Sharpe’s Gold: The Destruction of Almeida, August 1810
Bernard Cornwell
Captain Sharpe’s task is to recover from a feared guerilla leader the gold Wellington so desperately needs.The enemy he faces strikes terror into the hearts of all around –a renegade guerilla band whose leader has a particular loathing for Sharpe who has stolen his woman.Soldier, hero, rogue – Sharpe is the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles whose green jacket he proudly wears.
SHARPE’S
GOLD
Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of
Almeida, August 1810
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 (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1981
Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1981
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
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Source ISBN: 9780006173144
Ebook Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 9780007338672
Version: 2017-05-06
Praise (#u0c1b55c5-a5ab-5360-a24e-9c8bea443023)
‘The insubordinate, sarcastic and oversexed Sharpe returns … Cornwell delivers the usual mix of strategy and strength – classic battle scenes and plenty of fisticuffs’
Daily Mirror
Dedication (#u0c1b55c5-a5ab-5360-a24e-9c8bea443023)
This book is for
Andrew Gardner
with much gratitude
Epigraph (#u0c1b55c5-a5ab-5360-a24e-9c8bea443023)
For a soldier I listed, to grow great in fame.
And be shot at for sixpence a day.
CHARLES DIBDIN 1745 – 1814
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u6516f620-dcc7-50ad-8163-546acb19a4df)
Copyright (#ucd7ddf99-2005-51d4-a30c-4e5b9bb1735f)
Praise (#u9e96fae0-b641-523b-9667-19b19cd0430b)
Dedication (#u3764d22e-7d02-5915-9c08-6fa0492631ad)
Epigraph (#u83747957-d0fd-5261-bfda-294bf26a4e40)
Map (#ue5b3790a-fabe-5a1d-ae43-7ed56a0cd39a)
Chapter One (#u90e625fa-e6c0-5052-a689-aa5ab904626a)
Chapter Two (#u4bd99c5b-9569-54e4-a8f4-909092e4e7a1)
Chapter Three (#u48416ccd-2b56-5ad3-85d1-c91daef75b71)
Chapter Four (#u03358028-43d2-59b2-ae4c-4e6cf1cea7b3)
Chapter Five (#u0573d28d-e22e-5a80-b1a7-7251d7e67070)
Chapter Six (#u522c4fb8-d2aa-5ba7-b5cc-e651147fb638)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Sharpe’s Story (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Bernard Cornwell (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in chronological order) (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in order of publication) (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Map (#u0c1b55c5-a5ab-5360-a24e-9c8bea443023)
CHAPTER ONE
The war was lost; not finished, but lost. Everyone knew it, from Generals of Division to the whores of Lisbon: that the British were trapped, trussed, ready for cooking, and all Europe waited for the master chef himself, Bonaparte, to cross the mountains and put his finishing touch to the roast. Then, to add insult to imminent defeat, it seemed that the small British army was not worthy of the great Bonaparte’s attention. The war was lost.
Spain had fallen. The last Spanish armies had gone, butchered into the history books, and all that was left was the fortress harbour of Cádiz and the peasants who fought the guerrilla, the ‘little war’. They fought with Spanish knives and British guns, with ambush and terror, till the French troops loathed and feared the Spanish people. But the little war was not the war, and that, everyone said, was lost.
Captain Richard Sharpe, once of His Majesty’s 95th Rifles, now Captain of the Light Company of the South Essex Regiment, did not think that the war was lost, although, despite that, he was in a foul mood, morose and irritable. Rain had fallen since dawn and had turned the dust of the road’s surface into slick, slippery mud and made his Rifleman’s uniform clammy and uncomfortable. He marched in solitary silence, listening to his men chatter, and Lieutenant Robert Knowles and Sergeant Patrick Harper, who both would normally have sought his company, let him alone. Lieutenant Knowles had commented on Sharpe’s mood, but the huge Irish Sergeant had shaken his head.
‘There’s no chance of cheering him up, sir. He likes being miserable, so he does, and the bastard will get over it.’
Knowles shrugged. He rather disapproved of a Sergeant calling a Captain a ‘bastard’, but there was no point in protesting. The Sergeant would look innocent and assure Knowles that the Captain’s parents had never married, which was true, and anyway Patrick Harper had fought beside Sharpe for years and had a friendship with the Captain that Knowles rather envied. It had taken Knowles months to understand the friendship, which was not, as many officers thought, based on the fact that Sharpe had once been a private soldier, marching and fighting in the ranks, and now, elevated to the glories of the officers’ mess, still sought out the company of the lower ranks. ‘Once a peasant, always a peasant,’ an officer had sneered, and Sharpe had heard, looked at the man, and Knowles had seen the fear come under the impact of those chilling, mocking eyes. Besides, Sharpe and Harper did not spend off-duty time together; the difference in rank made that impossible. But still, behind the formal relationship, Knowles saw the friendship. Both were big men, the Irishman hugely strong, and both confident in their abilities. Knowles could never imagine either out of uniform. It was as if they had been born to the job and it was on the battlefield, where most men thought nervously of their own survival, that Sharpe and Harper came together in an uncanny understanding. It was almost, Knowles thought, as if they were at home on a battlefield, and he envied them.
He looked up at the sky, at the low clouds touching the hilltops either side of the road. ‘Bloody weather.’
‘Back home, sir, we’d call this a fine day!’ Harper grinned at Knowles, the rain dripping off his shako, and then turned to look at the Company, who followed the fast-marching figure of Sharpe. They were straggling a little, slipping on the road, and Harper raised his voice. ‘Come on, you Protestant scum! The war’s not waiting for you!’
He grinned at them as he shouted, proud they had outmarched the rest of the Regiment, and happy that, at last, the South Essex was marching north to where the summer’s battles would be fought. Patrick Harper had heard the rumours – everyone had – of the French armies and their new commander, but Patrick Harper did not intend to lose any sleep over the future even though the South Essex was pitifully under strength. Replacements had sailed from Portsmouth in March, but the convoy had been hit by a storm, and, weeks later, rumours came of hundreds of bodies washed ashore on the southern Biscay beaches, and now the Regiment must fight with less than half its proper number. Harper did not mind. At Talavera the army had been outnumbered two to one, and tonight, in the town of Celorico, where the army was gathering, there would be women in the streets and wine in the shops. Life could be a lot worse for a lad from Donegal, and Patrick Harper began whistling.
Sharpe heard the whistling and checked his impulse to snap at the Sergeant, recognizing it as pure irritation, but he was annoyed by Harper’s customary equanimity. Sharpe did not believe the rumours of defeat, because, to a soldier, defeat was unthinkable. It was something that happened to the enemy. Yet Sharpe despised himself because, like a walking nightmare, the remorseless logic of numbers was haunting him. Defeat was in the air, whether he believed it or not, and as the thought came to him again he marched even faster, as if the aching pace could obliterate the pessimism. But at least, at long last, they were doing something. Since Talavera the Regiment had patrolled the bleak southern border between Spain and Portugal, and it had been a long, boring winter. The sun had risen and set, the Regiment had trained, they had watched the empty hills, and there had been too much leisure, too much softness. The officers had found a discarded French cavalryman’s breastplate and used it as a shaving bowl, and to his disgust Sharpe had found himself taking the luxury of hot water in a bowl as a normal daily occurrence! And weddings. Twenty alone in the last three months, so that, miles behind, the other nine companies of the South Essex were leading a motley procession of women and children, wives and whores, like a travelling fairground. But now, at last, in an unseasonably wet summer, they were marching north, to where the French attack would come, and where the doubts and fears would be banished in action.
The road reached a crest, revealing a shallow valley with a small village at its centre. There were cavalry in the village, presumably summoned north, like the South Essex, and as Sharpe saw the mass of horses, he let his irritation escape by spitting on the road. Bloody cavalry, with their airs and graces, their undisguised condescension to the infantry, but then he saw the uniforms of the dismounted riders and felt ashamed of his reaction. The men wore the blue of the King’s German Legion, and Sharpe respected the Germans. They were fellow professionals, and Sharpe, above everything else, was a professional soldier. He had to be. He had no money to buy promotion, and his future lay only in his skill and experience. There was plenty of experience. He had been a soldier for seventeen of his thirty-three years, first as a Private, then a Sergeant, then the dizzy jump to officer’s rank, and all the promotions had been earned on battlefields. He had fought in Flanders, in India, and now in the Peninsula, and he knew that should peace arrive the army would drop him like a red-hot bullet. It was only in war that they needed professionals like himself, like Harper, like the tough Germans who fought France in Britain’s army.
He halted the Company in the village street under the curious gaze of the cavalrymen. One of them, an officer, hitched his curved sabre off the ground and walked over to Sharpe. ‘Captain?’ The cavalryman made it a question because Sharpe’s only signs of rank were the faded scarlet sash and the sword.
Sharpe nodded. ‘Captain Sharpe. South Essex.’
The German officer’s eyebrows went up; his face split into a smile. ‘Captain Sharpe! Talavera!’ He pumped Sharpe’s hand, clapped him on the shoulder, then turned to shout at his men. The blue-coated cavalry grinned at Sharpe, nodded at him. They had all heard of him: the man who had captured the French Eagle at Talavera.
Sharpe jerked his head towards Patrick Harper and the Company. ‘Don’t forget Sergeant Harper, and the Company. We were all there.’
The German beamed at the Light Company. ‘It was well done!’ He clicked his heels to Sharpe and gave the slightest nod. ‘Lossow. Captain Lossow at your service. You going to Celorico?’ The German’s English was accented but good. His men, Sharpe knew, would probably speak no English.
Sharpe nodded again. ‘And you?’
Lossow shook his head. ‘The Coa. Patrolling. The enemy are getting close, so there will be fighting.’ He sounded pleased and Sharpe envied the cavalry. What fighting there was to be had was all taking place along the steep banks of the river Coa and not at Celorico. Lossow laughed. ‘This time we get an Eagle, yes?’
Sharpe wished him luck. If any cavalry regiment were likely to break apart a French battalion, it would be the Germans. The English cavalry were brave enough, well mounted, but with no discipline. English horsemen grew bored with patrols, with picquet duty, and dreamed only of the blood-curdling charge, swords high, that left their horses blown and the men scattered and vulnerable. Sharpe, like all infantry in the army, preferred the Germans because they knew their job and did it well.
Lossow grinned at the compliment. He was a squarefaced man, with a pleasant and ready smile and eyes that looked out shrewdly from the web of lines traced on his face by staring too long at the enemy-held horizons. ‘Oh, one more thing, Captain. The bloody provosts are in the village.’ The phrase came awkwardly from Lossow’s lips, as if he did not usually use English swearwords except to describe the provosts, for whom any other language’s curse would be inadequate.
Sharpe thanked him and turned to the Company. ‘You heard Captain Lossow! There are provosts here. So keep your thieving hands to yourselves. Understand?’ They understood. No one wanted to be hung on the spot for being caught looting. ‘We stop for ten minutes. Dismiss them, Sergeant.’
The Germans left, cloaked against the rain, and Sharpe walked up the only street towards the church. It was a miserable village, poor and deserted, and the cottage doors swung emptily. The inhabitants had gone south and west, as the Portuguese government had ordered. When the French advanced they would find no crops, no animals, wells filled with stones or poisoned with dead sheep: a land of hunger and thirst.
Patrick Harper, sensing that Sharpe’s mood had lightened after the meeting with Lossow, fell into step beside his Captain. ‘Nothing here to loot, sir.’
Sharpe glanced at the men stooping into the cottages. ‘They’ll find something.’
The provosts were beside the church, three of them, mounted on black horses and standing like highwaymen waiting for a plump coach. Their equipment was new, their faces burned red, and Sharpe guessed they were fresh out from England, though why the Horse Guards sent provosts instead of fighting soldiers was a mystery. He nodded civilly to them. ‘Good morning.’
One of the three, with an officer’s sword jutting from beneath his cloak, nodded back. He seemed, like all of his kind, to be suspicious of any friendly gesture. He looked at their green Riflemen’s jackets. ‘There aren’t supposed to be any Riflemen in this area.’
Sharpe let the accusation go unanswered. If the provost thought they were deserters, then the provost was a fool. Deserters did not travel the open road in daylight, or wear uniforms, or stroll casually up to provosts. Sharpe and Harper, like the other eighteen Riflemen in the Company, had kept their old uniforms out of pride, preferring the dark green to the red of the line battalions.
The provost’s eyes flicked between the two men. ‘You have orders?’
‘The General wants to see us, sir.’ Harper spoke cheerfully.
