There was a burst of applause from a group of cavalry officers standing by a wine shop. Lawford shot them a withering look and strode on, followed by someone's ironic mimicry of the bugle call for the full charge. Sharpe followed. Lawford could be right. The General had summoned the South Essex, no one knew why, and Sharpe had hoped that it was for some special task, something to wipe out the memory of the winter's boredom. But the scene with Lieutenant Ayres could change that for Sharpe, condemn him to a court-martial, to a future far more dreary even than patrol work on an empty border.

Four ox-carts stood outside Wellington's headquarters, another reminder that the army would move soon, but otherwise everything was peaceful. The only unusual object was a tall mast that jutted from the roof of the house, topped by a crosspiece, from which hung four tarred sheep bladders. Sharpe looked at them curiously. This was the first time he had seen the new telegraph and he wished that it was working so that he could watch the black, inflated bladders running up and down on their ropes and sending messages, via other similar stations, to the far-off fortress of Almeida and to the troops guarding the river Coa. The system had been copied from the Royal Navy and sailors had been sent to man the telegraph. Each letter of the alphabet had its own arrangement of the four black bags, and common words, like 'regiment', 'enemy', and 'general', were abbreviated to a single display that could be seen, miles away, through a huge naval telescope. Sharpe had heard that a message could travel twenty miles in less than ten minutes and he wondered, as they came close to the two bored sentries guarding the General's headquarters, what other modern devices would be thrown up by the necessity of the long war against Napoleon.

He forgot the telegraph as they stepped into the cool hallway of the house and he felt a twinge of fear at the coming interview.