‘They’ve gone.’
She began to move, but he shook his head. ‘Wait!’
She turned her head, raised it so that her cheek touched his, and she hissed when she saw what was at the end of the valley: a convoy, with rows of ox-carts whose ungreased axles screamed piercingly through the foul weather, and either side of the plodding carts were the shapes of more horsemen, sabres and lances, escorting the carts southwards towards the Almeida road. It could take an hour for the convoy to pass, but at least it had driven away El Catolico and his men, and Sharpe realized, with one of the sudden bursts of elation that had punctuated the sense of growing failure for the last week, that as long as the Light Company was not discovered they should safely reach the ford when the French had gone. He looked at the girl.
‘Will you be still?’
She nodded. He asked again, she nodded again, and he slowly eased himself off her and lay down beside her. She turned over on to her stomach and the wet dress clung to her and he remembered the sight of her naked body, its shadowed, slim beauty, and he reached out a hand and took the rope at her neck, turning it so he found the knot, and fumbling at it with wet fingers. The tight, sodden rope yielded slowly, but it was off and he dropped it to the gravel.
‘I’m sorry.’
She shrugged as if it was no matter. There was a chain round her neck and Sharpe, his hand already close, pulled it, to find a square locket, made of silver. She watched, her dark eyes utterly expressionless, as he put a thumbnail under the catch and it sprang open. There was no picture and she gave the hint of a smile because she understood that he had expected one. The inside of the lid was engraved: my love to you. J. It took him a few seconds to realize that Joaquim, El Catolico, would never have inscribed a piece of silver in English, and he knew, with a sick certainty, that it had belonged to Hardy. ‘J’ for Josefina, and he looked at the silver ring, engraved with an eagle, that she had bought before Talavera, before Hardy, and with a superstition he did not understand he touched the locket on to the ring.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
For a moment her face did not move, but then she nodded. Her eyes dropped to the ring on his finger, back to his face.
‘The gold?’
‘Yes?’
‘You go to Cadiz?’
It was Sharpe’s turn to think, to watch her eyes through the rain dripping from the peak of his shako. ‘No.’
‘You keep it?’
‘I think so. But to fight the French, not to take home. I promise.’
She nodded and turned to watch the French convoy. Guns, coming from the French Army of the North, and going to Almeida. Not field guns or even siege artillery but Bonaparte’s favourite eight-inch howitzers, with obscene little muzzles that squatted like cooking-pots in their wooden beds and which could throw explosive shells high into the air to fall into the packed houses of a besieged town. There were carts as well, presumably with ammunition, and all pulled by slow oxen who were prodded with long goads and thrashed by irate cavalrymen. Their progress was not helped by the wind getting under the canvas covers of the carts, whipping the ropes free so that the tarpaulins flapped and writhed like pinioned bats, and the cavalrymen, doubtless cursing the war, fought to cover the precious powder-kegs from the unending rain. The solid axles, turning with the wheels, screeched over the sodden valley. Sharpe could feel the rain beating on his back, the water in the stream rising to his knees, and he knew that the river would be rising as well, and that with every passing moment his chance of crossing the ford was receding. The water would be too deep. He turned to the girl again.
‘How did Hardy die?’
‘El Catolico.’ She gave the answer readily enough and Sharpe knew that her loyalty was changing. It was not the kiss.