“Your dinner, Lieutenant? And you and your fellow officers will sell the rest. Right? I’ll take it.”
The Lieutenant recovered the keg. “Why don’t you let me give you a fine chicken we just happened to find, Captain, as a gift, of course.”
Sharpe put his hand on the mule. “You want me to sign, Lieutenant? I think I’ll weigh the beef first.”
The Lieutenant was beaten. He smiled brightly and gave Sharpe the list. “I wouldn’t want you to go to the trouble, sir. Let’s just say you’ll take all the kegs, these included?”
Sharpe nodded. The day’s bargaining was over and his own working party unloaded the mules and took the beef down to the outskirts of Oropesa, where the men of the Battalion were quartered. The supply situation was hopeless and getting worse. The Spanish army had been waiting at Oropesa and they had long eaten any spare food from the surrounding countryside. The town’s steep streets were filled with troops, Spanish, British and Germans from the Legion, and there was already friction between the allies. British and German patrols had ambushed
Spanish supply wagons, even killing their guards, to get hold of the food Cuesta had promised to Wellesley but never delivered. The army’s hopes of reaching Madrid by the middle of August had faded when they saw the waiting Spanish troops. The Regimienta de la Santa Maria was at Oropesa parading beneath two huge new colours, and Sharpe wondered whether General Cuesta kept a limitless supply to replace the trophies that ended up in Paris. As he walked down the steep street he watched two officers with their long swords tucked, in the strange Spanish fashion, under their armpits, and nothing about them, from their splendid uniforms to their thin cigars, gave the Rifleman any comfort about the army of Spain.
He felt his own hunger as he walked down the street. Josefina’s servant had found food, at a price, and at least tonight he would eat, and every mouthful was almost a day’s pay. The two rooms she had found were costing a fortnight’s pay every night but, he thought, the hell with it. If the worst came to pass and he was forced to choose between a West Indies commission and civilian life, then damn the money and enjoy it. Rent the rooms, pay through the nose for a scrawny chicken that would boil into grey scraps, and carry into the fever ward the remembrance of Josefina’s body and the extraordinary luxury of a wide, shared bed. So far there was only the memory of the one night at the inn, and then she had ridden ahead, grudgingly escorted by Hogan, while Sharpe spent two days marching through the dust and heat with the Battalion. He had seen her briefly at midday, been dazzled by a smile of welcome, and now there was a whole evening, a long night, and no march tomorrow.
“Sir!”
Sharpe turned. Sergeant Harper was running towards him; another man, one of the South Essex’s Light Company, with him. “Sir!”
“What is it?” Sharpe noticed that Harper was looking agitated and worried, an unusual sight, but he felt a twinge of impatience as he returned their salutes. Damn them! He wanted to be with Josefina. “Well?”
“It’s the deserters, sir.” Harper was almost wriggling in embarrassment.
“Deserters?”
“You know, sir. The ones who escaped at Castelo?”
The day they had met up with the South Essex. Sharpe remembered the men being flogged because four deserters had slipped past the guard at night. He looked hard at Harper. “How do you know?”
“Kirby’s a mate of theirs, sir.” He pointed to the man standing next to him. Sharpe looked at him. He was a small man who had lost most of his teeth. “Well, Kirby?”
“Dunno, sir.”
“You want to be flogged, Kirby?”
The man’s eyes jerked up to his, astonished. “What, sir?”
“If you don’t tell me I’ll have to presume you are helping them to escape.”
Harper and Kirby were silent. Finally the Sergeant looked at Sharpe. “Kirby saw one of them in the street, sir. He went back with him. Two of them are wounded, sir. Kirby came to see me.”
“And in turn you came to see me.” Sharpe kept his voice harsh. “And what do you expect me to do?”
Again they said nothing. Sharpe knew that they hoped he could work a miracle; that somehow lucky Captain Sharpe could find a way to save the four men from the savage punishment the army gave to deserters. He felt an unreasonable anger mount inside him, alloyed with impatience. What did they think he was? “Fetch six men, Sergeant. Three Riflemen and three others. Meet me here in five minutes. Kirby, stay here.”
