`Late?’
`Father Hacha was with him.’ The servant yawned as he pissed. `Say a prayer for me, father.’
The chaplain smiled, then pushed the door open. It was dark in the room, all light blocked out by the great velvet hangings over the windows. `My Lord?’
There was no answer from behind the curtained bed. The chaplain closed the door quietly behind him then groped uncertainly through the strange, heavy furniture until he reached the window. He reflected how wealthy these provincial merchants were who could afford such furnishings, then pulled the curtain back, flooding the room with a sickly grey light.
`My Lord? It’s I, Father Pello.’
Still no sound. The Marques’ uniform was carefully hung on a cupboard door, his boots, stretchers inside, parked carefully beneath. The chaplain pulled back the curtains of the bed. `My Lord?’
His first thought was that the Marques was sleeping on a pillow of red velvet. His second thought was relief. There would be no prayers this morning. He could go to the kitchen and have a leisurely breakfast.
Then he vomited.
The Marques was dead. His throat had been cut so that the blood had soaked the linen pillowcase and sheets. His head was tilted back, his eyes staring sightless at the headboard. One hand hung over the side of the bed.
The chaplain tried to call out, but no sound came. He tried to move, but his feet seemed stuck to the carpeted floor.
The vomit stained his scapular. Some of it dribbled down the dead man’s plump hand. The Marques seemed to have two mouths, one wide and red, the other prim and pale.
The chaplain called out again, and this time his voice, thickened by the vomit in his throat, came out as a terrible strangled cry. `Guards!’
The servants came in, but to no avail. The body was cold, the blood on the linen caked hard. Major Mendora, the General’s aide, came in with drawn sword, followed by the Inquisitor in his night-robe. Even the Inquisitor’s strong face paled at the carnage on the bed. The Marques of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had been killed in his sleep, his throat opened, and his soul sent to the judgment of heaven where, the Inquisitor prayed aloud in his dreadful, deep voice, the soul of his murderer would soon follow for awful and condign punishment.
They came for Major Richard Sharpe at eight on the same morning. The Battalion was paraded, the companies already marching off to their tasks.
Richard Sharpe, as so often in the early morning, was in a bad mood. His mouth had the thick sourness of too much wine the night before. He was looking forward to a second breakfast and feeling only mildly guilty that his new rank gave him the freedom for such luxuries. He had scrounged some eggs from Isabella, there was a flitch of bacon that belonged to the Mess, and Sharpe could almost taste the meal already.
For once, this morning, he would not have three mens’ work to do. Colonel Leroy was taking half of the companies on a long march, the others were detailed to help drag the great pontoon bridges up to the high road, ready for the march into French territory. He could, he thought sourly, catch up on his paperwork. He remembered that he must try to sell one of the new mules to the sutler, though whether that sly, wealthy man would want to buy one of the tubed, half-winded animals that had turned up from Brigade was another matter. Perhaps the sutler would buy it for its dead-weight. Sharpe turned to shout for the Battalion clerk, but the shout never sounded. Instead he saw the Provosts.
The Provosts were led, strangely, by Major Michael Hogan. He was no policeman. He was Wellington’s chief of intelligence and Sharpe’s good friend. He was a middle-aged Irishman whose face was normally humorous and shrewd, but who this morning looked grim as the plague.
He reined in by Sharpe. Hogan led a spare horse. His voice was bleak, unnatural, forced. `I must ask for your sword, Richard.’
Sharpe’s smile, which had greeted his friend, changed to a puzzlement. `My sword?’