Sharpe grinned back. “Don’t worry.” He took the stairs three at a time, his boots squelching on the wooden steps, and Hogan watched him go. “Tis brief, my Lord.” He was speaking to himself. “As woman’s love.”
“What’s that, sir?” Lieutenant Knowles was standing beside him.
“Do you never read Shakespeare, lad?”
“Shakespeare, sir?”
“A famous Irish poet,” Hogan said.
Knowles laughed. “And what play was that from, sir?”
“Hamlet.”
“Oh him.” Knowles grinned. “The famous Irish Prince?”
Hogan grinned at him. “Oh no. Hamlet was no Irish-man. He was a fool. Goodnight, Lieutenant. Time for bed.”
Hogan looked up at Sharpe’s room. He would trust Sharpe with his life, trust the Rifleman against almost any odds, but with a woman? He would be disarmed, defeated; one girl could do what a Battalion of French could never hope to achieve. Hogan muttered under his breath as he walked away, his voice quiet in the empty courtyard, repeating the line over and over as though, perhaps, repetition would rob it of truth. “Beauty provoketh fools sooner than gold.”
CHAPTER 12
“Officer of the day?”
Sharpe nodded. “Come on in.”
The Commissary officer, a plump Lieutenant, grinned cheerfully and closed the door behind him. “Good after-noon, sir. Your signature?”
“For what?”
The Lieutenant pretended to be surprised. He looked at the piece of paper he had been holding out to Sharpe. “3rd Battalion of Detachments? Right?” Sharpe nodded. “Your rations, sir.” He held the list out again. “Will you sign, sir?”
“Wait.” Sharpe looked down the list. “Seven hundred and fifty pounds of beef? That’s generous, isn’t it?”
The Lieutenant put on his professional smile. “I’m afraid that’s not just for today, sir. That’s the next three days’ ration altogether.”
“What! Three days? That’s half bloody rations!”
The Lieutenant spread his hands. “I know, sir, I know, but it really is the best we can do. Will you sign?”
Sharpe took his hat and weapons from the table. “Where are they?”
The Lieutenant sighed. “I’m sure you don’t want to. ,
“Where are they?” Sharpe’s voice boomed in the small room. The Lieutenant smiled, opened the door, and beckoned Sharpe into the courtyard, where the Lieuten-ant’s working party was standing by a string of pack mules. The Lieutenant pulled the cover off a keg of freshly killed beef. “Sir?”
Sharpe picked up the top piece and dangled it in front of the plump Commissary officer. “Put laces in it and you could march on it.” The Lieutenant smiled; he had heard it all before. Sharpe took another piece of gristle from the keg. “It’s uneatable! How many kegs?”
The Lieutenant waved at the mules. “All this, sir.”
Sharpe looked out of the courtyard into the bright street. Another mule stood patiently in the late afternoon sunlight. “What’s that?”
“A mule, sir.” The Lieutenant smiled brightly. He saw Sharpe’s face. “Sorry, sir. My little joke.” He became serious. “That’s the supplies for the castle, sir. Sir Arthur’s. You understand.”
“I do?” Sharpe walked under the arch towards the mule, the Lieutenant alongside, and waved the muleteer away. “I happened to see the supplies delivered to the castle this morning, Lieutenant, and nothing was missing.”
The Lieutenant smiled helplessly. Sharpe was lying, they both knew that, but then so was the Lieutenant, and they both knew that, too. Sharpe pulled the cover off the nearest keg. “Now that, Lieutenant, is beef. I’ll have both these kegs instead of two of the others.”
“But, sir! This is for. ,
“Your dinner, Lieutenant? And you and your fellow officers will sell the rest. Right? I’ll take it.”
The Lieutenant recovered the keg. “Why don’t you let me give you a fine chicken we just happened to find, Captain, as a gift, of course.”
Sharpe put his hand on the mule. “You want me to sign, Lieutenant? I think I’ll weigh the beef first.”
The Lieutenant was beaten. He smiled brightly and gave Sharpe the list. “I wouldn’t want you to go to the trouble, sir. Let’s just say you’ll take all the kegs, these included?”
Sharpe nodded. The day’s bargaining was over and his own working party unloaded the mules and took the beef down to the outskirts of Oropesa, where the men of the Battalion were quartered. The supply situation was hope-less and getting worse. The Spanish army had been waiting at Oropesa and they had long eaten any spare food from the surrounding countryside. The town’s steep streets were filled with troops, Spanish, British and Germans from the Legion, and there was already friction between the allies. British and German patrols had ambushed