded with masonry. “I thought you said they’d stopped building,” Sharpe said.

“I suppose they must do repairs,” Lord Pumphrey said airily. He led Sharpe past a pulpit behind which an archway had been built into one of the massive pillars. A flight of steps disappeared downward. “Captain Plummer met his end down there.” Lord Pumphrey gestured at the steps. “I try to feel sorrow at his passing, but I must say he was a most obnoxious man. You wish to descend?”

“Of course.”

“I very much doubt they will choose this place again,” His Lordship said.

“Depends what they want,” Sharpe said.

“Meaning?”

“If they want us dead then they’ll choose this place. It worked for them once, so why not use it again?” He led the way down the stairs and so emerged into an extraordinary chamber. It was circular with a low-domed ceiling. An altar lay at one end of the chamber. Three women knelt in front of the crucifix, beads busy in their fingers, staring up at the crucified Christ as Pumphrey tiptoed to the crypt’s center. Once there he put a finger to his lips and Sharpe assumed His Lordship was being reverent, but instead Pumphrey rapped his cane sharply on the floor and the sound echoed and reechoed. “Isn’t it amazing?” Lord Pumphrey asked. “Amazing,” the echo said, and then again, and again, and again. One of the women turned and scowled, but His Lordship just smiled at her and offered an elegant bow. “You can sing in harmony with yourself here,” Pumphrey said. “Would you like to try?”

Sharpe was more interested in the archways leading from the big chamber. There were five. The center one led to another chapel, which had an altar lit by candles, while the remaining four were dark caverns. He explored the nearest one and discovered a passage leading from it. The passage circled the big chamber, going from cavern to cavern. “Clever bastards, aren’t they?” he said to Lord Pumphrey who had followed him.

“Clever?”

“Plummer must have died in the middle of the big chamber, yes?”

“That’s where the blood was, certainly. You can still see it if you look carefully.”

“And the bastards must have been in these side chambers. And you can never tell which one they’re in because they can go around the passage. There’s only one reason for meeting in a place like this. It’s a killing ground. You’re negotiating with the bastards? You tell them to meet us in a public place, in daylight.”

“I suspect we have reason to indulge them, rather than the other way around.”

“Whatever that means,” Sharpe said. “How much money are we talking about?”

“At least a thousand guineas. At least. Probably much more.”

“Bloody hell!” Sharpe said, then gave a humorless laugh. “That’ll teach the ambassador to choose his women more carefully.”

“Henry paid the three hundred guineas that Plummer lost,” Pumphrey said, “but he can well afford it. The man who stole his wife had to pay him a fortune. But from now it will be the government’s money.”

“Why?”

“Because once our enemies published a letter it became a matter of public policy. This business is no longer about Henry’s unfortunate choice of bedmate, but about British policy toward Spain. Perhaps that’s why they printed the one letter. It put up the price and opened His Majesty’s purse strings. If that was their motive, then I must say it was rather clever of them.”

Sharpe walked back to the central chamber. He imagined enemies hidden all around, enemies who were moving through the hidden passage, enemies threatening from a new archway every few seconds. Plummer and his companions would have been like rats in a pit, never knowing which hole the terriers would come from. “Suppose they do sell you the letters,” he said. “What’s to stop them keeping copies and publishing them anyway?”

“They will undertake not to. That is one of our immutable conditions.”

“Immutable rubbish,” Sharpe said scornfully. “You’re not dealing with other diplomats, but with bloody blackmailers!”

“I know, Richard,” Pumphrey said. “I do know. It is unsatisfactory, but we must do our best and trust that the transaction is attended by honor.”

“You mean you’re just hoping for the best?”

“Is that bad?”

“In battle, my lord, always expect the worst. Then you might be ready for it. Where’s the woman?”

“Woman?”

“Caterina Blazquez, is that her name? Where is she?”

“I have no idea,” Pumphrey said distantly.

