Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (20 page)

A flint clicked uselessly on steel, the musket’s powder turned into a grey porridge by the rain. Four men faced Sharpe and he drove his horse towards them, sword lifted, shouting, and he swept the grey blade down on a raised sabre, lunged into the man’s ribs, and twisted the blade free. A musket butt slammed into his left arm, he pulled the reins with numbed fingers, stood in the saddle and screamed a challenge as the sword came across and down to shear into the man’s face. A third rifle shot banged from the wet rocks.

God bless the boy, Sharpe thought. Angel had reloaded as fast as any Rifleman and another man was down, being dragged by the stirrup of his frightened horse, and Sharpe parried a swinging musket, sliced wood from the butt, and lunged at the enemy’s throat, twisting the blade as it went home, and the blood was warm on his hands as he parried right, hacked down, and the enemy was going downhill. They were running!

He pushed his heels back. ‘Go! Go! Go!’ They heard him coming, they were frightened, and one man pulled the reins, his horse slipped, screamed, and Sharpe swerved past him and lunged forward with the sword at the spine of the last unwounded man. The man screamed, arched his back, and Sharpe let the blade come free.

He pulled on the reins.

His attack had been so sudden and so savage, as an attack should be, that the enemy was gone, all but their dead. Sharpe leaned left, snatched the reins of another horse, and turned back up the hill. Now was the time for speed.

‘Angel!‘

Sharpe was galloping the horses uphill. ‘You’re a marvel! A bloody, bloody marvel!’ He had shouted it in English. He tried an approximation in Spanish and was rewarded by seeing the boy’s broad grin as he squeezed out of the rocks. Sharpe was laughing. ‘You’re as good as any Rifleman!’

‘Better!’

‘You’re better!’ They both laughed. ‘Get the horses!’

Angel threw Sharpe’s rifle to him and he slung it on his shoulder. ‘Helene!’

She came slowly out of the crack in the rocks. She stared at the men who lay crumpled on the road, their blood already diluted by the rain and trickling down the ruts of the track. Her eyes came up to Sharpe. She was smiling. ‘I’ve never seen you fight!’

‘You’ll see more if you don’t hurry.’

‘You’re wonderful!’

‘Helene! For God’s sake! Hurry! What are you doing?’

She was running past him. ‘I want one of those cloaks! I’m god-damned cold!’

She dragged a fur cloak from one of the dead men, grunting at the weight of the corpse. Sharpe leaned from his saddle to help her. He laughed when she draped it about her shoulders because it seemed so odd to see such delicate beauty swathed in such a brutal great fur.

El Matarife
had not been among the seven men, so presumably the Partisan leader was at the foot of the mountain. He would have heard the shots, but it would be several minutes, maybe a half hour, before he knew what had happened. Then, though, he would realise what Sharpe was doing and guess that his enemy was escaping him. Sharpe chivvied Helene into Carbine’s saddle, knowing that every moment was precious.

Sharpe had four horses now and he led them upwards, away from the dead men, up to the plateau. ‘Where are we going, Richard?’

‘Down the other side. There’s a small path, a goat track.’ He had ridden round the plateau before going to the convent, sure there must be another path, fearful that he would not find it.

‘Then what?’

‘We ride as far as we can! We’ve stolen half a day’s lead on the bastards, but they’ll follow us!’ He did not tell her that no one moved faster across country than Partisans. Their pursuit would be grim, their revenge terrible unless he hurried.

She watched as he clumsily wiped the blood from his sword on the saddle-cloth of his captured horse. ‘Thank you, Richard!’

‘Thank Angel! He got three of them.’

Angel blushed. He was staring at La Marquesa with dog-like devotion. Sharpe laughed, then led them back up the mountain and south towards the far valleys.

He felt an extraordinary surge of life in him. He had done it! He had crossed Spain and snatched this woman from the Convent of the Heavens, he had fought her enemies, and he would take her to safety. He would find his answers, he would wrench his life back where it belonged, but first, first before all things, because at this moment it seemed the most important of all things, he would find out if she had changed. He looked at her, thinking that her beauty dimmed this land, and that when she smiled it was as if she held all his happiness in her hand. For the first time in months, because of this woman, he was content.

