Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (40 page)

There was no answer.

Sharpe remembered the hanging, turning, bloodied body. He remembered the prisoner blinded. He paused, then struck.

The knife was as sharp as a razor, honed to a wicked, feather-bladed edge, and, tough as a man’s throat is, with its gristle and tubes and muscle and skin, the knife cut the throat as easily as silk. There was a gasp as the blood gushed out, as it splashed once, twice, and then the heart had nothing left to pump, and Sharpe let go of the black hair.

The Slaughterman fell forward and his bearded, brutal face fell into the mess of blood, mud and silver.

There was silence from all who watched.

Sharpe turned and walked towards La Marquesa. His eyes were on the man who held her, and in his eyes was a message of death. Slowly, his head shaking, the man let go of her.

Sharpe dropped the knife. She ran towards him, stumbling in the mud and silver coins, and his left arm was about her and she pressed herself against his mud smeared chest. ‘I thought you were dead.’

The first stars were visible above the plunder of an empire.

He held the woman for whom he had ridden across Spain, for whom he had ridden the field of jewels and gold, of silk and diamonds.

She could never be his, he knew that. He had known that even when she had said that she loved him, yet he would ride the fields of silver and pearls again for her; he would cross hell for her.

He turned from
El Matarife’s
men and Harper threw down his sword and haversack. Sharpe wondered why the bag was so heavy. He buckled. the sword and knew he would have to go into the city and find the Inquisitor. There were questions to be put to that Inquisitor, and Sharpe would be as delicate as the Inquisition in his search for the answers.

He would go into Vitoria, and he would take the answers to the mystery that Hogan had asked him to solve, but that, he knew, was not the reason that he had come to this place. Not for victory, and not for gold, but for the woman who would cheat him, lie to him, never love him, but who was the whore of gold and, for this one night at least, Sharpe’s woman.

The army had gone, following the French towards the Pyrenees, and Vitoria was left to the Spanish Battalions. Of the British only a few staff officers and the South Essex were left; the South Essex to guard the French prisoners who would soon start their journey to Dartmoor or the prison hulks.

On a warm night brilliant with starlight, Sharpe was in the hotel where so many British officers, on the night of the battle, had enjoyed a free meal. He was in a vast room with windows that looked towards the cathedral on its hill.

‘What is it?’

‘Open it.’ Helene smiled at him. She was dressed in cream silk that was cut so low that one deep breath, he was sure, would tip her breasts over the lace-trimmed collar.

She had given him a box. It was made from rosewood, polished to a deep shine, and it was locked with two golden clasps that he pushed aside.

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘open it.’

He lifted the lid.

The box was lined with red taffeta. Lying in a trough that ran the length of the box was a telescope. ‘God! It’s beautiful.’

‘Isn’t it?’ she said with satisfaction.

He lifted it. Its barrel was of ivory, its trimmings of gold, and it slid apart with extraordinary smoothness. There was a plate engraved and inset into the ivory. ‘What does it say?’

She smiled, took the glass from him, and tipped it to the candlelight. “‘To Joseph, King of Spain and the Indies, from his brother, Napoleon, Emperor of France”.’ She laughed. ‘A king’s telescope for you. I bought it off one of your cavalrymen.’

‘It’s wonderful.’ He took it from her, drew the tubes fully out, and stared with it at the sickle moon that hung over the northern hills. His last telescope, destroyed by Ducos, had been good, but it had been nothing compared with this instrument. ‘It’s wonderful,’ he said again.

‘Of course! It’s French.’ She smiled. ‘My thank you to you.’

‘For nothing.’ He put the telescope into its box, and she laughed at him.

‘For nothing, then. Just for my wagons, my life, little things like that. Nothing.’

He frowned, clasping the box shut. ‘You’ll take nothing from me?’

‘You are a fool, Richard Sharpe.’ She walked to the window, raised her bare arms to the curtains, and paused as she stared into the night. Then, abruptly, she pulled the curtains closed and turned to him. ‘You keep those diamonds. They have made you rich. And don’t give them away, not to me, not to anyone. Keep them.’

He smiled. ‘Yes, ma’am.‘

‘Because, Richard,’ and she touched his face with her finger. ‘this war will not last for ever, and when peace comes, you will need money.’

