“What is the sentry guarding?”

“Just papers.” Vivar’s voice was cold. “Put your knife away, Lieutenant, and stay there.”

Sharpe obeyed. After a moment the Major appeared in the church doorway. “Don’t do that again, Lieutenant. I will kill to protect what is in that box.”

Sharpe felt like a small boy caught by a watchman, but he tried to brazen out the confrontation. “Papers?”

“Papers,” Vivar said bleakly. He looked up at the sky where silvered clouds flew fast beside the moon. “It isn’t a night for killing, Englishman. The estadea are already restless.” He walked up the aisle. “Now I think you should try to sleep. We have far to go in the morning.”

Sharpe, chastened, went past Vivar to the church door. With one hand on the jamb, he turned to look back at the chest. Vivar, his back to him, was already on his knees in front of the mysterious strongbox.

Sharpe, embarrassed to see a man praying, paused.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Vivar had not turned round.

“Did your prisoners tell you who the chasseur is? The man in red who led them here?”

“No, Lieutenant.” The Spaniard’s voice was very patient, as though by answering he merely humoured a child’s caprice. “I did not think to ask them.”

“Or the man in black? The civilian?”

Vivar paused for a second. “Does the wolf know the names of the hounds?”

“Who is he, Major?”

The rosary’s beads clicked. “Goodnight, Lieutenant.”.

Sharpe knew he would fetch no answers, only more mysteries to rival the insubstantiality of the estadea. He half-closed the charred door, then went to his cold bed of bare earth and listened to the wind moan in the spirit-haunted night. Somewhere a wolf howled, and one of the captured horses whinnied softly. In the chapel a man prayed. Sharpe slept.

CHAPTER 6

The Cazadores and Riflemen still went west but, for fear of the French Dragoons, Vivar avoided the easier paths of the pilgrim way, insisting that safety still lay in the uplands. The road, if it could be called a road at all, struggled through the passes of high mountains and across cold streams swollen by meltwater and by the persistent, stinging rain that made the paths as slippery as grease. The wounded men and those who caught a fever of the cold were carried by the captured French horses, but those precious beasts had to be led with an infinite caution if they were to survive on the treacherous tracks. One of the horses carried the strongbox.

There was no news of the French. During the first two days of the march Sharpe expected to see the threatening silhouettes of the Dragoons on the skyline, but the chasseur andihis men seemed to have vanished. The few people who lived in the highland villages assured Vivar that they had seen no Frenchmen. Some of them did not even know that a foreign enemy was in Spain and, hearing the strange language of Sharpe’s Riflemen, would stare with a suspicious hostility at the strangers. “Not that their own dialect isn’t strange,” Vivar said cheerfully; then, as fluent in the Galician speech as in the more courtly tongue of Spain, he would reassure the peasants that the men in torn green coats were not to be feared.

After the first few days, and satisfied that the French had lost the scent, Vivar descended to the pilgrim way which proved to be a succession of mingling tracks that twisted through the deeper valleys. The largest roads were reinforced with flint so that carts and carriages could use them, and even though the winter had drowned the flints in mud, the men marched fast and easily on the firmer surface. Chestnuts and elm trees grew thick beside the road which led through a country that had so far been free of scavenging armies. The men ate well. There was maize, rye, potatoes, chestnuts, and salted meat in winter store. One night there was even fresh mutton.

Yet, despite the food and the easier footing, it was not a soft country. One midday, beside a bridge which crossed a deep, dark stream, Sharpe saw three human heads stuck high on wooden poles. The heads had been there for months, and their eyes, tongues, and softer flesh had been eaten by ravens, while what shreds of skin were left on the grisly skulls had turned as black as pitch. ‘Rateros,“ Vivar told Sharpe, ”highwaymen. They think that pilgrims give easy pickings.“

“Do many pilgrims go to Santiago de Compostela?”

“Not so many as in the old days. A few lepers still go to be cured, but even they will be stopped by the war.” Vivar nodded towards the lank-haired skulls. “So now those gentlemen will have to use their murderous skills against the French.” The thought cheered him, just as the easier going on the pilgrim way cheered Sharpe’s Riflemen. Sometimes they sang as they marched. They rediscovered old comforts. Vivar bought great blocks of tobacco that had to be rasped into shreds before it could be smoked and some of the Riflemen imitated the Spanish soldiers and twisted the tobacco in paper rather than smoking it in clay pipes. The small villages would always yield generous quantities of a rough, strong cider. Vivar was astonished at the Riflemen’s capacity for the drink, and even more astonished when Sharpe told him that most of the men had only joined the army to get the daily ration of a third of a pint of rum.

There was no rum to be had but, perhaps because of the plentiful cider, the men were happy; even treating Sharpe with a wary acceptance. The greenjackets had welcomed Harper back into their ranks with unfeigned delight, and Sharpe had again seen how the big man was the real leader of the men. They liked Sergeant Williams, but instinctively expected Harper to make their decisions, and Sharpe noted sourly how it was Harper, rather than himself, who melded these survivors of four separate companies into a single unit.

“Harps is a decent fellow, sir.” Sergeant Williams persevered in his role as peacemaker between the two men. “He says he was wrong now.”

Sharpe was irritated at this second-hand compliment. “I don’t give a damn what he says.”

“He says he was never hit so hard in his life.”

“I know what he says.” Sharpe wondered if the Sergeant would talk in this way to other officers, and decided he would not. He supposed it was only because Williams knew he was an ex-Sergeant that he felt able to use such intimacy. “You can tell Rifleman Harper,” Sharpe said with deliberate harshness, “that if he steps out of line once more, he’ll be hit so hard that he’ll remember nothing.”

Williams chuckled. “Harps won’t step out of line again, sir. Major Vivar had a word with him, sir. God knows what he said, but he scared the bloody daylights out of him.” He shook his head in admiration of the Spaniard. “The Major’s a tough bugger, sir, and a rich one. He’s carrying a bloody fortune in that strongbox!”

“I told you it’s nothing but papers,” Sharpe said carelessly.

“It’s jewels, sir.” Williams took an evident pleasure in revealing the secret. “Just like I guessed. Diamonds and things. The Major told Harps as much, sir. Harps says the jewels belong to the Major’s family, and that if we get them safe to this Santy-aggy place, then the Major will give us all a piece of gold.”

“Nonsense!” Sharpe said sourly, and he knew that his sourness was provoked by an irrational jealousy. Why should Vivar tell Rifleman Harper what he would not tell him? Was it because the Irishman was a Catholic? For that matter, why would Vivar reverently lodge a family’s jewels in a church? And would mere jewels have brought enemy Dragoons across wintry hills to set an ambush?

“They’re ancient jewels.” Sergeant Williams was oblivious to Sharpe’s doubts. “One of them’s a necklace made from the diamonds of a crown. A blackamoor’s crown, sir. He was an old King, sir. An ‘eathen.” It was clear that the greenjackets had been fearfully impressed. The Riflemen might march through rain and across bad roads, but their hardships were given dignity because they escorted the pagan jewels of an ancient kingdom.