She stared at him suspiciously. ‘Guests?’

‘Fleas.’

‘Christ!’ She sat up with sudden energy and hauled the shift above her knees. She frowned at her bared skin. ‘Fleas?’

‘Probably.’ He looked at her thighs, wondering why she had lied to him. He was sure that she had, he was certain that there was more to the letter she had written to her husband than the mere request of a church that wanted her riches, yet he sensed that he would have to accept her explanation because he was not clever enough to get the real truth from her.

She twitched the shift higher, peering at her legs. ‘God and hell and damnation! Fleas? I can’t see any.’

‘You won’t.’

She pushed the shift down. ‘I’ll never get rid of them!’

‘You will.’

‘How?’

‘The same as the rest of us. A piece of soap.’

‘Just wash them away?’

He grinned. ‘No.’

Someone knocked on the trapdoor that was the entrance to the room. Sharpe unbolted it, hauled it up, and the innkeeper’s wife pushed a great tin bath towards him. He took it from her and saw the buckets of water steaming at the ladder’s foot. ‘You have towels?’

‘Si, senor.’

Sharpe saw Angel by the fire at the end of the inn’s main room. The boy stared forlornly at Sharpe, jealous that the Rifle officer was in La Marquesa’s room. ‘And I want soap.’

‘Si, senor.’

La Marquesa was sitting, legs apart, on the edge of the bed. ‘What do I do with the soap?’

‘You dampen a corner, chase the fleas and dab them with it. They stick to the soap. It’s twenty times faster than trying to catch them with your fingers.’ He pulled up the first bucket and poured it into the tin bath.

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What if they go to my back?’

Sharpe laughed. ‘The innkeeper’s wife will help you. She doesn’t want fleas in the bed.’ Privately he would be surprised if there weren’t fleas already in the bed, though it was possible, this being the inn’s only proper bedroom, that it was clean.

‘That woman?’

‘Why not?’

‘Christ, Richard! I don’t want her to know I’ve got fleas! You’ll have to do it.’ She shrugged. ‘You’ve seen it often enough before.’

He poured another bucket. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? A rescuer’s reward? Isn’t that why knights rode around rescuing maidens? Only they called it the Holy Grail which is a nicer name than some I’ve heard.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She laughed at his smile. ‘I missed you. I often wondered what you were doing. I imagined you scowling through life, scaring all the rich young officers.’ She made a face at him. ‘I don’t even have a comb, let alone a brush! Is that all the water they’re giving me?’

‘There’s more coming.’

‘Thank God for that.’ She leaned back on the bed. ‘I could sleep for a month. I never want to see a bloody horse again:‘

Sharpe lifted more buckets into the room. ‘You’ll have to ride one tomorrow.’

‘No I don’t!’

‘I could leave you for El Matarife.’

‘He couldn’t make me more sore than this.’ She turned her head and watched him through the billows of steam. ‘I was sorry about your wife, Richard.’

‘Yes.’ He did not know what else to say to such abrupt sympathy.

She shrugged. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry about Luis. It doesn’t seem real, somehow, being a widow.’ She laughed softly. ‘A rich widow, if that bastard doesn’t steal everything.’

‘The Inquisitor?’

‘The bloody Inquisitor. Father Hacha. Is it ready?’

‘Just the towels.’

He took the thin linen cloths from the woman downstairs and closed the trapdoor. ‘Your bath, ma’am.’

‘You make a bloody awful lady’s maid, Richard.’

‘I think I’m relieved to hear that.’

‘Let it cool a bit. I don’t fancy being scalded as well as flea-bitten and sore.’ She sat on the side of the bed, her chin cupped in her hands, and looked at him. ‘What do we do now, Richard?’

‘What do you want to do.’

‘I want to go to Burgos.’

He felt disappointed. He had somehow, and he knew stupidly, hoped that she would come back to the army with him. ‘If the French are still there,’ he said dubiously.

She shrugged. ‘Wherever they are, that’s where I want to be. Because wherever they are, that’s where the wagons are.’

‘Won’t they arrest you again?’

She shook her head. ‘The Church can’t do it twice.’ She was thinking of General Verigny. ‘I won’t let the bastards do it twice.’ She reached over and put a hand in the water. ‘You’ve got the soap?’

‘Ready and willing, ma’am.’

She grinned, then crossed her arms to draw the shift over her head. She laughed at his expression, then pulled the grey wool up and over her head. ‘I’m cold.’

‘Nonsense. Just stand in the bath.’

For ten minutes, to unseemly laughter, he hunted her skin. She complained that it tickled as he explored for the fleas, dabbed them onto the soap, then pinched them between his fingernails, and by the time the last flea had been found she insisted on searching him for fleas and by the time she had done that she was on the bed, cursing the raw skin of her thighs, and his face was in her hair and her arms were on the’ scars where he had been flogged so long ago. She kissed his cheek. ‘Poor Richard, poor Richard.’

‘Poor?’

‘Poor Richard.’ She kissed him again. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘Forgotten what?’

‘Never mind. Do you think that bloody bath’s cold?’

It still had enough warmth and she soaked herself, washed her hair, then put her head back on the wall. She was looking at him where he lay naked on the bed. ‘You look happy.’

‘I am.’

She smiled sadly. ‘It doesn’t take much to make you happy, does it?’

‘I thought it took a lot.’

Later, when they had eaten and when each had a bottle of wine inside, they lay in the bed. The fire was hot, the chimney warmed and drawing well, and La Marquesa smoked a ragged cigar that she had bought from the innkeeper. Sharpe had forgotten that she liked to smoke. She had a hand on his belly, twisting the small hairs with her fingers. ‘Will that man come into the town?’

‘I don’t think so. The alcalde said not.’ The mayor had said that the town fell into the fief of another Partisan leader, a man not fond of El Matarife.

She looked at him. Her hair had dried soft and golden to spread about her face. ‘Did you ever think you’d see me again?’

‘No.’

‘I thought I’d see you again.’

‘You did?’

‘I think so.’ She blew a smoke ring and looked at it critically. ‘But not in a nunnery.’ She laughed. ‘I couldn’t believe it was you! I thought you were dead for a start, but even so! I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’

They spoke of what had happened in their lives since the summer in Salamanca, and he listened in awe to her descriptions of the palaces she had seen, the balls she had attended, and he hid the jealousy he felt when he imagined her in the arms of other men. He tried to persuade himself that it was useless to be jealous about La Marquesa, a man might as well complain of the wind veering.

He spoke about his daughter. He told her about the winter in the Gateway of God, the battle, the death of Teresa. She sat up to drink wine. ‘You weren’t popular with us.’

‘Because of the battle?’

She laughed. ‘I was quite proud of you, but I didn’t dare say so.’ She gave him the bottle. ‘So you gave all your money to your daughter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Richard Sharpe, you are a fool. Some day I’ll have to teach you how to survive. So you’re poor again?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed. She spoke of the money that was with the retreating French army, not her own money, but the hundreds of wagons that had been collected at Burgos. ‘You can’t believe it, Richard! They looted every monastery, every palace, every bloody house from here to Madrid! There’s gold, silver, paintings, plate, more gold, more paintings, jewels, silks, coin…’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘It’s the fortune of the Spanish empire, Richard, and it’s all going back to France. They know they’re losing, so they’re taking everything with them.’