Sharpe’s Rifles: The French Invasion of Galicia, January 1809

Harper ignored the words. ‘We’re not going, sir, and that’s that.’

‘Sergeant Williams!’ Sharpe shouted through the door of the hovel that faced towards the barn. The Riflemen stood in an arc about the shallow grave they had scooped in the snow. They watched, and their stillness was evidence that Harper was their emissary and spokesman this morning. Williams did not move.

‘Sergeant Williams!’

‘He’s not coming,’ Harper said. ‘It’s very simple, sir. We’re not going south. We’ll go north to the coast. We talked about it, so we did, and that’s where we’re going. You can come or stay. It’s all the same to us.’

Sharpe stood very still, disguising the fear that pricked his skin cold and churned in his hungry belly. If he went north then he tacitly agreed with this mutiny, he accepted it, and with that acceptance he lost every shred of his authority. Yet if he insisted on going south he was inviting his own murder. ‘We’re going south.’

‘You don’t understand, sir.’

‘Oh, I do. I understand very well. You’ve decided to go north, but you’re scared to death that I might go south on my own and reach the Lisbon garrison. Then I report you for disobedience and mutiny. They’ll stand you by your own grave, Harper, and shoot you.’

‘You’ll never make it to the south, sir.’

‘What you mean, Harper, is that you’ve been sent here to make sure I don’t survive. A dead officer can’t betray a mutiny, isn’t that right?’

Sharpe could see from the Irishman’s expression that his words had been accurate. Harper shifted uneasily. He was a huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, and with a broad body that betrayed a massive strength. Doubtless the other Riflemen were content to let Harper do their dirty work, and perhaps only he had the guts to do it. Or perhaps his nation’s hatred of the English would make this murder into a pleasure.

‘Well?’ Sharpe insisted. ‘Am I right?’

Harper licked his lips, then put his hand to the brass hilt of his bayonet. ‘You can come with us, sir.’

Sharpe let the silence drag out, then, as though surrendering to the inevitable, he nodded wearily. ‘I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?’

‘No, sir.’ Harper’s voice betrayed relief that he would not have to kill the officer.

‘Bring those things.’ Sharpe nodded at his haversack and weapons.

Harper, somewhat astonished to receive the peremptory order, nevertheless bent over to pick up the haversack. He was still bending when he saw he had been tricked. Harper began to twist away but, before he could protect himself, Sharpe had kicked him in the belly. It was a massive kick, thumping deep into the hard flesh, and Sharpe followed it with a two-handed blow that slammed down onto the back of Harper’s neck.

Sharpe was amazed that the Irishman could even stand. Another man would have been winded and stunned, but not him. He shook his head like a cornered boar, staggered backwards, then succeeded in straightening himself to receive Sharpe’s next blows. The officer’s right fist slammed into the big man’s belly, then his left followed.

It was like hitting teak, but the blows hurt Harper. Not enough. The Irishman grunted, then lurched forward. Sharpe ducked, hit again, then his head seemed to explode like a cannon firing as a huge fist slammed into the side of his skull. He butted his head forward and felt it smash on the other man’s face, then his arms and chest were being hugged in a great, rib-cracking embrace.

Sharpe raised his right foot and raked his heel down Harper’s shin. It must have hurt, but the grip did not lessen and Sharpe had no weapon left but his teeth. He bit the Irishman’s cheek, clamping his teeth down, tasting the blood, and the pain was enough to force Harper to release his huge embrace to hit at the officer’s head.

Sharpe was faster. He had grown up in a rookery where he had learned every trick of cheating and brutality. He punched Harper’s throat, then slammed a boot into his groin. Any other man would have been blubbing by now, shrivelling away from the pain, but Harper just seemed to shudder, then bored in again with his overwhelming strength.

‘Bastard.’ Sharpe hissed the word, ducked, feinted, then threw himself backwards so that he bounced off the blackened stone wall and used the momentum of his recoil to drive his bunched fists into the other man’s belly. Harper’s head came forward, and Sharpe butted again; then, through the whirl of lights that seared across his vision, he brought his fists backwards and forwards across the Irishman’s face.

Harper would not back down. He punched back, and drew blood from Sharpe’s nose and lips, then drove him reeling backwards. Sharpe slipped on snow, tripped on the floor’s rubble, and fell. He saw the massive boot coming, and twisted clear. He came up from the floor, snarling through blood, and grabbed Harper’s crossbelt. The Irishman was himself off balance now and Sharpe turned him, swung him, then let go. Harper spun away, staggered, and fell against the wall. A stone gouged blood down his left cheek.

