"Sharpe's Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Корнуэлл Бернард)

CHAPTER 9

He stood quite still, the air cooler on one side of his face, the sound of revelry muffled by the thick tapestry. He put out his left hand slowly, found the open door, and swung it shut. The hinges were well greased. It moved soundlessly until the latch clicked into place and then Sharpe leaned against it and let his eyes adjust slowly to the darkness.

He was on a small, square landing between two staircases. To his right the steps went downwards into utter darkness, to his left they climbed and at their head he could see a pale square that might have been the night sky except that it was curiously mottled and had no stars. He went to his left, climbing slowly, and his boots grated on the stone steps until he came out onto a wide balcony.

He saw now why there were no stars visible. The open side and roof of the balcony were enclosed by a small-latticed screen, dense with climbing plants, and the effect was to make the balcony comfortably cool. The plant stems had been trained so there were wide gaps between them and he crossed to the nearest gap and rested his shako peak on the lattice so he could see out. The lattice moved. He started back, then realised that the screen was a series of hinged doors, any of which could be opened so that the sun could flood onto the flagstones. The city was spread beneath him, grey moonlight on tiles and stone, the glow of fires reddening some of the buildings.

The balcony was deserted. Rush mats lay at its centre, making a path between troughs planted with small shrubs and stone benches supported by carved, crouching lions. He walked slowly along the balcony’s length and his eye caught strange, intermittent flashes of light from his right. They seemed to come from the balcony floor where it met the wall of the Palacio and he stopped, crouched, and saw that the lights came from a series of tiny windows that looked into the ballroom below. They were like spyholes. Beyond the palm-sized panes of glass were tunnels that must go through stone and plaster and each revealed a small patch of the great ballroom. Sharpe saw Lord Spears circle through his spyhole, his pelisse round Maria’s shoulders and his one good arm somewhere beneath the pelisse. Sharpe stood up and walked on.

The balcony turned to the right and Sharpe stopped at the corner. The rush mats on the new stretch were overlaid with rugs and there were doors, shut and shuttered, that led into the Palacio’s interior. At the far end, hard against a blank wall, Sharpe could see a table that was set with food and wine. The crystal and china winked with the reflected light of a single candle, shielded by glass, that stood in a niche of the wall. Only two chairs stood by the table, both empty, and Sharpe felt the stirring of his instinct, of danger, and he wondered why he had been invited to what looked like a very small party indeed. It made no sense, despite Spears’ explanation, for La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba to invite Captain Sharpe to this private, expensive, and luxurious balcony.

Halfway down the balcony a huge brass telescope was mounted on a heavy iron tripod. Sharpe walked to it and pushed open a lattice door next to the instrument and saw, as he had guessed, that it pointed toward the night’s battlefield. The wasteland was pale in the moonlight, the fortresses dark, and Sharpe could see the ravine clearly that ran between the San Vincente and the smaller forts. There was the glow of fire tingeing the roofline of the San Vincente’s courtyard and he knew the French were celebrating their victory around the flames, but fearing, too, the next assault. There were other fires, small torches that were hand-held in the wasteland where men searched for the wounded and dead. The French ignored them. Sharpe suddenly shivered. For no reason he remembered the burning of the dead after the assault on Badajoz just a few weeks before. There had been too many bodies to bury so they had been stacked in layers, timber between the stripped corpses, and the fires had burned darkly and he remembered how the corpses on the top layer had sat up in the heat, almost as if they were alive and begging for rescue, and then the corpses below had also begun to bend in the great fire and, as if to blot out the vision, he pulled shut the lattice door with a loud click.

“What are you thinking?” Her voice was husky. He turned and La Marquesa was standing by the table, by a door that had opened silently, and a woman servant was in the doorway offering a shawl. La Marquesa shook her head and the servant disappeared, shutting the door as noiselessly as it had opened. La Marquesa was light in the darkness. Her golden hair seemed glowing to Sharpe, spun with gossamer fine radiance, and her dress was a brilliant white. It left her shoulders and arms bare and he could see the shadows of her collarbones and he wanted to put his hands on that fine, pale skin because she was, in a Palacio of priceless and beautiful objects, the most perfect of them all. He felt clumsy.

