Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (91 page)

‘To protect your precious strongbox?’ Sharpe gestured at the mysterious chest which stood against one wall. ‘You’d have lost the bloody thing without us, wouldn’t you? And why, Major? Because your precious Spanish armies are bloody useless, that’s why!’

‘And your army’s broken, beaten, and gone. It’s less than useless. Now get out! Run away!’

‘I hope the French get your bloody box.’ Sharpe twisted away, then heard the rasp of a sword being drawn. He whipped back, scraping his own sword quickly from its mended scabbard as Vivar, blade already flickering in the candlelight, came towards him.

‘
Basta
!’ It was the priest who threw himself between the two furious men. He pleaded with Vivar, who stared contemptuously at Sharpe. Understanding none of the conversation, the Rifleman held his ground with his sword still raised.

Vivar, reluctantly persuaded by the priest, dropped his blade. ‘You won’t last a day without me, Lieutenant, but get out!’

Sharpe spat on the floor to show his own contempt, then, his sword still drawn, went back into the night. The French had gained the north, and he must flee.

Progress during the first day of the southward journey proved better than Sharpe had dared to hope. The Parkers’ carriage was cumbersome, but it had broad-rimmed wheels designed to cope with rutted and muddy roads and a patient Spanish coachman who skilfully handled its team of six big draught horses. Only twice in that first day was it necessary for the Riflemen to help pull the carriage out of difficulty; once on a steep incline and the second time when a wheel dropped into a roadside morass. Of Louisa Parker Sharpe saw nothing, for the girl’s aunt made certain that she stayed safely mewed up behind the coach’s drawn leather curtains.

The size and cost of the carriage impressed Sharpe. The Parkers’ self-imposed mission to enlighten the Papist heathens of Spain clearly lacked for little and George Parker, who seemed to prefer walking with Sharpe to the company of his wife, explained that it was the bequest of the Admiral’s prize money that had made such comforts possible.

‘Was the Admiral a religious man, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Alas, no. Far from it. But a wealthy one, Lieutenant. Nor do I see,’ Parker was clearly piqued by Sharpe’s questions about the carriage’s cost, ‘why the Lord’s work should be constrained by a paucity of funds, do you?’

‘Indeed not,’ Sharpe cheerfully agreed. ‘But why Spain, sir? I’d have thought there were enough heathens in England without bothering the Spanish.’

‘Because the Spanish labour under the darkness of Rome, Lieutenant. Do you have any idea what that means? The horror of it? I can tell you tales of priestly behaviour that would make you shudder! Do you know what superstitions these people harbour?’

‘I’ve an idea, sir.’ Sharpe turned to check on the carriage’s progress. His two wounded men were travelling on the roof, banished there on Mrs Parker’s insistence. ‘But the Dons don’t seem quite ready for Methodism, sir, if you’ll forgive me saying as much.’

‘It is stony ground,’ Parker agreed glumly.

‘Mind you, I knew an officer in India who converted the heathen to Christianity,’ Sharpe said helpfully, ‘and he was most successful.’

‘Truly?’ Mr Parker was pleased to hear of this evidence of God’s grace. ‘A godly man?’

‘Mad as a hatter, sir. One of the Royal Irish, and they’ve all got wormscrew wits.’

‘But you say he was successful?’

‘He threatened to blow their heads off with a musket unless they were baptized, sir. That queue went twice round the armoury and clear back to the guardhouse.’

Mr Parker fell silent, plunged into a gloom that was matched only by the rebellious mood of the trudging Riflemen. Sharpe’s own cheerfulness was forced, for he was unwilling to admit that the small progress he had so far made in gaining the Riflemen’s confidence had been shattered by his decision to strike off south alone. He told himself that the men’s sullenness was due to lack of sleep, while in truth he knew it was because they had been forced to leave Major Vivar. They trusted Vivar, while his own authority over them was still on trial, and that knowledge fretted at Sharpe’s fragile dignity.

Confirmation of the Riflemen’s unhappiness came from Sergeant Williams, who fell into step with Sharpe as the small column marched between wide apple orchards. ‘The lads really wanted to stay with the Major, sir.’

‘For Christ’s sake why?’

‘Because of his jewels, sir! He was going to give us gold when we got to Santy-aggy.’

‘You’re a bloody fool, Sergeant. There was never going to be any gold. There may have been jewels in that damned box, but the only reason he wanted our company was to give him protection.’ Sharpe was certain he was right. Vivar’s encounter with the Riflemen had almost doubled the Major’s small force, and Sharpe’s duty was not to some damned strongbox but to the British army. ‘We’d never have reached Santiago anyway. It’s full of the damned Frogs.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Williams said dutifully, but with regret.

They stopped that night in a small town where George Parker’s command of Spanish secured space in an inn. The Parkers hired themselves one of the rooms off the tavern’s large chamber, while the Riflemen were given the use of a stable.

