The door was empty.

He went to it, the sword bloody in his hand. His face was a mask of blood, his uniform soaked with Lavin’s blood. One man against four, and that a Rifleman! Sergeant Harper would say they were fair odds.

‘Ducos! You bastard! Ducos!’

He walked into the corridor. Behind him the Sergeant sobbed and wailed and bled into the hands cupped over his groin.

‘Ducos! You filth!’

The voice came from his right. Sharpe turned.

A group of French officers stood there. They were elegant and clean, staring aghast at the bloody man with the swollen face and the savage voice and the sword that dripped blood.

The French officers wore swords, but none was drawn.

One man stepped forward, a tall man in green and pink, a man who frowned. ‘Major Vaughn?’

It was Verigny. His face was screwed up, either because of the smell of blood, or the sight of Sharpe. ‘Major?’

‘My name is Sharpe.’ There was no point in concealment any longer. ‘Major Richard Sharpe.’ He leaned on the wall. The tip of the sword rested on the flagstones and made there a small pool of thick blood.

Verigny seemed to stand to attention. ‘I came from honour, Major, that you would be treated in accord with honour.’

Sharpe jerked his head towards the door. ‘The bastards tried to kill me. I had no sword then. I fought back.’ Sergeant Lavin was sobbing in high, pitiful cries from within the square, stone-walled room.

Verigny looked through the door. He stepped back and stared in awe at the Rifleman who had made the room look like a slaughterhouse. ‘You will be treated good, Major. You have need of a doctor?’

‘Yes. And water. Food. A bed.’

‘Of course.’

These clothes washed. A bath.’

‘Of course.’

Sharpe pulled his right hand from the sword. His palm was a bloody mess. It hurt. He held the sword out with his left hand. ‘I am your prisoner again, it seems.’

‘You will do me the honour to keep the sword, Monsigneur, till we have discussion on what we do to you.’

Sharpe nodded, then turned back into the room. He retrieved his scabbard and sword belt, but could not fasten them with his wounded hand. He went and stood over the moaning, sobbing Sergeant Lavin who looked up at him with eyes that seemed to mix pain with an astonishment that he had been beaten. Sharpe looked at the French General. ‘Sir?’

‘Major?’

‘Tell this eunuch he got his wish.’

Verigny was chilled by the Rifleman’s voice. ‘His wish, Monsigneur?’

‘He wanted an Englishman. He got one.’

CHAPTER 16

Sharpe was led to one of the buildings in the castle yard that was still in a state of repair, then helped upstairs to a limewashed room, decently furnished with a bed, table and chairs, and with a view from a barred window into the fortress’ biggest courtyard. He could see across to the squat keep, past the castle church, and every spare inch of the courtyard was crowded with the treasure wagons.

A doctor came. Sharpe’s wounds were washed and bandaged. He was bled with lancet and cup, then given food and brandy.

A great tub was brought to his room, filled by a succession of buckets, and he soaked his body in it. His uniform was taken away, laundered, mended, and returned.

He was still a prisoner. Two guards were outside his door, at the head of the stairs which led down into the courtyard. One of the guards, a cheerful young man no older than Angel, shaved him. Sharpe could not hold a razor in his bandaged right hand.

His sword was propped by the bed. He had cleaned the blade with difficulty. In the ridges of the wooden handle, that should have been wrapped with leather and bound with wire, there was blood that he did not have the energy to clean. He slept instead; a sleep of bad dreams and intermittent pain.

His guards brought him food, good food, and two bottles of red wine. They tried to tell him something, grinning good-naturedly at his incomprehension. He heard the name Verigny and supposed that the General had sent the food. He smiled, nodded to show he understood, and the guards left him with candles and his own thoughts. He paced the floor, thinking only that soon all Spain would think that Wellington had released the murderer of a Spanish Marques. He had failed Wellington, Hogan, and himself.

In the morning the doctor came again, unpeeled the bandages, and muttered to himself. He examined Sharpe’s night-soil in the bucket, seemed pleased by it, then bled Sharpe’s thigh into a small cup. He did not re-bandage Sharpe’s head, only the cut hand that was still painful.

His lips were swollen. Their insides were coated with congealed blood. Rather that, he thought, than the Sergeant’s wound.

He sat by the window all morning, watching the wagons roll out of the courtyard. Wagon after wagon left, their oxen prodded by drivers with pointed staves. The axle squeals never stopped as the courtyard slowly emptied. The French retreat, that had begun in Valladolid, had started again and Sharpe knew that the British must be advancing still, and that the French were sending the treasure wagons back on the Great Road towards France. He wondered if Helene’s six wagons were among the ones that left. He wondered why Ducos had arranged for him to be accused of the Marques’ death, and why Helene had lied about it.

The castle church had been used as an ammunition store. As the wagons made space in the big courtyard, squads of infantry began carrying shells and canister from the church towards the keep. Sharpe, with nothing else to do, watched.

After an hour the shells were no longer being carried into the keep, but instead were being piled in the courtyard. Pile after pile was made, starting by the keep door and working slowly down the courtyard towards him. He wondered if this was a punishment detail, forced to do one of the pointless chores that all armies gave their defaulters, but then, curiously, he saw French engineer officers running white fuses to each of the conical heaps, fuses that led back into the keep.

He realised suddenly that the French must be abandoning Burgos, that they were blowing the castle apart rather than delivering such a fortress intact to their enemies, yet it struck him as odd that they should go to the trouble of piling the shells in the courtyard instead of blowing them in one great mass in the magazine. Then, hearing footsteps on the stairs, he turned from the window and forgot the strange piles of ammunition.

He made sure the sword was within reach. He was half expecting Ducos to return and finish what he had begun, but it was a smiling French lancer who opened the door. On the man’s arm, incongruously, hung a basket covered with a linen cloth.

More such men came, men who arranged food and wine on the table in Sharpe’s room. None spoke English. They finished their job, left, then Sharpe heard her voice on the stairs. It was La Marquesa, looking as if she had bathed in dew and sipped ambrosia, her eyes bright, her smile welcoming, and her concern about his battered, blood-marked face oddly touching. With her was the tall, dark figure of General Verigny, while behind came another French officer, a plump Major called Montbrun who spoke fluent English and trusted that Major Sharpe was not in any great pain?

Sharpe assured him he was not. Major Montbrun nevertheless hoped that Major Sharpe would realise that his treatment at the hands of Sergeant Lavin had not been worthy of the great French army, and that Major Sharpe would forgive it, and offer Major Montbrun the pleasure of joining him in a small, light luncheon?

Major Sharpe would.

Major Montbrun knew that Major Sharpe had the honour of already knowing La Marquesa and the General. Montbrun explained that he was an aide to King Joseph himself, Napoleon’s brother who was the puppet King on the crumbling Spanish throne. Montbrun hoped that Major Sharpe would not take it amiss if he said that His Majesty King Joseph was flattered that so redoubtable an enemy as Major Sharpe should have been captured. Sharpe did not reply. La Marquesa smiled and brushed the crusted wound on Sharpe’s head with her fingertips. ‘Ducos is a pig.’