SHARPE’S
EAGLE
Richard Sharpe and the Talavera
Campaign, July 1809
BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright

This novel is a work of fiction.The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1981

Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1981

Reprinted twelve times

Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1981

Map © John Gilkes 2011

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007276240

Ebook Edition © JULY 2009 ISBN: 9780007338641

Version: 2017-05-06

‘Bernard Cornwell set out to create a character who was credible enough to go through many adventures and both Sharpe himself and his Irish sergeant, Patrick Harper, are excellent creations. To my taste, Sharpe is much more interesting than Flashman’

Financial Times

For Judy

‘Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier’

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Foreword

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Epilogue

Historical Note

Sharpe’s Story

Keep Reading

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

FOREWORD

This was the first book I wrote, and it is the only book of mine that I have never dared go back and re-read. I still do not dare, for I am sure I would be horrified by the crudity of its writing, but I am constantly told by readers that it is one of their favourites.

It tells the story of the battle of Talavera, which occurred towards the beginning of the Peninsular War. It was not where I wanted to start the Sharpe series. I really wanted to begin with the tale of Badajoz (which turns up in Sharpe’s Company), because Badajoz is such an extraordinary and dramatic event, but I decided it would be a good idea to write a book or two before Badajoz, rather like a bowler warming up before he takes on the opening batsman. I had never written a novel before, never tried to write a novel before, and so Sharpe’s Eagle is where I was going to make all a beginner’s mistakes, and where, if I was successful in my ambition to write a series of tales about the adventures of a British rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, I was going to learn some of the tricks of the trade. One of the first things I learned was that Sharpe’s enemies, by and large, had to be British. I had thought, before I began writing, that the French would provide him with enemies enough, but the circumstances of war meant that Sharpe spent much more time with the British than with the enemy French, and if he was to be unendingly challenged, irritated, obstructed and angered then the provocations had to come from people with whom he was constantly associated. In time Sharpe is to meet many foul enemies, but few, I think, are as nauseating as Sir Henry Simmerson who, I seem to remember, becomes a tax inspector in his later career.

I said Sharpe’s enemies were British. In fact most of them, like me, are English, while his friends are often Irish. This arose from the happy fact that I had been living in Belfast in the years immediately prior to writing Sharpe and had acquired a fondness for Ireland which has never abated. It also reflected a truth that Wellington’s army was heavily recruited from the Irish, and indeed the Duke (as he was to become) had been born there. That was not a fact of which he was proud. ‘Being born in a stable,’ he once remarked, ‘does not make a man a horse.’ The Duke was a difficult, cold and snobbish man who was also one of the greatest soldiers ever to take the field. Like Sharpe I admire him, but would not particularly wish to dine with him. His story, though, is intimately linked with Sharpe’s, which is to Sharpe’s good fortune. But Sharpe, if he is to make his reputation, must do it with action, rather than by his distant connection with the Duke, and there was no act more admired on a battlefield than the capture of an enemy’s standard. In Napoleon’s army those standards took the form of small statuettes of eagles – thus the book’s title. I decided that if I was not to launch Sharpe against the great walls of Badajoz in his first adventure, then he should face another task just as impossible, and so I set him to capture an eagle. Poor Sharpe.

But there were much greater events resting on his shoulders than the seizing of an eagle. I had fallen in love with Judy, an American to whom the book is dedicated and who, for family reasons, could not live in Britain, which meant I had to earn a crust in the United States if the course of true love was ever to flow smooth. The American Government, in its Simmerson-like wisdom, refused me a work permit so I airily told Judy that I would support us by writing books. Sharpe had to succeed if that irresponsible promise was to be kept. That was twenty-one years ago, and we are still married, so in truth Sharpe’s Eagle is a dazzling romance. And one day I shall read it again.

PREFACE

In 1809 the British army was divided into Regiments, as today, but most Regiments were described by numbers not by names; thus, for instance, the Bedfordshire Regiment was properly called the 14th, the Connaught Rangers the 88th and so on. The soldiers themselves preferred the names but had to wait until 1881 for their official adoption. I have deliberately not given the South Essex, a fictional Regiment, any number.

A Regiment was an administrative unit; the basic fighting unit was the Battalion. Most Regiments consisted of at least two Battalions but a few, like the imaginary South Essex, were small single-Battalion Regiments. That is why, in Sharpe’s Eagle, the two words are used interchangeably of the South Essex. On paper a Battalion was supposed to have about a thousand men but disease and casualties, plus the shortage of recruits, meant that Battalions often went into battle with only five or six hundred troops.

All Battalions were divided into ten companies. Two of these, the Light Company and the Grenadier Company, were the elite of the Battalion and the Light Companies, in particular, were so useful that whole Regiments of Light troops, like the 95th Rifles, were being raised or expanded.

A Battalion was usually commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel, with two Majors, ten Captains, and below them the Lieutenants and Ensigns. None of these officers would have received any formal training; that was reserved for officers of the Engineers and the Artillery. About one officer in twenty was promoted from the ranks. Normal promotion was by seniority rather than merit but a rich man, as long as he had served a minimum period in his rank, could buy his next promotion and thus jump the queue. This system of purchase could lead to very unfair promotions but it is worth remembering that without it Britain’s most successful soldier, Sir Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, would never have risen to high rank early enough in his career to form the most brilliant army Britain has ever possessed; the army in which Richard Sharpe fought the French through Portugal, Spain, and into France between 1808 and 1814.

CHAPTER ONE

The guns could be heard long before they came into sight. Children clung to their mothers’ skirts and wondered what dreadful thing made such noises. The hooves of the great horses mixed with the jangling of traces and chains, the hollow rumbling of the blurring wheels, and above it all the crashes as tons of brass, iron and timber bounced on the town’s broken paving. Then they were in view; guns, limbers, horses and outriders, and the gunners looked as tough as the squat, blackened barrels that spoke of the fighting up north where the artillery had dragged their massive weapons through swollen rivers and up rain-soaked slopes to pound the enemy into oblivion and defeat. Now they would do it again. Mothers held their smallest children and pointed at the guns, boasted that these British would make Napoleon wish he had stayed in Corsica and suckled pigs which was all he was fit for.

And the cavalry! The Portuguese civilians applauded the trotting ranks of gorgeous uniforms, the curved, polished sabres unsheathed for display in Abrantes’ streets and squares, and the fine dust from the horses’ hooves was a small price to pay for the sight of the splendid Regiments who, the townspeople said, would chase the French clean over the Pyrenees and back into the sewers of Paris itself. Who could resist this army? From north and south, from the ports on the western coast, they were coming together and marching east on the road that led to the Spanish frontier and to the enemy. Portugal will be free, Spain’s pride restored, France humbled, and these British soldiers can go back to their own wine-shops and inns leaving Abrantes and Lisbon, Coimbra and Oporto in peace. The soldiers themselves were not so confident. True they had beaten Soult’s northern army but, marching into their lengthening shadows, they wondered what lay beyond Castelo Branco, the next town and the last before the frontier. Soon they would face again the blue-coated veterans of Jena and Austerlitz, the masters of Europe’s battlefields, the French Regiments that had turned the finest armies of the world into so much mincemeat. The townspeople were impressed, at least by the cavalry and artillery, but to experienced eyes the troops gathering round Abrantes were pitifully few and the French armies to the east threateningly big. The British army that awed the children of Abrantes would not frighten the French Marshals.

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, waiting for orders in his billet on the outskirts of town, watched the cavalry sheath their sabres as the last spectators were left behind and then he turned back to the job of unwinding the dirty bandage from his thigh.

As the last few inches peeled stickily away some maggots dropped to the floor and Sergeant Harper knelt to pick them up before looking at the wound.

‘Healed, sir. Beautiful.’

Sharpe grunted. The sabre cut had become nine inches of puckered scar tissue, clean and pink against the darker skin. He picked off a last fat maggot and gave it to Harper to put safely away.

‘There, my beauty, well fed you are.’ Sergeant Harper closed the tin and looked up at Sharpe. ‘You were lucky, sir.’

That was true, thought Sharpe. The French Hussar had nearly ended him, the man’s blade half way through a massive down-stroke when Harper’s rifle bullet had lifted him from the saddle and the Frenchman’s grimace, framed by the weird pigtails, had turned to sudden agony. Sharpe had twisted desperately away and the sabre, aimed at his neck, had sliced into his thigh to leave another scar as a memento of sixteen years in the British army. It had not been a deep wound but Sharpe had watched too many men die from smaller cuts, the blood poisoned, the flesh discoloured and stinking, and the doctors helpless to do anything but let the man sweat and rot to his death in the charnel houses they called hospitals. A handful of maggots did more than any army doctor, eating away the diseased tissue to let the healthy flesh close naturally. He stood up and tested the leg. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. Good as new.’

‘Pleasure’s all mine, sir.’

Sharpe pulled on the cavalry overalls he wore instead of the regulation green trousers of the 95th Rifles. He was proud of the green overalls with their black leather reinforcement panels, stripped from the corpse of a Chasseur Colonel of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard last winter. The outside of each leg had been decorated with more than twenty silver buttons and the metal had paid for food and drink as his small band of refugee Riflemen had escaped south through the Galician snows. The Colonel had been a lucky kill; there were not many men in either army as tall as Sharpe but the overalls fitted him perfectly and the Frenchman’s soft, rich, black leather boots could have been made for the English Lieutenant. Patrick Harper had not been so fortunate. The Sergeant topped Sharpe by a full four inches and the huge Irishman had yet to find any trousers to replace his faded, patched and tattered pair that were scarcely fit to scare crows in a turnip field. The whole company was like that, reflected Sharpe, their uniforms threadbare, their boots literally tied together with strips of hide, and as long as their parent Battalion was home in England Sharpe’s small company could find no Commissary Officer willing to complicate his account books by issuing them with new trousers or shoes. Sergeant Harper handed Sharpe his uniform jacket. ‘Do you want a Hungarian bath, sir?’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘It’s bearable.’ There were not too many lice in the jacket, not enough to justify steeping it in the smoke from a grass fire and to smell like a charcoal burner for the next two days. The jacket was as worn as those of the rest of his company but nothing, not the best tailored corpse in Portugal or Spain, would have persuaded Sharpe to throw it away. It was green, the dark green jacket of the 95th Rifles, and it was the badge of an elite Regiment. British Infantry wore red, but the best British Infantry wore green, and even after three years in the 95th Sharpe took pleasure in the distinction of the green uniform. It was all he had, his uniform and what he could carry on his back. Richard Sharpe knew no home other than the Regiment, no family except for his company, and no belongings except what fitted into his pack and pouches. He knew no other way to live and expected that it would be the way he would die. Round his waist he tied the red officer’s sash and covered it with the black leather belt with its silver snake buckle. After a year in the Peninsula only the sash and his sword denoted his officer’s rank and even his sword, like the overalls, broke regulations. Officers of the Rifles, like all Light Infantry officers, were supposed to carry a curved cavalry sabre but Sharpe hated the weapon. In its place he wore the long, straight sword of the Heavy Cavalry; a brute of a weapon, ill balanced and crude, but Sharpe liked the feel of a savage blade that could beat down the slim swords of French officers and crush aside a musket and bayonet.

The sword was not his only weapon. For ten years Richard Sharpe had marched in the red-coated ranks, first as a private, then a Sergeant, carrying a smooth-bore musket across the plains of India. He had stood in the line with the heavy flintlock, gone terrified into broken breaches with a bayonet, and he still carried a longarm into battle. The Baker rifle was his mark, it set him aside from other officers, and sixteen-year-old Ensigns, fresh in their bright new uniforms, looked warily at the tall, black-haired Lieutenant with the slung rifle and the scar which, except when he smiled, gave his face a look of grim amusement. Some wondered if the stories were true, stories of Seringapatam and Assaye, of Vimeiro and Lugo, but one glance from the apparently mocking eyes, or a sight of the worn grips on his weapons, stopped the wondering. Few new officers stopped to think of what the rifle really represented, of the fiercest struggle Sharpe had ever fought, the climb from the ranks into the officers’ mess. Sergeant Harper looked out of the window into the square soaked in afternoon sunlight.

