Sharpe watched the men coming into the convent; the blinded, the lamed, the bleeding, French and British. He tried to blot the screaming from his ears, but it was impossible, the sound penetrated the senses like the acrid smoke that hung in the city’s streets this night. An officer of the 95th Rifles came down the main stairway, crying, and saw Sharpe. ‘He’s bad.’ He did not know who he was talking to, except that he saw in Sharpe another Rifleman. ‘Crauford?’
‘There’s a bullet in his spine. They can’t get it out. The bastard was standing in the middle of the breach, right in the bloody middle, and telling us to move our arses. They shot him!’
The Rifle officer went out into the cold night. Crauford never asked his men to do anything he would not do himself, and he would be there, cursing and spitting, leading his men on, and now he would die. The army would not be the same.
Things were changing.
A clock struck ten o’clock and Sharpe thought it had been just three hours since they slipped over the snow towards the breach. Just three hours! The door through which Lawford had been carried was opened and a soldier dragged out a corpse. It was not the Colonel. The body, pulled by the heels, left a jellied slime of bloodied mud on the tiles. The door was left open and Sharpe crossed to it, leaned on the post, and stared into the candle-bright charnel house. He remembered the soldier’s prayer, morning and evening, that God keep him from the surgeon’s knife. Lawford was on the table strapped tight, his uniform cut away. An orderly leaned on his chest, obscuring the face, while a surgeon, his apron stiff with blood the colour of burnt ochre, grunted as he pushed in the knife. Sharpe saw Lawford’s feet, still encased in the boots with the swan-neck spurs, jerk in the leather straps. The surgeon was sweating. The candles guttered in the draught and he turned a blood-spattered face. ‘Shut the bloody door!’
Sharpe closed it, cutting off the view of severed limbs, the waiting bodies. He wanted a drink. Things were changing. Lawford under the knife, Crauford dying upstairs, the New Year mocking them. He stood in the hallway, in dark shadow, and remembered the gas lighting he had seen in London’s Pall Mall just two months ago. A wonder of the world, he had been told, but he did not think so. Gas lighting, steam power, and stupid men in offices with dirty spectacles and neat files, the new denizens of England that would tie up the world in pipes, conduits, paper, and above all order. Neatness above all. England did not want to know about the war. A hero was a week-long wonder, so long as he was not untidily scarred like the beggars in the streets of London. There were men with only half a face, covered in suppurating sores, rodent ulcers, men with empty eye sockets, torn mouths, ragged stumps who had cried out for a penny for an old soldier. He had watched them being moved on so they did not sully the pristine, hissing light in Pall Mall. Sharpe had fought beside some of them, watched them drop on a battlefield, but their country did not care. There were the military hospitals, of course, at Chelsea and Kilmainham, but it was the soldiers who paid for those, not the country. The country wanted the soldiers out of the way. Sharpe wanted a drink.
The door of the surgeon’s room banged open and Sharpe turned to see Lawford being carried on a canvas stretcher to the wide staircase. He hurried to the orderlies. ‘How is he?’ ‘If the rot doesn’t get him, sir... “ The man left the sentence unfinished. His nose was dripping, but he could not wipe it because both hands were on the stretcher. He sniffed. ‘Friend of yours, sir?’ ‘Yes. ‘
‘Nothing you can do tonight, sir. Come back tomorrow. We’ll look after him. ‘ He jerked his head upwards. ‘Lieutenant Colonels and above are on the second floor, sir. Bleeding luxury. Not like those in the cellar. ‘ Sharpe could imagine it, had seen it often enough, the dank cellars where the wounded were crammed on verminous pallets, one part of the ‘ward’ always left as a death room where the hopeless could simply rot. He let them go, and turned away.
Ciudad Rodrigo had fallen, the great fortress of the north, and the history books would record the fact and, for years to come, the victory would be remembered with pride. In just twelve days Wellington had surprised, surrounded, assaulted and taken a city. A victory. And no one would remember the names of the men who had died in the breach, who had struggled to silence the great, killing guns sunk in the wide wall. The English would celebrate. They liked victories, especially those far from home that fortified their sense of superiority over the French, but they did not want to know about this; the screams of the wounded, the thump of severed limbs, the slow drip of thick blood from the hallway ceiling. Sharpe pushed into the cold street and hunched down inside his collar against a sudden flurry of snow. There was no joy for him in this victory; only a sense of loss, of loneliness, and of some unfinished task he must perform in a breach. It could all wait. He went in search of drink.