“I was told to compliment you on your frock.“

“My dress? I suppose that was Jack Spears?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“He never saw me.” She leaned over the table and Sharpe saw her light a small cigar from the candle. He was amazed. He was used to the women of the army smoking their short clay pipes, but he had never seen a woman with a cigar before. She blew a plume of smoke that drifted up to the lattice. “I saw you, though, both of you. You were glowering at the ballroom, hating it all, and he was wondering where he could find an empty bedroom to take that silly girl. Do you smoke?”

“Sometimes. Not now, thank you.” Sharpe gestured at the spyholes. “Did you see through those?”

She shook her head. “The palace is full of spyholes, Captain. Riddled with secret passages.” She walked towards him, her feet quite silent on the rugs. Her voice seemed different to Sharpe, this was not the same woman who had been excited and enthusiastic at San Christobal. Tonight she spoke crisply, with a confident authority, and all traces of wide-eyed naivete had gone. She sat on a cushioned bench. “My husband’s great-great-grandfather built the Palacio and he was a suspicious man. He married a younger wife, like me, and he feared she would be unfaithful so he built the passages and the peepholes. He would follow her round the building, she in light and he in darkness, and everything she did, he watched.” She told the story as if it was a much-told tale, of interest to the listener, but holding boredom for herself. She shrugged, blew smoke upwards, and looked at him. “That’s the story.”

“Did he see anything he shouldn’t have?”

She smiled. “It’s said she discovered about the passages and that she hired two masons. One day she waited until her husband was in a long tunnel that bends round the library. It has only one entrance.” Her eyes were huge in the dimness. Sharpe watched her, entranced by the line of her throat, the shadows on her skin above the low white dress, by the wide mouth. She chopped down with the cigar. “She gave a signal and the masons nailed the entrance shut and then they laid stones over it. After that she made the servants pleasure her, one by one, two by two, and all the time they could hear the husband screaming and scrabbling beyond the wall. She told them it was rats and told them to keep going.” She shrugged. “It’s just a nonsense, of course, not true. The pride of this house would not allow it, but the people of Salamanca tell the story and certainly the passages exist.”

“It’s a harsh story.”

“Yes. It goes on that she died, strangled by the ghost of her husband, and that will be the fate of any mistress of this house who is unfaithful to her husband.” She glanced up at Sharpe as she said the last words and there was a curious hostility in her expression, a challenge perhaps.

“You say the story isn’t true?”

She gave a crooked, secret smile. “How very indelicate of you, Captain Sharpe.” She drew on the cigar, hardening the red point of the tobacco. “What did Lord Spears tell you about me?”

He was startled by the directness of her question, by the inference that she was commanding him to answer. He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“How very unlike Jack.” She drew on the cigar again. “Did he tell you that I asked him to make you come here?”

“No.”

“I did. Aren’t you curious why?”

Heleaned against the frameof the lattice. “I’m curious, yes.”

“Thank God for that! I was beginning to think there wasn’t a human feeling in your body.” Her voice was harsh. Sharpe wondered what game she was playing. He watched as she tossed the cigar onto the flagstones of the balcony and, as it landed, it showered sparks like a musket pan fired at night. “Why do you think, Captain?”

“I don’t know why I’m here, Ma’am.”

“Oh!” Her voice was mocking now. “You find me on my own, ignoring all my guests, not to mention the proprieties, and there’s a table set with wine, and you think nothing?”

Sharpe did not like being toyed with. “I’m only a humble soldier, Ma’am, unused to the ways of my betters.”

She laughed, and her face suddenly softened. “You said that with such delicious arrogance. Do I make you uncomfortable?”

“If it pleases you to, yes.”

She nodded. “It pleases me. So tell me what Jack Spears whispered to you?” The inflection of command was back in her voice, as if she talked to her postilion.

Sharpe was tired of her games. He let his own voice be as harsh as hers. “That you had low tastes, Ma’am.”

