Kitabı oku: «Sharpe’s Enemy: The Defence of Portugal, Christmas 1812»
SHARPE’S
ENEMY
Richard Sharpe and the Defence
of Portugal, Christmas 1812
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1984
Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1985
Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1984
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006170136
Ebook Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 9780007346790
Version: 2017-06-07
For my daughter,
with love
‘No one is better than Bernard Cornwell in describing battles large and small, howitzer fire, cavalry charges or bayonet attacks’
Evening Standard
‘… this system is yet in its infancy … much has been accomplished in a short time and there is every reason to believe that the accuracy of the Rocket may be actually brought upon a par with that of other artillery ammunition for all the important purposes of the field service.’
COLONEL SIR WILLIAM CONGREVE, 1814.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Epigraph
Map
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
Historical Note
Sharpe’s Story
Keep Reading
About the Author
The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)
The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)
Also by Bernard Cornwell
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
On December 8th, 1812, the English soldiers first came to Adrados.
The village had escaped the war. It lay in that part of Spain east of the northern Portuguese border and, though it was close to the frontier, few soldiers had passed through its single street.
The French had come once, three years before, but they had been running from the English Lord Wellington and running so fast that they scarcely had time to stop and loot.
Then in May of 1812 the Spanish soldiers had come, the Garrison of Adrados, but the villagers had not minded. There were only fifty soldiers, with four cannon, and once the guns had been placed in the old Castle and Watchtower outside the village the soldiers seemed to think their war was done. They drank in the village inn, flirted with the women at the stream where the flat stones made laundry easy, and two village girls married gunners in the summer. By some confusion in the Spanish Army the ‘garrison’ had been sent a powder convoy intended for Ciudad Rodrigo and the soldiers boasted that they had more powder, and fewer guns, than any other Artillery troop in Europe. They made crude fireworks for the weddings and the villagers admired the explosions that flashed and echoed in their remote valley. In the autumn some of the Spanish soldiers deserted, bored with guarding the valley where no soldiers came, eager to go back to their own villages and their own women.
Then the English soldiers came. And on that day of all days!
Adrados was not a place of great importance. It grew, the priest said, sheep and thorns, and the priest told the villagers that made the village a holy place because Christ’s life began with the shepherds’ visit and ended with a crown of thorns. Yet the villagers did not need the priest to tell them that Adrados was sacred because only one thing brought visitors to Adrados, and that was on the Feast on December 8th.
Years before, no one knew how many, not even the priest, but in those far-off days when the Christians fought the Muslims in Spain, the Holy Mother had come to Adrados. Everyone knew the story. Christian Knights were falling back through the valley, hard pressed, and their leader had stopped to pray beside a granite boulder that was poised on the edge of the pass which fell off to the west, towards Portugal, and then it had happened. She had appeared! She stood on the granite boulder, Her face pale as ice, Her eyes like mountain pools, and She told the Knight that the pursuing Muslims would soon stop to pray themselves, to face east towards their heathen home, and that if he turned his tired troop about, if they drew their battered swords, then they would bring glory to the cross.
Two thousand Muslim heads dropped that day. More! No one knew how many and each year the figure grew with the story’s telling. Carved Muslim heads decorated the archway of the Convent that was built around the place where She had appeared. In the Convent chapel, at the top of the altar steps, was a small patch of polished granite; the place of the Holy Footfall.
And each year on December 8th, the Day of the Miracle, women came to Adrados. It was a woman’s day, not a man’s, and the men would go to the village inn once they had carried the statue of the Virgin, its jewels swaying beneath the gilded canopy, round the village bounds and back to the Convent.
The Nuns had left the Convent two hundred years before, attracted to plumper houses in the plains, unable to compete with the towns where the Holy Mother had been more generous in her appearance, yet the buildings were still good. The chapel became the village church, the upper cloister was a store-place, and one day a year the Convent was still a place for miracles.
The women entered the chapel on their knees. They shuffled awkwardly across the flagstones, their hands busy with beads, their voices muttering urgent prayers, and their knees would take them to the top of the steps. The priest intoned his Latin. The women bent and kissed the smooth dark granite. There was a hole in the stone and legend said that if you kissed in that place and the tip of your tongue could reach the very bottom of the hole, then the baby would be a boy.
The women cried as they kissed the stone; not with sorrow, but with a kind of ecstasy. Some had to be helped away.
