Sharpe’s rifles

by Bernard Cornwell

  Sharpe felt adrift in an irony he was not clever enough to understand. “So you have decided to marry Mr Bufford?” he asked in trepidation, fearing that the answer would dash all his fragile hopes.

  “I’m not heiress enough to attract anyone more exalted,” Louisa said with a feigned self-pity. She brushed a scrap of fallen ash from her skirts. “But it’s surely the sensible thing for me to do, is it not, Lieutenant? To marry Mr Bufford and live in his very pleasant house? I shall have roses planted against the south wall and once in a while, a very long while, I shall see a paragraph in the newspapers and it will tell of a battle faraway, and I’ll remember how very horrid powder smoke smells and how sad a soldier can look when he’s scraping blood off his sword.”

  Her last words, which seemed so very intimate, restored Sharpe’s optimism. He looked up at her.

  “You see, Lieutenant,” Louisa forestalled anything he might say, “there comes a moment in anyone’s life when a choice presents itself. Isn’t that true?”

  The hope, so ill-based, so impractical, so irresistible, soared inside Sharpe. “Yes,” he said. He did not know exactly how she could stay with the army, or how the finances, which were the bane of most impractical romances, would be worked through, but other officers’ wives had houses in Lisbon, so why not Louisa?

  “I’m not convinced I want the roses and the embroidery.” Louisa seemed nervous and febrile suddenly, like an untrained horse edging skittishly towards the skirmish line. “I know that I should want those things, and I know I am most foolish in despising them, but I like Spain! I like the excitement here. There isn’t much excitement in England.”

  “No.” Sharpe hardly dared move for fear he would scare away her acceptance.

  “You think I am wrong to crave excitement?” Louisa did not wait for an answer, but instead asked another question. “Do you really think a British army will stay to fight in Portugal?”

  “Of course!”

  “I don’t think it will.” Louisa turned to stare at the youths who were stamping on the ashes of the burnt French flag. “Sir John Moore is dead,” she continued, “his army is gone, and we don’t even know if the Lisbon garrison still remains. And if it does, Lieutenant, how can such a small garrison hope to resist the armies of France?”

  Sharpe stubbornly clung to his belief that the British army had not surrendered its hopes. “The last news we heard from Lisbon was that the garrison was in place. It can be reinforced! We won two battles in Portugal last year, why not more this year?”

  Louisa shook her head. “I think we British have been trounced, Lieutenant, and I suspect we shall abandon Spain to its fate. It’s been a hundred years since a British army was successful in Europe, what makes us think we can be successful now?”

  Sharpe at last sensed that Louisa’s ambitions and his own hopes were not, after all, in step. Her nervousness was not that of a girl shyly accepting a proposal, but of a girl anxious not to cause hurt by her rejection. He looked up at her. “Do you believe that, Miss Parker? Or is that Major Vivar’s opinion?”

  Louisa paused, then spoke so softly that her voice scarcely carried to Sharpe over the din of the church bells. “Don Bias has asked me to stay in Spain, Lieutenant.”

  “Oh.” Sharpe closed his eyes as though the sunlight in the plaza was hurting him. He did not know what to say. There was nothing so foolish, he thought, as a man rejected.

  “I can take instruction in the faith,” Louisa said, “and I can become a part of this country. I don’t want to run away from Spain. I don’t want to go back to England and think of all the excitement that beckons here. And I cannot…“ She stopped in embarrassment.

  She did not need to finish. She could not throw herself away on a common soldier, an ageing Lieutenant, a pauper in a tattered uniform whose only prospect was to decay in some country barracks. “Yes,” Sharpe said helplessly.

  “I cannot ignore the moment,” she said dramatically.

  “Your family…“ Sharpe began.

  “Will hate it!” Louisa forced a laugh. “I am trying to persuade myself that is not the sole reason why I intend to accept Don Bias’s offer.”

  Sharpe made himself look up at her. “You will marry?”

  She looked very gravely at him. “Yes, Mr Sharpe, I shall marry Don Bias.” There was relief in her voice now that the truth was out. “It is a sudden decision, I know, but I must have the bravery to seize the moment.”