A tiny smile came and went on the provost’s face. ‘You mean Lord Wellington wants to see you?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
Sharpe’s voice had a warning in it, but the provost seemed oblivious. He was looking Sharpe up and down, letting his suspicions show. Sharpe’s appearance was extraordinary. The green jacket, faded and torn, was worn over French cavalry overalls. On his feet were tall leather boots that had originally been bought in Paris by a Colonel of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. On his back, like most of his men, he carried a French pack, made of ox hide, and on his shoulder, though he was an officer, he slung a rifle. The officer’s epaulettes had gone, leaving broken stitches, and the scarlet sash was stained and faded. Even Sharpe’s sword, his other badge of rank, was irregular. As an officer of a Light Company he should have carried the curved sabre of the British Light Cavalry, but Richard Sharpe preferred the sword of the Heavy Cavalry, straight-bladed and ill balanced. Cavalrymen hated it; they claimed its weight made it impossible to parry swiftly, but Sharpe was six feet tall and strong enough to wield the thirty-five inches of ponderous steel with deceptive ease.
The provost officer was unsettled. ‘What’s your Regiment?’
‘We’re the Light of the South Essex.’ Sharpe made his tone friendly.
The provost responded by spurring his horse forward so he could see down the street and watch Sharpe’s men. There was no immediately apparent reason to hang anyone, so he looked back at the two men and his eyes stopped, with surprise, when they reached Harper’s shoulder. The Irishman, with four inches more height than Sharpe, was a daunting sight at the best of times, but his weapons were even more irregular than Sharpe’s big sword. Slung with his rifle was a brute of a gun – a seven-barrelled, squat menace. The provost pointed. ‘What’s that?’
‘Seven-barrelled gun, sir.’ Harper’s voice was full of pride in his new weapon.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘Christmas present, sir.’
Sharpe grinned. It had been a present, given at Christmas time, from Sharpe to his Sergeant, but it was obvious that the provost, with his two silent companions, did not believe it. He was still staring at the gun, one of Henry Nock’s less successful inventions, and Sharpe realized that the provost had probably never seen one before. Only a few hundred had ever been made, for the Navy, and at the time it had seemed like a good idea. Seven barrels, each twenty inches long, were all fired by the same flintlock, and it was thought that sailors, perched precariously in the fighting tops, could wreak havoc by firing the seven barrels down on to the enemy’s crowded decks. One thing had been overlooked. Seven half-inch barrels fired together made a fearful discharge, like a small cannon’s, that not only wreaked havoc but also broke the shoulder of any man who pulled the trigger. Only Harper, in Sharpe’s acquaintance, had the brute strength to use the gun, and even the Irishman, in trying it out, had been astonished by the crashing recoil as the seven bullets spread from the flaming muzzles.
The provost sniffed. ‘A Christmas present.’
‘I gave it to him,’ Sharpe said.
‘And you are?’
‘Captain Richard Sharpe. South Essex. You?’
The provost stiffened. ‘Lieutenant Ayres, sir.’ The last word was spoken reluctantly.
‘And where are you going, Lieutenant Ayres?’
Sharpe was annoyed by the man’s suspicions, by the pointless display of his power, and he edged his questions with a touch of venom. Sharpe carried on his back the scars of a flogging that had been caused by just such an officer as this: Captain Morris, a supercilious bully, with his flattering familiar, Sergeant Hakeswill. Sharpe carried the memory along with the scars and a promise that one day he would revenge himself on both men. Morris, he knew, was stationed in Dublin; Hakeswill was God knows where, but one day, Sharpe promised himself, he would find him. But for now it was this young puppy with more power than sense. ‘Where, Lieutenant?’
‘Celorico, sir.’
‘Then have a good journey, Lieutenant.’
Ayres nodded. ‘I’ll look round first, sir. If you don’t mind.’
Sharpe watched the three men ride down the street, the rain beading the wide, black rumps of the horses. ‘I hope you’re right, Sergeant.’
‘Right, sir?’
‘That there’s nothing to loot.’
The thought struck both together, a single instinct for trouble, and they began running. Sharpe pulled his whistle from the small holster on his crossbelt and blew the long blasts that were usually reserved for the battlefield when the Light Company was strung out in a loose skirmish line, the enemy was pressing close, and the officers and Sergeants whistled the men back to rally and re-form under the shelter of the Battalion. The provosts heard the whistle blasts, put spurs to their horses, and swerved between two low cottages to search the yards as Sharpe’s men tumbled from doorways and grumbled into ranks.
Harper pulled up in front of the Company. ‘Packs on!’
There was a shout from behind the cottages. Sharpe turned. Lieutenant Knowles was at his elbow.
‘What’s happening, sir?’
‘Provost trouble. Bastards are throwing their weight around.’
They were determined, he knew, to find something, and as Sharpe’s eyes went down his ranks he had a sinking feeling that Lieutenant Ayres had succeeded. There should have been forty-eight men, three Sergeants, and the two officers, but one man was missing: Private Batten. Private bloody Batten, who was dragged by his hair from between the cottages by a triumphant provost.
‘A looter, sir. Caught in the act.’ Ayres was smiling.
Batten, who grumbled incessantly, who moaned if it rained and made a fuss when it stopped because the sun was in his eyes. Private Batten, a one-man destroyer of flintlocks, who thought the whole world was conspiring to annoy him, and who now stood flinching beneath the grasp of one of Ayres’s men. If there were any one member of the Company whom Sharpe would gladly have hanged, it would be Batten, but he was damned if any provost was going to do it for him.
Sharpe looked up at Ayres. ‘What was he looting, Lieutenant?’
‘This.’
Ayres held up a scrawny chicken as if it were the Crown of England. Its neck had been well wrung, but the legs still jerked and scrabbled at the air. Sharpe felt the anger come inside him, not at the provosts but at Batten.
‘I’ll deal with him, Lieutenant.’ Batten cringed away from his Captain.
Ayres shook his head. ‘You misunderstand, sir.’ He was talking with silky condescension. ‘Looters are hung, sir. On the spot, sir. As an example to others.’
There was a muttering from the Company, broken by Harper’s bellowed order for silence. Batten’s eyes flicked left and right as if looking for an escape from this latest example of the world’s injustice. Sharpe snapped at him. ‘Batten!’
‘Sir?’
‘Where did you find the chicken?’
‘It was in the field, sir. Honest.’ He winced as his hair was pulled. ‘It was a wild chicken, sir.’
There was a rustle of laughter from the ranks that Harper let go. Ayres snorted. ‘A wild chicken. Dangerous beasts, eh, sir? He’s lying. I found him in the cottage.’
Sharpe believed him, but he was not going to give up. ‘Who lives in the cottage, Lieutenant?’
Ayres raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, sir, I have not exchanged cards with every slum in Portugal.’ He turned to his men. ‘String him up.’
‘Lieutenant Ayres.’ The tone of Sharpe’s voice stopped any movement in the street. ‘How do you know the cottage is inhabited?’
‘Look for yourself.’
‘Sir.’
Ayres swallowed. ‘Sir.’
Sharpe raised his voice. ‘Are there people there, Lieutenant?’
‘No, sir. But it’s lived in.’
‘How do you know? The village is deserted. You can’t steal a chicken from nobody.’
Ayres thought about his reply. The village was deserted, the inhabitants gone away from the French attack, but absence was not a relinquishing of ownership. He shook his head. ‘The chicken is Portuguese property, sir.’ He turned again. ‘Hang him!’
‘Halt!’ Sharpe bellowed and again movement stopped. ‘You’re not going to hang him, so just go your way.’
Ayres swivelled back to Sharpe. ‘He was caught redhanded and the bastard will hang. Your men are probably a pack of bloody thieves and they need an example and, by God, they will get one!’ He raised himself in his stirrups and shouted at the Company. ‘You will see him hang! And if you steal, then you will hang too!’
A click interrupted him. He looked down and the anger in his face was replaced by astonishment. Sharpe held his Baker rifle, cocked, so that the barrel was pointing at Ayres.
‘Let him go, Lieutenant.’
‘Have you gone mad?’
Ayres had gone white, had sagged back into his saddle. Sergeant Harper, instinctively, came and stood beside Sharpe and ignored the hand that waved him away. Ayres stared at the two men. Both tall, both with hard, fighters’ faces, and a memory tickled at him. He looked at Sharpe, at the face that appeared to have a perpetually mocking expression, caused by the scar that ran down the right cheek, and he suddenly remembered. Wild chickens, bird-catchers! The South Essex Light Company. Were these the two men who had captured the Eagle? Who had hacked their way into a French regiment and come out with the standard? He could believe it.
Sharpe watched the Lieutenant’s eyes waver and knew that he had won, but it was a victory that would cost him dearly. The army did not look kindly on men who held rifles on provosts, even empty rifles.
Ayres pushed Batten forward. ‘Have your thief, Captain. We shall meet again.’
Sharpe lowered the rifle. Ayres waited until Batten was clear of the horses, then wrenched the reins and led his men towards Celorico. ‘You’ll hear from me!’ His words were flung back. Sharpe could sense the trouble like a boiling, black cloud on the horizon. He turned to Batten.
‘Did you steal that bloody hen?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Batten flapped a hand after the provost. ‘He took it, sir.’ He made it sound unfair.
‘I wish he’d bloody taken you. I wish he’d bloody spread your guts across the bloody landscape.’ Batten backed away from Sharpe’s anger. ‘What are the bloody rules, Batten?’
The eyes blinked at Sharpe. ‘Rules, sir?’
‘You know the bloody rules. Tell me.’
The army issued regulations that were inches thick, but Sharpe gave his men three rules. They were simple, they worked, and if broken the men knew they could expect punishment. Batten cleared his throat.
‘To fight well, sir. Not to get drunk without permission, sir. And –’
‘Go on.’
‘Not to steal, sir, except from the enemy or when starving, sir.’
‘Were you starving?’
Batten clearly wanted to say he was, but there were still two days’ rations in every man’s haversack. ‘No, sir.’
Sharpe hit him, all his frustration pouring into one fist that slammed Batten’s chest, winded him, and knocked him gasping into the wet road. ‘You’re a bloody fool, Batten, a cringing, miserable, whoreson, slimy fool.’ He turned away from the man, whose musket had fallen into the mud. ‘Company! March!’
They marched behind the tall Rifleman as Batten picked himself up, brushed ineffectively at the water that had flowed into the lock of his gun, and then shambled after the Company. He pushed himself into his file and muttered at his silent companions. ‘He’s not supposed to hit me.’
‘Shut your mouth, Batten!’ Harper’s voice was as harsh as his Captain’s. ‘You know the rules. Would you rather be kicking your useless heels now?’
The Sergeant shouted at the Company to pick up their feet, bellowed the steps at them, and all the time he wondered what faced Sharpe now. A complaint from that bloody provost would mean an enquiry and probably a court-martial. And all for the miserable Batten, a failed horse-coper, whom Harper would gladly have killed himself. Lieutenant Knowles seemed to share Harper’s thoughts, for he fell in step beside the Irishman and looked at him with a troubled face. ‘All for one chicken, Sergeant?’
Harper looked down at the young Lieutenant. ‘I doubt it, sir.’ He turned to the ranks. ‘Daniel!’
Hagman, one of the Riflemen, broke ranks and fell in beside the Sergeant. He was the oldest man in the Company, in his forties, but the best marksman. A Cheshireman, raised as a poacher, Hagman could shoot the buttons off a French General’s coat at three hundred yards. ‘Sarge?’
‘How many chickens were there?’
Hagman flashed his toothless grin, glanced at the Company, then up at Harper. The Sergeant was a fair man, never demanding more than a fair share. ‘Dozen, Sarge.’
Harper looked at Knowles. ‘There you are, sir. At least sixteen wild chickens there. Probably twenty. God knows what they were doing there, why the owners didn’t take them.’
‘Difficult to catch, sir, chickens.’ Hagman chuckled. ‘That all, Sarge?’
Harper grinned down at the Rifleman. ‘A leg each for the officers, Daniel. And not the stringy ones.’
Hagman glanced at Knowles. ‘Very good, sir. Leg each.’ He went back to the ranks.
Knowles chuckled to himself. A leg each for the officers meant a good breast for the Sergeant, chicken broth for everyone, and nothing for Private Batten. And for Sharpe? Knowles felt his spirits drop. The war was lost, it was still raining, and tomorrow Captain Richard Sharpe would be in provost trouble, real trouble, right up to his sabre-scarred neck.
