“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t you ”yes sir“ me.” Sharpe saw Wellesley watching with an amused eye. Crauford pushed a bottle of red wine towards Sharpe. “You lost damn near half your company! If you hadn’t come back with the Eagle you would have deserved to have been broken right back to private again. Aren’t I right?”

Sharpe inclined his head. “You are, sir.”

Crauford leaned back, satisfied, and raised his glass to the Rifleman. “But it was damn well done, all the same.”

There was laughter round the table. Lawford, a confection of silver and lace, and confirmed, at least temporarily, as Commanding Officer of the South Essex, leaned back and put two more opened bottles on the table. “How’s the excellent Sergeant Harper?”

Sharpe smiled. “Recovering, sir.”

“Was he wounded badly?” Hill leaned forward into the candlelight, his round, farmer’s face suffused with concern. Sharpe shook his head. “No, sir. The Sergeant’s mess of the First Battalion were kind enough to celebrate with him. I believe he proposed the theory that one man from Donegal could drink as much as any three Englishmen.”

Hogan slapped the table. The Irish Engineer was cheerfully drunk and he raised his glass to Wellesley. “We Irishmen are never beaten. Isn’t that so, sir?”

Wellesley raised his eyebrows. He had drunk even less than Sharpe. “I never count myself an Irishman, Captain Hogan, though perhaps I share that characteristic with them.”

“Damn that, sir,” Crauford growled. “I’ve heard you say that just because a man is born in a stable it doesn’t make him into a horse!”

There was more laughter. Sharpe leaned back and listened to the talk round the table and let the meal rest heavy in his stomach. The servants were bringing in brandy and cigars, which meant that the evening would soon be over, but he had enjoyed it. He was never comfortable at formal dinners; he had not been born to them, had been to few of them, but these men had made him feel at home and pretended not to notice when he waited for them to pick up their cutlery so that he would know which was the correct pair to use for each course. He had told once more the story of how he and Patrick Harper had hacked their way through the enemy line, of the death of Denny, and how they had been swept along with the fugitives before hacking their way clear with sword and axe.

He sipped his wine, wriggled his toes in the new shoes, and reflected again on his fortune. He remembered his despondency before the battle, of feeling that the promises could not be kept, yet it had all happened. Perhaps he really was lucky, as his men said, but he wished he knew how to preserve that luck. He remembered Gibbons’ falling body, the bayonet deep in his back, and the sight of Harper back from his bird-watching just in time to stop the sabre stabbing down into Sharpe. The next day all traces of the crime had been burned away. The dead, Gibbons among them, had been stacked in naked piles, and the living had thrust wooden faggots deep into the corpses and set fire to them. There had been far too many for burial, and for two days the fires were fed with more wood and the stench hung over the town until the ashes were scattered across the Portina valley and the only signs of the battle were the discarded equipment no-one could be bothered to retrieve and the scorched grass where the flames had roasted the wounded.

“Sharpe?”

He started. Someone had spoken his name, and he had missed what was said. “Sir? I’m sorry.”

Wellesley was smiling at him. “Captain Hogan was saying that you’ve been improving Anglo-Portuguese relations?”

Sharpe glanced at Hogan, who raised his eyebrows impishly. All week the Irishman had been determinedly cheerful about Josefina, and Sharpe, with three Generals watching him, had no option but to smile and give a modest shrug.

“Fortune favours the brave, eh, Sharpe?” Hill grinned.

“Yes, sir.”

He leaned back and let the conversation flow on. He missed her. It was only just over two weeks since the night he had followed her from the inn courtyard into the darkness by the stream, and since then he had spent only five nights with her. And now there would be no more. He had known as soon as he had reached Talavera, on the morning after the battle, and she had kissed him and smiled at him while in the background Agostino packed the leather saddlebags and folded up the dresses he had not had time to see her wear. She had walked with him through the town, clinging onto his elbow, looking up into his face as though she were a child. “It would never have lasted, Richard.”

“I know.” He believed otherwise.

“Do you?”

She wanted him to say goodbye gracefully, and it was the least he could do. He told her about Gibbons; about the final look before the bayonet took its revenge. She held his arm tight. “I’m sorry, Richard.”

“For Gibbons?”

“No. That you had to do it. It was my fault, I was a fool.”

“No.” It was strange, he thought, how when lovers say goodbye they take all the blame. “It wasn’t your fault. I promised to protect you. I didn’t.”

They walked into a small, sunlit square and stared at a convent which formed one side of the plaza. Fifteen hundred British wounded were in the building, and the army surgeons were working on the first floor. Screams came clearly from the windows and, with them, a grisly flow of severed limbs that piled up beside a tree: an ever growing heap of arms and legs that was guarded by two bored privates whose job was to chase away the hungry dogs from the mangled flesh. Sharpe shivered at the sight and prayed the soldiers’ prayer; that he would be delivered from the surgeons with their serrated blades and blood-stiff aprons.

Josefina had plucked his elbow and they turned away from the convent. “I have a present for you.”

He looked down at her. “I have nothing for you.”

She seemed embarrassed. “You owe Mr Hogan twenty guineas?”

“You’re not giving me money!” He let his anger show.

Josefina shook her head. “I’ve already paid him. Don’t be angry!” He had tried to pull away but she clung on. “There’s nothing you can do about it, Richard. I paid him. You kept pretending you had enough money, but I knew you were borrowing.” She gave him a tiny paper packet and did not look at him because she knew he was upset.

Inside the paper was a ring, made of silver, and on the boss was engraved an eagle. Not a French eagle, holding a thunderbolt, but an eagle all the same. She looked up at him, pleased at his expression. “I bought it in Oropesa. For you.”

Sharpe had not known what to say. He had stammered his thanks and now, sitting with the Generals, he let his fingers feel the silver ring. They had walked back to the house and, waiting outside, there had been a cavalry officer with two spare horses. “Is that him?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s rich?”

She had smiled. “Very. He’s a good man, Richard. You’d like him.”

Sharpe had laughed. “I doubt it.” He wanted to tell her how much he would not like Claud Hardy, with his stupid sounding name and his rich uniform and his thoroughbred horses. The Dragoon had watched them as she looked up at Sharpe.

“I can’t stay with the army, Richard.”So you’re going back to Lisbon?“

She nodded. “We’re not going to Madrid, are we?” He shook his head. “Well, it has to be Lisbon.” She smiled at him. “He has a house in Belem, a big one. I’m sorry.”Don’t be.“

“I can’t follow an army, Richard.” She was pleading for understanding.

“I know. But armies follow you, yes?” It was a clumsy attempt at gallantry, and it had pleased her, but now it was time to part and he wanted her to stay. He did not know what to say. “Josefina? I’m sorry.”

She touched his arm arid there was the gleam of tears in her eyes. She blinked them away and forced herself to sound happy. “One day, Richard, you will fall in love with the right girl? You promise?”