Two men seized Vandal by his shoulders and pulled him away from the blood-spattered Irishmen. The colonel was not badly wounded. A bayonet had cut into his thigh, but he felt unable to walk, to speak, even to think. The eagle! It had a laurel wreath about its neck, a wreath of gilded bronze presented by the city of Paris to those regiments that had distinguished themselves at Austerlitz, and now some prancing fool was waving the eagle in the air! Vandal felt a surge of fury. He would not lose it! If he had to die in the attempt, he would take back the emperor’s eagle. He screamed at the two men to drop him. He scrambled to his feet. “Pour l’empereur!” he shouted, and he ran toward Masterson, thinking to cut through the men barring his way. But suddenly there were more enemy to his left and he turned, parried a sword cut, lunged to kill the man, and saw, to his surprise, that it was a Spanish officer who, in turn, parried Vandal’s lunge and riposted fast. More Frenchmen came to help their colonel. “Get the eagle!” he screamed at them, and he slashed at the Spaniard, hoping to drive the man away so he could join the attack on the redcoat who had his eagle. The slash ripped through coat and yellow sash to score a bloody wound on the Spaniard’s belly, but just then the Spanish officer was thrust aside and a tall green-jacketed man beat down Vandal’s saber with a huge blade, then simply reached out and gripped the collar of the colonel’s coat. The green-jacketed man hauled Vandal out of the melee, tripped him, then kicked the colonel in the side of the head. Rifles fired, then a rush of Irishmen drove the last few Frenchmen back. Vandal tried to roll away from his attacker, but he was kicked again. When he looked up the big sword was at his throat.
“Remember me?” Captain Sharpe asked.
Vandal swung the saber, but Sharpe parried it with derisory ease. “Where’s my lieutenant?” he asked.
Vandal still held the saber. He readied himself to sweep it up at the rifleman, but then Sharpe pressed the point of the heavy cavalry sword into the colonel’s throat. “I yield,” Vandal said.
The pressure relaxed. “Give me your saber,” Sharpe said.
“I give my parole,” Vandal said, “and under the rules of war I may keep my saber.” The colonel knew his battle was finished. His men had gone and the Irish were harrying them farther east with bayonets. All along the line the French were running, and all along the line bloodied men were pursuing the enemy, though they did not pursue far. They had marched all night and fought all morning and they were bone tired. They followed the beaten enemy until it was certain that the broken army would not stop to re-form and then they sank down and marveled that they were still alive. “I give my parole,” Vandal said again.
“I said give me the saber,” Sharpe snarled.
“He can keep his weapon,” Galiana said. “He’s given his parole.”
Brigadier Moon watched and flinched as Sharpe kicked the Frenchman again, then stabbed down with the heavy cavalry sword to cut the man’s wrist. Vandal let go of the saber’s snakeskin grip and Sharpe bent and picked up the fallen blade. He looked at the steel, expecting to see a French name engraved there, but instead it said Bennett.
“You stole this, you bugger,” Sharpe said.
“I gave you my parole!” Vandal protested.
“Then stand up,” Sharpe said.
Vandal, his sight blurred because of his tears that were caused not by physical pain but by the loss of the eagle, stood. “My saber,” he demanded, blinking.
Sharpe threw the saber to Brigadier Moon, then hit Vandal. He knew he should not, but he was consumed by fury and so he hit him clean between the eyes. Vandal fell again, his hands clutching his face, and Sharpe bent over him. “Don’t you remember, Colonel?” he asked. “War is war and there are no rules. That’s what you told me. So where’s my lieutenant?”
Vandal recognized Sharpe then. He saw the bandage showing under the ragged shako and remembered the man who had blown the bridge, the man he thought he had killed. “Your lieutenant,” he said shakily, “is in Seville, where he is being treated with honor. You hear that? With honor, as you must treat me.”
“Get up,” Sharpe said. The colonel stood, then flinched as Sharpe dragged him around by tugging on one of his gilded epaulettes. Then Sharpe pointed. “Look, Colonel,” he said, “there’s your bloody honor.”
Sergeant Patrick Masterson, with a smile as broad as all Dublin, was parading the captured eagle. “By Jesus, boys,” he was shouting, “I’ve got their cuckoo!”
And Sharpe laughed.
HMS THORNSIDE cleared the Diamante rock off Cádiz and headed west into the Atlantic. Soon she would alter course for the mouth of the Tagus and for Lisbon. On shore a one-legged admiral watched her recede and tasted the bile in his throat. All Cádiz was praising the British now, the British who had taken an eagle and humiliated the French. No hope now of a new Regency in Spain, or of a sensible peace with the emperor, because the war fever had come to Cádiz and its hero was Sir Thomas Graham. The admiral turned away and stumped toward his home.
Sharpe watched the shore fade. He stood beside Harper. “I’m sorry, Pat.”
“I know you are, sir.”
“He was a friend.”
“And that he was,” Harper said. Rifleman Slattery had died. Sharpe had not seen it happen, but while he and Galiana had run into the disintegrating column to find Vandal, a last errant musket shot had pierced Slattery’s throat and he had bled to death on Caterina’s skirts.
“It wasn’t our fight,” Sharpe said. “You were right.”
“It was a rare fight, though,” Harper said, “and you got your man.”
Colonel Vandal had complained to Sir Thomas Graham. He protested that Captain Sharpe had wounded him after his surrender, that Captain Sharpe had insulted him and assaulted him, and that Captain Sharpe had stolen his saber. Lord William Russell had told Sharpe of the complaint and shaken his head. “I have to tell you it’s serious, Sharpe. You can’t upset a colonel, even a French one! Think what they’ll do to our officers if they learn what we do to theirs?”
“I didn’t do it,” Sharpe had lied stubbornly.
“Of course you didn’t, my dear fellow, but Vandal’s made his complaint and I fear Sir Thomas insists there must be a court of inquiry.”
But the inquiry had never taken place. Brigadier Sir Barnaby Moon had written his own report of the incident, saying that he had been within twenty paces of the colonel’s capture, that he had seen every action taken by Captain Richard Sharpe, and that Sharpe had behaved as a gentleman and an officer. Sir Thomas, on receiving Moon’s report, had apologized to Sharpe in person. “We had to take the complaint seriously, Sharpe,” Sir Thomas said, “but if that wretched Frenchman had known there was a brigadier watching, he’d never have made up such a pack of lies. And, of course, Moon dislikes you—he’s made that very clear—so he’s hardly likely to exonerate you if there was even the smallest chance of making trouble for you. So you can forget it, Sharpe, and I have to say I’m glad. I didn’t want to think you were capable of doing what Vandal claimed.”
“Of course I’m not, sir.”
“But Brigadier Moon, eh?” Sir Thomas had asked, laughing. “Moon and the widow! Is she a widow? A proper one, I mean, not just Henry’s leavings?”
“Not that I know of, sir, no.”
“Well, she’s a wife now,” Sir Thomas said, amused. “Let us all hope he never discovers who she really is!”
“She’s a lovely lady, sir.”
Sir Thomas had looked at him with some surprise. “Sharpe,” he had said, “we should all be as generous as you. What a kind thing to say.” Sir Thomas had thanked him effusively then, and Henry Wellesley had thanked him again that evening, an evening during which Lord Pumphrey found he had business away from the embassy.