Harper stood to attention. “But, sir… „
“Go!”
There was a translucent quality to the air, that quality of light just before dusk when the sun seems suspended in coloured liquid. A gnat buzzed irritatingly round Sharpe’s face, and he slapped at it. The church bells rang the Angélus, a woman hurrying down the street crossed herself, and Sharpe cursed inside because he had promised Josefina to join her just after six o’clock. Damn the deserters! Damn Harper for expecting a miracle! Did the Sergeant really think that Sharpe would condone desertion? Behind him, frightened and nervous, Kirby fidgeted in the roadway, and Sharpe thought gloomily of what this could mean to the Battalion. The whole army was frustrated but at least they could look forward with a mixture of fear and eagerness to the inevitable battle that gave their present discomforts some purpose. The South Essex did not share the anticipation. It had been disgraced at Valdelacasa, its colour shamefully lost, and the men of the Battalion had no stomach for another fight. The South Essex was sullen and bitter. Every man in it would wish the deserters well.
Harper reappeared with his men, all of them armed, all of them looking apprehensively at Sharpe. One of them asked nervously if the deserters would be shot.
“I don’t know,” Sharpe snapped. “Lead on, Kirby.”
They walked down the hill into the poorest section of the town, into a tangle of alleyways where half-dressed children played in the filth that was hurled from the night-buckets into the roadway. Washing hung between the high balconies, obscuring the light, and the closeness of the walls seemed to heighten the stench. It was a smell the men had first encountered in Lisbon, and they had become accustomed to it even though its source made walking through the streets after dark a risky and nauseating business. The men were silent and resentful, following Sharpe reluctantly to a duty they had no wish to perform.
“Here, sir.” Kirby pointed to a building that was little more than a hovel. It had partly collapsed, and the rest looked as if it could fall at any moment. Sharpe turned to the men. “You wait here. Sergeant, Peters, come with me.”
Peters was from the South Essex. Sharpe had noted him as a sensible man, older than most, and he needed someone from the deserters’ own Battalion so that no-one could think that the green-jacketed Riflemen had ganged up on the South Essex.
He pushed open the door. He had half expected someone to be waiting with a gun but instead he found himself looking at a room of unimaginable squalor. The four men were on the floor, two of them lying, the others sitting by the dead embers of a fire. Light filtered thickly through holes that had once been windows and through the broken roof and upper floors. The men were dressed in rags.
Sharpe crossed to the two sick men. He crouched and looked at their faces; they were white and shivering, the pulse beat almost gone. He turned to the others.
“Who are you?”
“Corporal Moss, sir.” The man had a fortnight’s growth of beard and his cheeks were sunken. They had obviously not been eating. “This is Private Ibbotson.” He pointed to his companion. “And those are Privates Campbell and Trapper, sir.” Moss was being punctilious and polite, as though it could save him from his fate. Dust lay heavy in the air; the room was filled with the stench of illness and ordure.
“Why are you in Oropesa?”
“Came to rejoin the Regiment, sir,” Moss said, but it was said too quickly. There was silence. Ibbotson sat by the dead fire and stared at the ground between his knees. He was the only one with a weapon, a bayon
et held in his left hand, and Sharpe guessed that he did not approve of what was happening.
“Where are your weapons?”
“Lost ‘em, sir. And the uniforms.” Moss was eager to please.
“You mean you sold them.”
Moss shrugged. “Yes, sir.”
“And you drank away the money?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a sudden noise in the next room, and Sharpe whirled to face the doorway. There was nothing there. Moss shook his head. “Rats, sir. Bloody armies of them.”
Sharpe looked back to the deserters. Ibbotson was now staring at him, the frightening stare of a crazed fanatic. For a moment Sharpe wondered if he was planning to use the bayonet.
“What are you doing here, Ibbotson? You don’t want to rejoin the Regiment.”
The man said nothing. Instead he lifted his right arm that had been hidden behind his body. There was no hand, just a stump wrapped in blood-soaked rags.