La Marquesa moaned, her eyes shut. She turned her head on the pillow, her lips open just enough for Sharpe to see her white teeth. The fire smoked into the room. Rain rattled a crisp tattoo on the tiny window through which, dim through the rain-smeared grime, Sharpe could see a candle burning in a cottage across the street.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’ She paused, her head turning in its gold hair on the pillow again. ‘Oh God!’

He laughed. He poured wine for her and put it beside the bed. A tallow wick, held in an iron bracket, smoked above its dim flame. ‘Wine for you.’

‘Oh God.’

They had ridden till one horse had had to be abandoned, until even the two good British horses were heaving with tiredness, and until La Marquesa’s thighs, unused to the saddle, were rubbed raw like fresh meat. She opened her eyes slowly. ‘Aren’t you sore?’

‘A bit.’

‘I never want to see a bloody horse again. Oh Christ!’ She scratched her waist. ‘Bloody place. Bloody Spain. Bloody weather. What’s that?’

Sharpe had put a metal pot on the rough table. ‘Grease.’

‘For God’s sake why?’

‘For the sores. Rub it on.’

She wrinkled her nose, then scratched again. She was lying on the bed, too tired to move, too tired to take any notice as Sharpe had ordered the fire lit, food prepared and wine brought.

They had come to this town, a tiny place huddled in the mountains where there was a church, a marketplace, an inn, and a mayor who had been impressed that a British officer should come to this place. Sharpe, fearing
El Matarife,
would have preferred to have ridden on, to have found a place in the deep country where they could have hidden for the night, but he knew that La Marquesa could take no more. He would risk the town’s inn and hope that
El Matarife,
if he reached this far, would be inhibited by the townsfolk from trying to seize back La Marquesa. This was not the time, Sharpe thought, to tell her that he planned an early start in the morning.

She pushed herself up on her elbows and frowned about the room. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever, ever, stayed in a place so awful.’

‘It seems comfortable enough to me.’

‘You never did have elevated tastes, Richard. Except in women.’ She flopped back. ‘I suppose that hoping for a bath here is futile?’

‘It’s coming.’

‘It is?’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘God, you’re wonderful.’ She frowned again as she scratched. ‘This bloody shift! I hate wearing wool.’

Sharpe had hung the dress she had rescued from the convent by the fire. Her jewels were on the table. She looked at the dress. ‘Not very suitable for a wild flight, is it?’ She laughed and watched Sharpe peel off his wet jacket. ‘Is that the shirt I gave you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you have a laundry in the British army?’

‘It couldn’t come with me.’

‘Poor Richard.’ She tasted the wine and grimaced. ‘One day, Richard, I’m going to have a house on the River Loire. I shall have an island in the river and young men will row me to my island where we will eat lark pate and honey and drink cold, cold wine on hot, hot days.’

He smiled. ‘Which is why you want your wagons?’

‘Which is why I want my wagons.’

‘And that’s why the Church arrested you?’

She nodded. She closed her eyes again. ‘They arranged it all. Luis had no one to leave his money to but me, and they found the bloody will and the clause which said they’d get it all if I became a nun. Simple.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘It’s rather clever of them.’

‘So why did you write the letter?’

She waved a hand airily. ‘Oh, Richard!’ She looked at him and sighed impatiently. ‘They had to have Luis dead, didn’t they? They told me they wanted him punished, I don’t know why. I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t think you’d mind killing him. He never was much use to anyone.’ She smiled at him. ‘I never thought it would get you into trouble, darling. Truly! I’ll write you a letter for Arthur, telling him you’re innocent. What a lot of trouble you went to!’ She frowned again, scratching at the grey shift.

‘Helene.’

She looked at him, struck by the seriousness in his voice. She hoped that he was not going to question her lies, she was too tired. ‘Richard?’

‘It isn’t the wool.’

‘What isn’t the wool?’

‘Your scratching.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

He gestured at the discarded fur cloak she had taken from the dead Partisan. ‘You’ve got guests.’

She stared at him suspiciously. ‘Guests?’

‘Fleas.’

‘Christ!’ She sat up with sudden energy and hauled the shift above her knees. She frowned at her bared skin. ‘Fleas?’

