'Looks that way, sir.' Sharpe grinned.
'You disturb my Christmas, force me to drag weary bones up into the snows of winter!' He smiled a huge smile. 'I thought you'd all be gone by now!'
'It crossed my mind, sir.'
'Sir Augustus said you'd be dead.'
'He did?'
Nairn laughed at Sharpe's tone. 'I sent him packing with his lady wife. She's a rare looker, Sharpe!'
'Yes, sir.'
'Mind you, your lady wife told me she was too fat! Told me something else, too, which I'm sure can't be true. Something to do with the fact that the lady's not a lady at all! Can you believe that, Sharpe?'
'I wouldn't know, sir.'
Nairn grinned, but said nothing. He was looking at the French back at the village, and he glanced left and right where his first troops had secured the wreckage of the Convent and now reinforced the watchtower hill. Nairn stamped his feet on the ground. 'I think our froggie friends will call that a day! Don't you?' He clapped his hands in delight. 'They won't attack again, and in a couple of hours I'll be in a position to attack them.' He looked at Sharpe. 'Well done, Major! Well done!'
'Thank you, sir.' Sharpe was not looking at Nairn. He was looking up the valley at a loose horse, at a dark figure on the snow, and his voice was far away, distracted.
'Sharpe?'
'Sir?' But Sharpe was already walking away, and the walk broke into a run, and he still stared at the figure on the snow.
The hair was black against the pure whiteness, long and black. He had seen it like that on a white pillow when she had teasingly raised her head and splayed her hair in a great tempting fan. The blood at her throat was like a broken necklace of rubies, half spilt onto the snow, and her eyes stared unseeing at the clouds.
He knelt beside her, wordless, and he felt the thickness in his throat, the sting of tears in his eyes, and he put his arms about the slim body, raised her, and her head fell backwards so that the big ruby in the hollow of her neck leaked a slow trickle towards her chin. He put a hand under her head, feeling where the cold snow was on her hair, and he pressed her cheek against his and he wept for Teresa was dead.
Her hands were in the snow, cold hands frozen by the ride, yet there was still warmth in her. Warmth that would fade. He held her to him as though he could force life back into the body and he sobbed into the black hair. She had loved him with a pure, simple love that forgave, understood, and she had loved him.
He had no picture of her. She would be a memory that would fade as her warmth would fade, but would fade over the years, and he would forget the passion that gave life to this face. She had seethed with life. She had been restless and forceful, a killer of the border hills, yet she had a childlike faith in love. She had given herself to him and never doubted the wisdom of the gift as he had sometimes doubted it. She had kept the faith, and she was dead.
He cried, not caring who watched, and he rocked her in his arms and held her tight because he had not held her enough when she lived. They had met through war, war had held them apart, and now war had done this. It should have been himself who died, he thought, not this, and his grief was formless, incoherent, a pain that was betrayed love and filled the universe.
'Sharpe?' Nairn touched his shoulder, but Sharpe did not hear, did not see, he only rocked the body in his arms. His left arm was entwined in her hair, gripping it because he did not want to lose her, he did not want to be alone, and she was the mother of his child, his motherless child, and Nairn heard the moan, half howl, that came from Sharpe's throat. Nairn saw the face of the body and straightened up. 'Oh God.'
Patrick Harper crouched opposite Sharpe. 'There'll be a priest with the Spanish, sir.' He had to repeat it, and then Sharpe looked up, eyes strange to Harper. 'What?'
'A priest, sir. She must be shriven.' Sharpe appeared not to understand. He was holding Teresa as though Harper would take her away, but then he frowned. 'After death?'
Harper was not embarrassed by the tears. 'Aye, sir. It can be done.' He put out a hand and, with extraordinary gentleness, closed the eyelids. 'We must send her to heaven, sir. She'd be best laying down, so she would.' He spoke as if to a child and Sharpe obeyed.
He knelt by the body till the priest came and he was in the confused world of the grief and he babbled promises at her and inside was the insane hope that the eyes would open and she would smile at him, tease him as she used to tease him, but there was no movement in her. Teresa was dead.