Sharpe was hurting. His ribs were tender, his head spinning, and his face bloody. He saw the other greenjackets edging closer to where the two men fought. Their faces showed disbelief, and Sharpe knew that not one of them would intervene to help Harper. The big Irishman had been delegated to do this job, and would be left alone to finish it.

Harper spat, stared at Sharpe through a mask of blood, then heaved himself to his feet. He found his bayonet and drew it.

‘Use that, you Irish bastard, and I’ll kill you.’

Harper said nothing, and there was something very terrifying in his silence.

‘Bastard,’ Sharpe said again. He glanced towards his new sword, but the Irishman had edged round to bar that salvation.

Harper stepped forward, coming slowly, the sword-bayonet held like a fighter’s knife. He lunged with it once, sending Sharpe to one side, then lunged again, quick and hard, hoping to catch the officer off balance.

Sharpe, expecting the second lunge, avoided it. He saw the flicker of astonishment on the big man’s face. Harper was good, he was younger than Sharpe, but he had not fought a man with Sharpe’s quickness. Nor had he been hurt so much in a long time, and the flicker of surprise turned to pain as Sharpe’s fists slapped at his eyes. Harper slashed with the bayonet, using it now to drive his attacker away, and Sharpe let the blade come at him. He felt it slice at his forearm, he ignored it, and rammed the heel of his hand forward to break the Irishman’s nose. He clawed at Harper’s eyes, trying to hook them out of his skull. The Irishman wrenched away and Sharpe pushed him off balance again. Fire seared at his arm, the fire of warm blood drawn by steel, but the pain went as Harper fell.

Sharpe followed fast. He kicked once, twice, crunching his boot into the big man’s ribs, then he seized the bayonet, cutting his fingers, and stamped his heel onto Harper’s wrist. The weapon came away. Sharpe reversed it. He was panting now, his breath misting in the frigid air. Blood dripped from his hand to run down the blade. There was more blood on the snow which had drifted through the hovel’s broken roof and gaping doors.

The Irishman saw his death above him. He rolled, then jerked back towards Sharpe with a stone in his hand. He lunged with the stone, smashing it onto the point of the descending blade and the shock of it numbed Sharpe’s arm. He had never fought such power, never. He tried to drive the weapon down again, but Harper had heaved up and Sharpe cried aloud as the rock thumped into his belly. He fell onto the wall behind, his hand still numb where it held the bayonet.

He saw that Harper’s face had changed. Until that moment the big Irishman had seemed as dispassionate as a butcher, but now there was a berserker look on his face. It was the face of a man goaded into battle-fury, and Sharpe understood that till now Harper had been reluctantly doing a necessary job that had suddenly become a passion. The Irishman spoke for the first time since the fight had begun, but in Gaelic, a language Sharpe had never understood. He only understood that the words were an insult that would be the threnody of his death as Harper used the stone to crush his skull.

‘Come on, you bastard.’ Sharpe was trying to massage life back into his numbed arm. ‘You Irish scum. You bog-Paddy bloody bastard. Come on!’

Harper peeled bloody lips back from bloody teeth. He screamed a challenge, charged, and Sharpe used the chasseur’s trick. He switched the blade from his right to his left hand and screamed his own challenge. He lunged.

Then the world exploded.

A noise like the thunder of doom crashed in Sharpe’s ear, and a flash of flame seared close to his face with a sudden warmth. He flinched, then heard the whip-crack of a bullet ricocheting from the hovel’s wall.

Sharpe thought one of the other Riflemen had at last summoned up the courage to help Harper. Desperate as a cornered animal, he twisted snarling from the foul smell of the gunpowder smoke, then saw that the Irishman was as astonished as himself. The stone still grasped in his massive fist, Harper was staring at a newcomer who stood in the east-facing door.

‘I thought you were here to fight the French?’ The voice was amused, mocking, superior. ‘Or do the British have nothing better to do than squabble like rats?’

The speaker was a cavalry officer in the scarlet uniform of the Spanish Cazadores, or rather the remnants of such a uniform for it was so torn and shabby that it might have been a beggar’s rags. The gold braid which edged the man’s yellow collar was tarnished and the chain-slings of his sword were rusted. The black boots that reached midway up his thighs were ripped. A sacking cloak hung from his shoulders. His men, who had made the tracks in the snow and who now formed a rough cordon to the east of the farmhouse, were in a similar condition, but Sharpe noted, with a soldier’s eye, that all these Spanish cavalrymen had retained their swords and carbines. The officer held a short-barrelled and smoking pistol that he lowered to his side.