Some prayed for deliverance from illness. They brought their tumours, their disfigurements, their crippled children. Some came to pray for a child and a year later they would return and give thanks to the Holy Mother for now they shared Her secret. They prayed to the Virgin who had given birth and they knew, as no man could know, that a woman brought forth her children in sorrow, yet still they prayed to be mothers and their tongues stretched down the hole. They prayed in the candled glory of the Convent Chapel of Adrados and the priest piled their gifts behind the altar; the harvest of each year.
December 8th, 1812. The English came.
They were not the first visitors. Women had been arriving in the village since dawn, women who had walked twenty miles or more. Some came from Portugal, most from the villages that were hidden in the same hills as Adrados. Then two English officers came, mounted on big horses, and with them was a girl. The officers had loud braying voices. They helped the girl from her horse outside the Convent then rode to the village where they paid their respects to the Spanish Commandant over cups of the region’s harsh red wine that was served in the inn. The men in the inn were good humoured. They knew that many of the women were praying for a child and they would be called on to help the Holy Mother in the prayer’s fulfilment.
The other British soldiers came from the east which was strange because there should have been no British soldiers to the east, but no one remarked on the fact. There was no alarm. The British had not been to Adrados, but the villagers had heard that these heathen soldiers were respectful. Their General had ordered them to stand to attention when the Host was carried through the streets to a deathbed, and to remove their hats, and that was good. Yet these English soldiers were not like the Spanish garrison. These red-coated men were foul looking, villainous, unkempt, their faces full of crudity and hatred.
A hundred of them waited at the eastern end of the village, sitting by the washing place next to the road and smoking short clay pipes. A hundred other men filed through the village led by a big man on horseback whose red coat was lavishly looped with gold. A Spanish soldier, coming from the castle to the inn, saluted the Colonel and was surprised when the English officer smiled at him, bowed ironically, and his mouth was almost toothless.
The Spaniard must have said something in the inn for the two British officers, jackets unbuttoned, came into the roadway and watched the last of the soldiers file by towards the Convent. One of the officers frowned. ‘Who the devil are you?’
The soldier he had spoken to grinned. ‘Smithers, sir.’
The Captain’s eyes flicked up the line of soldiers. ‘What Battalion?’
‘Third, sir.’
‘What bloody Regiment, you fool?’
‘The Colonel’ll tell you, sir.’ Smithers stepped into the centre of the street, put a hand to his mouth. ‘Colonel!’
The big man turned his horse, paused, then spurred towards the inn. The two Captains pulled themselves upright and saluted.
The Colonel reined in. He seemed once to have had the jaundice, perhaps to have served in the Fever Islands, for his skin was yellow like old parchment. The face beneath the tasselled bicorne hat twitched in involuntary spasm. The blue eyes, startlingly blue, were unfriendly. ‘Button your bloody jackets.’
The Captains put down their wine cups, buttoned their jackets and pulled their belts into place. One, a plump young man, frowned because the Colonel had shouted at them in front of the grinning privates.
The Colonel let his horse walk two steps closer to the pair of Captains. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Here, sir?’ The taller, thinner Captain smiled. ‘Just visiting, sir.’
‘Just visiting, eh?’ The face twitched again. The Colonel had a strangely long neck hidden by a cravat that he pinned high on his throat. ‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Lady Farthingdale, sir,’ added the plump one.
‘And Lady Farthingdale, eh?’ The Colonel mimicked the Captain’s plummy voice, then he screamed at them in sudden vehemence. ‘You’re a bloody disgrace, that’s what you are! I hate you! Christ’s belly, I hate you!’
The street was suddenly silent in the winter sunshine. The soldiers that had gathered either side of the Colonel’s horse grinned at the two Captains.
The taller Captain wiped the spittle flung from the Colonel’s mouth off his red jacket. ‘I must protest, sir.’
‘Protest! You puking horror! Smithers!’
‘Colonel?’
‘Shoot him!’
The plump Captain grinned, as if a joke had been made, but the other flung an arm up, flinched, and as Smithers, grinning, levelled and fired his musket so did the Colonel bring out an ornate chased pistol and shoot the plump Captain in the head. The shots echoed in the street, the smoke drifted in two distinct clouds above the fallen bodies, and the Colonel laughed before standing in his stirrups. ‘Now, lads, now!’
They cleared the inn first, stepping over the corpses whose blood was spattered on the lintel of the door, and the muskets crashed in the building, bayonets hunted the men into corners and killed them, and the Colonel waved the hundred men who had been waiting at the eastern end of the village into the street. He had not wanted to start this quickly, he had wanted to get half his men up to the Convent first, but these bloody Captains had forced his hand and the Colonel screamed at them, urged them on, and led half his force towards the big, square, blank-walled Convent.
