Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (68 page)

‘You’re wearing a red coat, Harry.’

Price swore. ‘We’ll be all right, sir.’

‘No you won’t.’ Sharpe raked a chestnut out of the fire with his knife. ‘There’ll be enough to do on Christmas Day, Harry. Trust me.’

Price’s voice was resentful. ‘Yes, sir.’ Then, unable to stay gloomy for long, he grinned and jerked his head at the camp-fires. ‘You’ve cheered them up, sir. Don’t know what’s hit them.’

Sharpe laughed. Two of the Lieutenants had been hobbling after a ten mile march, not used to being out of their saddles. The Riflemen were resigned. Sharpe was just another bastard who had denied them a warm bed, the chance of a warm girl, and forced them to sleep on a December night in an open field. Price swore as a chestnut burned his fingers. ‘They’re definitely intrigued, sir.’

‘Intrigued?’

‘Our lads have talked with them. Told them a thing or two.’ He grinned as, at last, the skin came off the chestnut. ‘Told them how long people usually live when they fight for Major Sharpe.’

‘Christ, Harry! Don’t lay it on too thick!’

Price munched happily. ‘They’re tough lads, sir. They’ll be all right.’

They were tough, too. The 6oth, the Royal American Rifles, a Regiment that had been raised in the Thirteen Colonies before the rebellion. They had been trained as sharp-shooters, stalkers, killers of the deep forest, but since the loss of America the Regiment’s ranks had been filled by British and by exiled Germans. At least half these men were German and Sharpe had discovered that Frederickson was the son of an English mother and German father and spoke both languages fluently. Sergeant Harper had discovered the ironic nickname that Frederickson’s Company had given to their Captain; Captain William Frederickson, as hard an officer as any in the army, had inevitably become Sweet William.

Sweet William crossed to Sharpe’s fire.‘Speak to you, sir?’

‘Go ahead.’

Frederickson squatted down, his one eye baleful. ‘Is there a password tonight, sir?’

‘Password?’

Frederickson shrugged. ‘I wanted to take a patrol out, sir.’ He did not want to ask permission. It offended Captains of the 6oth to ask permission. The Regiment did not fight in Battalions like other Regiments, but was split up into Companies that were attached to the army’s Divisions to strengthen the skirmish line. Companies of the 6oth were the army’s orphans, tough and independent, proud of their solitary status.

Sharpe grinned. There was no need to patrol this country; safe, friendly Portugal. ‘You want to take a patrol out, Captain.’

‘Yes, sir. Some of my men could do with some night training.’

‘How long?’

The thin, eye-patched face looked at the flames, then back to Sharpe. ‘Three hours, sir.’

Time enough to go back to the village they had passed in the dusk and get into the big farm on the hill behind the church. Sharpe had heard the sounds too, and the sounds had made him just as hungry as Frederickson. So he wanted a password to get back past the picquet line? ‘Pork chop, Captain.’

‘Sir?’

‘That’s the password. And my price.’

The faintest grin. ‘Your men say you don’t approve of stealing, sir.’

‘I never liked the sight of the provosts hanging men for looting.’ Sharpe felt in his pouch, threw Frederickson a coin. ‘Leave that on the doorstep.’

Frederickson nodded. ‘I will, sir.’ He stood up.

‘And Captain?’

‘Sir?’

‘I like the middle chops. The ones with the kidney.’

The grin showed in the darkness. ‘Yes, sir.’

They ate the pork the next day at dusk, hidden in a grove of oak trees, a long day’s march behind them. Tonight there would be no rest, only a difficult night march across the river and up into the hills. Sharpe paraded them formally, stripped them of packs, canteens, pouches, haversacks, greatcoats and shakoes, and he.watched as the Sergeants searched each man and his equipment for drink. This was one night and a day when no man could risk being drunk, and the Riflemen watched sullenly as their liquor was poured onto the ground. Then Sharpe held up a cluster of canteens. ‘Brandy.’ They cheered up a little. ‘We’ll dole it out tomorrow to see us through the cold. Once the job’s done you can drink yourselves stupid.’

They climbed that night through a dark landscape of broken rocks and dismal shadows, the howl of wolves in their ears. The wolves rarely attacked men, though Sharpe had seen one leap on a tethered horse, bite a mouthful from its rump and scare off into the darkness pursued by a futile volley of musket shots. Higher and higher they climbed, going eastward, and a fitful moon deceived Sharpe about the landmarks he had memorized on his first visit to the Convent. He was going to the north of the Gateway of God and, past midnight, he turned the soldiers southwards and the going was easier because the climbing was done. He feared the dawn. They must be in hiding before Pot-au-Feu’s men in the watchtower could search the upland scenery for intruders.

