“And if the stories were true—” Harper began.
“They’re not!” Sharpe shouted.
“All right! All right! God save Ireland.” Harper blew out a long breath, then there was an awkward silence between the two men. Sharpe just glowered to the north while Harper clambered down into a nearby gun embrasure and kicked at a loosened stone. “God knows why they built a fort up here,” he said at last.
“There used to be a main road down there.” Sharpe nodded to the pass which lay to the north. “It was a way to avoid Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, but half the road got washed away and what’s left of it can’t take modern guns, so it’s no use these days. But the road eastward is still all there, Pat, and Loup’s bloody brigade can use it. Down there”—he pointed to the route as he spoke—“up this slope, over these walls and straight down on us and there’s bugger all here to stop them.”
“Why would Loup do that?” Harper asked.
“Because he’s a mad, brave, ruthless bugger, that’s why. And because he hates me and because kicking the lights out of us would be a cheap victory for the bastard.” Sharpe had become preoccupied by the threat of a night raid by Loup’s brigade. He had first thought of the raid merely as a means of frightening Colonel Runciman into signing his fraudulent wagon orders, but the more Sharpe had thought about it, the more likely such a raid seemed. And the San Isidro Fort was hopelessly ill prepared for such an attack. A thousand men might have been able to hold its degraded ramparts, but the Real Compañía Irlandesa was far too small a unit to offer any real resistance. They would be trapped within the vast, crumbling walls like rats in a terrier’s fighting ring. “Which is just what Hogan and Wellington want,” Sharpe said aloud.
“What’s that, sir?”
“They don’t bloody trust your Irishmen, see? They want them out of the way and I’m supposed to help get rid of the buggers, but the trouble is I like them. Damn it, Pat. If Loup comes we’ll all be dead.”
“You think he’s coming?”
“I bloody well know he’s coming,” Sharpe said fervently, and suddenly the vague suspicions hardened into an utter certainty. He might have just made a vigorous proclamation of his practicality, but in truth he relied on instinct most of the time. Sometimes, Sharpe knew, the wise soldier listened to his superstitions and fears because they were a better guide than mere practicality. Good flat hard sense dictated that Loup would not waste valuable effort by raiding the San Isidro Fort, but Sharpe rejected that good sense because his every instinct told him there was trouble coming. “I don’t know when or how he’ll come,” he told Harper, “but I’m not trusting a palace guard to serve picket. I want our boys up here.” He meant he wanted riflemen guarding the fort’s northern extremity. “And I want a night picket too, so make sure a couple of the lads get some sleep today.”
Harper gazed down the long northern slope. “You think they’ll come this way?”
“It’s the easiest. West and east are too steep, the southern end is too strong, but a cripple could waltz across this wall. Jesus.” This last imprecation was torn from Sharpe as he realized just how vulnerable the fort was. He stared eastward. “I’ll bet that bastard is watching us right now.” From the far peaks a Frenchman armed with a good telescope could probably count the buttons on Sharpe’s jacket.
“You really think he’ll come?” Harper asked.
“I think we’re damn lucky he hasn’t come already. I think we’re damn lucky to be alive.” Sharpe jumped off the ramparts onto the grass inside the fort. There was nothing but grass and weed-strewn wasteland for a hundred yards, then the red stone barracks buildings began. There were eight long buildings and the Real Compañía Irlandesa bivouacked in the two that had been kept in best repair while Sharpe’s riflemen camped in one of the magazines close to the gate tower. That tower, Sharpe decided, was the key to the defense, for whoever held the tower would dominate the fight. “All we need is three or four minutes’ warning,” Sharpe said, “and we can make the bugger wish he’d stayed in bed.”
“You can beat him?” Harper asked.
“He thinks he can surprise us. He thinks he can break into the barracks and slaughter us in our beds, Pat, but if we just have some warning we can turn that gate tower into a fortress and without artillery Loup can’t do a damn thing about it.” Sharpe was suddenly enthusiastic. “Don’t you always say that a good fight is a tonic to an Irishman?” he asked.
“Only when I’m drunk,” Harper said.
“Let’s pray for a fight anyway,” Sharpe said eagerly, “and a victory. My God, that’ll put some confidence into these guards!”
