Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (10 page)

Collett obligingly left and Windham leaned back. ‘I’m sorry, Sharpe.’

‘Yes, sir. And the gazette?’

‘Refused.’ So there it was. The firing squad pulled their triggers and Lieutenant Richard Sharpe gave a mocking, sardonic laugh that made Windham frown. A Lieutenant again!

‘So what am I to do, sir?’ Sharpe let the bitterness edge his voice. ‘Am I to report to Captain Rymer?’

‘No, Mr Sharpe, you are not. Captain Rymer would find your presence an embarrassment, I’m sure you can understand that. He must be given time to settle in. I’ll keep you busy.’

‘I forgot, sir. I’m in charge of the women now.’

‘Don’t be impertinent, Sharpe!’ Windham snapped forward, startling the dogs. ‘You don’t understand, do you? There are rules, orders, regulations, Sharpe, by which our lives are conducted. If we ignore those rules, burdensome though they may be, then we open the gates to anarchy and tyranny; the very things against which we fight! Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe knew it would be pointless to mention that the rules, orders, and regulations were made by the privileged to protect the privileged. It had always been so, and always would. The only thing for him to do now was to get out with his shreds of dignity intact and then get stinking drunk. Show fellow Lieutenant Price how a real expert fell over.

Windham leaned back. ‘We’re going to Badajoz.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’re senior Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe’s replies were listless.

‘There’ll be vacancies, man! If we attack.’ That was true, and Sharpe nodded.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You can exchange.’ Windham looked expectantly at Sharpe.

‘No, sir.’ There were always officers who found their Regiments going to unpopular places such as the Fever Islands and who would offer to exchange with another officer in a battalion closer to the gaming tables and far from weird diseases. Usually they would offer a cash bribe to facilitate the exchange, but Sharpe dared not leave Spain, not while Teresa and Antonia were shut up in Badajoz. He listened to the rain on the window and thought of the girl riding. ‘I’ll stay, sir.’

‘Good!’ Windham sounded far from pleased. ‘There’s plenty of work. The mule train needs tidying up, I’ve seen that already, and, God knows, we’ll be swamped with pick-axes and spades. They all need counting.’

‘In charge of mules, pick-axes, and women, sir?’

Windham’s eyes met the challenge. ‘Yes, Mr Sharpe, if you insist.’

‘A suitable job, sir, for an ageing Lieutenant.’

‘It might, Lieutenant, engender humility.’

‘Yes, sir.’ An important quality to a soldier, humility, and Sharpe gave another sardonic laugh. Humility had not captured the gun at Ciudad Rodrigo, nor hacked a path through Fuentes de Onoro’s tight streets, nor fetched the gold from Spain, nor taken an Eagle from the enemy, nor rescued a General, nor brought a group of starving Riflemen out of a rout nor killed the Sultan Tippoo, and Sharpe’s sardonic laugh became real. He was being arrogant to himself, and perhaps Windham was right. He needed humility. He would now be parading wives and counting shovels, neither of which activity called for much initiative or leadership, and mules were notoriously chary of quick, confident decisions, and humility was best. He would be humble. ‘Sir?’

‘Yes?’

‘A request.’

‘Go on, man.’

‘I want to lead a Forlorn Hope at Badajoz, sir. I’d like you to forward my name now. I know it’s early, but I would be grateful if you would do so.’

Windham stared at him. ‘You’re unbalanced, man.’

Sharpe shook his head. He was not going to explain that he wanted a promotion that no man could take from him, and that he wanted to test himself in a breach because he had never done it. And if he died, as he surely would, and never saw his daughter? Then she would know that her father had died trying to reach her, leading an attack, and she could be proud. ‘I want it, sir.’

‘You don’t need it, Sharpe. There will be promotion at Badajoz.’

‘Will you forward my name, sir?’

Windham stood up. ‘Think about it, Sharpe, think about it.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘Report to Major Collett in the morning.’ The interview had been far worse than he had feared and the Colonel shook his head. ‘You don’t need it, Sharpe, you don’t. Now good day to you.’

Sharpe did not notice the rain. He stood and stared across the valley at the fortress. He thought of Teresa closing on the huge walls, and knew that he must go into the breach, whatever happened. The restitution of his rank, and hopefully the command of his Company, demanded it, but, most of all, because he was a soldier, it was pride.

