Sharpe's Sword Part 18

She turned. "Where he crossed a river in the face of the enemy?"

"Yesterday you knew nothing about a.s.saye."

"Yesterday I was in public." The cigar glowed again.

"He can attack." Sharpe was impressed by her intelligence, by her knowledge, but he was also mystified. There was something catlike about La Marquesa. She was quiet in her movements, beautiful, but she had claws, he knew, and now he knew she had the intelligence to use them skilfully. "Believe me, Ma'am, he can attack."

She nodded. "I believe you. Thank you, Captain Sharpe, that's all I wanted to know."

"All?"

She turned to the lattice and opened a window in it. "I want to know if the French are coming back to Salamanca. I want to know if Wellington will fight to stop that happening.

You've told me he will. You weren't boasting, you weren't trying to impress me, you gave me what I wanted; a professional opinion. Thank you."

Sharpe stood up, not sure if the visit was done and he was being dismissed. He walked towards her. "Why did you want to know?"

"Does it matter?" She still stared at the fortresses.

"I'm curious." He stopped behind her. "Why?"

She looked back at the table. "You forgot your musket."

"Rifle. Why?"

She turned round to face him and gave him another of her hostile stares. "How many men have you killed?"

"I don't know."

"Truly?"

"Truly. I've been a soldier for nineteen years."

"Do you get frightened?"

He smiled. "Of course. All the time. It gets worse, not better."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know. I sometimes think because the older you get, the more you have to live for."

She laughed at that. "Any woman will tell you otherwise."

"No, not any woman. Some, maybe. Some men, too." He gestured at the faraway sound of the party. "Cavalry officers don't like getting old."

"You're suddenly very wise for a humble soldier." She was mocking him. She put the cigar to her mouth and smoke drifted between them.

She had still not answered his question and he still did not understand why he had been brought to this balcony where the leaves stirred in the night breeze. "You could have asked a thousand people in this town the questions you've asked me, and got the same answers. Why me?"

"I told you." She pointed with the cigar to his rifle. "Now why don't you pick up the rifle and go?"

Sharpe said nothing. He did not move. Somewhere in the town there were raised voices, drunken soldiers fighting in all probability, and a dog howled at the moon from another street, and he saw her eyes look at his cheek. "What are those black stains?"

Sharpe was becoming used to her sudden questions that had no relevance to the previous conversation. She seemed to like to tease him, bring him almost to the point of anger, and then deflect him with some irrelevance. He brushed his right cheek. "Powder stains, Ma'am. The gunpowder explodes in the rifle pan and throws them up."

"Did you kill someone tonight?"

"No, not tonight."

They were standing just two feet apart and Sharpe knew that either could have moved away. Yet they stayed still, challenging each other and he knew that she was challenging him to touch her and he was tempted suddenly, to break the rules. He was tempted to walk away, as Marmont had simply walked away from Wellington's army, but he could not do it. The full mouth, the eyes, the cheekbones, the curve of her neck, the shadows above the white lace-frilled dress had caught him. She frowned at him. "What does it feel like? To kill a man?"

"Sometimes good, sometimes nothing, sometimes bad."

"When is it bad?"

He shrugged. "When it's unnecessary." He shook his head, remembering the bad dreams. "There was a man at Badajoz, a French artillery officer."

She had expected more. She tipped her face to one side. "Go on."

"The fight was over. We'd won. I think he wanted to surrender."

"And you killed him?"

"Yes."

"How?"

He gestured at the big sword. "With this." It had not been that simple. He had hacked at the man, gouged him, disembowelled the corpse in his great rage until Harper had stopped him.

She half turned away from him and stared at the scarcely touched food on the table. "Do you enjoy killing? I think you do."

He could feel his heart beating in his chest as if it had expanded. It was thumping hollowly, sounding in his eardrums, and he knew it as a compound of fear and excitement. He looked at her face, profiled against the broken moonlight, and the beauty was overpowering, unfair that one person could be so lovely and his hand, almost of its own volition, came slowly up, slowly, until his finger was under her chin and he turned the face towards him.

She gave him a calm, wide-eyed expression, then stepped away from him so his arm was left suspended in mid-air. He felt foolish. Her face was unfriendly. "Do you enjoy killing?"

He had been made to touch her, so she could back away and make him feel foolish. She had brought him here for her small victory, and he knew defeat. He turned away from her, walked to his rifle, slung it on his shoulder, and started back down the balcony without a word. He did not look at her. He walked past her, smelling the tobacco smoke from her cigar.

"Colonel Leroux enjoys killing, Captain."

For a second he almost kept on walking, but the name of his enemy stopped him. He turned.

"What do you know of Leroux?"

She shrugged. "I live in Salamanca. The French were in this house. Your job is to kill him, yes?"

Her voice was challenging again, impressing him with her knowledge, and again he had the feeling that he was involved in a game of which she only knew the rules. He thought of Leroux in the forts, of the cordon of men about the wasteland, of his own Company in their billets. He had a simple job and he was making it complicated.

"Good night, Ma'am. Thank you for the meal."