And now, it seemed, the lovers were marching too. To Badajoz.
CHAPTER 6
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 unsavoury 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 them.’
‘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?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure?’ She seemed desperate for his certainty.
Sharpe shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure. The army will go there, but we may be sent to Lisbon, or maybe stay here. I don’t know. Why?’
‘Because I want you to be there.’
Sharpe waited for her to continue, but she stopped talking and stared, instead, into the fire. The wine was sour, but he drank some, and then pulled the stiff blanket up round her shoulders. She looked sad. ‘Why do you want me to be there?’ he asked gently.
‘Because I will be there.’
‘You’ll be there.’ He spoke the words as if they described the most normal thing on earth, but inside he was grasping for a reason, any reason, that would take Teresa into the largest French fortress in Spain.
She nodded. ‘Inside. I’ve been there, Richard, since April.’
‘In Badajoz? Fighting?’
‘No. They don’t know me as “La Aguja”. They think I am Teresa Moreno, niece of Rafael Moreno. That’s my father’s brother.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘The French even let me carry a rifle outside the city, can you imagine that? To protect myself against the horrid Guerilleros.’ She laughed. ‘We live there, my aunt, uncle, myself, and we trade in furs, leather, and we want peace so the profits can be high.’ She made a face.
‘I don’t understand.’
She leaned away from him, poked at the fire with the bayonet, and then drank more wine. ‘Will there be trouble there?’
‘Trouble?’
‘Like tonight? Killings? Thieving? Rape?’
‘If the French fight, yes.’
‘They will fight.’ She looked at him. ‘You must find me in the city, you understand?’
He nodded, puzzled. ‘I understand.’ A dog howled outside at the soft, falling snow. ‘But why in Badajoz?’
‘You’ll be angry.’
‘I won’t be angry. Why Badajoz?’
Again she was silent, biting her lip and searching his face, and then she took his hand and placed it, beneath the blanket, on her bare stomach. ‘Is it different?’
‘No.’ He stroked her skin, not understanding. She breathed deep.
‘I had a baby.’ His hand went still on the warm flesh. She shrugged. ‘I said you’d be angry.’
‘A baby?’ His mind seemed to whirl like the snow above the flames.
‘Your baby. Our daughter.’ Tears came to her eyes, and she buried her head on his shoulder. ‘She’s ill, Richard, so ill, and she cannot travel. She could die. She is so little.’
‘Our daughter? Mine?’ He felt the beginnings of joy.
‘Yes.’
‘What did you call her?’
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears. ‘Antonia. It was my mother’s name. If it had been a boy I would have called him Ricardo.’
‘Antonia.’ He said the name. ‘I like it.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re not angry?’
‘Why should I be?’
She shrugged. ‘Soldiers do not need children.’
He pulled her close, remembering the first kiss, not many miles from here, under the rainstorm as the French Lancers searched the streambed. They had been given so little time together. He remembered the parting in the shadow of Almeida’s smoke. ‘How old is she?’
‘Just over seven months. She’s very small.’
He sup
posed she would be. Tiny, vulnerable, ill, and inside Badajoz, surrounded by the French, ringed with the walls that rose dark above the Guadiana. His daughter.
Teresa shook her head. ‘I thought you’d be angry.’ She spoke the words as soft as the snow that fell beyond the shuttered windows.
‘Angry? No. I’m…’ But the words could not be found. A daughter? His? And this woman was the mother of his child? It seemed to sink in, with a wonderment and a confusion, and there were no words for him. More than a daughter, a family, and Sharpe thought he had no family, not since his mother died near thirty years before, and he held Teresa tight, crushing her, because he did not want her to see his eyes. He had a family, at last, a family.
In Badajoz.
CHAPTER 7
‘Where are we going?’
‘Badajoz!’
