Kearsey marched across to stand beside Sharpe. He faced the Company, the Bible still clasped in his hand. 'You've done well. Very well. Difficult countryside and a long way from home. Well done.' They stared back at him with the blank look soldiers keep for encouraging talks from unpopular officers. 'I'm sorry that you must go back empty-handed, but your efforts have not been in vain. We have shown, together, that we do care about the Spanish people, about their future, and your enthusiasm, your struggle, will not be forgotten.'

El Catolico clapped, beamed at the Company, smiled at Kearsey. Sharpe's Company stared at the two men as if wondering what new indignity would be heaped on them, and Sharpe suppressed a smile at the thought of the Spanish people remembering the enthusiasm and struggle of Private Batten.

Kearsey flicked at his moustache. 'You will march tomorrow, back to Portugal, and El Catolico, here, will provide an escort.'

Sharpe kept his face straight, hiding his fury. Kearsey had told him none of this.

The Major went on. 'I'm staying, to continue the fight, and I hope we will meet again.' If he had expected a cheer he was disappointed.

Then, as El Catolico had visited the burial of the British dead, it was the officers' turn to stand in the walled graveyard as the dead villagers were put into a common grave. El Catolico had a tame priest, a moth-eaten little man, who rushed through the service as Sharpe, Knowles, and Harper stood awkwardly by the high wall. The French had been here, too, as disturbed graves and burst-open sepulchres showed. The dead had been reburied, the damage patched up, but Sharpe wondered yet again at the savagery of such a war.

He looked at Teresa, dressed in black, and she gave him one of her unconcerned stares, as if she had never seen him before, and he told himself that there was already enough trouble looming on the horizon without planning to pursue El Catolico's woman. The Spanish officer, his sword still tucked under his arm, caught the glance Teresa gave Sharpe and he smiled slightly, or at least twitched the corners of his mouth, as if he recognized Sharpe's desire and pitied him for wanting something as unattainable as Teresa. Sharpe remembered the golden body running up the rocks, the shadows on the skin, and he knew he would as soon give up his search for the gold as give up his desire for the girl.

Harper crossed himself, the hats went on, and people stirred in the graveyard. Ramon limped over to Sharpe and smiled.

'You go tomorrow?'

'Yes.'

'I am sad.' He was genuine, the one friendly face in Casatejada. He pointed to Sharpe's rifle. 'I like it.'

Sharpe grinned, gave him the rifle to handle. 'Come with us; you could become a Rifleman.' There was a laugh and El Catolico stood there, Kearsey loyally shadowing the tall man, and he watched as Ramon felt with his little finger, poking from the bandage, the seven rifled grooves that spun the ball and made the weapon so accurate.

El Catolico cleared his throat. 'A sad day, Captain.'

'Yes, sir.' Surely he had not come to tell Sharpe it had been a sad day.

El Catolico looked round the graveyard with an imperious eye. 'Too many dead. Too many graves. Too many new graves.'

Sharpe followed his eyes round the small graveyard. There was something strange here, something out of place, but it could have been his reaction to the burials, to the French damage in the graveyard. One wall, beside the hermitage, was made of niches, each sized to receive a coffin, and the French had torn off the sealed doors and spilt the rotting contents to the ground. Had the French heard of the gold, Sharpe wondered, or did they treat all cemeteries this way? To defile the dead was a taunt almost as callous as man could devise, but Sharpe guessed it was commonplace in the war between Partisans and French.

Sergeant Harper, unexpectedly, took a pace forward. 'They didn't open all the graves, sir.' He stated it consolingly, with his surprising compassion.

El Catolico smiled at him, saw that Harper was pointing at a fresh grave, neatly piled with earth and waiting for its headstone. The tall man nodded. 'Not all. Perhaps there was not time. I buried him six days ago. A servant, a good man.'

There was a snap and they all looked at Ramon, who was still fumbling with the Baker rifle. He had the small trap open, in the butt, and seemed impressed by the cleaning tools hidden inside. He handed the rifle back to Sharpe. 'One day I have one, yes?'

'One day I'll give you one. When we're back.'

Ramon lifted his eyebrows. 'You come back?'

Sharpe laughed. 'We'll be back. We'll chase the French all the way to Paris.'

He slung the rifle and walked away from El Catolico, across the cemetery and through a wrought-iron side gate that opened on to the wide fields. If he had hoped for fresh air, untainted with death, he was unlucky. Beside the gate, half hidden by dark-green bushes, was a vast manure heap, stinking and warm, and Sharpe turned back to see that El Catolico had followed him.

'You think the war is not lost, Captain?'

Sharpe wondered if he detected a trace of worry in the Spaniard. He shrugged. 'It's not lost.'

'You're wrong.' If the Spaniard had been worried, it was gone now. He spoke loudly, almost sneeringly. 'You've lost, Captain. Only a miracle can save the British now."

Sharpe copied the sneering tone. 'We're all bloody Christians, aren't we? We believe in miracles.'

Kearsey's protest was stopped by a peal of laughter. It checked them all, swung them round, to see Teresa, her arm through her father's, standing at the hermitage door. The laugh stopped, the face became stern again, but for the first time, Sharpe thought, he had seen that she was not completely bound to the tall, grey-cloaked Spaniard. She even nodded to the Rifleman, in agreement, before turning away. Miracles, Sharpe decided, were beginning to happen.

CHAPTER 11

The elation had worn thin. Failure, like a hangover, imposed its mocking price of depression and regret as Sharpe marched westward from Casatejada towards the two rivers that barred the Light Company from a doomed British army. Sharpe felt sour, disappointed, and cheated. There had been little friendliness in the farewells. Ramon had embraced him, Spanish fashion, with a garlic kiss on both cheeks, and the young man had seemed genuinely sad to be parting from the Light Company. 'Remember your promise, Captain. A rifle.'

Sharpe had made the promise, but he wondered, gloomily, how it was to be kept. Almeida must soon be under siege, the French would dominate the land between the rivers, and the British would be retreating westward towards the sea, to final defeat. And all that stood between survival and a silent, bitter embarkation was his suspicion that the gold was still in Casatejada, hidden as subtly as the Partisans hid their food and their weapons. He remembered Wellington's words. 'Must, do you hear? Must'

There had to be more gold, Sharpe thought: gold in the cellars of London, in the merchant banks, the counting-houses, in the bellies of merchant ships. So why this gold? The question could not be answered and the threat of defeat, like the rain-clouds that still built in the north, accompanied the Light Company on its empty march towards the river Agueda.

The Partisans were also going westward and for the first hour Sharpe had watched the horsemen as they rode on the spine of a low chain of hills to the south. El Catolico had talked of ambushing the French convoys that would be lumbering with ammunition towards Almeida. But, often as Sharpe saw Kearsey's blue coat among the horsemen, he could not see El Catolico's grey cloak. He had asked Jose, one of El Catolico's Lieutenants and the leader of the Company's escort, where the Partisan leader was, but Jose shrugged.