‘So will we, sir.’
‘Yes. But it’s Spanish gold, and we’re not Spaniards.’ He jerked himself upright and looked somewhat ruefully at the scraps of Sharpe’s torn orders. ‘We will take the gold to Wellington, Captain. But under my orders. You must release the girl, do you understand? I will not be a party to these threats, to this underhand procedure.”
‘No, sir.’
Kearsey looked at him, uncertain whether Sharpe was agreeing with him. ‘You do understand, Sharpe?’
‘I understand, sir.’ Sharpe turned and stared at the castillo and then across the Agueda to the far hills where the French patrols were still waiting and where the siege guns would be inching their way to the fortress walls of Almeida.
‘I presume the girl has not been harmed?’
‘No, sir, she has not.’ Sharpe’s patience was at an end. If El Catolico thought, for one second, that the girl was safe, then his men would fall on the Light Company and Sharpe would face a death more painful than the imagination could invent. He looked up at Kearsey. ‘In ten minutes, Major, I am going to cut off one of her ears. Only halfway, so it will mend, but if any of those murderous bastards with El Catolico tries to interfere with our crossing of the ford, then the whole ear will be sliced off. And the other ear, and her eyes, and her tongue, and do you understand me, sir? We are leaving, with the gold, and the girl is our passport and I’m not giving her up. Tell her father, tell El Catolico, that if they want the gold they can collect it with a toothless, blind, deaf, ugly, and dumb girl. Understand!’
Sharpe’s anger battered at the Major, drove him two steps down the slope. ‘I am ordering you, Sharpe…’
‘You’re ordering nothing, sir. You tore up my orders! We are going. So tell them, Major! Tell them! You hear the scream in ten minutes!’
He turned away, his anger deafening him to Kearsey’s words, and climbed into the stockade of the fort. His men saw his face and said nothing, but turned away and watched as the small, blue-uniformed Major rode his horse back to the Partisans.
Kearsey delivered the message, shaking with rage, and watched, with Cesar Moreno beside him, the high, silent fort. El Catolico was with them and swore his vengeance on Sharpe. The Major touched his sleeve.
‘He won’t do it. Believe me. He won’t.’
Kearsey squinted up at the Castillo, at the silhouettes of the sentries. There was something more on his mind, something that he could not keep in, and he turned to the tall Spaniard. ‘Captain Hardy.’ He stopped.
El Catolico soothed his horse, looked at Kearsey. ‘What about him?’
Kearsey was embarrassed. ‘Sharpe says you killed him.’
El Catolico laughed. ‘He would say anything.’ He spat on to the ground. ‘You are the only officer we can trust, Major. Not people like Sharpe. He has no proof, does he?’ He asked the question confidently.
Kearsey shook his head. ‘No.’
‘He just wants to turn you against us. No, Major, Captain Hardy was captured. Ask Cesar.’
He gestured at Teresa’s father, whose face was tortured with worry. The Major shook his head, felt a sense of relief, a feeling that was shattered by the sound that came from the ruined tower of the Castillo. The scream seemed to linger in the oak grove. It rose to an unbearable pitch and then wavered down to a thin, sobbing desperation that chilled every man. Cesar Moreno spurred forward with a dozen men, his face set with a determination they had forgotten, but a sentry on the ramparts gave a signal to the tower and the scream came again, higher this time, like the sound of the Frenchmen whose lives they had stripped, inch by inch, with their long knives. Teresa’s father reined in, knowing he was beaten, swearing that for every blade that was laid to his daughter Sharpe would suffer a hundred.
El Catolico had killed northerners before, Frenchmen, and some had taken three moons to die and every second they had known their own pain. Sharpe, El Catolico promised himself, would plead for such a death.