Chapter 5
It had begun to snow again, a thin sprinkling that flecked the greatcoats of the collapsed drunks in the street. It was cold. Sharpe knew he should find somewhere warm, somewhere to clean the big sword properly before the rust pits began, somewhere to sleep, but he wanted a drink first.
The city was quieter. There were still shouts echoing down empty alleyways, an odd musket shot, and once, inexplicably, a muffled explosion. Sharpe did not care. He wanted drink to drive away the self-pity, the nagging thought that, without Lawford, he could be a Lieutenant again under the orders of a Captain ten years younger than himself, without experience, and his mood turned savage as he made his way towards the flickering lights of the plaza where the French spirit store had been broken open.
The French prisoners were still in the square’s centre, though without their officers who had given their parole and gone off to bed or to drink with their captors. The French soldiers sat shivering and weaponless. Their guards watched them with curious eyes, their hands thrust into pockets, their loaded and bayoneted muskets slung on cold shoulders. Other sentries guarded the houses, stopping the last looters who still staggered, drunk, in the light of the burning buildings. Sharpe was stopped at the liquor store by a nervous sentry. ‘Can’t go in there, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘General’s orders, sir. Orders. ‘
Sharpe snarled at him. ‘The General sent me. He’s thirsty. ‘
The sentry grinned, but still brought his musket down across the doorway. I’m sorry, sir. It’s orders, sir. ‘
‘”What’s going on?’ A Sergeant appeared, a big man, walking slowly. ‘Trouble?’
Sharpe faced the Sergeant. I’m going in there for drink. Do you want to stop me?’
The Sergeant shrugged. ‘Up to you, sir, but I’d advise against it. Bloody raw alcohol, that is, sir. It’s killed a couple of lads. ‘ He looked Sharpe up and down, saw the blood on the uniform. ‘In the breach, were you, sir?’
‘Yes.’
The Sergeant nodded and unslung a canteen from his neck. ‘Here you are, sir. Brandy. Took it off a prisoner. Compliments of the 83rd.’
Sharpe took it, made his thanks, and the Sergeant let out a long, slow breath as he watched the Rifleman walk away. ‘You know who that was, lad?’
‘No, Sarge.’
‘Sharpe. That’s who that was. Lucky I was here. ‘
‘Lucky, Sarge?’
‘Yes, lad. Otherwise you might have had to shoot a bleedin’ hero.’ The Sergeant shook his head. ‘Well, well, well, so he likes a drop, does he?’
Sharpe walked close to one of the burning houses where the heat of the fire had melted the snow into a glistening sheen on the cobbles. A broken table was tipped on its side and he perched on it, watching the prisoners in the snow, and wished he could get drunk. He knew he would not. As soon as the first, fierce brandy was in his throat he knew that he was being indulgent. He must find the Company, clean the sword, think of tomorrow, but not yet. It was warm by the burning house, the first warmth he had known in days, and he wanted to be alone for a while. Damn Lawford for walking into a breach where he had no business!
Hooves clattered on stones and a group of
horsemen entered the plaza. They wore long, dark cloaks, broad-brimmed hats, and Sharpe could see the outlines of muskets and swords. Partisans. He felt an obscure, unfair anger. The Guerilleros were the men and women of Spain who fought the ‘Guerilla’, the ‘little war’, and they were achieving what the Spanish armies had failed to achieve; they were pinning down thousands and thousands of Napoleon’s troops, troops the British would not have to face, but somehow the presence of the Spanish horsemen in the plaza of Ciudad Rodrigo annoyed Sharpe. These partisans had not fought through a breach, had not faced the cannon, yet here they were, come to pick like vultures at a carcass they had done nothing to kill. The horsemen stopped. They stared at the French prisoners with a silent menace.
