Sharpe’s Gold: The Destruction of Almeida, August 1810

‘Top of the castle, Sharpe. Can’t miss it, right by the telegraph. Your lads can get breakfast in the castle.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Sharpe climbed the winding stairs of the mast-topped turret and, as he came into the early sunlight, understood Cox’s reference to nearness to God. Beyond the wooden telegraph with its four motionless bladders, identical to the arrangement in Celorico, Sharpe saw a small man on his knees, an open Bible lying next to a telescope at his side. Sharpe coughed and the small man opened a fierce, battling eye.

‘Yes?’

‘Sharpe, sir. South Essex.’

Kearsey nodded, shut the eye, and went back to his prayers, his lips moving at double speed until he had finished. Then he took a deep breath, smiled at the sky as if his duty were done, and turned an abruptly fierce expression on Sharpe. ‘Kearsey.’ He stood up, his spurs clicking on the stones. The cavalryman was a foot shorter than Sharpe, but he seemed to compensate for his lack of height with a look of Cromwellian fervour and rectitude. ‘Pleased to meet you, Sharpe.’ His voice was gruff and he did not sound in the least pleased. ‘Heard about Talavera, of course. Well done.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Kearsey had succeeded in making the compliment sound as if it had come from a man who had personally captured two or three dozen Eagles and was encouraging an apprentice. The Major closed his Bible.

‘Do you pray, Sharpe?’

‘No, sir.’

‘A Christian?’

It seemed a strange conversation to be having on the verge of losing the whole war, but Sharpe knew of other officers like this who carried their faith to war like an extraordinary weapon.

‘I suppose so, sir.’

Kearsey snorted. ‘Don’t suppose! Either you’re washed in the blood of the Lamb or not. I’ll talk to you later about it.’

‘Yes, sir. Something to look forward to.’

Kearsey glared at Sharpe, but decided to believe him. ‘Glad you’re here, Sharpe. We can get going. You know what we’re doing?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘One day’s march to Casatejada, pick up the gold, escort it back to British lines, and send it on its way. Clear?’

‘No, sir.’

Kearsey had already started walking towards the staircase, and, hearing Sharpe’s words, he stopped abruptly, swivelled, and looked up at the Rifleman. The Major was wearing a long, black cloak, and in the first light he looked like a malevolent small bat.

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘Where the gold is, who it belongs to, how we get it out, where it’s going, do the enemy know, why us and not cavalry, and most of all, sir, what it’s going to be used for.’

‘Used for?’ Kearsey looked puzzled. ‘Used for? None of your business, Sharpe.’

‘So I understand, sir.’

Kearsey was walking back to the battlement. ‘Used for! It’s Spanish gold. They can do what they like with it. They can buy more gaudy statues for their Romish churches, if they want to, but they won’t.’ He started barking, and Sharpe realized, after a moment’s panic, that the Major was laughing. ‘They’ll buy guns, Sharpe, to kill the French.’

‘I thought the gold was for us, sir. The British.’

Kearsey sounded like a dog coughing, Sharpe decided, and he watched as Kearsey almost doubled over with his strange laugh. ‘Forgive me, Sharpe. For us? What a strange idea. It’s Spanish gold, belongs to them. Not for us at all! Oh, no! We’re just delivering it safely to Lisbon and the Royal Navy will ship it down to Cádiz.’ Kearsey started his strange barking again, repeating to himself, ‘For us! For us!’

Sharpe decided it was not the time, or place, to enlighten the Major. It did not matter much what Kearsey thought, as long as the gold was taken safely back over the river Coa. ‘Where is it now, sir?’

‘I told you. Casatejada.’ Kearsey bristled at Sharpe, as though he resented giving away precious information, but then he seemed to relent and sat on the edge of the telegraph platform and riffled the pages of his Bible as he talked. ‘It’s Spanish gold. Sent by the government to Salamanca to pay the army. The army gets defeated, remember? So the Spaniards have a problem. Lot of money in the middle of nowhere, no army, and the countryside crawling with the French. Luckily a good man got hold of the gold, told me, and I came up with the solution.’

