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‘For sleeping in, sir.’ Sergeant Patrick Harper kept a rigidly straight face. The watching men of the South Essex grinned.
‘Bloody tents.’
‘Clean tents, sir. Nice and white, sir. We could make flower gardens round them in case the lads get homesick.’
Sharpe kicked one of the enormous canvas bundles. ‘Who needs goddamned tents?’
‘Soldiers, sir, in case they get cold and wet at night.’ Harper’s thick Ulster accent was rich with amusement. ‘I expect they’ll give us beds next, sir, with clean sheets and little girls to tuck us up at night. And chamberpots, sir, with God save the King written on their rims.’
Sharpe kicked the heap of tents again. ‘I’ll order the Quartermaster to burn them.’
‘He can’t do that, sir.’
‘Of course he can!’
‘Signed for, sir. Any loss will be deducted from pay, sir.’
Sharpe prowled round the great heap of obscene bundles. Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, stupid things, the Horse Guards had sent tents! Soldiers had always slept in the open! Sharpe had woken in the morning with his hair frozen to the ground, had woken with his clothes sopping wet, but he had never wanted a tent! He was an infantryman. An infantryman had to march, and march fast, and tents would slow them down. ‘How are we supposed to carry the bloody things?’
‘Mules, sir, tent mules. One to two companies. To be issued tomorrow, sir, and signed for.’
‘Jesus wept!’
‘Probably because he didn’t have a tent, sir.’
Sharpe smiled, because he was enjoying himself, but this sudden arrival of tents from headquarters posed problems he did not need. The tents would need five mules to carry them. Each mule could carry two hundred pounds, plus thirty more pounds of forage that would keep the animal alive for six days. If they marched on a campaign like last summer’s then he would have to assume that forage would be short and extra mules would have to carry extra forage. But the extra mules would need feed too, which meant more mules still, and if he assumed a march of six weeks then that was nine hundred extra pounds of forage. That would need four to five more mules, but those mules would need an extra seven hundred pounds of feed which would mean four more mules, who would also need forage; and so on, until the ridiculous but accurate conclusion was reached that it would take fourteen extra mules simply to keep the five tent-carrying mules alive! He kicked another tent. ‘Christ, Patrick! It’s ridiculous!’
It was three days since the French had surrendered to them in the hills. They had marched north from the bridge, suddenly leaving the approaches to Salamanca and coming into an area of hills and bad tracks. Waiting for them was the bulk of the army, and a white-grey pile of goddamned tents. Sharpe scowled. ‘We’ll leave them in store.’
‘And have them stolen, sir?’
Sharpe swore. What Harper meant, of course, was that the storekeeper would sell the tents to the Spanish, claim that they were stolen, and have them charged to the Battalion’s accounts. ‘You know the storekeeper?’
‘Aye.’ Harper sounded dubious.
‘How much?’
‘Handful.’
Sharpe swore again. He could doubtless get five pounds out of the Battalion accounts to bribe the storekeeper, but the job would be a nuisance. ‘He’s no friend of yours, this storekeeper?’
‘He’s from County Down.’ Harper said it meaningfully. ‘Sell his own bloody mother for a shilling.’
‘You’ve got nothing on the bastard?’
‘No.’ Harper shook his head. ‘He’s tighter than an orangeman’s drum.’
‘I’ll get you the handful.’ He could sell one of the mules that would arrive tomorrow, claim it died of glanders or God knows what, and see if anyone dared question him. He shook his head in exasperation, then grinned at the big Sergeant. ‘How’s your woman?’
‘Grand, sir!’ Harper beamed. ‘Blooming, so she is. I think she’d like to cook you one of those terrible meals.’
‘I’ll come for one this week.’ Isabella was a small, dark Spanish girl whom Harper had rescued from the horror at Badajoz. Ever since that terrible night she had loyally followed the Battalion, along with the other wives, mistresses and whores who formed a clumsy tail to every marching army. Sharpe suspected that Harper would be marrying before the year’s end.
