“I don’t know anything about Señor Nuñez,” Sharpe said.

“Then I shall educate you,” Galiana said. “He owns, or rather he did own, a newspaper called El Correo de Cádiz. It’s not much of a newspaper. One year ago it was read all across Andalucía, but now? Now it sells a few copies only. He used to publish twice a week, but now he is lucky to find enough news for one issue a fortnight. He lists the ships arriving and departing the harbor and he describes their cargoes. He prints which priests will preach in the city churches. He describes the proceedings of the Cortes. It is thin fare, isn’t that what you say? But in the last issue, Captain Sharpe, there was something much more interesting. A love letter. It was not signed. Señor Nuñez merely said it was a letter translated from the English and that he had found it lying in the street, and that if the true owner would like it then he should come to the newspaper. Is that why you were here, Captain? No! Please don’t say you were sheltering from the rain.”

“I didn’t write any love letters,” Sharpe said.

“We all know who wrote it,” Galiana said scornfully.

“I’m a soldier. I don’t deal with love.”

Galiana smiled. “I doubt that, Captain, I do doubt that.” He turned as a man came through the chapel door. A small crowd was braving the rain to watch the efforts to extinguish the fire and some, seeing the priory gates open, had come into the courtyard. One of them, a bedraggled, soaking-wet creature with a tobacco-stained beard, stepped into the chapel.

“It was him!” the man shouted in Spanish, pointing at Sharpe. It was the writer, Benito Chavez, who had managed to get another bottle of brandy. He was almost drunk, but not so helpless that he could not recognize Sharpe. “It was him!” he said, still pointing. “The one with the bandaged head!”

“Arrest him,” Galiana ordered his men.

The Spanish soldiers stepped forward and Sharpe thought of trying to pick up his sword, but before he could move he saw that Galiana was gesturing at Chavez. The soldiers hesitated, unsure what their officer meant. “Arrest him!” Galiana said, pointing at Chavez. The writer yelped in protest, but two of Galiana’s men thrust him against the wall and held him there. “He is drunk,” Galiana explained to Sharpe, “and making damaging accusations against our allies, so he can spend the rest of the night contemplating his own foolishness in jail.”

“Allies?” Sharpe was as confused as Chavez now.

“Are we not allies?” Galiana asked in mock innocence.

“I thought we were,” Sharpe said, “but sometimes I’m not sure.”

“You are like the Spanish, Captain Sharpe, confused. Cádiz is filled with politicians and lawyers and they encourage confusion. They argue. Should we be a republic? Or perhaps a monarchy? Do we want a Cortes? And if so, should it have one chamber or two? Some want a parliament like Britain’s. Others insist that Spain is best ruled by God and by a king. They squabble about these things like children, but in truth there is only one real argument.”

Sharpe understood now that Galiana had been playing with him. The Spaniard truly was an ally. “The argument,” Sharpe said, “is whether Spain fights France or not?”

“Exactly,” Galiana said.

“And you,” Sharpe said carefully, “believe Spain should fight against France?”

“You know what the French have done to our country?” Galiana asked. “The women raped, the children killed, the churches desecrated? Yes, I believe we should fight. I also believe, Captain Sharpe, that British soldiers are banned from entering Cádiz. They are not even allowed inside the city without their uniforms. I should arrest you all. But I assume you are lost?”

“We’re lost,” Sharpe agreed.

“And you were merely sheltering from the rain?”

“We were.”

“Then I shall escort you to your embassy, Captain Sharpe.”

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said in relief.

It took a half hour to reach the embassy. The wind had died a little by the time they reached the gate and the rain had lessened. Galiana took Sharpe aside. “I was ordered to watch the newspaper,” he said, “in case someone tried to destroy it. I believe, and I trust I am not deceiving myself, that by failing in that duty I have helped the war against France.”

“You have,” Sharpe said.

“I also believe you owe me a favor, Captain Sharpe.”

“I do,” Sharpe agreed fervently.

“I shall find one. Be sure of that, I shall find one. Good night, Captain.”

“Good night, Captain,” Sharpe said. The courtyard inside the embassy was dark, the windows showing no light. Sharpe touched the letters in his coat pocket, took the newspaper from Slattery, and went to bed.

HENRY WELLESLEY LOOKED TIRED, and that was to be understood. He had been at a reception for the Portuguese ambassador half the night and had then been woken soon after dawn when an indignant delegation arrived at the British embassy. It was a measure of the urgency of their protest that the delegation had arrived so early in the morning, long before most of the city was stirring. The two elderly diplomats, each dressed in black, had been sent by the Regency, the council that ruled what was left of Spain, and the pair now sat very stiffly in the ambassador’s parlor where a newly made fire smoked in the hearth behind them. Lord Pumphrey, hastily dressed and looking pale, sat to one side of Wellesley’s desk while the interpreter stood on the other. “One question, Sharpe,” Wellesley greeted the rifleman brusquely.

“Sir?”

“Where were you last night?”

“In bed, sir, all night, sir,” Sharpe said woodenly. It was the tone of voice he had learned as a sergeant, the voice used to tell lies to officers. “Took an early night, sir, on account of my head.” He touched his bandage. The two Spaniards looked at him with distaste. Sharpe had just been woken by an embassy servant and he had hurriedly pulled on his uniform, but he was unshaven, weary, dirty, and exhausted.

“You were in bed?” Wellesley asked.

“All night, sir,” Sharpe said, staring an inch above the ambassador’s head.

The interpreter repeated the exchange in French, the language of diplomacy. The interpreter was only there to translate Sharpe’s words, because everyone else said what they had to say in French. Wellesley looked at the delegation and raised an eyebrow as if to suggest that that was as much as they could hope to learn from Captain Sharpe. “I ask you these questions, Sharpe,” the ambassador explained, “because there was something of a small tragedy last night. A newspaper was burned to the ground. It was quite destroyed, alas. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it’s a sad thing.”

“Very sad, sir.”

“And the newspaper’s proprietor, a man called”—Wellesley paused to look at some notes he had scribbled down.

“Nuñez, Your Excellency,” Lord Pumphrey offered helpfully.

“Nuñez, that’s it, a man called Nuñez, claims that British men did it, and that the British were led by a gentleman with a bandaged head.”

“A gentleman, sir?” Sharpe asked, suggesting that he could never be mistaken for a gentleman.

“I use the word loosely, Captain Sharpe,” Wellesley said with a surprising asperity.

“I was in bed, sir,” Sharpe insisted. “But there was lightning, wasn’t there? I seem to remember a storm, or perhaps I dreamed that?”

“There was lightning, indeed.”

“A lightning strike caused the fire, sir, most likely.”

The interpreter explained to the delegation that there had been lightning and one of the visiting diplomats pointed out that they had found scraps of shell casing in the embers. The two men stared again at Sharpe as their words were translated.

“Shells?” Sharpe asked in mock innocence. “Then it must have been the French mortars, sir.”

That suggestion prompted a flurry of words, summed up by the ambassador. “The French mortars, Sharpe, don’t have the range to reach that part of the city.”