“We should wait,” Sharpe said. “Wait till they’ve marched south.”

“You think they won’t garrison Galicia?” Vivar was stubborn in his refusal to wait. He gestured for Davila and larper to join him. How long before the volunteers would >e hammered into shape?

Davila, no infantryman, looked at Harper. The Irishman hrugged. “It’s desperate, sir. Bloody desperate.”

Harper’s response was so unlike his usual cheerfulness hat it depressed even Vivar. The Spaniard only needed: hese volunteers brought to a minimum of efficiency before aunching his attack, but the Irishman’s gloom seemed to Dresage indefinite postponements, if not outright abandonment.

Harper cleared his throat. “But what I don’t understand, sir, is why you’re trying to turn them into soldiers at all.”

“To win a battle?” Sharpe suggested acidly.

“If it comes to a straight scrap between these lads and French Dragoons, we’re not going to win,” Harper paused, “begging your pardon, sir.” None of the officers spoke. His voice took on a note of authority, like a practical man demonstrating a simplicity to fools. “What’s the point in training them to fight an open battle when that’s not what you’re expecting? Why do they need to learn platoon fire? These lads have to fight in the streets, sir. That’s just gutter fighting, so it is, and I’ll wager they’re as good at that as any Frenchman. Get them into the city, then set them loose. I wouldn’t want to face the bastards.”

“Ten trained men can see off a rabble.” Sharpe, hearing his hopes of a postponement being dashed by Harper’s words, spoke harshly.

“Aye, but we’ve got two hundred trained men,” Harper said, “and we just push them to wherever there’s real trouble.”

“My God!” Vivar was suddenly elated. “Sergeant, you are right!”

“Nothing, sir.” Harper was obviously delighted at the praise.

“You are right!” Vivar slapped the Irishman’s shoulder. “I should have seen it. The people, not the army, will free Spain, so why turn the people into an army? And we forget, gentlemen, just what forces will be on our side in the city.

The citizens themselves! They’ll rise and fight for us, and we would never think of refusing their help because they’re not trained!“ Vivar’s optimism, released by Harper’s words, was in full flood. ”So, we can go soon. Gentlemen, we are ready!“

So now, Sharpe thought, even the training would be abandoned. An outnumbered rabble would march on a city. Vivar made it all sound so easy, like filling a pit with rats then letting in the terriers. Yet the pit was a city, and the rats were waiting.

Vivar’s volunteers might not be trained soldiers, but the Major insisted on swearing them into the service of the Spanish Crown. The priests conducted the ceremony, and each man’s name was solemnly recorded on paper as a duly sworn soldier of His Most Christian Majesty, Ferdinand VII. Now the French could have no excuse for treating Vivar’s volunteers as civilian criminals.

Yet soldiers needed uniforms, and there was no dyed cloth to make bright coats, nor any of the other accoutrements of a soldier like shakos, belts, pouches, or gaiters. But there was plenty of coarse brown homespun to be had, and from that humble material Vivar ordered simple tunics to be made. There was also some white linen, fetched from a nunnery twenty miles away, which was made into sashes. It was a very crude uniform, fastened with loops about bone buttons, but, if any rules of war could be applied to Vivar’s expedition, the brown tunics passed as soldiers’ coats.

The wives of the volunteers cut and sewed the brown tunics while Louisa Parker, high in the fortress, helped the Riflemen mend their green jackets. The coats were ragged, torn, threadbare and scorched, yet the girl proved to have an extraordinary skill with the needle. She took Sharpe’s green jacket and, in less than a day, made it seem almost new. “I even ironed out the bugs,” she said happily, and folded back a seam at the collar to prove that the lice had truly been exterminated by the stub of a broken sabre which she had used as a flatiron.

“Thank you.” Sharpe took the coat and saw how she had turned the collar, darned the sleeves, and patched the black facings. His trousers could not be restored to their original grey, so she had sewn patches of brown homespun over the worst rents. “You look like a harlequin, Lieutenant.”

“A fool?”

It was the evening of the day on which Harper had convinced Vivar of the uselessness of training the volunteers. Sharpe, as on previous evenings, walked the ramparts with Louisa. He prized these moments. As the fears of defeat grew on him, these snatched conversations were passages of hope. He liked to stare at the firelight reflected from her face, he liked the gentleness which sometimes softened her vivacity. She was gentle now as she leaned against the parapet. “Do you suppose my uncle and aunt are in Santiago?”

“Perhaps.”

Louisa was swathed in a Cazador’s scarlet cloak and wore a close fitting bonnet. “Perhaps my aunt won’t take me back. Perhaps she will be so scandalized by my terrible behaviour that I will be cast from chapel and home.”

“Is that likely?”

“I don’t know.” Louisa was wistful. “I sometimes suspect that’s what I want to happen.”

“Want?” Sharpe was surprised.

“To be cast adrift in the middle of the biggest adventure in the world? Why ever not?” Louisa laughed. “When I was a child, Lieutenant, I was told it was perilous to cross the village green in case the gypsies took me. And if soldiers ever appeared in the village—‘ she shook her head to demonstrate the enormity of such an occasion’s danger. ”Now I’m in the middle of a war and accompanied only by soldiers!“ She smiled at the predicament, then gave Sharpe a look which mingled curiosity and warmth. ”Don Bias says you’re the best soldier he’s ever known.“

Sharpe thought it odd that she used Vivar’s Christian name, then supposed it was the polite usage of an hidalgo. ‘He exaggerates.“

“What he actually said, ”Louisa spoke more slowly, and Sharpe sensed she was delivering a message to him, “was that if you had more confidence in yourself, you’d be the best. I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that?” He wondered if the criticism were true and Louisa, mistaking his silence for hurt, apologized.

“I’m sure it is true,” Sharpe said hastily.

“Do you like being a soldier?”

“I always dreamed of having a farm. God knows why, because I know nothing of the business. I’d probably plant the turnips upside down.” He stared at the campfires in the deep valley; tiny sparks of warmth and light in an immensity of cold darkness. “I imagined I’d have a couple of horses in a stable, a stream to fish,” he paused, shrugged, “children.”

Louisa smiled. “I used to dream of living in a great castle. There would be secret passages, dungeons, and mysterious horsemen bringing messages in the night. I think I should have preferred to have lived in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Catholic priests in the shrubbery and Spaniards in the channel? Except those old enemies are now our friends, aren’t they?”

“Even the priests?”

“They aren’t the ogres I thought they were.” She was silent for a second. “But if you’re brought up too firmly in one persuasion then you’re bound to be curious about the enemy, are you not? And we English were always taught to hate Catholics.”

“I wasn’t.”

“But you know what I mean. Aren’t you curious about the French?”

“Not really.”

Louisa frowned. “I find myself curious about the Catholics. I even find myself with a most unProtestant affection for them now. I’m sure Mr Bufford would be scandalized.”

“Will he ever know?” Sharpe asked.

Louisa shrugged. “I shall have to describe my adventures to him, shall I not? And I shall have to confess that the Inquisition didn’t torture me or try to burn me at the stake.” She stared into the night. “One day this will all seem like a dream?”