  “Yes.” He could think of nothing else to say.

  Louisa watched him in silence. There were tears in her eyes, but Sharpe did not see them. “I’m sorry,” she began.

  “No.” Sharpe stood. “I had no expectations, none.”

  “I am pleased to hear that,” Louisa said very formally. She stepped back as Sharpe walked to the platform’s edge, then frowned as he went down the cathedral steps. “Didn’t you have to see Don Bias?”

  “No.” Sharpe did not care any longer. He sheathed his sword and walked away. He felt he had fought for nothing, there was nothing left worth fighting for, and his hopes were like the ashes of the burnt flag in the empty plaza. It was all for nothing.

  Chapter 16

  For Lieutenant Richard Sharpe to aspire to Miss Louisa Parker was, in its way, as daring as Vivar’s plan to capture an enemy-held city. She came from a respectable family which, though it sometimes trembled on the edges of genteel poverty, was far above Sharpe’s ignoble station. He was a peasant by birth, an officer by accident, and a pauper by profession.

  And what, Sharpe asked himself, had he expected of the girl? Did he imagine that Louisa would willingly tramp behind the campaigning army, or find some squalid home near the barracks and eke out his inadequate pay on scraps of meat and day-old bread? Was she to have abandoned silk dresses for woollen shifts? Or would he have expected her to follow him to the West Indian garrison where the yellow fever wiped out whole Regiments? He told himself that his hopes of the girl had ever been as stupid as they were unrealistic, yet that did not heal the sudden hurt. He told himself that he acted childishly for even feeling the hurt, but that did not make it any easier to bear.

  He plunged from the plaza’s wintry sunshine into the foetid reek of an alley where, beneath an arcade, he found a wineshop. Sharpe had no money to pay for the wine, but his demeanour and the hammer of his hand on the counter persuaded the tavern keeper to fill a big flask from the barrel. Sharpe took the flask and a tin cup to an alcove at the back of the room. The few customers, huddled round the fire and seeing his bitter face, ignored him; all but for a whore who, at the tavern keeper’s bidding, edged onto the bench beside the foreign soldier. For a second Sharpe was tempted to push her away, but instead he beckoned for a second mug.

  The tavern keeper wiped the mug on his apron and set it on the table. A sacking curtain was looped back over the alcove’s arch and he took hold of it and raised an interrogatory eyebrow.

  “Yes,” Sharpe said harshly. ”Si.“

  The curtain dropped, plunging Sharpe and the girl into dark shadow. She giggled, put her arms about his neck, and whispered some Spanish endearment until he silenced her with a kiss.

  The curtain was snatched back, making the girl squeal in alarm.

  Bias Vivar stood in the archway. “It’s very simple to follow a foreigner through Spanish streets. Did you hope to hide from me, Lieutenant?”

  Sharpe put his left arm around the whore and pulled her towards him so that her head leaned on his shoulder. He moved his handle cup her breast. “I’m busy, sir.”

  Vivar ignored the provocation, sitting instead on the bench opposite Sharpe. He rolled a cigar across the table. “By now,” he said, “Colonel de l’Eclin must have realized that Miss Parker lied to him?”

  “I’m sure,” Sharpe said carelessly.

  “He will be returning. Soon he will meet a fugitive from the city and he will learn the extent of his mistake.”

  “Yes.” Sharpe tugged at the laces of the whore’s bodice. The girl made a desultory
effort to stop him, but he insisted, and succeeded in pulling her dress apart.

  Vivar’s voice was very patient. “So I would expect de l’Eclin to attack us, wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose he will.” Sharpe put his hand beneath the girl’s unlaced dress and dared Bias Vivar to make a protest.

  “The defence is ready?” Vivar asked in a tone of gentle reasonableness. The tavern whore might not have existed for all the notice he took of her.

  Sharpe did not answer at once. He poured himself wine with his free hand, drank the cupful, and poured more. “Why in Christ’s name don’t you just get your damned nonsense over with, Vivar? We’re lingering in this bloody deathtrap of a city just so you can work a conjuring trick in the cathedral. So do what you have to do quickly, then get the hell out!”

