Sharpe's Honor

by Bernard Cornwell

  He fingered the sword hilt and hesitated. He knew he should not say it, but in ten minutes he would be dead, butchered by the Slaughterman or his men. He would take some of them with him, he would give them cause to remember fighting against a lone Rifleman. ‘Helene?’

  She looked at him with exasperation. ‘Don’t say it, Richard.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I knew you’d say it.’ She was putting the diamond earrings into her lobes. ‘But then you are a fool.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Go and fight for me, fool.’

  He went down the ladder, drew the great sword, and opened the door to the street where his enemies had gathered for his death.

  CHAPTER 14

  Angel had woken before dawn. He had slept in the stable, wrapped by warm straw and his thick cloak. He had shivered as he yawned, wriggled from his bed, and went into the yard. He splashed water on his face and looked up at the dark roof beneath which Sharpe slept with the golden woman.

  Angel had polished the saddles the night before. He had brushed the horses and made everything ready for this morning. Not just ready, but gleamingly ready. He had done it for a woman more beautiful than his dreams had dared imagine, and now, in yet more homage to her, he saddled Carbine and folded a blanket over the saddle in an effort to give La Marquesa a more comfortable seat. He knew she was French, and he hated the French, but no woman so lovely as she could be evil in Angel’s worshipping eyes.

  He tried out his makeshift attempt at her comfort, riding out of the inn yard, and turning Carbine towards the south. The wind was at his back, bringing a chill to his thin body. The shapes of the townspeople were dark where they moved in alleys and courtyards. He put a hand on the butt of his rifle that he had pushed into the saddle’s holster.

  The eastern mountains were edged with light. Angel put his heels back, letting Carbine go into a trot. He revelled in the feel of the big, black horse that lifted its hooves high and tossed its mane with impatience. Angel straightened his back, imagining that he was El Arcangel, the most feared Partisan in Spain, riding to battle. A woman of great beauty, with golden hair and grey eyes, waited for his return, though she did not believe that any man would return from so suicidal a mission.

  He pulled the rifle from its holster, then twitched the reins to take Carbine down to the stream where the women of the town washed their clothes. He would let the horse drink there, and let his daydream run on to the delicious moment when he returned from battle, not too severely wounded, and the golden haired woman would run from the house, her arms wide; then Angel saw the horsemen over the stream.

  He was in the darkness beneath chestnut trees. He checked Carbine and saw the grey shapes in the grey light and he thumbed back the cock of the rifle, thinking that he should fire a warning shot for Sharpe, then thought that the sound of the rifle would bring the men galloping over the stream for his blood.

  He pulled the reins, knowing he must ride back to the town and warn Sharpe, but as Carbine moved, so the men over the shallow stream saw the movement, one shouted, and Angel saw the water splash white as they drove their horses towards him.

  They were ahead of him, cutting him off from the town, and the boy, now no longer the feared Arcangel, but merely Angel riding for his life, let the black horse have its head.

  Carbine easily outstripped El Matarife’s men, carrying Angel south in the valley, away from the town. Angel discarded the folded blanket, pulled the reins left, and hid himself among pines that grew on a small knoll. He watched from their cover, wondering what he could do to help, and then he saw more horsemen coming from the south and he knew there was nothing he could do except to wait, watch, and hope. He remembered Major Hogan’s urgent warning that his job was to protect Sharpe, and he felt failure with all the passion of his sixteen years. He patted Carbine’s neck, sheathed the unfired rifle, and shivered.

  A murmur greeted Sharpe, a murmur that rose to a chorus of hate. The horses in their semi-circle about the inn’s facade came forward and El Matarife raised his hand and bellowed for silence and stillness.

  El Matarife looked down on Sharpe. ‘Well, Major Vaughn?’

  ‘What happens to the woman?’

  The Partisan laughed. ‘That’s no worry of yours.’

  Sharpe was in the doorway, ready to leap inside at the first sign of an attack. He held his sword low, and now, with his left hand, he brought the rifle into view. ‘If you want to fight me, Matarife, I am ready. The first bullet will be for you. Now tell me what happens to the woman.’

