Sergeant Harper, unexpectedly, took a pace forward. 'They didn't open all the graves, sir. He stated it consolingly, with his surprising compassion.
El Catolico smiled at him, saw that Harper was pointing at a fresh grave, neatly piled with earth and waiting for its headstone. The tall man nodded. 'Not all. Perhaps there was not time. I buried him six days ago. A servant, a good man.
There was a snap and they all looked at Ramon, who was still fumbling with the Baker rifle. He had the small trap open, in the butt, and seemed impressed by the cleaning tools hidden inside. He handed the rifle back to Sharpe. 'One day I have one, yes?
'One day I'll give you one. When we're back.
Ramon lifted his eyebrows. 'You come back?
Sharpe laughed. 'We'll be back. We'll chase the French all the way to Paris.
He slung the rifle and walked away from El Catolico, across the cemetery and through a wrought-iron side gate that opened on to the wide fields. If he had hoped for fresh air, untainted with death, he was unlucky. Beside the gate, half hidden by dark-green bushes, was a vast manure heap, stinking and warm, and Sharpe turned back to see that El Catolico had followed him.
'You think the war is not lost, Captain?
Sharpe wondered if he detected a trace of worry in the Spaniard. He shrugged. 'It's not lost.
'You're wrong. If the Spaniard had been worried, it was gone now. He spoke loudly, almost sneeringly. 'You've lost, Captain. Only a miracle can save the British now."
Sharpe copied the sneering tone. 'We're all bloody Christians, aren't we? We believe in miracles.
Kearsey's protest was stopped by a peal of laughter. It checked them all, swung them round, to see Teresa, her arm through her father's, standing at the hermitage door. The laugh stopped, the face became stern again, but for the first time, Sharpe thought, he had seen that she was not completely bound to the tall, grey-cloaked Spaniard. She even nodded to the Rifleman, in agreement, before turning away. Miracles, Sharpe decided, were beginning to happen.
CHAPTER 11
The elation had worn thin. Failure, like a hangover, imposed its mocking price of depression and regret as Sharpe marched westward from Casatejada towards the two rivers that barred the Light Company from a doomed British army. Sharpe felt sour, disappointed, and cheated. There had been little friendliness in the farewells. Ramon had embraced him, Spanish fashion, with a garlic kiss on both cheeks, and the young man had seemed genuinely sad to be parting from the Light Company. 'Remember your promise, Captain. A rifle.
Sharpe had made the promise, but he wondered, gloomily, how it was to be kept. Almeida must soon be under siege, the French would dominate the land between the rivers, and the British would be retreating westward towards the sea, to final defeat. And all that stood between survival and a silent, bitter embarkation was his suspicion that the gold was still in Casatejada, hidden as subtly as the Partisans hid their food and their weapons. He remembered Wellington's words. 'Must, do you hear? Must'
There had to be more gold, Sharpe thought: gold in the cellars of London, in the merchant banks, the counting-houses, in the bellies of merchant ships. So why this gold? The question could not be answered and the threat of defeat, like the rain-clouds that still built in the north, accompanied the Light Company on its empty march towards the river Agueda.
The Partisans were also going westward and for the first hour Sharpe had watched the horsemen as they rode on the spine of a low chain of hills to the south. El Catolico had talked of ambushing the French convoys that would be lumbering with ammunition towards Almeida. But, often as Sharpe saw Kearsey's blue coat among the horsemen, he could not see El Catolico's grey cloak. He had asked Jose, one of El Catolico's Lieutenants and the leader of the Company's escort, where the Partisan leader was, but Jose shrugged.
'Went ahead. The Spaniard spurred his horse away.
Patrick Harper caught up with Sharpe, glanced at his Captain's face. 'Permission to speak, sir?
Sharpe looked at him sourly. 'You don't usually ask. What is it?
Harper gestured at the escorting horsemen. 'What do they remind you of, sir?
Sharpe looked at the long black cloaks, wide hats, and long-stirruped saddlery. He shrugged. 'So tell me.
Harper looked up at the northern sky, at the heavy clouds. 'I remember, sir, when I was a recruit. It was like this, so it was, marching from Derry. Sharpe was used to the Sergeant's circumlocutions. If there were a way of imparting information by a story, then the Irishman preferred to use it, and Sharpe, who had learned that it was worth listening, did not interrupt. 'And they gave us an escort, sir, just like this. Horsemen before, beside, behind, and all the way round, so that not one mother's son would get the hell off the road. It was like being a prisoner, sir, so it was, and all the way! Locked up at night, we were, in a barn near Maghera, and on their side, we were!
The Sergeant's face had the fleeting look of sadness that sometimes came when he talked of home, his beloved Ulster, of a place so poor that he had ended up in the army of its enemy. The look passed and he grinned again. 'Do you see what I'm telling you, sir? This is a bloody escort for prisoners. They're seeing us off their own land, so they are.
'And what if they are? The two men had quickened their pace so they were ahead of the Company, out of earshot.
'The bastards are lying through their teeth. Harper said it with a quiet relish, as if confident that he could defeat their lies as easily as he saw through them.
Jose paused on a ridge ahead and searched the ground before spurring his horse onwards. The Company was isolated in a vastness of pale grass, rocks, and dried streambeds. The sun baked it all, hazed it with shimmering air, cracking the soil open with miniature chasms. Sharpe knew they must stop soon and rest, but his men were uncomplaining, even the wounded, and they trudged on in the heat and dust towards the far blue line that was the hills around Almeida.
'All right. Why are they lying?
'What did your man say yesterday? Harper meant El Catolico. But the question did not demand an answer from Sharpe. The Sergeant went on with enthusiasm. 'We were standing by that grave, you remember, and he said that he had buried the man six days before. Would you remember that?
Sharpe nodded. He had been thinking of that grave himself, but his Sergeant's words were opening up new ideas. 'Go on.
'Yesterday was a Saturday. I asked the Lieutenant; he can always remember the day and date. So that means he buried his servant on the Sunday.
Sharpe looked at Harper, mystified by the meaning of his statement. 'So?
'So he buried the man last Sunday.
'What's wrong with that?
'God save Ireland, sir, they would not do that. Not on a Sunday and not on a holy day. They're Catholics, sir, not your heathen Protestants. On a Sunday? Not at all!
Sharpe grinned at his vehemence. 'Are you sure?
'Am I sure? If my name's not Patrick Augustine Harper, and we were all good Catholics in Tangaveane despite the bastard English. Now would you look at that, sir?
'What? Sharpe was alarmed by the Sergeant's suddenly pointing to the north, as if a French patrol had appeared.
'A red kite, sir. You don't see many of those.
Sharpe saw a bird that looked like a hawk, but to him most birds, from cuckoos to eagles, looked like hawks. He walked on. Harper had reinforced his suspicions, added to them, and he let his mind wander over the vague feelings that were causing him disquiet. The stone over the crypt that had not even prompted the faintest mistrust from Kearsey. Then there was the speed with which El Catolico had killed the Polish Sergeant, forgoing the usual pleasure of torturing the man, and surely, Sharpe reasoned, that had been done so that the man did not have time in his dying to blurt out the awkward fact that the French knew nothing about the gold. It was not much of a reason for suspicion. In the short time that the lancer had been their prisoner Sharpe had not even found a common language, but El Catolico was not to know that.