‘Who the devil are you?’ Still holding the bayonet, Sharpe was ready to lunge. He was indeed like a cornered rat; bloody, salivating, and vicious.

‘My name is Major Blas Vivar.’ Vivar was a man of middle height with a tough face. He looked, as did his men, as though he had been through hell in the last days, yet he was not so exhausted that his voice did not betray derision for what he had just witnessed. ‘Who are you?’

Sharpe had to spit blood before he could answer. ‘Lieutenant Richard Sharpe of the 95th. The Rifles,’ he added.

‘And him?’ Vivar looked at Harper.

‘He’s under arrest,’ Sharpe said. He threw down the sword-bayonet and pushed Harper in the chest. ‘Out! Out!’ He pushed him through the hovel’s door, out to where the other greenjackets waited in the snow. ‘Sergeant Williams!’

‘Sir?’ Williams stared with awe at their bloodied faces. ‘Sir?’

‘Rifleman Harper is under close arrest.’ Sharpe shoved Harper a last time, tumbling him into the snow, then turned back to the Spaniard’s mocking gaze.

‘You seem to be in trouble, Lieutenant?’ Vivar’s derision was made worse by the amusement in his voice.

The shame of the situation galled Sharpe, just as the Spaniard’s tone stung him. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Sir,’ Major Vivar chided him.

‘None of your bloody business, sir.’

Vivar shrugged. ‘This is Spain, Lieutenant. What happens here is more my business than yours, I think?’ His English was excellent, and spoken with a cold courtesy that made Sharpe feel mulish.

But the Englishman could not help his mulishness. ‘All we want to do,’ Sharpe smeared blood from his mouth onto his dark green sleeve, ‘is get out of your damned country.’

There was a hint of renewed anger in the Spaniard’s eyes. ‘I think I shall be glad to see you gone, Lieutenant. So perhaps I’d better help you leave?’

Sharpe, for better or worse, had found an ally.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Defeat,’ Blas Vivar said, ‘destroys discipline. You teach an army to march, to fight, to obey orders.’ Each virtue was stressed by a downward slash of the razor which spattered soapy water onto the kitchen floor. ‘But,’ he shrugged, ‘defeat brings ruin.’

Sharpe knew that the Spaniard was trying to find excuses for the disgraceful exhibition at the ruined farmstead. That was kind of him, but Sharpe was in no mood for kindness and he could find nothing to say in reply.

‘And that farmhouse is unlucky.’ Vivar turned back to the mirror fragment which he had propped on the window-ledge. ‘It always has been. In my grandfather’s time there was a murder there. Over a woman, naturally. And in my father’s time there was a suicide.’ He made the sign of the cross with the razor, then carefully shaved the angle of his jaw. ‘It’s haunted, Lieutenant. At night you can see ghosts there. It is a bad place. You are lucky I found you. You want to use this razor?’

‘I have my own.’

Vivar dried his blade and stowed it, with the mirror, in its leather case. Then he watched pensively as Sharpe spooned up the beans and pigs’ ears that the village priest had provided as supper. ‘Do you think,’ Vivar asked softly, ‘that, after your skirmish, the Dragoons followed your army?’

‘I didn’t see.’

‘Let us hope they did.’ Vivar ladled some of the mixture onto his own plate. ‘Perhaps they think I’ve joined the British retreat, yes?’

‘Perhaps.’ Sharpe wondered why Vivar was so interested in the French Dragoons who had been led by a red-coated chasseur and a black-coated civilian. He had eagerly questioned Sharpe about every detail of the fight by the bridge, but what most interested the Spaniard was which direction the enemy horsemen had taken after the fight, to which enquiry Sharpe could only offer his supposition that the Dragoons had ridden in pursuit of Sir John Moore’s army.

‘If you’re right, Lieutenant,’ Vivar raised a mug of wine in an ironic toast, ‘then that is the best news I’ve had in two weeks.’

‘Why were they pursuing you?’

