‘How well?’

The cavalryman smiled. ‘Tres bien, Monsieur, jeparle…’

‘I didn’t ask for a god-damned demonstration! Answer me.’

The Lieutenant was horrified by the savage reproof. ‘I speak it well, sir.’

Sharpe stared at him. The Lieutenant thought that this was just such a stare that an executioner might give a plump and once-privileged victim. ‘What’s your name, Lieutenant?’

‘Trumper-Jones, sir.’

‘Do you have a white handkerchief?’

This conversation, Trumper-Jones decided, was becoming increasingly odd. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’ Sharpe looked back to the ridge, and to the saddle among the rocks where the road came over the skyline.

This had become, he was thinking, a bastard of a day’s work. The British army was clearing the roads eastward from the Portuguese frontier. They were driving back the French outposts and prising out. the French garrisons, making the roads ready for the army’s summer campaign.

And on this day of fitful rain and cold wind five British Battalions had attacked a small French garrison on the River Tormes. Five miles behind the French, on the road that would be their retreat, was this bridge. Sharpe, with half a Battalion and a Company of Riflemen had been sent by a circuitous night march to block the retreat. His task was simple; to stop the French long enough to let the other Battalions come up behind and finish them off. It was as simple as that, yet now, as the afternoon was well advanced, Sharpe’s mood was sour and bitter.

‘Sir?’ Sharpe looked up. The Lieutenant was offering him a folded linen handkerchief. Trumper-Jones smiled nervously. ‘You wanted a handkerchief, sir?’

‘I don’t want to blow my nose, you fool!’ It’s for the surrender!’ Sharpe scowled and walked two paces away.

Michael Trumper-Jones stared after him. It was true that fifteen hundred French were approaching this small force of less then four hundred men, but nothing that Trumper-Jones had heard of Richard Sharpe had prepared him for this sudden willingness to surrender.