the chase and turned for the bank. But ahead of them, where the smaller river joined the Guadiana, a knot of French horsemen appeared. Sharpe guessed they were the 8th’s officers who had galloped ahead of the battalion. So now those men must watch their prey vanish downriver, but then he saw that some of the horsemen had muskets and he turned towards the stern. ‘Steer away from the bank!’ he told Noolan who had taken the tiller ropes.
Sharpe reloaded the rifle. He could see four of the horsemen had dismounted and were kneeling at the river’s edge, aiming their muskets. The range was close, no more than thirty yards. ‘Rifles!’ he called. He aimed his own. He saw Vandal. The French colonel was one of the officers kneeling by the river. He had a musket at his shoulder and he seemed to be aiming directly at Sharpe. You bastard, Sharpe thought, and he shifted the rifle, pointing it straight at Vandal’s chest. The boat lurched, his aim wandered, he corrected it, and now he would teach the bastard the advantages of a rifle. He started to pull the trigger, keeping the foresight dead on the Frenchman’s chest, and just then he saw the smoke billow from the musket muzzles and there was an instant when his whole head seemed filled with light, a searing white light that turned blood red. There was pain like a lightning strike in his brain and then, like blood congealing on a corpse, the light went black and he could see and feel nothing at all. Nothing.
CHAPTER THREE
Two men, both tall, walked side by side on Cadiz’s ramparts. Those defences were huge, ringing the city to protect it against enemies and the sea. The firestep facing the bay was wide, so wide that three coaches and horses could travel abreast, and it was a popular place for folk to take the air, but no one disturbed the two men. Three of the taller man’s servants walked ahead to part the crowds, and three more walked on either side and still more walked behind to prevent any stranger disturbing their master.
The taller man, and he was very tall, was dressed in the uniform of a Spanish admiral. He had one white silk stocking, red knee breeches, a red sash and a dark-blue tail coat with an elaborate red collar trimmed with gold lace. His straight sword was scabbarded in black fishskin and had a hilt of gold. His face was drawn, distinguished and aloof, a face etched by pain and made harsh by disappointment. The admiral’s left calf and foot were missing, so his lower leg was made of ebony, as was the gold-topped cane he used to help him walk.
His companion was Father Salvador Montseny. The priest was in a cassock and had a silver crucifix hanging on his breast. The admiral had been his companion in imprisonment in England after Trafalgar and sometimes, if they did not wish to be understood by nearby folk, they spoke English together. Not today. ‘So the girl confessed to you?’ the admiral asked, amused.
‘She makes confession once a year,’ Montseny said, ‘on her saint’s day. January 13th.’
‘She is called Veronica?’
‘Caterina Veronica Blazquez,’ Montseny said, ‘and God brought her to me. There were seven other priests hearing confession in the cathedral that day, but she was guided to me.’
‘So you killed her pimp, then you killed the Englishman and his servants. I trust God will forgive you for that, Father.’
Montseny had no doubts about God’s opinions. ‘What God wants, my lord, is a holy and a powerful Spain. He wants our flag spread across South America, he wants a Catholic king in Madrid and he wants his glory to be reflected in our people. I do God’s work.’
‘Do you enjoy it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ the admiral said, then paused beside a cannon that faced the bay. ‘I need more money,’ he said.
‘You will have it, my lord.’
‘Money,’ the admiral said in a tone of disgust. He was the Marquis de Cardenas and he had been born to money, and he had made more money, but there was never enough money. He tapped the cannon with the tip of his cane. ‘I need money for bribes,’ he said sourly, ‘because there is no courage in these men. They are lawyers, Father. Lawyers and politicians. They are scum.’ The scum of whom the admiral spoke were the deputies to the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, which now met in Cadiz where its chief business was to construct a new constitution for Spain. Some men, the liberales, wanted a Spain governed by the Cortes, a Spain in which citizens would have a say in their own destiny, and such men spoke of liberty and democracy and the admiral hated them. He wanted a Spain like the old Spain, a Spain led by king and church, a Spain devoted to God and to glory. He wanted a Spain free of foreigners, a Spain without Frenchmen and without Britons, and to get it he would have to bribe members of the Cortes and he would have to make an offer to the French Emperor. Leave Spain, the offer would say, and we shall help you conquer the British in Portugal. It was an offer, the admiral knew, that the French would accept because Napoleon was desperate. He wanted an end to the war in Spain. To the world’s eyes it looked as if the French had won. They had occupied Madrid and taken Seville so that now the Spanish government, such as it was, clung to the land’s edge at Cadiz. Yet to hold Spain meant keeping hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen in fortresses, and whenever those men left their walls they were harried by partisans. If Bonaparte could make peace with an amenable Spanish government then those garrisons would be freed to fight elsewhere.
‘How much money do you need?’ Montseny asked.
‘With ten thousand dollars,’ the admiral said, ‘I can buy the Cortes.’ He watched a British frigate sail past the end of the long mole which protected Cadiz’s harbour from the open Atlantic. He saw the great ensign ripple at the frigate’s stern and felt a pulse of pure loathing. He had watched Nelson’s ships sail towards him off Cape Trafalgar, he had breathed the powder smoke and listened to the screams of men dying aboard his ship. He had been felled by a piece of grapeshot that had shattered his left leg, but the admiral had stayed on the quarterdeck, shouting at his men to fight, to kill, to resist, then he had watched as a crowd of yelling British sailors, ugly as apes, swarmed across his deck, and he had wept when Spain’s ensign was lowered and the British flag hoisted. He had surrendered his sword, and then been a prisoner in England and now he was the limping admiral of a broken country that had no battle fleet. He hated the British. ‘But the English,’ he said, still watching the frigate, ‘will never pay ten thousand dollars for the letters.’
‘I think they will pay a great deal,’ Father Montseny said, ‘if we frighten them.’
‘How?’
‘I shall publish one letter. I shall change it, of course. And the implicit threat will be that we shall publish them all.’ Father Montseny paused, giving the admiral time to object to his proposal, but the admiral stayed silent. ‘I need a writer to make the changes,’ Montseny went on.
‘A writer?’ the admiral asked in a sour tone. ‘Why can’t you make the changes yourself?’
‘I can,’ Montseny said, ‘but once the letters are changed, the English will proclaim them forgeries. We cannot present the originals to anyone, because the originals will prove the English correct. So we must make new copies, in English, in an English hand, which we shall claim as the originals. I need a man who can write perfect English. My English is good, but not good enough.’ He fingered his crucifix, thinking. ‘The new letters need only persuade the Cortes, and most deputies will want to believe them, but the changes must still be convincing. The grammar, the spelling, must all be accurate. So I need a writer who can achieve that.’
The admiral made a dismissive gesture. ‘I know a man. A horrid creature. He writes well, though, and has a passion for English books. He’ll do, but how do you publish the letters?’
‘El Correo de Cádiz,’ Father Montseny said, naming the one newspaper that opposed the liberales. ‘I shall print one letter and I shall say in it that the English plan to take Cadiz and make it a second Gibraltar. The English will deny it, of course, but we will have a new letter with a forged signature.’
‘They’ll