But then, at dusk, just as the last red-gold rays were shrinking behind the western hills, everything changed.
The Portuguese battalion arrived unannounced. They were caçadores, skirmishers like the greenjackets, only these troops were outfitted in blood-brown jackets and gray British trousers. They carried Baker rifles and looked as if they knew how to use them. They marched into the fort with the easy, lazy step of veteran troops, while behind them came a convoy of three ox-drawn wagons loaded with rations, firewood and spare ammunition. The battalion was a little over half strength, mustering just four hundred rank and file, but the men still made a brave show as they paraded on the fort’s old plaza.
Their colonel was a thin-faced man called Oliveira. “For a few days every year,” he explained offhandedly to Lord Kiely, “we occupy the San Isidro. Just as a way of reminding ourselves that the fort exists and to discourage anyone else from setting up house here. No, don’t move your men out of the barracks. My men don’t need roofs. And we won’t be in your way, Colonel. I’ll exercise my rogues across the frontier for the next few days.”
Behind the last supply wagons the fort’s great gates creaked shut. They crashed together, then one of Kiely’s men lifted the locking bar into position. Colonel Runciman hurried out of the gatehouse to offer his greeting to Colonel Oliveira and to invite the Portuguese officer to supper, but Oliveira declined. “I share my men’s supper, Colonel. No offense.” Oliveira spoke good English and nearly half his officers were British, the result of a policy to integrate the Portuguese army into Wellington’s forces. To Sharpe’s delight one of the caçador officers was Thomas Garrard, a man who had served with Sharpe in the ranks of the 33rd and who had taken advantage of the promotion prospects offered to British sergeants willing to join the Portuguese army. The two men had last met at Almeida when the great fortress had exploded in a horror that had led to the garrison’s surrender. Garrard had been among the men forced to lay down his arms.
“Bloody Crapaud bastards,” he said feelingly. “Kept us in Burgos with hardly enough food to feed a rat, and what food there was was all rotted. Christ, Dick, you and I have eaten some bad meals in our time, but this was really bad. And all because that damned cathedral exploded. I’d like to meet the French gunner who did that and wring his bloody neck.”
In truth it had been Sharpe who had caused the magazine in the cathedral’s crypt to explode, but it did not seem a politic admission to make. “It was a bad business,” Sharpe agreed mildly.
“You got out next morning, didn’t you?” Garrard asked. “Cox wouldn’t let us go. We wanted to fight our way out, but he said we had to do the decent thing and surrender.” He shook his head in disgust. “Not that it matters now,” he went on. “The Crapauds exchanged me and Oliveira asked me to join his regiment and now I’m a captain like you.”
“Well done.”
“They’re good lads,” Garrard said fondly of his company, which was bivouacking in the open space inside the northern ramparts where the Portuguese campfires burned bright in the dusk. Oliveira’s pickets were on every rampart save the gate tower. Such efficient sentries meant that Sharpe no longer needed to deploy his own riflemen on picket duty, but he was still apprehensive and told Garrard his fears as the two men strolled round the darkening ramparts.
“I’ve heard of Loup,” Garrard said. “He’s a right bastard.?
??
“Nasty as hell.”
“And you think he’s coming here?”
“Just an instinct, Tom.”
“Hell, ignore those and you might as well dig your own grave, eh? Let’s go and see the colonel.”
But Oliveira was not so easily convinced of Sharpe’s fears, nor did Juanita de Elia help Sharpe’s cause. Juanita and Lord Kiely had returned from a day’s hunting and, with Father Sarsfield, Colonel Runciman and a half-dozen of the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s officers, were guests at the Portuguese supper. Juanita scorned Sharpe’s warning. “You think a French brigadier would bother himself with an English captain?” she asked mockingly.
Sharpe suppressed a stab of evil temper. He had been speaking to Oliveira, not to Kiely’s whore, but this was not the time or the place to pick a quarrel. Besides, he recognized that in some obscure way his and Juanita’s dislike of each other was bred into the bone and probably unavoidable. She would talk to any other officer in the fort, even to Runciman, but at Sharpe’s very appearance she would turn and walk away rather than offer a polite greeting. “I think he’ll bother with me, ma’am, yes,” Sharpe said mildly.