The Battalion found the joke endlessly amusing. It took just one man in a company to shout the question and the rest of the men took a deep breath and bawled out the answer. They exaggerated the Spanish pronunciation; the guttural, choking sound of the ‘j’ drawn out to the final ‘th’ sound of the Spanish ‘z’. The name, shouted by the South Essex, sounded like four hundred men simultaneously vomiting and spitting, and the amusement had carried them far down the familiar Portuguese roads. They marched close to the frontier, going south.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Badajoz!’
It was still cold. The snow had gone, except from the hilltops, and the final ice had melted in the rivers, but the wind stayed in the north and brought daily rain that flogged through the greatcoats, soaked blankets, and made the nightly billets steamy and damp. Most of the army was still in the north, close to Ciudad Rodrigo, attempting to persuade the French that no move was contemplated against the huge southern fortress that guarded the invasion route from Lisbon.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Badajoz!’
Lawford was alive, feverish and weak, but growing stronger in the convent hospital where Crauford had died. In a month or so, as his old battalion faced Badajoz, the Colonel would be shipped home and, doubtless, taken by carriage from the dockside to the family estate. He had smiled when Sharpe visited him, and struggled to sit up. ‘It’s only the left arm, Richard.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I can still ride, carry a sword. I’ll be back’
‘I hope so, sir.’
Lawford shook his head. ‘Bloody foolish thing to do, eh? Still, you were wrong about one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘No one shot me, and I didn’t wear the cloak.’
‘Then you deserved to be shot.’
Lawford smiled. ‘I’ll take your advice next time.’
If there was a next time, Sharpe thought. Lawford might be back, as he hoped, but not for months, and not with the South Essex. There would be a new Colonel and the rumours had blown through the Regiment like musket smoke over a battlefield. There had been a suggestion, greeted with dismay, that Sir Henry Simmerson might return to Spain, but Sharpe doubted whether the old Colonel would want to give up his lucrative job with the new-fangled Income Tax. Another thought was that Forrest might be promoted, then that was discounted, and other names came and went. Every Lieutenant Colonel whose path brought him near the South Essex was carefully scrutinized in case he should be the new man, but, as they marched one dawn across the Tagus, into the south, Forrest still commanded and there was no news of Lawford’s replacement.
Teresa rode with the Battalion. The Light Company knew her, remembered her from the fighting around Almeida and, somehow, though Sharpe never spoke of it, the men learned of the child’s existence. Harper, marching with his effortless stride, grinned at Sharpe. ‘Not to worry, sir. The baby’ll be all right, so she will. The lads will all look out for her.’
The wives of the Battalion, marching at the rear with their children, brought small presents to Sharpe and Teresa. A blanket, a pair of baby’s mittens knitted from an unravelled sock, a carved rattle. Sharpe was surprised, touched and embarrassed by the pleasure the news had caused.
The men themselves were confident, looking forward to Badajoz because the casualties at Ciudad Rodrigo had been blessedly light. The South Essex, like the rest of the army, thought that if they could storm the breaches at Ciudad Rodrigo for only sixty dead, then they would slice through the defences of Badajoz for a similarly light loss. Teresa listened to them and had shaken her head. ‘They don’t know Badajoz.’ Perhaps, Sharpe thought, it was as well that they did not.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Badajoz!’
They stopped three days in Portalegre, letting a rainstorm hammer overhead that had made the roads treacherous and a river crossing impassable. They were the only battalion in town, living in comfort, but Sharpe could see from the doorposts of the houses how frequently the army had used this road. The Commissary marked the doors with chalk; thus SE/L/6 meant that six men of the South Essex’s Light Company were to be billeted in that particular house, but each house had a jumble of such fading marks that spoke of the years of this war. The marks told of English Regiments, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, German, Portuguese, and there were even strange markings left by the French battalions. Only when Badajoz was taken would the war move again into Spain and leave Portalegre to its customary peace.