CHAPTER TWO
If anyone needed a symbol of impending defeat, then the Church of São Paolo in Celorico, the temporary headquarters of the South Essex, offered it in full. Sharpe stood in the choir watching the priest whitewash a gorgeous rood-screen. The screen was made of solid silver, ancient and intricate, a gift from some long-forgotten parishioner whose family’s faces were those of the grieving women and disciples who stared up at the crucifix. The priest, standing on a trestle, dripping thick lime paint down his cassock, looked from Sharpe to the screen, and shrugged.
‘It took three months to clean off last time.’
‘Last time?’
‘When the French left.’ The priest sounded bitter and he dabbed angrily with the bristles at the delicate traceries. ‘If they knew it was silver they would carve it into pieces and take it away.’ He splashed the nailed, hanging figure with a slap of paint and then, as if in apology, moved the brush to his left hand so that his right could sketch a perfunctory sign of the cross on his spattered gown.
‘Perhaps they won’t get this far.’
It sounded unconvincing, even to Sharpe, and the priest did not bother to reply. He just gave a humourless laugh and dipped the brush into his bucket. They know, thought Sharpe; they all know that the French are coming and the British falling back. The priest made him feel guilty, as if he were personally betraying the town and its inhabitants, and he moved down the church into the darkness by the main door where the Battalion’s commissariat officer was supervising the piling of fresh baked bread for the evening rations.
The door banged open, letting in the late-afternoon sunlight, and Lawford, dressed in his glittering best uniform, beckoned at Sharpe. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Major Forrest was waiting outside and he smiled nervously at Sharpe. ‘Don’t worry, Richard.’
‘Worry?’ Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable William Lawford was angry. ‘He should damned well worry.’ He looked Sharpe up and down. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
Sharpe fingered the tear in his sleeve. ‘It’s all I’ve got, sir.’
‘All? What about that new uniform! Good Lord, Richard, you look like a tramp.’
‘Uniform’s in Lisbon, sir. In store. Light Companies should travel light.’
Lawford snorted. ‘And they shouldn’t threaten provosts with rifles either. Come on, we don’t want to be late.’ He crammed the tricorne hat on to his head and returned the salute of the two sentries who had listened, amused, to his outburst.
Sharpe held up his hand. ‘One moment, sir.’ He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the gold regimental badge that the Colonel wore on his white diagonal sash. It was a new badge, commissioned by Lawford after Talavera, and showed an eagle in chains – a message to the world that the South Essex was the only regiment in the Peninsula that had captured a French standard. Sharpe stood back satisfied. ‘That’s better, sir.’
Lawford took the hint, and smiled. ‘You’re a bastard, Sharpe. Just because you captured an Eagle doesn’t mean you can do what you like.’
‘While just because some idiot is dressed up as a provost, I suppose, means that he can?’
‘Yes,’ Lawford said. ‘It does. Come on.’
It was strange, Sharpe thought, how Lawford was the sum of all he disliked about privilege and wealth, yet he liked Lawford and was content to serve him. They were the same age, thirty-three, but Lawford had always been an officer, had never worried about promotion, because he could afford the next step, and never concerned himself where the next year’s money would come from. Seven years ago, Lawford had been a Lieutenant and Richard Sharpe his Sergeant, both fighting the Mahrattas in India, and the Sergeant had kept the officer alive in the dungeons of the Tippoo Sultan. In return, Lawford taught the Sergeant to read and write and thus qualified him for a commission if ever he were foolish enough to perform some act of bravery on a battlefield that could hoist a man from the ranks into the officers’ exalted company.
Sharpe followed Lawford through the crowded streets towards Wellington’s headquarters, and seeing the Colonel’s exquisite uniform and expensive accoutrements, he wondered where they would be in another seven years. Lawford was ambitious, as was Sharpe, but the Colonel had the birth and the money for great things. He’ll be a general, Sharpe thought, and he grinned because he knew that Lawford would still need him or someone like him. Sharpe was Lawford’s eyes and his ears, his professional soldier, the man who could read the faces of the failed criminals, drunks, and desperate men who had somehow become the best infantry in the world. And more than that, Sharpe could read the ground, could read the enemy, and Lawford, for whom the army was a means to a glorious and exalted end, relied on his ex-Sergeant’s instinct and talent. Lawford, Sharpe decided, had done well in the last year. He had taken over an embittered, brutalized, and frightened Regiment and turned them into a unit as good as any battalion in the line. Sharpe’s Eagle had helped. It had wiped out the stain of Valdelacasa, where the South Essex, under Sir Henry Simmerson, had lost a colour and their pride; but it was not just the Eagle. Lawford, with his politician’s instincts, had trusted the men while he worked them hard, had given them back their confidence. And the badge, which every man wore on his shako, shared the glory of Talavera with every soldier in the Regiment.
Lawford led them through the press of officers and townspeople. Major Forrest kept glancing at Sharpe with an avuncular smile that made him look, more than ever, like a kindly country vicar dressed as a soldier for the village pageant. He tried to reassure Sharpe. ‘It won’t come to a court-martial, Richard; it can’t! You’ll probably have to apologize, or something, and it will all blow over.’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘I won’t bloody apologize, sir.’
Lawford stopped and turned round, his finger pushed into Sharpe’s chest. ‘If you are ordered to apologize, Richard Sharpe, you will damned well apologize. You will grovel, squirm, cringe and toady to order. Do you understand?’
Sharpe clicked the heels of his tall French boots. ‘Sir!’
Lawford exploded in rare anger. ‘Christ Almighty, Richard, don’t you bloody understand? This is a general-court-martial offence. Ayres has screamed his head off to the Provost Marshal and the Provost Marshal has screamed to the General that the authority of the provost must not be undermined. And the General, Mr Sharpe, is rather sympathetic to that point of view.’ Lawford’s passion had attracted a small crowd of interested spectators. His anger faded as suddenly as it had erupted, but he still jabbed his finger into Sharpe’s chest. ‘The General wants more provosts, not fewer, and he is understandably not happy with the thought that Captain Richard Sharpe is declaring open season on them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Lawford was not placated by Sharpe’s crestfallen expression, which the Colonel suspected was not motivated by true regret. ‘And do not think, Captain Sharpe, that just because the General ordered us here he will look kindly on your action. He’s saved your miserable skin often enough in the past and he may not be of a mind to do it again. Understand?’
There was a burst of applause from a group of cavalry officers standing by a wine shop. Lawford shot them a withering look and strode on, followed by someone’s ironic mimicry of the bugle call for the full charge. Sharpe followed. Lawford could be right. The General had summoned the South Essex, no one knew why, and Sharpe had hoped that it was for some special task, something to wipe out the memory of the winter’s boredom. But the scene with Lieutenant Ayres could change that for Sharpe, condemn him to a court-martial, to a future far more dreary even than patrol work on an empty border.
Four ox-carts stood outside Wellington’s headquarters, another reminder that the army would move soon, but otherwise everything was peaceful. The only unusual object was a tall mast that jutted from the roof of the house, topped by a crosspiece, from which hung four tarred sheep bladders. Sharpe looked at them curiously. This was the first time he had seen the new telegraph and he wished that it was working so that he could watch the black, inflated bladders running up and down on their ropes and sending messages, via other similar stations, to the far-off fortress of Almeida and to the troops guarding the river Coa. The system had been copied from the Royal Navy and sailors had been sent to man the telegraph. Each letter of the alphabet had its own arrangement of the four black bags, and common words, like ‘regiment’, ‘enemy’, and ‘general’, were abbreviated to a single display that could be seen, miles away, through a huge naval telescope. Sharpe had heard that a message could travel twenty miles in less than ten minutes and he wondered, as they came close to the two bored sentries guarding the General’s headquarters, what other modern devices would be thrown up by the necessity of the long war against Napoleon.
He forgot the telegraph as they stepped into the cool hallway of the house and he felt a twinge of fear at the coming interview. In a curious fashion his career had been linked to Wellington. They had shared battlefields in Flanders, India, and now in the Peninsula, and in his pack Sharpe carried a telescope that had been a present from the General. There was a small, curved, brass plate let into the walnut tube and on it was inscribed IN GRATITUDE. AW. SEPTEMBER 23RD, 1803. Sir Arthur Wellesley believed that Sergeant Sharpe had saved his life, though Sharpe, if he was honest, could remember little of the event except that the General’s horse had been piked and the Indian bayonets and curved tulwars were coming forward and what else did a Sergeant do except get in the way and fight back? That had been the battle of Assaye, a bastard of a fight, and Sharpe had watched his officers die in the shot from the ornate guns and, his blood up, he had taken the survivors on and the enemy had been beaten. Only just, by God, but victory was victory. After that he was made into an officer, dressed up like a prize bull, and the same man who had rewarded him then must decide his fate now.
‘His Lordship will see you now.’ A suave young Major smiled at them through the door as though they had been invited for tea. It had been a year since Sharpe had seen Wellington, but nothing had changed: still the table covered with papers, the same blue eyes that gave nothing away above the beak of a nose, and the handsome mouth that was grudging with a smile. Sharpe was glad there were no provosts in the room so at least he would not have to grovel in front of the General, but even so he felt apprehensive of this quiet man’s anger and he watched, cautiously, as the quill pen was laid down and the expressionless eyes looked up at him. There was no recognition in them.
‘Did you threaten Lieutenant Ayres with a rifle, Captain Sharpe?’ There was the faintest stress on the ‘Captain’.
‘Yes, sir.’
Wellington nodded. He looked tired. He stood up and moved to the window, peering through as though expecting something. There was silence in the room, broken only by the jingle of chains and rumbling of wheels as a battery of artillery drove by in the street. It struck Sharpe that the General was on edge. Wellington turned back to him.
‘Do you know, Captain Sharpe, the damage it does our cause if our soldiers thieve or rape?’ His voice was scathingly quiet.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I hope you do, Captain Sharpe, I hope you do.’ He sat down again. ‘Our enemies are encouraged to steal because that is the only way they can be fed. The result is that they are hated wherever they march. I spend money – my God, how much money – on providing rations and transport and buying food from the populace so that our soldiers have no need to steal. We do this so they will be welcomed by the local people and helped by them. Do you understand?’
Sharpe wished the lecture would end. ‘Yes, sir.’
There was suddenly a strange noise overhead, a shuffling and rattling, and Wellington’s eyes shot to the ceiling as if he could read what the noise might mean. It occurred to Sharpe that the telegraph was working, the inflated bladders running up and down the ropes, bringing a coded message from the troops facing the French. The General listened for a few seconds, then dropped his face to Sharpe again. ‘Your gazette has not yet been ratified.’
There were few things the General could have said more calculated to worry Sharpe. Officially he was still a Lieutenant, only a Lieutenant, and his Captaincy had been awarded by a gazette from Wellington a year ago. If the Horse Guards in Whitehall did not approve, and he knew they usually rejected such irregular promotions, then he was soon to be a Lieutenant again. He said nothing as Wellington watched him. If this were a warning shot, then he would take it in silence.
The General sighed, picked up a piece of paper, put it down again. ‘The soldier has been punished?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He thought of Batten, winded, on the ground.
‘Then do not, pray, let it happen again. Not even, Captain Sharpe, to wild chickens.’
My God, thought Sharpe, he knows everything that happens in this army. There was silence. Was that the end of it? No court-martial? No apology? He coughed and Wellington looked up.
‘Yes?’
‘I was expecting more, sir. Court-martials and drumheads.’
Sharpe heard Lawford stir in embarrassment but the General did not seem worried. He stood up and used one of his few, thin smiles.
‘I would quite happily, Captain Sharpe, string up you and that damned Sergeant. But I suspect we need you. What do you think of our chances this summer?’
Again there was silence. The change of tack had taken them all by surprise. Lawford cleared his throat. ‘There’s clearly some concern, my lord, about the intentions of the enemy and our response.’
Another wintry smile. ‘The enemy intend to push us into the sea, and soon. How do we respond?’ Wellington, it occurred to Sharpe, was using up time. He was waiting for something or someone.
Lawford was feeling uncomfortable. The question was one he would rather hear answered by the General. ‘Bring them to battle, sir?’
‘Thirty thousand troops, plus twenty-five thousand untried Portuguese, against three hundred and fifty thousand men?’
Wellington let the figures hang in the air like the dust that shifted silently in the slanting sunlight over his desk. Overhead the feet of the men operating the telegraph still shuffled. The figures, Sharpe knew, were unfair. Masséna needed thousands of those men to contain the Guerrilleros, the partisans, but even so the disparity in numbers was appalling. Wellington sniffed. There was a knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
‘Sir.’
The Major who had shown them into the room handed a slip of paper to the General, who read it, closed his eyes momentarily, and sighed.
‘The rest of the message is still coming?’
‘Yes, sir. But the gist is there.’