“Is she part of it?” Sharpe asked forcefully. “Does she want guineas?”

“The letters were stolen from her!”

“So she says.”

“You have a very suspicious mind, Richard.”

Sharpe said nothing. He disliked the way Pumphrey used his Christian name. It denoted more than familiarity. It suggested Sharpe was a valued inferior, a pet. It was patronizing and it was false. Pumphrey liked to give the impression of frailty, lightness, and frivolity, but Sharpe knew there was a razor mind at work in that well-groomed head. Lord Pumphrey was a man at home in darkness, and a man who knew well enough that ulterior motives were the driving force of the world. “Pumps,” he said, and was rewarded by a slight flicker of an eyebrow, “you know bloody well that they’re going to cheat us.”

“Which is why I asked for you, Captain Sharpe.”

That was better. “We don’t know the letters are at the newspaper house, do we?”

“No.”

“But if they cheat us, which they will, then I’m going to have to deal with them. What’s the object, my lord? To steal them, or to stop them from being published?”

“His Majesty’s government would like both.”

“And His Majesty’s government pays me, don’t they? Ten shillings and sixpence a day, with four shillings and sixpence deducted for mess costs.”

“The ambassador, I’m sure, will reward you,” Lord Pumphrey said stiffly.

Sharpe said nothing. He went to the center of the chamber where he could see the dried blood black between the flagstones. He slapped his toe on the floor and listened to the echo. Noise, he thought, noise and bullets. Scare the bastards to death. But perhaps Pumphrey was right. Perhaps they did intend to sell the letters. But if they chose this crypt for the exchange then Sharpe reckoned they wanted both letters and gold. He climbed the steps back to the cathedral’s crossing and Lord Pumphrey followed. There was a door in the temporary brick wall and Sharpe tried it. It opened easily and beyond was the open air and great stacks of abandoned masonry waiting for work to resume on the cathedral. “Seen enough?” Lord Pumphrey asked.

“Just pray they don’t want to meet us in the crypt,” Sharpe said.

“Suppose they do?”

“Just pray they don’t,” Sharpe said, for he had never seen a place so ideally suited for ambush and murder.

They walked silently through the small streets. A mortar shell exploded dully at the other end of the city and a moment later every church bell in the city sounded at once. Sharpe wondered if the clangor was a summons for men to extinguish a fire set by the shell. Then he saw that everyone on the street had stopped. Men took off their hats and bowed their heads. “The oraciones,” Lord Pumphrey said, taking off his own hat.

“The what?”

“Evening prayer time.” The folk made the sign of the cross when the bells ended. Sharpe and Pumphrey walked on, but had to step into a shopfront to make way for three men carrying gigantic loads of firewood on their backs. “It’s all imported,” Lord Pumphrey said.

“The wood?”

“Can’t get it from the mainland, can we? So it’s fetched in from the Balearics or from the Azores. It costs a great deal of money to cook or stay warm in a Cádiz winter. Luckily the embassy gets coal from Britain.”

Firewood and coal. Sharpe watched the men disappear. They gave him an idea. A way to save the ambassador if the bastards did not sell the letters. A way to win.

 

FATHER SALVADOR Montseny ignored the two men operating the printing press while they were only too aware of him. There was something very threatening in the priest’s calmness. Their employer, Eduardo Nuñez, who had brought Montseny to the pressroom, sat on a high chair in the room’s corner and smoked a cigar as Montseny explored the room. “The work has been well done,” Montseny said.

“Except now we can’t see.” Nuñez waved at the brick rectangles where the two windows had been. “Light was bad anyway. Now we work in the dark.”

“You have lanterns,” Father Montseny observed.

“But the work is delicate,” Nuñez said, pointing at his two men. One was inking the press’s form with a sheepskin ball while the other was trimming a sheet of paper.