Her cloak was open at the waist and he pulled it over her and felt the lump tucked into the sash she wore. He pulled out the cloth bundle, unwrapped it, and he looked at the Rifleman which was his daughter's present and he did not think it worthy of her so he broke it, tore it, scattered the small shreds on the snow.
He stood unseeing as the priest knelt by the body, as the Latin words whirled over the snow like meaningless, dead things. The wafer was put to dead lips, the sign of the cross made, and Sharpe stared at the face that was so calm and still and utterly without life.
'Sharpe?' Nairn touched his elbow. Pointed eastwards.
Dubreton was riding slowly towards them and behind the French Colonel was Sergeant Bigeard, walking, and in Bigeard's grip once more was Hakeswill. Hakeswill clutched the greatcoat about his nakedness and jerked helplessly against the big Frenchman's hold.
Dubreton saluted Nairn, spoke softly with him, and then turned to Sharpe who had stepped protectively towards Teresa's body. 'Major Sharpe?'
'Sir?'
'He did it. We saw it. I give him to you.' He spoke very simply.
'He did it?'
'Yes.'
Sharpe looked at the twitching, yellow-faced man who cringed in fear because Bigeard was holding him towards Sharpe. Sharpe felt the uselessness of the hatred he had for Hakeswill when measured against the pain of this loss. His sword was lying a few feet'away, dropped there when he had run to the body, but there was no desire to pick it up, to bury it in this lumpen man whose curse had killed the mother of Sharpe's child. Sharpe wanted this place of her death to be peaceful. 'Sergeant Harper?'
'Sir?'
'Take the prisoner. He's to live for a firing squad.'
'Sir.'
The wind stirred the snow in powdery ripples that banked against Teresa's boots. Sharpe hated this place.
Dubreton spoke again. 'Major?'
‘Sir?'
'It's all over now.'
'Over, sir?'
Dubreton shrugged. 'We're going. You won, Major. You won.'
Sharpe looked uncomprehending at the French Colonel. 'Won, sir?'
'You won.'
Won so that a child's present could be strewn in the snow. Won so that he could feel this pain that was bigger than anything he had ever felt.
By the village Major Ducos watched through his telescope as Sharpe lifted the body from the snow and walked with it towards the Castle. He watched the big Sergeant pick the sword out of the snow and then Ducos snapped the glass shut. He had sworn his revenge on Sharpe, on the Rifleman who had thwarted this winter victory, but revenge, Ducos believed with the Spanish proverb, was a dish best eaten cold. He would wait.
Snow drifted over the broken doll in the Gateway of God.
Christmas was finished.
Epilogue
Sharpe was in the room where it had all started last year. Last year. That seemed strange, but 1813 was already ten days old, Teresa's death two weeks in the past, the spring would come and with it would come a new campaign.
The fire burned in the same hearth by which Sharpe had learned with such joy of his promotion. There was no joy now.
Wellington looked at Hogan as if for help, but the Major shrugged. The General put levity into his voice. 'I'll have to keep those damned rockets, Sharpe. You saw to that.'
Sharpe looked up from the fire. 'Yes, my Lord.' He supposed he had seen to that. After their success at Adrados they could hardly be sent back to England. 'I'm sorry, my Lord.'
'We'll fit them in somewhere.' W
ellington paused. 'As we'll fit you in somewhere, Major.' He gave one of his rare smiles. 'You took a lot on yourself, Sharpe. A whole Battalion under your command!'
Sharpe nodded. 'Sir Augustus complained I took too much on myself, my Lord.'
Wellington grunted. 'Good thing you did. What was the matter with the man? Lily-livered?' His voice was suddenly harsh.
Sharpe shrugged, then decided the truth was better than politeness. 'Yes, sir.'
'How did it feel to fight a Battalion? Good?'
'At times, sir.'
'Like being a General, eh? Perhaps you'll find that out, Sharpe.'
'I doubt it, sir.'
Wellington's piercing blue eyes watched him. The General stood in muddied boots in front of the fire, the skirts of his riding coat lifted by clasped hands. 'The glory gets tarnished, yes?’
’Yes, sir.'
'Some people never learn that. They think I enjoy this, but its a job, Sharpe, that's all, a job. Like being a street-sweeper or a slaughterman. Someone has to do it or the filth will overwhelm us.' He seemed embarrassed to have said so much.