He took them too close, unaware until a sentry across the valley dropped a whole dry thorn bush onto a fire and the flames startled upwards, sheeting the watchtower stones with light, and Sharpe hissed for silence. God! They were close. He circled back and,just before dawn, he found a deep gully.

The gully, though too close to the Convent for comfort, was otherwise perfect. A Major, two Captains, four Lieutenants, eleven Sergeants, and one hundred and sixty-five rank and file were hidden by its deep banks. They must spend the whole day in concealment.

It was a strange way to spend Christmas Eve. In Britain they would be preparing food for the day’s feast. Geese would be hanging plucked on the farmhouse walls next to hams rich from the smokehouse. Plum puddings would be trussed next to the hearths on which brawn would be boiling while, in the houses of the rich, the servants would be taking the pigs’ heads from the pickle barrels and stuffing them with force-meat. Christmas pies were being made, veal and beef, while the Christmas fruit breads rose in the brick ovens, their smell rivalling the rich aroma of the new-brewed beer. Firelight would glint on bottles of home made wine, and on the great bowl that waited for the spices and hot wine of the wassail cup. Christmas was a time when a man should be in a warm house, steamy from cooking, and thinking of little else but the mid-winter feast.

Sharpe wondered if these men would resent losing their Christmas to the war, yet as its Eve passed slow and cold, he detected a pride in them that they had been chosen for their task. They had conceived a bitter hatred for the deserters and Sharpe suspected that hatred was caused partly by envy. Most soldiers thought at one time or another of desertion, but few did it, and all soldiers dreamed of a perfect paradise where there was no discipline, much wine and plentiful women. Pot-au-Feu and Hakeswill had come close to realizing that dream and Sharpe’s men would punish them for daring to do what they had only dreamed of doing.

Frederickson thought Sharpe was being fanciful. He sat on the gully’s side, next to Sharpe and Harper, and nodded at his men. ‘It’s because they’re romantics, sir.’

‘Romantics?’ The word sounded surprising coming from Sweet William.

‘Look at the bastards. Half of them would murder for ten shillings, less. They’re drunkards, they’d steal their mother’s wedding ring for a pint of rum. Jesus! They’re bastards!’ He smiled fondly at them, then lifted a frayed comer of the eyepatch and poked with a finger at the wound. It seemed to be an habitual, unthinking gesture. He wiped the finger on his jacket. ‘God knows they’re not saints, but they’re upset about the women in the Convent. They like the idea of rescuing women.’ Frederickson smiled his crooked smile. ‘Everyone hates the bloody army till someone needs rescuing, then we’re all bloody heroes and white knights.’ He laughed.

Most of the men had slept fitfully through the morning while Price’s redcoats provided sentries. Now those men were huddled in sleep while Captain Cross’s picquets lined the gully’s rim, their heads barely visible above the skyline. Sharpe had seen figures on the watchtower turret and, just after mid-day, three men on horseback had appeared to the east. Sharpe assumed they were a patrol, but the men had disappeared into a hollow and not reappeared for an hour. He guessed they had taken bottles with them, drunk, then gone back to the valley with some fiction of an uneventful patrol.

The cold was Sharpe’s biggest worry. It had been colder during the night, but the men had been moving, while now they were immobile, unable to light any fires, and frozen by a wind that blew the length of their hiding place and brought with it an intermittent drizzle. After the patrol had gone Sharpe had started a childish game of tag, its bounds restricted by an imaginary contour halfway up the gully, its most important rule silence. It forced warmth into men and officers, and the game had run for more than two hours. Whenever an officer was in the game it became more boisterous. The tag was passed by forcing another player to the ground and Sharpe had twice been tackled with bone-crunching glee, both times repaying the tag on the same man. Now, as the light was beginning to fade, the men were sitting with their weapons, intent on the preparations for the night.

Patrick Harper had Sharpe’s sword. It was a blade that Harper himself had bought, repaired, and given to Sharpe when it was feared Sharpe was dying in the army hospital at Salamanca. It was a Heavy Cavalry sword, huge and straight bladed, clumsy because of its weight, but a killer wielded with strength. The man who had shot him, the Frenchman Leroux who had brought Sharpe so close to death, had died beneath this sword. Harper sharpened the blade with long strokes of his hand-stone. He had worked the point to needle sharpness and now he held the handle out to Sharpe. ‘There, sir. Like new.’