“Ibbs got in a fight, sir,” Moss said. “Lost ‘is ’and. He’s no use to anyone no more, sir. ”E’s right-handed, you see,“ he added lamely.
“You mean he’s no use to the French.”
There was silence. The dust hung thick in the air. “That’s right.” Ibbotson had spoken. He had an educated voice. Moss tried to quieten him but Ibbotson ignored the Corporal. “We would have been with the French a week ago but these fools decided to drink.”
Sharpe stared at him. It was strange to hear a cultured voice coming from the rags, stubble and blood-soaked bandages. The man was ill, he probably had gangrene, but it hardly mattered now. By admitting they were running towards the enemy Ibbotson had condemned all four. If they had been caught trying to get to a neutral country they might have been sent, as Sharpe might be, to the garrison in the West Indies, where the fever would kill them anyway, but there was only one punishment for men who deserted to the enemy. Corporal Moss knew it. He looked up at Sharpe and pleaded. “Honest, sir, we didn’t know what we was doing. We waited ‘ere, sir… „
“Shut your teeth, Moss!” Ibbotson glared at him then turned to Sharpe; his hand moved the bayonet higher but it was only to emphasise his remarks. “We’re going to lose this war. Any fool can see that! There are more French armies than Britain could raise in a hundred years. Look at you!” His voice was filled with scorn. “You might beat one General, then another, but they’ll keep coming! And they’ll win! And do you know why? Because they have an idea. It’s called freedom, and justice, and equality!” He stopped abruptly, his eyes blazing.
“What are you, Ibbotson?” Sharpe asked.
“A man.”
Sharpe smiled at the dramatic challenge in the answer. The argument wasn’t new, Rifleman Tongue could be relied on to trot it out most nights, but Sharpe was curious why an educated man like Ibbotson should be in the ranks of the army and preaching the French shibboleths of freedom.
“You’re educated Ibbotson. Where are you from?”
Ibbotson did not answer. He stared at Sharpe, clutching his bayonet. There was silence. Behind him Sharpe heard Harper and Peters shuffle their feet on the hard earth floor. Moss cleared his throat and beckoned at Ibbotson. “E’s a vicar’s son, sir.” He said it as if it explained everything.
Sharpe looked at Ibbotson. The son of a vicarage? Perhaps the father had died or the family was too large, and penury could lie at the end of both those roads. But what fate had driven Ibbotson to join the army? To pit his puny strength against the drunks and hardened criminals who were the usual scrapings gathered by the recruiting parties? Ibbotson stared back at him and then, to Sharpe’s disgust, began to cry. He let go of the bayonet and buried his face in the crook of his left elbow, and Sharpe wondered if he were suddenly thinking of a vicarage garden beside a church and a long-lost mother baking bread in the ripeness of an English summer. He turned to Harper.
“They’re under arrest, Sergeant. You’ll have to carry those two.”
He stepped outside the hovel into the foetid alleyway. “Kirby?”
“Sir?”
“You can go.” The man ran off. Sharpe did not want him to face the four deserters whose arrest he had caused. “You others. Inside.”
He stared up between the narrowing walls at the patch of sky. Swallows flashed across the opening, the colours were deepening into night, and tomorrow there would be executions. But first there was Josefina. Harper came to the door. “We’re ready, sir.”
“Then let’s go.”
Chapter 13
Sharpe woke with a start, sat up, instinctively reached for a weapon and then, realising where he was, sank back on the pillow. He was covered with sweat though the night was cool and a small breeze stirred the edges of the curtains either side of the open window, through which he could see a full moon. Josefina sat beside the bed, watching him, a glass of wine in her hand. “You were dreaming.”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“My first battle.” He did not say any more but in his dream he had been unable to load the Brown Bess, the bayonet would not fit the muzzle, and the French kept coming and laughing at the frightened boy on the wet plains of Flanders. Boxtel, it had been called, and he rarely thought of the messy fight in the damp field. He looked at the girl. “What about you?” He patted the bed. “Why are you up?”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.” She had put on some kind of dark robe, and only her face and the hand holding the glass were visible in the unlit room.
