“Sir?”
“Where were you last night?”
“In bed, sir, all night, sir,” Sharpe said woodenly. It was the tone of voice he had learned as a sergeant, the voice used to tell lies to officers. “Took an early night, sir, on account of my head.” He touched his bandage. The two Spaniards looked at him with distaste. Sharpe had just been woken by an embassy servant and he had hurriedly pulled on his uniform, but he was unshaven, weary, dirty, and exhausted.
“You were in bed?” Wellesley asked.
“All night, sir,” Sharpe said, staring an inch above the ambassador’s head.
The interpreter repeated the exchange in French, the language of diplomacy. The interpreter was only there to translate Sharpe’s words, because everyone else said what they had to say in French. Wellesley looked at the delegation and raised an eyebrow as if to suggest that that was as much as they could hope to learn from Captain Sharpe. “I ask you these questions, Sharpe,” the ambassador explained, “because there was something of a small tragedy last night. A newspaper was burned to the ground. It was quite destroyed, alas. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it’s a sad thing.”
“Very sad, sir.”
“And the newspaper’s proprietor, a man called”—Wellesley paused to look at some notes he had scribbled down.
“Nuñez, Your Excellency,” Lord Pumphrey offered helpfully.
“Nuñez, that’s it, a man called Nuñez, claims that British men did it, and that the British were led by a gentleman with a bandaged head.”
“A gentleman, sir?” Sharpe asked, suggesting that he could never be mistaken for a gentleman.
“I use the word loosely, Captain Sharpe,” Wellesley said with a surprising asperity.
“I was in bed, sir,” Sharpe insisted. “But there was lightning, wasn’t there? I seem to remember a storm, or perhaps I dreamed that?”
“There was lightning, indeed.”
“A lightning strike caused the fire, sir, most likely.”
The interpreter explained to the delegation that there had been lightning and one of the visiting diplomats pointed out that they had found scraps of shell casing in the embers. The two men stared again at Sharpe as their words were translated.
“Shells?” Sharpe asked in mock innocence. “Then it must have been the French mortars, sir.”
That suggestion prompted a flurry of words, summed up by the ambassador. “The French mortars, Sharpe, don’t have the range to reach that part of the city.”
“They would, sir, if they double-charged them.”
“Double-charged?” Lord Pumphrey inquired delicately.
“Twice as much powder as usual, my lord. It will throw the shell much farther, but at the risk of blowing up the gun. Or perhaps they’ve found some decent powder, sir? They’ve been using rubbish, nothing but dust, but a barrel of cylinder charcoal powder would increase their range. Most likely that, sir.” Sharpe uttered this nonsense in a confident voice. He was, after all, the only soldier in the room and the man most likely to know about gunpowder, and no one disputed his opinion.
“Probably a mortar, then,” Wellesley suggested, and the diplomats politely accepted the fiction that the French guns had destroyed the newspaper. It was plain they disbelieved the story and equally plain that, despite their indignation, they did not much care. They had protested because they had to protest, but they had no future in prolonging an argument with Henry Wellesley who, effectively, was the man who funded the Spanish government. The fiction that the French had contrived to extend their mortars’ range by five hundred yards would suffice to dampen the city’s anger.
The diplomats left with mutual expressions of regret and regard. Once they were gone Henry Wellesley leaned back in his chair. “Lord Pumphrey told me what happened in the cathedral. That was a pity, Sharpe.”
“A pity, sir?”
“There were casualties!” Wellesley said sternly. “We don’t know how many, and I daren’t show too much interest in finding out. At present no one is directly accusing us of causing the damage, but they will, they will.”
“We kept the money, sir,” Sharpe said, “and they were never going to give us the letters. I’m sure Lord Pumphrey told you that.”
“I did,” Pumphrey said.
“And it was a priest who tried to cheat you?” Wellesley sounded shocked.
“Father Salvador Montseny,” Lord Pumphrey said sourly.
Wellesley twisted his chair to look out the window. It was a gray day and a thin mist blurred the small garden. “I could, perhaps, have done something about Father Montseny,” he said, still looking into the mist. “I could have brought pressure to bear, I might have had him posted to some mission in a godforsaken fever swamp in the Americas, but that’s impossible now. Your actions at the newspaper, Sharpe, have made it impossible. Those gentlemen pretended to believe us, but they know damned well you did it.” He turned back, his face showing a sudden anger. “I warned you that we must step carefully here. I told you to observe the proprieties. We cannot offend the Spanish. They know that the newspaper was destroyed in an attempt to stop the letters being published, and they will not be happy with us. They might even go so far as to make another press available for the men who have the letters! Good God, Sharpe! We have a house burned, a business destroyed, a cathedral desecrated, men wounded, and for what? Tell me that! For what?”
“For that, sir?” Sharpe said, and laid the copy of El Correo de Cádiz on the ambassador’s desk. “I believe it’s a new edition, sir.”
“Oh, dear God,” Henry Wellesley said. He was blushing as he turned the pages and saw column after column filled with his letters. “Oh, dear God.”
“That’s the only copy,” Sharpe said. “I burned the rest.”
“You burned”—the ambassador began, then his voice faltered because Sharpe had begun laying the ambassador’s imprudent letters on top of the newspaper, one after the other, as if he were dealing cards.
“These are your letters, sir,” Sharpe said, still in his sergeant’s tone of voice, “and we’ve ruined the press that printed them, sir, and we’ve burned their newspapers, and we’ve taught the bastards not to take us lightly, sir. As Lord Pumphrey told me, sir, we have frustrated their knavish tricks. There, sir.” He laid the last letter down.
“Good God,” Henry Wellesley said, staring at the letters.
“Dear Lord above,” Lord Pumphrey said faintly.
“They might have copies, sir,” Sharpe said, “but without the originals they can’t prove the letters are real, can they? And, anyway, they don’t have a way of printing them now.”
“Good God,” Wellesley said again, this time looking up at Sharpe.
“Thief, murderer, and arsonist,” Sharpe said proudly. The ambassador said nothing, just stared at him. “Have you ever heard of a Spanish officer called Captain Galiana, sir?” Sharpe asked.
Wellesley had looked back to the letters and seemed not to have heard Sharpe. Then he gave a start as if he had just woken. “Fernando Galiana? Yes, he was a liaison officer to Sir Thomas’s predecessor. A splendid young man. Are those all the letters?”
“All they had, sir.”
“Good God,” the ambassador said, then stood abruptly, took hold of the letters and the newspaper, and carried them all to the fire. He threw them on the coals and watched them blaze bright. “How—” he began, then decided there were some questions better not answered.
“Will that be all, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“I must thank you, Sharpe,” Wellesley said, still staring at the burning letters.
“And my men, sir, all five of them. I’ll be taking then back to the Isla de León, sir, and we’ll wait there for a ship.”
“Of course, of course.” The ambassador hurried across to his bureau. “Your five men helped?”
“Very much, sir.”