She went very still and tense. She was leaning forward on the bench, her hands gripping its edge, and Sharpe wondered if she was about to shout for her servants and have him thrown out. Then she leaned back, relaxed, and waved a hand at the elegant balcony. “I thought I had rather high tastes. Poor Jack thinks everyone is like him.” Her voice had changed again, this time she had spoken with a soft sadness. She stood up and walked to the lattice, pushing open one of the doors. “That business tonight was a shambles.”

The previous subject seemed to have been forgotten, as if it had never existed. Sharpe turned to look at her. “Yes.”

“Why did the Peer order the attack? It seemed hopeless.”

Sharpe was tempted to say that she had wanted a battle, almost pleaded with Wellington for one, but this new, crisp woman was not someone he wanted to annoy, not at this moment. “He’s always impetuous at sieges. He likes to get them done.”

“Which means many deaths?” Her fingers were beating a swift tattoo on the frame of the lattice.

“Yes.”

“What happens now?” She was staring at the forts and Sharpe was staring at her profile. She was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.

“We’ll have to dig trenches. We’ll have to do everything properly.”

“Where?”

He shrugged. “Probably in the ravine.”

“Show me.”

He went to her side, smelling her, feeling her closeness to him and he wondered if she could detect his trembling. He could see a silver comb holding up her piled hair and then he looked away and pointed at the gorge. “Along the right hand side, Ma’am, close to the San Vincente.”

She turned her face to his, just inches away, and her eyes were violet in the moonlight that threw shadows beneath the high cheekbones. “How long will that take?”

“It could be done in two days.”

She kept her face turned up and her eyes stayed on his eyes. He was aware of her body, of the bare shoulders, of dark shadows that promised softness.

She turned abruptly away and crossed to the table. “You haven’t eaten.”

“A little, Ma’am.”

“Come and sit. Pour me some wine.” There were partridges roasted whole, quails stuffed with meat and peppers, and small slices of fruit, that she said were quinces, that had been dipped in syrup and sugar. Sharpe took off his shako, propped his rifle against the wall, and sat. He did not touch the food. He poured her wine, moved the bottle to his own glass, and she stared at him, half smiling, and spoke in a detached, curious voice. “Why didn’t you kiss me just then?”

The bottle clinked dangerously against his glass. He set it down. “I didn’t want to offend you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “A kiss is offensive?”

“If it’s not wanted.”

“So a woman must always show that she wants to be kissed?”

Sharpe was feeling desperately uncomfortable, out of his place in a world he did not understand. He tried to shrug the topic away. “I don’t know.”

“You do. You think that a woman must always invite a man, yes? And that then leaves you guiltless.” Sharpe said nothing, and she laughed. “I forgot. You’re just a humble soldier and you don’t understand the ways of your betters.”

Sharpe looked at the beauty across the table and he tried to tell himself that this was just another woman, and he a man, and that there was nothing more to it than that. He could behave as if she was any woman he had ever known, but he could not convince himself. This was a Marquesa related to Emperors, and he was Richard Sharpe, related to no one apart from his daughter. The difference was like a screen between them and he could not shift it. Others might, but not he. He shrugged inwardly. That’s right, Ma’am. I don’t understand.“

She picked another cigar from the box on the table and leaned over the candle in the niche to light it. She sat down and stared at the cigar glow as if she had never seen it before. Her voice was soft again. “I’m sorry, Captain Sharpe. I don’t mean to offend.” She looked up at him. “How many people do understand? How many, do you think, live like this? One in a hundred thousand? I don’t know.” She looked at the thick rugs, at the crystal on the table. “You think I’m fortunate, don’t you.” She smiled to herself. “I am. Yet I speak five languages, Captain, and all I am expected to do with them is order the daily meals. I look in a mirror and I know just what you see. I open my doors and all those pretty staff-officers flood in and they flatter me, charm me, amuse me, and they all want something of me.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back. She shrugged. “I know what they want. Then there’s my servants. They want me to be lax, to be undemanding. They want to steal my food, my money. My Confessor wants me to live like a nun, to give to his charities, and my husband wants me to sail to South America. Everyone wants something. And now I want something.”

“What?”

