Then the ribbon-merchant came.
The Reverend Sebastian Whistler was enumerating God’s blessings; fresh bread, mothers, newly brewed tea, and such like, when Sharpe saw the eyes of the Battalion look away from the preacher. He looked himself and saw, coming to the field where the church parade was tactfully held away from Spanish Catholic eyes, two Spanish officers and a Spanish priest.
The ribbon-merchant rode ahead of his two companions. He was a young man uniformed so splendidly, so gaudily, that he had earned the nickname given by the British troops to any fine dandy. The young man wore a uniform of pristine white, laced with gold, decorated with a blue silken sash on which shone a silver star. His coat was edged with scarlet, the same colour as his horse’s leather bridle. Hanging from his saddle was a scabbard decorated with precious stones.
The Battalion, ignoring the Reverend Sebastian Whistler’s injunctions that they should be content with their humble lot and not covet wealth that would only lead them into temptation, watched the superbly uniformed man ride behind the preacher and pause a few paces from Sharpe.
The other two Spaniards reined in fifty yards away. The priest, mounted on a big, fine bay, was dressed in black, a hat over his eyes. The other man, Sharpe saw, was a General, no less. He was a burly, tall Spaniard in gold laced finery who seemed to stare fixedly at the Rifle officer.
The young man in the gorgeous white uniform had a thin, proud face with eyes that looked disdainfully at the Englishman. He waited until the sermon was finished, until the RSM had brought the parade to attention and shouldered its muskets, then spoke in English. ‘You’re Sharpe?’
Sharpe replied in Spanish. ‘Who are you?’
‘Are you Sharpe?’
Sharpe knew from the ribbon-merchant’s deliberate rudeness that his instinct had been right. He had sensed trouble, but now that it was here he did not fear it. The man spoke with scorn and hatred in his voice, but a man, unlike a formless dread, could be killed. Sharpe turned away from the Spaniard. ‘Regimental Sergeant Major!’
‘Sir?’
‘A general officer is present! General salute!’
‘Sir!’ RSM MacLaird turned to the parade, filled his lungs, and his shout bellowed over the field. ‘Talion! General salute!’
Sharpe watched the muskets fall from the shoulders, check, slam over the bodies, then the right feet went back, the officers’ swords swept up, and he turned and smiled at the Spaniard. ‘Who are you?’
The Spanish General, Sharpe saw, returned the salute. MacLaird shouted the shoulder arms and turned back to Sharpe. ‘Dismiss, sir?’
‘Dismiss the parade, Sergeant Major.’
The white uniformed Spaniard spurred his horse forward into Sharpe’s line of vision. ‘Are you Sharpe?’
Sharpe looked at him. The man’s English was good, but Sharpe chose to reply in Spanish. ‘I’m the man who’ll slit your throat if you don’t learn to be polite.’ He had spoken softly and he saw his words rewarded by a tiny flicker of fear in the man’s face. This officer was covering his nervousness with bravado.
The Spaniard straightened in his saddle. ‘My name is Miguel Mendora, Major Mendora.’
‘My name is Sharpe.’
Mendora nodded. For a second or two he said nothing, then, with the speed of a scorpion striking, he lashed with his right hand to strike Sharpe a stinging blow about the face.
The blow did not land. Sharpe had fought in every gutter from London to Calcutta and he had seen the blow coming. He had seen it in Mendora’s eyes. He swayed back, letting the white-gloved hand go past. He saw the anger in the Spaniard, while inside himself he felt the icy calm that came to him in battle. He smiled. ‘I have known piglets with more manhood than you, Mendora.’
Mendora ignored the insult. He had done what he was ordered to do and survived. Now he looked to his right to see the dismissed soldiers straggling towards him. They had seen him try to strike their officer, and their mood was at once excited and belligerent. Mendora looked back to Sharpe. ‘That was from my master.’
‘Who is?’
Mendora ignored the question. ‘You will write a letter of apology to him, a letter that he will use as he sees fit. After that, as you are no gentleman, you will resign your commission.’
