Sharpe 14 - Sharpe's Sword (12 page)

Sharpe laughed. He sipped the wine. He had been brought up to this balcony to tell her something that any officer, British or Spanish, German or Portuguese, could tell her? He looked at her and her face was serious, waiting, so he nodded. “Yes. There has to be. We haven’t come this far to do nothing, and I can’t see Marmont giving up the west of Spain.”

She spoke with deliberation. “So why didn’t Wellington attack yesterday?”

He had almost forgotten that it was only yesterday that they had sat on the hilltop and watched the two armies. “He wanted Marmont to attack him.”

“I know that. But he didn’t, and the Peer outnumbered him, so why didn’t he attack?”

Sharpe reached forward and cut at a partridge. The skin was crisp and honeyed. He gestured with the slice of meat towards the lights of the spyholes. “There are a dozen generals down there, three dozen staff officers, and you ask me? Why?”

“Because it pleases me!” Her voice was suddenly harsh. She paused to draw on the cigar. “Why do you think? If I ask one of them they’ll smile politely, become charming, and tell me, in so many words, not to worry my head about soldiering. So I’m asking you. Why didn’t he attack?”

Sharpe leaned back, took a deep breath, and launched into his thoughts. “Yesterday the French had their back to a plain. Marmont could have retreated endlessly, in good order, and the battle would have stopped by nightfall. There’d have been, oh…“ he shrugged, ”say, five hundred dead on each side? If our cavalry was better there might have been more, but it would decide nothing. The armies would still have to fight again. Wellington doesn’t want a series of small indecisive skirmishes. He wants to trap Marmont, he wants him in a place where there’s no escape, or where he’s wrong footed, and then he can crush him. Destroy him.“

She watched the sudden passion in Sharpe, the cruelty of his face as he imagined the battle.

“Go on.”

“There isn’t any more. We take the forts and then we go after Marmont.”

“Do you like the French, Captain Sharpe?”

It struck him as a curious question, the wrong question. She meant, surely, did he dislike the French? He made a gesture of indecision. “No.” He smiled. “I don’t dislike them. I don’t have reason to dislike them.”

“Yet you fight them?”

“I’m a soldier.” It was not that simple. He was a soldier because there was nothing else for him to be. He had discovered all those years ago that he could do the job and do it well, and now he could not imagine another life.

Her eyes were curious, huge and curious. “What do you fight for?”

He shook his head, not knowing what to tell her. If he said ‘England’ it would sound pompous, and Sharpe had a suspicion that if he had been born French then he would have fought for France with as much skill and ferocity as he served England. The Colours? Perhaps, because they were a soldier’s pride, and pride is valuable to a soldier, but he supposed the real answer was that he fought for himself to stop himself sliding back into the nothingness where he began. He met her eyes. “My friends.” It was as good an answer as he could think of.

“Friends?”

“They’re more important on a battlefield.”

She nodded, then stood up and walked down the balcony trailing smoke behind her. “What do you say to the charge that Wellington can’t fight an attacking battle? Only a defensive battle?”

“Assaye.”

She turned. “Where he crossed a river in the face of the enemy?”

“Yesterday you knew nothing about Assaye.”

“Yesterday I was in public.” The cigar glowed again.

“He can attack.” Sharpe was impressed by her intelligence, by her knowledge, but he was also mystified. There was something catlike about La Marquesa. She was quiet in her movements, beautiful, but she had claws, he knew, and now he knew she had the intelligence to use them skilfully. “Believe me, Ma’am, he can attack.”

She nodded. “I believe you. Thank you, Captain Sharpe, that’s all I wanted to know.”

“All?”

She turned to the lattice and opened a window in it. “I want to know if the French are coming back to Salamanca. I want to know if Wellington will fight to stop that happening.

You’ve told me he will. You weren’t boasting, you weren’t trying to impress me, you gave me what I wanted; a professional opinion. Thank you.“

Sharpe stood up, not sure if the visit was done and he was being dismissed. He walked towards her. “Why did you want to know?”

“Does it matter?” She still stared at the fortresses.

“I’m curious.” He stopped behind her. “Why?”

She looked back at the table. “You forgot your musket.”

