Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold (66 page)

Lawford stared at the two men, at the tiredness beneath the powder stains, at the lines on their faces grooved with blood from scalp wounds, and at the black patches where bayonets had sprung blood into their green jackets. He took the Eagle, disbelieving, knowing it was the one thing that would restore the Battalion’s pride, and hoisted it high into the air. The South Essex, so long scorned by the army, saw it and cheered, slapped each other’s backs, hoisted their muskets triumphantly into the air, and cheered until other Battalions stopped to see what the noise was about.

Above them, on the Medellin, General Hill heard the excitement and trained a telescope onto the Battalion that had so nearly lost the battle. He caught the Eagle in the lens and his mouth dropped open. ‘I’ll be damned! Bless my soul! The strangest thing. The South Essex have captured an Eagle!’

There was a dry laugh beside him, and Hill turned to see Sir Arthur Wellesley. ‘Sir?’

‘I’ll be damned too, Hill. That’s only the third time I’ve ever heard you swear.’ He took the glass from Hill and looked down the slope. ‘God damn it! You’re right! Let’s go and see this strange bird.’

The wine was dark red in the crystal glasses, the deep polished table shone from a score of candles in their silver holders, the paintings whose ancient varnish reflected the circle of light showed grave and eminent ancestors of the Spanish family in whose Talavera mansion Sir Arthur Wellesley was host to a dinner party. Even the food was fairly equal to the occasion. In the week since the battle the supply situation had worsened, the Spanish promises unfulfilled, and the troops were on meagre half-rations. Wellesley, as befitted a General, had done better than most, and Sharpe had sipped a slightly watered down chicken soup, enjoyed jugged hare, eaten amply of Wellesley’s favourite mutton, and listened to his fellow guests grumble about the diet as they drank unending bottles of wine. ‘Daddy’ Hill was there, rubicund and happy, continually smiling at Sharpe, shaking his head and saying, ‘Bless me, Sharpe, an Eagle.’ Robert Crauford sat opposite Sharpe; Black Bob, whom Sharpe had not seen since the retreat to Corunna. Crauford had missed the Battle of Talavera by one day even though he had marched his crack Light Division forty-two miles in twenty-six hours to catch up with Wellesley. Among the troops he had brought from England were the First Battalion of the 95th Rifles, and Sharpe had already been generously entertained by their mess in celebration of his feat. They had done more than that. They had presented him with a new uniform and he sat at Wellesley’s table resplendent in smart green cloth, black leather, and silver trappings. He had kept his old uniform. Tomorrow, when the army marched again, he would prefer to wear the bloodstained cavalry overalls and the comfortable French boots rather than this immaculate uniform and fragile shoes.

Black Bob Crauford was in good form. He was the sternest disciplinarian in the army, a tyrant of excessive rages, loved and hated by his troops. Few Generals asked more of their men, or received it, and if his demands were backed up by savage punishments then at least the men knew Crauford’s justice was even-handed and impartial. Sharpe remembered seeing Crauford catch a company officer being carried piggy-back across an ice cold stream in the northern mountains.

‘Drop him, sir! Drop him!’ the General shouted from the dry safety of his horse to the astonished private and, to the delight of the suffering troops, the officer was dumped unceremoniously into the waist-high water. Now Crauford fixed Sharpe with a cynical eye and thumped the table, rattling the silverware. ‘You were lucky, Sharpe, lucky!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t you “yes sir” me.’ Sharpe saw Wellesley watching with an amused eye. Crauford pushed a bottle of red wine towards Sharpe. ‘You lost damn near half your company! If you hadn’t come back with the Eagle you would have deserved to have been broken right back to private again. Aren’t I right?’

Sharpe inclined his head. ‘You are, sir.’

Crauford leaned back, satisfied, and raised his glass to the Rifleman. ‘But it was damn well done, all the same.’

There was laughter round the table. Lawford, a confection of silver and lace, and confirmed, at least temporarily, as Commanding Officer of the South Essex, leaned back and put two more opened bottles on the table. ‘How’s the excellent Sergeant Harper?’

Sharpe smiled. ‘Recovering, sir.’

‘Was he wounded badly?’ Hill leaned forward into the candlelight, his round, farmer’s face suffused with concern. Sharpe shook his head. ‘No, sir. The Sergeant’s mess of the First Battalion were kind enough to celebrate with him. I believe he proposed the theory that one man from Donegal could drink as much as any three Englishmen.’

Hogan slapped the table. The Irish Engineer was cheerfully drunk and he raised his glass to Wellesley. ‘We Irishmen are never beaten. Isn’t that so, sir?’

Wellesley raised his eyebrows. He had drunk even less than Sharpe. ‘I never count myself an Irishman, Captain Hogan, though perhaps I share that characteristic with them.’