  The bearded man paused. From somewhere in the town came the smell of a kitchen fire. The street was slick and thick with mud from the night’s rain. El Matarife licked his lips. ‘Nothing happens to her. She goes back to the convent.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  El Matarife’s horse pranced in the mud. The bearded man quieted the beast. ‘She goes back, Englishman, to where she belongs. Our quarrel is not with her, but with a man who dared to frighten nuns.’ Slowly, his eyes not leaving Sharpe, he reached down to his saddle. Sharpe knew what was coming and he did not move.

  El Matarife produced a looped chain. He held onto one end of it and tossed the rest towards Sharpe. The chain lay in the mud. The Partisan took from his belt a long knife and that too he threw towards the inn door. ‘Do you dare, Englishman? Or do you only have courage against nuns?’

  Sharpe stepped forward. He had small choice. He remembered the speed of this man, he remembered how he had speared the eyes from the French prisoner, but Sharpe knew he must accept the challenge. He stooped, picked up the last link of the chain, and a musket sounded to his left.

  The musket’s report was curiously flat in the chill morning. El Matarife stared up the street, then suddenly threw down the chain and shouted at his men. He rowelled his spurs back and Sharpe was forgotten in the sudden panic.

  Hooves galloped. A trumpet was splitting the valley with sudden urgency, and Sharpe heard a whoop of glee from the upstairs room of the inn, a shriek of pure joy from La Marquesa, and then more muskets hammered and he smelt the acrid powder smoke as he ducked into the inn and knelt with his rifle ready.

  Lancers swept into the street. French lancers. Some had pennants on their blades that were already stained with blood. A riderless horse galloped with them.

  The Partisans were running. They were not ready for the charge, not formed up to meet the shock of the heavy horses. They could only turn and run, but the street was crowded and they could not move as the lancers tore into them.

  Sharpe watched the French riders grimace as they leaned into their long spears, as they ripped the enemy from their horses, as they rode over the dying to strip the long blades free in gouts of blood and screams.

  The blades came up again, aimed for new targets, and the trumpet drove a second squadron into the street, horses’ teeth bared, hooves slinging the mud high to stain the uniforms of the riders, and Sharpe watched two cornered Partisans raise their muskets, but Frenchmen rode at them, lunged, and a lance pinned one man to the wall of a house with such force that the lancer left the weapon there with the spitted man wriggling and screaming and dying. The lancer drew his sabre to pursue the second man who had leaped from his horse and now fell as the sabre was back-sliced into his face.

  Some Partisans had escaped as far as the market place, but now Sharpe heard another trumpet from the plaza’s far side, and more lancers came from the north to drive the fleeing Partisans into a melee of turning horses, shouts and fear. The townsfolk were running for shelter, the children, brought to watch the Partisans, screamed as the lancers rode knee to knee into the panicked mass.

  Pistols banged, muskets coughed smoke, and another squadron cantered at the trumpet’s command to take their long blades into the dull press of cloaked Partisans. The lance blades, razor sharp, dipped at the officer’s order, the horses were urged on, and the level blades were driven into the enemy. The green and pink uniforms were darkened by blood. One lancer came running from the melee, hi
s square-topped hat in one hand, his other hand pressed to a running wound in his scalp. Another of the bright uniforms was in the mud, but for every Frenchman down there were a dozen Partisans, and still more lancers thundered towards the marketplace, and still the trumpet urged them on, and still the long blades were rammed home to scrape on ribs and tear the guts from the panicked horsemen.

  Sharpe thought he could hear El Matarife shouting, he thought he saw the poleaxe raised once in the churning mass of men and screaming horses, and then he saw a fence fall at the far side of the marketplace and, as if a whirling flood had been released by a broken dam, the Partisans fled over the broken wattle of the downed fence leaving the square to the triumphant, blood-stained cavalry. The marketplace stank of blood. The wounded pulled themselves through the mud, crying out for Jesus, screaming as the lancers rode at them and, with surgical precision, pushed down with the stained blades. The French laughed as they inflicted pain on their elusive guerrilla enemies. One wounded man was pierced again and again, and still no lancer tried to kill him. A woman, crouching over a still body, screamed at the French troops until a cavalryman kicked her with his heavy boot and she fell onto her dying man.