“Then do the work carefully,” Montseny said sourly. He was satisfied. The cellar, where the two printing apprentices lived, had no entrance other than a trapdoor that let into the pressroom’s floor, while the pressroom itself, which took up almost all the ground floor, was now only accessible by the door that led from the courtyard. The first story was a storeroom, crammed with paper and ink, that could only be reached by an open stair beside the trapdoor. The second and third stories were Nuñez’s living quarters, and Montseny had blocked the stairway leading to the flat roof. A guard was up on that roof at all hours, climbing to his post by a ladder from the balcony of Nuñez’s bedroom. Nuñez did not like the arrangements, but Nuñez was being well paid in English gold.

“Do you really believe we shall be attacked?” Nuñez asked.

“I hope you’re attacked,” Montseny said.

Nuñez made the sign of the cross. “Why, Father?”

“Because then the admiral’s men will kill our enemies,” Montseny said.

“We are not soldiers,” Nuñez said nervously.

“We are all soldiers,” Montseny said, “fighting for a better Spain.”

He had nine guards to keep the press safe. They lived in the storeroom upstairs and cooked their meals in the courtyard beside the latrine. They were solid oxlike men with big hands stained by years spent in the tarred rigging of warships, and they were all familiar with weapons and all ready to kill for their king, their country, and their admiral.

There was one small room off the pressroom. It was Nuñez’s office, a charnel house of old bills, papers, and books, but Montseny had turfed Nuñez out, replacing him with a creature supplied by the admiral; a miserable creature, a whining, smoke-ridden, alcohol sodden, sweat-stinking excuse for a man, a writer. Benito Chavez was fat, nervous, peevish, and pompous. He had made his living writing opinions for the newspapers, but as the land ruled by the Spanish shrank, so the newspapers that would accept his opinions vanished until he was left only with El Correo de Cádiz, but that, at least, now promised to pay him well. He glanced around as Montseny opened the door. “Magnificent,” he said, “quite magnificent.”

“Are you drunk?”

“How can I be drunk? There’s no liquor here! No, the letters!” Chavez chuckled. “They are magnificent. Listen! ‘I cannot wait to caress your…’”

“I have read the letters,” Montseny interrupted coldly.

“Passion! Tenderness! Lust! He writes well.”

“You write better.”

“Of course I do, of course. But I would like to meet this girl”—Chavez turned a letter over—“this Caterina.”

“You think she would want to meet you?” Montseny asked. Benito Chavez was corpulent, his clothes were unkempt, and his graying beard speckled with scraps of tobacco. There was a bucket beside him and it was almost filled with cigar stubs and ash. Two half-smoked cigars were in a saucer on the table. “Caterina Blazquez,” Montseny said, “serves only the best clients.”

“She certainly knows how to wear out a mattress,” Chavez said, ignoring Montseny’s scorn.

“So make your copies,” Montseny said, “and do your work.”

“No need for copies,” Chavez said. “I shall just rewrite everything and we can print it all at once.”

“All at once?”

Chavez picked up one of the cigars, relit it from a candle, then scratched at an itch on his belly. “The English,” he said, “provide the funds that keep the Regency going. The English supply the muskets for our army. The English give us the powder for the cannon on the city walls. The English have an army on the Isla de León that protects Cádiz. Without England, Father, there is no Cádiz. If we annoy the English sufficiently, then they will persuade the Regency to shut the newspaper, and what use are the letters then? So fire all our ammunition at once! Give them a volley that will finish them. All the letters, all the passion, all the sweat on the sheets, all the lies I shall write, all at once! Blast them in one edition. Then it does not matter if they do close the newspaper.”

Montseny stared at the miserable creature. There was some sense there, he allowed. “But if they do not close the newspaper,” he pointed out, “then we shall have no more letters.”

“But there are other letters,” Chavez said enthusiastically. “Here”—he sorted through the sheets of paper—“there’s a reference to His Excellency’s last letter and it isn’t here. I assume this marvelous creature still has some?”

“She does.”

“Then get them,” Chavez said, “or don’t, as you please. It doesn’t matter. I am a journalist, Father, so I make things up.”