The Major left and Wellington leaned back in his chair. The news had been bad, Sharpe could tell, but not, perhaps, unexpected. He remembered that Wellington had once said that running a campaign was like driving a team of horses with a rope harness. The ropes kept breaking and all a General could do was tie a knot and keep going. A rope was unravelling, here and now, an important one, and Sharpe watched the fingers drum on the edge of the table. The eyes came up to Sharpe again, flicked to Lawford.
‘Colonel?’
‘Sir?’
‘I am borrowing Captain Sharpe from you, and his Company. I doubt whether I need them for more than one month.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Lawford looked at Sharpe and shrugged.
Wellington stood again. He seemed to be relieved, as if a decision had been made. ‘The war is not lost, gentlemen, though I know my confidence is not universally shared.’ He sounded bitter, angry with the defeatists whose letters home were quoted in the newspapers. ‘We may bring the French to battle, and if we do we will win.’ Sharpe never doubted it. Of all Britain’s generals this was the only one who knew how to beat the French. ‘If we win we will only delay their advance.’ He opened a map, stared at it blankly, and let it snap shut again into a roll. ‘No, gentlemen, our survival depends on something else. Something that you, Captain Sharpe, must bring me. Must, do you hear? Must.’
Sharpe had never heard the General so insistent. ‘Yes, sir.’
Lawford coughed. ‘And if he fails, my lord?’
The wintry smile again. ‘He had better not.’ He looked at Sharpe. ‘You are not the only card in my hand, Mr Sharpe, but you are … important. There are things happening, gentlemen, that this army does not know about. If it did it would be generally more optimistic.’ He sat down again, leaving them mystified. Sharpe suspected the mystification was on purpose. He was spreading some counter-rumours to the defeatists, and that, too, was part of a general’s job. He looked up again. ‘You are now under my orders, Captain Sharpe. Your men must be ready to march this night. They must not be encumbered with wives or unnecessary baggage, and they must have full ammunition.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you will be back here in one hour. You have two tasks to perform.’
Sharpe wondered if he was to be told what they were. ‘Sir?’
‘First, Mr Sharpe, you will receive your orders. Not from me but from an old companion of yours.’ Wellington saw Sharpe’s quizzical look. ‘Major Hogan.’
Sharpe’s face betrayed his pleasure. Hogan, the engineer, the quiet Irishman who was a friend, whose sense Sharpe had leaned on in the difficult days leading to Talavera. Wellington saw the pleasure and tried to puncture it. ‘But before that, Mr Sharpe, you will apologize to Lieutenant Ayres.’ He watched for Sharpe’s reaction.
‘But of course, sir. I had always planned to.’ Sharpe looked shocked at the thought that he might ever have contemplated another course of action and, through his innocently wide eyes, wondered if he saw a flicker of amusement behind the General’s cold, blue gaze.
Wellington looked away, to Lawford, and with his usual disarming speed suddenly became affable. ‘You’re well, Colonel?’
‘Thank you, sir. Yes.’ Lawford beamed with pleasure. He had served on Wellington’s staff, knew the General well.
‘Join me for dinner tonight. The usual time.’ The General looked at Forrest. ‘And you, Major?’
‘My pleasure, sir.’
‘Good.’ The eyes flicked at Sharpe. ‘Captain Sharpe will be too busy, I fear.’ He nodded a dismissal. ‘Good day, gentlemen.’
Outside the headquarters the bugles sounded the evening and the sun sank in magnificent crimson. Inside the quiet room the General paused a moment before plunging back into the paperwork that must be done before the dinner of roast mutton. Hogan, he thought, was right. If a miracle were needed to save the campaign, and it was, then the rogue he had just seen was the best man for the job. More than a rogue: a fighter, and a man who looked on failure as unthinkable. But a rogue, thought Wellington, a damned rogue all the same.
CHAPTER THREE
Sharpe had spent the hour between leaving and returning to Wellington’s headquarters conjuring all kinds of quixotic answers to the mystery of what he was supposed to bring back to the General. Perhaps, he had thought as he stirred the Company into activity, it would be a new French secret weapon, something like the British Colonel Congreve’s rocket system, of which there were so many tales but so little evidence. Or, more fanciful still, perhaps the British had secretly offered refuge to Napoleon’s divorced Josephine, who might have smuggled herself to Spain to become a pawn in the high politics of the war. He was still wondering as he was shown into a large room of the headquarters, to find a reception committee, formal and strained, flanking a wretchedly embarrassed Lieutenant Ayres.
The unctuous young Major smiled at Sharpe as though he were a valued and expected guest. ‘Ah, Captain Sharpe. You know the Provost Marshal, you’ve met Lieutenant Ayres, and this is Colonel Williams. Gentlemen?’ The Major made a delicate gesture as if inviting them all to sit down and take a glass of sherry. It seemed that Colonel Williams, plump and red-veined, was deputed to do the talking.
‘Disgraceful, Sharpe. Disgraceful!’
Sharpe stared a fraction of an inch over Williams’s head and stopped himself from blinking. It was a useful way of discomfiting people, and, sure enough, Williams wavered from the apparent gaze and made a helpless gesture towards Lieutenant Ayres.
‘You imperilled his authority, overstepped your own. A disgrace!’
‘Yes, sir. I apologize!’
‘What?’ Williams seemed surprised at Sharpe’s sudden apology. Lieutenant Ayres was squirming with uneasiness, while the Provost Marshal seemed impatient to get the charade done. Williams cleared his throat, seemed to want his pound of flesh. ‘You apologize?’
‘Yes, sir. Unreservedly, sir. Terrible disgrace, sir. I utterly apologize, sir, regret my part very much, sir, as I’m sure Lieutenant Ayres does his.’
Ayres, startled by a sudden smile from Sharpe, nodded hastily and agreed. ‘I do, sir. I do.’
Williams whirled on his unfortunate Lieutenant. ‘What do you have to regret, Ayres? You mean there’s more to this than I thought?’
The Provost Marshal sighed and scraped a boot on the floor. ‘I think the purpose of this meeting is over, gentlemen, and I have work to do.’ He looked at Sharpe. ‘Thank you, Captain, for your apology. We’ll leave you.’
As they left, Sharpe could hear Colonel Williams interrogating Ayres as to why he should have any regrets, and Sharpe let a grin show on his face which widened into a broad smile as the door opened once more and Michael Hogan came into the room. The small Irishman shut the door carefully and smiled at Sharpe.
‘As graceful an apology as I expected from you. How are you?’
They shook hands, pleasure on both their faces. The war, it turned out, was treating Hogan well. An engineer, he had been transferred to Wellington’s staff, and promoted. He spoke Portuguese and Spanish, and added to those skills was a common sense that was rare. Sharpe raised his eyebrows at Hogan’s elegant, new uniform.
‘So what do you do here?’
‘A bit of this and the other.’ Hogan beamed at him, paused, then sneezed violently. ‘Christ and St Patrick! Bloody Irish Blackguard!’
Sharpe looked puzzled and Hogan held out his snuff-box. ‘Can’t get Scotch Rappee here, only Irish Blackguard. It’s like sniffing grapeshot straight up the nostrils.’
‘Give it up.’
Hogan laughed. ‘I’ve tried; I can’t.’ His eyes watered as another sneeze gathered force. ‘God in heaven!’
‘So what do you do?’
Hogan wiped a tear from his cheek. ‘Not so very much, Richard. I sort of find things out, about the enemy, you understand. And draw maps. Things like that. We call it “intelligence”, but it’s a fancy word for knowing a bit about the other fellow. And I have some duties in Lisbon.’ He waved a deprecating hand. ‘I get by.’
Lisbon, where Josefina was. The thought struck Hogan as it came to Sharpe, and the small Irishman smiled and answered the unspoken question. ‘Aye, she’s well.’
Josefina, whom Sharpe had loved so briefly, for whom he had killed, and who had left him for a cavalry officer. He still thought of her, remembered the few nights, but this was no time or place for that kind of memory. He pushed the thought of her away, the jealousy he had for Captain Claud Hardy, and changed the subject.
‘So what is this thing that I must bring back for the General?’
Hogan leaned back. ‘Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam.’
‘You know I don’t speak Spanish.’
Hogan gave a gentle smile. ‘Latin, Richard, Latin. Your education was sadly overlooked. Cicero said it: “The sinews of war are unlimited money.”’
‘Money?’
‘Gold, to be precise. Bucketfuls of gold. A King’s bloody ransom, my dear Richard, and we want it. No, more than we want it, we need it. Without it –’ He did not finish the sentence, but just shrugged instead.
‘You’re joking, surely!’
Hogan carefully lit another candle – the light beyond the windows was fading fast – and spoke quietly. ‘I wish I was. We’ve run out of money. You wouldn’t believe it, but there it is. Eighty-five million pounds is the war budget this year – can you imagine it? – and we’ve run out.’
‘Run out?’
Hogan gave another shrug. ‘A new government in London, bloody English, demanding accounts. We’re paying all Portugal’s expenses, arming half the Spanish nation, and now we need it.’ He stressed the ‘we’. ‘It’s what, I think, you would call a local embarrassment. We need some money fast, in a matter of days. We could force it out of London in a couple of months, but that will be too long. We need it now.’
‘And if not?’
‘If not, Richard, the French will be in Lisbon and not all the money in the world will make any difference.’ He smiled. ‘So you go and get the money.’
‘I go and get the money.’ Sharpe grinned at the Irishman. ‘How? Steal it?’
‘Shall we say “borrow”?’ Hogan’s voice was serious. Sharpe said nothing and the Irishman sighed, leaned back. ‘There is a problem, Richard, which is that the gold belongs to the Spanish government, in a manner of speaking.’
‘What manner?’
Hogan shrugged. ‘Who knows where the government is? Is it in Madrid, with the French? Or in Cádiz?’
‘And where’s the gold? Paris?’
Hogan gave a tired smile. ‘Not quite that far. Two days’ march.’ His voice became formal, reciting instructions. ‘You leave tonight, march to Almeida. The crossing of the Coa is guarded by the Sixtieth; they’re expecting you. In Almeida you meet Major Kearsey. From then on you are under his orders. We expect you to take no longer than one week, and should you need help, which pray God you do not, here is all you’re going to get.’
He pushed a piece of paper over the table. Sharpe unfolded it. Captain Sharpe is directed by my orders and all Officers of the Allied Armies are requested and instructed to offer Captain Sharpe any assistance he may require. The signature was a simple Wellington.
‘There’s no mention of gold?’ Sharpe had expected elucidation at this meeting. He seemed to find only more mysteries.
‘We didn’t think it wise to tell too many people about a great pile of gold that’s looking for an owner. It sort of encourages greed, if you follow me.’
A moth flew crazy circles round the candle flames. Sharpe heard dogs barking in the town, the tramping of horses in the stables behind the headquarters.
‘So how much gold?’
‘Kearsey will tell you. It can be carried.’
‘Christ Almighty! Can’t you tell me anything?’
Hogan smiled. ‘Not much. I’ll tell you this much, though.’ He leaned back, locked his fingers behind his head. ‘The war’s going bad, Richard. It’s not our fault. We need men, guns, horses, powder, everything. The enemy gets stronger. But there’s only one thing can save us now, and that’s this money.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you.’ Hogan sighed, pained by hiding something from a trusted friend. ‘We have something that is secret, Richard, and it must stay that way.’ He waved down an interruption. ‘It’s the biggest damned secret I’ve ever seen, and we don’t want anyone to know – anyone. You’ll know in the end, I promise you; everyone will. But for the moment, get the gold; pay for the secret.’
They had marched at midnight. Hogan had waved them farewell, and now with the dawn bleaching the sky the Light Company was climbing the gorge of the river Coa towards the fortress town of Almeida. A shadowy picquet had waved them across the narrow, high bridge that spanned the river, and it had seemed to Sharpe, in that moment, that he was marching into the unknown. The road from the river zigzagged up the side of the gorge. Jagged rocks loomed over the path; the creeping dawn showed a savage landscape half hidden by mist from the water. The men were silent, saving their breath for the steep road.
Almeida, a mile or so ahead, was like an island in French territory. It was a Portuguese fortress town, manned by the Portuguese army under British leaders, but the countryside around was in French hands. Soon, Sharpe knew, the French would have to take Almeida by siege, batter their way through its famous walls, storm the breach, drown the island in blood so they could march safely towards Lisbon. The sentries on the bridge had stamped their feet and waved at the dark hills. ‘No patrols yesterday. You should be all right.’
