“It’s just that your aunt and uncle will worry about you,” he said lamely. “And we’re probably going to have to fight again, and a fight’s no place for a woman.”

Louisa said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. “The Frenchman, de l’Eclin? He offended me. I think he perceived me as a spoil of war.”

“He was offensive?”

“I imagine he thought he was being very gallant.” Louisa, dressed in the blue skirts and coat in which she had fled the travelling coach, paced about her small room. “Would I offend you by saying that I preferred your protection to his?”

“I’m flattered, miss.” Sharpe felt himself being drawn into her conspiracy. He had come here to warn Louisa that Bias Vivar disapproved of her presence, and to tell her to avoid the Spaniard as much as was possible; instead he felt the attraction of her vivacity.

“I was tempted to stay with the French,” Louisa confessed, “not because of the Colonel’s intrinsic charms, but because Godalming would surely have been agog to hear of my adventures with the army of the Corsican ogre, would it not? Perhaps we would have been sent to Paris and paraded before the mob like Ancient Britons displayed before the Romans.”

“I doubt that,” Sharpe said.

“I rather doubted it, too. Instead I foresaw a most tedious time in which I would be forced to listen to my aunt’s interminable complaints about the war, the lost testaments, her discomforts, French cooking, your shortcomings, her husband’s timidity, my forwardness, the weather, her bunions — do you wish me to continue?”

Sharpe smiled. “No.”

Louisa teased out her dark curls with her fingers, then shrugged. “I came, Lieutenant, because of a whim. Because if I am to be stranded in a war then I would rather be stranded with my own side than with the enemy.”

“I think Major Vivar fears you’ll be a hindrance to us, miss.”

“Oh,” Louisa said with mock foreboding, then walked to the window and frowned down at the Spaniard who still stood with the two priests. “Does Major Vivar not like women?”

“I think he does.”

“He just thinks they get in the way?”

“In battle, they do. If you’ll pardon me, miss.”

Louisa mocked Sharpe with a deprecating smile. “I promise not to stand in the way of your sword, Lieutenant. And I’m sorry if I have caused you inconvenience. Now you can tell me just why we’re here, and what you plan to do. I can’t stay out of the way unless I know exactly where the way leads, can I?”

“I don’t know what’s happening, miss.”

Louisa grimaced. “Does that mean you don’t trust me?”

“It means I don’t know.” Sharpe told her about the strongbox and Vivar’s secretiveness, and about their long journey which had been dogged by the French Dragoons. “All I know is that the Major wants to take the box to Santiago, but why, I don’t know, and what’s in it, I don’t know.”

Louisa was delighted with the mystery. “But you will find out?”

“I hope so.”

“I shall ask Major Vivar directly!”

“I don’t think you should, miss.”

“Of course not. The ogre-ish Papist Spaniard doesn’t want me interfering in his adventure.”

“It’s not an adventure, miss, but war.”

“War is the moment, Mr Sharpe, when we loose the bonds of convention, do you not think so? I do. And they are very constricting bonds, especially in Godalming. I insist upon knowing what is in Major Vivar’s box! Do you think it is jewels?”

“No, miss.”

“The crown of Spain! The sceptre and orb! Of course it is, Mr Sharpe. Napoleon wishes to put the crown on his head, and your friend is denying it him! Don’t you see? We are carrying a dynasty’s regalia to safety!” She clapped her hands with delight. “I shall insist upon seeing these treasures. Major Vivar is going to reveal everything to you, is he not?”

“He said he might tell me after supper. I think it rather depends on those priests.”

Tn that case we might never know.“ Louisa grimaced. ”But I can have supper with you?“

The request embarrassed Sharpe, for he doubted whether Vivar would want Louisa present, but nor did he know a tactful way of telling the girl that she was being too persistent. “I don’t know,” he said weakly.

“Of course I can dine with you! You don’t expect me to starve, do you? Tonight, Mr Sharpe, we shall look upon the jewels of an empire!” Louisa was enchanted with the whole idea. “If only Mr Bufford could see me now!”

Sharpe recalled that Mr Bufford was the ink-manufacturing Methodist who hoped to marry Louisa. “He would doubtless pray for you?”

“Most devoutly.” She laughed. “But it is cruel to mock him, Mr Sharpe, especially as I merely delay the time when I must accept his hand.” Her enthusiasm visibly evaporated in the face of reality. “I presume that once you have solved this mystery, you will go to Lisbon?”

“If there’s still a garrison there, yes.”

“And I shall have to go with you.” She sighed, as a child might sigh for the ending of a treat that had yet to begin. Then her face cleared, reverting to an expression of mischievous delight. “But you will ask Major Vivar’s permission for me to dine with the gentlemen? I promise to behave myself.”

To Sharpe’s surprise, Bias Vivar was not at all disconcerted by Louisa’s request. “Of course she may have supper with us.”

“She’s very curious about the strongbox,” Sharpe warned.

“Naturally, aren’t you?”

Thus Louisa was present that night when Sharpe at last discovered why Bias Vivar had lied to him, why the Cazadores had ridden to rescue him, and why the Spanish Major had journeyed so obsessively westward through the chaos of winter and defeat.

That night, too, Sharpe felt himself drawn ever more deeply into a world of mystery and weirdness; a world where the estadea drifted like flames in the night and sprites inhabited streams; Bias Vivar’s world.

Sharpe, Louisa, Vivar and Lieutenant Davila dined in a room punctuated by thick pillars which supported a barrel-vaulted ceiling. They were joined by the two priests. A fire was lit, blankets were spread on the floor, and dishes of millet, beans, fish, and mutton were served. One of the priests, Father Borellas, was a short, plump man who spoke passable English and seemed to enjoy practising it on Sharpe and Louisa. Borellas told them that he had a parish in Santiago de Compostela; a small, very poor parish. Pouring Sharpe wine and ever eager that the Rifleman’s plate did not empty, he seemed at pains to exaggerate his humble status. The other priest, he explained, was a rising man, a true hidalgo, and a future prince of the church.

That other priest was the sacrist of Santiago’s cathedral, a canon and a man who, from the very first, made it plain that he disliked and distrusted Lieutenant Richard Sharpe. If Father Alzaga spoke English then he did not betray that skill to Sharpe. Indeed, Alzaga barely acknowledged his presence, confining his conversation to Bias Vivar whom he perhaps perceived as his social equal. His hostility was so blatant, and so jarring, that Borellas felt constrained to explain it. “He does not love the English.”

“Many Spaniards don’t,” Louisa, who seemed unnaturally subdued by the evident hostility in the room, commented drily.

“You’re heretics, you see. And your army has run away.” The priest spoke in soft apology. “Politics, politics. I do not understand the politics. I am just a humble priest, Lieutenant.”

But Borellas was a humble priest whose knowledge of Santiago de Compostela’s alleyways and courtyards had saved the sacrist from the French. He told Sharpe how they had hidden in a plasterer’s yard while the French cavalrymen searched the houses. “They shot many people.” He crossed himself. “If a man had a fowling gun, they said he was an enemy. Bang. If someone protested at the killing, bang.” Borellas crumbled a piece of hard bread. “I did not think I would live to see an enemy army on Spanish soil. This is the nineteenth century, not the twelfth!”