'Yes, my Lord.'
Wellington waved a hand towards the door. 'I'll send for you, Major Sharpe. We must find you employment. A Major who fights my battles must be given employment!'
Sharpe moved to the door, Hogan with him, shepherding him protectively, but the General stopped them. 'Sharpe?’
’My Lord?'
This time Wellington really did seem embarrassed. He glanced at the armchair, then back to Sharpe. 'Would it seem amiss, Sharpe, if I say that all things pass?’
’No, my Lord. Thank you.'
Major Michael Hogan, as old a friend as almost any in the army, walked with Sharpe through Frenada's streets. 'You're sure of this, Richard?’Yes, I'm sure.'
They walked in silence for a minute and Hogan hated the heaviness in his friend, the seemingly inconsolable and private grief that festered inside. ‘I’ll meet you afterwards.’
’Afterwards?'
'Afterwards.' Hogan spoke decisively. This evening he planned to make Sharpe drunk. He planned to force the grief out into the open and he would do it as the Irish knew how to do it, with a wake. It was overdue, but he and Harper had agreed to it, had forced agreement on Sharpe, and the Rifle Captain, Frederickson, would come too. Hogan had liked Frederickson instantly, had been amused at the man's complaint that no one would fight him, and had been pleased to see Frederickson's modest disclaimer when he had read the words of Sharpe's report. A wake, a decent, drunken, laughing wake, Hogan had ordered Harry Price to attend and he would force Sharpe to drink, to talk, to remember Teresa, and in the morning the grief would already be turning into healthy regret. 'Afterwards, Richard.' Hogan stepped across a deep rut in a cross-roads. 'You heard that Sir Augustus has requested home leave?'
'I heard.'
'And ‘Lady Farthingdale’ is back in Lisbon?'
'Yes. I heard.'Josefina had written Sharpe a bitter letter, a letter that complained he had broken his word by revealing his knowledge to Sir Augustus, a letter that reeked of her lost future fortune. It had ended by saying a friendship was over and Sharpe had torn the letter into shreds and put the shreds on the fire, and then remembered how Teresa had seen him flirting with Josefina and he had cried because of the hurt he might have given to his wife. His wife.
She was buried in Casatejada, in the stone crypt in the tiny chapel where her family was buried. Antonia would grow up speaking Spanish, knowing neither mother nor father, and Sharpe would ride to see her soon, to look at his daughter who would grow up not knowing him.
Sometimes he woke in the night and he was happy for a moment until he remembered Teresa was dead. Then the happiness went.
Sometimes he saw long black hair on a slim woman in the street and his heart leaped inside, joy welled up uncontrollable, and then the shroud of knowledge would sink again. She was dead.
The South Essex had marched north to Frenada and they were drawn up in a hollow square, one side left open, and in the open side was a hornbeam tree. Not a sapling like the one the Germans had decorated for Christmas, but a full grown tree and in front of the tree was an open grave and beside the grave was an empty box.
When the corpse was put in the box they would make the whole Battalion march past and the order would be given. 'Eyes left!' Every man must look on the punishment for desertion.
The provosts brought him, and the firing squad watched as he was tied to the hornbeam, but Sharpe did not watch. It was late afternoon and he stared at the snow which was on the hilltops around Frenada and he waited until a provost officer reported to him. 'We're ready, sir.'
It was a cloudless sky, a winter's day of sharp clarity, a day when a deserter would die.
He did not want to die. He had cheated death before and he pulled at the bonds, his head twitching, and the spittle frothed at his lips as he swore and jerked, snatched at the ropes and threw himself from side to side so that the fourteen muskets of the firing party went from side to side.
'Fire!'
Fourteen muskets slammed into fourteen shoulders and Hakeswill was twitched against the trunk, blood spattering the shirt he wore, yet still he lived. He slumped down, a cough rasping in his throat, and then he was cackling in triumph, the madness on him because he knew he had cheated death again, and he jerked, twisted, and the blood spotted his trousers, the earth, and the blue eyes in the yellow face came up to watch the Rifle officer walk slowly towards him. 'You can't kill me! You can't kill me! You can't kill me!'
