“We leave at dawn,” Herault said, then smiled, “and tonight my men will spread rumours that we intend to sack Avila. By tomorrow night, Major, every partisan within fifty miles will be waiting on the Avila road.”
And Herault would be miles away, spurring towards a fortress that thought itself safe.
It was uncanny how news spread in the Spanish countryside. Sharpe could see no one in the fields, olive groves and vineyards across the river, other than a few old men who tended the oxen turning the wheels that pumped the river water into the irrigation ditches, but by midday a rumour had reached Teresa’s partisans that a French column had marched from Toledo to sack Avila. The rumour enraged Teresa. “It is a special place!”
she claimed.
“Avila?” Sharpe asked, “special?”
“St Teresa lived there.”
“Must be special then.” Sharpe said sarcastically.
“What would you know? Protestant pig.”
“I’m not any sort of pig. Not protestant, not nothing.”
“Heathen pig, then,” Teresa said angrily. She stared eastwards. “I should ride there,” she added.
“I won’t stop you,” Sharpe said, “but I won’t be happy.”
“Who cares about your happiness?”
“Your men are my best sentries.” Sharpe said. “If anything does come up that road,” he pointed southwards, “they’ll see it first.” Teresa’s partisans were keeping watch in the foothills, ready to ride back and warn San Miguel of any threat coming out of the Sierra de Gredos. “How far is Avila, anyway?”
Teresa shrugged. “Fifty miles.”
“And why would the frogs go there?”
“For plunder, of course! There are rich convents, monasteries, the cathedral, the basilica of Santa Vicente.”
“Why would they go after plunder?” Sharpe asked.
Teresa frowned at him, wondering why he asked such a seemingly stupid question. “Because they are crapauds, of course!” she said. “Because they are scum. Because they are slime-toads that crawled from the devil’s backside when God was not watching.”
“But everywhere else,” Sharpe said, “the church treasures are hidden!”
Sharpe had marched through countless Spanish towns and villages, and everywhere the church plate had been taken away and buried or concealed behind walls or hidden in caves. He had seen precious altar screens, too large to be moved, daubed with limewash in hope that the French would not realise there was treasure behind the white covering. What he had never seen was a church flaunting its treasures when the French were within a week’s march. “Why would Avila keep its treasures?”
“How would I know?” Teresa responded indignantly.
“And the frogs know damn well that church treasures are hidden,” Sharpe said, “so why are they going there?”
“You tell me,” Teresa said.
“Because they want you to think they’re going there, that’s why. And all the time the bastards are going somewhere else. God damn it!” He turned around again to stare south. Was it just nerves? Was he frightened of this small responsibility? To guard a derelict fort in a backwater of the war?
Or was his instinct, that had served him so well through over fifteen years of fighting, telling him to be careful? “Keep your men here, love,”
he said to Teresa, “because I think you’re going to have frogs to kill.”
He turned and ran towards the firestep that looked down onto the bridge.
“Sergeant Harper!”
Harper emerged from the shrine built on the far side of the roadway and blinked up at Sharpe who, standing on the fort parapet, was silhouetted against the sky. “Sir?”
“My compliments to Major Tubbs, Sergeant, and I want his ox-cart on the bridge. As a barricade, got it? And I want you and twenty riflemen up at that damn farm,” he pointed southwards, “and I want it all done now!”
Teresa put a hand on his green sleeve. “You really think the French are coming here, Richard?”
“I don’t think it, I know it! I know it! I don’t know how I know it, but I do. The buggers have slipped round the side gate and are coming in through the back door.”
Major Tubbs, sweating in the day’s heat, came lumbering up the stone stairway from the courtyard. “You can’t block the bridge, Captain Sharpe!”
Tubbs protested. “You can’t! It’s a public thoroughfare.”