Sharpe's Gold

For a soldier I listed,

to grow great in fame.

And be shot at for sixpence a day.

Charles Dibdin, 1745-1814

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 Cadiz 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, arid, 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 square-faced 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.1

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.