Sharpe turned away. He drank again and stared into the white-heat where the house had collapsed into a furnace-like intensity. He thought of Badajoz, waiting to the south, Badajoz the impregnable. Perhaps the pox-scarred Whitehall clerk could write the garrison a letter, telling them their presence was ‘irregular’, and Sharpe laughed at the thought. Damn the bloody clerk.
There was a shout behind him that made him turn round. A single rider had left the group of horsemen and was walking his horse along the front row of prisoners. The French squirmed back, fearing the revenge of the Spanish, and the British sentries tried ineffectually to force the horse away. The rider spurred into a trot, into a canter, and the snow spurted from the hooves that crashed on the cobbles beneath. The rider’s face turned towards Sharpe, the heels slammed down, and the horse came towards the lone Rifleman in the light of the burning house.
Sharpe watched the man come. If he wanted drink, then he could find his own. There were sparks from the cobbles as the horse was reined in and Sharpe found himself wishing grimly that the beast would slip and tip its rider into an ignominious heap. So the man was a brilliant horseman, but that did not give him the right to disturb a man who had deserved a quiet drink. Sharpe turned away, ignoring the dismounting Spaniard.
‘You’ve forgotten me?’ Sharpe heard the voice and the drink was forgotten. He spun round, standing up, and the rider took off the broad-brimmed hat, shook her head, and the long dark hair fell either side of a face that was like a hawk.
Slim, cruel, and very, very beautiful. She smiled at him. ‘I came here to find you. ‘
‘Teresa?’ The wind snatched snow from a rooftop, whirled it crazily above the sparks of the burning house. Teresa?’ He reached out for her and she came to him and he held her as he had held her that first time, two years ago, beneath the blades of the French lancers. ‘Teresa? It’s you?’
She looked up at him, mocking him. ‘You forgot me. ‘
‘Christ in heaven! Where have you been?’ He began to laugh, his misery banished, and touched her face as if he wanted to prove it was her. ‘Teresa?’
She laughed, too, with real pleasure and put a finger to his scarred cheek. ‘I thought you might forget me. ‘
‘Forget you? No. ‘ He shook his head, suddenly tongue-tied, though there was so much to say. He had hoped to find her the year before when the army had marched to Fuentes de Onoro just a few miles from Ciudad Rodrigo. This was Teresa’s country. He had thought she might look for him last year, but there had been no sign of her, and then he had gone to England and met Jane Gibbons. He pushed that thought away and looked instead at Teresa and wondered how he could have forgotten this face, the life in it, the sheer force of her presence.
She smiled and jerked her head at the rifle on her shoulder. ‘I still have your gun. ‘
‘How many have you killed with it?’
‘Nineteen. ‘ She made a grimace. ‘Not enough. ‘ She hated the French with a pure, terrifying hatred. She turned in his arms and stared at the prisoners. ‘How many did you kill tonight?’
Sharpe thought of the fight in the casement. He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Two maybe, three?’
She looked up at him again and grinned. ‘Not enough. Did you miss me?’
He had forgotten how she would mock him. He nodded, embarrassed. ‘Yes.’
‘I missed you.’ The statement was said matter-of-factly, almost flatly, that gave it a ring of absolute truth. She pulled away from him. ‘Listen.’ She jerked her head at the other horsemen. ‘They are impatient. Are you going to Badajoz?’
He was confused by her sudden question. ‘Badajoz?’ He nodded. It was an open secret. Nothing had been said to the army, but every man knew that both fortresses must be “taken. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Good. Then I’m staying. I must tell my people.’ She turned to her horse.
‘You’re what?’
‘You don’t want me to?’ She was mocking him again, and laughed. ‘I will explain, Richard, later. Do we have somewhere to stay?’
‘No. ‘
‘We’ll find somewhere.’ She swung herself on to the horse and nodded again towards the Partisans. ‘They want to be on their way. I’ll tell them they can go. Will you wait here?’
He saluted her. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘That’s better.’ She smiled at him, dazzling him with her beauty, with the joy on her face, and then she spurred back across the slush.
He grinned and turned back to the fire, facing its warmth, and felt a vast relief that she had come. He wished she would never go. Then he wondered at her words, hearing, distantly in his mind, the faint alarm at the very mention of the name. Badajoz. Tonight was a victory, but it led only to one place, to the place where the British, the French, the Spanish; to where the gunners and the infantry, the cavalry and the Engineers, all marched.