‘Damn that, sir,’ Crauford growled. ‘I’ve heard you say that just because a man is born in a stable it doesn’t make him into a horse!’

There was more laughter. Sharpe leaned back and listened to the talk round the table and let the meal rest heavy in his stomach. The servants were bringing in brandy and cigars, which meant that the evening would soon be over, but he had enjoyed it. He was never comfortable at formal dinners; he had not been born to them, had been to few of them, but these men had made him feel at home and pretended not to notice when he waited for them to pick up their cutlery so that he would know which was the correct pair to use for each course. He had told once more the story of how he and Patrick Harper had hacked their way through the enemy line, of the death of Denny, and how they had been swept along with the fugitives before hacking their way clear with sword and axe.

He sipped his wine, wriggled his toes in the new shoes, and reflected again on his fortune. He remembered his despondency before the battle, of feeling that the promises could not be kept, yet it had all happened. Perhaps he really was lucky, as his men said, but he wished he knew how to preserve that luck. He remembered Gibbons’ falling body, the bayonet deep in his back, and the sight of Harper back from his bird-watching just in time to stop the sabre stabbing down into Sharpe. The next day all traces of the crime had been burned away. The dead, Gibbons among them, had been stacked in naked piles, and the living had thrust wooden faggots deep into the corpses and set fire to them. There had been far too many for burial, and for two days the fires were fed with more wood and the stench hung over the town until the ashes were scattered across the Portina valley and the only signs of the battle were the discarded equipment no-one could be bothered to retrieve and the scorched grass where the flames had roasted the wounded.

‘Sharpe?’

He started. Someone had spoken his name, and he had missed what was said. ‘Sir? I’m sorry.’

Wellesley was smiling at him. ‘Captain Hogan was saying that you’ve been improving Anglo-Portuguese relations?’

Sharpe glanced at Hogan, who raised his eyebrows impishly. All week the Irishman had been determinedly cheerful about Josefina, and Sharpe, with three Generals watching him, had no option but to smile and give a modest shrug.

‘Fortune favours the brave, eh, Sharpe?’ Hill grinned.

‘Yes, sir.’

He leaned back and let the conversation flow on. He missed her. It was only just over two weeks since the night he had followed her from the inn courtyard into the darkness by the stream, and since then he had spent only five nights with her. And now there would be no more. He had known as soon as he had reached Talavera, on the morning after the battle, and she had kissed him and smiled at him while in the background Agostino packed the leather saddlebags and folded up the dresses he had not had time to see her wear. She had walked with him through the town, clinging onto his elbow, looking up into his face as though she were a child. ‘It would never have lasted, Richard.’

‘I know.’ He believed otherwise.

‘Do you?’

She wanted him to say goodbye gracefully, and it was the least he could do. He told her about Gibbons; about the final look before the bayonet took its revenge. She held his arm tight. ‘I’m sorry, Richard.’

‘For Gibbons?’

‘No. That you had to do it. It was my fault, I was a fool.’

‘No.’ It was strange, he thought, how when lovers say goodbye they take all the blame. ‘It wasn’t your fault. I promised to protect you. I didn’t.’

They walked into a small, sunlit square and stared at a convent which formed one side of the plaza. Fifteen hundred British wounded were in the building, and the army surgeons were working on the first floor. Screams came clearly from the windows and, with them, a grisly flow of severed limbs that piled up beside a tree: an ever growing heap of arms and legs that was guarded by two bored privates whose job was to chase away the hungry dogs from the mangled flesh. Sharpe shivered at the sight and prayed the soldiers’ prayer; that he would be delivered from the surgeons with their serrated blades and blood-stiff aprons.

Josefina had plucked his elbow and they turned away from the convent. ‘I have a present for you.’

He looked down at her. ‘I have nothing for you.’

She seemed embarrassed. ‘You owe Mr Hogan twenty guineas?’

‘You’re not giving me money!’ He let his anger show.

Josefina shook her head. ‘I’ve already paid him. Don’t be angry!’ He had tried to pull away but she clung on. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it, Richard. I paid him. You kept pretending you had enough money, but I knew you were borrowing.’ She gave him a tiny paper packet and did not look at him because she knew he was upset.

Inside the paper was a ring, made of silver, and on the boss was engraved an eagle. Not a French eagle, holding a thunderbolt, but an eagle all the same. She looked up at him, pleased at his expression. ‘I bought it in Oropesa. For you.’

Sharpe had not known what to say. He had stammered his thanks and now, sitting with the Generals, he let his fingers feel the silver ring. They had walked back to the house and, waiting outside, there had been a cavalry officer with two spare horses. ‘Is that him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he’s rich?’

