Sharpes Devil   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

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" Harper fell silent as the small group of uniformed men approached a shuttered house that was surrounded by a neatly trimmed hedge. Bright flowers grew in a border on either side of a pathway made from crushed seashells. A gardener, who looked Chinese, was digging in the vegetable patch beside the house, while a young woman, fair-haired and white-dressed, sat reading under a gazebo close to the front hedge. She looked up, smiled a familiar greeting at the red-faced Major who led the convoy of mules, then stared with frank curiosity at the strangers. The Spanish officers bowed their heads gravely, Sharpe tipped his old-fashioned brown tricorne hat, while Harper offered her a cheerful smile. "It's a fine morning, miss!"

"Too hot, I think." Her accent was English, her voice gentle. "We're going to have rain this afternoon."

"Better rain than cold. It's freezing back home, so it is."

The girl smiled, but did not respond again. She looked down at her book and slowly turned a page. Somewhere in the house a clock struck the tinkling chimes of midday. A cat slept on a win-dowsill.

The mules climbed slowly on toward the guardpost. They left the flax and the banyan trees and the myrtles behind, emerging onto a plateau where the grass was sparse and brown and the few trees stunted and wind-bent. Beyond the barren grassland were sudden saw-edged peaks, black and menacing, and on one of those rocky crags was a white-walled house which had the gaunt gallows of a semaphore station built on its roof. The semaphore house stood on the skyline and, because they were backed by the turbulent dark rain clouds, its white painted walls looked unnaturally bright. The semaphore machine beside the guardhouse on the road suddenly clattered into life, its twin black arms creaking as they jerked up and down.

"They'll be telling everyone that we're coming," Harper, who was finding every mundane event of this hot day exciting, said happily.

"Like as not," Sharpe said.

The redcoats on duty at the guardpost saluted as the Spanish officers rode past. Some smiled at the sight of the monstrous Harper overlapping the struggling mule, but their faces turned to stone when Sharpe glowered at them. Christ, Sharpe thought, but these men must be bored. Stuck four thousand miles from home with nothing to do but watch the sea and the mountains and to wonder about the small house five miles from the anchorage. "You do realize," Sharpe said to Harper suddenly, and with a sour expression, "that we're almost certainly wasting our time.

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