The meek, he had been told, would inherit the earth, but only when the last soldier left it to them in his will.

‘Sergeant Hakeswill, sir! Reporting to Lieutenant Sharpe, sir, as ordered, sir!’ The right boot crashed into the attention, the arm quivered at the salute, the face twitched, but was full of amusement.

Sharpe returned the salute. It had been more than three weeks since his demotion, yet it still hurt. The Battalion, embarrassed, called him ‘sir’ or ‘Mr Sharpe’. Only Hakeswill twisted the knife. Sharpe pointed to the mess on the ground. ‘That’s it. Sort it out.’

‘Sir!’ Hakeswill turned to the working party from the Light Company. ‘You heard the Lieutenant! Sort it out and get a bloody move on! The Captain wants us back.’

Hagman, the old Rifleman, the best shot in the Company, who had served with Sharpe for seven years, gave his old Captain a sad smile. ‘Nasty day, sir.’

Sharpe nodded. The rain had stopped, but it looked as if it would start again soon. ‘How are things, Dan?’

The Rifleman grinned, shrugged, and looked round to see if Hakeswill was listening. ‘Bloody terrible, sir.’

‘Hagman!’ Hakeswill bellowed. ‘Just because you’re bloody old doesn’t mean you can’t work. Get your bloody self here, fast!’ The Sergeant grinned at Sharpe. ‘Sorry, Lieutenant, sir. Can’t stop to chat, can we? Work to do.’ The teeth ground together, the blue eyes blinked rapidly. ‘How’s your lady, sir. Well? I was hoping to renew the acquaintance. In Baddy-joss is she?’ He cackled and turned away, back to the working party that was rescuing the fallen shovels from the broken-axled cart.

Sharpe ignored the gibes because to react was to give Hakeswill the satisfaction of having unsettled him, and he looked away from the cart and stared over the grey, swollen river. Badajoz. Just four miles away; a city built on a corner of land formed by the River Guadiana and the Rivillas stream. The city was dominated by the sprawling castle high on the rock hill which stood where the stream flowed into the river. The army had marched from Elvas that morning and now they waited as the Engineers put the last touches to the pontoon bridge that would take the British to the southern bank on which Badajoz stood. Each tin pontoon, strengthened by wooden braces, weighed two tons, and the clumsy, oblong boats, dragged here by oxen, had been floated in a line across the Guadiana. They were all moored now, anchored against the rain-heightened river, and across their top surfaces the Engineers had laid massive thirteen-inch cables. The water foamed dirty between the tin boats as, on top of the cables, planks were slapped into place with a speed that spoke of the frequent practice the Engineers had made in crossing Spain’s rivers. Almost before the last planks were in place the first carts were crossing and men shovelled sand and earth on to the planks to make a crude roadway.

‘Forward!’ The first troops began to cross, unmounted men of the newly arrived Heavy Cavalry Brigade leading their horses. The animals were nervous on the thrumming bridge, but they crossed, and Badajoz was about to be ringed with troops.

On the far bank the cavalry mounted, sorted themselves into squadrons, and, as the first infantry began to cross, the horsemen put spurs to their mounts and trotted towards the city. There was little they could do against the massive walls; they were a demonstration, a flaunting of intent, and a discouragement to the handful of French cavalry inside Badajoz who might be tempted to ride against the bridgehead.

It began to rain, pitting the swirling, dark water, and soaking the already damp troops as they crossed the river and turned left towards the city. Once there was a cheer from the infantry as a cannon’s shot was heard from Badajoz. A squadron of the Heavy Cavalry had ridden too close to the walls, a French gun had fired, and the British riders galloped ignominiously out of range. The cheer was ironic. The infantry might die soon at the hands of the guns, but it was still good to see the fancy cavalry taught a lesson. No cavalryman would have to go into Badajoz’s breaches.

The South Essex had become pack mules. The Engineers had over a hundred carts waiting to cross the river and two had snapped their axles. The South Essex would have to carry the loads across the water. Windham reined in beside Sharpe. ‘All ready, Mr Sharpe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Keep the baggage close when we cross!’

‘Yes, sir.’ No, sir, three bags full, sir. ‘Sir?’

‘Mr Sharpe?’ Windham was eager to be away.

‘Have you forwarded my request, sir?’

‘No, Mr Sharpe, much too early My compliments!’ The Colonel touched the tassel on his bicorne and wheeled his horse away.