It was supposed to be done with a pistol, but Sharpe pulled back the flint of his Rifle and he knew that the curse would be gone when the flint snapped forward. Hakeswill was hanging in the ropes, the face turned up, the voice screaming and spitting blood and spittle.
The Rifle barrel came slowly up.
'You can't kill me!' And this time the voice collapsed into sobs, sobs that were child-like because Obadiah knew that he was lying. 'You can't kill me.'
The bullet killed him. It twitched his head for the very last time, killing him instantly, killing the man who could not be killed. Sharpe had dreamed of this moment for nigh on twenty years, but there was none of the pleasure he had expected.
Behind him, unseen, the evening star was showing pale against a winter sky. A small wind stirred the hornbeam twigs.
Two bodies marked this winter. The one whose hair had been spread on the snows of the Gateway of God, and now this one. Obadiah Hakeswill, being lifted into his coffin, dead. Sharpe's enemy.
Historical Note
The idea that a private 'army' of deserters, drawn from every nationality fought in the Peninsular War, may stretch credulity too far. Not as far, perhaps, as the idea of a 'Rocket Troop'. Yet both existed.
Pot-au-Feu lived, a renegade French Sergeant who promoted himself to Marshal, and who survived by terrorising a wide patch of Spanish countryside. His followers included French, British, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers, and his crimes included kidnapping, rape, and murder. I fear I have made him into a man pleasanter than he really was. The French General de Marbot tells how the French destroyed him and then handed the allied deserters over to Wellington's forces. Sharpe, I fear, has taken credit for a French success.
In another distortion of history I have brought the Rocket Troop to Spain a few months early. Wellington first saw a demonstration of Sir William Congreve's Rocket System in 1810 when a Naval detachment brought some weapons ashore in Portugal. Wellington was unimpressed. By 1813, however, a Rocket Troop had joined his army and it enjoyed the enthusiastic patronage of the Prince Regent. In its workings I have stayed close to the Instruction Book written by Sir William Congreve himself (even down to the detachable lance-heads, surely a triumph of inventor's hope over judgment). It was an extraordinary system that had, at its most ambitious, a 'Light-Ball' rocket that delivered a parachute flare for night fighting. And this in 1813! The Rocket Corps itself came into formal existence on January 1st, 1814, though it had already b
een deployed in the Peninsula and, indeed, Congreve's system had been sold in 1808 to the Austrian army where it was known as the Feuerwerkscorps. Wellington continued to mistrust it, though he used it at the crossing of the Adour, while in Northern Europe, it had its most successful day at the Battle of Leipzig where foreign observers were much impressed. A rocket battery was present at Waterloo and in some pictures of that engagement the rocket trails can be seen over the battlefield.
Though it was never a great success, the Rocket Corps has enshrined itself in history thanks to one of the enemies against whom it was so ineffectively employed (the problem was simply accuracy, which is why Sharpe chose to wait until they could hardly avoid hitting the enemy). Rockets were deployed in the war of 1812 against the United States, used by the British in their siege of Fort McHenry. A song was written about that siege and then put to the music of a drinking song used by the Anacreon Club in London. Those words and that tune now comprise, of course, the American National Anthem. It is strange to think that whenever 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is sung, before every baseball and football game, Britain's erstwhile enemies recall Sir William Congreve's invention in the line 'the rockets' red glare'. Thus did Britain's secret weapon find lasting fame!
Sir Augustus Farthingdale plagiarized his book mainly from Major Chamberlin's book, and now I must confess to a plagiarism. Sharpe's Christmas meal, and the hare stew that Pot-au-Feu ate in the Convent, all came from Elizabeth David's magnificent French Provincial Cooking, a book that has given me more pleasure than most. If any reader would like to recreate Sharpe's Christmas meal (a rewarding experience!) then I refer to them to Mrs David's magnificent work. Potage de marron Dauphinois (Chestnut soup), Perdreau Roti au Four (Roast Partridge), and the Cassoulet de Toulouse a la Menagere, to which I added roast potatoes for Sharpe's sake, and changed the recipe to fit the foods which might have been available in winter Spain. The hare stew exalts in the name Le Civet de Lievre de Diane de Chateaumorand. Strictly speaking it is not a stew, but I will not attempt the impossible and try to rival Elizabeth David as a cookery writer. My thanks to her.