Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold (45 page)

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

‘The middle one is the prettiest.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Form up, Sergeant.’

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

‘Bayonets, Sergeant.’

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

‘Only one thing to do, sir.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Company! To the right! Salute!’

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

‘Eyes front!’

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

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

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

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

‘Why not?’

‘No birds, sir. Not even a vulture.’

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

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

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

‘You’re being Irish, Sergeant.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He wanted one?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘How much powder will you use?’

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

‘Why not?’

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

‘Upside down and inside out?’

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

‘Will it work?’

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

‘How much longer?’

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

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

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

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

‘They’re our allies, remember.’

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

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

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

‘What are they doing?’

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

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

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

‘He’s what?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Pendleton!’

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

‘Do you see anything, sir?’

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

‘Chasseurs.’

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

‘Two hundred, Sharpe?’

‘That’s what I make it.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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