‘Your answer, Major?’
So the Marqués knew he had been cuckolded? But why in God’s name pick on Sharpe? There must be a half-Battalion of men he would have to fight to retrieve his honour that had been held so lightly by Helene. Sharpe smiled. ‘You will get no letter from me, Major, nor my resignation.’
Mendora had expected the answer. ‘You will name me your second, señor?’
‘I don’t have a second.’ Sharpe knew that Wellington had forbidden all duels. If he took the risk, that was his foolishness, but he would not risk another man’s career. He looked at the Marqués, judging that such a heavy-set man would be slow on his feet. ‘I choose swords.’
Mendora smiled. ‘My master is a fine swordsman, Major. You will stand more chance with a pistol.’
The soldiers were gawping up at the two mounted officers. They sensed, even though they could not hear the words, that something dramatic took place.
Sharpe smiled. ‘If I need advice how to fight, Major, I will seek it from a man.’
Mendora’s proud face looked with hatred at the Englishman, but he held his temper. ‘There is a cemetery on the southern road, you know it?’
‘I can find it.’
‘My master will be there at seven this evening. He will not wait long. I hope your courage will be sufficient for death, Major.’ He turned his horse, looking back at Sharpe. ‘You agree?’
‘I agree.’ Sharpe let him turn away. ‘Major!’
‘Señor?’
‘You have a priest with you?’
The Spaniard nodded. ‘You’re very observant for an Englishman.’
Sharpe deliberately switched back into English. ‘Make sure he knows the prayer for the dead, Spaniard.’
A shout came from the watching men. ‘Kill the bugger, Sharpie!’
The shout was taken up, grew louder, and some wit began shouting ‘a ring! a ring!’, the usual cry when a fight broke out in Battalion lines. Sharpe saw the look of fury cross Mendora’s face, then the Spaniard put his spurs to his horse and galloped it at a knot of men who scattered from his path and jeered at his retreating back. The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba and his attendant priest galloped after him.
Sharpe ignored the shouts of the men about him. He watched the three Spaniards go and he knew, on pain of losing all that he had gained in this army, that he should not go to the cemetery and fight the duel. He would be cashiered; he would be lucky, if he won, not to be accused of murder.
On the other hand, there was the memory of La Marquesa, of her skin against the sheets, her hair on the pillow, her laughter in the shadowed bedroom. There was the thought that the Spanish Major had tried to strike him. There was his boredom, and his inability to refuse a challenge. And, above all, there was the sense of unfinished business, of a guilt that demanded its price, of a guilt that ordered him to pay that price. He shouted at the men for silence and looked through the ragged crowd of soldiers to find the man he wanted. ‘Harps!’
Patrick Harper pushed through the men and stared up at Sharpe. ‘Sir?’
Sharpe took the sword from his slings. It was a sword that Sergeant Harper had re-fashioned for him while Sharpe lay in Salamanca’s hospital. It was a cheap blade, one of many made in Birmingham for Britain’s Heavy Cavalry, nearly a yard of heavy steel that was clumsy and ill-balanced except in the hands of a strong man.
Sharpe tossed the sword to the Irishman. ‘Put an edge on it for me, Harps. A real edge.’
The men cheered, but Harper held the sword unhappily. He looked up at Sharpe and saw the madness on the dark, scarred face.
Sharpe remembered a face of delicate beauty, the face of a woman whom the Spanish now called the Golden Whore. Sharpe knew he could never possess her, but he could fight for her. He could give up all for her, what else was a warrior to do for a beauty? He smiled. He would fight for a woman who was known to be treacherous, and because, in an obscure way that he did not fully understand, he thought that this challenge, this duel, this risk was some expiation for the guilt that racked him. He would fight.
‘You’re slow, Sharpe, very slow.’ Captain Peter d’Alembord, who had taken Sharpe’s place as Captain of the Light Company, had run his slim sword past Sharpe’s guard and now the tip quivered an inch beneath the silver whistle holstered on Sharpe’s cross belt. D’Alembord, an impressively elegant and slim man, had volunteered, with some diffidence, to ‘put Sharpe over the jumps’. He had also scouted the opposition and his news was grim. ‘It seems the Marqués is rather good.’
‘Good?’
‘Took lessons in Paris from Bouillet. They say he could beat him. Still, not to worry. Old Bouillet must have been getting on, perhaps he was slow.’ D’Alembord smiled, stepped back, and raised his sword. ‘En garde?’
Sharpe laughed. ‘I’ll just hack the bugger to bits.’
‘Hope springs eternal, my dear Sharpe. Do raise your blade, I’m going to pass it on the left. With some warning you might just be able to stop me. Engage.’
The blades rattled, scraped, disengaged, clanged, and suddenly, with eye-defeating speed, d’Alembord had passed Sharpe’s guard on the left and his sword was poised again to split Sharpe’s trunk. Captain d’Alembord frowned. ‘If I darken my hair with lamp black, Sharpe, and paint a scar on my face, I might just pass for you. It’s really your best hope of survival.’
‘Nonsense. I’ll chop the bastard into mincemeat.’
‘You seem to forget that he has handled a sword before.’
‘He’s old, he’s fat, and I’ll slaughter him.’
‘He’s not yet fifty,’ d’Alembord said mildly, ‘and don’t be fooled by that waist. The fastest swordsman I ever saw was fatter than a hogshead. Why didn’t you choose pistols? Or twelve-pounder cannons?’
Sharpe laughed and hefted his big, straight sword. ‘This is a lucky blade.’
‘One sincerely hopes so. On the other hand, finesse is usually more useful than luck in a duel.’
‘You’ve fought a duel?’
D’Alembord nodded. ‘Rather why I’m here, Sharpe. Life got a little difficult.’ He said it lightly, though Sharpe could guess the ruin that the duel had meant for d’Alembord. Sharpe had been curious as to why the tall, elegant, foppish man had joined a mere line regiment like the South Essex. D’Alembord, with his spotless lace cuffs, his silver cutlery and crystal wine glasses that were carefully transported by his servant from camp ground to camp ground, would have been more at home in a Guards regiment or a smart cavalry uniform.
Instead he was in the South Essex, seeking obscurity in an unfashionable regiment while the scandal blew itself out in England, and an example to Sharpe of how a duel could blight a career. Sharpe smiled. ‘I suppose you killed your man?’
‘Didn’t mean to. Meant to wing him, but he moved into the blade. Very messy.’ He sighed. ‘If you would deign to hold that thing more like a sword and less like a cleaving instrument, one might hold out a morsel of hope. Part of the object of the exercise is to defend one’s body. Mind you, it’s quite possible that he’ll faint with horror when he sees it. It’s positively medieval. It’s hardly an instrument for fencing.’
Sharpe smiled. ‘I don’t fence, d’Alembord. I fight.’
‘I’m sure it’s