‘Yes, ma’am.‘ There was a thump on the door, a hearty, loud, hammering of a thump, and Sharpe raised his voice. ’Who is it?‘

‘Officer of the day, sir!’ It was Captain d‘Alembord’s voice

‘What is it?’

‘I need you, sir.’

La Marquesa smiled. ‘Go on. I’ll wait.’

Sharpe unlocked the door. ‘I only just got here, Peter!’

The tall, elegant Captain, who was more than a little drunk, bowed lavishly to Sharpe. ‘Your presence is demanded, sir. You’ll forgive me, ma’am?‘

They stopped at the stair’s head. Half the Battalion were in the dining room that was littered with broken plates and discarded cutlery. Sharpe doubted whether three-quarters of these men had ever eaten in such style. Someone had discovered, in a locked chest, a French tricolour that was being paraded noisily about the room. Most of the men were drunk. Some were asleep. Only at the head table was there a hint of decorum, and even there, not much.

Sergeant Patrick Harper presided. Next to him, resplendent in white, with a veil of lace that had been taken from the French baggage park, sat Isabella. About her throat was a necklace of diamonds. Sharpe doubted whether her husband would let her wear it again, at least not till they were safely away from the thieves of the British army.

Sharpe had never seen a man so frightened as Harper. He had shaken in the cathedral. Sharpe had given his Sergeant two big glasses of whisky, but even they had not stopped his fear. ‘It’s ridiculous, sir! Getting married.’

‘Women like it, Patrick.’

‘Why do they need us? Why don’t they just do it and tell us afterwards. Christ!’

‘Are you sure you want to go through with it?’

‘And let her down? Of course I’ll do it!’ He was indignant. ‘I just don’t have to enjoy doing it!’

He was enjoying himself now. He was drunk, better fed than a soldier had a right to be, and with a pretty, pregnant, dark-eyed girl beside him.

‘It’s astonishing,’ Captain d‘Alembord observed, ’how she keeps him in order.‘

Sharpe smiled. He was a Major again, reinstated to his rank, and in temporary command of the South Essex. The command would only be temporary. He had not served long enough as a Major to be given the next rank, and so he must wait, with these men, to see who replaced Lieutenant Colonel Leroy.

Wellington, furious almost beyond words at the looting of the baggage park, had spared praise for Sharpe. The Inquisitor, his bruises explained as a tumble down his stairs, had provided the Generalissimo with a list of those men who had offered support to a peace with France. Already those men were being visited, were listening to quiet arguments that were not quite threats, but which were unmistakeable just the same.

The Inquisitor had offered another explanation of the Marqués’ death, an explanation listened to in silence by those Spanish officers brought to hear it. They had looked at Sharpe, at Wellington, and a few, seeing the jest inherent in what they saw, had laughed.

La Marquesa, who had provoked a smile from Wellington’s anger, had taken her fortune from the Inquisitor’s house. She had been promised safe conduct as soon as the roads to the frontier were cleared of the last French garrisons. Wellington, as ever susceptible to a pretty face, had listened to her account of the treaty and rewarded her treachery by restoring her wealth. She would go home, and Sharpe was back where he belonged; with his men.

He had eaten with them this night, made an embarrassing speech to them, and laughed when they had cheered the Marquesa and, because of her dress, shouted at her to jump up and down. Now, standing at the stair’s head with Captain d‘Alembord, he felt a surge of affection for these soldiers whose life was so hard and whose pleasures so few and who knew how to take both hardship and pleasure in their stride. He looked at Captain d’Alembord. ‘Why did you need me?’

‘We just thought you’d gone to bed early, sir. Thought you might like to drink another toast.’

Sharpe laughed. He went down the stairs and listened to the cheers and laughter of his men, saw the worried hotel proprietor who winced every time another plate or glass broke, and he walked up to the head table, reached for a bottle of champagne, smiled at Angel who had been given a place of honour, then turned back to the stairs.

‘Where are you going, sir?’ a voice shouted.

He did not reply, instead he waved the champagne, took the stairs two at a time, and the cheers, jeers, and whistles wafted him up to the landing, and the suggestions were thick about him as he turned at the top, raised the bottle, and bowed to them. He motioned for silence that was a long time coming, but finally the faces stared up at him, flushed with drink, and grinning broadly at the Major who had come back from the dead to lead them to victory.