‘Here comes Happy, sir.’

‘Captain Hogan.’

Harper ignored the reproof. He and Sharpe had been together too long, shared too many dangers, and the Sergeant knew precisely what liberties he could take with his taciturn officer. ‘He’s looking more cheerful than ever, sir. He must have another job for us.’

‘I wish to God they’d send us home.’

Harper, his huge hands gently stripping the lock of his rifle, pretended not to hear the remark. He knew what it meant but the subject was a dangerous one. Sharpe commanded the remnants of a company of Riflemen who had been cut off from the rearguard of Sir John Moore’s army during its retreat to Corunna the winter before. It had been a terrible campaign in weather that was like the travellers’ tales of Russia rather than northern Spain. Men had died in their sleep, their hair frozen to the ground, while others dropped exhausted from the march and let death overtake them. The discipline of the army had crumbled and the drunken stragglers were easy meat for the French cavalry who flogged their exhausted mounts at the heel of the British army. The rabble was saved from disaster only by the few Regiments, like the 95th, which kept their discipline and fought on. 1808 turned into 1809 and still the nightmarish battle went on, a battle fought with damp powder by freezing men peering through the snow for a glimpse of the cloaked French Dragoons. Then, on a day when the blizzard bellied in the wind like a malevolent monster, the company had been cut off by the horsemen. The Captain was killed, the other Lieutenant, the rifles wouldn’t fire and the enemy sabres rose and fell and the damp snow muffled all sounds except for the grunts of the Dragoons and the terrible chopping of the blades cutting into wounds that steamed in the freezing air. Lieutenant Sharpe and a few survivors fought clear and scrambled into high rocks where horsemen could not follow but when the storm blew out, and the last desperately wounded man died, there was no hope of rejoining the army. The second Battalion of the 95th Rifles had sailed home while Sharpe and his thirty men, lost and forgotten, had headed south, away from the French, to join the small British garrison in Lisbon.

Since then Sharpe had asked a dozen times to be sent home but Riflemen were too scarce, too valuable, and the army’s new commander, Sir Arthur Wellesley, was unwilling to lose even thirty-one. So they had stayed and fought for whichever Battalion needed its Light Company strengthening and had marched north again, retracing their steps, and been with Wellesley when he avenged Sir John Moore by tumbling Marshal Soult and his veterans out of North Portugal. Harper knew his Lieutenant harboured a sullen anger at his predicament. Richard Sharpe was poor, dog poor, and he would never have the money to purchase his next promotion. To become a Captain, even in an ordinary Battalion of the line, would cost Sharpe fifteen hundred pounds and he might as well hope to be made King of France as raise that money. He had only one hope of promotion and that was by seniority in his own Regiment; to step into the shoes of men who died or were promoted and whose own commissions had not been purchased. But as long as Sharpe was in Portugal and the Regiment was home in England he was being forgotten and passed over, time and again, and the unfairness soured Sharpe’s resentment. He watched men younger than himself purchase their Captaincies, their Majorities, while he, a better soldier, was left on the heap because he was poor and because he was fighting instead of being safe home in England.

The door of the cottage banged open and Captain Hogan stepped into the room. He looked, in his blue coat and white trousers, like a naval officer and he claimed his uniform had been mistaken for a Frenchman’s so often that he had been fired on more by his own side than by the enemy. He was an Engineer, one of the tiny number of Military Engineers in Portugal, and he grinned as he took off his cocked hat and nodded at Sharpe’s leg. ‘The warrior restored? How’s the leg?’

‘Perfect, sir.’

‘Sergeant Harper’s maggots, eh? Well, we Irish are clever devils. God knows where you English would be without us.’ Hogan took out his snuff box and inhaled a vast pinch. As Sharpe waited for the inevitable sneeze he eyed the small, middle-aged Captain fondly. For a month his Riflemen had been Hogan’s escort as the Engineer had mapped the roads across the high passes that led to Spain. It was no secret that any day now Wellesley would take the army into Spain, to follow the River Tagus that was aimed like a spear at the capital, Madrid, and Hogan, as well as sketching endless maps, had strengthened the culverts and bridges which would have to take the tons of brass and wood as the field artillery rolled towards the enemy. It had been a job well done in agreeable company, until it rained and the rifles wouldn’t fire and the crazy-eyed French Hussar had nearly made a name for himself by his mad solo charge at the Riflemen. Somehow Sergeant Harper had kept the damp out of his firing pan and Sharpe still shivered when he thought of what might have happened if the rifle had not fired.

The Sergeant collected the pieces of his rifle lock as if he was about to leave but Hogan held up his hand. ‘Stay on, Patrick. I have a treat for you; one that even a heathen from Donegal might like.’ He took a dark bottle out of his haversack and raised an eyebrow to Sharpe. ‘You don’t mind?’

Sharpe shook his head. Harper was a good man, good at everything he did, and in their three years’ acquaintanceship Sharpe and Harper had become friends, or at least as friendly as an officer and a Sergeant could be. Sharpe could not imagine fighting without the huge Irishman beside him, the Irishman dreaded fighting without Sharpe, and together they were as formidable a pair as Hogan had ever seen on a battlefield. The Captain set the bottle on the table and pulled the cork. ‘Brandy. French brandy from Marshal Soult’s own cellars and captured at Oporto. With the compliments of the General.’

‘From Wellesley?’ Sharpe asked.

‘The man himself. He asked after you, Sharpe, and I said you were being doctored or would have been with me.’

Sharpe said nothing. Hogan paused in his careful pouring of the liquid. ‘Don’t be unfair, Sharpe! He’s fond of you. Do you think he’s forgotten Assaye?’

Assaye. Sharpe remembered all right. The field of dead outside the Indian village where he had been commissioned on the battlefield. Hogan pushed a tin cup of brandy across the table to him. ‘You know he can’t make you into a Captain of the 95th. He doesn’t have the power!’

‘I know.’ Sharpe smiled and raised the cup to his lips. But Wellesley did have the power to send him home where promotion might be had. He pushed the thought away, knowing the nagging insult of his rank would soon come back, and was envious of Hogan who, being an Engineer, could only gain promotion by seniority. It meant that Hogan was still only a Captain, even in his fifties, but at least there was no jealousy and injustice because no man could buy his way up the ladder of promotion. He leaned forward. ‘So? Any news? Are we still with you?’

‘You are. And we have a job.’ Hogan’s eyes twinkled. ‘And a wonderful job it is, too.’

Patrick Harper grinned. ‘That means a powerful big bang.’

Hogan nodded. ‘You are right, Sergeant. A big bridge to be blown into the next world.’ He took a map out of his pocket and unfolded it on to the table. Sharpe watched a calloused finger trace the River Tagus from the sea at Lisbon, past Abrantes where they now sat, and on into Spain to stop where the river made a huge southwards loop. ‘Valdelacasa,’ Hogan said. ‘There’s an old bridge there, a Roman one. The General doesn’t like it.’

Sharpe could see why. The army would march on the north bank of the Tagus towards Madrid and the river would guard their right flank. There were few bridges where the French might cross and harass their supply lines and those bridges were in towns, like Alcantara, where the Spanish kept garrisons to protect the crossings. Valdelacasa was not even marked. If there was no town there would be no garrison and a French force could cross and play havoc in the British rear. Harper leaned over and looked at the map.

‘Why isn’t it marked, sir?’

Hogan made a contemptuous noise. ‘I’m surprised the map even marks Madrid, let alone Valdelacasa.’ He was right. The Tomas Lopez map, the only one available to the armies in Spain, was a wondrous work of the Spanish imagination. Hogan stabbed his finger down on to the map. ‘The bridge is hardly used, it’s in bad repair. We’re told you can hardly put a cart across, let alone a gun, but it could be repaired and we could have “old trousers” up our backsides in no time.’ Sharpe smiled. ‘Old trousers’ was the Rifles’ strange nickname for the French and Hogan had adopted the phrase with relish. The Engineer lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘It’s a strange place, I’m told, just a ruined convent and the bridge. They call it El Puente de los Malditos.’ He nodded as if he had made his point.

Sharpe waited a few seconds and sighed. ‘All right. What does it mean?’

Hogan smiled triumphantly. ‘I’m surprised you need to ask! It means “The Bridge of the Accursed”. It seems that, years ago, all the nuns were taken out of the convent and massacred by the Moors. It’s haunted, Sharpe, stalked by the spirits of the dead!’

Sharpe leaned forward to peer more closely at the map. Give or take the width of Hogan’s finger the bridge must be sixty miles beyond the border and they were that far from Spain already. ‘When do we leave?’

‘Now there’s a problem.’ Hogan folded the map carefully. ‘We can leave for the frontier tomorrow but we can’t cross until we’re formally invited by the Spanish.’ He leaned back with his cup of brandy. ‘And we have to wait for our escort.’

‘Escort!’ Sharpe bridled. ‘We’re your escort.’

Hogan shook his head. ‘Oh, no. This is politics. The Spanish will let us blow up their bridge but only if a Spanish Regiment goes along with us. It’s a question of pride, apparently.’

‘Pride!’ Sharpe’s anger was obvious. ‘If you have a whole Regiment of Spaniards then why the hell do you need us?’

Hogan smiled placatingly. ‘Oh, I need you. There’s more, you see.’ He was interrupted by Harper. The Sergeant was standing at the window, oblivious of their conversation, and staring into the small square.

‘That is nice. Oh, sir, that can clean my rifle any day of the week.’

Sharpe looked through the small window. Outside, on a black mare, sat a girl dressed in black; black breeches, black jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed her face but in no way obscured a beauty that was startling. Sharpe saw a wide mouth, dark eyes, coiled hair the colour of fine powder and then she became aware of their scrutiny. She half smiled at them and turned away, snapped an order at a servant holding the halter of a mule, and stared at the road leading from the plaza towards the centre of Abrantes. Hogan made a small, contented noise. ‘That is special. They don’t come out like that very often. I wonder who she is?’

‘Officer’s wife?’ Sharpe suggested.

Harper shook his head. ‘No ring, sir. But she’s waiting for someone, lucky bastard.’

And a rich bastard, thought Sharpe. The army was collecting its customary tail of women and children who followed the Regiments to war. Each Battalion was allowed to take sixty soldiers’ wives to an overseas war but no one could stop other women joining the ‘official’ wives; local girls, prostitutes, seamstresses and washerwomen, all making their living from the army. This girl looked different. There was the smell of money and privilege about her as if she had run away from a rich Lisbon home. Sharpe presumed she was the lover of a rich officer, as much a part of his equipment as his thoroughbred horses, his Manton pistols, his silver dinnerware for camp meals, and the hounds that would trot obediently at his horse’s tail. There were plenty of girls like her, Sharpe knew, girls who cost a lot of money, and he felt the old envy rise in him.

‘My God.’ Harper, still staring out of the window, had spoken again.

‘What is it?’ Sharpe leaned forward and, like his Sergeant, he could hardly believe his eyes. A Battalion of British Infantry was marching steadily into the square but a Battalion the like of which Sharpe had not seen for more than twelve months. A year in Portugal had turned the army into a Drill-Sergeant’s nightmare, the soldiers’ uniforms had faded and been patched with the ubiquitous brown cloth of the Portuguese peasants, their hair had grown long, the polish had long disappeared from buttons and badges. Sir Arthur Wellesley did not mind; he only cared that a soldier had sixty rounds of ammunition and a clear head and if his trousers were brown instead of white then it made no difference to the outcome of a fight. But this Battalion was fresh from England. Their coats were a brilliant scarlet, their crossbelts pipeclayed white, their boots a mirror-surfaced black. Each man wore tightly-buttoned gaiters and, even more surprising, they still wore the infamous stocks; four inches of stiffly varnished black leather that constricted the neck and was supposed to keep a man’s chin high and back straight. Sharpe could not remember when he had last seen a stock; once on campaign the men ‘lost’ them, and with them went the running sores where the rigid leather dug into the soft flesh beneath the jawbone.

