The columns closed up. A Spanish column stayed to the north, fending off any approach by the French troops on the Biscay shore, but the other columns merged about a single road so they could concentrate swiftly for battle. The infantry, as ever, had the worst of it. The road had to be left for the baggage, the guns, the cavalry, and so the infantry marched on the hills either side, the slopes thick with men and mules, the air noisy with their marching songs.
That they had the energy to sing was astonishing, that they sang so well was more so, that they wanted a fight was obvious. Rumours had gone through the army that the enemy guarded a convoy of gold, that each man would be rich if he did his duty, and perhaps that rumour, more than pride, drove them on. They joked that the froggies were on the run now, that Johnny-Frenchman would not stand till he was past Paris, that this army would march on and on and on till every man jack in it had a Parisian girl on his elbow and a bag of gold in his hand, and the General, who would sometimes just sit on his horse and watch them pass, would feel his soul full of pride and love for these ranks that he led, that marched in such spirits to a battle that would leave some of them broken like bloody rag dolls on a Spanish field.
Three nights after the Burgos explosion, Major Michael Hogan sat in the uncomfortable stable that was his billet. He was lucky, he knew, to have even this place to sleep. A lantern hung over his head, its light showing the map that was spread on a makeshift table made from an overturned byre.
A man sat opposite him. The man was a Jew named Rodrigues. He was a corn dealer who travelled with the army, unpopular with the quartermasters who dealt with him, suspected by them, because of his rapacity, to be sympathetic with the French. Why not, they said? Everyone knew the Spanish church hated the Jews. Surely, they reasoned, Rodrigues would have a better life if the French ruled in Spain?
Hogan knew better. Rodrigues drove a harsh bargain, but so did every other corn factor who travelled with the army, Jewish or not. Yet this corn merchant, this despised man, had a genius of a memory and ears that seemed to hear the quietest whispers from far away. He talked now of one such whisper, and Hogan listened.
`A man broke into a convent.’ Rodrigues smiled slyly. `That must have surprised the sisters.’
`What kind of a man?’
`Some say English, some say American! Others say French. He was rescued from the Partisans by the French.’
`And you say?’
Rodrigues smiled. He was a thin man who wore his hair, summer and winter, beneath a fur hat. `I say he was your man. He took the woman.’ He held up a hand to stop Hogan interrupting. `But the news is not good, Major.’
`Go on.’
`He went to Burgos with the woman, but he was killed there.’
`Killed?’
Rodrigues saw the look on Hogan’s face and suspected, rightly, that the un-named Englishman had been a friend of the Major’s. `There are a dozen stories; I tell you what I think.’ The corn merchant fidgeted with the coiled whip he always carried. It was not much of a weapon, but enough to deter the children who tried to steal from his carts. `They say he was in the castle and that he killed a man. Then they say that he was treated with respect.’ Rodrigues shrugged. `I don’t know. What I do know is that he was still in the castle when it blew up. He died with the others.’
`They found his body?’
`Who can tell? It was difficult to tell what was a body in that place.’
Hogan said nothing for a while. He was wondering if it was true, but he had learned to trust Rodrigues and so he feared that it must be so. He had heard that the explosion in the castle had been an accident that had taken the lives of scores of Frenchmen, but was it possible, he found himself wondering, that Sharpe had engineered it? He could believe that. `And the woman?’