Sharpe instantly forgot the cathedral’s glories. “Miss Parker?” He knew he was smiling like a fool, but he could not help it. It was not just a pirate’s pride that had made him fight, but his memory of this girl who, in her blue skirt and rust-coloured cape, smiled back at him. He turned and gestured at the silent French-held palace. “Isn’t it dangerous to be here?”
“My dear Lieutenant, I was inside the ogre’s den for a whole day! You think I am in more peril now that you have gained such a victory?”
Sharpe.smiled at the compliment, then, as he climbed to the top of the steps, returned it. “A victory, Miss Parker, to which you signally contributed.” He bowed to her. “My humblest congratulations. I was wrong, and you were right.”
Louisa, delighted with the praise, laughed. “Colonel de l’Eclin believes he will ambush you in the Ulla valley east of Padron. I watched him at three o’clock this morning.” She walked to the very centre of the cathedral’s platform which made a kind of stage dominating the wide plaza. “He stood in this very place, Lieutenant, and made a speech to his men. They filled the plaza! Rank after rank of helmets gleaming in the torchlight, and all of the men cheering their Colonel. I never thought to see such a thing! They cheered, then they rode off to their great victory.”
Sharpe thought how slender had been this day’s margin of victory. An extra thousand men, under de l’Eclin’s ruthlessly efficient command, would have destroyed Vivar’s attack. Yet the chasseur Colonel, utterly deceived by Louisa, had been lured southwards. “How did you convince him?”
“With copious tears and an evident reluctance to tell him anything. Eventually, though, he wheedled the fatal truth from me.” Louisa seemed to mock her own cleverness. “In the end he gave me a choice. I could stay in the city or rejoin my aunt in Corunna. I think he believed that if I chose to stay here then I must have hopes of rescue, and that to express such a hope would reveal that I lied to him. So I pleaded to rejoin my grieving family, and the Colonel rode away.” She did a pirouette of joy. “I was supposed to leave for Corunna at midday today. Do you see what a fate you have spared me?”
“Weren’t you frightened of staying?”
“Of course, weren’t you frightened of coming?”
He smiled. “I’m paid to be frightened.”
“And to be frightening. You look very grim, Lieutenant.” Louisa walked to some crates that lay open beside the cathedral door, sat on one of them, and pushed an errant curl from her eyes. “These crates,” she said, “were filled with plunder from the cathedral. The French took most of it away last week, but Don Bias has saved some.”
“That will please him.”
“Not very much,” Louisa said tartly. “The French desecrated the cathedral. They plundered the treasury and tore down most of the screens. Don Bias is not happy. But the gonfalon arrived safely and is under guard, so the miracle can proceed.”
“Good.” Sharpe sat, drew sword and, with the blade across his knees, scrubbed at the blood which would pit the steel with rust if it were not removed.
“Don Bias is inside. He’s preparing the high altar for his nonsense.” Louisa defused the word with a smile. “Doubtless you wish he would get it over with swiftly, so you can withdraw?”
“Indeed, yes.”
“But he won’t,” Louisa said firmly. “The priests are insisting that the nonsense must be done properly and with due ceremony. This is a miracle, Lieutenant, that must be observed by witnesses who can carry news of it throughout
Spain. We wait for the coming of some monks and friars.“ She laughed delightedly. ”It’s like something out of the Middle Ages, isn’t it?“
“Indeed.”
“But Don Bias is serious, so we must both treat it with the utmost gravity. Shall we go inside to see him?” Louisa spoke with sudden enthusiasm. “You should also see the Gate of Glory, Lieutenant, it really is a very remarkable piece of masonry. Much more impressive than the doors to a Methodist meeting house, though it’s monstrously disloyal of me to say as much.”
Sharpe was silent for a few seconds. He did not want to see the Gate of Glory, whatever that might be, nor share this girl with the Spaniards who prepared the cathedral for the evening’s rigmarole. He wanted to sit here with her, sharing the moment of victory.
“I do believe,” Louisa said, “that these have been the happiest days of my life. I do envy you.”
“Envy me?”
“It’s the lack of restraint, Lieutenant. Suddenly there are no rules any more, are there? You wish to tell a lie? You lie! You desire to tear a town into tatters? You do it! You wish to light a fire? Then strike the flint! Perhaps I should become one of your Riflemen?”
Sharpe laughed. “I accept.”
“But instead,” Louisa folded her arms demurely, “I must travel south to Lisbon, and there take a ship to England.”
“Must you?” Sharpe blurted out.
Louisa was silent for a second. The smell of smoke from one of the burning houses drifted across the plaza, then was dispelled by a gust of wind. “Isn’t that what you’re going to do?” she asked.
The hope soared in him. “It depends on whether we keep a garrison is Lisbon. I’m sure we will,” he added lamely.
“It seems unlikely, after our defeats.” Louisa turned to watch a group of Spanish youths who had succeeded in slipping past the Cazadores who guarded the plaza. The boys held a captured tricolour which they first set alight, then brandished towards the trapped enemy. If they hoped to stir the Frenchmen in the palace by their defiance, they failed.
“So I am doomed to return home,” Louisa gazed at the capering boys as she spoke, “and for what, Lieutenant? In England I shall resume my needlework and spend hours with my watercolours. Doubtless I shall be a curiosity for a while; the squire will want to hear of my quaint adventures. Mister Bufford will resume his courtship and reassure me that never again, so long as there is breath in his body, shall I be exposed to such foul danger! I shall play the pianoforte, and spend weeks deciding whether to buy pink ribbons or blue for next year’s gowns. I shall take alms to the poor, and tea with the ladies of the town. It will all be so very unarduous, Lieutenant Sharpe.”
Sharpe felt adrift in an irony he was not clever enough to understand. “So you have decided to marry Mr Bufford?” he asked in trepidation, fearing that the answer would dash all his fragile hopes.
“I’m not heiress enough to attract anyone more exalted,” Louisa said with a feigned self-pity. She brushed a scrap of fallen ash from her skirts. “But it’s surely the sensible thing for me to do, is it not, Lieutenant? To marry Mr Bufford and live in his very pleasant house? I shall have roses planted against the south wall and once in a while, a very long while, I shall see a paragraph in the newspapers and it will tell of a battle faraway, and I’ll remember how very horrid powder smoke smells and how sad a soldier can look when he’s scraping blood off his sword.”
Her last words, which seemed so very intimate, restored Sharpe’s optimism. He looked up at her.
“You see, Lieutenant,” Louisa forestalled anything he might say, “there comes a moment in anyone’s life when a choice presents itself. Isn’t that true?”
The hope, so ill-based, so impractical, so irresistible, soared inside Sharpe. “Yes,” he said. He did not know exactly how she could stay with the army, or how the finances, which were the bane of most impractical romances, would be worked through, but other officers’ wives had houses in Lisbon, so why not Louisa?
“I’m not convinced I want the roses and the embroidery.” Louisa seemed nervous and febrile suddenly, like an untrained horse edging skittishly towards the skirmish line. “I know that I should want those things, and I know I am most foolish in despising them, but I like Spain! I like the excitement here. There isn’t much excitement in England.”