She pulled on the cigar, looking at him through the smoke. “I want you to tell me if there’s going to be a battle.”

Sharpe laughed. He sipped the wine. He had been brought up to this balcony to tell her something that any officer, British or Spanish, German or Portuguese, could tell her? He looked at her and her face was serious, waiting, so he nodded. “Yes. There has to be. We haven’t come this far to do nothing, and I can’t see Marmont giving up the west of Spain.”

She spoke with deliberation. “So why didn’t Wellington attack yesterday?”

He had almost forgotten that it was only yesterday that they had sat on the hilltop and watched the two armies. “He wanted Marmont to attack him.”

“I know that. But he didn’t, and the Peer outnumbered him, so why didn’t he attack?”

Sharpe reached forward and cut at a partridge. The skin was crisp and honeyed. He gestured with the slice of meat towards the lights of the spyholes. “There are a dozen generals down there, three dozen staff officers, and you ask me? Why?”

“Because it pleases me!” Her voice was suddenly harsh. She paused to draw on the cigar. “Why do you think? If I ask one of them they’ll smile politely, become charming, and tell me, in so many words, not to worry my head about soldiering. So I’m asking you. Why didn’t he attack?”

Sharpe leaned back, took a deep breath, and launched into his thoughts. “Yesterday the French had their back to a plain. Marmont could have retreated endlessly, in good order, and the battle would have stopped by nightfall. There’d have been, oh…“ he shrugged, ”say, five hundred dead on each side? If our cavalry was better there might have been more, but it would decide nothing. The armies would still have to fight again. Wellington doesn’t want a series of small indecisive skirmishes. He wants to trap Marmont, he wants him in a place where there’s no escape, or where he’s wrong footed, and then he can crush him. Destroy him.“

She watched the sudden passion in Sharpe, the cruelty of his face as he imagined the battle.

“Go on.”

“There isn’t any more. We take the forts and then we go after Marmont.”

“Do you like the French, Captain Sharpe?”

It struck him as a curious question, the wrong question. She meant, surely, did he dislike the French? He made a gesture of indecision. “No.” He smiled. “I don’t dislike them. I don’t have reason to dislike them.”

“Yet you fight them?”

“I’m a soldier.” It was not that simple. He was a soldier because there was nothing else for him to be. He had discovered all those years ago that he could do the job and do it well, and now he could not imagine another life.

Her eyes were curious, huge and curious. “What do you fight for?”

He shook his head, not knowing what to tell her. If he said ‘England’ it would sound pompous, and Sharpe had a suspicion that if he had been born French then he would have fought for France with as much skill and ferocity as he served England. The Colours? Perhaps, because they were a soldier’s pride, and pride is valuable to a soldier, but he supposed the real answer was that he fought for himself to stop himself sliding back into the nothingness where he began. He met her eyes. “My friends.” It was as good an answer as he could think of.

“Friends?”

“They’re more important on a battlefield.”

She nodded, then stood up and walked down the balcony trailing smoke behind her. “What do you say to the charge that Wellington can’t fight an attacking battle? Only a defensive battle?”

“Assaye.”

She turned. “Where he crossed a river in the face of the enemy?”

“Yesterday you knew nothing about Assaye.”

“Yesterday I was in public.” The cigar glowed again.

“He can attack.” Sharpe was impressed by her intelligence, by her knowledge, but he was also mystified. There was something catlike about La Marquesa. She was quiet in her movements, beautiful, but she had claws, he knew, and now he knew she had the intelligence to use them skilfully. “Believe me, Ma’am, he can attack.”

She nodded. “I believe you. Thank you, Captain Sharpe, that’s all I wanted to know.”

“All?”

She turned to the lattice and opened a window in it. “I want to know if the French are coming back to Salamanca. I want to know if Wellington will fight to stop that happening.

You’ve told me he will. You weren’t boasting, you weren’t trying to impress me, you gave me what I wanted; a professional opinion. Thank you.“

Sharpe stood up, not sure if the visit was done and he was being dismissed. He walked towards her. “Why did you want to know?”

“Does it matter?” She still stared at the fortresses.

