‘And what if they are?’ The two men had quickened their pace so they were ahead of the Company, out of earshot.
‘The bastards are lying through their teeth.’ Harper said it with a quiet relish, as if confident that he could defeat their lies as easily as he saw through them.
Jose paused on a ridge ahead and searched the ground before spurring his horse onwards. The Company was isolated in a vastness of pale grass, rocks, and dried streambeds. The sun baked it all, hazed it with shimmering air, cracking the soil open with miniature chasms. Sharpe knew they must stop soon and rest, but his men were uncomplaining, even the wounded, and they trudged on in the heat and dust towards the far blue line that was the hills around Almeida.
‘All right. Why are they lying?’
‘What did your man say yesterday?’ Harper meant El Catolico. But the question did not demand an answer from Sharpe. The Sergeant went on with enthusiasm. ‘We were standing by that grave, you remember, and he said that he had buried the man six days before. Would you remember that?’
Sharpe nodded. He had been thinking of that grave himself, but his Sergeant’s words were opening up new ideas. ‘Go on.’
‘Yesterday was a Saturday. I asked the Lieutenant; he can always remember the day and date. So that means he buried his servant on the Sunday.’
Sharpe looked at Harper, mystified by the meaning of his statement. ‘So?’
‘So he buried the man last Sunday.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘God save Ireland, sir, they would not do that. Not on a Sunday and not on a holy day. They’re Catholics, sir, not your heathen Protestants. On a Sunday? Not at all!’
Sharpe grinned at his vehemence. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Am I sure? If my name’s not Patrick Augustine Harper, and we were all good Catholics in Tangaveane despite the bastard English. Now would you look at that, sir?’
‘What?’ Sharpe was alarmed by the Sergeant’s suddenly pointing to the north, as if a French patrol had appeared.
‘A red kite, sir. You don’t see many of those.’
Sharpe saw a bird that looked like a hawk, but to him most birds, from cuckoos to eagles, looked like hawks. He walked on. Harper had reinforced his suspicions, added to them, and he let his mind wander over the vague feelings that were causing him disquiet. The stone over the crypt that had not even prompted the faintest mistrust from Kearsey. Then there was the speed with which El Catolico had killed the Polish Sergeant, forgoing the usual pleasure of torturing the man, and surely, Sharpe reasoned, that had been done so that the man did not have time in his dying to blurt out the awkward fact that the French knew nothing about the gold. It was not much of a reason for suspicion. In the short time that the lancer had been their prisoner Sharpe had not even found a common language, but El Catolico was not to know that.
The stone, the sudden death of the lancer, and, added to those, Sharpe’s first suspicions that the French, if they had found the treasure, would not have lingered in the high valley but would have ridden fast with their booty to Ciudad Rodrigo. Now there was Harper’s idea that, if El Catolico had told the truth, the grave in the churchyard had been created on a Sunday, which, by itself, was reason for suspicion. Sharpe walked on, feeling the sweat trickling down his back, and tried to remember El Catolico’s words. Had he said something like ‘I buried him less than a week ago’? But if Harper was right, exact about the six days? Once again his suspicion was drifting free and had nothing to pin it and justify the plan that was in his mind. Yet El Catolico was lying. He had no proof, just a certainty. He turned back to Harper.
‘You think the gold is in that grave?’
‘There’s something there, sir, and it’s as sure as eternal damnation that it’s no Christian burial.’
‘But he could have buried the man on the Saturday.’
‘He could, sir, he could. But there’s the point that the thing is not disturbed. Strange.’ Again Sharpe did not follow the Irishman’s reasoning. Harper grinned at him. ‘Say you wanted to steal a few thousand gold coins, sir, and they were hidden in the vault. Now, would you want to share the good news with everyone that you were taking them away? Not if you have a grain of sense, sir, so you move it a short way, hidden by the walls of the burial yard, and you hide it again. In a good fresh grave.’