‘They’ve taken the wrong turning for Windsor Castle,’ Harper said.

Sharpe shook his head. ‘They’re unbelievable!’ Whoever commanded this Battalion must have made the men’s lives hell to keep them looking so immaculate despite the voyage from England in cramped and foul ships and the long march from Lisbon in the summer heat. Their weapons shone, their equipment was pristine and regular while their faces bulged red from the constricting stocks and the unaccustomed sun. At the head of each company rode the officers, all, Sharpe noted, mounted superbly. The colours were cased in polished leather and guarded by Sergeants whose halberd blades had been burnished to a brilliant, glittering sheen. The men marched in perfect step, looking neither right nor left, for all the world, as Harper had said, as if they were marching for the Royal duty at Windsor.

‘Who are they?’ Sharpe was trying to think of the Regiments who had yellow facings on their uniforms but this looked like none of the Regiments he knew.

‘The South Essex,’ Hogan said.

‘The who?’

‘The South Essex. They’re new, very new. Just raised by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson, a cousin of General Sir Banestre Tarleton.’

Sharpe whistled softly. Tarleton had fought in the American war and now sat in Parliament as Wellesley’s bitterest military opponent. Sharpe had heard said that Tarleton wanted the command of the army in Portugal for himself and bitterly resented the younger man’s preferment. Tarleton was a man of influence, a dangerous enemy for Wellesley, and Sharpe knew enough about the politics of high command to realise that the presence of Tarleton’s cousin in the army would not be welcomed by Wellesley.

‘Is that him?’ He pointed to a portly man riding a grey horse in the centre of the Battalion.

Hogan nodded. ‘That is Sir Henry Simmerson, whom God preserve or preferably not.’

Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson had a red face lined with purple veins and pendulous with jowls. His eyes, at the distance Sharpe was seeing them, seemed small and red, and on either side of the suspicious, questing face there sprung prominent ears that looked like the protruding trunnions either side of a cannon barrel. He looked, Sharpe thought, like a pig on horseback. ‘I’ve not heard of the man.’

‘That’s not surprising. He’s done nothing.’ Hogan was scornful. ‘Landed money, in Parliament for Paglesham, justice of the peace and, God help us, a Militia Colonel.’ Hogan seemed surprised by his own lack of charity. ‘He means well. He won’t be content till those lads are the best damned Battalion in the army but I think the man has a terrible shock coming when he finds the difference between us and the Militia.’

Like other Regular officers Hogan had little time for the Militia, Britain’s second army. It was used exclusively within Britain itself, never had to fight, never went hungry, never slept in an open field beneath a cloudburst, yet it paraded with a glorious pomp and self-importance. Hogan laughed. ‘Mustn’t complain. We’re lucky to have Sir Henry.’

‘Lucky?’ Sharpe looked at the greying Engineer.

‘Oh, yes. Sir Henry only arrived in Abrantes yesterday but he tells us he’s a great expert on war. The man’s not yet seen a Frenchman but he’s lectured the General on how to beat them!’ Hogan laughed and shook his head. ‘Maybe he’ll learn. One battle could take the starch out of him.’

Sharpe looked at the companies marching steadily through the square like automatons. The brass badges on their shakoes reflected the sun but the faces beneath the brilliance were expressionless. Sharpe loved the army, it was his home, the refuge that an orphan had needed sixteen years before, but he liked it most of all because it gave him, in a clumsy way, the opportunity to prove again and again that he was valued. He could chafe against the rich and the privileged but he acknowledged that the army had taken him from the gutter and put an officer’s sash round his waist and Sharpe could think of no other job that would offer a low-born bastard on the run from the law the chance of rank and responsibility. But Sharpe had also been lucky. In sixteen years he had rarely stopped fighting and it had been his fortune that the battles in Flanders, India and Portugal had called for men like himself who reacted to danger the way a gambler reacted to a deck of cards. Sharpe suspected he would hate the peacetime army, with its church parades and pointless drills, its petty jealousies and endless polish, and in the South Essex he saw the peacetime army he did not want. ‘I suppose he’s a flogger?’

Hogan grimaced. ‘Floggings, punishment parades, extra drills. You name it and Sir Henry uses it. He will have, he says, only the best. And they are. What do you think of them?’

Sharpe laughed grimly. ‘God keep me from the South Essex. That’s not too much to ask, is it?’

Hogan smiled. ‘I’m afraid it is.’

Sharpe looked at him, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Hogan shrugged. ‘I told you there was more. If a Spanish Regiment marches to Valdelacasa then Sir Arthur feels, for the sake of diplomacy, that a British one should go as well. Show the flag; that kind of thing.’ He glanced at the polished ranks and back to Sharpe. ‘Sir Henry Simmerson and his fine men are going with us.’

Sharpe groaned. ‘You mean we have to take orders from him?’

Hogan pursed his lips. ‘Not exactly. Strictly speaking you will take your orders from me.’ He had spoken primly, like a lawyer, and Sharpe glanced at him curiously. There could be only one reason why Wellesley had subordinated Sharpe and his Riflemen to Hogan, instead of to Simmerson, and that was because the General did not trust Sir Henry. Sharpe still wondered why he was needed; after all Hogan could expect the protection of two whole Battalions, at least fifteen hundred men. ‘Does the General expect there to be a fight?’

Hogan shrugged. ‘He doesn’t know. The Spanish say that the French have a whole Regiment of cavalry on the south bank, with horse artillery, who’ve been chasing Guerilleros up and down the river since spring. Who knows? He thinks they may try to stop us blowing the bridge.’

‘I still don’t understand why you need us.’

Hogan smiled. ‘Perhaps I don’t. But there won’t be any action for a month; the French will let us go deep into Spain before they fight, so Valdelacasa will at least be the chance of a scramble. And I want someone with me I can trust. Perhaps I just want you along as a favour?’

Sharpe smiled. Some favour, wet-nursing a Militia Colonel who thought he knew it all, but he hid his feelings. ‘For you, sir, it will be a pleasure.’

Hogan smiled back. ‘Who knows? It might be. She’s going along.’ Sharpe followed Hogan’s gaze out of the window and saw the black-dressed girl raise a hand to an officer of the South Essex. Sharpe had an impression of a blond man, immaculately uniformed, mounted on a horse that had probably cost more than the rider’s commission. The girl spurred her mare forward and, followed by the servant and his mule, joined the rear of the Battalion that was marching down the road that led to Castelo Branco. The square became empty again, the dust settling in the fierce heat, and Sharpe leaned back and began to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ Hogan asked.

Sharpe pointed with his cup of brandy at Harper’s tattered jacket and gaping trousers. ‘Sir Henry’s not exactly going to be fond of his new allies.’

The Sergeant’s face stayed gloomy. ‘God save Ireland.’

Hogan raised his cup. ‘Amen to that.’

CHAPTER TWO

The drumbeats were distant and muffled, sometimes blending with the other sounds of the city, but insistent and sinister and Sharpe was glad when the sound stopped. He was also glad they had reached Castelo Branco, twenty-four hours after the South Essex, after a tiresome journey that had consisted of forcing Hogan’s mules along a road cut with deep, jagged ruts showing where the field artillery had gone before them. Now the mules, laden with powder kegs, oilskin packets of match-fuse, picks, crowbars, spades, all the equipment Hogan needed for Valdelacasa, followed patiently behind the Riflemen and Hogan’s artificers as they pushed their way through the crowded streets towards the main square. As they spilled into the bright sunlight Sharpe’s suspicions about the drumbeats were confirmed.

Someone had been flogged. It was over now. The victim had gone and Sharpe, watching the hollow square formation of the South Essex, remembered his own flogging, years before, and the struggle to keep the agony shut up, not to show to the officers that the lash hurt. Sharpe would carry the scars of his flogging to his grave but he doubted whether Simmerson knew how savage was the punishment he had just meted to his Battalion.

Hogan reined in his horse in the shade of the Bishop’s palace. ‘This doesn’t seem to be the best moment to talk to the good Colonel.’ Soldiers were taking down four wooden triangles that were propped against the far wall of the square. Four men flogged. Dear God, thought Sharpe, four men. Hogan turned his horse so that his back was to the Battalion. ‘I must lock up the powder, Richard. Otherwise every bloody grain will be stolen. I’ll meet you back here.’

Sharpe nodded. ‘I need water anyway. Ten minutes?’

Sharpe’s men collapsed at the foot of the wall, their packs and rifles discarded, their mood soured by the reminder before them of a discipline the Rifle Regiments had virtually discarded. Sir Henry rode his horse delicately to the centre of the square and his voice carried clearly to Sharpe and his men.

‘I have flogged four men because four men deserted.’ Sharpe looked up, startled. Deserters already? He looked at the Battalion, their faces expressionless, and wondered how many others were tempted to escape from Simmerson’s ranks. The Colonel was half standing in his saddle. ‘Some of you know how those men planned their crime. Some of you helped them. But you preferred silence so I have flogged four men to remind you of your duty.’ His voice was curiously high pitched; it would have been funny if the man’s presence was not so big. He had been speaking in a controlled manner, almost conversationally, but suddenly Sir Henry turned left and right and waved an arm as if to point at every man in his command. ‘You will be the best!’ The loudness was so sudden that pigeons burst startled from the ledges of the convent. Sharpe waited for more, but there was none, and the Colonel turned his horse and rode away leaving the battle cry lingering behind like a menace.

Sharpe caught Harper’s eye and the Sergeant shrugged. There was nothing to be said, the faces of the South Essex proclaimed Simmerson’s failure; they simply did not know how to be the best. Sharpe watched as the companies marched from the plaza and saw only sullenness and resentment in their expressions. Sharpe believed in discipline. Desertion to the enemy deserved death, some offences deserved a flogging, and if a man was hung for blatant looting then it was his fault because the rules were simple. And for Sharpe, that was the key; keep the rules simple. He asked three things of his men. That they fought, as he did, with a ruthless professionalism. That they stole only from the enemy and the dead unless they were starving. And that they never got drunk without his permission. It was a simple code, understandable by men who had mostly joined the army because they had failed elsewhere, and it worked. It was backed by punishment and Sharpe knew, for all that his men liked him and followed him willingly, that they feared his anger when they broke his trust. Sharpe was a soldier.

He crossed the square towards an alleyway, looking for a water fountain, and noticed a Lieutenant of the South Essex’s Light Company riding his horse towards the same dark-shadowed gap between the buildings.

It was the man who had waved to the black-dressed girl and Sharpe felt a stab of irritation as he entered the alley first. It was an irrational jealousy. The Lieutenant’s uniform was elegantly tailored, the Light Infantry curved sabre was expensive, and the black horse he rode was probably worth a Lieutenant’s commission by itself. Sharpe resented the man’s wealth, his privilege, the easy superiority of a man born to the landed gentry, and it annoyed Sharpe because he knew that resentment was based on envy. He squeezed into the side of the alley to let the horseman pass, looked up and nodded affably, and had an impression of a thin, handsome face fringed with blond hair. He hoped the Lieutenant would ignore him; Sharpe was bad at small talk and he had no wish to make stilted conversation in a foetid alley when he would doubtless be introduced to the Battalion’s officers later in the day.

Sharpe was disappointed. The Lieutenant stopped and stared down at the Rifleman. ‘Don’t they teach you to salute in the Rifles?’ The Lieutenant’s voice was as smooth and rich as his uniform. Sharpe said nothing. His epaulette was missing, torn off in the winter’s fighting, and he realised that the blond Lieutenant had mistaken him for a private. It was hardly surprising. The alleyway was deeply shadowed, Sharpe’s profile, with slung rifle, all helped to explain the Lieutenant’s mistake. Sharpe glanced up to the thin, blue-eyed face and was about to explain when the Lieutenant flicked his whip so that it slapped Sharpe’s face.

