“Stay here, Sharpe,” Moon ordered.
“I’ll follow you,” Sharpe told Pumphrey. “Sir?” he asked the brigadier when Wellesley and Pumphrey were gone.
“What the devil are you doing here?”
“I’m helping the ambassador, sir.”
“Helping the ambassador, sir,” Moon mimicked Sharpe. “Is that why you stayed? You were supposed to ship back to Lisbon.”
“Weren’t you supposed to as well, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“Broken bones heal better on land,” the brigadier said. “That’s what the doctor told me. Stands to reason when you think about it. All that lurching about on ship? Doesn’t help a bone knit, does it?” He grunted as he lowered himself into his chair. “I like it up here. You see things.” He tapped the telescope.
“Women, sir?” Sharpe asked. He could think of no other reason why a man with a broken leg would struggle to the top of a watchtower, and the tower did give Moon views of dozens of windows.
“Mind your tongue, Sharpe,” Moon said, “and tell me why you’re still here.”
“Because the ambassador asked me to stay, sir, to help him.”
“Did you learn your impudence in the ranks, Sharpe? Or were you born with it?”
“Being a sergeant helped, sir.”
“Being a sergeant?”
“You have to deal with officers, sir. Day in, day out.”
“And you have no high opinion of officers?”
Sharpe did not answer. Instead he gazed at the feluccas that were rounding into the wind and dropping anchors. The bay was a turmoil of whitecaps and small angry waves. “If you’ll excuse me, sir?”
“Is it anything to do with that woman?” Moon demanded.
“What woman, sir?” Sharpe turned back from the stairs.
“I can read a newspaper, Sharpe,” Moon said. “What are you and that bloody little molly cooking up?”
“Molly, sir?”
“Pumphrey, you idiot. Or hadn’t you noticed?” The question was a sneer.
“I’d noticed, sir.”
“Because if you’re too fond of him,” the brigadier said nastily,
“you’ve got a rival.” Moon was delighted by the indignation on Sharpe’s face. “I keep my eyes open, Sharpe. I’m a soldier. Best to keep your eyes open. You know who visits the molly’s house?” he gestured through the window. The embassy was composed of a series of houses, gathered around two courtyards and a garden, and the brigadier pointed to a house in the smaller yard. “The ambassador, Sharpe, that’s who! Sneaks into the molly’s house. What do you think of that, then?”
“I think Lord Pumphrey is an adviser to the ambassador, sir.”
“Advice that must be given at night?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir,” Sharpe said, “and if you’ll excuse me?”
“Excused,” Moon sneered, and Sharpe clattered down the tower stairs, going to the ambassador’s study where he found Henry Wellesley staring into the garden where the rain crashed down. Lord Pumphrey was by the fire, warming his behind. “Captain Sharpe is of the opinion that Father Montseny was lying,” Pumphrey told Wellesley as Sharpe entered.
“Are you, Sharpe?” Wellesley asked without turning.
“Don’t trust him, sir.”
“A man of the cloth?”
“We don’t even know he’s a real priest,” Sharpe said, “and I saw him at the newspaper.”
“Whatever he is,” Lord Pumphrey said tartly, “we have to deal with him.”
“Eighteen hundred guineas,” the ambassador said, sitting at his desk, “good God.” He was so appalled that he did not see the look Sharpe shot at Lord Pumphrey.
Pumphrey, his peculation inadvertently revealed by the ambassador, looked innocent. “I would suggest, Your Excellency, that the Spaniards saw the ships arriving before we did. They conclude that our expedition will sail in the next day or two. That means battle within a fortnight and they are entirely confident of victory. And if the forces defending Cádiz are destroyed, then the letters become irrelevant. They would like to profit from them before that happens and thus the acceptance of my offer.”
“Eighteen hundred guineas, though,” Henry Wellesley said.
“Not your guineas,” Pumphrey said.
“Good God, Pumps, the letters are mine!”
“Our opponents, Your Excellency, by publishing one letter, have made the correspondence into instruments of diplomacy. We are therefore justified in using His Majesty’s funds to render them ineffectual.” Lord Pumphrey made a pretty gesture with his right hand. “I shall lose the money, sir, in the accounts. Not difficult.”
“Not difficult!” Henry Wellesley retorted.
“Subventions to the guerrilleros,” Lord Pumphrey said smoothly, “purchase of information from agents, bribes to the deputies of the Cortes. We expend hundreds, thousands of guineas on such recipients and the Treasury has never glimpsed a receipt yet. It’s not difficult at all, Your Excellency.”
“Montseny will take the money,” Sharpe said stubbornly, “and keep the letters.”
Both men ignored him. “He insists you make the exchange personally?” the ambassador asked Lord Pumphrey.
“I suspect it is his way of assuring me that violence is not contemplated,” Lord Pumphrey said. “No one would dare murder one of His Majesty’s diplomats. It would cause too much of a ruction.”
“They killed Plummer,” Sharpe said.
“Plummer was not a diplomat,” Lord Pumphrey said sharply.
The ambassador looked at Sharpe. “Can you steal the letters, Sharpe?”
“No, sir. I can probably destroy them, sir, but they’re too well guarded to steal.”
“Destroy them,” the ambassador said. “I assume that means violence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I do not, I cannot, countenance acts that might aggravate our relationship with the Spanish,” Henry Wellesley said. He rubbed his face with both hands. “Will they keep their word, Pumps? No more letters published?”
“I imagine the admiral is content with the damage done by the first, my lord, and is eager for gold. I think he will keep his word.” Pumphrey frowned as Sharpe made a noise of disgust.
“Then so be it,” Henry Wellesley said. “Buy them back, buy them back, and I apologize for causing this trouble.”
“The trouble, Your Excellency,” Lord Pumphrey said, “will soon be done.” He looked down at the ambassador’s chess game. “We have come, I think,” he said, “to the end of the matter. Captain Sharpe? I assume you will accompany me?”
“I’ll be there,” Sharpe said grimly.
“Then let us gather gold,” Lord Pumphrey said lightly, “and be done with it.”
THE NOTE came well after dark. Sharpe was waiting with his men in an empty stall of the embassy stables. His five men were all in cheap civilian clothes and looked subtly different. Hagman, who was thin anyway, looked like a beggar. Perkins resembled an unappealing street rat, one of the London boys who swept horse shit out of the way of pedestrians in hope of a coin. Slattery appeared menacing, a footpad who could turn violent at the slightest show of resistance. Harris looked like a man down on his luck, perhaps a drunken schoolmaster turned onto the streets, while Harper was like a countryman come to town, big and placid and out of place in his shabby broadcloth coat. “Sergeant Harper comes with me,” Sharpe told them, “and the rest of you wait here. Don’t get drunk! I might need you later tonight.” He suspected this night’s adventure would go sour. Lord Pumphrey might be optimistic about the outcome, but Sharpe wanted to be ready for the worst, and the riflemen were his reinforcements.
“If we’re not to get drunk, sir,” Harris asked, “why the brandy?”
Sharpe had brought four bottles of brandy from the ambassador’s own supply and now he uncorked the bottles and poured their contents into a stable bucket. Then he added a jug full of lamp oil. “Mix all that up,” he told Harris, “then put it back in the bottles.”
“You’re setting a fire, sir?”
“I don’t know what the hell we’re doing. Maybe we’re doing nothing. But stay sober, wait, and we’ll see what happens.”