Sharpe wanted to laugh. ‘Your General is who?’ Major Mendora tossed his head. ‘The Marques de Gasares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’
And suddenly the memory of that flawless beauty that masked the flawed woman flooded into him so that the excitement came searing back. Helene! It was with Helene that he had betrayed Teresa, and he knew that the revenge for that betrayal had come to this field. He wanted to laugh aloud. Helene! Helene of the hair of gold, of the white skin on her black sheets, the woman who had used him in the service of death, but who, he thought, had perhaps loved him a little.
He stared past Mendora at the General. He had thought, from Helene’s description, that her husband would be a short, fat man. Fat he was, but it was a burly, muscular fatness. He looked tall. The excitement was still on Sharpe. The Marquesa was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, a woman he had loved for a season, then lost. He had thought her gone forever, but now here was her husband back from the Spanish colonies with the horns on his head. Sharpe smiled at Mendora. ‘How have I offended your master?’
‘You know how, senor.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘You call me senor? You’ve found your manners?’
‘Your answer, Major?’
So the Marques knew he had been cuckolded? But why in God’s name pick on Sharpe? There must be a half-Battalion of men he would have to fight to retrieve his honour that had been held so lightly by Helene. Sharpe smiled. ‘You will get no letter from me, Major, nor my resignation.’
Mendora had expected the answer. ‘You will name me your second, senor?’
‘I don’t have a second.’ Sharpe knew that Wellington had forbidden all duels. If he took the risk, that was his foolishness, but he would not risk another man’s career. He looked at the Marques, judging that such a heavy-set man would be slow on his feet. ‘I choose swords.’
Mendora smiled. ‘My master is a fine swordsman, Major. You will stand more chance with a pistol.’
The soldiers were gawping up at the two mounted officers. They sensed, even though they could not hear the words, that something dramatic took place.
Sharpe smiled. ‘If I need advice how to fight, Major, I will seek it from a man.’
Mendora’s proud face looked with hatred at the Englishman, but he held his temper. ‘There is a cemetery on the southern road, you know it?’
‘I can find it.’
‘My master will be there at seven this evening. He will not wait long. I hope your courage will be sufficient for death, Major.’ He turned his horse, looking back at Sharpe. ‘You agree?’
‘I agree.’ Sharpe let him turn away. ‘Major!’
‘You have a priest with you?’
The Spaniard nodded. ‘You’re very observant for an Englishman.’
Sharpe deliberately switched back into English. ‘Make sure he knows the prayer for the dead, Spaniard.’
A shout came from the watching men. ‘Kill the bugger, Sharpie!’
The shout was taken up, grew louder, and some wit began shouting ‘a ring! a ring!’, the usual cry when a fight broke out in Battalion lines. Sharpe saw the look of fury cross Mendora’s face, then the Spaniard put his spurs to his horse and galloped it at a knot of men who scattered from his path and jeered at his retreating back. The Marques de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba and his attendant priest galloped after him.
Sharpe ignored the shouts of the men about him. He watched the three Spaniards go and he knew, on pain of losing all that he had gained in this army, that he should not go to the cemetery and fight the duel. He would be cashiered; he would be lucky, if he won, not to be accused of murder.
On the other hand, there was a memory of La Marquesa, of her skin against the sheets, her hair on the pillow
, her laughter in the shadowed bedroom. There was the thought that the Spanish Major had tried to strike him. There was his boredom, and his inability to refuse a challenge. And, above all, there was the sense of unfinished business, of a guilt that demanded its price, of a guilt that ordered him to pay that price. He shouted at the men for silence and looked through the ragged crowd of soldiers to find the man he wanted. ‘Harps!’
Patrick Harper pushed through the men and stared up at Sharpe. ‘Sir?’
Sharpe took the sword from his slings. It was a sword that Sergeant Harper had re-fashioned for him while Sharpe lay in Salamanca’s hospital. It was a cheap blade, one of many made in Birmingham for Britain’s Heavy Cavalry, nearly a yard of heavy steel that was clumsy and ill-balanced except in the hands of a strong man.
Sharpe tossed the sword to the Irishman. ‘Put an edge on it for me, Harps. A real edge.’
The men cheered, but Harper held the sword unhappily. He looked up at Sharpe and saw the madness on the dark, scarred face.