He wondered what he should say. Wellington, in his rage at the men who had plundered the baggage park, had called his army ‘the scum of the earth’. Sharpe laughed aloud. He was proud of them.

“Talion?‘ He paused. They waited. ’Morning parade at seven o‘clock, married men included. Goodnight.’

He turned, laughed, and their insults followed him to the door of his room.

He went inside. The first thing he saw was a pair of shoes lying on their side. Beyond the shoes was a cream dress, fallen on the floor.

She was in bed. She smiled at the champagne, then at him, and Richard Sharpe, leaning on the locked door, thought that this was what had driven him across Spain to this city. This woman, treacherous as sin, who would love and betray him in the same moment. She was as faithful as a morning mist, as hard as a sword-bayonet, and that, he thought, made her a suitable reward for a soldier.

He unbuckled his sword, dropped it on a chair, and sat on the bed. The Marquesa pulled his face to hers, kissed him, and put her hands to the buttons of his jacket. She was the whore of gold, she was the enemy, and she had known that this man, in the cause of her greed, would give to her his sword, his strength, and even his life. He would give her all that he had, all but for the one small thing that she had wanted; the one small thing she could not take; Sharpe’s honour.

“The material captured,” wrote Charles Oman in his great
History of the Peninsular War,
“was such as no European army had ever laid hands on ... since Alexander’s Macedonians plundered the camp of the Persian king after the battle of Issus.”

“Many of our men,” wrote Commissary Schaumann, “and particularly those who found diamonds, became rich people that day.”

Edward Costello, a Rifleman, reckoned that he made about a thousand pounds on the evening of the battle, helped by a “few whacks of my rifle”.

The plunder of Vitoria was truly spectacular. In military terms it was stunning; all the French guns save two, a hundred and fifty-one in all, and of the two guns the French did manage to salvage, one was lost during the retreat. But it was not the guns that the soldiers were interested in acquiring.

No one truly knows the value of the plunder. I suspect the figure of five million pounds is a low estimate, and it could well have been seven million. In today’s money that translates to something like £154,000,000 ($234,000,000). Much of it was in such ‘non-negotiable’ items as paintings by Rubens, though even those had their uses as tarpaulins. Eventually the paintings were recovered and some of them, presented to Wellington by the restored King Ferdinand VII, can be seen at Stratfield Saye or at Apsley House in London. One object that was never recovered was the Crown of Spain.

Some of the plunder was extremely negotiable, and not just the gold. Schaumann, a German officer in Wellington’s army, who was one of the men who enjoyed the victory feast in the hotel, particularly noted the number of captured women, many of them dressed in specially tailored cavalry uniforms. Schaumann, who had a particular and discriminating eye for women during the campaign, noted how, in the plunder, the French women instinctively found one enemy soldier to whom, in exchange for protection, they offered their allegiance. Those who, like the Marquesa, wanted to return to France with their belongings, were given safe conduct and an escort. The words, “we are a walking brothel” were spoken to Wellington by a captured French officer.

Wellington himself reckons that the British soldiers took one million pounds worth of gold coin (and they were third into the baggage-park after the fleeing French and the citizens of Vitoria), while he, for the military chest, received only one hundred thousand silver dollars. Among the other trophies were King Joseph’s silver chamberpot (still used, though for drinking purposes, by the cavalry regiment that captured it), and also Marshal Jourdan’s baton which Wellington sent to the Prince Regent. The Prince returned the compliment, “you have sent me the staff of a French Marshal, and I send you in return that of England”. Except that no such English ‘staff existed, one had to be designed, and thus Wellington became a Field Marshal.

An extremely unhappy Field Marshal after his victory. He was furious with the men for plundering the baggage, describing them in a phrase for which he has been attacked ever since; “the scum of the earth”. Many of his soldiers doubtless were (but by no means all) and those people who cite the phrase as evidence that Wellington despised the men who fought for him usually forget that he was fond of adding, “but it is wonderful what fine fellows we have made of them”. Wellington had cause to be angry (he was hoping to use the French treasure to pay for the campaign), but in defence of the “scum” it is very hard to see how any soldier, paid a shilling a day, could resist the field of gold that waited for them to the east of Vitoria. Yet many did; some regiments kept their order and marched straight through it, so I have no excuses to offer for Sharpe and Harper.