The women in the Convent had not heard the shots fired five hundred yards to the east. The women were crowded in the upper cloister, waiting their turn to shuffle into the chapel on their knees, and the first they knew that the war had at last come in its horror to Adrados was when the red-coated men appeared in the gateway, bayonets levelled, and the screaming began.
Other men were clearing the village houses, one by one, while yet more streamed across the valley towards the castle. The Spanish garrison had been drinking in the village, only a handful were at their posts, and they assumed that British uniforms belonged to their allies and further assumed that these British soldiers could explain the uproar in the village. The Spaniards watched the redcoats come across the rubble of the castle’s fallen east wall, shouted questions at them, and then the muskets fired, the bayonets came, and the garrison died in the mediaeval ramparts. One Lieutenant killed two of the redcoats. He fought with skill and fury, drove more of the invaders back, and he escaped over the fallen wall and ran through the thorn bushes to the watchtower on its hill to the east. He hoped he would find a handful of his men there, but he died in the thorns, shot by a hidden marksman, and the Spanish Lieutenant never knew that the men who had captured the watchtower were dressed not in British red, but in French blue. His body rolled under a thorn bush, crushing the old brittle bones of a raven left by a fox.
There were screams in the street. Men died who tried to protect their homes, children screamed as their fathers died, as their homes were forced open. The musket shots dotted the breeze with small white clouds.
More men came from the east, men in uniforms as varied as the Battalions that had fought for Portugal and Spain in the four years of war in the Peninsula. With the men came women and it was the women who killed children in the village, shooting them, knifing them, keeping only those who could work. The women squabbled over the cottages, arguing who would have what, sometimes crossing themselves as they passed a crucifix nailed on the low stone walls. It did not take long to destroy Adrados.
In the Convent the screams had become constant as the English soldiers hunted through the two cloisters, the hall, the empty rooms, and the crammed chapel. The priest had run to the door, pushing his way through the women, and now he was held, quivering, as the redcoats sorted out their prize. Some women were pushed out of the building, the lucky ones, women too diseased or too old, and some were killed with the long bayonets. Inside the chapel the soldiers took the ornaments from the altar, picked through the gifts that were piled in the narrow space behind it, and then smashed open the cupboard that held the Mass vessels. One soldier was pulling on the white and gold finery the priest kept for Easter. He walked round the church blessing his comrades who pulled women onto the floor. The chapel sounded with sobs, screams, men’s laughter, and the tearing of cloth.
The Colonel had ridden his horse into the upper cloister and waited, a grin on his face, and watched his men. He had sent two men he could trust into the chapel and they appeared now, holding a woman between them, and the Colonel looked at her, licked his lips, and his face twitched in its spasms.
Everything about her was rich, from her clothes to her hair, a richness that spoke of money enhancing beauty. Her hair was black and full, falling in waves either side of a face that was generous and provocative. She had dark eyes that looked at him fearlessly, a mouth that seemed as if it smiled a lot, and her clothes were covered with a dark cloak trimmed in lavish silver fur. The Colonel smiled. ‘Is that her?’
Smithers grinned. ‘That’s ’er, sir.’
‘Well, well, well. Isn’t Lord Farthingdale a lucky bastard, then. Get her bloody cloak off, let’s have a look at her.’
Smithers reached for the fur-edged hood at the back of the cloak, but she pushed the men away, undid the clasp at her neck and slowly took the cloak from her shoulders. She had a full body, in the prime of her youth, and there was something tantalizing to the Colonel in her absence of fear. The cloister stank of fresh blood, echoed with screaming women and children, yet this rich, beautiful woman stood there with a calm face. The Colonel smiled again with his toothless mouth. ‘So you’re married to Lord Farthingdale, whoever he is?’
‘Sir Augustus Farthingdale.’ She was not English.
‘Oh, dear me. I begs your Ladyship’s pardon.’ The Colonel gave his cackling laugh. ‘Sir Augustus. General, is he?’
‘Colonel.’
‘Like me!’ The yellow face twitched as he laughed. ‘Rich, is he?’
‘Very.’ She stated it as a fact.
The Colonel dismounted clumsily. He was tall, with a huge belly, and an ugliness that was truly remarkable. His face twitched as he approached her. ‘You’re no bloody English lady, are you now?’
