‘I had to, didn’t I?’ Hogan sounded defensive. ‘Christ! We had to patch up the bloody alliance. If you’d been found not guilty then the Spanish would never have trusted us again.’

‘But I wasn’t guilty.’

‘I know that.’ Hogan said it testily. ‘Of course you’re not guilty. Wellington knows you’re not guilty, he knows well enough that if you were going to murder someone you’d do it properly and not be caught. If he’d thought you were guilty he’d have put the rope round your neck himself!’

Frederickson laughed softly. Sharpe put the letter on the flames and the sudden gush of light lit his sun-darkened face.

Hogan watched the letter shrivel. ‘So why did she write that pack of lies to her husband?’

Sharpe shrugged. He had wondered about that question for a fortnight. ‘Perhaps she wanted him dead? She’s bound to inherit a god-damned fortune, and I seem to remember she has expensive tastes.’

‘Except in men,’ Hogan said sourly. ‘But if she just wanted him dead, why did she involve you? She had someone else ready to oblige her, it seems.’ He was distractedly breaking a piece of bread into small crumbs. ‘She must have known she was landing you into God’s own trouble. I thought she cared for you?’

Sharpe said nothing. He did not believe that Helene was so careless of him, so unfeeling. He did not understand her, indeed he thought he would never understand the ways of people who lived in the great houses and took privilege as their birthright, but he did not believe that La Marquesa wished him ill.

‘Well?’

Sharpe looked at the Irishman. ‘I don’t think she’d want me dead.’

‘You killed her brother.’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Helene wasn’t fond of that bastard.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Who in hell knows?’ Sharpe laughed. ‘She never seemed fond of him. He was an arrogant bastard.’

‘While you, of course,’ Hogan said sourly, ‘are the soul of humility. So who’d want a saint like you dead?’

Sharpe smiled and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Perhaps,’ Sweet William spoke softly, ‘the French just wanted to upset the Spanish and the British, and along with it get a hero hanged?’ He smiled. ‘The Paris newspapers would make an hurrah about it all. Perhaps they forged the letter from the Marquesa?’

Hogan made a gesture of frustration. ‘I don’t know. I do know that Helene has come back to Spain. God knows why.’ He saw Sharpe’s sudden interest and he knew that his friend was still hooked by the golden woman.

The Spanish boy, who had not spoken since they came into the convent, reached nervously for a wineskin. Frederickson pushed one towards him.

Hogan shivered suddenly. The wind was stronger, sounding on the broken stones and whirling the sparks of the fire up into the darkness. ‘And why in God’s name does an Inquisitor bring her letter?’

‘An Inquisitor?’ Sharpe asked. ‘The Spanish Inquisition?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought they’d run out of people to burn years ago!’

‘They haven’t.’ Hogan had talked long with the Marques’ chaplain and had learned some few things about the mysterious Inquisitor who had brought the incriminating letter. ‘He’s called Father Hacha and he’s got the soul of a snake.’ Hogan frowned at Sharpe. ‘Helene wouldn’t have caught religion, would she?’

Sharpe smiled. ‘I wouldn’t think so.’

‘The weirdest people do,’ Hogan said glumly. ‘But if she had, she’d hardly be plotting murder.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe she would. Religion does odd things to people.’

There was silence. Frederickson took a piece of broken floorboard that he had collected from the shattered chapel and put it on the fire. The Spanish boy looked from man to man, wondering what they spoke of. He stared at Sharpe. He knew all about Sharpe and the boy was worried. He wanted Sharpe to approve of him.

Hogan suddenly looked at the broken gateway. Do you know what a torno is?’

Sharpe took a cigar from Fredericfcson, leaned forward, and lit it from the flames.

‘No.’

Frederickson, who loved old buildings, knew what a torno was, but kept silent.

‘There might have been one here once.’ Hogan gestured at the ruined convent gateway. ‘I’ve only ever seen them in Spain. They’re revolving cupboards built into the outer wall of a convent. You can put something into the cupboard from the outside, ring the bell, and a nun inside turns the torno. It has partitions so you can’t see into the convent as the cupboard turns. Whatever you put there simply disappears and another part of the cupboard faces the street.’ He sipped his wine. ‘They use them for bastards. A girl has a baby, she can’t raise it, so she takes it to the torno. There’s no questions asked, you see. The nuns don’t know who the mother is, and the mother knows the baby’s in good hands. It’s clean. It’s better than letting the wee things die in the gutter.’

‘Or join the army,’ Frederickson said.

Sharpe wondered what the purpose of the story was. but knew better than to ask. The wind was driving clouds to cover the western stars.

Hogan shrugged. ‘Sometimes I feel just like the person inside the convent. The cupboard turns, there’s the baby on the shelf, and I don’t know where it’s come from, or what it’s called, or who put it there, or what bastard had his joy of the girl and dropped her. It’s just a little scrap of mystery, but there’s one difference.’ He looked from the fire to Sharpe. ‘My job is to solve the mystery. The torno has just dumped this thing into my lap, and you’re going to find out who put it there. You understand?’

Sharpe nodded. He should, he thought, be the Major of a Battalion marching to war. He should be preparing his men to stand in the musket line and blast death at an attacking army, but instead he was to be Hogan’s spy. He had earned the job by his foolishness, by accepting the duel. And the result was this secret meeting in the hills and the chance to once more go close to a woman he had once thought unapproachable, a woman who had been his lover for a short, treacherous season in Salamanca. ‘I understand.’

‘Find out, come back, and maybe, Richard, just maybe, the General will give you your rank back.’

‘Maybe?’

‘Wellington doesn’t like fools.’ A spot of rain hissed on the fire. Hogan pulled his cloak about him. ‘You’d better pray that I’m right.’

‘About what?’

The Irishman stared at the fire. ‘I don’t understand it, Richard, I really don’t. It’s too elaborate! To kill a General, send an Inquisitor, mark you as the murderer? Someone thought about it all, someone planned it, and I cannot convince my addled brain that they did it just to have you hanged. Laudable as that aim is, why kill a Marques for it? No.’ He frowned in thought. ‘The bastards are up to something. I can feel it in my bones, but I don’t know what it is. So you find out. And if you don’t find out, don’t come back.’

He said the last words brutally. No one spoke. More rain hissed on the flames. One of the horses whinnied softly.

Hogan gestured at the Spanish boy. ‘He’s called Angel.’

Sharpe looked at the boy and nodded. Angel smiled timidly back at the Rifleman.

Hogan switched into Spanish. ‘I’m lending him to you, and I want him back in one piece because he’s useful. I don’t care if you don’t come back, but I want Angel.’

Angel smiled nervously. Hogan looked up at the sky. ‘I’ve a horse for you as well; a better one than you deserve. And this.’ He took something from his haversack and handed it to Sharpe.

It was a telescope, Sharpe’s own telescope. It had been a gift to him, given ten years before when he had been commissioned as an officer. There was a small brass plate inset into the curve of the walnut barrel, and inscribed on the brass was ‘In Gratitude. AW. September 23rd, 1803’.

If it was not for that day, Sharpe reflected as he took the glass, he might not be alive now. Wellington had undoubtedly remembered the day when his horse had been piked and he had been pitched forward towards the bayonets of his enemies. A Sergeant called Richard Sharpe had saved the General’s life that day, beating back the enemy until the General was on his feet. It would be hard, Sharpe thought, to see a man who had saved your life condemned to hang for a crime he had not committed.