When he returned for the five companies he had found failure waiting for him.

Mr Collip, Quartermaster, had decided to make the crossing easier for the redcoats. He had made a rope out of musket slings, a great loop that could be endlessly pulled over the chasm, and on the rope he had slung across the ravine all the mens’ weapons, packs, canteens, and haversacks. On the last pass the knotted slings had come undone and all the South Essex’s musket ammunition had gone down into the stream.

When the French approached the bridge only Sharpe’s Riflemen had ammunition. The French could have taken the bridge with one volley of musketry because Sharpe had nothing with which to oppose them.

‘Never, Mr Collip, ever, separate a man from his weapons and ammunition. Do you promise me that?’

Collip nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘I think you owe me a bottle of something, Mr Collip.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

‘Good day, Mr Collip.’

Sharpe walked away. He smiled suddenly, perhaps because the clouds in the west had parted and there was a sudden shaft of red sunlight that glanced down to the scene of his victory. He looked for Patrick Harper, stood with his old Riflemen, and drank tea with them. ‘A good day’s work, lads.’

Harper laughed. ‘Did you tell the bastards we didn’t have any ammunition?’

‘Always leave a man his pride, Patrick.’ Sharpe laughed. He had not laughed often since Christmas.

But now, with this first fight of the new campaign, he had survived the winter, had made his first victory of the spring, and he looked forward at last to a summer untrammelled by the griefs and tangles of the past. He was a soldier, he was marching to war, and the future looked bright.

On a day of sunshine, when the martins were busy making their nests in the old masonry of Burgos Castle, Major Pierre Ducos stared down from the ramparts.

He was hatless. The small west wind lifted his black hair as he stared into the castle’s courtyard. He fidgeted with the earpieces of his spectacles, wincing as the curved wire chafed his sore skin.

Six wagons were being dragged over the cobbles. The wagons were huge, lumbering fourgons, each pulled by eight oxen. Tarpaulins covered their loads, tarpaulins roped down and bulging with cargo. The tired oxen were prodded to the far end of the courtyard where the wagons, with much shouting and effort, were parked against the keep’s wall.

The wagons had an escort of cavalrymen who carried bright-bladed lances from which hung red and white pennants.

The garrison of the castle watched the wagons arrive. Above their heads, at the top of the keep, the tricolour of France flapped sullenly in the wind. The sentries stared out across the wide countryside, wondering whether the war would once again lap against this old Spanish fortress that guarded the Great Road from Paris to Madrid.

There was a rattle of hooves in the gateway and Pierre Ducos saw a bright, gleaming carriage come bursting into the courtyard. It was drawn by four white horses that were harnessed to the splinter-bar with silver trace chains. The carriage was driven too fast, but that, Ducos decided, was typical of the carriage’s owner.

She was known in Spain as La Puta Dorada, ‘the Golden Whore’.

Beside the carriage, where it stopped beneath Ducos’ gaze, was a General of cavalry. He was a youngish man, the very image of a French hero, whose gaudy uniform was stiffened to carry the weight of his medals. He leaped from his horse, waved the coachmen aside, and opened the carriage door and let down the steps with a flourish. He bowed.

Ducos, like a predator watching its victim, stared at the woman.

She was beautiful, this Golden Whore. Men who saw her for the first time hardly dared believe that any woman was so beautiful. Her skin was as white and clear as the white pearl shells of the Biscay beaches. Her hair was golden. An accident of lip and bone, of eye and skin had given her a look of innocence that made men wish to protect her. Pierre Ducos could think of few women so little in need of protection.

She was French. She was born Helene Leroux and she had served France since her sixteenth year. She had slept in the beds of the powerful and brought from their pillows the secrets of their nations, and when the Emperor had taken the decision to annex Spain to his Empire, he had sent Helene as his weapon.

She had pretended to be the daughter of victims of the Terror. She had married, on instructions from Paris, a man close to the Spanish King, a man privy to the secrets of Spain. She was still married, though her husband was far off, and she bore the title that he had given her. She was the Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba. She was lovely as a summer dream and as treacherous as sin. She was La Puta Dorada.

Ducos smiled. A hawk, high above its victim, might have felt the same satisfaction that the bespectacled French Major felt as he ordered his aide to send his compliments to the Marquesa with a request, which, from Pierre Ducos, was tantamount to an order, that her Ladyship come to his presence immediately.

La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba, smelling of rosewater and smiling sweetly, was ushered into Major Ducos’ bare room an hour later. He looked up from the table. ‘You’re late.’

She blew a kiss from her lace-gloved hand and walked past him to the bastion. ‘The country looks very pretty today. I asked your deliciously timid Lieutenant to fetch me some wine and grapes. We could eat out here, Pierre. Your skin needs some sun.’ She shaded her face with a parasol and smiled at him. ‘How are you, Pierre? Dancing the nights away, as ever?’

He ignored her mockery. He stood in the doorway and his deep voice was harsh. ‘You have six wagons in this fortress.’

She pretended awe. ‘Has the Emperor made you his wagonmaster, Pierre? I must congratulate you.’

He took a folded piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket. ‘They are loaded with gold and silver plate, paintings, coins, tapestries, statues, carvings, and a wine cellar packed in sawdust. The total value is put at three hundred thousand Spanish dollars.’ He stared at her in silent triumph.

‘And some furniture, Pierre. Did your spy not find the furniture? Some of it’s rather valuable. A very fine Moorish couch inlaid with ivory, a japanned escritoire that you’d like, and a mirrored bed.’

‘And doubtless the bed in which you persuaded General Verigny to guard your stolen property?’ General Verigny was the cavalry officer whose men had guarded the wagons on their journey from Salamanca.

‘Stolen, Pierre? It all belongs to me and my dear husband. I merely thought that while Wellington threatens to defeat us I would remove our few household belongings into France. Just think of me as a simple refugee. Ah!’ She smiled at Ducos’ aide who had brought a tray on which stood an opened bottle of champagne, a single glass, and a dish of white grapes. ‘Put it on the parapet, Lieutenant.’

Scowling, Ducos waited till his aide had gone. ‘The property is loaded on French army wagons.’

‘Condemned wagons, Pierre.’

‘Condemned by General Verigny’s Quartermaster.’

‘True.’ She smiled. ‘A dear man.’ ‘And I will countermand his condemnation.’ She stared at him. She feared Pierre Ducos, though she would not give him the satisfaction of showing her fear. She recognised the threat that he offered her. She was running from Spain, running from the victory that Wellington threatened, and she was taking the wealth with her that would make her independent of whatever tragedies befell France. Now Ducos menaced that independence. She plucked a grape from the bunch. ‘Tell me, Pierre, do you order your breakfast with a threat? If you want something of me, why don’t you just ask? Or is it that you want to. share my plunder?’