She had smiled. ‘Very. He’s a good man, Richard. You’d like him.’

Sharpe had laughed. ‘I doubt it.’ He wanted to tell her how much he would not like Claud Hardy, with his stupid sounding name and his rich uniform and his thorough-bred horses. The Dragoon had watched them as she looked up at Sharpe.

‘I can’t stay with the army, Richard.’

‘So you’re going back to Lisbon?’

She nodded. ‘We’re not going to Madrid, are we?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, it has to be Lisbon.’ She smiled at him. ‘He has a house in Belem, a big one. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘I can’t follow an army, Richard.’ She was pleading for understanding.

‘I know. But armies follow you, yes?’ It was a clumsy attempt at gallantry, and it had pleased her, but now it was time to part and he wanted her to stay. He did not know what to say. ‘Josefina? I’m sorry.’

She touched his arm and there was the gleam of tears in her eyes. She blinked them away and forced herself to sound happy. ‘One day, Richard, you will fall in love with the right girl? You promise?’

He had not watched her walk to the Dragoon but instead turned away to rejoin the company in the stench of the dead on the battlefield.

‘Captains shouldn’t marry.’ Crauford thumped the table and Sharpe jumped. ‘Isn’t that true?’

Sharpe did not reply. He suspected Crauford was right, and he determined, again, to thrust away the memory of Josefina. She was on her way to Lisbon, to the big house, to live with a man who was to join the Lisbon garrison and live a life of dancing and diplomacy. Damn all of it. He drank his wine, reached for the bottle, and forced himself to listen to the conversation which was now as gloomy as his thoughts. They were talking of the fifteen hundred wounded men in the convent who would have to be abandoned to the care of the Spanish. Hill was peering worriedly at Wellesley. ‘Will Cuesta look after them?’

‘I wish I could say “yes”.’ Wellesley sipped his wine. ‘The Spanish have failed us in every promise. It was not easy to leave our wounded to their care but we have no choice, gentlemen, no choice.’

Hill shook his head. ‘The retreat will not be received well in England.’

‘Damn England!’ Wellesley spoke with asperity, his eyes suddenly alive with anger. ‘I know what England will say; that once again we have been driven from Spain, and so we have, gentlemen, so we have!’ He leaned back in his chair and Sharpe could see the tiredness on his face. The other officers were still, listening intently, and like Sharpe they could see in Wellesley’s face the difficulty of the decision he had taken. ‘But this time—’ the General ran his finger round the wine glass so that it rang— ‘this time we have been driven out, not by the French, but by our allies.’ He let the sarcasm come through on the word. ‘A starving army, gentlemen, is worse than no army. If our allies cannot feed us then we must go where we can feed ourselves and we will come back, I promise you that, but we will come back on our terms and not on the Spanish terms.’ There were murmurs of agreement round the table. Wellesley sipped his wine. ‘The Spanish have failed us everywhere. They promised us food and delivered none. They promised to shield us from Soult’s northern army, and now I find that they did not. Soult, gentlemen, is behind us and unless we move now we will find ourselves a surrounded and starving army simply because we believed General Cuesta and his promises. Now he has promised to look after our wounded.’ Wellesley shook his head. ‘I know what will happen. He will insist on advancing to meet the French, he will be thrashed, and the town will be abandoned to the enemy.’ He shrugged. ‘I am convinced, gentlemen, that they will treat our wounded better than our allies.’

There was silence round the table. The candles flickered and shimmered their reflections on the polished wood. From somewhere, far away, there came the sound of music but it faded with the breeze beyond the heavy curtains. And what happens to Josefina now? Sharpe filled his glass with wine and passed the bottle to Hill. If Wellesley was right, and he was, then in a matter of days the French would be masters of Talavera and the British army would be well on its way back to Portugal and probably to Lisbon. Sharpe knew that he wanted her still and wondered what would happen if the swirling currents of war brought them together again.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts and he watched as a Staff Captain entered and gave Wellesley a sealed paper. The officers talked, inventing topics of conversation so that Wellesley could open the paper and talk to the Captain in some privacy. Hill was telling Sharpe about the Drury Lane Theatre. Did he know it had been burned down in February? Sharpe nodded and smiled, made the right noises, but he looked round the table, at the three Generals, at the aristocrats, and he thought of the foundling home and prisons he had known as a child. He remembered the foetid barracks where two men shared a cot, the vicious beatings, the unprincipled struggle just to stay alive. And now this? The candles danced in the draught, the red wine was rich and deep, and he wondered where the road they must take in tomorrow’s cold dawn would lead. If Bonaparte was to be defeated, then tomorrow’s march could last for years before it ended at the gates of Paris.