Harper’s face was sublimely honest. “Eighty, sir.”
“Show me your powder horn.”
Harper smiled. “I thought you might like a drop of something tonight, sir?”
“Let’s get on, then.” Sharpe grinned at Harper’s discomfiture. In addition to the eighty rounds, twenty more than the rest of the army carried, Riflemen also carried a horn of fine powder that made for better shooting when there was time to use it. “All right, Sergeant. Ten minutes fast, then we’ll march easy.”
At midday they found Major Forrest with his small, mounted advance party waving to them from a stand of trees that grew between the road and the stream Harper had been hoping for. The Major led the Riflemen to the spot he had chosen for them. “I thought, Sharpe, that it might be best if you were some way from the Colonel?”
“Don’t worry, sir.” Sharpe grinned at the nervous Major. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”
Forrest was still worried. He looked at Sharpe’s men, who were already hacking at the branches. “Sir Henry insists on fires being built in straight lines, Sharpe.”
Sharpe held up his hands. “Not a flame out of place, sir, I promise you.”
An hour later the Battalion arrived, and the men threw themselves onto the ground and rested their heads on their packs. Some went to the stream and sat with blistered, swollen feet in the cool water. Sentries were posted, weapons stacked, the smell of tobacco drifted through the trees, and a desultory game of football started far away from the pile of baggage that marked the temporary officers’ mess. Last to arrive were the wives and children, mixed with the Portuguese muleteers and their animals, Hogan and his mules, and the herd of cattle, driven by hired labour, that would provide the evening meals until the last beast was killed.
In the somnolent afternoon Sharpe felt restless. He had no family to write to and no desire to join Harper vainly tempting non-existent fish with his maggots. Hogan was sleeping, snoring gently in a patch of shade, so Sharpe got up from the grass, took his rifle, and strolled towards the picquet line and beyond. It was a beautiful day. No cloud disturbed the sky, the water in the stream flowed clear, a whisper of a breeze stirred the grass and flickered the pale leaves of the olive trees. He walked between the stream and a field of growing corn, jumped a crude, wicker dam that stopped an irrigation channel, and into a rock-strewn field of stunted olives. Nothing moved. Insects buzzed and clicked, a horse whinnied from the camp site, the sound of the water faded behind him. Someone had told him it was July. Perhaps it was his birthday. He did not know on which day he had been born, but before his mother died he remembered her calling him a July-baby, or was it June? He remembered little else of her. Dark hair and a voice in the darkness. She had died when he was an infant, and there was no other family.
The landscape crouched beneath the heat, still and silent, the Battalion swallowed up in the countryside as though it did not exist. He looked back down the road the Battalion had marched and far away, too far to see properly, there was a dust cloud where the main army was still on the road. He sat beside a gnarled tree trunk, rifle across his knees, and stared into the heat haze. A lizard darted across the ground, paused, looked at him, then ran up a tree trunk and froze as if he would lose sight of it because of its stillness. A speck of movement in the sky made him look up, and high in the blue a hawk slid silently, its wings motionless, its head searching the ground for prey. Patrick would have known instantly what it was but to Sharpe the bird was just another hunter, and today, he thought, there is nothing for us hunters and, as if in agreement, the bird stirred its wings and in a moment had gone out of view. He felt comfortable and lazy, at peace with the world, glad to be a Rifleman in Spain. He looked at the stunted olives with their promise of a thin harvest and wondered what family would shake the branches in the autumn, whose lives were bounded by the stream, the shallow fields, and the high, climbing road he would probably never see again.
Then there was a noise. Too hesitant and far off to sound an alarm in his head, but strange and persistent enough to make him alert and send his right hand to curl unconsciously round the narrow part of the rifle’s stock. There were horses on the road, only two from the sound of their hooves, but they were moving slowly and uncertainly, and the sound suggested that something was wrong. He doubted that the French would have cavalry patrols in this part of Spain but he still got to his feet and moved silendy through the grove, instinctively choosing a path that kept his green uniform hidden and shadowed until he stood in the bright sunlight and surprised the traveller.