“Why?” Oliveira demanded.
“Go on, man, answer!” Kiely said when Sharpe hesitated.
“Well, Captain?” Juanita mocked Sharpe. “Lost your tongue?”
“I think he’ll bother with me, ma’am,” Sharpe said, stung into an answer, “because I killed two of his men.”
“Oh, my God!” Juanita pretended to be shocked. “Anyone would think there was a war happening!”
Kiely and some of the Portuguese officers smiled, but Colonel Oliveira just stared at Sharpe as though weighing the warning carefully. Finally he shrugged. “Why would he worry that you killed two of his men?” he asked.
Sharpe hesitated to confess to what he knew was a crime against military justice, but he could hardly withdraw now. The safety of the fort and all the men inside depended on him convincing Oliveira of the genuine danger and so, very reluctantly, he described the raped and massacred village and how he had captured two of Loup’s men and stood them up against a wall.
“You had orders to shoot them?” Oliveira asked presciently.
“No, sir,” Sharpe said, aware of the eyes staring at him. He knew it might prove a horrid mistake to have admitted the executions, but he desperately needed to persuade Oliveira of the danger and so he described how Loup had ridden to the small upland village to plead for his men’s lives and how, despite that appeal, Sharpe had ordered them shot. Colonel Runciman, hearing the tale for the first time, shook his head in disbelief.
“You shot the men in front of Loup?” Oliveira asked, surprised.
“Yes, sir.”
“So this rivalry between you and Loup is a personal vendetta, Captain Sharpe?” the Portuguese colonel asked.
“In a way, sir.”
“Either yes or no!” Oliveira snapped. He was a forceful, quick-tempered man who reminded Sharpe of General Craufurd, the Light Division’s commander. Oliveira had the same impatience with evasive answers.
“I believe Brigadier Loup will attack very soon, sir,” Sharpe insisted.
“Proof?”
“Our vulnerability,” Sharpe said, “and because he’s put a price on my head, sir.” He knew it sounded feeble and he blushed when Juanita laughed aloud. She was wearing her Real Compañía Irlandesa uniform, though she had unbuttoned the coat and shirt so that the flamelight glowed on her long neck. Every officer around the fire seemed fascinated by her, and no wonder, for she was a flamboyantly exotic creature in this place of guns and powder and stone. She sat close to Kiely, an arm resting on his knee, and Sharpe wondered if perhaps they had announced their betrothal. Something seemed to have put the supper guests into a holiday mood. “How much is the price, Captain?” she asked mockingly.
Sharpe bit back a retort that the reward would prove more than enough to hire her services for a night. “I don’t know,” he lied instead.
“Can’t be very much,” Kiely said. “Overage captain like you, Sharpe? Couple of dollars maybe? Bag of salt?”
Oliveira glanced at Kiely and the glance expressed disapproval of his lordship’s drunken gibes. The colonel sucked on a cigar, then blew smoke across the fire. “I have doubled the sentries, Captain,” he said to Sharpe, “and if this Loup does come to claim your head then we’ll give him a fight.”
“When he comes, sir,” Sharpe insisted, “can I suggest, with respect, sir, that you get your men into the gatehouse?”
“You don’t give up, do you, Sharpe?” Kiely interrupted. Before the Portuguese battalion’s arrival Sharpe had asked Kiely to move the whole Real Compañía Irlandesa into the gatehouse, a request that Kiely had peremptorily turned down. “No one’s going to attack us here,” Kiely now said, reiterating his earlier argument, “and anyway, if they do, we should fight the bastards from the ramparts, not the gatehouse.”
“We can’t fight from the ramparts—” Sharpe began.
“Don’t tell me where we can fight! Goddamn you!” Kiely shouted, startling Juanita. “You’re a jumped-up corporal, Sharpe, not a bloody general. If the French come, damn it, I’ll fight them how I like and beat them how I like and I won’t need your help!”
The outburst embarrassed the assembled officers. Father Sarsfield frowned as though he was looking for some emollient words, but it was Oliveira who finally broke the awkward silence. “If they come, Captain Sharpe,” he said gravely, “I shall seek the refuge you advise. And thank you for your advice.” Oliveira nodded his dismissal.