The Light Company were not worried by the French. If Richard Sharpe wanted to lead them to Paris they would go, blindly confident that he would see them through, and they had grinned when he had told them they were to march behind the enemy patrols, across the Coa, across the river Agueda – for Hogan had known that much – and then back again. But something in Sharpe’s voice had been wrong; no one had said anything, but the knowledge was there that the Captain was worried. Harper had picked it up. He had marched alongside Sharpe as the road dropped towards the Coa, its surface still sticky from the rain.
‘What’s the problem, sir?’
‘There isn’t one.’ Sharpe’s tone had shut off the conversation, but he was remembering Hogan’s final words. Sharpe had been pushing and probing, trying for information that Hogan was not giving. ‘Why us? It sounds like a job for cavalry.’
Hogan nodded. ‘The cavalry tried, and failed. Kearsey says the country’s not good for horses.’
‘But the French cavalry use it?’
Another tired nod. ‘Kearsey says you’ll be all right.’ There was something constrained about Hogan’s voice.
‘You’re worried about it.’
Hogan spread his hands. ‘We should have fetched the gold out days ago. The longer it’s there, the riskier it gets.’
There had been a fraction of silence in the room. The moth had burned its wings, was flapping on the table, and Sharpe crushed it. ‘You don’t think we’ll succeed, do you.’ It was a statement, not a question.
Hogan looked up from the dead moth. ‘No.’
‘So the war’s lost?’ Hogan nodded. Sharpe flicked the moth on to the floor. ‘But the General says there are other tricks up his sleeve. That this isn’t the only hope.’
Hogan’s eyes were tired. ‘He has to say that.’
Sharpe had stood up. ‘So why the hell don’t you send three bloody regiments in? Four. Send the bloody army! Make sure you get the gold.’
‘It’s too far, Richard. There are no roads beyond Almeida. If we attract attention, then the French will be there before us. The regiments could never get across both rivers without a fight, and they’d be outnumbered. No. We’re sending you.’
And now he was climbing the tight bends of the border road, watching the dull horizon for the telltale gleam of a drawn enemy sabre, and marching in the knowledge that he was expected to fail. He hoped Major Kearsey, who waited for the Company in Almeida, had more faith, but Hogan had been diffident about the Major. Sharpe had probed again. ‘Is he unreliable?’
Hogan shook his head. ‘He’s one of the best, Richard, one of the very best. But he’s not exactly the man we’d have chosen for this job.’
He had refused to elaborate. Kearsey, he had told Sharpe, was an exploring officer, one of the men who rode fast horses behind enemy lines, in full uniform, and sent back a stream of information, despatches captured from the French by the Partisans and maps of the countryside. It was Kearsey who had discovered the gold, informed Wellington, and only Kearsey knew its exact location. Kearsey, suitable or not, was the key to success.
The road flattened on the high crest of the Coa’s east bank, and ahead, silhouetted in the dawn light, was Portugal’s northern fortress, Almeida. It dominated the countryside for miles around, a town built on a hill that rose to the huge bulk of a cathedral and a castle side by side. Below those buildings, massive and challenging, the thick-tiled houses fell away down the steep streets until they met Almeida’s real defences. In this early light, at this distance, it was the castle that impressed, with its four huge turrets and crenellated walls, but Sharpe knew that the high battlements had long been out of date, replaced by the low, grey ramparts that spread a vast, grim pattern round the town. He did not envy the French. They would have to attack across open ground, through a scientifically designed maze of ditches and hidden walls, and all the time they would be enfiladed by dozens of masked batteries that could pour canister and grape into the killing-ground between the long, sleek arms of the star-like fortifications. Almeida had been fortified, its defences rebuilt only seven years before, and the old, redundant castle looked down on the modern, unglamorous, granite monster that was designed only to lure, to trap, and to destroy.
Closer, the defences seemed less threatening. It was an illusion. The old days of sheer, high walls were past and the best modern fortresses were surrounded by smooth hummocks, like the ones the Light Company approached, that were so gently sloping that even a cripple could walk up without losing breath. The hummocks were there to deflect the besiegers’ cannon shots, to send the balls and shells ricocheting into the air, over the defences, so that when the infantry attacked, up the gentle, innocent grass slopes, they would find the murderous traps intact. At the top of that slope was hidden a vast ditch, at the far side of which was a granite-faced wall, topped by belching guns, and even if that were taken there was another behind, and another, and Sharpe was glad he was not summoning the strength to attack a fortress like this. It would come, he knew, because before the French were spat out of Spain the British would have to take towns like this, and he pushed away the thought. Sufficient unto the day was that evil.
The Portuguese defenders were as impressive as their walls. The Company marched through the first gate, a tunnel that took two right turns beneath the first massive wall, and Sharpe was pleased at the look of the Portuguese. They were nothing like the shambles that had called itself the army of Spain. The Portuguese looked confident, with the arrogance of soldiers secure in their own strength and unafraid of the French storm that would soon lap round the walls of their huge, granite star. The town’s steep streets were virtually empty of civilians, most of the houses barred shut, and to Sharpe it was as if Almeida were waiting, empty, for some great event. It was certainly prepared. From the guns on the inner walls to the bales of food stacked in courtyards, the fortress was supplied and ready. It was Portugal’s front door and Masséna would need all his fox-like cunning and strength to open it.
Brigadier Cox, the English Commander of the garrison, had his headquarters at the top of the hill, but Sharpe found him outside, in the main Plaza, watching his men roll barrels of gunpowder into the door of the cathedral. Cox, tall and distinguished, returned Sharpe’s salute.
‘Honoured, Sharpe, honoured. Heard about Talavera.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ He glanced at the barrels going into the dark interior of the cathedral. ‘You seem well prepared.’
Cox nodded happily. ‘We are, Sharpe, we are. Filled to the gunwales and ready to go.’ He nodded at the cathedral. ‘That’s our magazine.’
Sharpe showed his surprise and Cox laughed. ‘The best defences in Portugal and nowhere to store the ammunition. Can you imagine that? Luckily they built that cathedral to last. Walls like Windsor Castle and crypts like dungeons. Hey presto, a magazine. No, I can’t complain, Sharpe. Plenty of guns, plenty of ammunition. We should hold the Froggies up for a couple of months.’ He looked speculatively at Sharpe’s faded green jacket. ‘I could do with some prime Riflemen, though.’
Sharpe could see his Company being ordered on to the main ramparts and he swiftly changed the subject. ‘I understand I’m to report to Major Kearsey, sir.’
‘Ah! Our exploring officer! You’ll find him in the place nearest to God.’ Cox laughed.
Sharpe was puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘Top of the castle, Sharpe. Can’t miss it, right by the telegraph. Your lads can get breakfast in the castle.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Sharpe climbed the winding stairs of the mast-topped turret and, as he came into the early sunlight, understood Cox’s reference to nearness to God. Beyond the wooden telegraph with its four motionless bladders, identical to the arrangement in Celorico, Sharpe saw a small man on his knees, an open Bible lying next to a telescope at his side. Sharpe coughed and the small man opened a fierce, battling eye.
‘Yes?’
‘Sharpe, sir. South Essex.’
Kearsey nodded, shut the eye, and went back to his prayers, his lips moving at double speed until he had finished. Then he took a deep breath, smiled at the sky as if his duty were done, and turned an abruptly fierce expression on Sharpe. ‘Kearsey.’ He stood up, his spurs clicking on the stones. The cavalryman was a foot shorter than Sharpe, but he seemed to compensate for his lack of height with a look of Cromwellian fervour and rectitude. ‘Pleased to meet you, Sharpe.’ His voice was gruff and he did not sound in the least pleased. ‘Heard about Talavera, of course. Well done.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Kearsey had succeeded in making the compliment sound as if it had come from a man who had personally captured two or three dozen Eagles and was encouraging an apprentice. The Major closed his Bible.
‘Do you pray, Sharpe?’
‘No, sir.’
‘A Christian?’
It seemed a strange conversation to be having on the verge of losing the whole war, but Sharpe knew of other officers like this who carried their faith to war like an extraordinary weapon.
‘I suppose so, sir.’
Kearsey snorted. ‘Don’t suppose! Either you’re washed in the blood of the Lamb or not. I’ll talk to you later about it.’
‘Yes, sir. Something to look forward to.’
Kearsey glared at Sharpe, but decided to believe him. ‘Glad you’re here, Sharpe. We can get going. You know what we’re doing?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘One day’s march to Casatejada, pick up the gold, escort it back to British lines, and send it on its way. Clear?’
‘No, sir.’
Kearsey had already started walking towards the staircase, and, hearing Sharpe’s words, he stopped abruptly, swivelled, and looked up at the Rifleman. The Major was wearing a long, black cloak, and in the first light he looked like a malevolent small bat.
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘Where the gold is, who it belongs to, how we get it out, where it’s going, do the enemy know, why us and not cavalry, and most of all, sir, what it’s going to be used for.’
‘Used for?’ Kearsey looked puzzled. ‘Used for? None of your business, Sharpe.’
‘So I understand, sir.’
Kearsey was walking back to the battlement. ‘Used for! It’s Spanish gold. They can do what they like with it. They can buy more gaudy statues for their Romish churches, if they want to, but they won’t.’ He started barking, and Sharpe realized, after a moment’s panic, that the Major was laughing. ‘They’ll buy guns, Sharpe, to kill the French.’
‘I thought the gold was for us, sir. The British.’
Kearsey sounded like a dog coughing, Sharpe decided, and he watched as Kearsey almost doubled over with his strange laugh. ‘Forgive me, Sharpe. For us? What a strange idea. It’s Spanish gold, belongs to them. Not for us at all! Oh, no! We’re just delivering it safely to Lisbon and the Royal Navy will ship it down to Cádiz.’ Kearsey started his strange barking again, repeating to himself, ‘For us! For us!’
Sharpe decided it was not the time, or place, to enlighten the Major. It did not matter much what Kearsey thought, as long as the gold was taken safely back over the river Coa. ‘Where is it now, sir?’
‘I told you. Casatejada.’ Kearsey bristled at Sharpe, as though he resented giving away precious information, but then he seemed to relent and sat on the edge of the telegraph platform and riffled the pages of his Bible as he talked. ‘It’s Spanish gold. Sent by the government to Salamanca to pay the army. The army gets defeated, remember? So the Spaniards have a problem. Lot of money in the middle of nowhere, no army, and the countryside crawling with the French. Luckily a good man got hold of the gold, told me, and I came up with the solution.’
‘The Royal Navy.’
‘Precisely! We send the gold back to the government in Cádiz.’
‘Who’s the “good man”, sir?’
‘Ah. Cesar Moreno. A fine man, Sharpe. He leads a guerrilla band. He brought the gold from Salamanca.’
‘How much, sir?’
‘Sixteen thousand coins.’
The amount meant nothing to Sharpe. It depended how much each coin weighed. ‘Why doesn’t Moreno bring it over the border, sir?’
Kearsey stroked his grey moustache, twitched at his cloak, and seemed unsettled by the question. He looked fiercely at Sharpe, as if weighing up whether to say more, and then sighed. ‘Problems, Sharpe, problems. Moreno’s band is small and he’s joined up with another group, a bigger group, and the new man doesn’t want us to help. This man’s marrying Moreno’s daughter, has a lot of influence, and he’s our problem. He thinks we just want to steal the gold! Can you imagine that?’ Sharpe could, very well, and he suspected that Wellington had more than imagined it. Kearsey slapped at a fly. ‘Wasn’t helped by our failure two weeks ago.’
‘Failure?’
Kearsey looked unhappy. ‘Cavalry, Sharpe. My own regiment, too. We sent fifty men and they got caught.’ He chopped his hand up and down as if it were a sabre. ‘Fifty. So we lost face to the Spanish. They don’t trust us, and they think we’re losing the war and planning to take their gold. El Católico wants to move the gold by land, but I’ve persuaded them to give us one more chance!’
After a dearth of information Sharpe was suddenly being deluged with new facts. ‘El Católico, sir?’
‘I told you! The new man. Marrying Moreno’s daughter.’
‘But why El Católico?’
A stork flapped its way up into the sky, legs back, long wings edged with black, and Kearsey watched it for a second or two.
‘Ah! See what you mean. The Catholic. He prays over his victims before he kills them. The Latin prayer for the dead. Just as a joke, of course.’ The Major sounded gloomy. His fingers riffled the pages as if he were drawing strength from the psalms and stories that were beneath his fingertips. ‘He’s a dangerous man, Sharpe. Ex-officer, knows how to fight, and he doesn’t want us to be involved.’
Sharpe took a deep breath, walked to the battlement, and stared at the rocky northern landscape. ‘So, sir. The gold is a day’s march from here, guarded by Moreno and El Católico, and our job is to fetch it, persuade them to let us take it, and escort it safely over the border.’