“I’m curious.” He stopped behind her. “Why?”

She looked back at the table. “You forgot your musket.”

“Rifle. Why?”

She turned round to face him and gave him another of her hostile stares. “How many men have you killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. I’ve been a soldier for nineteen years.”

“Do you get frightened?”

He smiled. “Of course. All the time. It gets worse, not better.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. I sometimes think because the older you get, the more you have to live for.”

She laughed at that. “Any woman will tell you otherwise.”

“No, not any woman. Some, maybe. Some men, too.” He gestured at the faraway sound of the party. “Cavalry officers don’t like getting old.”

“You’re suddenly very wise for a humble soldier.” She was mocking him. She put the cigar to her mouth and smoke drifted between them.

She had still not answered his question and he still did not understand why he had been brought to this balcony where the leaves stirred in the night breeze. “You could have asked a thousand people in this town the questions you’ve asked me, and got the same answers. Why me?”

“I told you.” She pointed with the cigar to his rifle. “Now why don’t you pick up the rifle and go?”

Sharpe said nothing. He did not move. Somewhere in the town there were raised voices, drunken soldiers fighting in all probability, and a dog howled at the moon from another street, and he saw her eyes look at his cheek. “What are those black stains?”

Sharpe was becoming used to her sudden questions that had no relevance to the previous conversation. She seemed to like to tease him, bring him almost to the point of anger, and then deflect him with some irrelevance. He brushed his right cheek. “Powder stains, Ma’am. The gunpowder explodes in the rifle pan and throws them up.”

“Did you kill someone tonight?”

“No, not tonight.”

They were standing just two feet apart and Sharpe knew that either could have moved away. Yet they stayed still, challenging each other and he knew that she was challenging him to touch her and he was tempted suddenly, to break the rules. He was tempted to walk away, as Marmont had simply walked away from Wellington’s army, but he could not do it. The full mouth, the eyes, the cheekbones, the curve of her neck, the shadows above the white lace-frilled dress had caught him. She frowned at him. “What does it feel like? To kill a man?”

“Sometimes good, sometimes nothing, sometimes bad.”

“When is it bad?”

He shrugged. “When it’s unnecessary.” He shook his head, remembering the bad dreams. “There was a man at Badajoz, a French artillery officer.”

She had expected more. She tipped her face to one side. “Go on.”

“The fight was over. We’d won. I think he wanted to surrender.”

“And you killed him?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

He gestured at the big sword. “With this.” It had not been that simple. He had hacked at the man, gouged him, disembowelled the corpse in his great rage until Harper had stopped him.

She half turned away from him and stared at the scarcely touched food on the table. “Do you enjoy killing? I think you do.”

He could feel his heart beating in his chest as if it had expanded. It was thumping hollowly, sounding in his eardrums, and he knew it as a compound of fear and excitement. He looked at her face, profiled against the broken moonlight, and the beauty was overpowering, unfair that one person could be so lovely and his hand, almost of its own volition, came slowly up, slowly, until his finger was under her chin and he turned the face towards him.

She gave him a calm, wide-eyed expression, then stepped away from him so his arm was left suspended in mid-air. He felt foolish. Her face was unfriendly. “Do you enjoy killing?”

He had been made to touch her, so she could back away and make him feel foolish. She had brought him here for her small victory, and he knew defeat. He turned away from her, walked to his rifle, slung it on his shoulder, and started back down the balcony without a word. He did not look at her. He walked past her, smelling the tobacco smoke from her cigar.

“Colonel Leroux enjoys killing, Captain.”

For a second he almost kept on walking, but the name of his enemy stopped him. He turned.

“What do you know of Leroux?”

She shrugged. “I live in Salamanca. The French were in this house. Your job is to kill him, yes?”

Her voice was challenging again, impressing him with her knowledge, and again he had the feeling that he was involved in a game of which she only knew the rules. He thought of Leroux in the forts, of the cordon of men about the wasteland, of his own Company in their billets. He had a simple job and he was making it complicated.

“Good night, Ma’am. Thank you for the meal.”

“Captain?”

