Sharpe’s Honour: The Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813. Bernard Cornwell
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fate, sir, to our fate.’
‘You don’t have to come, d’Alembord.’
‘True, sir. I shall say I was a mere innocent misled by you.’ He spurred his horse down the pastureland of the hillside.
Sharpe followed. It was a beautiful evening, a promise of summer in the blossoms beneath his horse’s hooves and in the warm fragrant air. There was a scattering of high mackerel clouds in the west, each tiny cloud touched with pink as though they were puffs of cannon smoke drifting over a burning field.
The men sitting on the cemetery wall saw the two horsemen coming, recognised the green jacket, and a yell went up as though Sharpe was a prizefighter coming to hammer out a hundred bloody rounds with his naked fists. To his right, coming from the town, he saw a dark coach, windows curtained, and on its doorway, too far away to distinguish the details, was a coat of arms.
He knew that escutcheon. It had been quartered and requartered over the years as the family of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had married more wealth and privilege until now, as the nineteenth century began, the crest was a patchwork of the history of the Spanish nobility. And into that family, marrying the childless widower who had been close to the Spanish throne, had come the golden-haired woman who was a traitor. La Marquesa. She would be pleased, Sharpe thought, to know that two men would face each other with drawn swords on her account.
The cheers were echoed by jeers from the Spaniards as he ducked under the arched gateway of the cemetery. The shadows of the carved graves were long. Flowers wilted in earthenware pots. An old lady, swathed and scarved in black, ignored the unseemly noise that sullied her family’s resting place.
D’Alembord led Sharpe to the south side of the burial ground where they dismounted. The British troops, mixed with some of the tough soldiers of the King’s German Legion, shouted at Sharpe to kill the dago, to teach the bastard a lesson, and then Sharpe heard the far side of the cemetery erupt into celebration and he turned to see his opponent walk into the burial ground. The Marqués had his long sword tucked in Spanish fashion beneath his arm. The priest was beside him, while Major Mendora walked behind. The old woman knelt to the priest who made the sign of the cross over her then touched her scarved head.
D’Alembord smiled at Sharpe. ‘I shall go and make polite conversation. Try and persuade them to back down.’
‘They won’t.’
‘Of course not. Fools never do.’ D’Alembord shrugged and walked towards the party of Spaniards. Major Mendora, the Marqués’s second, came to meet him.
Sharpe tried to ignore the cheering, the insults, and the shouts. There was no turning back now. In less time than it took the sun to go down, he had changed his life. He had accepted the challenge and nothing would be the same again. Only by walking away now, by refusing to fight, could he save his career. Yet to do that was to lose his pride, and deny fate.
He drew the great sword, and the action provoked another huge cheer from his supporters. Some of the South Essex, he saw, had managed to get to the place and were pushing for room on the wall’s broad top. They cheered as he raised the sword and as the sunlight ran up the steel. With this blade, he thought, he had killed La Marquesa’s brother. Was he now to kill her husband?
He looked up. The Marqués had taken off his gold-encrusted jacket. He flexed his sword, the steel moving like a whip. He was a big man, heavily muscled, strong enough to carry his huge weight lightly. Sharpe had still not seen the man’s face. He had often wondered who it was that Helene had married. He remembered that she had often spoken of her husband’s piety. That, Sharpe thought, explained the tall priest who leaned in urgent conversation towards the Marqués.
D’Alembord turned and paced the weed-grown path towards Sharpe. ‘You’ll face north. The fight ends with death or if, in the opinion of the seconds, one man is too badly hurt to continue. Satisfied?’
Sharpe nodded. The evening was warm. He could feel the sweat prickling beneath his shirt. He handed d’Alembord his sword, undid his belt, then peeled off his jacket. He thought suddenly that the fine linen shirt he wore had been a gift from the Marquesa. He took his sword back and held it up to the sun as though some ancient god would bless it and bring him success. ‘Now?’
‘It seems as good a time as any.’
He walked forward, his tall French boots crunching on the stones of the path. They would fight where the paths crossed at the graveyard’s centre, where the Marqués would try to turn Sharpe into the dazzling sun and run him through with the slim, shining blade.
He stopped opposite his enemy. He stared into the blank, expressionless eyes and he tried to imagine Helene marrying this man. There was a weakness in the fleshy, proud face. Sharpe tried to pin it down, tried to analyse this man whose skill he had to beat. Perhaps, he thought, the Marqués was a man born to greatness who had never felt himself worthy. That perhaps was why he prayed so hard and had so much pride.
The Marqués stared at Sharpe, seeing the man whom he believed had insulted his wife and tried to assault her. The Marqués did not just fight for Helene, nor just for his pride, but for the pride of all Spain that had been humbled by needing to make an Englishman its Generalisimo.
The Marqués remembered what the Inquisitor, Father Hacha, had said about this man. Fast, but unskilled. Sharpe, the Marqués knew, would try to kill him as if he was an ox. He twitched the fine sword in his hand. It was odd, he thought, that an Inquisitor should carry Helene’s letter. He pushed the thought away.
‘You are ready, my Lord?’ Mendora called.
The Marqués’s face gave the smallest twitch. He was ready.
‘Major Sharpe?’
‘Yes.’
Major Mendora flexed his sword once so that the steel hissed in the air. The Inquisitor stood with a doctor beside the Marqués’s coach. D’Alembord looked hopefully towards the cemetery entrance, but it was empty. He felt the hopelessness of this idiocy, and then Mendora called them forward. ‘Your swords, gentlemen?’
Sharpe’s boots grated on the gravel. If he got into real trouble, he thought, then he could pretend to fall down, scoop up a handful of the stones, and hurl them to blind the big man who came cautiously forward. What had d’Alembord said? He would feint to the right and go left? Or was it the other way round?
He raised his big, straight sword and it looked dull beside the slim, polished blade that came beside it. The swords touched. Sharpe wondered if he detected a quiver in the other man’s grip, but no, the blades rested quietly as Mendora drew his own sword, held it beneath the raised blades, then swept his weapon up to part the two swords and the duel had begun.
Neither man moved.
They watched each other, waiting. Sharpe’s urge was to shout, as he shouted on a battlefield to frighten his opponents, but he felt cowed by the formality of this setting. He was fighting a duel against an aristocrat and he felt that he must behave as they expected him to behave. This was not like battle. This was so cold-blooded, so ritualistic, and it seemed hard to believe that in this warm evening air a man must fall to bleed his life onto the gravel.
The Marqués’s sword came slowly down, reached out, touched Sharpe’s blade, then flickered in bright, quick motion, and Sharpe took two steps back.
The Marqués still watched him. He had done no more than test Sharpe’s speed. He would test his skill next.
Sharpe tried to shake the odd lethargy away. It seemed impossible that this was real, that death waited here. He saw the Marqués come forward again, his heavy tread no clue to the speed that Sharpe had already seen, and Sharpe went forward too, his sword reaching, and the Marqués stepped back.
The troops jeered. They wanted blood, they wanted a furious mill with their champion standing over the ripped corpse of the other man.
The Marqués tried to oblige. He came forward with surprising speed, his blade flickering past Sharpe’s guard, looping beneath the heavy cavalry sword and lunging to Sharpe’s