It was the girl. She was still dressed like a man, in the black trousers and boots, with the same wide-brimmed hat that shadowed her beauty. She was walking, or rather limping like her horse, and at the sight of Sharpe she stopped and looked at him angrily, as if she was annoyed at being seen unexpectedly. The servant, a slight, dark man leading the heavily loaded mule, stopped ten paces behind and stared mutely at the tall, scarred Rifleman. The mare also looked at Sharpe, swished its tail at the flies, and stood patiendy with one hind leg lifted off the ground. The shoe was hanging loose, held by a single nail, and the animal must have suffered agonies on the heat of the stony road. Sharpe nodded at the hind foot. “Why didn’t you take the shoe off?”
Her voice was surprisingly soft. “Can you do it?” She smiled at him, the anger going from her face, and for a second Sharpe said nothing. He guessed she was in her early twenties, but she carried her looks with the assurance of someone who knew that beauty could be a better inheritance than money or land. She seemed amused at his hesitation, as though she was accustomed to her effect on men, and she raised a mocking eyebrow. “Can you?”
Sharpe nodded and moved to the horse’s rear. He pulled the hoof towards him, holding the pastern firmly, and the mare trembled but stayed still. The shoe would have fallen off within a few paces and he pulled it clear with the slightest tug and let the leg go. He held the shoe out to the girl. “You’re lucky.”
Her eyes were huge and dark. “Why?”
“It can probably be put back on, I don’t know.” He felt clumsy and awkward in her presence, aware of her beauty, suddenly tongue-tied because he wanted her very much. She made no move to take the shoe, so he pushed it under the strap of a bulging saddle bag. “Someone will know how to shoe a horse up there.” He nodded up the road. “There’s a Battalion camped up there.”
“The South Essex?” Her English was good, tinged with a Portuguese accent.
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Good. I was following them when the shoe came off.” She looked at her servant and smiled. “Poor Agostino. He’s frightened of horses.”
“And you, ma’am?” Sharpe wanted to keep her talking. It was not unusual for women to follow the army; already Sir Arthur Wellesley’s troops had collected English, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese wives, mistresses, and whores, but it was unusual to see a beautiful girl, well horsed, attended by a servant, and Sharpe’s curiosity was aroused. More than his curiosity. He wanted this girl. It was a reaction to her beauty as much as a reaction to the knowledge that a girl with this kind of looks did not need a shabby Lieutenant without a private fortune. She could take her pick of the rich officers, but that did not stop Sharpe looking at her and desiring her. She seemed to read his thoughts.
“You think I should be afraid?”
Sharpe shrugged, glancing up the road where the Battalion’s smoke drifted into the evening. “Soldiers aren’t delicate, ma’am.”
“Thank you for warning me.” She was mocking him. She looked down at his faded red sash. “Lieutenant?”
“Lieutenant Sharpe, ma’am.”
“Lieutenant Sharpe.” She smiled at him, spitting him with her beauty. “You must know Christian Gibbons?”
He nodded, knowing the unfairness of life. Money could buy anything: a commission, promotion, a sword fashioned to a man’s height and strength, even a woman like this. “I know him.”
“And you don’t like him!” She
laughed, knowing that her instinct was right. “But I do.” She clicked her tongue at the horse and gathered up the reins. “I expect we will meet again. I am going with you to Madrid.”
Sharpe did not want her to go. “You’re a long way from home.”
She turned back, mocking him with a smile. “So are you, Lieutenant, so are you.”
She led the limping mare, followed by the mute servant, towards the stand of trees and the cooking fires. Sharpe watched her go, let his eyes see her slim figure beneath the black clothes, and felt the envy and heaviness of his desire. He walked back into the olive grove, as if by leaving the road he could wipe her from his memory and regain the peace of the afternoon. Damn Gibbons and his money, damn all officers who could buy such thoroughbred beauty. He knew it was jealousy, yet he encouraged the sour thoughts, let them swill round his head to try to convince himself that he did not want her, but as he walked between the gnarled trees he felt the horse-shoe nail still held in his right palm. He looked at it, a short, bent nail, and tucked it carefully into his ammunition pouch. He told himself it would come in useful; he needed a nail to jam the mainspring of the rifle when he stripped the lock for cleaning, but better nails were plentiful and he knew he was keeping it because it had been hers. Angrily he fished among the fat cartridges and threw the nail far away.