He kept walking. He went round the corner, past the lights of the spyholes, and he felt a freedom come on him. He would be true to Teresa, who loved him, and he quickened his pace towards the secret staircase.

“Captain!” She was running now, her bare feet slapping the rush mats. “Captain!” Her hand pulled at his elbow. “Why are you going?”

She had teased him earlier, mocked him for not kissing her, withdrawn when he had touched her. Now she held his arm, was pleading with him, her eyes searching his face for some reassurance. He hated her games.

“God damn you to hell, Ma’am.” He put his left arm about her back, half lifted her, and kissed her on the mouth. He crushed her, kissing her to hurt, and when he saw her eyes close, he dropped her. “For God’s sake! Do I enjoy killing? What am I? A bloody trophy for your rotten wall? I’m going to get drunk, Ma’am, in some flea-bitten hovel in this bloody town and I might take a whore with me. She won’t ask me bloody questions. Good night!”

“No!” She held him again.

“What do you want? To save me money?” He was harsh, feeling his hurt. She was more beautiful than he could have imagined a woman to be.

“No.” She shook her head. “I want you, Captain, to save me from Colonel Leroux.” She said it almost bitterly and then, as if ashamed of the kiss, she turned and walked away from him.

“You what?”

She went on walking, back to the corner and onto the lighted side of the balcony. Once again she had surprised him, but this time he felt there was no game. He followed.

She was standing by the telescope, staring through the lattice, and Sharpe propped his rifle against the wall and went close behind her. “Tell me why?”

“I’m frightened of him.” She stared away from him.

“Why?”

“He’ll kill me.”

There was a silence and it seemed to Sharpe to be like a great abyss over which he was suspended on a single, fine blade-edge. One false move and the moment would be lost, finished, and it was as if he and she were alone high above the dark night and he saw the shadow between her shoulder blades, a dark shadow running down into the intricate lace of her dress, and it seemed to him that there was nothing on this dark earth so mysterious, so frightening, or as fragile as a beautiful woman. “He’ll kill you?”

“Yes.”

He put his right hand up, slowly, and put his long finger against her shoulder blade, a touch so gentle that it could have been a strand of her golden hair. He slid the finger down her warm, dry skin and she did not move.

“Why will he kill you?”

His fingertip explored the ridges of her spine. Still she did not move and he let his other fingers down, then pushed them slowly up towards her neck. She was very still.

“You’ve stopped calling me ”Ma’am“.”

“Why will he kill you, Ma’am?”

His fingers were on the nape of her neck where they could feel the wisps of hair that had escaped from the silver combs. He moved his hand right, very slowly, letting his fingers trace and stroke the curve of her long neck. She began to turn and his hand, as if frightened of breaking something very fragile, leaped an inch from her skin. She stopped, waited till she was touched again, and turned to face him.

“Do your friends call you Dick?”

He smiled. “Not for many years.” His arm was tense from the effort of holding it still, hovering on her skin, and he waited for her to speak again, knowing that she had suddenly asked an irrelevant question because she was thinking. She seemed oblivious of his hand, but he knew she was not, and his heart still thumped inside him, and the moment was still there. Her eyes flicked between his.

“I’m frightened of Leroux.” She said it flatly.

He let the palm of his hand drop onto the curve of her neck. Still she seemed to take no notice. His fingers curled onto her back. “Why?”

She gestured at the balcony. “You know what this is?”

He shrugged. “A balcony.”

For a few seconds she said nothing. His hand was feather-light on her neck and he could see the shadows move on her skin as she breathed. He could hear the beat of his heart. She licked her lips. “A balcony, but a special kind of balcony. You can see a long way from here, and it’s built so you can do that.” Her eyes, trusting and serious, were on his. She was speaking simply, as if to a child, so that he would understand her. It was, Sharpe thought, with his hand still on her neck, yet another face of this remarkable woman who changed like lake water, but something in her tone told him that now she was not playing. If there was a true Marquesa, this was she. “You can see the roads over the river, and that’s why it was built. My husband’s great-great-grandfather didn’t want to spy only indoors. He liked to watch his wife when she rode out of the palace, so he built this balcony like a watch-tower. They’re not unusual in Spain, and they have this lattice for a special reason. No one can see in, Mr. Sharpe, but we can see out. It’s a special kind of balcony. In Spanish a balcony is ”balcon“, but this isn’t a ”balcon“. Do you know what it is?”