The huge Irishman pushed his shako back and scratched at his sandy hair. ‘Did your dago find you, sir?’
‘Dago?’
‘Officer; a real ribbon-merchant. He was sniffing about this morning, so he was. Looked as if he’d lost his purse. Grim as a bloody judge.’
‘I was here.’
Harper shrugged. ‘Probably wasn’t important.’
But Sharpe was frowning. He did not know why, but his instinct, that kept him alive on the battlefield, was suddenly warning him of trouble. The warning was sufficient to destroy the small moment of happiness that insulting the tents had given him. It was as if, on a day of hope and peace, he had suddenly smelt French cavalry. ‘What time was he here?’
‘Sunrise.’ Harper sensed the sudden alertness. ‘He was just a young fellow.’
Sharpe could think of no reason why a Spanish officer should want to see him, and when something had no reason, it was liable to be dangerous. He gave the tents a parting kick. ‘Let me know if you see him again.’
‘Aye, sir.’ Harper watched Sharpe walk towards the Battalion’s headquarters. He wondered why the mention of the gaudy-uniformed Spaniard had plunged Sharpe into such sudden tenseness. Perhaps, he thought, it was just more of Sharpe’s guilt and grief.
Harper could understand grief, but he sensed that Sharpe’s mood was not simple grief. It seemed to the big Irishman that his friend had begun to hate himself, perhaps blaming himself for his wife’s death and the abandonment of his child. Whatever it was, Harper thought, he hoped that soon the army would march against the French. By that bridge, when the infantrymen had not a shot between them, Harper had seen the old energy and enthusiasm. Whatever Sharpe’s sadness was, it had not stopped his ability to fight.
‘He needs a good battle,’ he said to Isabella that night.
She made a scornful sound. ‘He needs another wife.’
Harper laughed. ‘That’s all you women think about. Marriage, marriage, marriage!’ He had been drinking with the other Sergeants of the Battalion and had come back late to find the food she had cooked for him spoilt.
She pushed the burnt eggs about the pan as if hoping that by rearranging them she would improve their looks. ‘And what’s wrong with marriage?’
Harper, who could sense marriage on his own horizon, decided that discretion was the best part of valour. ‘Nothing at all. Have you got any bread?’
‘You know I have. You fetch it.’
There were limits to discretion, though. A man’s job was not to fetch bread, or be on time for a meal, and Harper sat silent as Isabella grumbled about the billet and as she complained to him about the landlady, and about Sergeant Pierce’s wife who had stolen a bucket of water, and told him that he should see a priest before the campaign began so as to make a good confession. Harper half listened to it all. ‘I smell trouble ahead.’
‘You’re right.’ Isabella scooped the eggs onto a tin plate. ‘Big trouble if you don’t fetch the bread.’ When she spoke English she did it with a northern Irish accent.
‘Fetch it yourself, woman.’
She said something that Harper’s Spanish was not good enough to understand, but went to the corner of the room and unearthed the hidden loaf. ‘What kind of trouble, Patrick?’
‘He’s bored.’
‘The Major?’
‘Aye.’ Harper deigned to cut the loaf with his rifle’s bayonet. ‘He’s bored, my love, and when he’s bored he gets into trouble.’
Isabella poured the ration wine. ‘Rainbows?’
Harper laughed. He was fond of saying that Major Sharpe was always chasing the pot of gold that lay at the end of every rainbow. He found the pots often enough, but, according to Harper, he always discarded them because the pots were the wrong shape. ‘Aye. The bugger’s chasing rainbows again.’
‘He should get married.’
Harper kept a diplomatic silence, but his instinct, like Sharpe’s, suddenly sensed danger. He was remembering Sharpe’s sudden change of mood that day when he had mentioned the ribbon-merchant, and Harper feared because he knew Richard Sharpe was capable of chasing rainbows into hell itself. He looked at his woman, who waited for a word of praise, and smiled at her. ‘You’re right. He needs a woman.’
