‘They were enemies. They hurt a friend.’
She understood the half truth. ‘A woman?’
He nodded. ‘Not mine.’ Another half truth, but by the time the two Lieutenants had died, Josefina had already found Hardy.
She laughed. ‘You’re a good man, Richard.’
‘I know.’
He grinned at her, picked up the locket and pushed it back into his pocket. Why had he kept it? Because Gibbons’s sister was so beautiful? Or was it now his talisman, his magic charm against the killing lance and El Catolico’s rapier? Teresa helped him with the jacket buttons.
‘You’ll come back?’
‘I’ll be back. The soldiers are here; you’re safe.’
She leaned off the bed, pulled up the rifle. ‘I’m safe.’
He left her in the bedroom, feeling his loss, and went down to where the kitchen fire was blazing and Lossow was drinking beer from an earthenware bottle. The German Captain grinned at Sharpe.
‘A good night, my friend?”
Knowles winced, Harper looked at the ceiling, but Sharpe growled something approximately polite and crossed to the fire. ‘Tea?’
‘Here, sir.’ Harper pushed a mug over the table. ‘Just wet it.’
A dozen men of the Company were in the kitchen, and some Germans, and they were sawing with knives at the new bread and looking surprised because there were pots of butter, fresh butter, on the table. Sharpe scraped his boot on the hearth and his men looked up.
‘The girl.’ He wondered if he sounded embarrassed, but the men seemed not to mind. ‘Look after her till I get back.’
They nodded, grinned at him, and he was suddenly immensely proud of them. She would be safe with them, scoundrels though they were, just as a King’s ransom in gold was safe with them. He had never thought of it, not in detail, but it occurred to Sharpe that most officers would never have trusted their men with the gold. They would have feared desertion; that the temptation of so much money would be simply too much, but Sharpe had never been worried. These were his men, his Company, and he trusted his life with their skills, so why not gold, or a girl?
Robert Knowles cleared his throat. ‘When will you be back, sir?’
‘Three hours.’ An hour till the message could be sent, an hour for the reply to come, and then another hour unpicking the details with Cox. ‘Keep an eye out for El Catolico. He’s here. Keep a guard, Robert, all the time, and don’t let anyone in, no one.’
The men grinned at him, laughed as they thought what they could do to anyone who interfered with them, and Lossow clapped his hands together.
‘We surprise the Spanish, yes? They think they have the gold? But they don’t know about the telegraph. Ah! The wonders of modern war.’
It was cold in the street, the sky still dark grey, but as Sharpe, Lossow, and Harper mounted the final steps to the rampart of the castle they could see the eastern sky blazing with the coming sun. The telegraph was unmanned, the sheep bladders tied to the mast, and in the cruel, grey light it reminded Sharpe of a gallows. The wind slapped the ropes in a forlorn tattoo against the mast.
The sun shattered the remnants of night, dazzled over the eastern hills, and streaked its bleak, early light into the countryside round Almeida. As if in salute there was a blare of bugles, shouts from the walls, and Lossow clapped Sharpe’s good shoulder and pointed south.
‘Look!’
The bugles had responded to the first formal move of the siege. The waiting was over, and through his undamaged telescope Sharpe saw that the dawn light had revealed a mound of fresh earth that had been thrown up a thousand yards from the fortifications. It was the first French battery and, even as Sharpe watched, he saw the tiny figures of men throwing up more earth and battening great fascines to the crest of the mound. It had been years since he had carried a fascine to war, a great wicker cylinder that was filled with soil and provided an instant battlement to protect men and guns from enemy artillery. The Portuguese gunners had seen the fresh earthworks and were running along the town wall.