Hawkwood was about to plead ignorance when the answer dawned on him.

“You’re not serious?”

“Damned right, I’m serious. If it wasn’t for me taking on his mantle, they wouldn’t have posted me to the Canadas and I wouldn’t have been captured and we wouldn’t be having this chinwag. If I were a God-fearing man, I’d say that your coming to my rescue was a clear case of Divine intervention.” Lawrence shook his head. “Since I’m not, let’s put it down to happy coincidence.”

“Bloody hell!” Hawkwood said.

“Quite so,” Lawrence responded. “Strange how chance takes a hand, ain’t it? I felt sure I was imagining things when I saw you back at the ferry landing.”

“That makes two of us,” Hawkwood said. “How did you end up taking over Grant’s role?”

Lawrence put down his tankard and picked up a poker. After steering a couple of glowing log ends away from the edge of the hearth, he replaced the poker, reclaimed his drink and sat back. “It was following our last adventure, when you and I said our goodbyes and I returned to Spain. There was a lot of bad feeling after the Badajoz affair, and Wellington—”

“Badajoz?” Hawkwood said.

Lawrence fixed Hawkwood with a questioning gaze. “You know about the victory, obviously?”

“I read about it.”

“Aye, well it wasn’t near as glorious as the journals might have made out. In fact, it was anything but. Our losses were appalling. And when our troops did finally take the city, they went on a three-day killing spree. Men, women, even children, were put to the sword. It was ghastly, a bloody massacre.” He gave a shudder at the thought of it. “You can imagine what it did to our relations with the Spanish. Naturally, Wellington wanted bridges rebuilt as soon as possible, and one way to achieve that was to have British officers working with their Spanish counterparts to try and smooth things over.

“My colonel volunteered me for the role; he knew my Spanish was good. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was spending more time delivering dispatches to the local guerrilla commanders than I was marching with my regiment.

“In the course of all this, I worked with Grant, got to know him a little. After he was captured, and because I was already entrenched with the guerrilleros, I was tasked to take over the running of some of his courier routes.”

“But how did you end up here?”

Lawrence eyed Hawkwood over the rim of his mug. “When you were in Spain, did you ever come across Lieutenant-Colonel Pearson?”

“Can’t say the name means anything.”