“Why couldn’t you sleep?”
“I was thinking. About what you said. ”
“It may not happen.”
She smiled at him. “No.”
Somewhere in the town a dog barked but there were no other sounds. Sharpe thought of the prisoners and wondered if they were spending their last night awake and listening to the same dog. He thought back to the evening after he had come back from the guardroom and the long conversation with Josefina. She wanted to reach Madrid, was desperate to reach Madrid, and Sharpe had told her he thought it unlikely that the allies would get as far as Spain’s capital. Sharpe thought that Josefina had little idea why she wanted to reach Madrid; it was the dream city for her, the pot of gold at the end of a fading rainbow, and he was jealous of her desire to get there. “Why not go back to Lisbon?”
“My husband’s family won’t welcome me, not now.”
“Ah, Edward.”
“Duarte.” Her correction was automatic.
“Then go home.” They had had this conversation before. He tried to force her to reject every option but staying near him, as though he thought he could afford to keep her.
“Home? You don’t understand. They will force me to wait for him just like his parents do. In a convent or in a dark room, it doesn’t matter.” Her voice was edged with despair. She had been brought up in Oporto, the daughter of a merchant who was rich enough to mix with the important English families in the town who dominated the Port trade. She had learned English as a child because that language was the tongue of the wealthy and powerful in her home town. Then she had married Duarte, ten years her senior, and Keeper of the King’s Falcons in Lisbon. It was a courtier’s job, far from any falcons, and she had loved the glitter of the palace, the balls, the fashionable life. Then, two years before, when the Royal Family had fled to Brazil, Duarte had taken a mistress instead of his wife, and she had been left in the big house with his parents and sisters. “They wanted me to go into a convent. Can you believe that? That I should wait for him in a convent, a dutiful wife, while he fathers bastards on that woman?”
Sharpe rolled off the bed and walked to the window. He leaned on the black ironwork, oblivious of his nakedness, and stared towards the east as if, in the night sky, he might see the reflection of the French fires. They were there, a long day’s march away, but there was nothing to be seen except the moonlight on the countryside and the falling roofs of the town. Josefina came and stood beside him and ran her fingers down the scars on his back. “Wh
at happens tomorrow?”
Sharpe turned and looked down on her. “They get shot.”
“It’s quick?”
“Yes.” There was no point in telling her of the times when the bullets missed and the officers had to walk up and blow the heads apart with a pistol. He put an arm round her and drew her to him, smelling her hair. She rested her head on his chest, her fingers still exploring the scars. “I’m frightened.” Her voice was very small.
“Of them?”
“Yes.”
Gibbons and Berry had been in the guardroom when the deserters had been brought in. Sir Henry was there, rubbing his hands, and in his delight at the capture of the fugitives had effusively thanked Sharpe, all enmity suddenly put aside. The court-martial was a formality, a matter of moments, and then the paper had gone to be signed by the General and the fate of the four men sealed. Sharpe, for a few moments, had been left in the room with the two Lieutenants, but nothing had been said to him. They had talked quietly, occasionally laughing, looking at him as if to provoke his anger, but it was the wrong time and place. It would come. He tilted her face towards him. “Would you need me if they were not here?”
She nodded. “You still don’t understand. I’m a married woman and I’ve run away. Oh, I know he’s done worse, but that does not count against him. The day I left Duarte’s parents I became alone. Do you see? I can’t go back there, my parents will not forgive me. I thought in Madrid… „ She tailed away.
“And Christian Gibbons said he would look after you in Madrid?”
She nodded again. “Other girls went, you know that. There are so many officers. But now.” She stopped again. He knew what she was thinking.
“Now you’re worried. No Madrid and you’re with someone who has no money and you’re thinking of all those nights in the fields or flea-ridden cottages?”
She smiled up at him and Sharpe felt the pang of her beauty. “One day, Richard, you’ll be a Colonel with a big horse, and lots of money, and you’ll be horrible to all the Captains and Lieutenants.”