‘They weren’t pursuing me,’ Vivar said. ‘They’re pursuing anyone in uniform, anyone. They just happened to catch my scent a few days ago. I want to be sure they’re not waiting in the next valley.’ Vivar explained to Sharpe that he had been travelling westwards but, forced into the highlands, he had lost all his horses and a good number of his men. He had been driven down to this small village by his desperate need for food and shelter.

That food had been willingly given. As the soldiers entered the small settlement Sharpe had noted how glad the villagers were to see Major Blas Vivar. Some of the men had even tried to kiss the Major’s hand, while the village priest, hurrying from his house, had ordered the women to heat up their ovens and uncover their winter stores. The soldiers, both Spanish and British, had been warmly welcomed. ‘My father,’ Vivar now explained to Sharpe, ‘was a lord in these mountains.’

‘Does that mean you’re a lord?’

‘I am the younger son. My brother is the Count now.’ Vivar crossed himself at this mention of his brother, a sign which Sharpe took to denote respect. ‘I am an hidalgo, of course,’ he went on, ‘so these people call me Don Blas.’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Hidalgo?’

Vivar politely disguised his surprise at Sharpe’s ignorance. ‘An hidalgo, Lieutenant, is a man who can trace his blood back to the old Christians of Spain. Pure blood, you understand, without a taint of Moor or Jew in it. I am hidalgo.’ He said it with a simple pride which made the claim all the more impressive. ‘And your father? He is a lord, too?’

‘I don’t know who my father is, or was.’

‘You don’t know …’ Vivar’s initial reaction was curiosity, then the implication of bastardy made him drop the subject. It was clear that Sharpe had fallen even lower in the Spaniard’s opinion. The Major glanced out of the window, judging the day’s dying. ‘So what will you do now, Lieutenant?’

‘I’m going south. To Lisbon.’

‘To take a ship home?’

Sharpe ignored the hint of scorn which suggested he was running away from the fight. ‘To take a ship home,’ he confirmed.

‘You have a map?’

‘No.’

Vivar broke a piece of bread to mop up the gravy. ‘You will find there are no roads south in these mountains.’

‘None?’

‘None passable in winter, and certainly not in this winter. You will have to go east to Astorga, or west to the sea, before you will find a southern road open.’

‘The French are to the east?’

‘The French are everywhere.’ Vivar leaned back and stared at Sharpe. ‘I’m going west. Do you wish to join me?’

Sharpe knew that his chances of surviving in this strange land were slim. He had no map, spoke no Spanish, and had only the haziest notion of Spanish geography, yet at the same time Sharpe had no desire to ally himself with this aristocratic Spaniard who had witnessed his disgrace. There could be no more damning indictment of an officer’s failure of command than to be discovered brawling with one of his own men, and that sense of shame made him hesitate.

‘Or are you tempted to surrender?’ Vivar asked harshly.

‘Never.’ Sharpe’s answer was equally harsh.

His tone, so unexpectedly firm, made the Spaniard smile. Then Vivar glanced out of the window again. ‘We leave in an hour, Lieutenant. Tonight we cross the high road, and that must be done in darkness.’ He looked back at the Englishman. ‘Do you put yourself under my command?’

And Sharpe, who really had no choices left, agreed.

What was so very galling to Sharpe was that his Riflemen immediately accepted Vivar’s leadership. That dusk, parading in the trampled snow in front of the tiny church, the greenjackets listened to the Spaniard’s explanation. It was foolish, Vivar said, to try to go north, for the enemy was marching to secure the coastal harbours. To attempt to rejoin the retreating British army was equally foolish, for it meant dogging the French footsteps and the enemy would simply turn and snap them up as prisoners. Their best course lay south, but first it would be necessary to march westwards. Sharpe watched the Riflemen’s faces and for a second he hated them as they nodded their willing comprehension.

So tonight, Vivar said, they must cross the road on which the main French army advanced. He doubted if the road was garrisoned, but the Riflemen must be ready for a brief fight. He knew they would fight well. Were they not the vaunted British greencoats? He was proud to fight beside them. Sharpe saw the Riflemen grin. He also saw how Vivar had the easy manner of a born officer and for a second Sharpe hated the Spaniard too.

Rifleman Harper was missing from the ranks. The Irishman was under arrest and, by Sharpe’s orders, his wrists were first bound together then tied by a length of rope to the tail of a mule which the Major had commandeered from one of the villagers. The mule was carrying a great square chest that was wrapped in oilcloth and guarded by four of Vivar’s Spaniards who also, by default, acted as guards over the prisoner.