“Rifle. Why?”

She turned round to face him and gave him another of her hostile stares. “How many men have you killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. I’ve been a soldier for nineteen years.”

“Do you get frightened?”

He smiled. “Of course. All the time. It gets worse, not better.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. I sometimes think because the older you get, the more you have to live for.”

She laughed at that. “Any woman will tell you otherwise.”

“No, not any woman. Some, maybe. Some men, too.” He gestured at the faraway sound of the party. “Cavalry officers don’t like getting old.”

“You’re suddenly very wise for a humble soldier.” She was mocking him. She put the cigar to her mouth and smoke drifted between them.

She had still not answered his question and he still did not understand why he had been brought to this balcony where the leaves stirred in the night breeze. “You could have asked a thousand people in this town the questions you’ve asked me, and got the same answers. Why me?”

“I told you.” She pointed with the cigar to his rifle. “Now why don’t you pick up the rifle and go?”

Sharpe said nothing. He did not move. Somewhere in the town there were raised voices, drunken soldiers fighting in all probability, and a dog howled at the moon from another street, and he saw her eyes look at his cheek. “What are those black stains?”

Sharpe was becoming used to her sudden questions that had no relevance to the previous conversation. She seemed to like to tease him, bring him almost to the point of anger, and then deflect him with some irrelevance. He brushed his right cheek. “Powder stains, Ma’am. The gunpowder explodes in the rifle pan and throws them up.”

“Did you kill someone tonight?”

“No, not tonight.”

They were standing just two feet apart and Sharpe knew that either could have moved away. Yet they stayed still, challenging each other and he knew that she was challenging him to touch her and he was tempted suddenly, to break the rules. He was tempted to walk away, as Marmont had simply walked away from Wellington’s army, but he could not do it. The full mouth, the eyes, the cheekbones, the curve of her neck, the shadows above the white lace-frilled dress had caught him. She frowned at him. “What does it feel like? To kill a man?”

“Sometimes good, sometimes nothing, sometimes bad.”

“When is it bad?”

He shrugged. “When it’s unnecessary.” He shook his head, remembering the bad dreams. “There was a man at Badajoz, a French artillery officer.”

She had expected more. She tipped her face to one side. “Go on.”

“The fight was over. We’d won. I think he wanted to surrender.”

“And you killed him?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

He gestured at the big sword. “With this.” It had not been that simple. He had hacked at the man, gouged him, disembowelled the corpse in his great rage until Harper had stopped him.

She half turned away from him and stared at the scarcely touched food on the table. “Do you enjoy killing? I think you do.”

He could feel his heart beating in his chest as if it had expanded. It was thumping hollowly, sounding in his eardrums, and he knew it as a compound of fear and excitement. He looked at her face, profiled against the broken moonlight, and the beauty was overpowering, unfair that one person could be so lovely and his hand, almost of its own volition, came slowly up, slowly, until his finger was under her chin and he turned the face towards him.

She gave him a calm, wide-eyed expression, then stepped away from him so his arm was left suspended in mid-air. He felt foolish. Her face was unfriendly. “Do you enjoy killing?”

He had been made to touch her, so she could back away and make him feel foolish. She had brought him here for her small victory, and he knew defeat. He turned away from her, walked to his rifle, slung it on his shoulder, and started back down the balcony without a word. He did not look at her. He walked past her, smelling the tobacco smoke from her cigar.

“Colonel Leroux enjoys killing, Captain.”

For a second he almost kept on walking, but the name of his enemy stopped him. He turned.

“What do you know of Leroux?”

She shrugged. “I live in Salamanca. The French were in this house. Your job is to kill him, yes?”

Her voice was challenging again, impressing him with her knowledge, and again he had the feeling that he was involved in a game of which she only knew the rules. He thought of Leroux in the forts, of the cordon of men about the wasteland, of his own Company in their billets. He had a simple job and he was making it complicated.

“Good night, Ma’am. Thank you for the meal.”

“Captain?”

He kept walking. He went round the corner, past the lights of the spyholes, and he felt a freedom come on him. He would be true to Teresa, who loved him, and he quickened his pace towards the secret staircase.

