Sharpe’s Honour: The Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813

Sharpe watched the muskets fall from the shoulders, check, slam over the bodies, then the right feet went back, the officers’ swords swept up, and he turned and smiled at the Spaniard. ‘Who are you?’

The Spanish General, Sharpe saw, returned the salute. MacLaird shouted the shoulder arms and turned back to Sharpe. ‘Dismiss, sir?’

‘Dismiss the parade, Sergeant Major.’

The white-uniformed Spaniard spurred his horse forward into Sharpe’s line of vision. ‘Are you Sharpe?’

Sharpe looked at him. The man’s English was good, but Sharpe chose to reply in Spanish. ‘I’m the man who’ll slit your throat if you don’t learn to be polite.’ He had spoken softly and he saw his words rewarded by a tiny flicker of fear in the man’s face. This officer was covering his nervousness with bravado.

The Spaniard straightened in his saddle. ‘My name is Miguel Mendora, Major Mendora.’

‘My name is Sharpe.’

Mendora nodded. For a second or two he said nothing, then, with the speed of a scorpion striking, he lashed with his right hand to strike Sharpe a stinging blow about the face.

The blow did not land. Sharpe had fought in every gutter from London to Calcutta and he had seen the blow coming. He had seen it in Mendora’s eyes. He swayed back, letting the white-gloved hand go past. He saw the anger in the Spaniard, while inside himself he felt the icy calm that came to him in battle. He smiled. ‘I have known piglets with more manhood than you, Mendora.’

Mendora ignored the insult. He had done what he was ordered to do and survived. Now he looked to his right to see the dismissed soldiers straggling towards him. They had seen him try to strike their officer, and their mood was at once excited and belligerent. Mendora looked back to Sharpe. ‘That was from my master.’

‘Who is?’

Mendora ignored the question. ‘You will write a letter of apology to him, a letter that he will use as he sees fit. After that, as you are no gentleman, you will resign your commission.’

Sharpe wanted to laugh. ‘Your General is who?’

Major Mendora tossed his head. ‘The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’

And suddenly the memory of that flawless beauty that masked the flawed woman flooded into him so that the excitement came searing back. Helene! It was with Helene that he had betrayed Teresa, and he knew that the revenge for that betrayal had come to this field. He wanted to laugh aloud. Helene! Helene of the hair of gold, of the white skin on her black sheets, the woman who had used him in the service of death, but who, he thought, had perhaps loved him a little.

He stared past Mendora at the General. He had thought, from Helene’s description, that her husband would be a short, fat man. Fat he was, but it was a burly, muscular fatness. He looked tall. The excitement was still on Sharpe. The Marquesa was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, a woman he had loved for a season, then lost. He had thought her gone forever, but now here was her husband back from the Spanish colonies with the horns on his head. Sharpe smiled at Mendora. ‘How have I offended your master?’

‘You know how, señor.’

Sharpe laughed. ‘You call me señor? You’ve found your manners?’

‘Your answer, Major?’

So the Marqués knew he had been cuckolded? But why in God’s name pick on Sharpe? There must be a half-Battalion of men he would have to fight to retrieve his honour that had been held so lightly by Helene. Sharpe smiled. ‘You will get no letter from me, Major, nor my resignation.’

Mendora had expected the answer. ‘You will name me your second, señor?’

‘I don’t have a second.’ Sharpe knew that Wellington had forbidden all duels. If he took the risk, that was his foolishness, but he would not risk another man’s career. He looked at the Marqués, judging that such a heavy-set man would be slow on his feet. ‘I choose swords.’

Mendora smiled. ‘My master is a fine swordsman, Major. You will stand more chance with a pistol.’

The soldiers were gawping up at the two mounted officers. They sensed, even though they could not hear the words, that something dramatic took place.

Sharpe smiled. ‘If I need advice how to fight, Major, I will seek it from a man.’

Mendora’s proud face looked with hatred at the Englishman, but he held his temper. ‘There is a cemetery on the southern road, you know it?’

‘I can find it.’