“Publish them all at once,” Montseny said thoughtfully.

“I need a week,” Chavez said, “and I shall rewrite, translate, and invent. We shall say the English are sending muskets to the rebels in Venezuela, that they plan to impose the Protestant heresies on Cádiz”—he paused, sucking on the cigar—“and we shall say”—he went on more slowly, thoughtfully—“that they are negotiating a peace with France that will give Portugal its independence at the price of Spain. That should do it! Give me a week!”

“Ten days,” Montseny snorted. “You have five.”

Chavez’s broad face took on a sly look. “I work better with brandy, Father.” He gestured at the empty hearth, “and it is cold in here.”

“After five days, Chavez,” Montseny said, “you shall have gold, you shall have brandy, and you shall have all the fuel you can burn. Until then, work.” He closed the door.

He could taste victory already.

 

THE NEW south wind had loosed a dozen ships on their voyages to Portugal. Sergeant Noolan and his men had left, ordered aboard a naval sloop that was carrying dispatches to Lisbon, but Lord Pumphrey’s note to Sir Thomas Graham had been sufficient to keep Sharpe’s riflemen on the Isla de León. That evening Sharpe went to look for them in the tent lines. He had changed back into his uniform, then borrowed one of the embassy’s horses. It was dark by the time he reached the encampment where he discovered Harper trying to revive a dying fire. “There’s rum in that bottle, sir,” Harper said, nodding at a stone bottle at the tent door.

“Where are the others?”

“Where I’ll be in ten minutes. In a tavern, sir. How’s your head?”

“It throbs.”

“Are you keeping the bandage wet, like the surgeon said you must?”

“I forgot.”

“Sergeant Noolan and his men are gone,” Harper said. “Took a sloop of war to Lisbon. But we’re staying, is that it?”

“Not for long,” Sharpe said. He slid clumsily out of the saddle and wondered what the hell he was to do with the horse.

“Aye, we got orders from Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Graham himself,” Harper said, relishing the rank and title, “delivered to us by Lord William Russell, no less.” He gave Sharpe a quizzical look.

“We’ve got a job, Pat,” Sharpe said, “some bastards in the city who need thumping.”

“A job, eh?” There was a touch of resentment in Harper’s voice.

“You’re thinking of Joana?”

“I was, sir.”

“Only be a few days, Pat, and there might be some cash in it.” It had occurred to him that Lord Pumphrey was right and that Henry Wellesley could well be generous in his reward if the letters were retrieved. He stooped to the fire and warmed his hands. “We have to get you all some civilian clothes, then move you into Cádiz for a day or two, and after that we can go home. Joana will wait for you.”

“She will, I hope. And what are you doing with that horse, sir? It’s wandering off.”

“Bloody hell.” Sharpe retrieved the mare. “I’m going to take it to Sir Thomas’s quarters. He’ll have stables. And I want to see him anyway. Got a favor to ask him.”

“I’ll come with you, sir,” Harper said. He abandoned the fire and Sharpe realized Harper had been waiting for him. The big Irishman retrieved his rifle, volley gun, and the rest of his equipment from the tent. “If I leave anything here, sir, the bastards will steal it. There’s nothing but bloody thieves in this army.” Harper was happier now, not because Sharpe had returned, but because his officer had remembered to ask about Joana. “So what’s this job, sir?”

“We’ve got to steal something.”

“God save Ireland. They need us? This camp is full of thieves!”

“They want a thief they can trust,” Sharpe said.

“I suppose that’s difficult. Let me lead the horse, sir.”

“I need to talk to Sir Thomas,” Sharpe said, handing over the reins. “Then we’ll join the others. I could do with a drink.”

“I think you’ll find Sir Thomas is busy, sir. They’ve been running around all evening like starlings, they have. Something’s brewing.”