Sharpe remembered a face of delicate beauty, the face of a woman whom the Spanish now called the Golden Whore. Sharpe knew he could never possess her, but he could fight for her. He could give up all for her, what else was a warrior to do for a beauty? He smiled. He would fight for a woman who was known to be treacherous, and because, in an obscure way that he did not fully understand, he thought that this challenge, this duel, this risk was some expiation for the guilt that racked him. He would fight.
Chapter 4
‘You’re slow, Sharpe, very slow.’ Captain Peter d’Alembord, who had taken Sharpe’s place as Captain of the Light Company, had run his slim sword past Sharpe’s guard and now the tip quivered an inch beneath the silver whistle holstered on Sharpe’s cross belt. D’Alembord, an impressively elegant and slim man, had volunteered, with some diffidence, to ‘put Sharpe over the jumps’. He had also scouted the opposition and his news was grim. ‘It seems the Marques is rather good.’
‘Good?’
‘Took lessons in Paris from Bouillet. They say he could beat him. Still, not to worry. Old Bouillet must have been getting on, perhaps he was slow.’ D’Alembord smiled, stepped back, and raised his sword. ‘En garde?’
Sharpe laughed. ‘I’ll just hack the bugger to bits.’
‘Hope springs eternal, my dear Sharpe. Do raise your blade, I’m going to pass it on the left. With some warning you might just be able to stop me. Engage.’
The blades rattled, scraped, disengaged, clanged, and suddenly, with eye-defeating speed, d’Alembord had passed Sharpe’s guard on the left and his sword was poised again to split Sharpe’s trunk. Captain d’Alembord frowned. ‘If I darken my hair with lamp black, Sharpe, and paint a scar on my face, I might just pass for you. It’s really your best hope of survival.’
‘Nonsense. I’ll chop the bastard into mincemeat.’
‘You seem to forget that he has handled a sword before.’
‘He’s old, he’s fat, and I’ll slaughter him.’
‘He’s not yet fifty,’ d’Alembord said mildly, ‘and don’t be fooled by that waist. The fastest swordsman I ever saw was fatter than a hogshead. Why didn’t you choose pistols? Or twelve pounder cannons?’
Sharpe laughed and hefted his big, straight sword. ‘This is a lucky blade.’
‘One sincerely hopes so. On the other hand, finesse is usually more useful than luck in a duel.’
‘You’ve fought a duel?’
D’Alembord nodded. ‘Rather why I’m here, Sharpe. Life got a little difficult.’ He said it lightly, though Sharpe could guess the ruin that the duel had meant for d’Alembord. Sharpe had been curious as to why the tall, elegant, foppish man had joined a mere line regiment like the South Essex. D’Alembord, with his spotless lace cuffs, his silver cutlery and crystal wine glasses that were carefully transported by his servant from camp ground to camp ground, would have been more at home in a Guards regiment or a smart cavalry uniform.
Instead he was in the South Essex, seeking obscurity in an unfashionable regiment while the scandal blew itself out in England, and an example to Sharpe of how a duel could blight a career. Sharpe smiled. ‘I suppose you killed your man?’
‘Didn’t mean to. Meant to wing him, but he moved into the blade. Very messy.’ He sighed. ‘If you would deign to hold that thing more like a sword and less like a cleaving instrument, one might hold out a morsel of hope. Part of the object of the exercise is to defend one’s body. Mind you, it’s quite possible that he’ll faint with horror when he sees it. It’s positively mediaeval. It’s hardly an instrument for fencing.’
Sharpe-smiled. ‘I don’t fence, d’Alembord. I fight.’
‘I’m sure it’s vastly unpleasant for your opponent. I shall insist on coming as your second.’
‘No seconds.’
D’Alembord shrugged. ‘No gentleman fights without a second. I shall come. Besides, I might be able to persuade you not to go through with this.’
Sharpe was sheathing his sword on which Harper had put a wicked cutting edge. ‘Not to go through with it?’
D’Alembord pushed open the door of the stable yard where, to the amusement of the officers’ servants and grooms, they had been practising. ‘You’ll be sent home in disgrace, Sharpe. The Peer will have your guts for breakfast tomorrow.’
‘Wellington won’t know about it.’
D’Alembord looked pityingly on his superior officer. ‘Half the bloody army knows, my dear Sharpe. I can’t think why you accepted! Is it because the man struck you?’