Sharpe’s hand was utterly still. He did not know the answer, but he could guess. The word almost stumbled as he spoke it, but he said it aloud. “Mirador?”

She nodded. “El Mirador. The watch-place.” She looked at his face. She could see a pulse throbbing in his cheek beside the sword scar. His eyes were dark. She raised an eyebrow as if in question. “You know, don’t you?”

He hardly dared speak, he hardly dared breathe. He moved his hand, sliding it gently onto her back so that his fingertips touched the skin of her spine. The wind stirred the leaves above them.

She frowned slightly. “Do you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

She closed her eyes, seemed to sigh, and he pulled with his hand and she came, so easily, into his chest. Her hair was below his chin, her face cradled in his rough uniform, and her voice was small and pleading.

“No one must know, Richard, no one. Don’t tell anyone that you know, not even the General! No one must know. Promise me?”

“I promise.” He held her close, the wonder of it in his head.

“I’m frightened.”

“Is that why you wanted me here?”

“Yes. But I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

“You can trust me.”

She tipped her head up to his and he could see that her eyes were gleaming. “I’m frightened of him, Richard. He does terrible things to people. I didn’t know! I never knew it would be like this.”

“I know.” He leaned down and her face did not move. He kissed her and suddenly her arms were round him and she clung to him fiercely and kissed him fiercely as if she wanted to suck the strength from him into her own self. Sharpe held her, his arms round the slim body, and he thought of what his enemy would do to this perfect, lovely, golden woman, and he despised himself for distrusting her because he knew, now, that she was braver than he, that she had led her lonely life in the great Palacio, surrounded by enemies, and in danger, always, of a terrible death. El Mirador!

His hand pressed on her back and, through the lace, hanging in fringes, he felt the hooks of her dress, and he slipped his hand between the hooks, felt her skin, and then pressed the bottom hook between finger and thumb, the finger and thumb that were more used to the pressure of flint on mainspring, and the hook slid out of the loop, and he moved his hand up to the second, pressed again, it opened, and she dropped her face onto his chest, still clinging to him. He could not believe this was happening, that he, Richard Sharpe, was on this mirador, this night, with this woman, and he moved his hand to the last hook, pressed it back through the loop and he could feel the metal scraping as it moved, and she seemed to stiffen in his arms. He froze.

She looked up at him and her eyes searched his face as though she needed some reassurance that this man could truly keep her from Leroux’s long Kligenthal. She gave a small smile. “Call me Helena.”

“Helena?” The hook snapped free, he moved his hand, and he sensed the wings of the dress fall away and he put his hand back, stroked, and it was pressed into the rich curve at the small of her back. Her skin was like silk.

Her smile went, all the harshness came back. “Let go of me!” It was snapped like an order, her voice loud. “Let go of me!”

He had been a fool! She had wanted protection, not this, and now he had offended her by imagining what was not to be, and he let go of her, bringing his hand back, and she stepped away from him. Her face changed again. She laughed at him, laughed at his confusion, and she had ordered him away so that she could stand free and let the dress, light as thistledown, rustle to the floor. She was naked beneath the dress and she stepped back to him over its folds. “I’m sorry, Richard.”

He put his arms round her, her skin was pressed against his uniform, his sword belt, his ammunition pouch, and she clung to him and he stared at the dark bulk of the San Vincente and he swore that the enemy would never reach her, never, not while there was breath in his body or while his arm could lift the heavy sword whose hilt was cold on her flank. She hooked a leg round his, lifted herself up, and kissed him again and he forgot everything. The Company, the forts, Teresa; all were scoured away, whirled far off by this moment, by this promise, by this woman who fought her own lonely war against his enemies.

She lowered herself to the floor, took his hand, and her face was grave and innocent. “Come.”

He followed, obedient, in the dark Salamantine night.