“Captain!” She was running now, her bare feet slapping the rush mats. “Captain!” Her hand pulled at his elbow. “Why are you going?”

She had teased him earlier, mocked him for not kissing her, withdrawn when he had touched her. Now she held his arm, was pleading with him, her eyes searching his face for some reassurance. He hated her games.

“God damn you to hell, Ma’am.” He put his left arm about her back, half lifted her, and kissed her on the mouth. He crushed her, kissing her to hurt, and when he saw her eyes close, he dropped her. “For God’s sake! Do I enjoy killing? What am I? A bloody trophy for your rotten wall? I’m going to get drunk, Ma’am, in some flea-bitten hovel in this bloody town and I might take a whore with me. She won’t ask me bloody questions. Good night!”

“No!” She held him again.

“What do you want? To save me money?” He was harsh, feeling his hurt. She was more beautiful than he could have imagined a woman to be.

“No.” She shook her head. “I want you, Captain, to save me from Colonel Leroux.” She said it almost bitterly and then, as if ashamed of the kiss, she turned and walked away from him.

“You what?”

She went on walking, back to the corner and onto the lighted side of the balcony. Once again she had surprised him, but this time he felt there was no game. He followed.

She was standing by the telescope, staring through the lattice, and Sharpe propped his rifle against the wall and went close behind her. “Tell me why?”

“I’m frightened of him.” She stared away from him.

“Why?”

“He’ll kill me.”

There was a silence and it seemed to Sharpe to be like a great abyss over which he was suspended on a single, fine blade-edge. One false move and the moment would be lost, finished, and it was as if he and she were alone high above the dark night and he saw the shadow between her shoulder blades, a dark shadow running down into the intricate lace of her dress, and it seemed to him that there was nothing on this dark earth so mysterious, so frightening, or as fragile as a beautiful woman. “He’ll kill you?”

“Yes.”

He put his right hand up, slowly, and put his long finger against her shoulder blade, a touch so gentle that it could have been a strand of her golden hair. He slid the finger down her warm, dry skin and she did not move.

“Why will he kill you?”

His fingertip explored the ridges of her spine. Still she did not move and he let his other fingers down, then pushed them slowly up towards her neck. She was very still.

“You’ve stopped calling me ”Ma’am“.”

“Why will he kill you, Ma’am?”

His fingers were on the nape of her neck where they could feel the wisps of hair that had escaped from the silver combs. He moved his hand right, very slowly, letting his fingers trace and stroke the curve of her long neck. She began to turn and his hand, as if frightened of breaking something very fragile, leaped an inch from her skin. She stopped, waited till she was touched again, and turned to face him.

“Do your friends call you Dick?”

He smiled. “Not for many years.” His arm was tense from the effort of holding it still, hovering on her skin, and he waited for her to speak again, knowing that she had suddenly asked an irrelevant question because she was thinking. She seemed oblivious of his hand, but he knew she was not, and his heart still thumped inside him, and the moment was still there. Her eyes flicked between his.

“I’m frightened of Leroux.” She said it flatly.

He let the palm of his hand drop onto the curve of her neck. Still she seemed to take no notice. His fingers curled onto her back. “Why?”

She gestured at the balcony. “You know what this is?”

He shrugged. “A balcony.”

For a few seconds she said nothing. His hand was feather-light on her neck and he could see the shadows move on her skin as she breathed. He could hear the beat of his heart. She licked her lips. “A balcony, but a special kind of balcony. You can see a long way from here, and it’s built so you can do that.” Her eyes, trusting and serious, were on his. She was speaking simply, as if to a child, so that he would understand her. It was, Sharpe thought, with his hand still on her neck, yet another face of this remarkable woman who changed like lake water, but something in her tone told him that now she was not playing. If there was a true Marquesa, this was she. “You can see the roads over the river, and that’s why it was built. My husband’s great-great-grandfather didn’t want to spy only indoors. He liked to watch his wife when she rode out of the palace, so he built this balcony like a watch-tower. They’re not unusual in Spain, and they have this lattice for a special reason. No one can see in, Mr. Sharpe, but we can see out. It’s a special kind of balcony. In Spanish a balcony is ”balcon“, but this isn’t a ”balcon“. Do you know what it is?”