‘Marriage,’ she said tartly, but he could see she was pleased. She pointed her spoon at him. ‘You look after him, Patrick.’
‘He’s big enough to look after himself.’
‘I know big men who can’t fetch bread.’
‘You’re a lucky woman, so you are.’ He grinned at her, but inside he was wondering just what it was that had alarmed Sharpe. Like the prospect of marriage that he sensed for himself, he sensed trouble coming for his friend.
‘Ah, Sharpe! No problems? Good!’ Lieutenant Colonel Leroy was pulling on thin kid-leather gloves. He had been a Major till a few weeks before, but now the loyalist American had achieved his ambition to command the Battalion. The glove on his right hand hid the terrible burn scars that he had earned a year before at Badajoz. Nothing could hide the awful, puckered, distorting scar that wrenched the right side of his face. He looked into the morning sky. ‘No rain today.’
‘Let’s hope not.’
‘Tent mules coming today?’
‘So I’m told, sir.’
‘God knows why we need tents.’ Leroy stooped to light a long, thin cigar from a candle that, on his orders, was kept alight in Battalion headquarters for just this purpose. ‘Tents will just soften the men. We might as well march to war with milkmaids. Can you lose the bloody things?’
‘I’ll try, sir.’
Leroy put on his bicorne hat, pulling the front low to shadow his thin, terrible face. ‘What else today?’
‘Mahoney’s taking Two and Three on a march. Firing practice for the new draft. Parade at two.’
‘Parade?’ Leroy, whose voice still held the flat intonation of his native New England, scowled at his only Major. Joseph Forrest, the Battalion’s other Major, had been posted to the Lisbon Staff to help organise the stores that poured into that port. ‘Parade?’ Leroy asked. ‘What goddamned parade?’
‘Your orders, sir. Church parade.’
‘Christ, I’d forgotten.’ Leroy blew smoke towards Sharpe and grinned. ‘You take it, Richard, it’ll be good for you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Well, I’m off!’ Leroy sounded pleased. He had been invited to Brigade headquarters for the day and was anticipating equal measures of wine and gossip. He picked up his riding crop. ‘Make sure the parson gives the buggers a rousing sermon. Nothing like a good sermon to put men in a frog-killing mood. I hear there was a ribbon-merchant looking for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He never found me.’
‘Well tell him “no”, whatever he wants, and borrow money off him.’
‘Money?’
Leroy turned in the doorway. ‘The adjutant tells me you owe the Mess sixteen guineas. True?’ Sharpe nodded and Leroy pointed the riding crop at him. ‘Pay it, Richard. Don’t want you dying and owing the goddamn Mess money.’ He walked into the street to his waiting horse, and Sharpe turned to the table of paperwork that waited for him.
‘What the devil are you grinning at?’
Paddock, the Battalion clerk, shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir.’
Sharpe sat to the pile of work. Paddock, he knew, was grinning because Leroy had told Sharpe to pay his debts, but Sharpe could not pay them. He owed the laundry-woman five shillings, the sutler two pounds, and Leroy, quite rightly, was demanding that Sharpe buy a horse. As a Captain, Sharpe had not wanted a horse, preferring to stay on his boots like his men, but as a Major the added height would be useful on a battlefield, as would the added speed. But a good horse was not to be had for under a hundred and thirty pounds and he did not know where the funds were to come from. He sighed. ‘Can’t you forge my bloody signature?’
‘Yes, sir, but only on pay forms. Tea, Major?’
‘Any breakfast left?’
‘I’ll go and look, sir.’
Sharpe worked through the papers. Equipment reports and weekly reports and new standing orders from Brigade and Army. There was the usual warning from the Chaplain-General to keep an eye on subversive Methodists that Sharpe threw away, and a General Order from Wellington that reminded officers that it was mandatory to remove the hat when the Host was being carried by a priest through a street to a dying man. Do not upset the Spanish was the message of that order and Sharpe noted its receipt and wondered again who the ribbon-merchant was.
