“Eyes front!”
Hogan laughed out loud. “Well done, Sharpe!” He looked at his watch. “We’ll make the bridge before night-fall. Let’s hope the French don’t.”
Let’s hope the French don’t make it at all, thought Sharpe. Defeating an ally was one thing but his doubts about the ability of the South Essex to face the French were as real as ever. He looked at the white, dusty road stretching over the featureless plain and in a fleeting, horrid moment wondered whether he would return. He pushed the thought away and gripped the stock of his rifle. With his other hand he unconsciously felt the lump over his breastbone. Harper saw the gesture. Sharpe thought it was a secret that round his neck he had a leather bag in which he kept his worldly wealth, but all his men knew it was there, and Sergeant Harper knew that when
Sharpe touched the bag with its few gold coins looted from old battlefields then the Lieutenant was worried. And if Sharpe was worried? Harper turned to the Riflemen. “Come on, you bastards! This isn’t a funeral! Faster!”
CHAPTER 6
Valdelacasa did not exist as a place where human beings lived, loved, or traded, it was simply a ruined building and a great stone bridge that had been built to span the river at a time when the Tagus was wider than the flow which now slid darkly between the three central arches of the Roman stonework. And from the bridge, with its attendant building, the land spread outwards in a vast, shallow bowl bisected by the river in one direction and the road which led to and from the bridge in the other. The Battalion had marched down the almost imperceptible incline as the shadows of dusk began to creep across the pale grasslands. There was no farming, no cattle, no signs of life: just the ancient ruin, the bridge, and the water slipping silently towards the far-off sea.
“I don’t like it, sir.” Harper’s face had been genuinely worried.
“Why not?”
“No birds, sir. Not even a vulture.”
Sharpe had to admit it was true, there was not a bird to be seen or heard. It was like a place forgotten, and as they marched towards the building the men in green jackets were unnaturally quiet as if infected by some ancient gloom.
“There’s no sign of the French.” Sharpe could see no movement in the darkening landscape.
“It’s not the French that worry me.” Harper was really concerned. “It’s this place, sir. It’s not good.”
“You’re being Irish, Sergeant.”
“That may be, sir. But tell me why there’s no village here. The soil is better than the stuff we’ve marched past, there’s a bridge, so why no village?”
Why not? It seemed an obvious place for a village, but on the other hand they had passed only one small hamlet in the last ten miles so it was possible that there were simply not enough people in the vast remoteness of the Estremaduran plain to inhabit every likely spot. Sharpe tried to ignore Harper’s concern but, coming as it did on top of his own gloomy presentiments, he had begun to feel that Valdelacasa really did have a sinister air about it. Hogan did not help.
“That’s the Puente de los Malditos, the Bridge of the Accursed.” Hogan walked his horse beside them and nodded at the building. “That must have been the convent. The Moors beheaded every single nun. The story goes that they were killed on the bridge, that their heads were thrown into the water but the bodies left to rot. They say no-one lives here because the spirits walk the bridge at night looking for their heads.”
The Riflemen heard him in silence. When Hogan had finished Sharpe was surprised to see his huge Sergeant surreptitiously cross himself, and he guessed that they would spend a restless night. He was right. The darkness was total, there was no wood on the plain so the men could build no fires, and in the small hours a wind brought clouds that covered the moon. The Riflemen were guard-ing the southern end of the bridge, the bank on which the French were loose, and it was a nervous night as shadows played tricks and the chill sentries were not certain whether they imagined the noises that could either be headless nuns or patrolling Frenchmen. Just before dawn Sharpe heard the sound of a bird’s wings, followed by the call of an owl, and he wondered whether to tell Harper that there were birds after all. He decided not; he remembered that owls were supposed to be harbingers of death, and the news might worry the Irishman even more.