  Vivar nodded as though Sharpe’s words made sense. “Let me see now. I’ve sent Cazadores on patrol north and south. It will take me two hours to recall them, maybe longer. We have yet to find every man in the city who has cooperated with the French, but the searches go on and may take another hour. Are all the supplies destroyed?”

  “There are no bloody supplies. The bloody crapauds took them all into the palace yesterday.”

  Vivar flinched at the news. “I feared as much. I saw great piles of grain and hay when I looked into the cellars of the palace. That is a pity.”

  “So do your miracle, and run.”

  Vivar shrugged. “I’m waiting for some churchmen to arrive, and I’ve sent men to destroy the nearest bridges over the Ulla, which cannot be completed till late this afternoon. I don’t really see that haste is so very feasible. We should be ready in the cathedral by sundown, and we can certainly leave tonight rather than tomorrow, but I do think we must be ready to defend the city against de l’Eclin, don’t you?”

  Sharpe tipped the whore’s face to his own and kissed her. He knew he was behaving boorishly, yet the hurt was strong and the jealousy like a fever.

  Vivar sighed. “If Colonel de l’Eclin has failed to take the city back by nightfall, then he will be blinded by the darkness and we shall simply walk away. That’s why I think it best to wait till nightfall before we leave, don’t you?”

  “Or is it so you can unfurl your magic banner in the dark? Miracles are best done in darkness, aren’t they? So that no one can see the bloody trickery.”

  Vivar smiled. “I know my magic banner is not as important to you, Lieutenant, as it is to me, but that is why I am here. And when it is unfurled I want as many witnesses as can be assembled. The news must travel out from this city; it must go to every town and village in all of Spain. Even in the far south they must know that Santiago has stirred in his tomb and that the sword is drawn again.”

  Sharpe, despite all his scepticism, shuddered.

  Vivar, if he saw Sharpe’s betrayal of emotion, pretended not to notice. “I estimate that Colonel de I’Eclin will be here within the next two hours. He will approach from the south of the city, but I suspect he will attack from the west in hope that the setting sun dazzles us. Will you undertake to conduct the defence?”

  “Suddenly you need the bloody English, do you?” Sharpe’s jealousy flared vivid. “You think the British are running away, don’t you? That we’ll abandon Lisbon. That your precious Spain will have to beat the French without us. Then bloody well do it without me!”

  For a second Vivar’s immobility suggested a proud fury that might snap like Sharpe’s temper. The whore shrank back, expecting violence, but when Vivar did move it was only to reach across the table to pick up Sharpe’s flask of wine. His voice was very controlled and very placid. “You once told me, Lieutenant, that no one expected officers who had risen from the ranks of Britain’s army to be successful. What was it you said? That the drink destroyed them?” He paused, but Sharpe made no answer. “I think you could become a soldier of great repute, Lieutenant. You understand battle. You become calm when other men become frightened. Your men, even when they disliked you, followed you because they understood you would give them victory. You’re good. But perhaps you’re not good enough. Perhaps you’re so full of self-pity that you’ll destroy yourself with drink or,” Vivar at last deigned to notice the straggly-haired girl who leaned against the Rifleman, “with the pox.”

  Throughout this lecture, Sharpe had stared at the Spaniard as if wishing to draw the big sword and slash across the table.

  Vivar stood and tipped the wine flask to pour what was left of its contents onto the floor rushes. Then he dropped it contemptuously.

  “Bastard,” Sharpe said.

  “Does that make me as good as you?” Vivar again paused to let Sharpe reply, and again Sharpe kept silent. The Spaniard shrugged. “You feel sorry for yourself, Lieutenant, because you were not born to the officer class. But have you ever thought that those of us who were so fortunate sometimes regret it? Do you think we’re not frightened by the tough, bitter men from the rookeries and hovels? Do you think we don’t look at men like you and feel envy?”

  “You patronizing bastard.”

