He was out of place here. It was not just the clothes. Any man, he supposed, could get a tailor to dress him like a lord, but it was not just a question of money. How did a man learn which of a dozen knives and forks to pick up first? Or how to dance? Or how to make light conversation with a Marquesa, joke with a Bishop, or how, even, to give orders to a butler? They said it was in the blood of a man’s birth, ordained by God, yet upstarts like Napoleon Bonaparte had come from low birth to the glittering pinnacle of the richest country on earth. He had asked Major Leroy once, the loyalist American, if there was no social distinction in the fledgling United States, but the Major had laughed, spat out a shred of cheroot, and intoned solemnly to Sharpe. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ You know what that is?“
“No.”
“The rebels’ Declaration of Independence.” Leroy had spat another tobacco shred from his tongue. “Half the bastards who signed it had slaves, the other half would run a mile rather than shake the hand of a slaughterman. No. I give them fifty years and they’ll all want titles. Barons of Boston and Dukes of New York. It’ll happen.”
And Sharpe, standing in the shards of a myriad refracted candle flames, guessed Leroy was right. If you took every person in this room and abandoned them, Robinson Crusoe style, on an empty island, then inside a year there would be a duke, five barons, and the rest would be serfs. Even the French had brought back the aristocracy! They had murdered it first, as they murdered La Marquesa’s parents, and now Bonaparte was making his Marshals into Princes of this and Dukes of that and his poor, honest brother had been made into King of Spain!
Sharpe looked at the sweating faces over tight collars, the thick thighs laced tight in military uniforms, the ridiculous costumes of the women. Take away the money, he supposed, and they would look like anyone else, softer perhaps, flabbier, but the money, and the birth, gave them something that he lacked. An assurance? An ease of moving through the rich waters of society? Then should he bother? He could walk away from the army, when the war was done, and Teresa would have a home for him in Casatejada among the wide fields that were her family’s property. He need never say ‘my lord’ again, or ‘sir’, or feel belittled by an elegant fool, and he felt an anger inside him at the unfairness of life and, at the same time, a determination that one day he would have them respecting him. God rot them all!
“Richard! Are you going?”
Spears whirled offthe dance floor, climbed the two steps to where Sharpe was standing, and brought with him a small, dark-haired girl with brightly rouged cheeks. “Say hello to Maria.”
Sharpe half bowed to her. “Senorita.”
“We are formal.” Spears grinned at him. “You’re not going, are you?”
“I was.”
“You can’t, my dear fellow! Positively can’t. You’ll have to see La Marquesa, at least. Press her exquisite fingers to your lips, murmur ”charmed“, and compliment heron her frock.”
“Tell her from me she looked wonderful.” He had not seen her, though he had looked, in either room.
Spears slumped back in mock resignation. “Are you a dull dog, Richard? Don’t tell me that the hero of Talavera, the Conqueror of Badajoz, is creeping back to his lonely cot to say a few prayers for lame dogs and orphans! Enjoy yourself!” He gestured at the girl. “Do you want her? She’s probably as clean as they come. Really! You can have her! There are plenty more down there.” Maria, who obviously spoke not a word of English, looked devotedly up into Spears’ handsome face.
Sharpe wondered why Spears was so friendly. Perhaps his Lordship needed a strong arm to protect him from his gambling creditors or maybe, as he had accused La Marquesa, Spears liked the company of his social inferiors. Whatever, it did not matter. “I’m going. It’s been a long day.”
Spears shrugged. “If you must, Richard. If you must. I did try.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Sharpe took one last look at the ballroom, at the circling, brilliant people beneath the great chandeliers, and he knew he had been foolish in coming to this place. La Marquesa was not to be his reward. He had been presumptuous in even coming. He nodded to Spears, turned, and walked onto the upper landing. He stopped behind the shako-hatted statue and stared up at the great, painted ceiling, and he could not imagine owning one hundredth of one hundredth part of all this wealth. He would go back and tell Harper of it.
“Senor?” A servant had appeared beside him. The man was aloof, liveried, and with a supercilious look in his eye.
“Yes?”
“This way, senor.” The man plucked Sharpe’s sleeve towards a tapestry against the wall.
Sharpe shook the hand off, growled, and he saw alarm come into the servant’s eyes.
“Senor! Por favor! This way!”
It suddenly occurred to Sharpe that the man only had these two words of English, words he had been coached in, and only one person gave orders in this house. La Marquesa. He followed the man towards the hanging tapestry. The servant glanced around the landing, making sure that no-one was watching, and then he swiftly drew back one heavy corner of the great cloth. Behind it was a low, open doorway. “Senor?”
There was urgency in the man’s voice. Sharpe ducked under the lintel and the footman, staying on the landing, let the tapestry fall back into place. Sharpe was alone, quite alone, in a musty and total darkness.
CHAPTER 9
He stood quite still, the air cooler on one side of his face, the sound of revelry muffled by the thick tapestry. He put out his left hand slowly, found the open door, and swung it shut. The hinges were well greased. It moved soundlessly until the latch clicked into place and then Sharpe leaned against it and let his eyes adjust slowly to the darkness.
He was on a small, square landing between two staircases. To his right the steps went downwards into utter darkness, to his left they climbed and at their head he could see a pale square that might have been the night sky except that it was curiously mottled and had no stars. He went to his left, climbing slowly, and his boots grated on the stone steps until he came out onto a wide balcony.
He saw now why there were no stars visible. The open side and roof of the balcony were enclosed by a small-latticed screen, dense with climbing plants, and the effect was to make the balcony comfortably cool. The plant stems had been trained so there were wide gaps between them and he crossed to the nearest gap and rested his shako peak on the lattice so he could see out. The lattice moved. He started back, then realised that the screen was a series of hinged doors, any of which could be opened so that the sun could flood onto the flagstones. The city was spread beneath him, grey moonlight on tiles and stone, the glow of fires reddening some of the buildings.
The balcony was deserted. Rush mats lay at its centre, making a path between troughs planted with small shrubs and stone benches supported by carved, crouching lions. He walked slowly along the balcony’s length and his eye caught strange, intermittent flashes of light from his right. They seemed to come from the balcony floor where it met the wall of the Palacio and he stopped, crouched, and saw that the lights came from a series of tiny windows that looked into the ballroom below. They were like spyholes. Beyond the palm-sized panes of glass were tunnels that must go through stone and plaster and each revealed a small patch of the great ballroom. Sharpe saw Lord Spears circle through his spyhole, his pelisse round Maria’s shoulders and his one good arm somewhere beneath the pelisse. Sharpe stood up and walked on.
The balcony turned to the right and Sharpe stopped at the corner. The rush mats on the new stretch were overlaid with rugs and there were doors, shut and shuttered, that led into the Palacio’s interior. At the far end, hard against a blank wall, Sharpe could see a table that was set with food and wine. The crystal and china winked with the reflected light of a single candle, shielded by glass, that stood in a niche of the wall. Only two chairs stood by the table, both empty, and Sharpe felt the stirring of his instinct, of danger, and he wondered why he had been invited to what looked like a very small party indeed. It made no sense, despite Spears’ explanation, for La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba to invite Captain Sharpe to this private, expensive, and luxurious balcony.