Next to Harper was his seven-barrelled gun, much admired by Frederickson. It was the only loaded weapon that would go with the first party into the Convent. The men of that party had been hand picked, the cream of the three Companies, and they would attack only with swords, knives, and bayonets. Sharpe would lead that party. Harper beside him, and the signal for the other Riflemen to come forward was a blast from the Irish Sergeant’s gun. Harper picked the gun up, scratched at the touch-hole with wire, blew on it, then grinned happily. ‘Mutton pie, sir.’

‘Mutton pie?’

‘That’s what we’d be eating at home, so we would. Mutton pie, potatoes, and more mutton pie. Ma always makes mutton pie at Christmas.’

‘Goose.’ Frederickson said. ‘And once we had a roast swan. French wine.’ He smiled as he rammed a bullet into his pistol. ‘Mincemeat pies. Now that’s something to fill a belly. Good minced beef.’

‘We used to get minced tripe.’ Sharpe said.

Frederickson looked disbelieving, but Harper grinned at the eye-patched Captain. ‘If you ask him nicely, sir, he’ll tell you all about life in the Foundling Home.’

Frederickson looked at Sharpe. ‘Truly?’

‘Yes. Five years. I went when I was four.’

‘And you got tripe for Christmas?’

‘If we were lucky. Minced tripe and hard-boiled eggs, and it was called Mincemeat. We used to enjoy Christmas. There was no work that day.’

‘What was the work?’

Harper grinned, for he had heard the stories before. Sharpe put his head back on his pack and stared at the low, dark clouds. ‘We used to pick old ships’ cables apart, the ones that were coated with tar. You’d get a length of eight-inch cable, stiff as frozen leather, and if you were under six you had to pick apart a seven foot length every day.’ He grinned. ‘They sold the stuff to caulkers and upholsterers. Wasn’t as bad as the bone room.’

‘The what?’

‘Bone room. Some children used to pound bones into powder and it was made into some kind of paste. Half the bloody ivory you buy is bone paste. That’s why we liked Christmas. No work.’

Frederickson seemed fascinated. ‘So what happened at Christmas, sir?’

Sharpe thought back. He had forgotten much of it. Once he had run away from the Home and managed to stay away, he had tried to force the memories out of his mind. Now they were so remote that it seemed as if they belonged to some other man, far less fortunate. ‘There was a church service in the morning, I remember that. We used to get a long sermon telling us how bloody lucky we were. Then there was the meal. Tripe.’ He grinned.

‘And plum pudding, sir. You told me you got plum pudding once.’ Harper was loading the huge gun.

‘Once. Yes. It was a gift from someone or other. In the afternoon the quality would come and visit. Little boys and girls brought by their mothers to see how the orphans lived. God! We hated them! Mind you, it was the one bloody day of the winter when they heated the place. Couldn’t have the children of the rich catching a cold when they visited the poor.’ He held the sword up, stared at the blade reflectively. ‘Long time ago, Captain, long time ago.’

‘Did you ever go back?’

Sharpe sat up. ‘No.’ He paused. ‘I thought about it. Be nice to go back, dressed up in uniform, carrying this.’ He hefted the sword again, then grinned. ‘It’s probably all changed. The bastards who ran it are probably dead and the children probably sleep in beds and get three meals a day and don’t know how lucky they are.’ He stood up so that he could slide the sword into its scabbard.

Frederickson shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s changed much.’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter, Captain. Children are tough little things. Leave them to life and they manage.’ He made it sound brutal because he had managed, and he walked away from Frederickson and Harper because the conversation had made him think of his own daughter. Was she old enough to be excited by Christmas Eve? He did not know. He thought of her small round face, her dark hair that had looked so much like his when he had last seen her, and he wondered what kind of life she would have. A life without a father, a life that had come out of war, and he knew that he did not want to leave her alone to life.

He talked to the men, chatting easily, listening to their jokes and knowing their hidden fears. He had the Sergeants hand out another half dozen canteens of brandy and was touched because men offered him swigs of the precious liquid. He left his own advance party till last, the fifteen men sitting in their own group and putting the last touches to sword bayonets that were already sharp. Eight were Germans who spoke good English, good enough to understand urgent orders, and he waved them down as, with the formality of their race, they began getting to their feet. ‘Warm enough?’