Sharpe and Teresa slept in an inn, the Battalion’s headquarters, and for Sharpe the three days were a period of contentment, perhaps his last before they would meet again, if they did, inside high, dark fortress walls. Teresa was leaving soon, riding on ahead to Badajoz, to the small, sick baby. She had to leave before the British arrived at the city and its gates were shut.
‘Why Badajoz?’ Sharpe asked the question again, lying in the Portalegre attic as the afternoon rained itself into a soaking night.
‘I had family there. I didn’t want her born at home.’
He knew why! Because his daughter was a bastard, with the mark of shame on her. ‘But they know, don’t they?’
She shrugged. ‘They know, but they don’t see what they know, so they pretend they do not know.’ She shrugged again. ‘And my father’s brother is a rich man, they’re childless, and they look after her well.’
Antonia was ill. Teresa did not know what was the matter, nor indeed did the doctors, but the child was small, did not hold her food, and the sisters in the convent had said that the child would die.
Teresa shook her head. ‘She will not.’ It was said with grim determination; no child of hers would give up easily its hold on life.
‘And she has black hair?’ Sharpe was enthralled by any scrap of information.
‘You know she has, I have told you a hundred times. Long, black hair, and she was born with it, then it all fell out, and now it is coming back. And she has a little nose. Not like mine, and not bent like yours.’
‘Perhaps she isn’t mine.’
She hit him, laughing. ‘She’s yours. She scowls, like this.’ And she screwed up her face in imitation of Sharpe and growled at him so that he pulled her down on to the bed and they lay in silence, the rain slapping at the window, and he wondered what lay ahead on the greasy, stony road.
‘Perhaps we should marry?’
She did not reply at first. She lay beside him and listened to the rain, to voices downstairs, and then the clatter of hooves in the stableyard. ‘Someone’s travelling.’
He said nothing.
She traced the scar on his cheek. ‘Would you live in Casatejada?’
He still lay silent. To be a stranger in a strange land? To be Teresa’s man, dependant on her for survival? He sighed. ‘Maybe. After the war.’
She smiled, knowing the answer to be meaningless. This was the fourth year of fighting the French in Spain, and still the country was occupied by the enemy. No one could remember a time of peace. Before they fought France, the Spanish had fought against the English until their fleet sailed to utter defeat at Trafalgar, sunk or captured with the French fleet. There was
no peace beyond the borders. Russia, Austria, Italy, Prussia, Denmark, Egypt, India, war everywhere, until now even the Americans were talking of war as if the young nation wanted to prove it could stand with the old world in a game that had racked the globe for two decades. It was a war fought on three continents, on all the oceans, and some men believed this was the final war, the ending of everything, the withering destruction foretold in the Bible. God only knew when it would end. Perhaps only when the last Frenchman, still dreaming of ruling the world, was hammered and battered into the blood-soaked mud.
Teresa kissed him. ‘After the war, Richard.’
Her hand lay over the pocket in his shirt and she pushed in her fingers to draw out the gold locket which contained Jane Gibbons’s picture. Sharpe had stolen the locket from her murdered brother. Teresa clicked it open and mocked him with her smile. ‘You met her, in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s pretty.’
‘I suppose so.’
He tried to take the locket from her, but she closed strong fingers on it.
‘You suppose so! She is pretty, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, very.’
She nodded, satisfied. ‘You’ll marry her.’ He laughed, thinking of the impossibility of the idea, but she shook her head. ‘You will, I can tell. Otherwise why do you carry this?’
He shrugged. ‘Superstition? It keeps me alive.’
She frowned at him and crossed herself; forehead, belly, nipple to nipple, an extravagant cross to warn off a demon. ‘What’s she like?’
Sharpe pulled a blanket over Teresa; her only dress was drying by the small fire. ‘She’s slim, she smiles a lot. She’s very rich and she’ll marry a very rich man.’ He grinned at her. ‘She’s soft. Comfortable.’
Teresa dismissed the implied criticism; anyone who had the chance to live in soft comfort was a fool to refuse. ‘How did you meet her?’