He signed his name three dozen times, abandoned the rest of the paperwork, and went out into the spring sunlight to check the picquets and watch the recruits, shipped out from England, fire three rounds of musket fire. He listened to the officer of the day’s usual complaint about the ration beef and dodged round the back of the houses to avoid the Portuguese sutler who was looking for his debtors. The sutler sold tobacco, tea, needles, thread, buttons, and the other small necessities of a soldier’s life. The South Essex’s sutler, who had a small stable of ugly whores, was the richest man with the Battalion.
Sharpe avoided the man. He wondered if the sutler would buy the tent mule, though he knew the man would only pay half value. Sharpe would be lucky to get fifteen pounds from the sutler, less the two pounds he owed and less the five pounds to bribe the storekeeper. Paddock, the clerk, would have to be bribed into silence. Sharpe supposed he would get seven or eight pounds from the deal, enough to keep the Mess happy. He swore. He wished the army was marching and fighting, too busy to worry about such small things as unpaid bills.
The fight at the bridge had been a false alarm. He guessed that it had been meant as a feint, a means to persuade the French that the British were retracing last year’s steps and marching on Salamanca and Madrid. Instead the Battalion had force-marched north to where the main part of the British army gathered. The French were guarding the front door into Spain and Wellington was planning to use the back. But let it start soon, Sharpe prayed. He was bored. Instead of fighting he was worrying about money and having to organise a church parade.
The General had ordered that all Battalions that lacked their own chaplain should receive one sermon at least from a priest borrowed from another unit. Today it was the turn of the South Essex and Sharpe, sitting on Captain d’Alembord’s spare horse, stared at the ten companies of the South Essex as they faced the man of God. Doubtless they were wondering why, after years free of such occasions, they should suddenly be hectored by a bald, plump man telling them to count their blessings. Sharpe ignored the sermon. He was wondering how to persuade the sutler to buy a mule when the man already had a half-dozen to carry his wares.
Then the ribbon-merchant came.
The Reverend Sebastian Whistler was enumerating God’s blessings; fresh bread, mothers, newly brewed tea, and such like, when Sharpe saw the eyes of the Battalion look away from the preacher. He looked himself and saw, coming to the field where the church parade was tactfully held away from Spanish Catholic eyes, two Spanish officers and a Spanish priest.
The ribbon-merchant rode ahead of his two companions. He was a young man uniformed so splendidly, so gaudily, that he had earned the nickname given by the British troops to any fine dandy. The young man wore a uniform of pristine white, laced with gold, decorated with a blue silken sash on which shone a silver star. His coat was edged with scarlet, the same colour as his horse’s leather bridle. Hanging from his saddle was a scabbard decorated with precious stones.
The Battalion, ignoring the Reverend Sebastian Whistler’s injunctions that they should be content with their humble lot and not covet wealth that would only lead them into temptation, watched the superbly uniformed man ride behind the preacher and pause a few paces from Sharpe.
The other two Spaniards reined in fifty yards away. The priest, mounted on a big, fine bay, was dressed in black, a hat over his eyes. The other man, Sharpe saw, was a General, no less. He was a burly, tall Spaniard in gold-laced finery who seemed to stare fixedly at the Rifle officer.
The young man in the gorgeous white uniform had a thin, proud face with eyes that looked disdainfully at the Englishman. He waited until the sermon was finished, until the RSM had brought the parade to attention and shouldered its muskets, then spoke in English. ‘You’re Sharpe?’
Sharpe replied in Spanish. ‘Who are you?’
‘Are you Sharpe?’
Sharpe knew from the ribbon-merchant’s deliberate rudeness that his instinct had been right. He had sensed trouble, but now that it was here he did not fear it. The man spoke with scorn and hatred in his voice, but a man, unlike a formless dread, could be killed. Sharpe turned away from the Spaniard. ‘Regimental Sergeant Major!’
‘Sir?’
‘A general officer is present! General salute!’
‘Sir!’ RSM MacLaird turned to the parade, filled his lungs, and his shout bellowed over the field. ‘’Talion! General salute!’