They walked into the small town. The streets of San Fernando were much more spacious than the alleys of Cádiz and the houses were lower. Lamps burned on some corners and light spilled from the taverns where British and Portuguese soldiers drank, watched by the ever-present provosts. San Fernando had become a garrison town, home to the five thousand men sent to guard the isthmus of Cádiz. Sharpe asked one of the provosts where Sir Thomas’s quarters were and was pointed down a lane that led to the quays beside the creek. The creek made the isthmus into an island. Two large torches flamed outside the headquarters, illuminating a group of animated officers. Sir Thomas was one of them. He was standing on the doorstep and it was clear that Harper had been right: something was brewing and the general was busy. He was giving orders, but then he saw Sharpe and broke off. “Sharpe!” he shouted.

“Sir?”

“Good man! You want to come? Good man! Willie, look after him.” Sir Thomas said nothing more, but turned brusquely away and, accompanied by a half dozen officers, strode toward the creek.

Lord William Russell turned to Sharpe. “You’re coming!” Lord William said. “Good!”

“Coming where?” Sharpe asked.

“Frog-hunting, of course.”

“Do I need a horse?”

“Good God, no, not unless it can swim?”

“Can I stable it here?”

“Pearce!” Lord William shouted. “Pearce!”

“I’m here, Your Lordship, I’m here, ever present and correct, sir.” A bowlegged cavalry trooper who appeared old enough to be Lord William’s father appeared from the alley beside the headquarters. “Your Lordship’s forgotten Your Lordship’s saber.”

“Dear God, have I? So I have, thank you, Pearce.” Lord William took the proffered saber and slid it into its scabbard. “Look after Captain Sharpe’s gee-gee, will you, Pearce? There’s a good fellow. Sure you don’t want to come with us?”

“Have to get Your Lordship’s breakfast.”

“So you do, Pearce, so you do. Beefsteak, I hope?”

“Might I wish Your Lordship good hunting?” Pearce said, flicking a speck of dust from one of Lord William’s epaulettes.

“That’s uncommonly kind of you, Pearce, thank you. Come on, Sharpe, we can’t dillydally. We have a tide to catch!” Lord William set off after Sir Thomas at a half run. Sharpe and Harper, still bemused, followed him to a long wharf where, in the small moonlight, Sharpe could see files of redcoats clambering into boats. General Graham was dressed in black boots, black breeches, red coat, and a black cocked hat. He had a claymore at his belt and was talking to a naval officer, but stopped long enough to greet Sharpe again. “Good man! How’s your head?”

“I’ll live, sir.”

“That’s the spirit! And that’s our boat. In you get.”

The boat was a big, flat-bottomed lighter, manned by a score of sailors with long sweeps. It was a short jump down onto the wide aft deck. The boat’s hold was already occupied by grinning redcoats. “What the hell are we doing?” Harper asked.

“Damned if I know,” Sharpe said, “but I need to talk to the general and this looks like as good a chance as I’ll get.”

Four other lighters lay astern and all were slowly filling with redcoats. An engineer officer threw a coil of quick match down onto the rearmost barge. Then a file of his men carried kegs of powder to the hold. Lord William Russell jumped down beside Sharpe, while General Graham, almost alone on the quay now, walked above the lighters. “No smoking, boys!” the general called. “We can’t have the French seeing a light just because you need a pipe. No noise, either. And make damned sure your guns aren’t cocked. And enjoy yourselves, you hear me? Enjoy yourselves.” He repeated the injunctions to the men in each of the barges, then clambered down onto the foremost lighter. The spacious afterdeck had room for a dozen officers to stand or sit and still leave space for the sailor who wielded the long tiller. “Those rogues,” Sir Thomas said to Sharpe, gesturing at the redcoats crouched in the lighter’s hold, “are from the 87th. Is that who you are, boys? Damned Irish rebels?”

“We are, sir!” two or three men called back.

“And you’ll not find better soldiers this side of the gates of hell,” Sir Thomas said, loud enough for the Irishmen to hear. “You’re most welcome, Sharpe.”

