even if he had then it made no sense for him to be treated this way. He thought of La Marquesa, imagining her in the arms of her General, her head on his chest, her hair golden against his skin. He tried to remember the night in the inn, but it seemed unreal. All that seemed real was this cell, his hurts, and the thirst. He found a wet patch of wall and he licked the stone for moisture. The stench in the cell was foul. Night-soil had been thrown in here, or left by other prisoners, and each breath he took was foetid.
Time passed and passed, measured only by the dripping of water onto stone. They wanted him to despair, to be dragged down by this foul, stinking place, and he fought it by trying to remember the names of every man who had served in his Company since the beginning of the war in Spain, and when he had done that he tried to call aloud the muster-roll of the very first Company he had joined in the army. He paced the cell against the cold, back and forth, his boots splashing on the floor, and sometimes, when the smell was too much, he put his mouth against the spyhole in the door and sucked deep breaths.
He cursed himself for this capture, for oversleeping in the dawn, for accepting the challenge of a duel.
He sensed that the day had passed, that night had come, though the glow at the door did not change. He propped himself in a corner, squatting on his heels with his back to the wall, and tried to sleep. Four nights ago he had been in a real bed, between sheets, with La Marquesa warm against him and over him and he tried to sleep, jerked awake, and listened to the rats outside and the drip of water. He shivered.
He sensed that the prisoner put in this cell was supposed to lie down. They wanted the prisoner here to soil his clothes and be stained with faeces. He would not oblige them.
Three men came for him eventually, two armed with bayonet-tipped muskets and the third the same great hulk of a Sergeant who had first struck Sharpe. The man was huge. He appeared to have no neck and his arms bulged the uniform sleeves with muscle. The Sergeant shouted at him in French, then laughed at the smell of the room.
Sharpe was tired, desperately so, and the thirst had half closed his throat. He stumbled in the sudden light of the flaming torch held by one of his guards and the Sergeant pushed him so he fell, and then hauled him up with a strength that took Sharpe’s weight easily.
They marched him down the corridor, up the stairs, along a second corridor and up more stairs. There was daylight here, coming through small windows that looked into the keep’s central courtyard, and then the Sergeant pushed Sharpe into a room where a fourth soldier waited.
It was a room about twelve feet square. One window, high and barred, let a grey, unhappy light onto the stone of the walls and floor. A single table was in the room, behind it a chair. The guards positioned themselves on either side of him. The Sergeant, the only unarmed Frenchman, was one of the two men on Sharpe’s right. Whenever Sharpe tried to lean against the wall he was shouted at, pulled forward, and then there would be silence again.
They waited. The two men immediately closest to Sharpe faced him with bayonets. Sharpe closed his eyes. He swayed slightly with tiredness. His head throbbed.
The door opened.
Sharpe opened his eyes and understood.
Pierre Ducos stepped into the room. For a second Sharpe did not recognise the small, pock-skinned man with the round spectacles, and then the Christmas meeting in the Gateway of God rushed back to him. Major Pierre Ducos, who had been described to Sharpe as a dangerous man, a clever man, a man whose hands stank with the slime of politics, was responsible for this treatment, for the filthy cell, for what, Sharpe knew, was about to happen.
Ducos wrinkled his nose then stepped almost delicately behind the table and sat. A soldier followed him and put Sharpe’s sword on the table, then his telescope, then some papers. Not a word was said until the soldier had gone. Ducos fussily aligned the edges of the papers before looking up at the English officer. ‘You slept well?’
Sharpe ignored the question. ‘I am an officer of His Britannic Majesty’s army, and I demand the treatment proper to my rank.’ His voice came out as a dry croak.
Ducos frowned. ‘You’re wasting my time.’ His voice was deep, as if it belonged to a much huger man.
‘I am an officer in His Britannic…’
He stopped because the huge Sergeant, on a nod from Ducos, had turned and planted one vast fist into Sharpe’s stomach, doubling him over, driving the wind from him.
Ducos waited until Sharpe was upright again, until his breathing was normal, then smiled. ‘I believe, Mr Sharpe, that you are not an officer. By a Court-Martial decision, of which I have a record here,’ he tapped the papers, ‘you were dismissed from the army. In brief you are a civilian, though masquerading as a Major Vaughn. Am I right?’
Sharpe said nothing. Ducos unhooked the spectacles from his ears, breathed on them, and began to polish their round lenses with a silk handkerchief he took from his sleeve. ‘I believe you are a spy, Mr Sharpe.’
‘I am an officer…’
‘Do stop being tedious. We have already ascertained that you were cashiered. You wear a uniform to which you are not entitled, carry a name not your own, and by your own admission to General Verigny you were trying to abduct a woman in the hope that she could provide information.’ He carefully hooked the wire spectacle frames onto his ears and smiled unpleasantly at Sharpe. ‘It sounds like spying to me. Did Wellington think that by faking your execution you would become invisible?’ He laughed at his jest. ‘I will admit, Mr Sharpe, that it fooled me. I could hardly credit it when I saw you in our courtyard!’ He smiled triumphantly, then picked up the top sheet of paper. ‘It seems from what that fool Verigny has told me that you rescued La Marquesa from the convent. Is that true?’
Sharpe said nothing. Ducos sighed. ‘I know you did, Mr Sharpe. It was inconvenient of you, to say the least. Why did you go to such lengths to rescue her?’
‘I wanted to go to bed with her.’
Ducos leaned back. ‘You’re being tiresome and my time is too valuable to listen to your filth. I ask you again, why did you rescue her?’
Sharpe repeated the answer.
Ducos looked at the Sergeant and nodded.
The Sergeant turned stolidly, his face expressionless, glanced up and down Sharpe and then brought his right fist hard again at the Rifleman’s stomach. Sharpe moved from the blow, his own hand going for the Sergeant’s eyes, but a bayonet chopped down on his arm and the Sergeant’s left fist crashed into his face, banging his head back on the stone wall, then the right fist was in his belly, doubling him over, and suddenly the Sergeant, as woodenly as he had turned to Sharpe, turned away and slammed to attention.
Ducos was frowning. He watched Sharpe straighten up. Blood was coming from the Rifleman’s nose. Sharpe leaned on the wall and this time no one stopped him. The Frenchman shook his head. ‘I do dislike violence, Major, it upsets me. It has its uses, I fear, and I think you now understand that. Why did you rescue La Marquesa?’
Sharpe gave the same answer.
This time he let himself be hit. He had only one weapon, and he used it. He pretended to be weaker than he was. He fell to the floor, groaning, and the Sergeant disdainfully pulled him up by his jacket collar and threw him against the wall. The Sergeant smiled in victory as he turned back to Ducos.
‘Why did you rescue La Marquesa?’
‘I
