LITMIR.BIZ

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‘They use them for bastards. A girl has a baby, she can’t raise it, so she takes it to the torno. There’s no questions asked, you see. The nuns don’t know who the mother is, and the mother knows the baby’s in good hands. It’s clean. It’s better than letting the wee things die in the gutter.’

      ‘Or join the army,’ Frederickson said.

      Sharpe wondered what the purpose of the story was. but knew better than to ask. The wind was driving clouds to cover the western stars.

      Hogan shrugged. ‘Sometimes I feel just like the person inside the convent. The cupboard turns, there’s the baby on the shelf, and I don’t know where it’s come from, or what it’s called, or who put it there, or what bastard had his joy of the girl and dropped her. It’s just a little scrap of mystery, but there’s one difference.’ He looked from the fire to Sharpe. ‘My job is to solve the mystery. The torno has just dumped this thing into my lap, and you’re going to find out who put it there. You understand?’

      Sharpe nodded. He should, he thought, be the Major of a Battalion marching to war. He should be preparing his men to stand in the musket line and blast death at an attacking army, but instead he was to be Hogan’s spy. He had earned the job by his foolishness, by accepting the duel. And the result was this secret meeting in the hills and the chance to once more go close to a woman he had once thought unapproachable, a woman who had been his lover for a short, treacherous season in Salamanca. ‘I understand.’

      ‘Find out, come back, and maybe, Richard, just maybe, the General will give you your rank back.’

      ‘Maybe?’

      ‘Wellington doesn’t like fools.’ A spot of rain hissed on the fire. Hogan pulled his cloak about him. ‘You’d better pray that I’m right.’

      ‘About what?’

      The Irishman stared at the fire. ‘I don’t understand it, Richard, I really don’t. It’s too elaborate! To kill a General, send an Inquisitor, mark you as the murderer? Someone thought about it all, someone planned it, and I cannot convince my addled brain that they did it just to have you hanged. Laudable as that aim is, why kill a Marqués for it? No.’ He frowned in thought. ‘The bastards are up to something. I can feel it in my bones, but I don’t know what it is. So you find out. And if you don’t find out, don’t come back.’

      He said the last words brutally. No one spoke. More rain hissed on the flames. One of the horses whinnied softly.

      Hogan gestured at the Spanish boy. ‘He’s called Angel.’

      Sharpe looked at the boy and nodded. Angel smiled timidly back at the Rifleman.

      Hogan switched into Spanish. ‘I’m lending him to you, and I want him back in one piece because he’s useful. I don’t care if you don’t come back, but I want Angel.’ Angel smiled nervously. Hogan looked up at the sky. ‘I’ve a horse for you as well; a better one than you deserve. And this.’ He took something from his haversack and handed it to Sharpe.

      It was a telescope, Sharpe’s own telescope. It had been a gift to him, given ten years before when he had been commissioned as an officer. There was a small brass plate inset into the curve of the walnut barrel, and inscribed on the brass was ‘In Gratitude. AW. September 23rd, 1803’.

      If it was not for that day, Sharpe reflected as he took the glass, he might not be alive now. Wellington had undoubtedly remembered the day when his horse had been piked and he had been pitched forward towards the bayonets of his enemies. A Sergeant called Richard Sharpe had saved the General’s life that day, beating back the enemy until the General was on his feet. It would be hard, Sharpe thought, to see a man who had saved your life condemned to hang for a crime he had not committed.

      Sharpe looked at Hogan. ‘You’ve brought my sword?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And more ammunition?’ Hogan had sent him north with only his rifle.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So what do I do with your horse and Angel?’

      ‘You go and solve my mystery.’ Hogan put snuff onto his hand, sniffed it, paused, then sneezed. For once he did not swear after the sneeze. ‘I could have sent one of my own people, but you have one advantage.’

      ‘Which is?’

      Hogan looked at Sharpe. ‘You know Helene. I just hope to God she’ll want to see you again, and that she’ll talk to you. Find her, curl up with her, find out what the hell is happening, and save your miserable career.’

      Frederickson laughed. Sharpe squirted wine from the skin into his mouth.

      Hogan nodded at Angel. ‘Angel’s your spy. Don’t worry that he looks young, he’s been working for me since he was thirteen. He can go where you can’t go. And you have one other advantage. Helene is rather noticeable. If the two of you get within twenty miles of her, you’ll hear about it. You know what the Spanish call her?’

      ‘La Puta Dorada.’ Sharpe said it softly. It was a just enough nickname, yet its use always offended him. ‘Will the Partisans help me?’

      ‘Who knows? They think you’re dead, so use another name.’ He smiled mockingly. ‘Don’t call yourself Major Hogan, please? I suppose you’ll have to look for the Partisans, but they don’t have any love for the Marquesa. Still, they might help you.’

      ‘Where would you start looking?’

      ‘Burgos or Vitoria,’ Hogan said decisively. ‘Burgos because it’s the crossroads of the French armies and if she’s in Spain then she’ll have passed through, and Vitoria because that’s where the Inquisitor comes from. It’s not much, God knows, but it’s better than nothing.’ Hogan frowned up at the sky, as if angry with the rain. ‘There’s one other thing.’

      Sharpe grinned. ‘You’re saving the bad news till last?’

      ‘If the French capture you, Richard, they’ll crow their victory from every housetop in Europe. They’ll prove that we cheated the Spanish with an execution, they’ll parade you like a captive bear to prove Britain’s perfidy. Or, if they don’t do that, they’ll simply kill you. You’re officially dead, after all, so they’ve nothing to lose.’ He stared at the Rifleman. ‘So don’t get captured.’ Hogan said it with a seething intensity and, to drive the message home, repeated the words. ‘Don’t get captured.’

      That was Hogan’s fear. It had been Wellington’s fear, too, when Hogan had suggested that Sharpe be sent to solve the mystery. The General had bristled at Sharpe’s name. ‘What if the fool gets caught, Hogan? Good God! The French will make hay of us! No. It won’t do, it won’t do.’

      ‘He won’t get caught, my Lord.’ Hogan had already sent Sharpe to the Gateway of God, and was praying that no stray enemy cavalry patrol had already found the Rifleman.

      It had taken Hogan two days to persuade the General, his only argument that no one but Sharpe could safely approach La Marquesa. The General had reluctantly agreed. He had wanted to send Sharpe back to England with orders never to show his face in the army again. ‘If this goes wrong, Hogan, it’ll be your hide as well as his.’

      ‘It won’t go wrong, my Lord, I promise you.’

      Wellington had looked mockingly at his chief of intelligence. ‘One man against an army?’

      ‘Yes, my Lord.’ And that man would win, Hogan fervently believed, because losing was not part of Richard Sharpe’s world.

      He watched Sharpe now, his face lit by the flames in the Gateway of God, and he wondered if Sharpe would live to come back to the army. He was sending him with just one boy deep behind the enemy lines, to find a woman who was as treacherous as she was beautiful, yet Hogan had no choice. This summer the General planned a campaign that could destroy French power in Spain, but the French knew how potent was the threat and they would be fighting back, using every weapon of treachery and subtlety that came to hand. Hogan, with

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