“Welcome to what, sir?”

“You don’t know? Then why are you here?”

“Came to ask a favor of you, sir.”

Sir Thomas laughed. “And I thought you wanted to join us! Ah well, the favor must wait, Sharpe, it must wait. We have work to do.”

The lighters had cast off and were now being rowed down a channel through the marshes that edged the Isla de León. Ahead of Sharpe, north and east, the long, low black silhouette of the Trocadero Peninsula just showed in the night. Sparks of light betrayed where the French forts lay. Lord William told him there were three forts. The farthest away was the Matagorda, which lay closest to Cádiz, and it was the giant mortar in the Matagorda Fort that did most damage to the city. Just to its south was the Fort San José and, farther south still and closest to the Isla de León, was the Fort San Luis. “What we’re doing,” Lord William explained, “is rowing past San Luis to the river just beyond. The river mouth is a creek, and once we’re in that creek, Sharpe, we’ll be plumb between the San Luis and the San Jose. Enfiladed, you might say.”

“And what’s in the creek?”

“Five damned great fire rafts.” Sir Thomas Graham had heard Sharpe’s question and now answered it. “The bastards are just waiting for a brisk northerly wind to set them loose on our fleet. Can’t have that.” The fleet, mostly small coasters with a few larger merchantmen, was assembling to take Graham’s men and General Lapeña’s Spanish army south. They would land on the coast, then march north to assault the siege lines from the rear. “We plan to burn the rafts tonight,” Sir Thomas went on. “It’ll be past midnight before we get there. Perhaps you’ll do the 87th the honor of joining them?”

“With pleasure, sir.”

“Major Gough! You’ve met Captain Sharpe?”

A shadowy officer appeared at Sir Thomas’s side. “I have not, sir,” Gough said, “but I remember you from Talavera, Sharpe.”

“Sharpe and his sergeant would beg the privilege of fighting with your boys tonight, Hugh,” Sir Thomas said.

“They’ll be most welcome, sir.” Gough spoke in a soft Irish accent.

“Warn your boys they have two stray riflemen, will you?” Sir Thomas said. “We don’t want your rogues shooting two men who captured a French eagle. So there you are, Sharpe. Major Gough is landing his lads on the south side of the creek. There are some guards there, but they’ll be easy enough to take care of. Then I imagine the French will send a relief party from the San Luis fort so it should all become fairly interesting.”

Sir Thomas’s plan was to land two lighters on the southern bank and two on the northern, and the men would disembark to drive off the French guards, then defend the creek against the expected counterattacks. Meanwhile the fifth lighter, which carried engineers, would row to the fire rafts that were just upstream of the twin French encampments, capture them, and set their explosives. “It should look like Guy Fawkes Night,” Sir Thomas said wolfishly.

Sharpe settled on the deck. Lord William Russell had brought cold sausage and a flask of wine. The sausage was chopped into slices and the flask handed around as the sailors heaved on the great sweeps and the lighter steadily butted its way through the small choppy waves. A Spaniard stood beside the steersman. “Our guide,” Sir Thomas explained. “A fisherman. A good fellow.”

“He doesn’t hate us, sir?” Sharpe asked.

“Hate us?”

“I keep being told how the Spanish hate us, sir.”

“He hates the French, like I do, Sharpe. If there is one constancy in this vale of tears, it is to always hate the damned French, always.” Sir Thomas spoke with a real vehemence. “I trust you hate the French, Sharpe?”

Sharpe paused. Hate? He was not sure he hated them. “I don’t like the bastards, sir,” he said.

“I used to,” Sir Thomas said.

“Used to?” Sharpe asked, puzzled.

“I used to like them,” Sir Thomas said. The general was staring ahead at the small lights showing through the embrasures of the forts. “I liked them, Sharpe. I rejoiced in their revolution. I believed it was a dawn for mankind. Liberty. Equality. Fraternity. I believed in all those things and I believe in them still, but now I hate the French. I’ve hated them, Sharpe, since the day my wife died.”