She still seemed utterly unafraid. She covered her dark riding habit with her fur-edged cloak and even gave a tiny smile. ‘Portuguese.’
The blue eyes watched her closely. ‘How do I know you’re telling the bleeding truth, then? What’s a Portuguesey doing married to Sir Augustus Farthingdale, eh?’
She shrugged, took from her left hand a ring, and tossed it to the Colonel. ‘Trust that.’
The ring was of gold. On its bevelled face was a coat of arms, quartered, and the Colonel smiled as he looked at it. ‘How long have you been married, Milady?’
This time she did smile, and the soldiers watching grinned with desire. This was the Colonel’s prize, but the Colonel could be generous when he wished it. She pushed black hair away from her olive skin. ‘Six months, Colonel.’
‘Six months. Still got the shine on it, has it?’ He cackled. ‘How much will Sir Augustus pay to have you back as a bedwarmer?’
‘A lot.’ She dropped her voice as she said it, enriching the two words with promise.
The Colonel laughed. Beautiful women did not like the Colonel and so he did not like them. This rich bitch had spirit, but he could break her, and he looked at his men who watched her, and he grinned. He tossed the gold ring in the air, caught it. ‘What were you doing here, Milady?’
‘I was praying for my mother.’
The grin went instantly from his face. His eyes were suddenly cunning, his voice guarded. ‘You were what?’
‘Praying for my mother. She’s ill.’
‘You love your mother?’ His question was intense.
She nodded, puzzled. ‘Yes.’
The Colonel jerked on his heel, swung to his men, and his finger jabbed at them like a blade. ‘No one!’ His voice was at a scream again. ‘No one is to touch her! You hear me! No one.’ The head twitched and he waited for the spasm to pass. ‘I’ll kill any bastard who touches her! Kill them!’ He turned back to her and gave her a clumsy bow. ‘Lady Farthingdale. You have to put up with us.’ His eyes searched the cloister and saw the priest, tied to a pillar. ‘We’ll send the vicar with a letter and the ring. Your husband can pay for you, Milady, but no one, I promises you, no one will touch you.’ He looked at his men again, screamed, and the spittle flayed out in the sunlight. ‘No one touches her!’ His mood changed back just as suddenly. He looked about the cloister, at the women who lay, bloody and beaten, on the coloured tiles, at the other women who waited, fearful and terrified, within the hedge of bayonets and he grinned. ‘Plenty for everyone, yes? Plenty!’ He cackled and turned, his slim sword scabbard scraping on the ground. He saw a young girl, skinny, scarce out of childhood, and the finger jabbed again. ‘That’s mine! Bring her here!’ He laughed, hands on hips, dominating the cloister, and he grinned at the men in the Convent. ‘Welcome to your new home, lads.’
The Day of the Miracle had come to Adrados again and the dogs of the village sniffed at the blood that stiffened in the single street.
CHAPTER ONE
Richard Sharpe, Captain of the Light Company of the South Essex Regiment’s one and only Battalion, stood at the window and stared at the procession in the street below. It was cold outside, he knew that too well. He had just marched his shrunken company north from Castelo Branco, ordered to Army Headquarters by a mysterious summons for which he had still not been given an explanation. Not that Headquarters often explained itself to mere Captains, but it annoyed Sharpe that he had now been in Frenada two days and was still none the wiser about the urgent orders. The General, Viscount Wellington of Talavera, no by God, that was wrong! He was now the Marquess of Wellington, Grandee of Spain, Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo, Generalissimo of all the Spanish Armies, ‘Nosey’ to his men, ‘the Peer’ to his officers, and the man, Sharpe assumed, who had wanted him in Frenada, but the General was not here. He was in Cadiz, or Lisbon, or God only knew where, and the British army was huddling in its winter quarters while only Sharpe and his Company were out on the cold December roads. Major Michael Hogan, Sharpe’s friend, and the man who ran Wellington’s Intelligence department, had gone south with the General and Sharpe missed him. Hogan would not have kept him waiting.
At least Sharpe was warm. He had given his name yet again to the clerk on the ground floor and then growled that he would wait upstairs in the Headquarters mess where there was a fire. He was not supposed to use the room, but few people wanted to argue with the tall, dark haired Rifleman with the scar that gave his face a slightly mocking look in repose.
He stared down at the roadway. A priest sprinkled Holy Water. Acolytes rang bells and swung censers of burning incense. Banners followed the litter-borne statue of the Virgin Mary. Women knelt by the buildings and held clasped hands towards the statue. A weak sunlight lit the streets, winter sunlight, and Sharpe’s eyes automatically searched the sky for clouds. There were none.