Sharpe hitched his sword up, useless to him for counting spades and pick-axes, and trudged over the mud towards the Battalion’s baggage. Each company kept a mule that carried the books, the endless paperwork that went with a Captaincy, a few paltry supplies and, quite illegally, some officers’ baggage as well. Other mules carried the Battalion supplies; the spare arms chest, uniforms, more paperwork, and the surgeon’s grim load. Mixed with the mules were the officers’ servants, leading spare horses and packhorses, and, mingled among them all, the children. They shrieked and played round the animals’ legs, watched by their mothers who crouched beneath makeshift shelters waiting for the order to march. By regulation there should be just sixty wives with the Battalion, but inevitably, after three years at war, the South Essex had collected far more. There were nearer three hundred women marching with the Battalion, the same number of children, and they were a mixture of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Spanish and Portuguese; there was even a Frenchwoman, left behind in the fighting at Fuentes de Onoro, who had chosen to stay with her captors and had married a Sergeant in Sterritt’s Company. Some were whores, following the army’s meagre pennies, some were proper wives with papers to prove it, while some called themselves wives and did not need the ceremony. All were tough. Many had married twice or three times in the war, having lost their husbands to a French bullet or a Spanish fever.

The previous morning Windham had cancelled the wives’ parade. In barracks the parade made some sense; it kept a Colonel in touch with the families and gave a good officer a chance to detect brutality, but the women of the South Essex did not like the parade, were not used to it, and had showed their discontent. The very first time that Sharpe had lined them for Windham’s inspection Private Clayton’s wife, a pretty girl, had been suckling her baby. The Colonel had stopped, glanced down, and frowned at her. ‘This is hardly the time, woman!’

She had grinned, lifted her breasts towards him. ‘When ’e’s ’ungry, ’e’s ’ungry, just like ’is father.’ There was a chorus of laughter from the wives, jeers from the men, and Windham had strode away. Jessica would have known what to do, but not he.

Now, as Sharpe approached the rain-swept baggage, the women grinned at him from beneath their blankets. Lily Grimes, a tiny woman of irrepressible cheerfulness, and a voice with the piercing quality of a well-honed bayonet, gave him a mock salute. ‘Given up parading us, Cap’n?’ The women always called him Captain.

‘That’s right, Lily.’

She sniffed. ‘He’s mad.’

‘Who?’

‘Bloody Colonel. What did he want us to parade for, anyway?’

Sharpe grinned. ‘He worries about you, Lily. He likes to keep an eye on you.’

She shook her head. ‘He wants to look at Sally Clayton’s tits more like.’ She laughed and peered up at Sharpe. ‘You didn’t look away either, Cap’n. I watched you.’

‘I was just wishing it had been you, Lily.’

She shrieked with laughter. ‘Any time, Cap’n, you just ask.’

Sharpe laughed, walked away from her. He admired the wives, and he liked them. They endured all the discomforts of the campaign; the nights under pouring rain, the hard rations, the long marches, yet they never gave up. They watched their men go into battle and afterwards they searched the field for a corpse or a wounded husband, and all the while they brought up their children and looked after their men. Sharpe had seen Lily carrying two of her children up a hard road, her husband’s musket, and the family’s few belongings as well. They were tough.

And they were not ladies; three years in the Peninsula had made sure of that. Some dressed in old uniforms, most were garbed in voluminous, filthy skirts with tattered shawls and scarves around their heads. They were tanned dark brown, with calloused hands and feet, and most could strip a corpse bare in ten seconds, a house in thirty. They were foul-mouthed, loud, and utterly immodest. No women could live with a battalion and be anything else. They slept with their men, often enough, in open fields with nothing but a tree or hedge to give an illusion of privacy. The women washed themselves, relieved themselves, made love, gave birth, and all in plain sight of a thousand eyes. To a fastidious observer they were a fearful sight, yet Sharpe liked them. They were tough, loyal, kind and uncomplaining.

Major Collett bawled an order for the Battalion to make ready, and Sharpe turned to his command; the baggage. It was chaos. Two children had succeeded in cutting the pannier from one of the Sutler’s mules, and the Sutler, a Spaniard who was a kind of travelling shop-keeper with the Battalion, was screaming at the children, but not daring to let go of the straw halter that tethered his other mules.

