`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?’
`Si, senor.’
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.’
`Si, senor.’
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.