‘Damn you, man, answer me!’

Sharpe felt the anger rise in him, but stayed still and waited for his moment. The Lieutenant drew the whip back.

‘What Battalion? What company?’

‘Second Battalion, Fourth Company.’ Sharpe spoke with deliberate insolence and remembered the days when he had no protection against officers like this. The Lieutenant smiled again, no more pleasantly.

‘You will call me “sir” you know. I shall make you. Who’s your officer?’

‘Lieutenant Sharpe.’

‘Ah!’ The Lieutenant kept his whip raised. ‘Lieutenant Sharpe who we’ve all been told about. Came up from the ranks, didn’t he?’

Sharpe nodded and the Lieutenant drew the whip back further.

‘Is that why you don’t say “sir”? Has Mr Sharpe strange ideas on discipline? Well, I will have to see Lieutenant Sharpe, won’t I, and arrange to have you punished for insolence.’ He brought the whip slashing down towards Sharpe’s head. There was no room for Sharpe to step back, but there was no need, instead he put both hands under the man’s stirrup and heaved upwards with all his strength. The whip stopped somewhere in mid stroke, the man started to cry out, and the next instant he was flat on his back on the far side of his horse where another horse had dunged earlier.

‘You’re going to have to wash your uniform, Lieutenant.’ Sharpe smiled.

The man’s horse had whinnied and gone forward a few paces and the furious Lieutenant struggled to his feet and put his hand to the hilt of his sabre.

‘Hello there!’ Hogan was peering into the alley. ‘I thought I’d lost you!’ The Engineer rode his horse up to the two men and stared cheerfully down on the Rifleman. ‘Mules all stabled, powders locked up.’ He turned to the strange Lieutenant and raised his hat. ‘Afternoon. Don’t think we’ve met. My name’s Hogan.’

The Lieutenant let go of his sword. ‘Gibbons, sir. Lieutenant Christian Gibbons.’

Hogan grinned. ‘I see you’ve already met Sharpe. Lieutenant Richard Sharpe of the 95th Rifles.’

Gibbons looked at Sharpe and his eyes widened as he noticed, for the first time, that the sword hanging by Sharpe’s side was not the usual sword-bayonet carried by Riflemen but was a full-length blade. He raised his eyes to look nervously at Sharpe’s. Hogan went cheerfully on. ‘You’ve heard of Sharpe, of course; everyone has. He’s the laddie who killed the Sultan Tippoo. Then, let me see, there was that ghastly affair at Assaye. No one knows how many Sharpe killed there. Do you know, Sharpe?’ Hogan ignored any possible answer and ground on remorselessly. ‘Terrible fellow, our Lieutenant Sharpe, equally fatal with a sword or gun.’

Gibbons could hardly mistake Hogan’s message. The Captain had seen the scuffle and was warning Gibbons about the likely consequence of a formal duel. The Lieutenant took the proffered escape. He bent down and picked up his Light Company shako then nodded to Sharpe.

‘My mistake, Sharpe.’

‘My pleasure, Lieutenant.’

Hogan watched Gibbons retrieve his horse and disappear from the alleyway. ‘You’re not very gracious at receiving an apology.’

‘It wasn’t very graciously given.’ Sharpe rubbed his cheek. ‘Anyway, the bastard hit me.’

Hogan laughed incredulously. ‘He what?’

‘Hit me, with his whip. Why do you think I dumped him in the manure?’

Hogan shook his head. ‘There’s nothing so satisfying as a friendly and professional relationship with your fellow officers, my dear Sharpe. I can see this job will be a pleasure. What did he want?’

‘Wanted me to salute him. Thought I was a private.’

Hogan laughed again. ‘God knows what Simmerson will think of you. Let’s go and find out.’

They were ushered into Simmerson’s room to find the Colonel of the South Essex sitting on his bed wearing nothing but a pair of trousers. A doctor knelt beside him who looked up nervously as the two officers came into the room; the movement prompted an impatient flap of Simmerson’s hand. ‘Come on, man, I haven’t all day!’

In his hand the doctor was holding what appeared to be a metal box with a trigger mounted on the top. He hovered it over Sir Henry’s arm and Sharpe saw he was trying to find a patch of skin that was not already scarred with strangely regular marks.

‘Scarification!’ Sir Henry barked to Hogan. ‘Do you bleed, Captain?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You should. Keeps a man healthy. All soldiers should bleed.’ He turned back to the doctor who was still hesitating over the scarred forearm. ‘Come on, you idiot!’

In his nervousness the doctor pressed the trigger by mistake and there was a sharp click. From the bottom of the box Sharpe saw a group of wicked little blades leap out like steel tongues. The doctor flinched back. ‘I’m sorry, Sir Henry. A moment.’

The doctor forced the blades back into the box and Sharpe suddenly realised that it was a bleeding machine. Instead of the old-fashioned lancet in the vein Sir Henry preferred the modern scarifier that was supposed to be faster and more effective. The doctor placed the box on the Colonel’s arm, glanced nervously at his patient, then pressed the trigger.

‘Ah! That’s better!’ Sir Henry closed his eyes and smiled momentarily. A trickle of blood ran down his arm and escaped the towel that the doctor was dabbing at the flow.

‘Again, Parton, again!’

The doctor shook his head. ‘But, Sir Henry …’

Simmerson cuffed the doctor with his free hand. ‘Don’t argue with me! Damn it, man, bleed me!’ He looked at Hogan. ‘Always too much spleen after a flogging, Captain.’

‘That’s very understandable, sir,’ Hogan said in his Irish brogue and Simmerson looked at him suspiciously. The box clicked again, the blades gouged into the plump arm, and more blood trickled on to the sheets. Hogan caught Sharpe’s eye and there was the glimmer of a smile that could too easily turn into laughter. Sharpe looked back to Sir Henry Simmerson who was pulling on his shirt.

‘You must be Captain Hogan?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Hogan nodded amiably.

Simmerson turned to Sharpe. ‘And who the devil are you?’

‘Lieutenant Sharpe, sir. 95th Rifles.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re a damned disgrace, that’s what you are!’

Sharpe said nothing. He stared over the Colonel’s shoulder, through the window, at the far blue hills where the French were gathering their strength.

‘Forrest!’ Simmerson had stood up. ‘Forrest!’

The door opened and the Major, who must have been waiting for the summons, came in. He smiled timorously at Sharpe and Hogan and then turned to Simmerson. ‘Colonel?’

‘This officer will need a new uniform. Provide it, please, and arrange to have the money deducted from his pay.’

‘No.’ Sharpe spoke flatly. Simmerson and Forrest turned to stare at him. For a moment Sir Henry said nothing, he was not used to being contradicted, and Sharpe kept going. ‘I am an officer of the 95th Rifles and I will wear their uniform so long as I have that honour.’

Simmerson began to go red and his fingers fluttered at his side. ‘Damn you, Sharpe! You’re a disgrace! You’re not a soldier, you’re a crossing sweeper! You’re under my orders now and I’m ordering you to be back here in fifteen minutes …’

‘No, sir.’ This time Hogan had spoken. His words checked Simmerson in full flow but the Captain gave the Colonel no time to recover. He unleashed all his Irish charm, starting with a smile of such sweet reasonableness that it would have charmed a fish out of the water. ‘You see, Sir Henry, Sharpe is under my orders. The General is quite specific. As I understand it, Sir Henry, we accompany each other to Valdelacasa but Sharpe is with me.’

‘But …’ Hogan raised a hand to Simmerson’s protest.

‘You are right, sir, so right. But of course you would understand that conditions in the field may not be all that we would want and it may be as well, sir, I need hardly tell you, that I should have the dispositions of the Riflemen.’

Simmerson stared at Hogan. The Colonel had not understood a word of Hogan’s nonsense but it had all been stated in such a matter-of-fact way, and in such a soldier-to-soldier way, that Simmerson was desperately trying to find an answer that did not make him sound foolish. He looked at Hogan for a moment. ‘But that would be my decision!’

‘How right you are, sir, how true!’ Hogan spoke emphatically and warmly. ‘Normally, that is. But I think the General had it in his mind, sir, that you would be so burdened with the problems of our Spanish allies and then, sir, there are the exigencies of engineering that Lieutenant Sharpe understands.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I need men to fetch and carry, sir. You understand.’

Simmerson smiled, then gave a bray of a laugh. Hogan had taken him off the hook. He pointed at Sharpe. ‘He dresses like a common labourer, eh, Forrest? A labourer!’ He was delighted with his joke and repeated it to himself as he pulled on his vast scarlet and yellow jacket. ‘A labourer! Eh, Forrest?’ The Major smiled dutifully. He resembled a long-suffering vicar continually assailed by the sins of an unrepentant flock and when Simmerson’s back was turned he gave Sharpe an apologetic look. Simmerson buckled his belt and turned back to Sharpe. ‘Done much soldiering then, Sharpe? Apart from fetching and carrying?’

‘A little, sir.’

Simmerson chuckled. ‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-two, sir.’ Sharpe stared rigidly ahead.

‘Thirty-two, eh? And still only a Lieutenant? What’s the matter, Sharpe? Incompetence?’

Sharpe saw Forrest signalling to the Colonel but he ignored the movements. ‘I joined in the ranks, sir.’

Forrest dropped his hand. The Colonel dropped his mouth. There were not many men who made the jump from Sergeant to Ensign and those who did could rarely be accused of incompetence. There were only three qualifications that a common soldier needed to be given a commission. First he must be able to read and write and Sharpe had learned his letters in the Sultan Tippoo’s prison to the accompaniment of the screams of other British prisoners being tortured. Secondly the man had to perform some act of suicidal bravery and Sharpe knew that Simmerson was wondering what he had done. The third qualification was extraordinary luck and Sharpe sometimes wondered whether that was not a two-edged sword. Simmerson snorted.

‘You’re not a gentleman then, Sharpe?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well you could try to dress like one, eh? Just because you grew up in a pigsty that doesn’t mean you have to dress like a pig?’

‘No, sir.’ There was nothing else to say.

Simmerson slung his sword over his vast belly. ‘Who commissioned you, Sharpe?’

‘Sir Arthur Wellesley, sir.’

Sir Henry gave a bray of triumph. ‘I knew it! No standards, no standards at all! I’ve seen this army, its appearance is a disgrace! You can’t say that of my men, eh? You cannot fight without discipline!’ He looked at Sharpe. ‘What makes a good soldier, Sharpe?’

‘The ability to fire three rounds a minute in wet weather, sir.’ Sharpe invested his answer with a tinge of insolence. He knew the reply would annoy Simmerson. The South Essex was a new Battalion and he doubted whether its musketry was up to the standard of other, older Battalions. Of all the European armies only the British practised with live ammunition but it took weeks, sometimes months, for a soldier to learn the complicated drill of loading and firing a musket fast, ignoring the panic, just concentrating on out-shooting the enemy.

Sir Henry had not expected the answer and he stared thoughtfully at the scarred Rifleman. To be honest, and Sir Henry did not enjoy being honest with himself, he was afraid of the army he had encountered in Portugal. Until now Sir Henry had thought soldiering was a glorious affair of obedient men in drill-straight lines, their scarlet coats shining in the sun, and instead he had been met by casual, unkempt officers who mocked his Militia training. Sir Henry had dreamed of leading his Battalion into battle, mounted on his charger, sword aloft, gaining undying glory. But staring at Sharpe, typical of so many officers he had met in his brief time in Portugal, he found himself wondering whether there were any French officers who looked like Sharpe. He had imagined Napoleon’s army as a herd of ignorant soldiers shepherded by foppish officers and he shuddered inside at the thought that they might turn out to be lean, hardened men like Sharpe who might chop him out of his saddle before he had the chance to be painted in oils as a conquering hero. Sir Henry was already afraid and he had yet to see a single enemy, but first he had to get a subtle revenge on this Rifleman who had baffled him.

