LITMIR.BIZ

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two altar boys. The soldiers who guarded this place had their hats off. She noticed that they were Spanish soldiers loyal to France. ‘Tell him to move!’ She said it irritably.

      ‘There’s a carriage coming the other way. ‘We’ll have to wait anyway, my Lady.’

      She pulled on the strap, slamming the window up, and muffling the sound of the other carriage that rattled towards her. She settled back on the velvet cushions. God damn Pierre Ducos, she thought, and God damn Verigny’s reluctance to oppose him. She thought of King Joseph, Napoleon’s brother and the French puppet king of Spain. If the treaty was signed, she reflected, then Joseph would lose his throne. She wondered whether, by betraying the secret to Joseph, he might reward her by ordering the wagons released; if, that was, even King Joseph dared to defy his brother’s loyal servant, Pierre Ducos.

      The other carriage stopped. She heard the shout of the coachman and she presumed the soldiers wanted to search it. She smiled: no one dared search her carriage.

      Then the door opened, she turned, one hand clutching her cloak to her neck, to see a priest climbing into her carriage. ‘Who are you?’

      She had a pistol beneath the cushions. She pushed her right hand towards it.

      The man took off his broad hat. The shielded lantern within her carriage showed a huge, strong face with eyes harder than stone. ‘You are La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba?’

      ‘I am.’ Her voice was like ice. ‘You?’

      ‘Father Hacha.’

      She could see men outside the coach, their shapes dim in the moonlit street. She looked back at the priest and saw that his clothes were finer than those she would have expected on an ordinary parish priest. She sensed this man’s force, his strength, and his hostility. It was a pity, she thought, that such a man should give up his life to God. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I have news for you.’

      She shrugged. ‘Go on.’

      The Inquisitor sat on the seat opposite her. He seemed to fill the small carriage with his huge presence. His voice was deeper even than Pierre Ducos’s. ‘Your husband is dead.’

      She stared at him. She said nothing. At each ear hung a diamond cluster. Her cloak, though the night was not cold, was edged with white fur. At her throat, where her left hand held the fur collar, were more diamonds.

      ‘Did you not hear me?’

      ‘I heard you.’ She smiled. ‘You want to be rewarded for bringing me the news? The coachman will give you a coin.’

      The Inquisitor’s face showed nothing. ‘Adultery is a sin, woman.’

      ‘And impudence is bad manners. Leave me, priest.’

      He pointed a strong, dark hand at her. ‘You are an adulterer.’

      She rapped on the window and shouted at the coachman to drive on. The carriage did not move and she angrily jerked the strap from its hook so that the window crashed down. ‘I said go on!’

      The Spanish soldiers, uncomfortable but obedient, surrounded the carriage. With them were men in long, dark habits. She fumbled in the cushions for the pistol, but the strong hand of the Inquisitor reached for her wrist and pulled it clear. ‘You are an adulterer, woman.’

      She pulled away from him, but his grip was firm. She called for her servants, but the Inquisitor just smiled. ‘Your servants will obey their God, as you never did. You are an adulterer, and your husband and your lover are dead.’

      ‘My lover?’

      ‘The Englishman.’

      She had thought he meant General Verigny, now she knew he meant Richard Sharpe. She felt a pang at the news, knowing that her letter had caused his death, but her own troubles were too immediate for the pang to last. ‘Let me go!’

      ‘You are under arrest, woman.’

      ‘Don’t be impertinent!’

      ‘You are Spanish by marriage and in the jurisdiction of this diocese.’ He pulled her, making her call out in pain, but no one moved to help her.

      He dragged her from the carriage and pushed her into the second coach where two women, both with lined, hard faces that were edged with white linen hoods, waited for her. She screamed at her servants for help, but they were surrounded by soldiers with muskets and monks with staves, and then the door of the coach slammed and it jerked under way. The Inquisitor sat opposite her. When she screamed again he leaned over and struck her into silence.

      The Marquesa’s coachman was ordered back to the town. The Spanish Major, who had been ordered to obey the summons of the Ecclesiastical court, wondered where the Golden Whore was going. He had been told not to ask, not to care, just to obey. He listened to the dark coach rattle into the night, then shouted at his men to return to their posts.

      General Verigny watched from the tower, waiting for the carriage lanterns to appear on the white road. He waited as the moon sank beneath the mountains. He waited until the clocks struck two and then he knew she was not coming. He thought of sending some of his men towards Burgos to see if her carriage had run into trouble, but decided that she was probably flirting with another man instead. He cursed, wondered whether anyone would ever tame the bitch, and went to bed.

      The night wind stirred the thorns of the Gateway of God. Bats flickered about the ruined keep. A cloud barred the moon. The stars were bright.

      Three horsemen climbed the pass. They came slowly. They were late. They had meant to be here when it was still daylight, but it had taken them four hours to find a place to cross the last river. Their uniforms were still damp.

      They stopped at the crest of the path. Nothing moved in the valley, no lights showed in the village, watchtower, convent or castle.

      ‘Which way?’

      ‘This way.’ A man whose uniform was dark as the night led his two companions towards the ruined convent. He tied the horses to a grille beside the shattered archway, unsaddled them, then broke open a net of forage. He spread food for the horses, then led his companions into the upper cloister. He smiled. ‘It’s more homely than the castle.’

      The older man looked about the shattered cloister. ‘The French captured this?’

      ‘Yes.’ The dark-uniformed man was making a fire. ‘But Sharpe took care of them.’ He pointed into the ruined chapel. ‘One of their guns.’

      In the weed-grown ruins there was a gleam of moon on bronze where a fallen gun barrel was half covered by timber and stone.

      The third man was young, so young that most would have described him as a mere boy. He did not need to shave yet. He was the only one of the three who wore no uniform, though slung on his shoulder was a rifle. He seemed nervous of the two soldiers. He watched the dark-uniformed one light a fire, doing the job with all the skill of an old campaigner.

      The dark-uniformed man was fearsome. He had one eye, the other covered by a black patch, and his scarred face was harsh and fierce. He was half German, half English, and his nickname in the 60th Regiment was Sweet William. He was Captain William Frederickson, the Rifleman who had ambushed the French gunners above the bridge, and who had fought, at Christmas, beneath Sharpe’s command in this high valley. He had come back to the Gateway of God as a guide for Major Michael Hogan and the young, silent Spaniard.

      Hogan was restless. He paced the cloister, asking questions about the battle, and staring at the castle where Sharpe had made the final stand and thrown back the last French attack. Sweet William answered his questions as he cooked the meal, though the young Spaniard noticed how the one-eyed Rifle officer was alert and listening for strange sounds beyond the ruined building.

      Their meal was wine, bread, cheese, and the joints of a hare that Frederickson had shot earlier in the day and now roasted on the ramrod of his rifle. A wind came from the west, from the far ocean, making the one-eyed Rifleman lift his head and sniff. There

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