“Now?” Sharpe listened. Faintly he could hear a rhythmic booming, a sound overlaid with a slight, tinny melody. “Hear that?”

They listened. Parry Jenkins grinned. “It’s a band!”

Sharpe slung his rifle. “I think we should join in.” He guessed that the Sixth Division was making their formal entry into the city; bands playing and colours flying, and he pointed down the river bank to the east. “That way, lads, then up into the city.” The route would take them far from the French cannons pointing across the wasted south-western corner of the city. “And listen, lads!” They looked at him. “Just stay together, you understand? We’re not supposed to be here and the bloody Provosts would just love a chance to put a real soldier in chains.” They grinned at him. “Come on!”

He was wiping the blood from his big sword as he led them along the river bank and then up into a steep alleyway which pointed towards the two Cathedrals on the hilltop. They were behind the houses from which the Spanish civilians had fired at Delmas, where the priest had checked their fire, and Sharpe thought he recognised the tall, grey-haired figure that climbed ahead of him.

He quickened his pace, leaving his Riflemen behind, and the noise of his boots on the cobbled street made the priest turn. He was a tall, elderly man whose face seemed filled with amusement and charity. He smiled at Sharpe and glanced at the sword. “You look as if you want to kill me, my son.”

Sharpe had not known exactly why he had pursued the priest, except to vent his anger at the man’s interference with the afternoon’s fight. The priest’s perfect English took him by surprise, and the man’s cool tone annoyed him. “I kill the King’s enemies.”

The priest smiled at Sharpe’s dramatic tone. “You’re angry with me, my son. Is it because I stopped the civilians shooting? Yes?” He did not wait for an answer, but went on placatingly. “Do you know what the French will do to them if they get a chance? Do you? Have you seen civilians put against a wall and shot like sick dogs?”

Sharpe’s anger spilt into his voice. “For Christ’s sake! We’re here now, not the bloody French!”

“I doubt if it’s for His sake, my son.” The priest irritated Sharpe by continuing to smile. “And for how long are you here? If you don’t defeat the main French armies then you’ll be running back to Portugal and we can expect those Frenchmen to be in our streets again.”

Sharpe frowned. “Are you English?”

“Praise the Lord, no!” For the first time the priest sounded shocked by something Sharpe had said. “I’m Irish, my son. My name is Father Patrick Curtis, though the Salamantines call me Don Patricio Cortes.” Curtis stopped as Harper shepherded the curious Riflemen past the two men. Harper took them on up the street. Curtis smiled again at Sharpe. “Salamanca is my city now, and these people are my people. I understand their hatred of the French, but I must protect them if the French ever rule here again. That man you were chasing. Do you know what he would do to them?”

“Delmas?What?”

Curtis frowned. He had a strong face, deeply lined, dominated by enormous, busy grey eyebrows. “Delmas? No! Leroux!”

It was Sharpe’s turn to be puzzled. “I was chasing a man in a brass helmet. A man with a limp.”

“That’s right! Leroux.” He saw Sharpe’s surprise. “He’s a full Colonel in Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Philippe Leroux. He’s ruthless, my son, especially against civilians.”

The priest’s calm, informative voice had not mollified Sharpe, who kept his voice hostile. “You know a lot about him.”

Curtis laughed. “Of course! I’m Irish! We’re always interested in other people’s business. In my case, of course, it’s also God’s business to know about people. Even people like Colonel Leroux.”

“And it was my business to kill him.”

“As the centurion said on Golgotha.”

“What?”

“Nothing, my son. A comment in poor taste. Well, Captain?” Curtis made the rank a question, and Sharpe nodded. The priest smiled. “It’s my pleasant duty to welcome you to Salamanca, even if you are English. Consider yourself duly welcomed.

“You don’t like the English?” Sharpe was determined not to like the elderly priest.

“Why should I?” Curtis still smiled. “Does the worm like the plough?”

“I suppose you’d prefer the French?” Sharpe was still convinced that Curtis had stopped the firing to spare the man who had called himself Delmas.

Curtis sighed. “Dear, oh dear! This conversation, if you’ll forgive me, Captain, is getting tiresome. I’ll bid you good-day, my son. I expect we’ll meet again soon. Salamanca’s a small enough town.” He turned and walked ahead of Sharpe, leaving the Rifle Officer annoyed. Sharpe knew he had been bested by the priest, that Curtis’s calmness had easily deflected his anger. Well, damn the priest, and damn Colonel Philippe Leroux. Sharpe walked on, hurrying past Curtis without acknowledging him, and his head was busy with his need for revenge. Leroux. The man who had murdered Windham, had murdered McDonald, had broken his parole, had escaped Sharpe, and who possessed a sword fit for a great fighter. Colonel Leroux; a worthy enemy for this summer of war and heat.

Sharpe overtook his men and led them along beside the two Cathedrals and into streets that were crowded with people ready to celebrate the city’s release from the French. Blankets had been hung from the poorer balconies, flags from the richer, while women leaned over window ledges and balustrades. “Vive Ingles!”

Harper bellowed back at them. “Viva Irlandes!” Wine was pressed on them, flowers tossed to them, and the cheerful holiday crowd jostled the Riflemen as they moved towards the music and the city centre. Harper grinned at Sharpe. “The Lieutenant ought to be here!”

Sharpe’s Lieutenant, Harold Price, would have been inordinately jealous. The girls were beautiful, smiling, and Price would have been torn by indecision like a terrier not knowing which rat to take first. A woman, monstrously fat, jumped up and down to plant a kiss on Harper’s cheek and the Irishman swept her up in his arms, kissed her happily, and put her down. The crowd cheered, loving it, and a small child was handed to the Sergeant who took her, skinny legs flailing, and put her on his shoulders. She drummed on his shako top, beating with the band sound, and beamed at her friends. Today was holiday in Salamanca. The French were gone, either north with Marmont or else into their three cordoned fortresses, and Salamanca was free.

The street opened into a courtyard, gorgeously decorated with carvings, and Sharpe remembered the place from his last visit. Salamanca was a town like Oxford or Cambridge, a University town, and the courtyard was part of the University. The stones of the buildings had been carved as delicately as silver filigree, the workmanship of the masons breath-takingly skilled, and he saw his men staring in wonder at the riotous stone. There was nothing like this to be seen in England, perhaps anywhere in the world, yet Sharpe knew that the best of Salamanca was still to come.

Bells pealed from a dozen belfries, a cacophony of joy that clashed with the army band. Swallows in their hundreds were wheeling and swooping over the rooftops, the harbingers of evening, and he pushed on, nodding and smiling at the people, and he noticed in the next street how the doors still bore the chalk marks left by the French billeting officers. Tonight the Sixth Division would be in these houses, and welcomed more readily because the British paid for their rooms and for their food. The French had gone. And Sharpe smiled because Leroux was trapped in the forts, and then he wondered how it would be possible to arrange it so that he could be present when the Sixth Division assaulted the forts.

The street ended in a wide space and Sharpe saw the tips of bright bayonets bobbing rhythmically over the heads of the crowd towards an archway. Harper put the small girl down, releasing her to run and join the crowd lining the parade route, and the Light Company men followed Sharpe towards the archway. Like all the Riflemen in Sharpe’s Company, Harper had been here before, back in the winter of ’08, and he remembered the Plaza Mayor that lay beyond this archway. It was in the Plaza Mayor that the Sixth Division gathered for the formal parade to mark the British entry into Salamanca.