‘Three rounds a minute?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And how do you teach men to fire three rounds a minute?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Patience, sir. Practice. One battle does a world of good.’

Simmerson scoffed at him. ‘Patience! Practice! They aren’t children, Sharpe. They’re drunkards and thieves! Gutter scourings!’ His voice was rising again. ‘Flog it into them, Sharpe, flog! It’s the only way! Give them a lesson they won’t forget. Isn’t that right?’

There was silence. Simmerson turned to Forrest. ‘Isn’t that right, Major?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Forrest’s answer lacked conviction. Simmerson turned to Sharpe. ‘Sharpe?’

‘It’s the last resort, sir.’

‘The last resort, sir.’ Simmerson mimicked Sharpe but secretly he was pleased. It was the answer he had wanted. ‘You’re soft, Sharpe! Could you teach men to fire three rounds a minute?’

Sharpe could feel the challenge in the air but there was no going back. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right!’ Simmerson rubbed his hands together. ‘This afternoon. Forrest?’

‘Sir?’

‘Give Mr Sharpe a company. The Light will do. Mr Sharpe will improve their shooting!’ Simmerson turned and bowed to Hogan with a heavy irony. ‘That is if Captain Hogan agrees to lend us Lieutenant Sharpe’s services.’

Hogan shrugged and looked at Sharpe. ‘Of course, sir.’

Simmerson smiled. ‘Excellent! So, Mr Sharpe, you’ll teach my Light Company to fire three shots a minute?’

Sharpe looked out of the window. It was a hot, dry day and there was no reason why a good man should not fire five shots a minute in this weather. It depended, of course, how bad the Light Company were at the moment. If they could only manage two shots a minute now then it was next to impossible to make them experts in one afternoon but trying would do no harm. He looked back to Simmerson. ‘I’ll try, sir.’

‘Oh you will, Mr Sharpe, you will. And you can tell them from me that if they fail then I’ll flog one out of every ten of them. Do you understand, Mr Sharpe? One out of every ten.’

Sharpe understood well enough. He had been tricked by Simmerson into what was probably an impossible job and the outcome would be that the Colonel would have his orgy of flogging and he, Sharpe, would be blamed. And if he succeeded? Then Simmerson could claim it was the threat of the flogging that had done the trick. He saw triumph in Simmerson’s small red eyes and he smiled at the Colonel. ‘I won’t tell them about the flogging, Colonel. You wouldn’t want them distracted, would you?’

Simmerson smiled back. ‘You use your own methods, Mr Sharpe. But I’ll leave the triangle where it is; I think I’m going to need it.’

Sharpe clapped his misshapen shako on to his head and gave the Colonel a salute of bone-cracking precision. ‘Don’t bother, sir. You won’t need a triangle. Good day, sir.’

Now make it happen, he thought.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I don’t bloody believe it, sir. Tell me it’s not true.’ Sergeant Patrick Harper shook his head as he stood with Sharpe and watched the South Essex Light Company fire two volleys to the orders of a Lieutenant. ‘Send this Battalion to Ireland, sir. We’d be a free country in two weeks! They couldn’t fight off a church choir!’

Sharpe gloomily agreed. It was not that the men did not know how to load and fire their muskets; it was simply that they did it with a painful slowness and a dedication to the drill book that was rigorously imposed by the Sergeants. There were officially twenty drill movements for the loading and firing of a musket, five of them alone applied to how the steel ramrod should be used to thrust ball and charge down the barrel and the Battalion’s insistence on doing it by the book meant that Sharpe had timed their two demonstration shots at more than thirty seconds each. He had three hours, at the most, to speed them up to twenty seconds a shot and he could understand Harper’s reaction to the task. The Sergeant was openly scornful.

‘God help us if we ever have to skirmish alongside this lot! The French will eat them for breakfast!’ He was right. The company was not even trained well enough to stand in the battle-line, let alone skirmish with the Light troops out in front of the enemy. Sharpe hushed Harper as a mounted Captain trotted across to them. It was Lennox, Captain of the Light Company, and he grinned down on Sharpe.

‘Terrifying, isn’t it?’

Sharpe was not sure how to reply. To agree might seem to be criticising the grizzled Scot who seemed friendly enough. Sharpe gave a non-committal answer and Lennox swung himself out of the saddle to stand beside him.

‘Don’t worry, Sharpe. I know how bad they are, but his Eminence insists on doing it this way. If he left it to me I’d have the bastards doing it properly but if we break one little regulation then it’s three hours’ drill with full packs.’ He looked quizzically at Sharpe. ‘You were at Assaye?’ Sharpe nodded and Lennox grinned again. ‘Aye, I remember you. You made a name for yourself that day. I was with the 78th.’

‘They made a name for themselves too.’

Lennox was pleased with the compliment. Sharpe remembered the Indian field and sight of the Highland Regiment marching in perfect order to assault the Mahratta lines. Great gaps were blown in the kilted ranks as they calmly marched into the artillery storm but the Scotsmen had done their job, slaughtered the gunners, and daringly reloaded in the face of a huge mass of enemy infantry that did not have the courage to counter-attack the seemingly invincible Regiment. Lennox shook his head.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Sharpe. What the devil am I doing here with this lot?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘I’m an old man, I was retired, but the wife died, the half pay wasn’t stretching and they needed officers for Sir Henry bloody Simmerson. So here I am. Do you know Leroy?’

‘Leroy?’

‘Thomas Leroy. He’s a Captain here, too. He’s good. Forrest is a decent fellow. But the rest! Just because they put on a fancy uniform they think they’re warriors. Look at that one!’

He pointed to Christian Gibbons who was riding his black horse on to the field. ‘Lieutenant Gibbons?’ Sharpe asked.

‘You’ve met then?’ Lennox laughed. ‘I’ll say nothing about Mr Gibbons, then, except that he’s Simmerson’s nephew, he’s interested in nothing but women, and he’s an arrogant little bastard. Bloody English! Begging your pardon, Sharpe.’

Sharpe laughed. ‘We’re not all that bad.’ He watched as Gibbons walked his horse delicately to within a dozen paces and stopped. The Lieutenant stared superciliously at the two officers. So this, Sharpe thought, is Simmerson’s nephew? ‘Are we needed here, sir?’

Lennox shook his head. ‘No, Mr Gibbons, we are not. I’ll leave Knowles and Denny with Lieutenant Sharpe while he works his miracles.’ Gibbons touched his hat and spurred his horse away. Lennox watched him go. ‘Can’t do any wrong, that one. Apple of the Colonel’s bloodshot eye.’ He turned and waved at the company. ‘I’ll leave you Lieutenant Knowles and Ensign Denny, they’re both good lads but they’ve learned wrong from Simmerson. You’ve got a sprinkling of old soldiers, that’ll help, and good luck to you, Sharpe, you’ll need it!’ He grunted as he heaved himself into the saddle. ‘Welcome to the madhouse, Sharpe!’

Sharpe was left with the company, its junior officers, and the ranks of dumb faces that stared at him as though fearful of some new torment devised by their Colonel. He walked to the front of the company, watching the red faces that bulged over the constricting stocks and glistened with sweat in the relentless heat, and faced them. His own jacket was unbuttoned, shirt open, and he wore no hat. To the men of the South Essex he was like a visitor from another continent. ‘You’re in a war now. When you meet the French a lot of you are going to die. Most of you.’ They were appalled by his words. ‘I’ll tell you why.’

He pointed over the eastern horizon. ‘The French are over there, waiting for you.’ Some of the men looked that way as though they expected to see Bonaparte himself coming through the olive trees on the outskirts of Castelo Branco. ‘They’ve got muskets and they can all fire three or four shots a minute. Aimed at you. And they’re going to kill you because you’re so damned slow. If you don’t kill them first then they will kill you, it is as simple as that. You.’ He pointed to a man in the front rank. ‘Bring me your musket!’

At least he had their attention and some of them would understand the simple fact that the side which pumped out the most bullets stood the best chance of winning. He took the man’s musket, a handful of ammunition, and discarded his rifle. He held the musket over his head and went right back to the beginnings.

‘Look at it! One India Pattern musket. Fifty-five and a quarter inches long with a thirty-nine-inch barrel. It fires a ball three-quarters of an inch wide, nearly as wide as your thumb, and it kills Frenchmen!’ There was a nervous laugh but they were listening. ‘But you won’t kill any Frenchmen with it. You’re too slow! In the time it takes you to fire two shots the enemy will probably manage three. And, believe me, the French are slow. So, this afternoon, you will learn to fire three shots in a minute. In time you’ll fire four shots every minute and if you’re really good you should manage five!’

The company watched as he loaded the musket. It had been years since he had fired a smooth-bore musket but compared to the Baker rifle it was ridiculously easy. There were no grooves in the barrel to grip the bullet and no need to force the ramrod with brute force or even hammer it down. A musket was fast to load which was why most of the army used it instead of the slower, but much more accurate, rifle. He checked the flint, it was new and well seated in its jaws, so he primed and cocked the gun. ‘Lieutenant Knowles?’

A young Lieutenant snapped to attention. ‘Sir!’

‘Do you have a watch?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Can it time one minute?’

Knowles dragged out a huge gold hunter and snapped open the lid. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘When I fire you will keep an eye on that watch and tell me when one minute has passed. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He turned away from the company and pointed the musket down the field towards a stone wall. Oh God, he prayed, let it not misfire, and pulled the trigger. The swan neck with its gripped flint snapped forward, the powder in the pan flashed, and a fraction later the main charge exploded and he felt the heavy kick as the lead ball was punched out of the barrel in a gout of thick, white smoke.

Now it was all instinct; the never-forgotten motions. Right hand away from the trigger, let the gun fall in the left hand and as the butt hits the ground the right hand already has the next cartridge. Bite off the bullet. Pour the powder down the barrel but remember to keep a pinch for the priming. Spit in the ball. Ramrod out, up, and down the barrel. A quick push and then it’s out again, the gun is up, the cock back, priming in the pan, and fire into the lingering smoke of the first shot.

And again and again and again and memories of standing in the line with sweating, mad-eyed comrades and going through the motions as if in a nightmare. Ignoring the billows of smoke, the screams, edging left and right to fill up the gaps left by the dead, just loading and firing, loading and firing, letting the flames spit out into the fog of powder smoke, the lead balls to smash into the unseen enemy and hope they are falling back. Then the command to cease fire and you stop. Your face is black and stinging from the explosions of the powder in the pan just inches from your right cheek, your eyes smarting from the smoke and the powder grains, and the cloud drifts away leaving the dead and wounded in front and you lean on the musket and pray that the next time the gun would not hang-fire, snap a flint, or simply refuse to fire at all.

He pulled the trigger for the fifth time, the ball hammered away down the field, and the musket was down and the powder in the barrel before Knowles called ‘Time’s up!’

The men cheered, laughed and clapped because an officer had broken the rules and showed them he could do it. Harper was grinning broadly. He at least knew how difficult it was to make five shots in a minute and Sharpe knew that the Sergeant had noticed how he had cunningly loaded the first shot before the timed minute began. Sharpe stopped the noise. ‘That is how you will use a musket. Fast! Now you’re going to do it.’

There was silence. Sharpe felt the devilment in him; had not Simmerson told him to use his own method? ‘Take off your stocks!’ For a moment no one moved. The men stared at him. ‘Come on! Hurry! Take your stocks off!’

Knowles, Denny, and the Sergeants watched, puzzled, as the men gripped their muskets between their knees and used both hands to wrench apart the stiff leather collars.

‘Sergeants! Collect the stocks. Bring them here.’