‘Quite right.’
‘What’s to stop Moreno already taking it, sir? I mean, while you’re here.’
Kearsey gave a single snorting bark. ‘Thought of that, Sharpe. Left a man there, one of the Regiment, good man. He’s keeping an eye on things, keeping the Partisans sweet.’ Kearsey stood up and, in the growing heat of the sun, shrugged off his cloak. His uniform was blue with a pelisse of silver lace and grey fur. At his side was the polished-steel scabbard of the curved sabre. It was the uniform of the Prince of Wales Dragoons, of Claud Hardy, of Josefina’s lover, Sharpe’s usurper. Kearsey pushed the Bible into his slung sabretache. ‘Moreno trusts us; it’s only El Católico we have to worry about, and he likes Hardy. I think it will be all right.’
‘Hardy?’ Sharpe had somehow sensed it, the feeling of an incomplete story.
‘That’s right.’ Kearsey glanced sharply at the Rifleman. ‘Captain Claud Hardy. You know him?’
‘No, sir.’
Which was true. He had never met him, just watched Josefina walk away to Hardy’s side. He had thought that the rich young cavalry officer was in Lisbon, dancing away the nights, and instead he was here! Waiting a day’s march away. He stared westward, away from Kearsey, at the deep, dark-shadowed gorge of the Coa that slashed across the landscape. Kearsey stamped his feet.
‘Anything else, Sharpe?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. We march tonight. Nine o’clock.’
Sharpe turned back. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘One rule, Sharpe. I know the country, you don’t, so no questions, just instant obedience.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Company prayers at sunset, unless the Froggies interfere.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Good Lord!
Kearsey returned Sharpe’s salute. ‘Nine o’clock, then. At the north gate!’ He turned and clattered down the winding stairs and Sharpe went back to the battlement, leaned on the granite, and stared unseeing at the huge sprawl of defences beneath him.
Josefina. Hardy. He squeezed the silver ring, engraved with an eagle, which she had bought for him before the battle, but which had been her parting gift when the killing had finished along the banks of the Portina stream north of Talavera. He had tried to forget her, to tell himself she was not worth it, and as he looked up at the rough countryside to the north he tried to force his mind away from her, to think of the gold, of El Católico, the praying killer, and Cesar Moreno. But to do the job with Josefina’s lover? God damn it!
A midshipman, far from the sea, came on to the turret to man the telegraph, and he looked curiously at the tall, darkhaired Rifleman with the scarred face. He looked, the midshipman decided, a dangerous beast, and he watched as a big, tanned hand fidgeted with the hilt of an enormous, straight-bladed sword.
‘She’s a bitch!’ Sharpe said.
‘Pardon, sir?’ The midshipman, fifteen years old, was frightened.
Sharpe turned, unaware he had been joined. ‘Nothing, son, nothing.’ He grinned at the bemused boy. ‘Gold for greed, women for jealousy, and death for the French. Right?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’
The boy watched the tall man go down the stairs. Once he had wanted to join the army, years before, but his father had simply looked up and said that anyone who joined the army was stark mad. He started untying the ropes that secured the bladders. His father, as ever, had been undoubtedly right.
CHAPTER FOUR
On foot Kearsey was busy and, to Sharpe’s eyes, ludicrous. He strutted with tiny steps, legs scissoring quickly, while his eyes, above the big, grey moustache, peered acutely at the mass of taller humanity. On horseback, though, astride his huge roan, he was at home as if he had been restored to his true height. Sharpe was impressed by the night’s march. The moon was thin and cloud-ridden, yet the Major led the Company unerringly across difficult country. They crossed the frontier somewhere in the darkness, a grunt from Kearsey announcing the news, and then the route led downhill to the river Agueda, where they waited for the first sign of dawn.
If Kearsey was impressive he was also annoying. The march had been punctuated with advice, condescending advice, as if Kearsey were the only man who understood the problems. He certainly knew the countryside, from the farmlands along the road from Almeida to Ciudad Rodrigo, to the high country that was to the north, the chaos of the valleys and hills that dropped finally to the river Duero, into which the Coa and the Agueda flowed. He knew the villages, the paths, the rivers and where they could be crossed; he knew the high hills and the sheltered passes, and within the lonely countryside he knew the guerrilla bands and where they could be found. Sitting in the mist that ghosted up from the Agueda, he talked, in his gruff voice, about the Partisans. Sharpe and Knowles listened, the unseen river a sound in the background, as the Major talked of ambushes and murders, the secret places where arms were stored, and the signal codes that flashed from hilltop to hilltop.
‘Nothing can move here, Sharpe, nothing, without the Partisans knowing. The French have to escort every messenger with four hundred men. Imagine that? Four hundred sabres to protect one despatch and sometimes even that’s not enough.’
Sharpe could imagine it, and even pity the French for it. Wellington paid hard cash for every captured despatch; sometimes they came to his headquarters with the crusted blood of the dead messenger still crisp on the paper. The messenger who died clean in such a fight was lucky. The wounded were taken not for the information but for revenge, and the war in the hills between French and Spanish was a terrible tale of ghastly pain. Kearsey was riffling the pages of his unseen Bible as he talked.
‘By day the men are shepherds, farmers, millers, but by night they’re killers. For every Frenchman we kill, they kill two. Think what it’s like for the French, Sharpe. Every man, every woman, every child, is an enemy in the countryside. Even the catechism has changed. “Are the French true believers?” “No, they are the devil’s spawn, doing his work, and must be eradicated.”’ He gave his barking laugh.
Knowles stretched his legs. ‘Do the women fight, sir?’
‘They fight, Lieutenant, like the men. Moreno’s daughter, Teresa, is as good as any man. She knows how to ambush, to pursue. I’ve seen her kill.’
Sharpe looked up and saw the mist silvering overhead as the dawn leaked across the hills. ‘Is she the one who’s to marry El Católico?’
Kearsey laughed. ‘Yes.’ He was silent for a second. ‘They’re not all good, of course. Some are just brigands, looting their own people.’ He was silent again. Knowles picked up his uncertainty.
‘Do you mean El Católico, sir?’
‘No.’ Kearsey still seemed uncertain. ‘But he’s a hard man. I’ve seen him skin a Frenchman alive, inch by inch, and praying over him at the same time.’ Knowles made a sound of disgust, but Kearsey, visible now, shook his head. ‘You must understand, Lieutenant, how much they hate. Teresa’s mother was killed by the French and she did not die well.’ He peered down at the Bible, trying to read the print, then looked up at the lightening mist. ‘We must move. Casatejada’s a two-hour march.’ He stood up. ‘You’ll find it best to tie your boots round your neck as we cross the river.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe said it patiently. He had probably crossed a thousand rivers in his years as a soldier, but Kearsey insisted on treating them all as pure amateurs.
Once over the Agueda, waist-high and cold, they were beyond the farthest British patrols. From now on there was no hope of any friendly cavalry, no Captain Lossow with his German sabres, to help out in trouble. This was French territory, and Kearsey rode ahead, searching the landscape for signs of the enemy. The hills were the French hunting-ground, the scene of countless small and bloody encounters between cavalrymen and Partisans, and Kearsey led the Light Company on paths high up the slopes so that should an enemy patrol appear they could scramble quickly into the high rocks where horsemen could not follow. The Company seemed excited, glad to be near the enemy, and they grinned at Sharpe as he watched them file past on the goat track.
He had only twenty Riflemen now, including himself and Harper, out of the thirty-one survivors he had led from the horror of the retreat to Corunna. They were good men, the Green Jackets, the best in the army, and he was proud of them. Daniel Hagman, the old poacher, who was the best marksman. Parry Jenkins, five feet and four inches of Welsh loquaciousness, who could tease fish out of the most reluctant water. Jenkins, in battle, partnered Isaiah Tongue, educated in books and alcohol, who believed Napoleon was an enlightened genius, England a foul tyranny, but nevertheless fought with the cool deliberation of a good Rifleman. Tongue wrote letters for the other men in the Company, read their infrequent mail when it arrived, and dearly wanted to argue his levelling ideas with Sharpe, but dared not. They were good men.
The other thirty-three were all Redcoats, armed with the smoothbore Brown Bess musket, but they had proved themselves at Talavera and in the tedious winter patrols. Lieutenant Knowles, still awed by Sharpe, but a good officer, decisive and fair. Sharpe nodded at James Kelly, an Irish Corporal, who had stunned the Battalion by marrying Pru Baxter, a widow who was a foot taller and two stones heavier than the skinny Kelly, but the Irishman had hardly stopped smiling in the three months since the marriage. Sergeant Read, the Methodist, who worried about the souls of the Company, and so he should. Most were criminals, avoiding justice by enlisting, and nearly all were drunks, but they were in Sharpe’s Company and he would defend them, even the useless ones like Private Batten or Private Roach, who pimped his wife for a shilling a time.
Sergeant Harper, the best of them all, moved alongside Sharpe. Next to the seven-barrelled gun he had slung two packs belonging to men who were falling with tiredness after the night’s march. He nodded ahead. ‘What’s next, sir?’
‘We pick up the gold and come back. Simple.’
Harper grinned. In battle he was savage, crooning the old stories of the Gaelic heroes, the warriors of Ireland, but away from the fighting he covered his intelligence with a charm that would have fooled the devil. ‘You believe that, sir?’
Sharpe had no time to reply. Kearsey had stopped, two hundred yards ahead, and dismounted. He pointed left, up the slope, and Sharpe repeated the gesture. The Company moved quickly into the stones and crouched while Sharpe, still puzzled, ran towards the Major. ‘Sir?’
Kearsey did not reply. The Major was alert, like a dog pointing at game, but Sharpe could see from his eyes that Kearsey was not sure what had alarmed him. Instinct, the soldier’s best gift, was working, and Sharpe, who trusted his own instinct, could sense nothing. ‘Sir?’
The Major nodded at a hilltop, half a mile away. ‘See the stones?’
Sharpe could see a heap of boulders on the peak of the hill. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘There’s a white stone showing, yes?’ Sharpe nodded, and Kearsey seemed relieved that his eyes had not deceived him. ‘That means the enemy are abroad. Come on.’
The Major led his horse, Marlborough, into the tangle of rocks, and Sharpe followed patiently, wondering how many other secret signs they had passed in the night. The Company were curious, but silent, and Kearsey led them over the crest, into a rock-strewn valley, and then eastwards again, back on course for the village where the gold should be waiting.
‘They won’t be up here, Sharpe.’ The Major sounded certain.
‘Where, then?’
Kearsey nodded ahead, past the head of the valley. He looked worried. ‘Casatejada.’
To the north, over the hilltops, a bank of cloud was ominous and still on the horizon, but otherwise the sky was arching an untouched blue over the pale grass and rocks. To Sharpe’s eyes there was nothing strange in the landscape. A rock thrush, startled and noisy, flew from the Company’s path, and Sharpe saw Harper smile with enjoyment. The Sergeant could have spent his life watching birds, but he gave the thrush only a few seconds’ attention before searching the skyline again. Everything seemed innocent, a high valley in morning sunshine, yet the whole Company was alert because of the Major’s sudden knowledge.
A mile up the valley, as the sides began to flatten out into a bleak hilltop, Kearsey tethered Marlborough to a rock. He talked to the horse and Sharpe knew that on many lonely days, behind French lines, the small Major would have only the big, intelligent roan for company. The Major turned back to Sharpe, the gruffness back in his voice. ‘Come on. Keep low.’
The skyline proved to be a false crest. Beyond was a gully, shaped like a bowl, and as Sharpe ran over the lip he realized that Kearsey had brought them to a vantage point high in the hills that was overlooked only by the peak with its white, warning stone. It was a steep scramble over the edge, impossible for a horse, and the Company tumbled into the bowl and sat, grateful for the rest, as Kearsey beckoned Sharpe to the far side. ‘Keep low!’ The two officers used hands and feet to climb the bowl’s inner face and then they were peering over the edge. ‘Casatejada.’ Kearsey spoke almost grudgingly, as if not wanting to share this high and secret village with another Englishman.
Casatejada was beautiful: a small village in a high valley that was built where two streams met and irrigated enough land to keep forty or so houses filled with food. Sharpe began to memorize the layout of the village, two miles away, from the old fortress-tower at one end of the main street, a reminder that this was border country, past the church, to the one large house at the far end of the street. He dared not use his telescope, pointing it eastwards towards the rising sun that might flash on the lens, but even without it, he could see that the house was built round a lavish courtyard and that within its outer walls were stables and outbuildings. He asked Kearsey about the house.