Sharpe felt almost as uncomfortable as when the ambassador had confessed his foolishness in writing love letters to a whore. “I’m sorry, sir,” he muttered.

“It was nineteen years ago,” Sir Thomas said, apparently oblivious of Sharpe’s inadequate sympathy, “off the southern coast of France. June twenty-sixth, 1792, was the day my dear Mary died. We took her body ashore and we placed it in a casket, and it was my wish that she should be buried in Scotland. So we hired a barge to take us to Bordeaux where we might find a ship to take us home. And just outside Toulouse, Sharpe”—the general’s voice was turning into a growl as he told the tale—“a rascally crowd of half-drunk Frenchmen insisted on searching the barge. I showed them my permits, I pleaded with them, I entreated them to show respect, but they ignored me, Sharpe. They were men wearing the uniform of France, and they tore that coffin open and they molested my dear Mary in her shroud, and from that day, Sharpe, I have hardened my heart against their damned race. I joined the army to get my revenge and I pray to God daily that I live long enough to see every damned Frenchman scoured off the face of this earth.”

“Amen to that,” Lord William Russell said.

“And tonight, for my Mary’s sake,” Sir Thomas said with relish, “I’ll kill a few more.”

“Amen to that,” Sharpe said.

 

A SMALL wind came from the west. It threw up tiny waves in the Bay of Cádiz across which the five lighters crawled slow, low and dark against the black water. It was chilly, not truly cold, but Sharpe wished he had worn a greatcoat. Five miles to the north and off to his left the lights of Cádiz glimmered against white walls to make a pale streak between the sea and sky, while closer, perhaps a mile to the west, yellow lantern light spilled from the stern windows of the anchored ships. Yet here, in the belly of the bay, there was no light, just the splash of black-painted oar blades. “It would have been quicker”—Sir Thomas broke a long silence—“to have rowed from the city, but if we’d have put lighters against the city wharves then the French would have known we’re coming. That’s why I didn’t tell you about this little jaunt last night. If I’d said a word of what we were planning, then the French would have known it all by breakfast time.”

“You think they have spies in the embassy, sir?”

“They have spies everywhere, Sharpe. Whole city is riddled with them. They get their messages out on the fishing boats. The bastards already know we’re sending an army to attack their siege lines and I suspect Marshal Victor knows more about my plans than I do.”

“The spies are Spanish?”

“I assume so.”

“Why do they serve the French, sir?”

Sir Thomas chuckled at that question. “Well, some of them think as I used to think, Sharpe, that liberty, equality, and fraternity are fine things. And so they are, but God knows not in French hands. And some of them just hate the British.”

“Why?”

“They’ve got plenty of reasons, Sharpe. Good Lord, it was only fourteen years ago we bombarded Cádiz! And six years ago we broke their fleet at Trafalgar! And most merchants here believe we want to destroy their trade with South America and take it for ourselves, and they’re right. We deny it, of course, but we’re still trying to do it. And they believe we’re fomenting rebellion in their South American colonies, and they’re not far wrong. We did encourage rebellion, though now we’re pretending we didn’t. Then there’s Gibraltar. They hate us for being in Gibraltar.”

“I thought they gave it to us, sir.”

“Aye, so they did, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, but they were raw damn fools to sign that piece of paper and well they know it. So enough of them hate us, and now the French are spreading rumors that we’ll annex Cádiz as well! God knows that isn’t true, but the Spanish are willing to credit it. And there are men in Spain who fervently believe a French alliance would serve their country better than a British friendship, and I’m not sure they’re wrong. But here we are, Sharpe, allies whether we like it or not. And there are plenty of Spaniards who hate the French more than they dislike us, so there’s hope.”

“There’s always hope,” Lord William Russell said cheerfully.

