Louisa turned away. “I wish…“ she began, but could not finish.

“It was very quick,” Sharpe said in wonderment.

There was a thump as the dead body was pushed off the chair, then a scraping sound as it was dragged off the platform. Louisa, no longer watching, did not speak till after the next shout from Father Alzaga signified that another traitor had met his end. “Do you think badly of me, Lieutenant?”

“For watching an execution?” Sharpe waited till the second body was released from the collar. “Why on earth should I? There are usually more women at a public hanging than men.”

“I don’t mean that.”

He looked down at her and was instantly embarrassed. “I would not think badly of you.”

“It was that night in the fortress.” There was a plea in Louisa’s voice, as if she desperately needed Sharpe to understand what had happened. “You remember? When Don Bias showed us the gonfalon and told us the tale of the last battle? I think I was trapped then.”

“Trapped?”

“I like his nonsense. I was brought up to hate Catholics; to despise them for their ignorance and fear them for their malevolence, but no one ever told me of their glory!”

“Glory?”

“I’m bored with plain chapels.” Louisa watched the executions as she spoke, though Sharpe doubted whether she was even aware that men died on the crude scaffold. “I’m bored with being told I’m a sinner and that my salvation depends only on my own dogged repentance. I want, just once, to see the hand of God come in all its glory to touch us. I want a miracle, Lieutenant. I want to feel so very small in front of that miracle, and that doesn’t make any sense to you at all, does it?”

Sharpe watched a man die. “You want the gonfalon.”

“No!” Louisa was almost scornful. “I do not believe for one small second, Lieutenant, that Santiago fetched that flag from heaven. I believe the gonfalon is merely an old banner that one of Don Bias’s ancestors carried into battle. The miracle lies in what the gonfalon does, not in what it is! If we survive today, Lieutenant, then we will have achieved a miracle. But we would not have done it, nor even tried to do it, without the gonfalon!” She paused, wanting some confirmation from Sharpe, but he said nothing. She shrugged ruefully. “You still think it’s all a nonsense, don’t you?”

Still Sharpe said nothing. For him the gonfalon, whether nonsensical or not, was an irrelevance. He had not come to Santiago de Compostela for the gonfalon. He had thought it was for this girl, but that dream was dead. Yet there was something else that had fetched him to this city. He had come to prove that a whoreson Sergeant, patted on the head by a patronizing army and made into a Quartermaster, could be as good, as God-damned bloody good, as any born officer. And that could not be proved without the help of the men in green jackets who waited for the enemy, and Sharpe was suddenly swept with an affection for those Riflemen. It was an affection he had not felt since he had been a Sergeant and had held the power of life and death over a company of redcoats.

A scream jerked his attention back to the plaza where a recalcitrant prisoner fought against the hands which pushed him up to the platform. The man’s fight was useless. He was forced to the garotte and strapped into the chair. The iron was bent around his neck and the collar’s tongue inserted into the slot where the screw would draw it tight. Alzaga made the sign of the cross. ‘Pax et misericordia et tranquillitasr

The prisoner’s yellow-frocked body jerked in a spasm as the collar gripped his neck to break his spine and choke the breath from him. His thin hands scrabbled at the arms of the chair, then the body slumped down. Sharpe supposed that swift death would have been the Count of Mouromorto’s fate if he had not stayed safe inside the French-held palace. “Why,” he asked Louisa suddenly, “did the Count stay in the city?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

Sharpe shrugged. “I’ve never seen him apart from de l’Eclin before. And that Colonel is a very clever man.”

“You’re clever, too,” Louisa said warmly. “How many soldiers know about caltrops?”

Vivar pushed through the crowd and climbed the steps. “The forges are being heated. By six o’clock you’ll have a few hundred of the things. Where do you want them?”

“Just send them to me,” Sharpe said.

“When you hear the bells next ring, you’ll know the gonfalon is unfurled. That’s when you can withdraw.”

“Make it soon!”

“Shortly after six,” Vivar said. “It can’t be sooner. Have you seen what the French did to the cathedral?”

“No.” But nor did Sharpe care. He only cared about a clever French Colonel, a chasseur of the Imperial Guard, then a single rifle shot sounded from the south-west, and he ran.

CHAPTER 17

The shot warned, not of de l’Eclin’s arrival, but of the approach of a Cazador patrol. Their horses were whipped to blood and lather. Vivar, who had returned with Sharpe to discover what had prompted the shot, translated the picquet’s message. “They saw French Dragoons.”

“Where?”

“About two leagues to the south-west.”

“How many?”

“Hundreds.” Vivar interpreted his patrol’s anxious report. “The Frenchmen chased them and they were lucky to escape.” He listened to more excited words. “And they saw the chasseur.” Vivar smiled. “So! We know where they are now. All we must do is hold them out of the city.”

“Yes.” Somehow the news that the enemy was at last approaching served to calm Sharpe’s apprehension. Most of that nervousness had been concentrated on Colonel de PEclin’s cleverness, but the prosaic knowledge of which road the enemy was on, and how faraway his forces were, made him seem a less fearsome opponent.

Vivar followed the tired horsemen through the gap in the barricade. “You hear the hammers?” he called back.

“Hammers?” Sharpe frowned, then did indeed hear the echoing ring of hammers on anvils. “Caltrops?”

Til send them to you, Lieutenant.“ Vivar started up the hill. ”Enjoy yourselves!“

Sharpe watched the Major walk away, then, on an impulse, he threaded the barricade and followed him up the cobbled street. “Sir?”

“Lieutenant.”

Sharpe made certain he was out of his men’s earshot.

“I want to apologize for what happened in the tavern, sir, I…“

“What tavern? I haven’t been in a tavern all day. Tomorrow, maybe, when we’re safely away from these bastards, we’ll find a tavern. But today?” Vivar’s face was entirely serious. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“I don’t like it when you call me ”sir“,” Vivar smiled. “It/ means you’re not being belligerent. I need you belligerent, Lieutenant. I need to know Frenchmen are going to die.”

They’ll die, sir.“

“You’ve put men in the houses?” Vivar meant the houses which lay along the road outside the city’s perimeter.

“Yes, sir.”

“They can’t defend against an attack from the west there, can they?”

“It won’t be from the west, sir. We’ll see them to the west first, but they’ll attack from the south.”

It was plain as a pikestaff that Vivar was unhappy with Sharpe’s deployment, but he also had faith in the Rifleman’s skills and that faith made him swallow his protest. “You’re a typical British soldier,” he said instead, “talking of taverns when there’s work to do.” He laughed and turned away.

Feeling shriven, Sharpe went back to the fortified hilltop where, behind a brushwood breastwork strung between tree stumps, two dozen Riflemen waited. They had a fine view from the hill-crest, but Sharpe had no doubt that, once the enemy committed himself to the attack, this strong picquet would go down to the houses where the rest of his men waited. The attack would be from the south, not the west. “You heard the Major!” he warned his Riflemen. “The bastards are coming! They’ll be here in another hour.”