The remains of the monastery’s gift of bread was the only food the men carried, and Sharpe knew they needed more. The innkeeper had meat and wine, but would not part with either unless Sharpe paid. He had no money, so approached George Parker who confessed, sadly, that his wife controlled the family purse.

Mrs Parker, divesting herself of cloaks and scarves, seemed to swell with indignation at his request. ‘Money, Mr Sharpe?’

‘The men need meat, ma’am.’

‘We are to make a subvention to the army?’

‘It will be repaid, ma’am.’ Sharpe felt Louisa’s gaze on him but, in the interests of his men’s appetites, he resisted looking at the niece for rear of offending the aunt.

Mrs Parker jangled her leather purse. ‘This is Christ’s money, Lieutenant.’

‘We’re only borrowing it, ma’am. And my men can offer you no protection if they’re starving.’

That argument, put so humbly, seemed to convince Mrs Parker. She demanded the presence of the innkeeper with whom she negotiated the purchase of a pot of goat-bones which, she told Sharpe, could be seethed into a nourishing broth.

When the haggling was done, Sharpe hesitated before writing out the receipt that Mrs Parker demanded. ‘And some money for wine, ma’am?’

George Parker raised eyes to the ceiling, Louisa busied herself with candle-wicks, and Mrs Parker turned to stare with horror at Sharpe. ‘Wine?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Your men are bibbers of strong drink?’

‘They’re entitled to wine, ma’am.’

‘Entitled?’ The rising inflection presaged trouble.

‘British army regulations, ma’am. One third of a pint of spirits a day, ma’am, or a pint of wine.’

‘Each?’

‘Of course, ma’am.’

‘Not, Lieutenant Sharpe, while they are escorting Christian folk to safety.’ Mrs Parker thrust the purse into a pocket of her skirt. ‘Our Lord and Saviour’s money, Lieutenant, will not be frittered away on liquor. Your men may drink water. My husband and I drink nothing but water.’

‘Or small beer,’ George hastened to correct her.

Mrs Parker ignored him. ‘The receipt, Lieutenant, if you please.’

Sharpe dutifully signed the piece of paper, then followed the innkeeper into the large room where, for lack of any other currency, he sliced off four of the silver buttons sewn on the outside seams of his uniform trousers. The buttons purchased enough wineskins to give each man a cupful. The issue, like the pot of gristly bones, was received in sullen silence that was only broken by a mutinous muttering when Sharpe announced a reveille for four o’clock in the morning. Stung by this new evidence of the Riflemen’s most uncooperative behaviour, he snapped that if any man preferred to be a French prisoner, then that man could leave now. He gestured to the stable door, beyond which the frost was already forming on the stableyard.

No one spoke or moved. Sharpe could see Harper’s eyes glittering from the back of the stable, and he saw again how the Riflemen had instinctively grouped themselves about the big Irishman. But there was no point in looking to Harper for help. He, more than any man, seemed to resent leaving Major Vivar, though what purpose any of them imagined would be served by staying at the Major’s side was beyond Sharpe’s imagination. ‘Four o’clock!’ he said. ‘And we’ll be marching at five!’

Mrs Parker was no happier at the news than the Riflemen. ‘Rising at four? You think a body can survive without sleep, Lieutenant?’

‘I think, ma’am, that it’s best to be travelling before the French.’ Sharpe hesitated, not willing to make another request of this disobliging woman, but knowing he could not trust himself to judge the hours in the night’s blackness. ‘I was wondering, ma’am, if you had a clock, or a watch?’

‘A timepiece, Lieutenant?’ Mrs Parker asked the question to gain time in which to marshal her forces of rejection.

‘Please, ma’am.’

Louisa smiled at Sharpe from her seat on the shelf in the alcove which formed the bed. Her aunt, seeing the smile, snatched the alcove’s curtain closed. ‘You, of course, will sleep outside this door. Lieutenant?’

Sharpe, thinking of timepieces, was taken aback by the peremptory demand. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am?’

‘There are defenceless females in this room, Lieutenant! British females!’

‘I’m certain you will be safe, ma’am.’ Sharpe pointed at the heavy bolt inside the door.

‘Have you no conception of your responsibilities, Lieutenant?’ Mrs Parker advanced in wrath. ‘Is it any wonder that you have never secured promotion beyond your lowly rank?’

‘Ma’am, I…’

‘Do not interrupt me! I will have none of your barrack manners here, Lieutenant. Have you seen the Papist creatures who are drinking like animals in this tavern? Do you know what horrors strong drink provokes? And let me remind you that Mr Parker paid his taxes in England, which entitles us to your protection.’

George Parker, trying to read his scriptures by the light of a tallow dip, looked beseechingly at Sharpe. ‘Please, Lieutenant?’

‘I shall sleep outside, ma’am, but I need a timepiece.’

Mrs Parker, pleased with her small victory, smiled. ‘If you are to guard us, Lieutenant, then you will want to be wakeful. Turning an hourglass will keep you from slumbering. George?’