“Aye, Willie, maybe,” Sir Thomas said, “but when Spain is reduced to Cádiz and Lord Wellington only holds the patch of land around Lisbon, it’s hard to see how we’ll drive the damn French back to their pigsties. If Napoleon had a scrap of sense he’d offer the Spanish their king back and make peace. Then we’d be properly cooked.”

“At least the Portuguese are on our side,” Sharpe said.

“True! And fine fellows they are. I’ve got two thousand of them here.”

“If they’ll fight,” Lord William said dubiously.

“They’ll fight,” Sharpe said. “I was at Bussaco. They fought.”

“So what happened?” Sir Thomas asked, and the telling of that story carried the lighter close to the reed-thick shore of the Trocadero Peninsula. The Fort of San Luis was close now. It stood two or three hundred paces inland, where the marshes gave way to ground firm enough to support the massive ramparts. Beyond the fort’s flooded ditch Sharpe could just see a small glow of light above the glacis. That was a mistake by the French. Sharpe suspected that the sentries had braziers burning on the firestep to keep themselves warm, and even the small light of the coals would make it difficult for them to see anything moving in the black shallows. Yet the greater danger was not the fort’s sentries, but guard boats, and Sir Thomas whispered that they were to keep a good lookout. “Listen for their oars,” he suggested.

The French evidently possessed a dozen guard boats. They had been seen in the dusk as they patrolled the Trocadero’s low coast, but there was no sign of them now. Either they were deeper in the bay or, more likely, their crews had been driven back to the creek by the chill wind. Sir Thomas suspected the crews of the boats were soldiers rather than sailors. “Bastards are shirking, aren’t they?” he whispered.

A hand touched Sharpe’s shoulder. “It’s Major Gough,” a voice said from the darkness, “and this is Ensign Keogh. Stay with him, Sharpe, and I’ll warrant we won’t shoot you.”

“We probably won’t.” Ensign Keogh corrected the major.

“He probably won’t shoot you.” Major Gough accepted the correction.

There was light ahead now, just enough for Sharpe to see that Ensign Keogh was absurdly young with a thin and eager face. The light came from campfires that burned perhaps a quarter mile ahead. The five boats were turning into the creek, creeping through the water to avoid the withies that marked the shallow channel, and the campfires burned where the French sentries guarded the fire rafts. The lighters’ black oars scarce touched the water now. The naval officer who led the boats had timed the expedition to arrive just as the tide finished its flood and so the rising water carried the lighters against the river’s small current. By the time the raid was over the tide should have turned and the ebb would hurry the British away. Still no Frenchman saw the boats, though the sentries were certainly on duty, for Sharpe could see a blue uniform with white crossbelts beside one of the fires. “I hate them,” Sir Thomas said softly, “God, how I do hate them.”

Sharpe could see the dim trace of light leaking over the glacis of Fort San Jose. It looked about half a mile away. Long cannon shot, he thought, especially if the French used canister, but the southernmost fort, San Luis, was much closer, close enough to shred the creek with rounds of canister, which were missiles of musket balls encased in tin cylinders that burst apart at the cannon’s muzzle. The balls, hundreds of them, spread like duck shot. Sharpe hated canister. All infantrymen did. “Buggers are asleep,” Lord William murmured.

Sharpe was suddenly struck by guilt. He had arranged to meet Lord Pumphrey at midday to discover whether the blackmailers had sent any message, and though he doubted there would be any word he knew his place was in Cádiz, not here. His duty was to Henry Wellesley, not to General Graham, yet here he was and he could only pray that he was not gutted by canister fired in the night. He touched his sword hilt and wished he could have sharpened the blade before he came. He liked to go into battle with a sharpened blade. Then he touched his rifle. Not many officers carried a longarm, but Sharpe was not like most officers. He was gutter-born, gutter-bred, and a gutter fighter.

Then the lighter’s bows ran softly onto the mud.

“Let’s kill some bastards,” Sir Thomas said vengefully.

And the first troops went ashore.