And now, it seemed, the lovers were marching too. To Badajoz.
They found a house, hard by the walls, that had been used by French gunners. There was food in the kitchen, hard bread and cold tongue, and Sharpe lit a fire and watched Teresa as she stabbed the loaf with her bayonet and ripped the blade downwards. He laughed. She glared at him. ‘What’s funny?’ ‘I don’t see you as a housewife.’
She pointed the blade at him. ‘Listen, Englishman, I can keep a house, but not for a man who laughs at me.’ She shrugged. ‘What happens when the war ends?’ He laughed again. ‘You go back to your kitchen, woman.’ She nodded, sad at the thought. She carried a gun, as other Spanish women carried guns, because too many men had shirked the role, but when peace came the men would be brave again and push the women back to the stoves. Sharpe saw the wistfulness on her face. ‘So what must we talk about?’ ‘Later.’ She brought the plate over to the fire and laughed at the unsavory lumps of food. ‘Eat first.’
They were both ravenous. They washed the food down with watered brandy and then, beneath blankets that had once graced the backs of French cavalry horses, they made love by the fire and Sharpe wished he could trap the moment, make it last for ever. The quietness of a small house in a captured city; the only noises the calls of sentries on the wall, the barking of a dog, the dying crackle of the small fire. She would not stay, he knew that, to be a camp follower. Teresa wanted to fight the French, to revenge herself on a nation that had raped and murdered her mother. Perhaps, he thought, he could not expect, could never expect this happiness to be for ever. All happiness is fleeting and his mind shied away from the thought of Lawford lying in the Convent. Teresa would go back to the hills, to the ambushes and torture, the harried French in the rock landscape. If he had not been a soldier, Sharpe thought, if he had been a gamekeeper or a coachman, or any one of the other jobs he might have found, then he might have found, too, a settled existence. But not like this, never as a soldier.
Teresa’s hand pushed over the skin of his chest, then round to his back, and her fingers were light on the thick, ridged “scars. ‘Did you find the men who flogged you?”
‘Not yet.’ He had been flogged, years before, when he was a Private.
‘What were their names?’
‘Captain Morris and Sergeant Hakeswill. ‘ He said the names tonelessly. They were deep in his mind, waiting vengeance.
‘You’ll find the
m.’
‘Yes.’
She smiled. ‘You’ll hurt them?’
‘Very much.’
‘Good.’
Sharpe grinned. ‘I thought Christians were supposed to forgive their enemies.’
She shook her head, the hair tickling him. ‘Only when they’re dead. Anyway.’ She plucked a hair from his chest. ‘You’re not a Christian.’
‘You are.’
She shrugged. ‘The priests don’t like me. I have been learning English from a priest, Father Pedro. He’s nice, but the others... ‘ She spat at the fire. ‘They do not let me take the Mass. Because I am bad.’ She said something in quick, guttural Spanish, something that would have confirmed the opinion of the priests. She sat up and looked round the room. ‘Those pigs must have left some wine.’
‘I didn’t see any.’
“You didn’t look. You only wanted me under the blankets.’ She stood up and searched the room. Sharpe watched her, loving the straightness of her body, the strength in her slimness. She opened cupboards and pulled their contents violently on to the floor. ‘Here.’ She tossed him a wooden shelf, loose from a cabinet. ‘Put it on the fire.’
Sharpe sprinkled it with powder, to help it light, and when he turned back she had found wine and brandished it to him. ‘You see? The pigs always have wine.’ She saw him looking at her and her face became serious. ‘Am I different?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’ She stood facing him, naked, her face worried.
‘I’m sure. You’re beautiful. ‘ He was puzzled. ‘Should there be something different?’
She shrugged, crossed the room and sat beside him. The cork was half out of the bottle and she pulled it free and smelt the wine. ‘Awful.’ She drank some and handed the bottle to Sharpe.
‘What’s the matter?’
He knew the moment had come when she would talk.
She was silent for a few seconds, staring into the fire, then she turned abruptly to him, her expression fierce. ‘You are going to Badajoz?’
Sharpe's Company Page 5