“Good night, sir,” Sharpe said, then walked away.
“Ten guineas to the price on your head says Loup won’t come, Sharpe!” Kiely called after the rifleman. “What is it? Lost your damn nerve? Don’t want to take a wager like a gentleman?” Kiely and Juanita laughed. Sharpe tried to ignore them.
Tom Garrard had followed Sharpe. “I’m sorry, Dick,” Garrard said and then, after a pause, “Did you really shoot two Crapauds?”
“Aye.”
“Good for you. But I wouldn’t tell too many people about it.”
“I know, I know,” Sharpe said, then shook his head. “Bloody Kiely.”
“His woman’s a rare one though,” Garrard said. “Reminds me of that girl you took up with at Gawilghur. You remember her?”
“This one’s a bitch, that’s the difference,” Sharpe said. God, he thought, but his temper was being abraded to a raw bloody edge. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said, “it’s like fighting with wet powder, trying to shake sense into this bloody place.”
“Join the Portuguese, Dick,” Garrard said. “Good as gold they are and no bloody overborn buggers like Kiely making life hard.” He offered Sharpe a cigar. The two men bent their heads over Garrard’s tinderbox and, when the charred linen caught the spark to flare bright, Sharpe saw a picture chased into the inner side of the lid.
“Hold it there, Tom,” he said, stopping his friend from closing the lid. He stared at the picture for a few seconds. “I’d forgotten those boxes,” Sharpe said. The tinderboxes were made of a cheap metal that had to be protected from rust by gun oil, but Garrard had somehow kept this box safe for twelve years. There had once been scores like it, all made by a tinsmith in captured Seringapatam and all with explicit pictures etched crudely into the lids. Garrard’s box showed a British soldier on top of a long-legged girl whose back was arched in apparent ecstasy. “Bugger might have taken his hat off first,” Sharpe said.
Garrard laughed and snapped the box shut to preserve the linen. “Still got yours?”
Sharpe shook his head. “It was stolen off me years ago, Tom. I reckon it was that bastard Hakeswill that had it. Remember him? He was a thieving sod.”
“Jesus God,” Garrard said, “I’d half forgotten the bastard.” He drew on the cigar, then shook his head in wonder. “Who’d ever believe it, Dick? You and me captains? And I can remember when you were broken down from corporal for farting on church parad
e.”
“They were good days, Tom,” Sharpe said.
“Only because they’re a long way back. Nothing like distant memory for putting green leaves on a bare life, Dick.”
Sharpe held the smoke in his mouth, then breathed out. “Let’s hope it’s a long life, Tom. Let’s hope Loup isn’t halfway here already. It would be a damned pity for you all to come up here for an exercise only to be slaughtered by Loup’s brigade.”
“We’re not really here for an exercise,” Garrard said. There was a long awkward silence. “Can you keep a secret?” Garrard asked eventually. The two men had reached a dark open space, out of earshot of any of the bivouacked caçadores. “We didn’t come here by accident, Richard,” Garrard admitted. “We were sent.”
Sharpe heard footfalls on the nearest rampart where a Portuguese officer made his rounds. A challenge rang out and was answered. It was comforting to hear such military efficiency. “By Wellington?” Sharpe asked.
Garrard shrugged. “I suppose so. His lordship doesn’t talk to me, but not much happens in this army without Nosey’s say-so.”
“So why did he send you?”
“Because he doesn’t trust your Spanish Irishmen, that’s why. There have been some odd stories going round the army these last few days. Stories of English troops burning Irish priests and raping Irish women, and—”
“I’ve heard the tales,” Sharpe interrupted, “and they’re not true. Hell, I even sent a captain down to the camps today and he found out for himself.” Captain Donaju, returning from the army’s cantonments with Father Sarsfield, had possessed enough grace to apologize to Sharpe. Wherever Donaju and Sarsfield had visited and whoever they had asked, even men fresh out of Ireland, they could find no confirmation of the stories printed in the American newspaper. “No one can believe the stories!” Sharpe now protested to Garrard.
“But true or not,” Garrard said, “the stories worry someone high up, and they think the stories are coming from your men. So we’ve been sent to keep an eye on you.”