Sharpe said nothing. The truth was that his pride had been offended, but it was more than that. It was his stubborn superstition that Fate, the soldier’s goddess, demanded that he accept. Besides, he did it for the Marquesa.
D’Alembord sighed. ‘A woman, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
The Light Company Captain smoothed a wrinkle in his sleeve. ‘When I fought my duel, Sharpe, I later discovered that the woman had put us up to it. She was watching, it turned out.’
‘What happened?’
The elegant shoulders shrugged. ‘After I skewered him she went back to her husband. It was all rather tedious and unnecessary. Just as I’m sure this duel is unnecessary. Do you really insist on this duel, Sharpe?’
‘Yes.’ Sharpe would not explain, was not even sure he could explain the tangle of guilt, lust, pride and superstition that drove him to folly. Instead he sat and shouted for the Mess servant to bring tea. The servant was a Spaniard who brewed tea foully.
‘I’ll have rum. Has it occurred to you,’ and d’Alembord leaned forward with a small frown of embarrassment on his face, ‘that some people are joining this regiment simply because you’re in it?’
Sharpe frowned at the words. ‘Nonsense.’
‘If you insist, my dear Sharpe, but it is true. There’s at least two or three young fire-eaters who think you’ll lead them to glory, such is your reputation. They’ll be very sad if they discover your paths of glory lead but to a lady’s bedchamber.’ He said the last words with a wry inflexion that hinted to Sharpe that it was a quotation that he ought to know. Yet Sharpe had not learned to read till he was well into his twenties; he had read few books, and none of them poetry.
‘Shakespeare?’ he guessed.
‘Thomas Gray, dear Sharpe. ‘The paths of glory lead but to the grave.’ I hope it’s not true, for you.’ He smiled. What his smile did not tell Sharpe was that Captain d’Alembord, who was an efficient, sensible man, had already tried to make sure that this folly did not lead Sharpe either to a grave or to disgrace. D’Alembord had sent Lieutenant Harry Price on one of his own fastest horses to find Colonel Leroy, fetch him back to Battalion, and order Sharpe not to fight the Spaniard. If Major Richard Sharpe was idiotic enough to will his own destruction by fighting a duel against Wellington’s express orders, then Captain d’Alembord would stop him. He prayed that Harry Price would reach Brigade in time, then took his glass of rum from the steward and raised it to Richard Sharpe
. ‘To your cleaver, Sharpe, may it hew mightily.’
‘May it kill the bastard!’ Sharpe sipped his tea. ‘And I hope it hurts.’
They went on horseback to the cemetery to outdistance the curious troops of the South Essex who wanted to follow and watch their Major skewer the Spanish aristocrat. D’Alembord, a natural horseman, led Sharpe on a circuitous route. Sharpe, once again mounted on one of d’Alembord’s spare horses, wondered whether he should accept the younger man’s advice and turn back.
He was behaving stupidly and he knew it. He was thirty-six years of age, a Major at last, and he was throwing it all away for mere superstition. He had joined the army twenty years before, straggling with a group of hungry recruits to escape a murder charge. From that inauspicious beginning he had joined that tiny band of men who were promoted from Sergeant into the Officers’ Mess. He had done more. Most men promoted from the ranks ended their days as Lieutenants, supervising the Battalion stores or in charge of the drill-square. Most such men, Wellington claimed, ended as drunkards. Yet Sharpe had gone on rising. From Ensign to Lieutenant, Lieutenant to Captain, and Captain to Major, and men looked at him as one of the few, the very very few, who might rise from the ranks to lead a Battalion.
He could lead a Battalion, and he knew it. The war was not over yet. The French might be retreating throughout Europe, but no enemy army had yet pierced the French frontier. Even if this year’s campaign was as successful as last year’s, and pushed the French back to the Pyrenees, then there would be hard fighting if, unlike last year, the British were to force their way through those cold, high mountains. Fighting in which Lieutenant Colonels would die and leave their Battalions to new commanders.
Yet he risked it all. He twisted his horse through bright-leaved ash trees on a hill top that overlooked their destination, and he thought of the Marquesa, of her eyes on him, and he knew that he risked all for one woman who played with men, and for another who was dead. None of it made sense, he was simply driven by a soldier’s superstition that said not to do this thing was to risk oblivion.