The mess was empty. With Wellington away most of the officers seemed to spend their mornings in bed, or else sitting in the inn next door where the landlord had been educated in the making of a proper breakfast. Pork chops, fried eggs, fried kidneys, bacon, toast, claret, more toast, butter, and tea so strong that it could scour a fouled howitzer barrel. Some officers had already gone to Lisbon for Christmas. If the French attacked now, Sharpe thought, they could stroll through Portugal to the sea.
The door banged open and a middle-aged man wearing a voluminous dressing-gown over his uniform trousers walked in. He scowled at the Rifleman. ‘Sharpe?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The ‘sir’ seemed judicious. The man had an air of authority despite a streaming cold.
‘Major General Nairn.’ The Major General dropped papers on a low table, next to the back numbers of the Times and the Courier from London, then crossed to the other tall window. He scowled at the street. ‘Damned Papists.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Another judicious reply.
‘Damned Papists! The Nairns, Sharpe, are all Scottish Presbyterians! We may be boring, but by God we are Godly!’ He grinned, then sneezed violently before vigorously wiping his nose with a huge grey handkerchief. He gestured with the handkerchief at the procession. ‘Another god-damned feast-day, Sharpe, can’t think why they’re all so bloody thin.’ He laughed, then looked with shrewd eyes at the Rifleman. ‘So you’re Sharpe?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well don’t come near me, I’ve got a bloody cold.’ He walked towards the fire. ‘Heard about you, Sharpe. Bloody impressive! Scottish, are you?’
‘No, sir.’ Sharpe grinned.
‘Not your fault, Sharpe, not your fault. Can’t help our damned parents which is why we have to thrash our damned children.’ He glanced quickly at Sharpe, making sure he was being appreciated. ‘Came up from the ranks, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’ve done bloody well, Sharpe, bloody well.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ It was amazing how few words were usually needed to get by with senior officers.
Major General Nairn bent down and damaged the fire by bashing its logs with a poker. ‘I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here. That right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re here because this is the warmest damned room in Frenada and you’re obviously no fool.’ Nairn laughed, dropped the poker, and worried his nose with his handkerchief. ‘Bloody awful place, Frenada.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Nairn looked accusingly at Sharpe. ‘Do you know why the Peer chose Frenada as his winter Headquarters?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Some people will tell you,’ and here the Major General broke off to collapse with a satisfied sigh into a vast horsehair armchair, ‘that it was chosen because it is near the Spanish border.’ He wagged a finger at Sharpe. ‘That bears some truth, but not the whole truth. Some people will tell you that the Peer chose this benighted town because it is bloody miles from Lisbon and no snivelling place-seekers and bum-lickers will bother to make the journey up here to annoy him. Now that, too, might contain a grain of the eternal truth, except that the Peer’s down there half the time which makes life bloody easy for the sycophantic bastards. No, Sharpe, we must look for the real reason elsewhere.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Nairn groaned as he stretched himself out. ‘The real reason, Sharpe, the immaculately conceived reason, is that this God-damned excuse for a bloody miserable little hovel of a crippled town being chosen is that it is right in the centre of the best God-damned fox-hunting in Portugal.’
Sharpe grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the Peer, Sharpe, likes to chase foxes. Thus are the rest of us consigned to the eternal torments of this bloody place. Sit down, man!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And stop saying “yes, sir”, “no, sir” like a bloody bum licker.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe sat in the chair opposite Major General Nairn. The Scotsman had huge grey eyebrows that seemed to be trying to grow upwards to meet his shock of grey hair. The face was good and strong, shrewd-eyed and humorous, spoilt only by his cold-reddened nose. Nairn returned the gaze, looking Sharpe up and down from the French cavalry boots to the Rifleman’s black hair, then he twisted round in the armchair.
‘Chatsworth! You scum! You varlet! Chatsworth! Heel! You hear me? Heel!’
An orderly appeared who grinned happily at Nairn. ‘Sir?’
‘Tea, Chatsworth, tea! Bring me strong tea! Something that will rekindle my military ardour. And kindly try to bring it before the New Year.’
‘I’ve already wet it, sir. Something to eat, sir?’
‘Eat? I’ve got a cold, Chatsworth. I’m nigh unto death and you blather at me about eating! What have you got?’
‘I’ve some ham, sir, that you liked. Mustard. Bread and fresh butter?’ Chatsworth was solicitous, obviously liking Nairn.