‘The Royal Navy.’

‘Precisely! We send the gold back to the government in Cádiz.’

‘Who’s the “good man”, sir?’

‘Ah. Cesar Moreno. A fine man, Sharpe. He leads a guerrilla band. He brought the gold from Salamanca.’

‘How much, sir?’

‘Sixteen thousand coins.’

The amount meant nothing to Sharpe. It depended how much each coin weighed. ‘Why doesn’t Moreno bring it over the border, sir?’

Kearsey stroked his grey moustache, twitched at his cloak, and seemed unsettled by the question. He looked fiercely at Sharpe, as if weighing up whether to say more, and then sighed. ‘Problems, Sharpe, problems. Moreno’s band is small and he’s joined up with another group, a bigger group, and the new man doesn’t want us to help. This man’s marrying Moreno’s daughter, has a lot of influence, and he’s our problem. He thinks we just want to steal the gold! Can you imagine that?’ Sharpe could, very well, and he suspected that Wellington had more than imagined it. Kearsey slapped at a fly. ‘Wasn’t helped by our failure two weeks ago.’

‘Failure?’

Kearsey looked unhappy. ‘Cavalry, Sharpe. My own regiment, too. We sent fifty men and they got caught.’ He chopped his hand up and down as if it were a sabre. ‘Fifty. So we lost face to the Spanish. They don’t trust us, and they think we’re losing the war and planning to take their gold. El Católico wants to move the gold by land, but I’ve persuaded them to give us one more chance!’

After a dearth of information Sharpe was suddenly being deluged with new facts. ‘El Católico, sir?’

‘I told you! The new man. Marrying Moreno’s daughter.’

‘But why El Católico?’

A stork flapped its way up into the sky, legs back, long wings edged with black, and Kearsey watched it for a second or two.

‘Ah! See what you mean. The Catholic. He prays over his victims before he kills them. The Latin prayer for the dead. Just as a joke, of course.’ The Major sounded gloomy. His fingers riffled the pages as if he were drawing strength from the psalms and stories that were beneath his fingertips. ‘He’s a dangerous man, Sharpe. Ex-officer, knows how to fight, and he doesn’t want us to be involved.’

Sharpe took a deep breath, walked to the battlement, and stared at the rocky northern landscape. ‘So, sir. The gold is a day’s march from here, guarded by Moreno and El Católico, and our job is to fetch it, persuade them to let us take it, and escort it safely over the border.’

‘Quite right.’

‘What’s to stop Moreno already taking it, sir? I mean, while you’re here.’

Kearsey gave a single snorting bark. ‘Thought of that, Sharpe. Left a man there, one of the Regiment, good man. He’s keeping an eye on things, keeping the Partisans sweet.’ Kearsey stood up and, in the growing heat of the sun, shrugged off his cloak. His uniform was blue with a pelisse of silver lace and grey fur. At his side was the polished-steel scabbard of the curved sabre. It was the uniform of the Prince of Wales Dragoons, of Claud Hardy, of Josefina’s lover, Sharpe’s usurper. Kearsey pushed the Bible into his slung sabretache. ‘Moreno trusts us; it’s only El Católico we have to worry about, and he likes Hardy. I think it will be all right.’

‘Hardy?’ Sharpe had somehow sensed it, the feeling of an incomplete story.

‘That’s right.’ Kearsey glanced sharply at the Rifleman. ‘Captain Claud Hardy. You know him?’

‘No, sir.’

Which was true. He had never met him, just watched Josefina walk away to Hardy’s side. He had thought that the rich young cavalry officer was in Lisbon, dancing away the nights, and instead he was here! Waiting a day’s march away. He stared westward, away from Kearsey, at the deep, dark-shadowed gorge of the Coa that slashed across the landscape. Kearsey stamped his feet.

‘Anything else, Sharpe?’