‘My master will be there at seven this evening. He will not wait long. I hope your courage will be sufficient for death, Major.’ He turned his horse, looking back at Sharpe. ‘You agree?’

‘I agree.’ Sharpe let him turn away. ‘Major!’

‘Señor?’

‘You have a priest with you?’

The Spaniard nodded. ‘You’re very observant for an Englishman.’

Sharpe deliberately switched back into English. ‘Make sure he knows the prayer for the dead, Spaniard.’

A shout came from the watching men. ‘Kill the bugger, Sharpie!’

The shout was taken up, grew louder, and some wit began shouting ‘a ring! a ring!’, the usual cry when a fight broke out in Battalion lines. Sharpe saw the look of fury cross Mendora’s face, then the Spaniard put his spurs to his horse and galloped it at a knot of men who scattered from his path and jeered at his retreating back. The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba and his attendant priest galloped after him.

Sharpe ignored the shouts of the men about him. He watched the three Spaniards go and he knew, on pain of losing all that he had gained in this army, that he should not go to the cemetery and fight the duel. He would be cashiered; he would be lucky, if he won, not to be accused of murder.

On the other hand, there was the memory of La Marquesa, of her skin against the sheets, her hair on the pillow, her laughter in the shadowed bedroom. There was the thought that the Spanish Major had tried to strike him. There was his boredom, and his inability to refuse a challenge. And, above all, there was the sense of unfinished business, of a guilt that demanded its price, of a guilt that ordered him to pay that price. He shouted at the men for silence and looked through the ragged crowd of soldiers to find the man he wanted. ‘Harps!’

Patrick Harper pushed through the men and stared up at Sharpe. ‘Sir?’

Sharpe took the sword from his slings. It was a sword that Sergeant Harper had re-fashioned for him while Sharpe lay in Salamanca’s hospital. It was a cheap blade, one of many made in Birmingham for Britain’s Heavy Cavalry, nearly a yard of heavy steel that was clumsy and ill-balanced except in the hands of a strong man.

Sharpe tossed the sword to the Irishman. ‘Put an edge on it for me, Harps. A real edge.’

The men cheered, but Harper held the sword unhappily. He looked up at Sharpe and saw the madness on the dark, scarred face.

Sharpe remembered a face of delicate beauty, the face of a woman whom the Spanish now called the Golden Whore. Sharpe knew he could never possess her, but he could fight for her. He could give up all for her, what else was a warrior to do for a beauty? He smiled. He would fight for a woman who was known to be treacherous, and because, in an obscure way that he did not fully understand, he thought that this challenge, this duel, this risk was some expiation for the guilt that racked him. He would fight.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘You’re slow, Sharpe, very slow.’ Captain Peter d’Alembord, who had taken Sharpe’s place as Captain of the Light Company, had run his slim sword past Sharpe’s guard and now the tip quivered an inch beneath the silver whistle holstered on Sharpe’s cross belt. D’Alembord, an impressively elegant and slim man, had volunteered, with some diffidence, to ‘put Sharpe over the jumps’. He had also scouted the opposition and his news was grim. ‘It seems the Marqués is rather good.’

‘Good?’

‘Took lessons in Paris from Bouillet. They say he could beat him. Still, not to worry. Old Bouillet must have been getting on, perhaps he was slow.’ D’Alembord smiled, stepped back, and raised his sword. ‘En garde?’

Sharpe laughed. ‘I’ll just hack the bugger to bits.’

‘Hope springs eternal, my dear Sharpe. Do raise your blade, I’m going to pass it on the left. With some warning you might just be able to stop me. Engage.’

The blades rattled, scraped, disengaged, clanged, and suddenly, with eye-defeating speed, d’Alembord had passed Sharpe’s guard on the left and his sword was poised again to split Sharpe’s trunk. Captain d’Alembord frowned. ‘If I darken my hair with lamp black, Sharpe, and paint a scar on my face, I might just pass for you. It’s really your best hope of survival.’

‘Nonsense. I’ll chop the bastard into mincemeat.’