‘Ah, ham! Bring us ham, Chatsworth, ham and mustard, with your bread and butter. Did you steal the toasting fork from this mess, Chatsworth?
‘No, sir.’
‘Then find which of your thieving comrades did take it, have them flogged, then bring the fork to me!’
‘Yes, sir.’ Chatsworth grinned as he left the room.
Nairn smiled at Sharpe. ‘I’m a harmless old man, Sharpe, left in charge of this bloody madhouse while the Peer gallivants round half of the bloody Peninsula. I am supposed, God help me, to be running this Headquarters. Me! If I had time, Sharpe, I suppose I could lead the troops on a winter campaign! I could inscribe my name in glory, but I don’t have bloody time! Look at this!’ He picked a paper from the pile beside him. ‘A letter, Sharpe, from the Chaplain General. The Chaplain General, no less! Do you know that he is in receipt of a salary of five hundred and sixty-five pounds a year, Sharpe, and in addition is named advisor on the establishment of semaphore stations for which nonsensical bloody job he receives a further six hundred pounds! Can you believe that? And what does God’s vicar to His Majesty’s Army do with his well-paid time? He writes to me thus!’ Nairn held the letter in front of his face. ‘“I require of you to report on the containment of Methodism within the Army.” Good God Almighty, Sharpe! What’s a man to do with such a letter?’
Sharpe smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know, sir.’
‘I do, Sharpe, I do. That’s why I’m a Major General.’ Nairn leaned forward and threw the letter onto the fire. ‘That’s what you do with letters like that.’ Nairn chuckled happily as the paper caught fire and flared brightly. ‘You want to know why you’re here, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You are here, Sharpe, because the Prince of Wales has gone mad. Just like his Father, poor man, stark staring raving mad.’ Nairn leaned back and nodded triumphantly at Sharpe. The letter shrivelled to a black wisp on the logs as Nairn waited for a reaction. ‘Good God, Sharpe! You’re supposed to say something! God bless the Prince of Wales would do at a pinch, but you sit there as though the news means nothing. Comes of being a hero, I suppose, always keeping a straight face. Stern business is it? Being a hero?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe was grinning broadly.
The door opened and Chatsworth edged in with a heavy wooden tray that he put on the floor in front of the fire. ‘Bread and ham, sir, mustard in the small pot. Tea’s well brewed, sir, and I beg to report that the toasting fork was in your room, sir. Here it is, sir.’
‘You’re a rogue and a scoundrel, Chatsworth. You’ll be accusing me of burning correspondence from the Chaplain General next.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Chatsworth grinned contentedly.
‘Are you a Methodist, Chatsworth?’
‘No, sir. Don’t rightly know what a Methodist is, sir.’
‘You are fortunate indeed.’ Nairn was fixing a slice of bread to the toasting fork. A Lieutenant appeared at the open door behind him, knocked hesitantly to attract attention. ‘General Nairn, sir?’
‘Major General Nairn is in Madrid! Negotiating a surrender to the French!’ Nairn pushed the bread close to the logs, wrapping his hand in his handkerchief to keep the scorching heat away.
The Lieutenant did not smile. He hovered at the door. ‘Colonel Greave’s compliments, sir, and what’s he to do with the iron brackets for the pontoons?’
Nairn rolled his eyes to the yellowed ceiling. ‘Who is in charge of the pontoons, Lieutenant?’
‘The Engineers, sir.’
‘And who, pray, is in charge of our gallant Engineers?’
‘Colonel Fletcher, sir.’
‘So what do you tell our good Colonel Greave?’
‘I see, sir. Yes, sir.’ The Lieutenant paused. ‘To ask Colonel Fletcher, sir?’
‘You are a General in the making, Lieutenant. Go and do that thing, and should the Washerwoman General want to see me, tell her I am a married man and cannot accede to her importunings.’
The Lieutenant left and Nairn glared at the orderly. ‘Take that grin off your face, Private Chatsworth! The Prince of Wales has gone mad and all you can do is grin!’
‘Yes, sir. Is that all, sir?’
‘It is, Chatsworth, and I thank you. Go now, and close the door silently.’
Nairn waited till the door was shut. He turned the bread on the fork. ‘You’re not a fool are you, Sharpe?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Thank God for that. It’s possible that the Prince of Wales does have a touch of his Father’s madness. He’s interfering in the army, and the Peer’s damned annoyed.’ Nairn paused, holding the bread dangerously close to the flames. Sharpe said nothing, but he knew that the Peer’s annoyance and the Prince of Wales’ interference had something to do with the sudden summons north. Nairn glanced at Sharpe from beneath the bushy eyebrows. ‘Have you heard of Congreve?’
