It was a room about twelve feet square. One window, high and barred, let a grey, unhappy light onto the stone of the walls and floor. A single table was in the room, behind it a chair. The guards positioned themselves on either side of him. The Sergeant, the only unarmed Frenchman, was one of the two men on Sharpe’s right. Whenever Sharpe tried to lean against the wall he was shouted at, pulled forward, and then there would be silence again.

They waited. The two men immediately closest to Sharpe faced him with bayonets. Sharpe closed his eyes. He swayed slightly with tiredness. His head throbbed.

The door opened.

Sharpe opened his eyes and understood.

Pierre Ducos stepped into the room. For a second Sharpe did not recognise the small, pock-skinned man with the round spectacles, and then the Christmas meeting in the Gateway of God rushed back to him. Major Pierre Ducos, who had been described to Sharpe as a dangerous man, a clever man, a man whose hands stank with the slime of politics, was responsible for this treatment, for the filthy cell, for what, Sharpe knew, was about to happen.

Ducos wrinkled his nose then stepped almost delicately behind the table and sat. A soldier followed him and put Sharpe’s sword on the table, then his telescope, then some papers. Not a word was said until the soldier had gone.

Ducos fussily aligned the edges of the papers before looking up at the English officer. ‘You slept well?’

Sharpe ignored the question. ‘I am an officer of His Britannic Majesty’s army, and I demand the treatment proper to my rank.’ His voice came out as a dry croak.

Ducos frowned. ‘You’re wasting my time.’ His voice was deep, as if it belonged to a much huger man.

‘I am an officer in His Britannic…’

He stopped because the huge Sergeant, on a nod from Ducos, had turned and planted one vast fist into Sharpe’s stomach, doubling him over, driving the wind from him.

Ducos waited until Sharpe was upright again, until his breathing was normal, then smiled. ‘I believe, Mr Sharpe, that you are not an officer. By a Court-Martial decision, of which I have a record here,’ he tapped the papers, ‘you were dismissed the army. In brief you are a civilian, though masquerading as a Major Vaughn. Am I right?’

Sharpe said nothing. Ducos unhooked the spectacles from his ears, breathed on them, and began to polish their round lenses with a silk handkerchief he took from his sleeve. ‘I believe you are a spy, Mr Sharpe.’

‘I am an officer…’

‘Do stop being tedious. We have already ascertained that you were cashiered. You wear a uniform to which you are not entitled, carry a name not your own, and by your own admission to General Verigny you were trying to abduct a woman in the hope that she could provide information.’ He carefully hooked the wire spectacle frames onto his ears and smiled unpleasantly at Sharpe. ‘It sounds like spying to me. Did Wellington think that by faking your execution you would become invisible?’ He laughed at his jest. ‘I will admit, Mr Sharpe, that it fooled me. I could hardly credit it when I saw you in our courtyard!’ He smiled triumphantly, then picked up the top sheet of paper. ‘It seems from what that fool Verigny has told me that you rescued La Marquesa from the convent. Is that true?’

Sharpe said nothing. Ducos sighed. ‘I know you did, Mr Sharpe. It was inconvenient of you, to say the least. Why did you go to such lengths to rescue her?’

‘I wanted to go to bed with her.’

Ducos leaned back. ‘You’re being tiresome and my time is too valuable to listen to your filth. I ask you again, why did you rescue her?’

Sharpe repeated the answer.

Ducos looked at the Sergeant and nodded.

The Sergeant turned stolidly, his face expressionless, glanced up and down Sharpe and then brought his right fist hard again at the Rifleman’s stomach. Sharpe moved from the blow, his own hand going for the Sergeant’s eyes, but a bayonet chopped down on his arm and the Sergeant’s left fist crashed into his face, banging his head back on the stone wall, then the right fist was in his belly, doubling him over, and suddenly the Sergeant, as woodenly as he had turned to Sharpe, turned away and slammed to attention.

Ducos was frowning. He watched Sharpe straighten up. Blood was coming from the Rifleman’s nose. Sharpe leaned on the wall and this time no one stopped him. The Frenchman shook his head. ‘I do dislike violence, Major, it upsets me. It has its uses, I fear, and I think you now understand that. Why did you rescue La Marquesa?’

Sharpe gave the same answer.

This time he let himself be hit. He had only one weapon, and he used it. He pretended to be weaker than he was. He fell to the floor, groaning, and the Sergeant disdainfully pulled him up by his jacket collar and threw him against the wall. The Sergeant smiled in victory as he turned back to Ducos.

‘Why did you rescue La Marquesa?’

‘I needed a woman.’

This time Ducos did not nod to the Sergeant. He seemed to sigh. He took off his spectacles again, frowned, polished them with his handkerchief, then, with a small wince, hooked the wires back on his ears. ‘I believe you, Major. Your appetite would run to women like Helene, and doubtless you rut her capably. Tell me, did she ask the British for help?’

‘Only for a rut. It seems the French don’t do it well enough for her.’

Sharpe braced himself for the blow, but again Ducos did not give the signal. He sighed again. ‘I should tell you, Mr Sharpe, that Sergeant Lavin is remarkably efficient at exacting words from reluctant talkers. He usually practises his art on the Spanish, but he has long wanted an Englishman.’ Ducos’ spectacles flashed two circles of grey light. ‘Indeed, he has wanted an Englishman for a long, long time.’

Sergeant Lavin, hearing his name, turned his squat, hard-eyed head and looked at Sharpe with disdain.

Ducos stood up and walked round the table, picking up Sharpe’s telescope as he came. ‘Before you are in no state to appreciate it, Major, I have a score to settle with you. You broke my spectacles. You put me to a deal of trouble!’ Suddenly, astonishingly, Ducos sounded angry. He seemed to control it, straightening his small body and frowning. ‘You deliberately broke my spectacles!’

Sharpe said nothing. It was true. He had smashed Ducos’ glasses in the Gateway of God. He had done it after Ducos had insulted Teresa, Sharpe’s wife. Now Ducos held Sharpe’s telescope. ‘A very fine instrument, Major.’ He peered at the brass plate. ‘September 23rd, 1803. We called it Vendemiaire Second, Year Ten.’ Ducos, Sharpe knew, regretted the abolition of the revolutionary calendar.

Sharpe pushed himself up from the wall. ‘Take it, Ducos, your army’s stolen everything else in Spain.’

‘Take it! Of course not. You think I’m a thief?’ He looked back at the brass plate. ‘The reward for one of your acts of bravery, no doubt.’ He pulled the telescope open, revealing the polished inner brass tubes. ‘No, Major Sharpe. I’m not going to take it. I’m simply going to pay back the insult you offered me.’

With gritted teeth and sudden frenzy, Ducos swung the telescope by its eyepiece, slamming it on the stone floor and then swinging it again and again. A fortune in finely ground glass was being smashed by the small man who went on beating it, bending the tubes, scattering thick glass fragments on the stone floor. He dropped the telescope and stamped on it, splitting the brass tubes apart, then he kicked at them viciously, skittering them about the floor until, nothing left to kick at, he stood panting. He straightened his jacket and looked with a smile of pitiful triumph at the Rifleman. ‘You have paid me your personal debt, Mr Sharpe. An eye for an eye, so to speak.’

Sharpe had watched the destruction of his telescope, his valued telescope that had been a gift from Wellington, with mounting anger and frustration. He could do nothing. Sergeant Lavin had watched him and the bayonets had been in his ribs. He forced his anger down and nodded at the sword. ‘Do it to that, Ducos.’