‘Moreno’s house, Sharpe.’
‘He’s rich?’
Kearsey shrugged. ‘Used to be. The family own the whole valley and a lot of other land. But who’s rich with the French here?’ Kearsey’s eyes flicked left, down the street. ‘The castillo. Ruins now, but they used to take refuge there from the raids over the hills.’
There were no animals in sight, no humans, just the wind stirring the barley that should have been harvested. The single village street was empty and Sharpe let his eyes travel beyond the church, across a flat pasture to some stunted fruit trees, and there, half hidden by the orchard, was another church and a bell-tower.
‘What’s the far church?’
‘Hermitage.’
‘Hermitage?’
Kearsey grunted. ‘Some holy man lived there, long ago, and they built the shrine. It’s not used now, except that the graveyard’s there.’ Sharpe could see the walled cemetery through the trees. Kearsey nodded at the hermitage. ‘That’s where the gold is.’
‘Where’s it hidden?’
‘In the Moreno vault, inside the hermitage.’
The village street ran left and right across Sharpe’s vision. To the right, to the south, the street became a road that disappeared in the purple shadows at the far end of the valley, miles away, but to the left the road came nearer to the hills before disappearing into the slopes. He pointed.
‘Where does it go?’
‘Ford at San Anton.’ Kearsey was chewing his grey moustache, glancing up at the white stone on the hilltop, back to the village. ‘They must be there.’
‘Who?’
‘The French.’
Nothing moved, except the wind on the heavy barley. Kearsey’s eyes flicked up and down the valley. ‘An ambush.’
‘What do you mean, sir?’ Sharpe was beginning to understand that in this kind of warfare he knew nothing.
Kearsey spoke quietly. ‘The weathervane on the church. It’s moving. When the Partisans are in the village they jam it with a metal rod so you know they’re there. There are no animals. The French have butchered them for food. They’re waiting, Sharpe, in the village, and they want the Partisans to think they’ve gone.’
‘Will they?’
Kearsey gave his asthmatic bark. ‘No. They’re too clever. The French can wait all day.’
‘And us, sir?’
Kearsey flashed one of his fierce glances on Sharpe. ‘We wait, too.’
The men had piled their arms on the floor of the bowl, and as the sun rose they used the weapons to support spread greatcoats to give themselves shade. The water in the canteens was brackish but drinkable, and the Company grumbled because, before leaving Almeida, Sharpe, Harper and Knowles had virtually stripped each man and taken away twelve bottles of wine and two of rum. Even so, Sharpe knew, someone would have drink, but not enough to do any harm. The sun’s heat increased, baking the rocks, while most of the Company slept, heads pillowed on haversacks, and single sentries watched the empty landscape around the hidden gully. Sharpe was frustrated. He could climb the gully’s rim, see where the gold was stored, see where the survival of the army was hidden in a seemingly uninhabited valley, yet he could do nothing. As midday approached he slept.
‘Sir!’ Harper was shaking him. ‘We’ve got action.’
He had slept no more than fifteen minutes. ‘Action?’
‘In the valley, sir.’
The Company were stirring, looking eagerly at Sharpe, but he waved them down. They must stifle their curiosity and watch, instead, as Sharpe and Harper climbed up beside Kearsey and Knowles on the rock rim. Kearsey was grinning. ‘Watch this.’
From the north, from a track that led down from high pastures, five horsemen trotted slowly towards the village. Kearsey had his telescope extended and Sharpe found his own. ‘Partisans, sir?’
Kearsey nodded. ‘Three of them.’
Sharpe pulled out his glass, his fingers feeling the inset brass plate, and found the small group of horsemen. The Spaniards rode, straight-backed and easy, looking relaxed and comfortable, but their two companions were quite different. Naked men, tied to the saddles, and through the glass Sharpe could see their heads jerking with fear as they wondered what was to happen to them.
‘Prisoners.’ Kearsey said the word fiercely.
‘What’s going to happen?’ Knowles was fidgeting.
‘Wait.’ Kearsey was still grinning.
Nothing stirred in the village. If the French were there they were well hidden. Kearsey chuckled. ‘The ambushers ambushed!’
The horsemen had stopped. Sharpe swung the glass back. One Spaniard held the reins of the prisoners’ horses while the others dismounted. The naked men were pulled from their saddles and the ropes that had tied their legs beneath the horses’ bellies were used to lash their ankles tightly together. Then more rope was produced, thick loops hanging from the Partisans’ saddles, and the two Frenchmen were tied behind the horses. Knowles had borrowed Sharpe’s telescope and beneath his tan he paled, shocked by the sight.
‘They won’t run far,’ the Lieutenant said half in hope.
Kearsey shook his head. ‘They will.’
Sharpe took the glass back. The Partisans were unfastening their saddle-bags, going back to the horses with the roped men. ‘What are they doing, sir?’
‘Thistles.’
Sharpe understood. Along the paths and in the high rocks huge purple thistles grew, often as high as a man, and the Spanish, a horse at a time, were thrusting the heads of the spiny plants beneath the empty saddles. The first horse began fighting, rearing up, but was held firm, until with a final crack over its rump the beast was released and it sprung off, infuriated by the pain, the prisoner jerked by the legs and scraped in a cloud of dust behind the angry horse.
The second horse followed, pulling left and right, zigzagging behind the first towards the village. The three Spaniards mounted and stood their horses quietly. One had a long cigar, and through the telescope Sharpe saw the smoke drift over the fields.
‘Good God.’ Knowles stared unbelieving.
‘No need for blasphemy.’ Kearsey’s gruff reprimand did not hide the excitement in his voice.
The two naked, tied men were invisible in the dust, but, as the horses swerved at a rock, Sharpe caught a glimpse, a flash through the cloud, of a body streaked red, and then the horse was running again. By now the Frenchmen would be unconscious, the pain gone, but the Partisans had guessed right and Sharpe saw the first movement in the village as the gates of Cesar Moreno’s big house were thrown open and cavalry, hidden all morning, rode on to the street. Sharpe saw sky-blue trousers, brown jackets, and the tall fur helmet. ‘Hussars.’
‘Wait. This is the clever bit.’ Kearsey could not hide his admiration.
The Hussars, sabres drawn, cantered down the street to meet the two horses with their terrible attachments. It seemed that the Spanish plan was to end in anticlimax, for the Hussars would rescue the two bloody and battered Frenchmen at the northern end of the village, but then the two horses became aware of the cavalry. They stopped.
‘Jesus,’ Harper muttered. He was using Sharpe’s glass. ‘One of those buggers is moving.’
Sharpe could see him. Far from unconscious, one of the two naked Frenchmen was trying to sit up, a writhing mass of blood, but suddenly he was whirled back to the roadway, wrenched terribly about, and the horses were moving, away from the Hussars, splitting apart in a mad, panicked gallop. Kearsey nodded in satisfaction. ‘They won’t go near French cavalry, not unless they’re ridden. They’re too used to running from it.’
There was chaos in the valley. The horses, with their thistle-driven pain, circled crazily in the fields; the Hussars, all order gone, tried to ride them down, and the nearer the French came to them the more the Spanish horses took the disorganized mass northwards. Sharpe guessed there were a hundred Frenchmen, in undisciplined groups, crossing and recrossing the fields. He looked back to the village, saw more horsemen standing in the street, watching the chase, and he wondered how he would feel if those two bodies were his men, and he knew that he would do what the French were doing: try to rescue them.
‘Good.’ Knowles seemed to have sided, instinctively, with the French.
One of the horses had been caught and quieted, and dismounted French cavalrymen were unbuckling the girth and untying the prisoner. A trumpet sounded, calling order to the scattered Hussars who still raced after the other horse, and at that exact moment, as the trumpet notes reached the gully, El Católico launched his own horsemen from the northern hills. They came down on to the scattered and outnumbered French in a long line, blacks and browns and greys, swords of all descriptions held over their heads, the dust spurting behind them, while from the rocks on the hillside Sharpe saw muskets firing over their heads at the surprised French.
Kearsey almost jumped over the rim with joy. His fist slammed into the rock. ‘Perfect!’
The ambushers had been ambushed.
CHAPTER FIVE
El Católico, the Catholic, led the horsemen from the cover of the hills, and Sharpe found him in the telescope. Kearsey barked out a description, but even without it Sharpe would have recognized the tall man as the leader. ‘Grey cloak, grey boots, long rapier, black horse.’
Kearsey was thumping his fist on the rock, willing the Partisans on, closer and closer to the wheeling French. Sharpe scanned the guerrilla line, looking for the blue and silver of a Prince of Wales Dragoon, but he could see no sign of Captain Hardy. He remembered Kearsey saying that El Católico’s fiancée, Teresa, fought like a man, but he could see no woman in the charging line, just men screaming defiance as the first horses met and the swords chopped down on the outnumbered French.
In the village the trumpets split the quiet; men scrambled on to nervous mounts, sabres hissed from scabbards, but El Católico was no fool. He was not going to fight a regiment and lose. Sharpe saw him waving at his men, turning them back, and the Rifleman searched with the telescope in the obscuring dust for clues to what was happening. The French had been hard-punished. Outnumbered two to one, they had fallen back, taking casualties, and the Spanish charge had given them no time to form a disciplined line. Sharpe saw prisoners, dragged by the arms, going back with the horsemen who had been disciplined, presumably by El Católico, to make the one killing charge and then get out of danger’s way. Sharpe admired the action. The French had been baited, had fallen for the lure, and then been savagely hurt in one quick charge. It was hardly two minutes since the Spanish had appeared and already, hidden by dust, they were returning to the hills and taking with them more prisoners whose fate would be worse than that of the two men who had drawn the Hussars from the safety of the village walls. One man alone stayed in the valley.
El Católico stood his horse and watched the Hussars stretching out from the village. Closer to him were the survivors of the Spanish charge and they now spurred their horses to attack the lone Partisan. El Católico seemed unconcerned. He urged his horse into a canter, away from the safety of the hills, circled in the uncut barley and looked over his shoulder as the French came close. A dozen men were chasing him, leaning over their horses’ manes, sabres stretched out, and it was certain that the tall Partisan leader must be taken until, at the last moment, his horse sidestepped, the thin rapier flashed, one Frenchman was down and the big, black horse with its grey rider was in full gallop to the north and the Hussars were milling in uncertainty where their leader lay dead. Sharpe whistled softly.
Kearsey smiled. ‘He’s the finest swordsman on the border. Probably in Spain. I’ve seen him take on four Frenchmen and he never stopped saying the prayer for their death.’
Sharpe stared into the valley. A hundred horsemen had ridden out to rescue the two prisoners and now two dozen of the Hussars were dead or captured. The Partisans had lost none; the speed of their charge and withdrawal had ensured that, and their leader, staying till the end, had slapped French pride in the face. The black horse was cantering to the hills, its strength obvious, and the French would never catch El Católico.
Kearsey slid down from the skyline. ‘That’s how it’s done.’
Sharpe nodded. ‘Impressive. Except for one thing.’
The fierce eyebrow shot up. ‘What?’
‘What are the French doing in the village?’
Kearsey shrugged. ‘Clearing out a hornets’ nest.’ He waved southwards. ‘Remember their main road is down there. All the supplies for the siege of Almeida go through this area, and when they invade Portugal proper, then everything will come through here. They don’t want Partisans in their rear. They’re clearing them out, or trying to.’
The answer made sense to Sharpe, but he was worried. ‘And the gold, sir?’
‘It’s hidden.’
‘And Hardy?’
Kearsey was annoyed by the questions. ‘He’ll be somewhere, Sharpe; I don’t know. At least El Católico’s here, so we’re not friendless!’ He gave his bark of a laugh and then pulled at his moustache. ‘I think it would be sensible to let him know we’ve arrived.’ He slid down the inner side of the gully. ‘Keep your men here, Sharpe. I’ll ride to El Católico.’
Knowles looked worried. ‘Isn’t that dangerous, sir?’
Kearsey gave the Lieutenant a pitying look. ‘I was not planning to go through the village, Lieutenant.’ He gestured towards the north. ‘I’ll go round the back. I’ll see you again tonight sometime, probably late. Don’t light any fires!’ He strode away, small legs urgent, and Harper waited till he was out of earshot.
‘What did he think we were going to do? Borrow a light from the French?’ He looked at Sharpe and raised his eyebrows. ‘Bloody muddle, sir.’
‘Yes.’
