One of the men, the one dressed in the greatcoat and in whose hand was a pistol, was dead. Half his head was missing, smeared in blood that fanned up the alley’s wall, but the second man, cursing and sobbing, was trying to stand and in his right hand was a long knife.
The sword knocked the knife out of the bloodstained hand and Sharpe dropped his knee onto the wounded man’s belly. He put the huge sword against the man’s throat. ‘Who are you?’
The man’s answer was short.
Sharpe drew the sword an inch to one side and the man, struck in the shoulder, waist, and thigh by the horse-pistol’s scraps, gasped as the edge cut into his throat.
‘Who are you?’
‘Jemmy Lippett!’
‘Who sent you?’ Sharpe let the sword slip another fraction.
‘No one sent me. I came with him!’ Lippett’s eyes, their whites bright in the gloom, looked towards the dead man. The smoke from the pistol still lingered in the entranceway. Sharpe heard the girl move behind him. He pushed the blade down, making the man gasp.
‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Who wanted me dead?’
‘Don’t know!’
Sharpe drew the blade another half inch. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know!’ The man felt the pressure of the steel and he whimpered. ‘Just a bleeding soldier! Honest! He knew my da!’
Sharpe jerked his head towards the dead man. ‘He’s a soldier?’
‘Yes!’ Lippett’s eyes, staring up at Sharpe’s face, suddenly moved. Belle had come to Sharpe’s shoulder, was looking down at Lippett, and the recognition in his eyes was his death warrant. If he lived he might call for revenge on the girl, even on her mistress, and besides, if he lived he would be able to say that Sharpe lived too.
Sharpe jerked his knee. ‘Listen!’
‘I’m listening!’
‘You tell your da . . .’ But there were no more words to be said because the sword, with sudden skill, had sliced down into the man’s throat, driven by Sharpe’s right hand on the handle and his left hand on the backblade, so now the man could not betray Maggie. His blood spurted up, striking Sharpe in the face, but the Rifleman kept the blade moving until it hit bone.
Sharpe had long known one thing, that if a man’s death is sought, then it is good for that man to pretend to be dead. Earlier this very summer he had fooled the French because they believed him hanged, and now he would do the same to whoever had sought his death. No one would come into this rookery to search for bodies. By morning both the dead men would be stripped of their clothes, and their naked corpses would be tipped into an open sewer. By killing both men, Sharpe had guaranteed a mystery of his own.
Nor would he go back to Spain, at least not yet. If nothing had happened tonight, if he had gone back to the tavern, slept, and woken with a hangover, then perhaps he might have decided that discretion was the better part of valour. But not now, for someone had declared war on Sharpe, someone wanted him dead, and Sharpe did not run from his enemies.
‘Christ!’ Belle was running swift hands over the first dead man, searching for coins. ‘Look!’
She had pulled open the dark greatcoat. Beneath it was a uniform; a red uniform with yellow facings, and with buttons that bore the badge of a chained eagle. Sharpe had killed a man of the South Essex, and he pulled the greatcoat away from the bloody uniform and saw on the man’s sleeve the chevrons of a Sergeant.
‘He’s a bloody soldier!’ Belle said.
Sharpe retrieved the rag that had stopped the pistol muzzle, wiped his face with it, then his sword blade. The blade scraped as he pushed it into the scabbard. He picked up the gun and gave it to the girl who hoisted her skirts and hung it on the hook, then she knelt awkwardly down to rummage through the clothes of the second dead man. She found some coins and smiled.
Sharpe peered out of the alley. No one waited for him, no one came to see why a shot had been fired. Instead, as always in the rookery, there was a strange silence while people waited to hear if the trouble was coming their way. He picked up the pistol that had been carried by the soldier and pushed it into his belt, then took two golden coins from his pouch. ‘Belle?’