  The trumpets took three squadrons in pursuit, two stayed to deal with the wounded and prisoners. Sharpe had gone to the back door of the inn, thinking to go up into the trees behind the stable yard, but the small yard was full of Frenchmen who were leading the captured horses from their stalls. One saw him, shouted, but Sharpe barred the door and turned back.

  La Marquesa was at the ladder’s foot. She stared at the sword in his hand. ‘You won’t get away, Richard.’

  Sharpe sheathed the sword. There were hands hammering on the barred door, shaking it. ‘My name’s Vaughn.’

  She smiled. ‘What?’

  ‘Vaughn!’

  ‘And you slept in the stable, Richard!’

  He saw the intensity in her eyes, the warning there, and he nodded wearily. He slung the rifle on his shoulder, and then a tall man ducked into the front door of the inn, Helene screamed with delight, and ran to his arms. Sharpe, a prisoner of the French, could only watch.

  General Raoul Verigny was six feet and two inches tall. There could not have been an ounce of fat on his body. His uniform was tailored tight as a drumskin.

  He had a thin, dark face with a small, neatly upturned moustache. He smiled often.

  He had shouted at the men at the back door to stop their noise, bowed to Sharpe, and accepted the gesture of surrender. He had spoken with La Marquesa for two minutes, bowed to Sharpe again, and returned the sword. ‘Your bravery, Major, makes it imperative to return the sword. You have my most wonderful thank you.’ He bowed a third time. ‘The rifle, Major, I have it my duty to take.’ He pronounced it ‘Riffle’. He gave it to an aide-de-camp who gave it to a Lieutenant who gave it to a Sergeant.

  Now, an hour later, Sharpe was an honoured guest at breakfast. About them the town burned. The inn was spared, so long as it provided shelter.

  General Verigny was solicitous of Sharpe. ‘You must be dishevelled, Major Vaughn.’

  ‘Dishevelled, sir?’

  ‘To fail in this hope.’ He smiled, touching the points of his moustache.

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  La Marquesa had told Verigny that Sharpe had been sent by the British to take her from the convent to Wellington’s army where she would have been questioned. Verigny poured Sharpe some coffee. ‘Instead we take Helene home, and you prisoner.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘But it is not to worry to you.’ Verigny offered Sharpe a leg of chicken, pressing him to accept. ‘You will be changed, yes?’

  ‘Exchanged?’

  ‘Exchanged! I do not practice my English so much. Helene speaks it so well, but she does not speak it at me. She should do so, yes?’ He laughed, and turned to La Marquesa, pouring her wine. He was, Sharpe judged, a man of his own age, darkly handsome. Sharpe was jealous. The General turned back to Sharpe. ‘You speak French, Major?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You should! It is the very beautifullest tongue in the world.’

  The table was crowded with French officers who grinned with the happiness of men who had won a great victory. It was rare for French cavalry to surprise the Partisans, and this morning they had reaped a grim harvest of their enemies. The silver-cloaked man was a prisoner, doubtless screaming beneath a blade as his captors sought answers to their questions, but El Matarife had escaped into the eastern mountains. Verigny did not mind. ‘He is ended, yes? His men broken! Besides, I come for Helene, not him, and you have released her for me.’ He smiled and toasted Sharpe.

  The assembled officers looked curiously at the Englishman. Few had seen a captured British officer before, and none had seen one of the feared Riflemen as a prisoner. If they caught his eye, they smiled. They offered him the best food on the table, one poured him wine, another brandy, and they urged him to drink with them.

  Verigny sat close to La Marquesa. She fed him scraps with her fork. They touched each other, laughed privately, and seemed to fill the room with their gaiety. At one point there was a roar of laughter and the General smiled at Sharpe. ‘I tell her she should be marrying me. She says she might become a nun instead, yes?’ Sharpe smiled politely. Verigny asked whether Sharpe thought La Marquesa would make a good nun, and Sharpe said that the nunnery would be a fortunate place.

