"A generous thought, Major," Sarsfield said.

Hogan stared down at Kiely's shroud. "The poor man. I hear he was hoping to marry the Lady Juanita?"

"They spoke of it," Sarsfield said drily, his tone implying his disapproval of the match.

"The lady's doubtless in mourning," Hogan said, then put his hat back on. "Or maybe she's not mourning at all? You've heard that she's gone back to the French? Captain Sharpe let her go. He's a fool for women, that man, but the Lady Juanita can easily make a fool of men. She did of poor Kiely here, did she not?" Hogan paused as a sneeze gathered and exploded. "Bless me," he said, wiping his nose and eyes with a vast red handkerchief. "And what a terrible woman she was," he went on. "Saying she was going to marry Kiely, and all the while she was committing adultery and fornication with Brigadier Guy Loup. Is fornication a mere venial sin these days?"

"Fornication, Major, is a mortal sin." Sarsfield smiled. "As I suspect you know only too well."

"Crying out to heaven for revenge, is it?" Hogan returned the smile, then looked back to the grave. Bees hummed in the orchard blossoms above Hogan's head. "But what about fornicating with the enemy, Father?" he asked. "Isn't that a worse sin?"

Sarsfield took the scapular from around his neck, kissed it, then carefully folded the strip of cloth. "Why are you so worried for the Dona Juanita's soul, Major?" he asked.

Hogan still looked down at the dead man's coarse shroud. "I'd rather worry about his poor soul. Do you think it was discovering that his lady was humping a Frog that killed him?"

Sarsfield flinched at Hogan's crudity. "If he did discover that, Major, then it could hardly have added to his happiness. But he was not a man who knew much happiness, and he rejected the hand of the church."

"And what could the church have done? Changed the whore's nature?" Hogan asked. "And don't tell me that Dona Juanita de Elia is not a spy, Father, for I know she is and you know the selfsame thing."

"I do?" Sarsfield frowned in puzzlement.

"You do, Father, you do, and God forgive you for it. Juanita is a whore and a spy, and a better whore, I think, than she is a spy. But she was the only person available for you, isn't that so? Doubtless you'd have preferred someone less flamboyant, but what choice did you have? Or was it Major Ducos who made the choice? But it was a bad choice, a very bad choice. Juanita failed you, Father. We found her when she was trying to bring you a whole lot of these." Hogan reached into his tail pocket and produced one of the counterfeit newspapers that Sharpe had discovered in San Cristobal. "They were wrapped in sheets of sacred music, Father, and I thought to myself, why would they do that? Why church music? Why not other newspapers? But, of course, if she was stopped and given a cursory search then who would think it odd that she was carrying a pile of psalms to a man of God?"

Sarsfield glanced at the newspaper, but did not take it. "I think, maybe," he said carefully, "that grief has deranged your mind."

Hogan laughed. "Grief for Kiely? Hardly, Father. What might have deranged me is all the work I've been having to do in these last few days. I've been reading my correspondence, Father, and it comes from all sorts of strange places. Some from Madrid, some from Paris, some even from London. Would you like to hear what I've learned?"

Father Sarsfield was fidgeting with the scapular, folding and refolding the embroidered strip of cloth. "If you insist," he said guardedly.

Hogan smiled. "Oh, I do, Father. For I've been thinking about this fellow, Ducos, and how clever everyone says he is, but what really worries me is that he's put another clever fellow behind our lines, and I've been hurting my mind wondering just who that new clever fellow might be. And I was also wondering, you see, just why it was that the first newspapers to arrive in the Irish regiments were supposed to be from Philadelphia. Very odd choice that. Am I losing you?"

"Go on," Sarsfield said. The scapular had come loose and he was meticulously folding it again.

"I've never been to Philadelphia," Hogan said, "though I hear it's a fine city. Would you like a pinch of snuff, Father?"

Sarsfield did not answer. He just watched Hogan and went on folding the cloth.

"Why Philadelphia?" Hogan asked. "Then I remembered! Actually I didn't remember at all; a man in London sent me a reminder. They remember these things in London. They have them all written down in a great big book, and one of the things written in that great big book is that it was in Philadelphia that Wolfe Tone got his letter of introduction to the French government. And it was there, too, that he met a passionate priest called Father Mallon. Mallon was more of a soldier than a priest and he was doing his best to raise a regiment of volunteers to fight the British, but he wasn't having a whole lot of success so he threw his lot in with Tone instead. Tone was a Protestant, wasn't he? And he never did have much fondness for priests, but he liked Mallon well enough because Mallon was an Irish patriot before he was a priest. And I think Mallon became Tone's friend as well, for he stayed with Tone every step of the way after that first meeting in Philadelphia. He went to Paris with Tone, raised the volunteers with Tone, then sailed to Ireland with Tone. Sailed all the way into Lough Swilly. That was in 1798, Father, in case you'd forgotten, and no one has seen Mallon from that day to this. Poor Tone was captured and the redcoats were all over Ireland looking for Father Mallon, but there's not been a sight nor smell of the man. Are you sure you won't have a pinch of snuff? It's Irish Blackguard and hard to come by."

"I would rather have a cigar, if you have one," Sarsfield said calmly.

"I don't, Father, but you should try the snuff one day. It's a grand specific against the fever, or so my mother always said. Now where was I? Oh yes, with poor Father Mallon on the run from the British. It's my belief he got back to France, and I think from there he was sent to Spain. The French couldn't use him against the English, at least not until the English had forgotten the events of 98, but Mallon must have been useful in Spain. I suspect he met the old Lady Kiely in Madrid. I hear she was a fierce old witch! Lived for the church and for Ireland, even though she saw too much of the one and had never seen the other. D'you think Mallon used her patronage as he spied on the Spanish for Bonaparte? I suspect so, but then the French took over the Spanish throne and someone must have been wondering where Father Mallon could be more usefully employed, and I suspect Father Mallon pleaded with his French masters to be employed against the real enemy. After all, who among the British would remember Father Mallon from 98? His hair will be white by now, he'll be a changed man. Maybe he's put on weight like me." Hogan patted his belly and smiled.

Father Sarsfield frowned at the scapular. He seemed surprised that he was still holding the vestment and so he carefully stowed it in the haversack slung from his shoulder, then just as carefully brought out a small pistol. "Father Mallon might be a changed man," he said as he opened the frizzen to check that the gun was primed, "but I would like to think that if he was still alive he would be a patriot."

"I imagine he is," Hogan said, apparently unworried by the pistol. "A man like Mallon? His loyalty won't change as much as his hair and belly."

Sarsfield frowned at Hogan. "And you're not a patriot, Major?"

"I like to think so."

"Yet you fight for Britain."

Hogan shrugged. The priest's pistol was loaded and primed, but for the moment it hung loose in Sarsfield's hand. Hogan had played a game with the priest, a game he had expected to win, but this proof of his victory was not giving the Major any pleasure. Indeed, as the realization of his triumph sank in, Hogan's mood became ever bleaker. "I worry about allegiance," Hogan said, "I surely do. I lie awake sometimes and wonder whether I'm right in thinking that what's best for Ireland is to be a part of Britain, but I do know one thing, Father, which is that I don't want to be ruled by Bonaparte. I think maybe I'm not so brave a man as Wolfe Tone, but nor did I ever agree with his ideas. You do, Father, and I salute you for it, but that isn't why you're going to have to die. " The reason you're going to have to die, Father, is not because you fight for Ireland, but because you fight for Napoleon. The distinction is fatal."