Sharpe opened his telescope to inspect the horsemen who came slowly from the south. He swore softly. They were Spaniards. He recognized one of Vivar’s Sergeants who had white side-whiskers. The mud on the horses’ legs and the picks strapped to the Cazadores’ saddles showed that they were a returning bridge-breaking party.

“Damn. Bloody hell and bloody damnation!” He had been wrong, utterly wrong! The Spaniards who approached from the south had just ridden clean through an area which should have been rife with de l’Eclin’s seven hundred missing men. Sharpe had been too clever by half! “Fetch the men out of the houses, Sergeant.”

Harper, relieved at the order, ran down the slope and Sharpe turned his glass back to the west. Just as he settled the long tube and adjusted the barrels to focus the image, Colonel de l’Eclin drew his sabre and Sharpe was momentarily dazzled by the reflection of sunlight from the curved steel.

He blinked the brightness away, remembering the moment when de l’Eclin had so nearly cut him down by the bridge. It seemed so long ago now; before he had met Vivar and Louisa. Sharpe remembered the black horse charging and his astonishment as the superbly trained beast had swerved right to allow the Colonel to hack down with a left-handed stroke. A man did not expect to face a cack-handed swordsman, and perhaps that explained why so many soldiers were superstitious of fighting against a left-handed opponent.

Sharpe peered through the telescope again. Colonel de l’Eclin was resting his curved blade on his saddle pommel, waiting. The horses behind him moved restlessly. The sun was sinking and reddening. Soon a flag would be unfurled in Santiago’s cathedral, and the faithful would plead with a dead saint to come to their country’s aid. Meanwhile, a soldier of the Emperor’s favourite elite waited for the charge that would break the city’s defences. The feint and the attack, Sharpe realized, would both come from the west. These three hundred horsemen would draw the defenders‘

fire while the rest of the Dragoons, hidden in the dead ground, prepared a sudden lunge that would burst from the fog of powder smoke like a thunderbolt.

Harper was urging the Riflemen uphill. “Where do you want them, sir?”

But Sharpe did not answer. He was watching Colonel de l’Eclin who cut the sabre in flashing practice strokes, as though he was bored. The sun’s reflection from the gleaming blade provoked a ragged and inaccurate volley from the city’s defenders. De l’Eclin ignored it. He was waiting for the sun to become a weapon of awesome power, dazzling the defenders, and that moment was very close.

“Sir?” Harper insisted.

But still Sharpe did not answer for, at that very instant, he had a new certainty. He knew at last what the French planned. He had been wrong about the southern attack, but if he was wrong now then the city, the gonfalon, and all his own men would be lost. All would be lost. He felt the temptation to ignore the new knowledge, but to hesitate was fatal and the decision must be taken. He slammed the telescope shut and pushed it into his pocket. He kicked the sacks of caltrops. “Bring them, and follow me. All of you!”

“On your feet!” Harper bawled at the Riflemen.

Sharpe began to run. “Follow me! Hurry! Come on!” He cursed himself for not seeing the truth earlier. It was so God-damned simple! Why had the French moved the supplies into the palace? And why had Colonel Coursot stacked grain and hay in the cellars? A cellar was no place to store forage a day or so before it was to be distributed! And there was the business of a thousand horsemen. Even a soldier as experienced as Harper had stared at the Dragoons and been impressed by their numbers. Men often saw a horde where there was only a small force, and how much easier it was for a civilian to make that mistake in the middle of the night. Sharpe ran even harder. “Come on! Hurry!”

For the city was almost lost.

The cathedral’s nave was plainer than the exterior of the building might suggest, but the plainness did not detract from the magnificence of its pillared height. Beyond the long nave, the domed transepts, and the screen was a sanctuary as sumptuous as any in Christendom, and still sumptuous even though the French had torn away the silverwork, wrenched down the statues, and ripped the triptychs from their frames. Behind the altar was an empty void, the space of God, that this dusk was lit by the scarlet rays of the setting sun which slashed through the cathedral’s dusty and smoky interior.

Beneath the altar and above the crypt where the saint lay buried, the opened strongbox stood before the altar.

From the top of the dome which covered the meeting of transepts and aisle, a great silver bowl hung from ropes. It smoked with incense that filled the huge church with a sweet and musty smell. A thousand candles added their smoke to make the shrine a place of mystery, scent, shadows and hope; a place for a miracle.

Two hundred people knelt in the transepts. There were priests and soldiers, monks and merchants, scholars and friars; the men who could carry a message throughout Spain that Santiago Matamoros lived. They would tell an invaded people that the due obeisance had been made, the proper words said, and that the great gonfalon, which had once flared above the massacre of pagans, had been unfurled again.

It was as if Drake’s Drum was at last beaten, or the soil of Avalon erupted in a violent darkness to release a band of woken knights, or as if Charlemagne, roused from his sleep of centuries, drew his battle-sword again to drive away the enemies of Christ. All nations had their legend, and this night, in the great ringing vault of the cathedral, Spain’s legend would be stirred from a thousand years of silence. The candles shivered in a cold wind as the robed priests bowed before the altar.

As they bowed, one of the cathedral’s western doors banged open as though a violent wind had snatched the wood and crashed it against stone. Feet pounded on paving. The soldiers who knelt before the altar twisted towards the sound and reached for their swords. Louisa, kneeling veiled beside Bias Vivar, gasped. The priests checked their words to see who had dared to interrupt the invocations.

Vivar stood. Sharpe had burst into the cathedral and now appeared beneath the Gate of Glory. The Spaniard ran down the long nave. “Why are you here?” There was outrage in his voice.

Sharpe, wild-eyed, did not reply. He stared about the cathedral as though expecting to find enemies. He saw none, and turned back to the western doors.

Vivar reached out a hand to stop the Rifleman. “Wh| aren’t you at the barricades?” /

“He was holding his sabre in his right hand!” Sharpe said. “Don’t you understand? His right hand! Colonel de l’Eclin’s left-handed!”

Vivar stared uncomprehendingly. “What are you talking about?”

“There are three hundred of the bastards out there,” Sharpe’s voice rose to echo from the tall stone of the nave, “only three hundred! And none to the south. So where are the rest? Did you look behind the sacks in the cellars?”

Vivar said nothing. He did not need to.

“Did you search the cellars?” Sharpe insisted.

“No.”

“That’s why your brother’s there! That’s why they wanted a truce! That’s why they saved the supplies! That’s why they had the place prepared! Don’t you see? De l’Eclin is in the palace! He’s been there all day, laughing at us! And he’s coming here!”

“No!” Vivar’s tone did not imply disagreement, only horror.

“Yes!” Sharpe pulled himself from Vivar’s grasp. He ran back through the Gate of Glory, oblivious of its majesty, and tore open the cathedral’s outer doors.

A shout of triumph and a trumpet’s peal of victory turned him back. Sharpe saw, dim through the smoke and incense, a flag unfurl. Not an old, threadbare, motheaten flag which crumbled to the air, but a new and glorious white banner of shining silk, crossed with red; the gonfalon of Santiago, and as it spread, so the bells began to ring.