  Verigny laughed. ‘But what waste, Major, yes?’ He gestured at her. ‘I ride here to rescue her. I insist they make me come here, I demand it! You think she deserves marriage to me as a return, yes?’

  Sharpe smiled, but inside he felt sick. He had been a prisoner before, back in the Indian wars, and then too he had been captured by lancers. He would remember to his last day the face of the Indian leaning towards him, teeth gritted as he drove the blade into Sharpe’s waist to pin him to the tree. Now he had been captured again, and he could see small hope of freedom.

  He listened to the loud laughter of the officers, saw their eyes fastened on La Marquesa, watched her coquettish gestures as she played to her audience. She pouted at him once, raising more laughter, and he hid his despair beneath a wan smile.

  General Verigny had said that Sharpe could be exchanged, but Sharpe knew it would not happen. Even if the British had a captive French Major to exchange, they would not recognise the name Vaughn on the French proposal. Every few weeks the two sides exchanged lists of prisoners, but Wellington’s headquarters would query Major Vaughn. The French would presume that the British did not want ‘Vaughn’ back and he would be sent to the fortress town of Verdun where officer prisoners were kept.

  Nor could Sharpe reveal his real name. To do that would be to prompt a dozen questions, each nastier than the last. He must stay Vaughn, and as Vaughn he would go to Verdun, and as Vaughn he would sit out the war, rotting behind Verdun’s walls, wondering what kind of bleak future peace would bring.

  Or he could escape, yet not till Verigny had safely escorted him from these mountains with their vengeful Partisans. Even as he thought it, Verigny turned and smiled at him. ‘Helene she tells me you break into the convent, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are brave man, Major Vaughn!’ Verigny lifted a glass to him. ‘I owe you my thank you.’

  Sharpe shrugged. ‘You can let me go, sir.’

  Verigny laughed, then translated the exchange into French to provoke more friendly laughter from his officers. He shook his head. ‘I cannot let you go, Major Vaughn, but you do not cause yourself to worry, no? You will be changed at Burgos.’

  Sharpe smiled. ‘I hope so, sir.’

  ‘You hope! It is certain! But however! You must give me your parole not to escape before then, yes?’

  Sharpe hesitated. By giving his parole he promised to make no effort to escape. He would keep his sword, he would be free to ride with the Lancers without guard, and he would be treated with the respect due to his rank. If he did not give it, then he would be able to make an
attempt to escape, but he knew that he would be well guarded. He would be disarmed, he would be locked up at night, and if there was nowhere to lock him he could even be tied to his guard.

  Verigny shrugged. ‘Well?’

  ‘I cannot give you my parole, sir.’

  Verigny frowned. The table was silent. The General shrugged. ‘You are a brave man, Major, I do not want to treat you bad.’

  ‘I cannot accept, sir.’

  ‘But I want to help, yes? Helene say you treat her with honour, so I do the similar for you! You will be changed! Why do you not let me do this?’

  Sharpe stood. The whole table watched him. He stepped over the bench. In his head he could hear Hogan’s insistent words that he must not be captured. He cursed himself. He had sought a warm bed last night when he should have insisted in sleeping in the open air, hidden by woods and night mists.

  La Marquesa watched him. She shook her head, is if to tell him that he must not do what he planned. At least, Sharpe thought, she had kept her word. So far the French did not know that they had captured Richard Sharpe.

  Verigny smiled. ‘Come, Major! You will be changed!’

  In answer Sharpe unbuckled his sword belt. The slings jangled harshly. He leaned forward and put the great sword on the table. The dull metal scabbard scraped on the wood as he looked at the General and pronounced his own failure. ‘I am your prisoner, sir. No parole.’

  Beyond the inn door the town burned. A woman screamed. A child sobbed. The lancers searched the houses before torching them, and Richard Sharpe was led under guard and locked into a stable. He had failed.

  CHAPTER 15

  There was nothing in the cell, no blanket, no cot, not even a bucket. The floor was thick with slime. Each breath made Sharpe want to gag on the stench that was thicker than musket smoke. There was no window. He knew he was deep inside the rock on which Burgos’ castle was built.