Sharpe’s Honour: The Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813

Harper laughed. ‘Did you tell the bastards we didn’t have any ammunition?’

‘Always leave a man his pride, Patrick.’ Sharpe laughed. He had not laughed often since Christmas.

But now, with this first fight of the new campaign, he had survived the winter, had made his first victory of the spring, and he looked forward at last to a summer untrammelled by the griefs and tangles of the past. He was a soldier, he was marching to war, and the future looked bright.

CHAPTER TWO

On a day of sunshine, when the martins were busy making their nests in the old masonry of Burgos Castle, Major Pierre Ducos stared down from the ramparts.

He was hatless. The small west wind lifted his black hair as he stared into the castle’s courtyard. He fidgeted with the earpieces of his spectacles, wincing as the curved wire chafed his sore skin.

Six wagons were being dragged over the cobbles. The wagons were huge, lumbering fourgons, each pulled by eight oxen. Tarpaulins covered their loads, tarpaulins roped down and bulging with cargo. The tired oxen were prodded to the far end of the courtyard where the wagons, with much shouting and effort, were parked against the keep’s wall.

The wagons had an escort of cavalrymen who carried bright-bladed lances from which hung red and white pennants.

The garrison of the castle watched the wagons arrive. Above their heads, at the top of the keep, the tricolour of France flapped sullenly in the wind. The sentries stared out across the wide countryside, wondering whether the war would once again lap against this old Spanish fortress that guarded the Great Road from Paris to Madrid.

There was a rattle of hooves in the gateway and Pierre Ducos saw a bright, gleaming carriage come bursting into the courtyard. It was drawn by four white horses that were harnessed to the splinter-bar with silver trace chains. The carriage was driven too fast, but that, Ducos decided, was typical of the carriage’s owner.

She was known in Spain as La Puta Dorada, ‘the Golden Whore’.

Beside the carriage, where it stopped beneath Ducos’s gaze, was a General of cavalry. He was a youngish man, the very image of a French hero, whose gaudy uniform was stiffened to carry the weight of his medals. He leaped from his horse, waved the coachmen aside, and opened the carriage door and let down the steps with a flourish. He bowed.

Ducos, like a predator watching its victim, stared at the woman.

She was beautiful, this Golden Whore. Men who saw her for the first time hardly dared believe that any woman was so beautiful. Her skin was as white and clear as the white pearl shells of the Biscay beaches. Her hair was golden. An accident of lip and bone, of eye and skin had given her a look of innocence that made men wish to protect her. Pierre Ducos could think of few women so little in need of protection.

She was French. She was born Helene Leroux and she had served France since her sixteenth year. She had slept in the beds of the powerful and brought from their pillows the secrets of their nations, and when the Emperor had taken the decision to annex Spain to his Empire, he had sent Helene as his weapon.

She had pretended to be the daughter of victims of the Terror. She had married, on instructions from Paris, a man close to the Spanish King, a man privy to the secrets of Spain. She was still married, though her husband was far off, and she bore the title that he had given her. She was the Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba. She was lovely as a summer dream and as treacherous as sin. She was La Puta Dorada.

Ducos smiled. A hawk, high above its victim, might have felt the same satisfaction that the bespectacled French Major felt as he ordered his aide to send his compliments to the Marquesa with a request, which, from Pierre Ducos, was tantamount to an order, that her Ladyship come to his presence immediately.

La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba, smelling of rosewater and smiling sweetly, was ushered into Major Ducos’s bare room an hour later. He looked up from the table. ‘You’re late.’

She blew a kiss from her lace-gloved hand and walked past him to the bastion. ‘The country looks very pretty today. I asked your deliciously timid Lieutenant to fetch me some wine and grapes. We could eat out here, Pierre. Your skin needs some sun.’ She shaded her face with a parasol and smiled at him. ‘How are you, Pierre? Dancing the night away, as ever?’

He ignored her mockery. He stood in the doorway and his deep voice was harsh. ‘You have six wagons in this fortress.’