‘The rocket man?’
‘That’s the one. Sir William Congreve who has the patronage of Prinny and is the begetter of a system of rocket artillery.’ Smoke came from the bread and Nairn snatched it towards him. ‘At a time, Sharpe, when we need cavalry, artillery, and infantry, what are we sent? Rockets! A troop of Rocket Cavalry! And all because Prinny, with a touch of his father’s madness, thinks they’ll win the war. Here.’ He held the toasting fork to Sharpe then proceeded to lavish butter on his blackened slice. ‘Tea?’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Sharpe should have poured. He filled two cups while Nairn dressed his toast with a massive chunk of ham liberally smeared with mustard. Nairn sipped the tea and sighed.
‘Chatsworth makes a cup of tea fit for heaven. He’ll make some woman a lovely wife one day.’ He watched Sharpe toast a slice of bread. ‘Rockets, Sharpe. We have in town one troop of Rocket Cavalry and we are ordered by the Horse Guards to give this rocket troop a fair and searching test.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t you like it blacker than that?’
‘No, sir.’ Sharpe liked his toast pale. He turned the bread.
‘I like it smoking like the bloody pit.’ Nairn paused while he ate a huge mouthful of ham. ‘What we have to do, Sharpe, is test these bloody rockets and when we find they don’t work we send them back to England and keep all their horses which we can put to good use. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good! Because you’ve got the job. You will take command of Captain Gilliland and his infernal machines and you will practice him as if he were in battle. That’s what your orders say. What I say, and what the Peer would say if he were here, is that you’ve got to test him so bloody hard that he slinks back to England with a grain of sense in his head.’
‘You want the rockets to fail, sir?’ Sharpe buttered his bread.
‘I don’t want them to fail, Sharpe. I’d be delighted if they worked, but they won’t. We had a few a couple of years back and they’re as flighty as a bitch in heat, but Prinny thinks he knows best. You are to test them, and you are also to practise Captain Gilliland in the manoeuvres of war. In plain words, Sharpe, you’ve to teach him how to co-operate with infantry on the grounds that infantry, if he were ever to go into battle, would have to protect him from the troops of the Proud Tyrant.’ Nairn wolfed another bite of ham. ‘Personally speaking,’ his voice was muffled, ‘I’d be delighted if Boney got him and his bloody rockets, but we’ve got to show willing.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe sipped his tea. There was something odd here, something still unsaid. Sharpe had heard of Congreve’s rocket system, indeed the army had been having rumours of the new secret artillery for five or six years, but why was Sharpe selected to test them? He was a Captain, and Nairn had spoken of him taking command of another Captain? It did not make sense.
Nairn had another piece of bread by the fire. ‘You’re wondering why you were chosen, is that right? Out of all the brave officers and gentlemen, we chose you, yes?’
‘I was wondering, sir. Yes.’
‘Because you’re a nuisance, Sharpe. Because you do not fit into the Peer’s well ordered scheme of things.’ Sharpe ate his toast and ham, saving himself the need to answer. Nairn seemed to have forgotten the toasting fork, that lay on the hearth, and instead had plucked another piece of paper from the table. ‘I told you, Sharpe, that Prinny has gone mad. Not only has he foisted the dreadful Gilliland on us with his dreadful Congreve rockets, but he has foisted this on us as well.’ ‘This’ was the piece of paper that Nairn dangled between finger and thumb as if contagious. ‘Appalling! I suppose you’d better read it, though God only knows why I don’t just put it on the fire with that bloody man’s letter. Here.’ He held the paper to Sharpe, then returned to his toast.
The paper was thick and creamy. A seal was big and red on its wide left margin. Sharpe twisted it towards the windows so he could read the words. The top two lines were printed in decorative copperplate script.
‘George the Third by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith &c. To Our’. The next words were hand written on ruled lines. ‘Trusty and Well-beloved Richard Sharpe, Esq.’ The printing resumed. ‘Greeting: We do by these Presents, Constitute and Appoint you to be’. Sharpe looked up at Nairn.
The Major General was grumbling as he scooped butter from the dish. ‘Waste of time, Sharpe! Throw it on the fire! Man’s mad!’
Sharpe grinned. He tried to control the elation that was growing in him, elation and sheer disbelief, he almost dared not read the next words.