From the Battalion there came the sound of musket fire, and he knew that bullocks had been slaughtered for the evening meal. There would be wine with the stew, and Hogan’s brandy after it, and stories about old friends and half-forgotten campaigns. He had been looking forward to the meal, to the evening, but suddenly everything was changed. The girl was in the camp, her laughter would invade the peace, and he thought, as he walked back by the stream, that he did not even know her name.
Chapter 5
The Regimienta de la Santa Maria would have conquered the world if words and display had been enough. But punctuality was not among their more obvious military virtues.
The South Essex had marched hard for four days to reach the rendezvous at Plasencia, but the town was empty of Spanish troops. Storks flapped lazily from their nests among the steep roofs that climbed to the ancient cathedral which dominated both the town and the circling plain, but of the Santa Maria there was no sign. The Battalion waited. Simmerson had bivouacked outside the walls, and the men watched jealously as other units arrived and marched into the tantalising streets with their wine shops and women. Three men disobeyed the standing order to stay away from the town and were caught, helplessly drunk, by the Provost-Marshal and received a flogging as the Battalion paraded beside the River Jerte.
Finally, two days late, the Spanish Regiment arrived and the South Essex mustered at five in the morning to begin their march south to Valdelacasa. There was a chill in the air which the rising sun would disperse, but as five thirty, the hour set for departure, came and went there was still no sign of the Santa Maria and the men stamped their feet and rubbed their hands to ward off the cold. The hour of six chimed from the bells in the town. The children who were waiting with their mothers to see the Battalion depart grew bored and ran through the ranks despite all the shouting that began with Simmerson and worked its way down to the Sergeants and Corporals. The Battalion was paraded beside the Roman bridge that spanned the river, and Sharpe followed a grumbling Captain Hogan onto the ancient arches and stared into the water that tumbled round the vast granite boulders which had been left in the river-bed in some long-ago upheaval of the earth. Hogan was impatient. “Damn them! Why can’t we just march and let the beggars catch us up?” He knew well why it was impossible. The answer was called diplomacy, and part of the price of cooperation with the touchy Spanish forces was that the native Regiment must march first. Sharpe said nothing. He stared into the water at the long weeds which waved sinuously in the current. He shivered in the dawn breeze. He shared Hogan’s impatience, and it was alloyed with frustrations that stirred inside him like the slow-moving river weed. He looked up at the Cathedral, touched by the rising sun, and tried to pin down his apprehensions about the operation at Valdelacasa. It sounded simple. A day’s march to the bridge, a day for Hogan to destroy the already crumbling arches, and a day’s march back to Plasencia, where Wellesley was gathering his forces for the next stage of the advance into Spain. But there was something, some instinct as difficult to pin down as the grey shadows that receded in the dawn, that told him it would not be that easy. It was not the Spanish that worried him. Like Hogan he knew that their presence was a political imperative and a military farce. If they proved as useless as their reputation suggested, that should not matter; the South Essex was strong enough to cope with whatever was needed. And that was the problem. Simmerson had never met the enemy, and Sharpe had little faith in the Colonel’s ability to do the right thing. If there really were French on the south bank of the Tagus, and if the South Essex had to repel an attack on the bridge while Hogan laid his charges, then Sharpe would have preferred an old soldier to be making the decisions and not this Colonel of Militia whose head was stuffed with theories on battles and tactics learned on the safe fields of Essex.
But it was not just Simmerson. He looked at the road leading to the town where an indistinct group of women stood, the wives of the Battalion, and wondered whether the girl, Josefina Lacosta, was there. He had at least learned her name and seen her, a dozen times, mounted on the delicate black mare with a crowd of Simmerson’s Lieutenants laughing and joking with her. He had listened to the rumours about her; that she was the widow of a rich Portuguese officer, that she had run away from the Portuguese officer, no-one seemed sure, but what was certain was that she had met Gibbons at a ball in Lisbon’s American Hotel and, within hours, had decided to go to the war with him. It was said that they planned to marry once the army reached Madrid and that Gibbons had promised her a house and a life of dancing and gaiety. Whatever the truth of Josefina there was no denying her presence, entrancing the whole Battalion, flirting even with Sir Henry who responded with a heavy gallantry and told the officers that young men would be young men. “Christian needs his exercise, what?” Simmerson would repeat the joke and laugh each time. The Colonel’s indulgence reached to letting his nephew break his standing order and take a suite of rooms in the town, where he lived with the girl and entertained friends in the long, warm evenings. Gibbons was the envy of all the officers, Josefina the jewel in his crown, and Sharpe shivered on the bridge and wondered if she would ever go back to the flatlands of Essex and to a big house built on the profits of salted fish.