‘Probably.’ He looked at her thighs, wondering why she had lied to him. He was sure that she had, he was certain that there was more to the letter she had written to her husband than the mere request of a church that wanted her riches, yet he sensed that he would have to accept her explanation because he was not clever enough to get the real truth from her.

She twitched the shift higher, peering at her legs. ‘God and hell and damnation! Fleas? I can’t see any.’

‘You won’t.’

She pushed the shift down. ‘I’ll never get rid of them!’

‘You will.’

‘How?’

‘The same as the rest of us. A piece of soap.’

‘Just wash them away?’

He grinned. ‘No.’

Someone knocked on the trapdoor that was the entrance to the room. Sharpe unbolted it, hauled it up, and the innkeeper’s wife pushed a great tin bath towards him. He took it from her and saw the buckets of water steaming at the ladder’s foot. ‘You have towels?’

Sharpe saw Angel by the fire at the end of the inn’s main room. The boy stared forlornly at Sharpe, jealous that the Rifle officer was in La Marquesa’s room. ‘And I want soap.’

La Marquesa was sitting, legs apart, on the edge of the bed. ‘What do I do with the soap?’

‘You dampen a corner, chase the fleas and dab them with it. They stick to the soap. It’s twenty times faster than trying to catch them with your fingers.’ He pulled up the first bucket and poured it into the tin bath.

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What if they go to my back?’

Sharpe laughed. ‘The innkeeper’s wife will help you. She doesn’t want fleas in the bed.’ Privately he would be surprised if there weren’t fleas already in the bed, though it was possible, this being the inn’s only proper bedroom, that it was clean.

‘That woman?’

‘Why not?’

‘Christ, Richard! I don’t want her to know I’ve got fleas! You’ll have to do it.’ She shrugged. ‘You’ve seen it often enough before.’

He poured another bucket. ‘Yes, ma’am.‘

‘It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? A rescuer’s reward? Isn’t that why knights rode around rescuing maidens? Only they called it the Holy Grail which is a nicer name than-some I’ve heard.’

‘Yes, ma’am.‘

She laughed at his smile. ‘I missed you. I often wondered what you were doing. I imagined you scowling through life, scaring all the rich young officers.’ She made a face at him. ‘I don’t even have a comb, let alone a brush! Is that all the water they’re giving me?’

‘There’s more coming.’

‘Thank God for that.’ She leaned back on the bed. ‘I could sleep for a month. I never want to see a bloody horse again.’

Sharpe lifted more buckets into the room. ‘You’ll have to ride one tomorrow.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘I could leave you for
El Matarife.’

‘He couldn’t make me more sore than this.’ She turned her head and watched him through the billows of steam. ‘I was sorry about your wife, Richard.’

‘Yes.’ He did not know what else to say to such abrupt sympathy.

She shrugged. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry about Luis. It doesn’t seem real, somehow, being a widow.’ She laughed softly. ‘A rich widow, if that bastard doesn’t steal everything.’

‘The Inquisitor?’

‘The bloody Inquisitor. Father Hacha. Is it ready?’

just the towels.‘

He took the thin linen cloths from the woman downstairs and closed the trapdoor. ‘Your bath, ma’am.‘

‘You make a bloody awful lady’s maid, Richard.’

‘I think I’m relieved to hear that.’

‘Let it cool a bit. I don’t fancy being scalded as well as flea-bitten and sore.’ She sat on the side of the bed, her chin cupped in her hands, and looked at him. ‘What do we do now, Richard?’

‘What do you want to do.’

‘I want to go to Burgos.’

He felt disappointed. He had somehow, and he knew stupidly, hoped that she would come back to the army with him. ‘If the French are still there,’ he said dubiously.

She shrugged. ‘Wherever they are, that’s where I want to be. Because wherever they are, that’s where the wagons are.’

‘Won’t they arrest you again?’

She shook her head. ‘The Church can’t do it twice.’ She was thinking of General Verigny. ‘I won’t let the bastards do it twice.’ She reached over and put a hand in the water. ‘You’ve got the soap?’

‘Ready and willing, ma’am.‘

She grinned, then crossed her arms to draw the shift over her head. She laughed at his expression, then pulled the grey wool up and over her head. ‘I’m cold.’