‘Major in Our Army now in Portugal and Spain’.
Dear God! Dear, sweet God! A Major! The paper shook in his hands. He leaned back for an instant, letting his head touch the chair behind him, a Major! Nineteen years he had been in this army. He had joined days before his sixteenth birthday and he had marched across India in the ranks, musket and bayonet in his hands, and now he was a Major! Dear God! He had fought so hard for his Captaincy, thinking it would never come, and now, suddenly, out of the blue, from nowhere, this! Major Richard Sharpe!
Nairn smiled at him. ‘It’s only army rank, Sharpe.’
A Brevet Major, then, but still a Major. Regimental rank was a man’s real rank, and if the commission had said ‘a Major in our South Essex Regiment’, then it would have been Regimental rank. Army rank meant that he was a Major as long as he served outside of his own Regiment, paid as a Major, though if he were to retire now his pay would be computed by his Regimental rank and not his new Majority. But who cared? He was a Major!
Nairn looked at the tanned, hard face. He knew he was seeing someone remarkable, someone who had risen this far, this quickly, and Nairn wondered what drove a man like Sharpe. Sitting by the fire, the Commission in his hand, he seemed a quiet, contained man, yet Nairn knew of this soldier. Few people in the army did not know of Sharpe. The Peer called him the best leader of a Light Company in the army and perhaps, Nairn wondered, that was why Wellington had been angered by the Prince of Wales’ interference. Sharpe was a good Captain, but would he be a good Major? Nairn shrugged to himself. This Sharpe, this man who still insisted on wearing the green uniform of the 95th Rifles, had not let the army down yet, and making him into a Major was hardly likely to still the ferocity of his fighting power.
Sharpe read through the Commission to the bottom. He would well discipline both inferior officers and soldiers, he would observe and follow such orders as were given him. Dear God! A Major!
‘Given at Our Court at Carlton House the Fourteenth day of November 1812 in the Fifty-Third Year of Our Reign.’ The words ‘By His Majesty’s Command’ had been crossed out. In their place the Commission read; ‘By the Command of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, in the Name and on the Behalf of His Majesty’.
Nairn smiled at him. ‘Prinny heard about Badajoz, then about Garcia Hernandez, and he insisted. It’s against the rules, of course, absolutely against the rules. The damned man has no business promoting you. Throw it on the fire!’
‘Would you take it hard if I disobeyed that order, sir?’
‘Congratulations, Sharpe! You’re beginning as you mean to go on.’ The last words were hurried as a sneeze gathered in his nose and Nairn grabbed his handkerchief and trumpeted into it. He shook his head, bullied and blew his nose, and smiled again. ‘My real congratulations.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Don’t thank me, Major. Thank all of us by making sure that little Gilliland’s rockets go fizz-plop. D’you know the beggar’s got over a hundred and fifty horses for his toys? A hundred and fifty! We need those horses, Sharpe, but we can’t bloody touch them as long as Prinny thinks we’re going to knock Boney bum over tip with them. Prove him wrong, Sharpe! He’ll listen to you.’
Sharpe smiled. ‘So that’s why I was chosen?’
‘Good! You’re not a fool. Of course that’s why you were chosen, and as a punishment, of course.’
‘Punishment?’
‘For being promoted before your time. If you’d have had the grace to wait for one of your own Majors to die in the South Essex you’d have landed Regimental rank. It’ll come, Sharpe, it’ll come. If 1813 is anything like this year we’ll all be Field Marshals by next Christmas.’ He pulled the dressing gown tight round his chest. ‘If we live to see next Christmas, which I doubt.’ Nairn stood up. ‘Off you go, Sharpe! You’ll find Gilliland playing fireworks on the Guarda road. Here’s your orders. He knows you’re coming, poor lamb. Pack him back to Prinny, Sharpe, but keep the bloody horses!’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe stood up, took the proffered orders, and felt the elation again. A Major!
Bells suddenly clanged from the church, jangling the still air, frightening birds into hurried flight. Nairn flinched at the sound and crossed to the window. ‘Get rid of Gilliland, then we can all have a quiet Christmas!’ Nairn rubbed his hands together. ‘Except for those bloody bells, Major, there’s nothing, thank the Good Lord, that is disturbing His Majesty’s Army in Portugal and Spain.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’ God! The ‘Major’ sounded good in his ears.
The bells rang on, marking the feastday, while, fifty miles north and east, the first English soldiers, red coats untidy, filed into the quiet village of Adrados.
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