Sharpe yelled at them. ‘Make ready!’ They took no notice. The Sutler’s assistants caught the children, snatched back the bottles, but then the mothers, sensing loot, attacked the assistants for beating the children. It was pandemonium, his new command.

‘Richard!’ Sharpe twisted back. Major Hogan was behind him.

‘Sir.’

Hogan grinned down from his horse. ‘We’re very formal today.’

‘We’re very responsible. Look.’ Sharpe waved at the baggage train. ‘My new Company.’

‘I heard.’ Hogan slipped from his horse, stretched, and then turned as there were sudden shouts from the bridge. An officer’s horse had become frightened by the sliding, grey water. It was nervously backing in short, jerking steps towards the infantry company behind. The Captain, panicking, was whipping the beast, increasing its terror, and the horse began to rear fitfully.

‘Get off!’ Hogan shouted. He had a surprisingly loud voice. ‘Fool! Get off! Dismount!’

The officer lashed down at the horse, wrenched the reins, and the horse put all its force into bucking the rider off its back. It succeeded. The horse slammed up, screaming, and the officer tumbled from the saddle, bounced once on the roadway’s edge, and disappeared downstream into the river. ‘Stupid bastard!’ Hogan was angry. A Sergeant threw a length of timber into the water, but it fell short, and Sharpe could see the Captain flailing the river, struggling against the freezing current that took him away from the bridge. ‘He’s had it.’

No one dived in to save the officer. By the time a man had stripped himself of pack, haversack, ammunition pouch, weapons and boots the Captain would be long gone. The horse, free of its burden, stood shivering on the bridge and a Private soothed it, then led it calmly to the southern bank. The Captain had disappeared.

‘There’s a vacancy.’ Sharpe laughed.

‘Bitter?’

‘Bitter, sir? No, sir. Being a Lieutenant is very satisfying.’

Hogan gave a sad smile. ‘I hear you were drunk.’

‘No.’ He had been drunk three times since the day Teresa left, the day he had lost the Company. Sharpe shrugged. ‘You know that gazette was refused in January? No one dared tell me. Then the new man arrives so someone has to tell me. So I look after the baggage while some half-cooked youngster destroys my Company.’

‘Is he that bad?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ Sharpe’s anger had taken himself by surprise.

‘Do you want me to talk to the General?’

‘No!’ Pride would stop Sharpe bleating for help, but then he turned back. ‘Yes, you can talk to the General. Tell him I’ll lead the Forlorn Hope for him at Badajoz.’

Hogan paused with a pinch of snuff half-way to his nostrils. He put it back in the box, carefully, and snapped the lid shut. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I’m serious.’

Hogan shook his head. ‘You don’t need it, Richard. God! There’ll be promotion by the graveload! Don’t you understand? You’ll be a Captain within a month.’

Sharpe shook his head. He understood, but his pride was hurt. ‘I want the Hope, sir, I want it. Ask for me.’

Hogan took Sharpe’s elbow and turned him so they were both looking eastwards along the river towards the city. ‘Do you know what it’s like, Richard? It’s bloody impossible!’ He pointed to the great stone bridge that carried the road to the city. ‘We can’t attack there. Anyone trying to cross that bridge will be shredded. So, try the east wall. They’ve damned the stream and it’s one bloody great lake. We’d need the navy to cross that, unless we can blow up the dam and they’ve built a fort to stop us doing that. There’s the castle, of course.’ Hogan’s words were urgent, almost bitter. ‘If you feel like climbing a hundred feet of rock and then scaling a forty foot wall, and all the time dodging the grapeshot, you’re welcome.’ He pointed again. ‘So there’s the west wall. Looks easy enough, doesn’t it?’ It did not look easy. Even at four miles Sharpe could see the huge bastions, jutting like miniature castles, that protected the wall. Hogan’s accent was becoming more pronounced as it always did when the Engineer spoke with passion. ‘It looks too easy! They want us to attack there. Why? My guess is that it’s mined. There’s more bloody powder under that glacis than Guy Fawkes dreamed of. We attack there and we give St Peter his busiest day since Agincourt!’ He was really angry now, seeing with his Engineer’s eye the problems, turning the problems into blood. ‘That leaves the south wall. We have to take at least one outlying fort, perhaps two, and then get through the walls. Do you know how thick they are? What was the distance from the brink of the ditch to the back of the walls at Ciudad Rodrigo?’