She pretended awe. ‘Has the Emperor made you his wagonmaster, Pierre? I must congratulate you.’

He took a folded piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket. ‘They are loaded with gold and silver plate, paintings, coins, tapestries, statues, carvings, and a wine cellar packed in sawdust. The total value is put at three hundred thousand Spanish dollars.’ He stared at her in silent triumph.

‘And some furniture, Pierre. Did your spy not find the furniture? Some of it’s rather valuable. A very fine Moorish couch inlaid with ivory, a japanned éscritoire that you’d like, and a mirrored bed.’

‘And doubtless the bed in which you persuaded General Verigny to guard your stolen property?’ General Verigny was the cavalry officer whose men had guarded the wagons on their journey from Salamanca.

‘Stolen, Pierre? It all belongs to me and my dear husband. I merely thought that while Wellington threatens to defeat us I would remove our few household belongings into France. Just think of me as a simple refugee. Ah!’ She smiled at Ducos’s aide who had brought a tray on which stood an opened bottle of champagne, a single glass, and a dish of white grapes. ‘Put it on the parapet, Lieutenant.’

Scowling, Ducos waited till his aide had gone. ‘The property is loaded on French army wagons.’

‘Condemned wagons, Pierre.’

‘Condemned by General Verigny’s Quartermaster.’

‘True.’ She smiled. ‘A dear man.’

‘And I will countermand his condemnation.’

She stared at him. She feared Pierre Ducos, though she would not give him the satisfaction of showing her fear. She recognised the threat that he offered her. She was running from Spain, running from the victory that Wellington threatened, and she was taking the wealth with her that would make her independent of whatever tragedies befell France. Now Ducos menaced that independence. She plucked a grape from the bunch. ‘Tell me, Pierre, do you order your breakfast with a threat? If you want something of me, why don’t you just ask? Or is it that you want to share my plunder?’

He scowled at that. No one could accuse Pierre Ducos of greed. He changed the subject. ‘I wanted to know how you felt about your husband returning from America.’

She laughed. ‘You want me to go back to his bed, Pierre? Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough for France?’

‘Does he still love you?’

‘Love? What an odd word from you, Pierre.’ She stared up at the tricolour. ‘He still wants me.’

‘He knows you’re a spy?’

‘I’m sure someone’s told him, aren’t you? But Luis doesn’t take women seriously, Pierre. He’d think I was a spy because I was unhappy without him. He thinks that once he’s back and I’m neatly tucked up beneath his glass dome then everything will be all right again. He can grunt all over me and then weep to his confessor. Men are so stupid.’

‘Or do you choose stupid men?’

‘What a boudoir conversation we are having.’ She smiled brilliantly at him. ‘So what do you want, Pierre?’

‘Why has your husband come home?’

‘He doesn’t like the climate in South America, Pierre. It gives him wind, he says. He suffers from wind. He once had a servant whipped who laughed when he broke it.’

‘He’s gone to Wellington.’

‘Of course he has! Luis is Spain’s new hero!’ She laughed. Her husband had led a Spanish army against rebels in the Banda Oriental, the area of land north of the River Plate. The rebels, seeing Spain humiliated by France, were trying to wrest their independence from the Spanish. To the Marquesa’s surprise; indeed, to the surprise of many people, the Marqués had defeated them. She flicked a grape pip over the parapet. ‘He must have outnumbered them by a hundred to one! Or perhaps he broke wind in their faces? Do you think that’s the answer, Pierre? A grape?’ She smiled at his silence and poured herself champagne. ‘Tell me why you summoned me here with your usual charm and consideration.’

‘Your husband wants you back?’

‘You know he does. I’m sure you intercept all his letters. His lust exceeds his patriotism.’

‘Then I want you to write a letter to him.’

She smiled. ‘Is that all? One letter? Do I get to keep my wagons then?’ She asked the question in a small girl’s voice.

He nodded.

She watched him, suspecting a bargain so easily made. Her voice was suddenly hard. ‘You’ll let me move my property to France for one letter?’

‘One letter.’