‘He’s an Irishman?’ Vivar asked Sharpe.

‘Yes.’

‘I like the Irish. What will you do with him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sharpe would have liked to have shot Harper there and then, but that would have turned the other Riflemen’s dislike into pure hatred. Besides, to circumvent the army’s careful disciplinary process and shoot him out of hand would have been to demonstrate a disdain of authority as great as that which had earned Harper punishment in the first place.

‘Wouldn’t we march faster if he was untied?’ Vivar asked.

‘And encourage him to desert to the French?’

‘The discipline of your men is your own affair,’ Vivar said delicately, thus intimating that he thought Sharpe had mishandled the whole business.

Sharpe pretended to ignore his disapproval. He knew the Spaniard despised him, for so far Vivar had seen nothing but incompetence from Sharpe, and it was an incompetence made worse by comparison with his own easy authority. Vivar had not just rescued the British soldiers from their precarious refuge in the old farm, but from their officer as well, and every Rifleman in the makeshift Company knew it.

Sharpe stood alone as the troops formed into companies for the march. The Spaniards would lead, then would come the mule with its box-shaped burden, and the Riflemen would bring up the rear. Sharpe knew he should say something to his men, that he should encourage them or inspect their equipment, do anything which would assert his authority, but he could not face their mocking eyes and so he stayed apart from them.

Major Vivar, apparently oblivious to Sharpe’s misery, crossed to the village priest and knelt in the snow for a benediction. Afterwards he accepted a small object from the priest, but what it was Sharpe could not tell.

It was a bitter night. The thin snowfall had stopped at dusk and gradually the clouds cleared in the eastern sky to reveal a brightness of cold stars. A fitful wind whipped the fallen snow into airy and fantastic shapes that curled and glinted above the path on which the men trudged like doomed animals. Their faces were wrapped with rags against the pitiless cold and their packs chafed their shoulders raw, yet Major Vivar seemed imbued with an inexhaustible energy. He roamed up and down the column, encouraging men in Spanish and English, telling them they were the best soldiers in the world. His enthusiasm was infectious forcing a grudging admiration from Richard Sharpe who saw how the scarlet-uniformed cavalrymen almost worshipped their officer.

‘They’re Galicians.’ Vivar gestured at his Cazadores.

‘Local men?’ Sharpe asked.

‘The best in Spain.’ His pride was obvious. ‘They mock us in Madrid, Lieutenant. They say we Galicians are country fools, but I’d rather lead one country fool into battle than ten men from the city.’

‘I come from a city.’ Sharpe’s voice was surly.

Vivar laughed, but said nothing.

At midnight they crossed the road which led to the sea and saw evidence that the French had already passed. The road’s muddy surface had been ridged high by the guns, then frozen hard. On either verge white mounds showed where corpses had been left unburied. No enemy was in sight, no town or village lights showed in the valley, the soldiers were alone in an immensity of white cold.

An hour later they came to a river. Small bare oaks grew thick on its banks. Vivar scouted eastwards until he found a place where the freezing water ran shallow across gravel and between rocks that offered some kind of footing for the tired men but, before he would allow a single man to try the crossing, he took a small phial from his pouch. He uncorked it, then sprinkled some liquid into the river. ‘Safe now.’

‘Safe?’ Sharpe was intrigued.

‘Holy water, Lieutenant. The priest in the village gave it to me.’ Vivar seemed to think the explanation sufficient, but Sharpe demanded to know more.

‘Xanes, of course,’ the Spaniard said, then turned and ordered his Sergeant to lead the way.

‘Xanes?’ Sharpe stumbled over the odd world.

‘Water spirits.’ Vivar was entirely serious. ‘They live in every stream, Lieutenant, and can be mischievous. If we did not scare them away, they might lead us astray.’

‘Ghosts?’ Sharpe could not hide his astonishment.

‘No. A ghost, Lieutenant, is a creature that cannot escape from the earth. A ghost is a soul in torment, someone who lived and offended the Holy Sacraments. A xana was never human. A xana is,’ he shrugged, ‘a creature? Like an otter, or a water rat. Just something that lives in the stream. You must have them in England, surely?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Vivar looked appalled, then crossed himself. ‘Will you go now?’

Sharpe crossed the fast-flowing stream, safe from malicious sprites, and watched as his Riflemen followed. They avoided looking at him. Sergeant Williams, who carried the pack of a wounded man, stepped into deeper water rather than scramble up the bank where the officer stood.