The Battalion had been brutalised too much. There was no way he could teach them to be fast-shooting soldiers unless he offered them an opportunity to take their revenge on the system that had condemned them to a flogger’s Battalion. The Sergeants came to him, their faces dubious, their arms piled high with the hated stocks.

‘Put them down there.’ Sharpe made them heap the seventy-odd stocks about forty paces in front of the company. He pointed to the glistening heap. ‘That is your target! Each of you will be given just three rounds. Just three. And you will have one minute in which to fire them! Those who succeed, twice in a row, will drop out and have a lazy afternoon. The rest will go on trying and go on trying until they do succeed.’

He let the two officers organise the drill. The men were grinning broadly and there was a buzz of conversation in the ranks that he did not try to check. The Sergeants looked at him as though he were committing treason but none dared cross the tall, dark Rifleman with the long sword. When all was ready Sharpe gave the word and the bullets began smashing their way into the pile of leather. The men forgot their old drill and concentrated on shooting their hatred into the leather collars that had given them sore necks and which represented Simmerson and all his tyranny. At the end of the first two sessions only twenty men had succeeded, nearly all of them old soldiers who had re-enlisted in the new Battalion, but an hour and three-quarters later, as the sun reddened behind him, the last man fired his last shot into the fragments of stiff leather that littered the grass.

Sharpe lined the whole company in two ranks and watched, satisfied, as they shot three volleys to Harper’s commands. He looked through the white smoke that lingered in the still air towards the eastern horizon. Over there, in the Estramadura, the French were waiting, their Eagles gathering for the battle that had to come while behind him, in the lane that led from the town, Sir Henry Simmerson was in sight coming to claim his victory and his victims for the triangle.

‘For what we are about to receive,’ Harper said softly.

‘Quiet! Make them load. We’ll give the man a demonstration.’ Sharpe watched Simmerson’s eyes as the slow dawning of his men’s unbuttoned collars and the significance of the leather shreds on the grass occurred in his brain. Sharpe watched the Colonel take a deep breath. ‘Now!’

‘Fire!’ Harper’s command unleashed a full volley that echoed like thunder in the valley. If Simmerson shouted then his words were lost in the noise and the Colonel could only watch as his men worked their muskets like veterans to the orders of a Sergeant of the Rifles, even bigger than Sharpe, whose broad, confident face was of the kind that had always infuriated Sir Henry, provoking his most savage sentences from the uncushioned magistrates’ bench in Chelmsford.

The last volley rattled on to the stone wall and Forrest tucked his watch back into a pocket. ‘Two seconds under a minute, Sir Henry, and four shots.’

‘I can count, Forrest.’ Four shots? Simmerson was impressed because secretly he had despaired of teaching his men to fire fast instead of fumbling nervously. But a whole company’s stocks? At two and threepence a piece? And on a day when his nephew had come in smelling like a stable hand? ‘God damn your eyes, Sharpe!’

‘Yes, sir.’

The acrid powder smoke made Sir Henry’s horse twitch its head and the Colonel reached forward to quiet it. Sharpe watched the gesture and knew that he had made a fool of the Colonel in front of his own men and he knew, too, that it had been a mistake. Sharpe had won a small victory but in doing so he had made an enemy who had both power and influence. The Colonel edged his horse closer to Sharpe and his voice was surprisingly quiet. ‘This is my Battalion, Mr Sharpe. My Battalion. Remember that.’ He looked for a moment as if his anger would erupt but he controlled it and shouted at Forrest to follow him instead. Sharpe turned away. Harper was grinning at him, the men looked pleased, and only Sharpe felt a foreboding of menace like an unseen but encircling enemy. He shook it off. There were muskets to clean, rations to issue, and, beyond the border hills, enemies enough for anyone.

CHAPTER FOUR

Patrick Harper marched with a long easy stride, happy to feel the road beneath his feet, happy they had at last crossed the unmarked frontier and were going somewhere, anywhere. They had left in the small, dark hours so that the bulk of the march would be done before the sun was at its hottest and he looked forward to an afternoon of inactivity and hoped that the bivouac Major Forrest had ridden ahead to find would be near a stream where he could drift a line down the water with one of his maggots impaled on the hook. The South Essex were somewhere behind them; Sharpe had started the day’s march at the Rifle Regiment’s fast pace, three steps walking, three running, and Harper was glad that they were free of the suspicious atmosphere of the Battalion. He grinned as he remembered the stocks. There was a sobering rumour that the Colonel had ordered Sharpe to pay for every one of the seventy-nine ruined collars and that, to Harper’s mind, was a terrible price to pay. He had not asked Sharpe the truth of the rumour; if he had he would have been told to mind his own business, though, for Patrick Harper, Sharpe was his business. The Lieutenant might be moody, irritable, and liable to snap at the Sergeant as a means of venting frustration, but Harper, if pressed, would have described Sharpe as a friend. It was not a word that a Sergeant could use of an officer, but Harper could have thought of no other. Sharpe was the best soldier the Irishman had seen on a battlefield, with a countryman’s eye for ground and a hunter’s instinct for using it, but Sharpe looked for advice to only one man in a battle, Sergeant Harper. It was an easy relationship, of trust and respect, and Patrick Harper saw his business as keeping Richard Sharpe alive and amused.

He enjoyed being a soldier, even in the army of the nation that had taken his family’s land and trampled on their religion. He had been reared on the tales of the great Irish heroes, he could recite by heart the story of Cuchulain single-handedly defeating the forces of Connaught and who did the English have to put beside that great hero? But Ireland was Ireland and hunger drove men to strange places. If Harper had followed his heart he would be fighting against the English, not for them, but like so many of his countrymen he had found a refuge from poverty and persecution in the ranks of the enemy. He never forgot home. He carried in his head a picture of Donegal, a county of twisted rock and thin soil, of mountains, lakes, wide bogs and the smallholdings where families scratched a thin living. And what families! Harper was the fourth of his mother’s eleven children who survived infancy and she always said that she never knew how she had come to bear such ‘a big wee one’. ‘To feed Patrick is like feeding three of the others’ she would say and he would more often go hungry. Then came the day when he left to seek his own fortune. He had walked from the Blue Stack mountains to the walled streets of Derry and there got drunk, and found himself enlisted. Now, eight years later and twenty-four years old, he was a Sergeant. They would never believe that in Tangaveane!

It was hard now to think of the English as enemies. Familiarity had bred too many friendships. The army was one place where strong men could do well and Patrick Harper liked the responsibility he had earned and enjoyed the respect of other tough men, like Sharpe. He remembered the stories of his countrymen who had fought the redcoats in the hills and fields of Ireland and sometimes he wondered what his future would be if he were to go back and live in Donegal again. That problem of loyalty was too difficult and he kept it in the back of his mind, hidden away with the vestiges of his religion. Perhaps the war would go on for ever, or perhaps St Patrick would return and convert the English to the true faith? Who could tell? But for the moment he was content to be a soldier and took his pleasure where it could be found. Yesterday he had seen a peregrine falcon, high over the road, and Patrick Harper’s soul had soared to meet it. He knew every bird in Ulster, loved them, and as he walked he searched the land and sky for new birds because the Sergeant never tired of watching them. In the hills north of Oporto he had caught a quick glimpse of a strange magpie with a long blue tail, unlike anything he had seen before, and he wanted to see another. The expectation and the waiting were part of his content and his pleasure.

A hare started up in a field next to the road. A voice shouted ‘Mine’ and they all paused while the man knelt, took quick aim, and fired. He missed and Riflemen jeered as the hare twisted and disappeared in the rocks. Daniel Hagman did not miss often, he had learned to shoot from his poacher father, and all the Riflemen were secretly proud of the Cheshire man’s ability with the rifle. As he reloaded he shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Sorry, sir. Getting too old.’

Sharpe laughed. Hagman was forty but he could still outshoot the rest of the company. The hare had been running at two hundred yards and it would have been a miracle if it had ended up in the evening’s cooking pots.

‘We’ll take a rest,’ Sharpe said. ‘Ten minutes.’ He set two men as sentries. The French were miles away, there were British cavalry ahead of them on the road, but soldiers stayed alive by taking precautions and this was strange country so Sharpe kept a watch and the men marched with loaded weapons. He took off his pack and pouches, glad to be rid of the eighty pounds of weight, and sat beside Harper who was leaning back and staring into the clear sky. ‘A hot day for a march, Sergeant.’

‘It will be, sir, so it will. But better than that damned cold last winter.’

Sharpe grinned. ‘You managed to keep warm enough.’

‘We did what we could, sir, we did what we could. You remember the Holy Father in the Friary?’ Sharpe nodded but there was no way to stop Patrick Harper once he was launched into a good story. ‘He told us there was no drink in the place! No drink, and we were as cold as the sea in winter! It was a terrible thing to hear a man of God lie so.’

‘You taught him a lesson, Sarge!’ Pendleton, the baby of the company, just seventeen and a thief from the streets of Bristol, grinned over the road at the Irishman. Harper nodded. ‘We did, lad. You remember? No priest runs out of drink and we found it. My God, a barrel big enough to drown an army’s thirst and it did us that night. And we tipped the Holy Father head first into the wine to teach him that lying is a mortal sin.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘I could do with a drop right now.’ He looked innocently round the men resting on the verges. ‘Would anyone have a drop?’

There was silence. Sharpe leaned back and hid his smile. He knew what Harper was doing and he could guess what would happen next. The Rifles were one of the few Regiments that could pick and choose its recruits, rejecting all but the best, but even so it suffered from the besetting sin of the whole army; drunkenness. Sharpe guessed there were at least half a dozen bottles of wine within a few paces and Harper was going to find them. He heard the Sergeant get to his feet. ‘Right! Inspection.’

‘Sergeant!’ That was Gataker, too fly for his own good. ‘You inspected the water bottles this morning! You know we haven’t got any.’

‘I know you haven’t any in your water bottles but that’s not the same thing, is it?’ There was still no response. ‘Lay your ammunition out! Now!’

There were groans. Both the Portuguese and the Spanish would gladly sell wine to a man in exchange for a handful of cartridges made with British gunpowder, the finest in the world, and it was a fair bet that if any man had less than his eighty rounds then Harper would find a bottle hid deep in that man’s pack. Sharpe heard the sound of rummaging and scuffling. He opened his eyes to see seven bottles had magically appeared. Harper stood over them triumphantly. ‘We share these out tonight. Well done, lads, I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’ He turned to Sharpe. ‘Do you want a cartridge count, sir?’

‘No, we’ll get on.’ He knew the men could be trusted not to sell more than a handful of cartridges. He looked at the huge Irishman. ‘How many cartridges would you have, Sergeant?’

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 on to 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 silently 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 patiently 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 saddlebag. ‘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 again, 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 first drifts of blue smoke where the cooking fires were being blown into life. Sharpe watched her go, let his eyes see her slim figure beneath the man’s 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 the officers who could pay for the beauties who rode their thoroughbred mares behind the army. He encouraged his sour thoughts, swirled them round his head to try to convince himself that he did not want her, but as he walked between the 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 main-spring 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 two 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 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 FIVE

The Regimiento 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 on to 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 on to 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.

‘What’s happening, sir? Where are the Spanish?’

Lawford shook his head. ‘Still in bed. At least they were, but the bugles have sounded, the warriors have pulled on their trousers and we’re told they’re coming.’ He leaned closer to Sharpe and dropped his voice. ‘How do you get on with Simmerson?’

‘I don’t have to get on with him. I work for Hogan.’

Lawford appeared not to hear the answer. ‘He’s an extraordinary man. Did you know he paid to raise this Regiment?’ Sharpe nodded. ‘Do you know what that cost him, Richard? Unimaginable!’

‘So he’s a rich man. But it doesn’t make him a soldier.’ Sharpe sounded sour.