Seven chimed, and there was a stir of excitement as a group of horsemen appeared from the houses and spurred towards the waiting Battalion. The riders turned out to be British and the ranks relaxed again. Hogan and Sharpe walked back to their men paraded next to Lennox’s Light Company at the left of the Battalion and watched the newcomers ride to join Simmerson. All the riders but one were in uniform, and the exception wore blue trousers under a grey cloak and on his head a plain bicorne hat. Ensign Denny, sixteen years old and full of barely suppressed excitement, was standing near the Riflemen, and Sharpe asked him if he knew who the apparent civilian was.
“No, sir.”
“Sergeant Harper! Tell Mr Denny who the gentleman in the grey cloak is.”
“That’s the General, Mr Denny. Sir Arthur Wellesley himself. Born in Ireland like all the best soldiers!”
A ripple of laughter went through the ranks, but they all straightened up and stared at the man who would lead them towards Madrid. They saw him take out a watch and look towards the town from where the Spanish should be coming but there was still no sign of the Regimienta even though the sun was well over the horizon and the dew fading fast from the grass. One of the staff officers with Wellesley broke away from the group and trotted his horse towards Hogan. Sharpe supposed he wanted to talk to the Engineer, and he walked away, back to the bridge, to give Hogan some privacy.
“Sharpe! Richard!”
The voice was familiar, from
the past. He turned to see the staff officer, a Lieutenant Colonel, waving to him, but the face was hidden beneath the ornate cocked hat.
“Richard! You’ve forgotten me!”
Lawford! Sharpe’s face broke into a smile. “Sir! I didn’t even know you were here!”
Lawford swung easily out of the saddle, took off his hat, and shook his head. “You look dreadful! You must really buy yourself a uniform one of these days.” He smiled and shook Sharpe’s hand. “It’s good to see you, Richard.”
“And to see you, sir. A Lieutenant Colonel? You’re doing well!”
“It cost me three thousand, five hundred pounds, Richard, and well you know it. Thank God for money.”
Lawford. Sharpe remembered when the Honourable William Lawford was a frightened Lieutenant and a Sergeant called Sharpe had guided him through the heat of India. Then Lawford had repaid the debt. In a prison cell in Seringapatam the aristocrat had taught the Sergeant to read and write; the exercise had stopped them both going mad in the dank hell of the Sultan Tippoo’s dungeons. Sharpe shook his head. “I haven’t seen you for… „
“It’s been months. Far too long. How are you?”
Sharpe grinned. “As you see me.”
“Untidy?” Lawford smiled. He was the same age as Sharpe but there the resemblance stopped. Lawford was a dandy, dressed always in the finest cloth and lace, and Sharpe had seen him pay a Regimental Tailor seven guineas to achieve a tighter fit on an already immaculately tailored jacket. He spread his hands expansively.
“You can stop worrying, Richard, Lawford is here. The French will probably surrender when they hear. God! It’s taken me months to get this job! I was stuck in Dublin Castle, changing the bloody guard, and I’ve pulled a hundred strings to get onto Wellesley’s staff. And here I am! Arrived two weeks ago!” The words tumbled out. Sharpe was delighted to see him. Lawford, like Gibbons, summed up all that he hated most about the army: how money and influence could buy promotion while others, like Sharpe, rotted in penury. Yet Sharpe liked Lawford, could feel no resentment, and he supposed that it was because the aristocrat, for all the assurance of his birth, responded to Sharpe in the same way. And Lawford, for all his finery and assumed languor, was a fighting soldier. Sharpe held up a hand to stop the flow of news.