  Vivar ignored the insult. “When my wife and children died, Lieutenant, I decided there was nothing to live for. I took to drink. I now thank God that a man cared enough for me to give me patronizing advice.” He picked up his tasselled hat. “If I have given you cause to hate me, Lieutenant, I regret it. It was not done purposefully; indeed you gave me to believe that I would not cause any bitterness between us.” It was as near as Vivar had come to a reference to Louisa. “Now all I ask is that you help me finish this job. There’s a hill to the west of the city which should be occupied. I shall put Davila under your command with a hundred Cazadores. I’ve reinforced the picquets to the south and west. And thank you for everything you have done so far. If you had not taken that first barricade, we would now be fleeing in the hills with lancers stabbing at our backsides.” Vivar stepped free of the bench. “Let me know when your defences are in place and I shall make an inspection.” He disdained any acknowledgement, but merely strode from the wineshop.

  Sharpe picked up his winecup which was still full. He stared at it. He had threatened his own men with punishment if any became worse for drink, yet now he wished to God that he could drown his disappointment in an alcoholic haze. Instead he threw the cup away and stood. The girl, seeing her earnings lost, whimpered.

  “Damn them all,” Sharpe said. He tore at two of the remaining silver buttons on his breeches, ripping a great swatch of the cloth away with the buttons which he dropped into the girl’s lap. “Damn them all.” He snatched up his weapons and left.

  The tavern keeper looked at the girl who was re-lacing her bodice. He shrugged sympathetically. “The English, yes? Mad. All mad. Heretics. Mad.” He made the sign of the cross to defend himself from the heathen evil. “Like all soldiers,” the tavern keeper said. “Just mad.”

  Sharpe walked with Sergeant Harper to the west of the city and forced himself to forget both Louisa and the shame of his behaviour in the tavern. Instead he tried to judge what approach the French might choose if they attacked Santiago de Compostela.

  The Dragoons had gone to Padron, and the road from that small town approached Santiago from the south-west. That made an attack from the south or west the likeliest possibility. De l’Eclin could emulate Vivar and make an assault from the north, but Sharpe doubted if the chasseur would choose that approach because it needed surprise. The ground to the city’s east was broken, and the most easily defended. The land to the south was hedged and ditched, while the ground to the west, from where Vivar believed the attack would come, was open and inviting like an English common field.

  The western open ground was flanked to the south by the low hill which Vivar wanted garrisoned and on which Sharpe’s Riflemen now waited for orders. The French, knowing the value of the hill, had chopped down most of the trees which had covered the high ground and made a crude fortification of brushwood jammed between the fallen trunks. Further west was dead ground where de l’Eclin’s Dragoons could assem
ble unseen. Sharpe stopped at the edge of that lower ground and stared back at the city. “We might have to hold the bloody place till after nightfall.”

  Harper instinctively glanced to find the sun’s position. “It won’t be full dark for six hours,” he said pessimistically, “and it’ll be a slow dusk, sir. No damned clouds to hide us.”

  “If God was on our side,” Sharpe essayed one of the stock jokes of the Regiment, “he’d have given the Baker rifle tits.”

  Harper, recognizing from the feeble jest that Sharpe’s grim mood was passing, grinned dutifully. “Is it true about Miss Louisa, sir?” The question was asked very carelessly and without evident embarrassment, making Sharpe think that none of his men had suspected his attachment to the girl.

  “It’s true.” Sharpe tried to sound as though he took little interest in the matter. “She’ll have to become a Catholic, of course.”

  “There’s always room for another. Mind you,” Harper stared down into the dead ground as he spoke, “I never thought it was a good thing for a soldier to be married.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “You can’t dance if you’ve got one foot nailed to the bloody floor, can you now? But the Major isn’t a soldier like us, sir. Coming from that big castle!” Harper had clearly been mightily impressed by the wealth of Vivar’s family. “The Major’s a grand big fellow, so he is.”

  “So what are we? The damned?”

  “We’re that, sure enough, but we’re also Riflemen, sir. You and me, sir, we’re the best God-damned soldiers in the world.”

  Sharpe laughed. Just weeks ago he had been bitterly at odds with his Riflemen, now they were on his side. He did not know how to acknowledge Harper’s compliment, so he resorted to a vague and meaningless cliche. “It’s a bloody odd world.”