Lawford shrugged. ‘He wants to be. He wants to be the best. I sailed out on the same boat and all he did, every day, was sit there reading the Rules and Regulations for His Majesty’s Forces!’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps he’ll learn. I don’t envy you, though.’ He turned to look at Wellesley. ‘Well. I can’t stay all day. Listen. You must dine with me when you get back from this job. Will you do that?’

‘With pleasure.’

‘Good!’ Lawford swung up into the saddle. ‘You’ve got a scrap ahead of you. We sent the Light Dragoons down south and they tell us there’s a sizeable bunch of Frenchies down there with some horse artillery. They’ve been trying to flush the Guerilleros out of the hills but they’re moving back east now, like us, so good luck!’ He turned his horse away, then looked back. ‘And, Richard?’

‘Sir?’

‘Sir Arthur asked to be remembered.’

‘He did?’

Lawford looked down on Sharpe. ‘You’re an idiot.’ He spoke cheerfully. ‘Shall I remember you to the General? It’s the done thing, you know.’ He grinned, raised his hat and turned away. Sharpe watched him go, the apprehension of the cold dawn suddenly dissipated by the rush of friendship. Hogan joined him.

‘Friends in high places?’

‘Old friend. We were in India.’

Hogan said nothing. He was staring across the field, his jaw sagging in astonishment, and Sharpe followed his gaze. ‘My God.’

The Regimienta had arrived. Two trumpeters in powdered wigs led the procession. They were mounted on glossy black horses, bedecked in uniforms that were a riot of gold and silver, their trumpets festooned with ribbons, tassels, and banners.

‘Hell’s teeth.’ The voice came from the ranks. ‘The Fairies are on our side.’

The colours came next, two flags covered in armorial bearings, threaded with gold, tasselled, looped, crowned, curlicued, emblazoned, carried by horsemen whose mounts stepped delicately high as though the earth was scarcely fit to carry such splendid creations. The officers came next. They should have delighted the soul of Sir Henry Simmerson for everything that could be polished had been burnished to an eye-hurting intensity; whether of leather, or bronze, silver or gold. Epaulettes of twisted golden strands were encrusted with semi-precious stones; their coats were piped with silver threads, frogged and plumed, sashed and shining. It was a dazzling display.

The men came next, a shambling mess, rattled on to the field by energetic but erratic drummers. Sharpe was appalled. All he had heard of the Spanish army seemed to be true in the Regimienta; their weapons looked dull and uncared for, there was no spirit in their bearing, and Madrid seemed suddenly a long way off if this was the quality of the allies who would help clear the road. There was a renewed energy from the Spanish drummers as the two trumpeters challenged the sky with a resounding fanfare. Then silence.

‘Now what?’ Hogan muttered.

Speeches. Wellesley, wise in the ways of diplomacy, escaped as the Spanish Colonel came forward to harangue the South Essex. There was no official translator but Hogan, who spoke passable Spanish, told Sharpe the Colonel was offering the British a chance, a small chance, to share in the glorious triumph of the Spanish warriors over their enemy. The glorious Spanish warriors, prompted by their non-commissioned officers, cheered the speech while the South Essex, prompted by Simmerson, did the same. Salutes were exchanged, arms presented, there were more fanfares, more drums, all climaxing in the appearance of a priest who, riding a small grey donkey, blessed the Santa Maria with the help of small, white-surpliced boys. Pointedly the pagan British were not included in the pleas to the Almighty.

Hogan took out his snuff box. ‘Do you think they’ll fight?’

‘God knows.’ The year before, Sharpe knew, a Spanish army had forced the surrender of twenty thousand Frenchmen so there was no doubting that the Spaniards could fight if their leadership and organisation were equal to their ambitions. But, to Sharpe, the evidence of the Regimienta suggested that their immediate allies had neither the organisation nor the leaders to do anything except, perhaps, make bombastic speeches.

At half past ten, five hours late, the Battalion finally shrugged on its packs and followed the Santa Maria across the old bridge. Sharpe and Hogan travelled ahead of the South Essex and immediately behind a far from warlike Spanish rearguard. A bunch of mules was being coaxed along, loaded high with luxuries to keep the Spanish officers comfortable in the field, while, in the middle of the beasts, rode the priest who continually turned and smiled nervously with blackened teeth at the heathens on his tail. Strangest of all were three white-dressed young women who rode thoroughbred horses and carried fringed parasols. They giggled constantly, turned and peeped at the Riflemen, and looked incongruously like three brides on horseback. What a way, Sharpe thought, to go to war.

By midday the column had covered a mere five miles and had come to a complete stop. Trumpets sounded at the head of the Regimienta, officers galloped in urgent clouds of dust up and down the ranks, and the soldiers simply dropped their weapons and packs and sat down in the road. Anyone with any kind of rank started to argue, the priest, stuck among the mules, screamed hysterically at a mounted officer, while the three women wilted visibly and fanned themselves with their white-gloved hands. Christian Gibbons walked his horse to the head of the British column and sat staring at the three women. Sharpe looked up at him.

‘The middle one is the prettiest.’

‘Thank you.’ Gibbons spoke with a heavy irony. ‘That’s civil of you, Sharpe.’ He was about to urge his horse forward when Sharpe put a hand on the bridle.

‘Spanish officers, I hear, are very fond of duelling.’

‘Ah.’ Gibbons stared icily down on Sharpe. ‘You may have a point.’ He wheeled his horse back down the road.

Hogan was shouting at the priest, in Spanish, trying to discover why they had stopped. The priest smiled his blackened smile and raised his eyes to heaven as if to say it was all God’s will and there was nothing to be done about it.

‘Damn this!’ Hogan looked round urgently. ‘Damn! Don’t they know how much time we’ve lost? Where’s the Colonel?’

Simmerson was not far behind. He and Forrest arrived with a clatter of hooves. ‘What the devil’s happening?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Spanish have sat down.’

Simmerson licked his lips. ‘Don’t they know we’re in a hurry?’ No one spoke. The Colonel looked round the officers as though one of them might suggest an answer. ‘Come on, then. We’ll see what it’s about. Hogan, will you translate?’

Sharpe fell his men out as the mounted officers rode up the column and the Riflemen sat beside the road with their packs beside them. The Spanish appeared to be asleep. The sun was high and the road surface reflected a searing heat. Sharpe touched the muzzle of his rifle by mistake and flinched from the hot metal. Sweat trickled down his neck and the glare of the sun, reflected from the metal ornaments of the Spanish infantry, was dazzling. There were still fifteen miles to go. The three women rode their horses slowly towards the head of the Regimienta, one of them turned and waved coquettishly to the Riflemen and Harper blew her a kiss, and when they had gone the dust drifted gently on to the thin grass of the verge.

Fifteen minutes of silence passed before Simmerson, Forrest and Hogan pounded back from their meeting with the Spanish Colonel. Sir Henry was not pleased. ‘Damn them! They’ve stopped for the day!’

Sharpe looked questioningly at Hogan. The Engineer nodded. ‘It’s true. There’s an inn up there and the officers have settled in.’

‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ Simmerson was pounding the pommel of his saddle. ‘What are we to do?’

The mounted officers glanced at each other. Simmerson was the man who had to make the decision and none of them answered his question, but there was only one thing to do. Sharpe looked at Harper.

‘Form up, Sergeant.’

Harper bellowed orders. The Spanish muleteers, their rest disturbed, looked curiously as the Riflemen pulled on their packs and formed ranks.

‘Bayonets, Sergeant.’

The order was given and the long, brass-handled sword-bayonets rasped from the scabbards. Each blade was twenty-three inches long, each sharp and brilliant in the sun. Simmerson looked nervously at the weapons. ‘What the devil are you doing, Sharpe?’

‘Only one thing to do, sir.’

Simmerson looked left and right at Forrest and Hogan, but they offered him no help. ‘Are you proposing we should simply carry on, Sharpe?’

It’s what you should have proposed, thought Sharpe, but instead he nodded. ‘Isn’t that what you intended, sir?’

Simmerson was not sure. Wellesley had impressed on him the need for speed but there was also the duty not to offend a touchy ally. But what if the bridge should already be occupied by the French? He looked at the Riflemen, grim in their dark uniforms, and then at the Spanish who lolled in the roadway smoking cigarettes. ‘Very well.’

‘Sir.’ Sharpe turned to Harper. ‘Four ranks, Sergeant.’

Harper took a deep breath. ‘Company! Double files to the right!’

There were times when Sharpe’s men, for all their tattered uniforms, knew how to startle a Militia Colonel. With a snap and a precision that would have done credit to the Guards the even numbered files stepped backwards; the whole company, without another word of command, turned to the right and instead of two ranks there were now four facing towards the Spanish. Harper had paused for a second while the movement was carried out. ‘Quick march!’

They marched. Their boots crashed on to the road scattering mules and muleteers before them. The priest took one look, kicked his heels, and the donkey bolted into the field.

‘Come on, you bastards!’ Harper shouted. ‘March as if you mean it!’

They did. They pushed their tempo up to the Light Infantry quick march and stamped with their boots so that the dust flew up. Behind them the South Essex were formed and following, before them the Regimienta split apart into the fields, the officers running from the white-walled inn and screaming at the Riflemen. Sharpe ignored them. The Spanish Colonel, a vision of golden lace, appeared at the inn doorway to see his Regiment in tatters. The men had scattered into the fields and the British were on their way to the bridge. The Colonel was without his boots and in his hand he held a glass of wine. As they drew level with the inn Sharpe turned to his men.

‘Company! To the right! Salute!’

He drew the long blade, held it in the ceremonial salute, and his men grinned as they presented their arms towards the Colonel. There was little he could do. He wanted to protest but honour was honour and the salute should be returned. The Spaniard was in a quandary. In one hand, the wine, and in the other a long cigar. Sharpe watched the debate on the Spanish Colonel’s face as he looked from one hand to the other, trying to decide which to abandon, but in the end the Colonel of the Santa Maria stood to attention in his stockings and held the wine glass and cigar at a dutifully ceremonious angle.

‘Eyes front!’

Hogan laughed out loud. ‘Well done, Sharpe!’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll make the bridge before nightfall. Let’s hope the French don’t.’

Let’s hope the French don’t make it at all, thought Sharpe. Defeating an ally was one thing but his doubts about the ability of the South Essex to face the French were as real as ever. He looked at the white, dusty road stretching over the featureless plain and in a fleeting, horrid moment wondered whether he would return. He pushed the thought away and gripped the stock of his rifle. With his other hand he unconsciously felt the lump over his breastbone. Harper saw the gesture. Sharpe thought it was a secret that round his neck he had a leather bag in which he kept his worldly wealth but all his men knew it was there and Sergeant Harper knew that when Sharpe touched the bag with its few gold coins looted from old battlefields then the Lieutenant was worried. And if Sharpe was worried? Harper turned to the Riflemen. ‘Come on, you bastards! This isn’t a funeral! Faster!’

CHAPTER SIX

Valdelacasa did not exist as a place where human beings lived, loved, or traded, it was simply a ruined building and a great stone bridge that had been built to span the river at a time when the Tagus was wider than the flow which now slid darkly between the three central arches of the Roman stonework. And from the bridge, with its attendant building, the land spread outwards in a vast, shallow bowl bisected by the river in one direction and the road which led to and from the bridge in the other. The Battalion had marched down the almost imperceptible incline as the shadows of dusk began to creep across the pale grasslands. There was no farming, no cattle, no sign of life; just the ancient ruin, the bridge, and the water slipping silently towards the far-off sea.

‘I don’t like it, sir.’ Harper’s face had been genuinely worried.

‘Why not?’

‘No birds, sir. Not even a vulture.’

Sharpe had to admit it was true, there was not a bird to be seen or heard. It was like a place forgotten and as they marched towards the building the men in green jackets were unnaturally quiet as if infected by some ancient gloom.

‘There’s no sign of the French.’ Sharpe could see no movement in the darkening landscape.