But it was not too bad, Sharpe decided. The French could not stay forever; the Partisans would be back in the village, and then there was only the small problem of persuading El Católico to let the British ‘escort’ the gold towards Lisbon. He turned back towards the valley, watched as the Hussars walked their horses disconsolately towards the village, one of them bearing the bloody horror that had been one of the naked prisoners, then raised his eyes and looked at the hermitage. It was a pity it was the far side of the valley, beyond the village, or else he would have been tempted to search the place that night, Kearsey or no Kearsey. The idea refused to go away and he lay there, the sun hot on his back, and thought of a dozen reasons why he should not make the attempt, and one huge, overriding reason why he should.
The valley settled in peace. The sun burned down on the grass, turning it a paler brown, and still, on the northern horizon, the great cloud bank loomed. There would be rain in a couple of days, Sharpe thought, and then he went back to the route he had planned in his head, down the slope to the road that led to the ford at San Anton, proceed to the big rock that would be a natural marker and then follow the edge of the barley field as far as the stunted fruit trees. Beyond the trees was another barley field that would give good cover and from there it was just fifty yards of open ground to the cemetery and the hermitage. And if the hermitage were locked? He dismissed the idea. A dozen men in the Company had once earned a living by opening up locks they had no right to be near; a lock was no problem, but then there was the task of finding the gold. Kearsey had said it was in the Moreno vault, which should be easy enough to find, and he let his imagination play with the idea of finding the gold in the middle of the night, just two hundred yards from a French regiment, and bringing it safely back to the gully by daybreak. Harper lay beside him, thinking the same thoughts.
‘They won’t move out the village, sir. Not at night.’
‘No.’
‘Be a bit difficult finding our way.’
Sharpe pointed to the route he had planned. ‘Hagman will lead.’
Harper nodded. Daniel Hagman had an uncanny ability to find his way in the darkness. Sharpe often wondered how the old poacher had ever been caught, but he supposed that one night the Cheshireman had drunk too much. It was the usual story. Harper had one more objection. ‘And the Major, sir?’ Sharpe said nothing and Harper nodded. ‘As you say, sir. A pox on the bloody Major.’ The Irish Sergeant grinned. ‘We can do it.’
Sharpe lay in the westering sun, looking at the valley, following the course he had planned until he agreed. It could be done. A pox on Kearsey. He imagined the vault as having a vast stone lid; he saw it, in his mind, being heaved back, to reveal a heap of gold coins that would save the army, defeat the French, and he wondered again why the money was needed. He would have to take all the Company, post a string of guards to face the village, preferably Riflemen, and the gold would have to go in their packs. What if there was more than they could carry? Then they must carry what they could. He wondered about a diversion, a small group of Riflemen in the southern end of the valley to distract the French, but he rejected the idea. Keep it simple. Night attacks could go disastrously wrong and the smallest complication could turn a well-thought plan into a horrid mess that cost lives. He felt the excitement grow. They could do it!
At first the trumpet was so faint that it hardly penetrated Sharpe’s consciousness. Rather it was Harper’s sudden alertness that stirred him, dragged his mind from the gold beneath the Moreno vault, and made him curse as he looked at the road disappearing to the north-east. ‘What was that?’
Harper stared at the empty valley. ‘Cavalry.’
‘North?’
The Sergeant nodded. ‘Nearer to us than the Partisans were, sir. Something’s happening up there.’
They waited, in silence, and watched the valley. Knowles climbed up beside them. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Don’t know.’ Sharpe’s instinct, so dormant this morning, was suddenly screaming at him. He turned and called to the sentry on the far side of the gully. ‘See anything?’
‘No, sir.’
‘There!’
Harper was pointing to the road. Kearsey was in sight, cantering the roan towards the village and looking over his shoulder, and then the Major turned off the road, began covering the rough ground towards the slopes where the Partisans had disappeared in a hidden entry to one of the twisted valleys that spilled into the main valley.
‘What the devil?’
Sharpe’s question was answered as soon as he had spoken. Behind Kearsey was a regiment, rank upon rank of horsemen in blue and yellow, each one wearing a strange, square yellow hat, but that was not their oddest feature. Instead of swords the enemy were carrying lances, long, steel-tipped weapons with their red and white pennants, and as the Major turned off the road the lancers kicked in their heels, dropped their points and the race was on. Knowles shook his head. ‘What are they?’
‘Polish lancers.’
Sharpe’s voice was grim. The Poles had a reputation in Europe: nasty fighters, effective fighters. These were the first he had encountered in his career. He remembered the moustachioed Indian face behind the long pole, the twisting, the way the man had played with him, and the final thrust that had pinned Sergeant Sharpe to a tree and held him there till the Tippoo Sultan’s men had come and pulled the needlesharp blade from his side. He still carried the scar. Bloody lancers.
‘They won’t get him, sir.’ Knowles sounded very sure.
‘Why not?’
‘The Major explained to me, sir. Marlborough’s fed on corn and most cavalry horses are grass-fed. A grass-fed horse can’t catch a corn-fed horse.’
Sharpe raised his eyebrows. ‘Has anyone told the horses?’
The lancers were catching up, slowly and surely, but Sharpe suspected Kearsey was saving the big horse’s strength. He watched the Poles and wondered how many regiments of cavalry the French had thrown up into the hills to wipe out the guerrilla bands. He wondered how long they would stay.
Sharpe had snapped his glass open, found Kearsey, and saw the Major look over his shoulder and urge Marlborough to go faster. The big roan responded, widening the gap from the nearest lancers, and Knowles clapped his hands. ‘Go on, sir!’
‘They must have caught him crossing the road, sir,’ Harper said.
Marlborough was taking the Major out of trouble, stretching the lead, galloping easily. Kearsey had not even bothered to unsheath his sabre and Sharpe was just relaxing when suddenly the big horse reared up, twisted sideways, and Kearsey fell.
‘What the –’
‘Bloody nightjar!’ Harper had seen a bird fly up, startled, right beneath the horse’s nose. Sharpe wondered, irrelevantly, how the Irishman could possibly have identified the bird at such a distance. He focused the glass again. Kearsey was on his feet, Marlborough was unhurt, and the little man was reaching up desperately to put his foot in the stirrup. The trumpet sounded again, the sound delayed by the distance, but Sharpe had already seen the lancers spurring their horses, reaching out with their nine-foot weapons, and he gritted his teeth as Kearsey seemed to take an age in swinging himself into the saddle.
‘Where’s El Católico?’ Knowles asked.
‘Miles away.’ Harper sounded gloomy.
The horse went forward again, Kearsey’s heels raking back, but the lancers were desperately close. The Major turned the roan downslope towards the village, letting his speed build up before turning back, but his horse seemed winded or frightened. The roan’s head tossed nervously, Kearsey urged it, and at the moment when Sharpe knew the lancers must catch him the Major realized it as well. He circled back, sword drawn, and Knowles groaned.
‘He might do it yet.’ Harper spoke gently, as if to a nervous recruit on the battlefield.
Four lancers were closest to the Major. He spurred towards them, singled one out, and Sharpe saw the sabre, point downwards, high in Kearsey’s hand. Marlborough had calmed, and as the lancers thundered in, Kearsey touched the spurs, the horse leaped forward, and the Major had turned the right-hand lance to one side, swivelled his wrist with the speed of a trained swordsman, and one Pole lay beheaded on the ground.
‘Beautiful!’ Sharpe was grinning. Once a man got past the razor tip of a lance he was safe.
Kearsey was through, crouching on Marlborough’s neck, urging the horse on towards the hills, but the first squadron of lancers were close behind their fellows, at full gallop, and the effort was useless. A dust cloud engulfed the Englishman, the silver points disappeared in the storm, and Kearsey was trapped with only his sword to save him. A man reeled out of the fight holding his stomach, and Sharpe knew the sabre had laid open the horseman’s guts. The dust billowed like cannon smoke. The lance points were forced upwards in the press and once – Sharpe was not sure – he thought he saw the slashing light of the lifted sabre. It was magnificent, quite hopeless, one man against a regiment, and Sharpe watched the commotion subside, the dust drift towards the nightjar’s treacherous nest, and the lance points sink to rest. It was over.
‘Poor bastard.’ Harper had not been looking forward to company prayers, but he had never wanted lancers to take away the unpleasant prospect.
‘He’s alive!’ Knowles was pointing. ‘Look!’
It was true. Sharpe rested the glass on the rock rim of the gully and saw the Major riding between two of his captors. There was blood on his thigh, a lot, and Sharpe saw Kearsey trying to stem the flow with his two fists where a lance point had gouged into his right leg. It was a good capture for the Poles. An exploring officer whom they could keep for a few months before exchanging for a Frenchman of equal rank. They could well have recognized him. The exploring officers often rode in sight of their enemy, their uniforms distinct, relying on their fast horses to carry them from trouble, and it was possible that the French would decide not to exchange Kearsey for months; perhaps, Sharpe thought with a sinking feeling, till the British had been driven from Portugal.
The depressing thought made him stare at the hermitage, half hidden by trees, the unlikely place where Wellington’s hopes were pinned. Without Kearsey it was even more important that the Company should try to find the gold that night, but then those hopes, too, were dashed. Half the lancers rode with their prisoner to the village, but the other half, in a curving column, trotted towards the graveyard and its hermitage. Sharpe cursed beneath his breath. There was no hope now of finding the gold that night. The only chance left was to wait until the French had gone, till they had stopped using the village and the hermitage as their base for the campaign against the Partisans in the hills. And when the French did go, El Católico would come, and Sharpe had no doubt that the tall, grey-cloaked Spaniard would use every effort to stop the British from taking the gold. Only one man stood a chance of persuading the Partisan leader, and that man was a prisoner, wounded, in the hands of the lancers. He slid back from the skyline, turned and stared at the Company.
Harper slid down beside him. ‘What do we do, sir?’
‘Do? We fight.’ Sharpe gripped the hilt of the sword. ‘We’ve been spectators long enough. We get the Major out, tonight.’
Knowles heard him, turned an astonished face on them. ‘Get him out, sir? There’s two regiments there!’
‘So? That’s only eight hundred men. There are fifty-three of us.’
‘And a dozen Irish.’ Harper grinned at the Lieutenant.
Knowles scrambled down the slope, looking at them with a disbelieving stare. ‘With respect, sir. You’re mad.’ He began to laugh. ‘Are you serious?’
Sharpe nodded. There was no other choice. Fifty-three men must take on eight hundred, or else the war was lost. He grinned at Knowles. ‘Stop worrying! It’ll be simple!’
And how the hell, he thought, do we do it?
CHAPTER SIX
Sharpe mocked himself. So simple. Just release the Major when two of the finest regiments in the French army were expecting a night attack. The wise course, he thought, was to go home. The French probably had the gold by now, the war was lost, and a sensible man would shoulder his rifle and think about making a living at home. Instead, like a gambler who had lost all but a handful of coins, he was staking everything on one last throw, a throw against odds of sixteen to one.
Which was not, he told himself as the Company filed down a goat track in the darkness, quite true. He had lain on the gully’s rim as the sun westered and watched the French preparations. They were thorough, but in their defence was their weakness, and Sharpe had felt the excitement well up inside, the incipient knowledge of success. The French expected an attack by Partisans, by small groups of silent men who would carry knives, or else who would fire muskets from the darkness, and they had prepared themselves for that ordeal. The village did not help them. The houses either side of the narrow street were jostled by low, ragged outbuildings; the whole making a maze of alleyways and dark corners where a silent assassin held the advantage. The French had no outlying sentries. To put a small group of men out in the fields was to write their death sentence, and the French, accustomed to this kind of fighting, had drawn themselves into makeshift fortresses. Most of the cavalry were in Cesar Moreno’s house with its ample stabling and high, encircling wall. The other fortress, the only other building with a wall high and strong enough, was the hermitage with its cemetery. Both buildings would be crowded, but both safe from the silent knives, and to make them safer the French had embarked on a crusade of systematic destruction. The cottages nearest the Moreno house had been flattened, the ringing of the big hammers on their stone walls carrying up into the gully, and every tree, every door, every stick of furniture, had been cut and splintered and piled into heaps that could be lit so an attacking Partisan would be denied the gift of darkness. The French held the advantage, but only against Partisans. In their wildest dreams they would not imagine the sudden appearance of British infantry, crossbelts vivid in the defensive firelight, muskets flaming disciplined death. Or so Sharpe hoped.
He had one other advantage, slight but important. Kearsey had obviously given his parole, his gentleman’s promise, to his captors that he would not attempt to escape, and Sharpe had seen the small Major limping round the village. Each time, Kearsey had gone back to Moreno’s house, and finally, as the light faded, Sharpe had seen the Major sitting on a balcony, on one of the few pieces of furniture left, so at least the rescuers knew where their goal lay. All that remained was to break into the house and for that speed was vital.
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