“Sharpe!” It was the petulant voice of the mud-smeared Colonel Wigram who, with Elphinstone, was forcing his way past the Portuguese troops on the crowded roadway.

The Comte de Maquerre looked at Wigram and gestured towards Sharpe. “He’s mad!”

“Major!” Wigram stepped down to the chasse-maree’s deck. “There are things you don’t understand, Major!”

“He’s a traitor. A spy.”

Wigram stayed by the cable-taut roadway. “He was supposed to tell the French we planned a landing! Don’t you see that?”

Sharpe stared at the tall, thin Frenchman. “He works for a man called Pierre Ducos. Oh, you fooled him, Wigram, I understand that, but this bastard tried to trap me.”

De Maquerre, sensing survival in Wigram’s alliance, gestured again at Sharpe. “He’s mad, Wigram, mad!”

“I’m mad enough,” Sharpe said, “to hate hanging men.”

The Comte de Maquerre could step no further back. His retreat was blocked by two naval ratings who crouched nervously beside the anchor’s winch. The Frenchman watched Sharpe’s sword, then Sharpe’s eyes. The boat shivered as Elphinstone leaped on to the deck from the roadway, and the movement seemed to prompt de Maquerre into a burst of pleading French directed at Wigram.

“In English, you bastard!” Sharpe stepped a pace closer to the frightened de Maquerre. “Tell him who Ducos is! Tell him who Favier is! Tell him how you offered to make me a Major General in your Royalist Army!”

„Monsieur!“ de Maquerre, faced with the Rifleman, could only plead.

“Sharpe!” Colonel Wigram made his voice very sensible and calm. “There will have to be a formal inquiry before a properly constituted tribunal…”

“… and what will they do? Hang him?”

“If found guilty, yes.” Wigram sounded uncertain.

“But I don’t like hanging men!” Sharpe said each word slowly and deliberately. “I’ve discovered a weakness in myself, and I regret it, but I can’t bear seeing men hanged!”

“Quite understandable.” Wigram, convinced he was dealing with a madman, spoke soothingly.

The Comte de Maquerre, sensing a reprieve in Sharpe’s words, tried a very nervous smile. “You don’t understand, monsieur.”

“I understand you’re a bastard,” Sharpe said, “and a spy, but you won’t hang for it. But this is for the men you killed, you pimp!“ The sword lunged as Sharpe shouted the final word. The blade, pitted with the rust of water and blood, twisted as Sharpe thrust it, twisted as it took de Maquerre in the upper belly, still twisted as the blood sprayed two feet into the air, and still was twisted so that the body’s flesh would not stick to the steel as the Frenchman, blood drenching his white breeches, fell into the river that Calvet should have defended.

The sound of Sharpe’s voice faded over the water. The two sailors gaped and one of them, spattered by blood, turned to retch into the scuppers.

“That wasn’t wise,” Colonel Elphinstone pushed past an appalled Wigram who watched as the body of a spy, surrounded by diluting blood, floated towards the sea.

“He was a traitor,” Sharpe said, “and he killed my men.” The tiredness was washing through him. He wanted to sit down, but he supposed he should explain. Somehow it was too difficult. “Hogan knew,” he said, remembering his friend’s fevered words. “Michael Hogan?” He looked for understanding into Elphinstone’s honest face.

Elphinstone nodded. “It was Hogan’s idea to let the French think we planned an invasion.”

“But Wigram sent de Maquerre, didn’t you?” Sharpe stared at the grey-faced colonel who said nothing. “Hogan would never have sent that pimp to risk our lives!”

“Hogan was ill,” Wigram spoke defensively.

“Then wait till he’s well,” Sharpe glowered at the staff officer, “then call him before your properly constituted tribunal.”

“That can’t be done.” Colonel Elphinstone spoke gently. “Hogan died.”

For a second the news made no sense. “Dead?”

“The fever. May he rest in peace.”

“Oh, God.” Tears came to Sharpe’s eyes and, so that neither Elphinstone nor Wigram should see them, the Rifleman turned away. Hogan, his particular friend, with whom he had so often talked of the pleasures to come when peace brought an end to killing, was dead of the fever. Sharpe watched de Maquerre’s body turning on the tide, and his grief for a friend turned into a fresh pulse of anger. “That should have been Bampfylde!” Sharpe pointed at the corpse and turned to Elphinstone. “He ran away!”

The grimness of Sharpe’s face made Colonel Wigram scramble back to the plank bridge, but Elphinstone simply reached for Sharpe’s sword and dried the wet, bloodied blade on a corner of his jacket. He handed the sword back. “You did well, Major.” He tried to imagine a handful of men facing a half brigade, and could not. “You need to rest.”

Sharpe nodded. “Can you get me a horse, sir?” He asked it in a voice that suggested nothing had happened, that no blood trickled On the rain-slick deck.

“A horse? I’m sure we can.” Elphinstone saw in Sharpe the weariness of a soldier pushed to the edge of reason. The colonel was an engineer, knowledgeable of the stresses that could shatter stone or wood or iron, and now he saw the same fracturing tension in Sharpe. “Of course!” Elphinstone made his own voice redolent of normality, “you’re eager to see your wife! I had the honour of dining with her two nights ago.”

Sharpe stared at the colonel. “You dined with her?”

“My dear Sharpe, it was entirely proper! At Lady Hope’s! There was a ragout and some very fine beef

Sharpe forgot de Maquerre, forgot the bridge, and forgot the ragged skirmishes that flared and died across the river. He even forgot Hogan. “And Jane’s well?”

Elphinstone shrugged. “Shouldn’t she be? Ah, she did mention a cold, but that was soon gone. A winter’s sniff, nothing more. She was distressed for Hogan, naturally.”

Sharpe gaped incredulously at the colonel. “No fever?”

“Your wife? Good Lord, no!” Elphinstone sounded astonished that Sharpe should even ask. “She wouldn’t credit you were defeated, of course.”

“Oh, God.” Sharpe sat on the ckasse-mare’e‘s gunwale and, because he could not help it, more tears came to his eyes and ran cold on his cheeks. No fever. He had let Killick live because of Jane’s fever, and he would not contemplate surrender to Calvet because of her fever, and it had only been a cold, a winter’s sniff. Sharpe-did not know whether to laugh or cry.

A gun banged over the river and a rocket wobbled into the sky to plunge uselessly into the river’s mud. A French cavalry trumpet sounded the retreat, but Sharpe did not care. He wept. He wept because a friend had died, and he wept with joy because Jane lived. He wept because at last it was over; a battle that should never have been fought, but a battle that, through stubbornness, pride, and an American enemy’s promise, had come to both this victory on a river’s edge and to this vast relief. It was over; Sharpe’s siege.