The horse was nervous so Saumier would have to lead it through the ditch. He stepped into the water and felt his boot sucked into the slimy mud. He slipped, held his balance, then tugged on the reins.
The horse nervously came forward. It put its head down and La Marquesa gripped the mane.
Saumier smiled at her with his yellow teeth. `Don’t frighten it, my Lady! Gently, now, gently!’
The horse stepped into the water.
`Come on! Come on!’
A horseman took the ditch in one stride a few yards to Saumier’s left. The Frenchman looked up, fearing a British cavalryman, but the man wore no uniform. Saumier tugged on the reins again. `Come on, boy! Come on!’
La Marquesa screamed and Saumier looked up at her, ready to chide her for frightening the horse, then he saw why she had shouted in fear.
The horseman had stopped beyond the ditch. The man grinned at Saumier.
More horsemen were behind La Marquesa. One of them was a huge man with a beard that seemed to grow from every part of his face.
The bearded man came forward and smiled. From his belt he drew a pistol.
Saumier let go of the reins. He had his sabre drawn, but his boots were stuck in the filth at the ditch’s bottom.
El Matarife still smiled. He had followed the carriage from the city and now he had found the woman he had been ordered to capture. She was to be taken to a nunnery, those were his brother’s orders, but El Matarife planned to give her one taste of the joys she would miss in the close confinement of a convent. He glanced at her, and she was more beautiful than a man could wish for, even screaming in horror at the sight of his face. The man in the ditch dropped his sabre and fumbled for the pistol in his holster.
El Matarife pulled his trigger.
Captain Saumier jerked backwards, hands flying up and pistol falling.
He splashed into the ditch, his boots slowly sucking up from the bubbling mud.
He floated.
His blood drifted in the dirty water, spreading as he died, choking on ditch-water and blood.
El Matarife smiled at La Marquesa, at the woman whose golden hair had been like a beacon in the havoc. `My Lady,’ he said. He began to laugh, the laugh getting louder and louder until it blotted out the screams of the chaos. `My Lady, my dear lady.’ He reached, for her, dragged her belly-downwards over his saddle. She screamed, and he slapped her rump to keep her quiet, then headed back towards the wagons. As he had followed her carriage here he had seen the gold and silver scattered like leaves upon the ground. There would be time, he knew, to take some for himself before he delivered the golden whore to her new prison. He went into the chaos with his prisoner.
CHAPTER 26
`God save Ireland!’ Patrick Harper’s favourite oath, saved only for the things that truly astonished him, was hardly sufficient to describe what he saw as he crossed the shallow crest where the grass was still scorched from the French guns that had made the slaughter on the bridge. He tried another. `God save England, too.’
Sharpe laughed. The sight, for a few seconds, had taken his mind from La Marquesa.
Angel stared open-mouthed. An army was running a race. Thousands and thousands of Frenchmen, all order gone, ran between the river and the city, streaming eastwards, abandoning muskets, packs, anything that would slow them.
From Sharpe’s right, cavalry approached, British cavalry who stared and laughed at the tide of panicked men. Their Major came towards Sharpe and grinned. `It’s cruel to charge them!’
Sharpe smiled. `Do you have a glass, Major?’
The cavalryman offered Sharpe a small spyglass. The Rifleman opened it, trained it, and saw what he thought he had seen with his naked eye. The road was blocked. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of wagons that were stuck in the fields east of Vitoria. He could see carriages there, their windows red from the setting sun. There was a woman there, and a treasure there. He closed the glass and gave it back to the cavalryman. `You see those wagons, Major?’