George Parker rooted about in his valise to produce an hourglass that he handed, with an apologetic grimace, to Sharpe. Mrs Parker nodded satisfaction. ‘It lacks twenty-five minutes of ten o’clock, Lieutenant, and the glass takes one hour to evacuate itself.’ She waved an imperious hand in dismissal.

Sharpe leaned on the wall outside the Parker’s room. He put the hourglass on a window sill and watched the first grains trickle through. Damn the bloody woman. No wonder the army discouraged the spread of Methodism in its ranks. Yet in one way Sharpe was glad to be a bodyguard, even to someone as disobliging as Mrs Parker, for it gave him an excuse not to go back to the stable where his Riflemen would make their displeasure and disdain clear once more. There had been a time when the company of such men had been his life and pleasure, but now, because he was an officer, he was bereft of such companionship. He felt an immense and hopeless weariness, and wished this damned journey was over.

He cut one more button from his trousers which already gaped to show a length of scarred thigh, and bought himself a skin of wine. He drank it quickly and miserably, then dragged a bench close to the family’s door. The tavern customers, suspicious of the ragged, harsh-faced, foreign soldier, kept clear of him. The bench was close to a small unshuttered window that gave Sharpe a view of the stables. He half suspected that the Riflemen might attempt another mutiny, perhaps sneaking off in the darkness to rejoin their beloved Major Vivar, but except for a few men who appeared in the stableyard to urinate, all seemed calm. Calm, but not quiet. Sharpe could hear the Riflemen’s laughter and it galled his loneliness. Gradually the laughter turned to silence.

He could not sleep. The tavern emptied, except for two drovers who snored cheerfully by the dying fire and the potman who made his bed under the serving hatch. Sharpe felt the beginnings of a headache. He suddenly missed Vivar. The Spaniard’s cheerfulness and certainty had made the long march bearable, and now he felt adrift in chaos. What if the British garrison had left Lisbon? Or what if there were no naval ships off the coast? Was he doomed to wander through Spain till, at last, the French solved his problems by making him a prisoner? And what if they did? The war must soon end with French victory, and the French would send their prisoners home. Sharpe would go back to England as just another failed officer who must eke out a bare existence on half-pay. He turned the hourglass and scratched another mark on the limewashed wall.

There was a half-collapsed skin of wine beside the sleeping drovers and Sharpe stole it. He squirted the foul liquid into his mouth, hoping that the raw taste would cut through his burgeoning headache. He knew it would not. He knew that in the morning he would feel foul-tempered and sore. So, doubtless, would his men, and the memory of their sullenness only depressed him more. Damn them. Damn Williams. Damn Harper. Damn Vivar. Damn Sir John Moore for ruining the best damned army that had ever left England. And damn Spain and damn the bloody Parkers and damn the bloody cold that slowly seeped into the tavern as the fire died.

He heard the bolt shifting in the door behind him. It was being drawn surreptitiously and with excruciating care. Then, after what seemed a long time, the heavy door creaked ajar. A pair of nervous eyes stared at Sharpe. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘Miss?’

‘I brought you this.’ Louisa closed the door very, very carefully and crossed to the bench. She held out a thick silver watch. ‘It’s a striking watch,’ she said quietly, ‘and I have set it to ring at four o’clock.’

Sharpe took the heavy watch. ‘Thank you.’

‘I have to apologize,’ Louisa said hastily.

‘No…’

‘Indeed I do. I spend many hours apologizing for my aunt’s behaviour. Perhaps tomorrow you would be kind enough to return the watch without her noticing?’

‘Of course.’

‘I also thought you might like this, Lieutenant.’ She smiled mischievously as she brought a black bottle from beneath her cloak. To Sharpe’s astonishment it held Spanish brandy. ‘It’s my uncle’s,’ she explained, ‘though he’s not supposed to drink it. He’ll think my aunt found it and threw it away.’

‘Thank you.’ Sharpe swallowed some of the fierce liquid. Then, with awkward courtesy, he wiped the bottle’s mouth on his dirty sleeve and offered it to Louisa.

‘No, thank you.’ She smiled at the clumsy gesture but, recognizing it as a friendly invitation, sat in decorous acceptance at the far end of Sharpe’s bench. She was still dressed in skirts, cloak and bonnet.

‘Your uncle drinks?’ Sharpe asked in amazement.

‘Wouldn’t you? Married to her?’ Louisa smiled at his expression. ‘Believe me, Lieutenant, I only came with my aunt for the opportunity to see Spain. It was hardly because I desired months of her company.’

‘I see,’ Sharpe said, though he really did not understand any of it, and certainly not why this girl had sought his company in the middle of the night. He did not think she had risked her aunt’s wrath just to lend him a watch, but she seemed eager to talk and, even though her presence made him shy and tongue-tied, he wanted her to stay. The dying fire cast just enough light to give a red sheen to her face. He thought her very beautiful.