‘It’s not the French that worry me.’ Harper was really concerned. ‘It’s this place, sir. It’s not good.’

‘You’re being Irish, Sergeant.’

‘That may be, sir. But tell me why there’s no village here. The soil is better than the stuff we’ve marched past, there’s a bridge, so why no village?’

Why not? It seemed an obvious place for a village but on the other hand they had passed only one small hamlet in the last ten miles so it was possible that there were simply not enough people on the vast remoteness of the Estramaduran plain to inhabit every likely spot. Sharpe tried to ignore Harper’s concern but, coming as it did on top of his own gloomy presentiments, he had begun to feel that Valdelacasa really did have a sinister air about it. Hogan did not help.

‘That’s the Puente de los Malditos; the Bridge of the Accursed.’ Hogan walked his horse beside them and nodded at the building. ‘That must have been the convent. The Moors beheaded every single nun. The story goes that they were killed on the bridge, that their heads were thrown into the water but the bodies left to rot. They say no one lives here because the spirits walk the bridge at night looking for their heads.’

The Riflemen heard him in silence. When Hogan had finished Sharpe was surprised to see his huge Sergeant surreptitiously cross himself and he guessed that they would spend a restless night. He was right. The darkness was total, there was no wood on the plain so the men could build no fires, and in the small hours a wind brought clouds that covered the moon. The Riflemen were guarding the southern end of the bridge, the bank on which the French were loose, and it was a nervous night as shadows played tricks and the chill sentries were not certain whether they imagined the noises that could either be headless nuns or patrolling Frenchmen. Just before dawn Sharpe heard the sound of a bird’s wings, followed by the call of an owl, and he wondered whether to tell Harper that there were birds after all. He decided not; he remembered that owls were supposed to be harbingers of death and the news might worry the Irishman even more.

But the new day, even if it did not bring the Regimienta who were presumably still at the inn, brought a brilliant blue sky with only a scattering of high, passing clouds that followed the night’s belt of light rain. Harsh ringing blows came from the bridge where Hogan’s artificers hammered down the parapet at the spot chosen for the explosion and the apprehensions of the night seemed, for the moment, to be like a bad dream. The Riflemen were relieved by Lennox’s Light Company and, with nothing else to do, Harper stripped naked and waded into the river.

‘That’s better. I haven’t washed in a month.’ He looked up at Sharpe. ‘Is anything happening, sir?’

‘No sign of them.’ Sharpe must have stared at the horizon, a mile to the south, fifty times since dawn but there had been no sign of the French. He watched as Harper came dripping wet out of the river and shook himself like a wolfhound. ‘Perhaps they’re not here, sir.’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Sergeant. I’ve a feeling they’re not far away.’ He turned and looked across the river, at the road they had marched the day before. ‘Still no sight of the Spanish.’

Harper was drying himself with his shirt. ‘Perhaps they’ll not turn up, sir.’

It had occurred to Sharpe that possibly the whole job would be done before the Regimienta reached Valdelacasa and he wondered why he still felt the stirrings of concern about the mission. Simmerson had behaved with restraint, the artificers were hard at work, and there were no French in sight. What could go wrong? He walked to the entrance of the bridge and nodded to Lennox. ‘Anything?’

The Scotsman shook his head. ‘All’s quiet. I reckon Sir Henry won’t get his battle today.’

‘He wanted one?’

Lennox laughed. ‘Keen as mustard. I suspect he thinks Napoleon himself is coming.’

Sharpe turned and stared down the road. Nothing moved. ‘They’re not far away. I can feel it.’

Lennox looked at him seriously. ‘You think so? I thought it was us Scots who had the second sight.’ He turned and looked with Sharpe at the empty horizon. ‘Maybe you’re right, Sharpe. But they’re too late.’

Sharpe agreed and walked on to the bridge. He chatted with Knowles and Denny and, as he left them to join Hogan, he reflected gloomily on the atmosphere in the officers’ mess of the South Essex. Most of the officers were supporters of Simmerson, men who had first earned their commissions with the Militia, and there was bad feeling between them and the men from the regular army. Sharpe liked Lennox, enjoyed his company, but most of the other officers thought the Scotsman was too easy with his company, too much like the Riflemen. Leroy was a decent man, a loyalist American, but he kept his thoughts to himself as did the few others who had little trust in their Colonel’s ability. He pitied the younger officers, learning their trade in such a school, and was glad that as soon as this bridge was destroyed his Riflemen would get away from the South Essex into more congenial company.

Hogan was up to his neck in a hole in the bridge. Sharpe peered down and saw, in the rubble, the curving stonework of two arches.

‘How much powder will you use?’

‘All there is!’ Hogan was happy, a man enjoying his work. ‘This isn’t easy. Those Romans built well. You see those blocks?’ He pointed to the exposed stones of the arches. ‘They’re all shaped and hammered into place. If I put a charge on top of one of those arches I’ll probably make the damn bridge stronger! I can’t put the powder underneath, more’s the pity.’

‘Why not?’

‘No time, Sharpe, no time. You have to contain an explosion. If I sling those kegs under the arch all I’ll do is frighten the fishes. No, I’m going to do this one upside down and inside out.’ He was half talking to himself, his mind full of weights of powder and lengths of fuse.

‘Upside down and inside out?’

Hogan scratched his dirty face. ‘So to speak. I’m going down into the pier and then I’ll blow the damn thing out sideways. If it works, Sharpe, it’ll bring down two arches and not just one.’

‘Will it work?’

Hogan grinned happily. ‘It should! It’ll be one hell of a bang, I promise you that.’

‘How much longer?’

‘I’ll be finished in a couple of hours. Perhaps sooner.’ Hogan heaved himself out of the hole and stood beside Sharpe. ‘Let’s get the powder up here.’ He turned towards the convent, cupped his hands to his mouth, and froze. The Spanish had arrived, their trumpeters in front, their colours flying, the blue-coated infantry straggling behind. ‘Glory be,’ Hogan said. ‘Now I can sleep safe at nights.’

The Regimienta marched to the convent, past the South Essex who were being drilled in the field, and kept on marching. Sharpe waited for the orders which would halt the Spaniards but they were never given. Instead the trumpeters paced their horses on to the bridge, the colours followed, then the gloriously uniformed officers and finally the infantry itself.

‘What the hell do they think they’re doing?’ Hogan stepped to the side of the bridge.

The Regimienta picked its way past the broken section and past the hole Hogan had dug. The Engineer waved his arms at them. ‘I’m going to blow it up! Bang! Bang!’ They ignored him. Hogan tried it in Spanish but the tide of men flowed on past. Even the priest and the three white-dressed ladies walked their mounts carefully round Hogan’s hole and on to the south bank where Captain Lennox had hastily moved the Light Company out of their path. The Regimienta was followed by an apoplectic Simmerson trying to find out what the hell was happening. Hogan shook his head wearily. ‘If it had been just you and I, Sharpe, we’d be on our way home by now.’ He waved to his men to bring the kegs of powder out to the hole. ‘I’m tempted to blow it up with that lot on the wrong side.’

‘They’re our allies, remember.’

Hogan wiped his forehead. ‘So’s Simmerson.’ He climbed back into the excavation. ‘I’ll be glad when this lot’s over.’

The kegs of powder arrived and Sharpe left Hogan to pack the gunpowder deep in the base of the arches. He walked back to the south bank where his Riflemen waited and watched as the Santa Maria paraded in a long line across the road that led to the distant skyline. Lennox grinned down from his horse.

‘What do you think of this, Sharpe?’ He waved at the Spaniards who resolutely faced an empty skyline.

‘What are they doing?’

‘They told the Colonel that it was their duty to cross the bridge! It’s something to do with Spanish pride. We got here first so they have to go further.’ He touched his hat to Simmerson who was re-crossing the bridge. ‘You know what he’s thinking of doing?’

‘What? Simmerson?’ Sharpe looked after the retreating Colonel who had pointedly ignored him.

‘Aye. He’s thinking of bringing the whole Battalion over.’

‘He’s what?’

‘If they cross, we cross.’ Lennox laughed. ‘Mad, that’s what he is.’

There were shouts from Sharpe’s Riflemen and he followed their pointing arms to look at the horizon. ‘Do you see anything?’

Lennox stared up the track. ‘Not a thing.’

A flash of light. ‘There!’ Sharpe climbed on to the parapet and dug into his pack for his only possession of value, a telescope made by Matthew Berge of London. He had no idea of its real worth but he suspected it had cost at least thirty guineas. There was a brass plate curved and inset into the walnut tube and engraved on the plate was an inscription. ‘In gratitude. AW. September 23rd, 1803.’ He recalled the piercing blue eyes looking at him when the telescope had been presented. ‘Remember, Mr Sharpe, an officer’s eyes are more valuable than his sword!’

He snapped the tube open and slid the brass shutters that protected the lens apart. The image danced in the glass, he held his breath to steady his arms, and panned the tube sideways. There! Damn the tube! It would not stay still.

‘Pendleton!’

The young Rifleman came running to the bridge and, on Sharpe’s instructions, jumped on to the parapet and crouched so that Sharpe could rest the telescope on his shoulder. The skyline leapt towards him, he moved the glass gently to the right. Nothing but grass and stunted bushes. The heat shimmered the air above the gentle slope as the telescope moved past the innocent horizon.

‘Do you see anything, sir?’

‘Keep still, damn you!’ He moved the glass back, concentrating on the spot where the white, dusty road merged with the sky. Then, with the suddenness of an actor coming through a stage trapdoor, the crest was lined with horsemen. Pendleton gasped, the image wavered, but Sharpe steadied it. Green uniforms, a single white crossbelt. He closed the glass and straightened up.

‘Chasseurs.’

There was a murmur from the Regimienta, the men nudged each other and pointed up the hill. Sharpe mentally split the line in half, then in half again, and counted the distant silhouettes in groups of five. Lennox had ridden across.

‘Two hundred, Sharpe?’

‘That’s what I make it.’

Lennox fiddled with his sword hilt. ‘They won’t bother us.’ He sounded resentful.

A second line of horsemen appeared. Sharpe opened the tube again and rested it on Pendleton’s shoulder. The French were making a dramatic appearance; two lines of cavalry, two hundred men in each, walking slowly towards the bridge. Through the lens Sharpe could see the carbines slung on their shoulders and on each horse there was an obscene lump behind the stirrup where the rider had strapped a netful of forage for his mount. He straightened up again and told Pendleton he could jump down.

‘Are they going to fight, sir?’ Like Lennox the young boy was eager for a brush with the French. Sharpe shook his head.

‘They won’t come near. They’re just having a look at us. They’ve nothing to gain by attacking.’

When Sharpe had been locked in the Tippoo’s dungeon with Lawford the Lieutenant had tried to teach him to play chess. It had been a hopeless task. They could never remember which chip of stone was supposed to represent which piece and their jailers had thought the scratched grid on the floor was an attempt at magic. They had been beaten and the chessboard scratched out. But Sharpe remembered the word ‘stalemate’. That was the position now. The French could not harm the infantry and the infantry could not harm the French. Simmerson was bringing the rest of the Battalion across the bridge, threading them past an exasperated Hogan and his excavation, but it made no difference how many men the allies had. The cavalry were simply too quick, the foot-soldiers would never get anywhere near them. And if the cavalry chose to attack they would be annihilated by the dreadful close-range volleys and any horse that survived the bullets would swerve away or pull up rather than gallop into the close-packed, steel-tipped ranks. There would be no fight today.

Simmerson thought otherwise. He waved his drawn sword cheerfully at Lennox. ‘We’ve got them, Lennox! We’ve got them!’

‘Aye, sir.’ Lennox sounded gloomy, he would have liked a fight. ‘Doesn’t the fool realise they won’t attack us? Does he think we’re going to lumber round this field like a cow chasing a fox? Damn it! We’ve done the job, Sharpe. We’ve mined the bridge and it’ll take an hour to get this lot back over.’

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