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

‘Late?’

‘Father Hacha was with him.’ The servant yawned as he pissed. ‘Say a prayer for me, father.’

The chaplain smiled, then pushed the door open. It was dark in the room, all light blocked out by the great velvet hangings over the windows. ‘My Lord?’

There was no answer from behind the curtained bed. The chaplain closed the door quietly behind him then groped uncertainly through the strange, heavy furniture until he reached the window. He reflected how wealthy these provincial merchants were who could afford such furnishings, then pulled the curtain back, flooding the room with a sickly grey light.

‘My Lord? It’s I, Father Pello.’

Still no sound. The Marqués’s uniform was carefully hung on a cupboard door, his boots, stretchers inside, parked carefully beneath. The chaplain pulled back the curtains of the bed. ‘My Lord?’

His first thought was that the Marqués was sleeping on a pillow of red velvet. His second thought was relief. There would be no prayers this morning. He could go to the kitchen and have a leisurely breakfast.

Then he vomited.

The Marqués was dead. His throat had been cut so that the blood had soaked the linen pillowcase and sheets. His head was tilted back, his eyes staring sightless at the headboard. One hand hung over the side of the bed.

The chaplain tried to call out, but no sound came. He tried to move, but his feet seemed stuck to the carpeted floor.

The vomit stained his scapular. Some of it dribbled down the dead man’s plump hand. The Marqués seemed to have two mouths, one wide and red, the other prim and pale.

The chaplain called out again, and this time his voice, thickened by the vomit in his throat, came out as a terrible strangled cry. ‘Guards!’

The servants came in, but to no avail. The body was cold, the blood on the linen caked hard. Major Mendora, the General’s aide, came in with drawn sword, followed by the Inquisitor in his night-robe. Even the Inquisitor’s strong face paled at the carnage on the bed. The Marqués of Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had been killed in his sleep, his throat opened, and his soul sent to the judgment of heaven where, the Inquisitor prayed aloud in his dreadful, deep voice, the soul of his murderer would soon follow for awful and condign punishment.

They came for Major Richard Sharpe at eight on the same morning. The Battalion was paraded, the companies already marching off to their tasks.

Richard Sharpe, as so often in the early morning, was in a bad mood. His mouth had the thick sourness of too much wine the night before. He was looking forward to a second breakfast and feeling only mildly guilty that his new rank gave him the freedom for such luxuries. He had scrounged some eggs from Isabella, there was a flitch of bacon that belonged to the Mess, and Sharpe could almost taste the meal already.

For once, this morning, he would not have three men’s work to do. Colonel Leroy was taking half of the companies on a long march, the others were detailed to help drag the great pontoon bridges up to the high road, ready for the march into French territory. He could, he thought sourly, catch up on his paperwork. He remembered that he must try to sell one of the new mules to the sutler, though whether that sly, wealthy man would want to buy one of the tubed, half-winded animals that had turned up from Brigade was another matter. Perhaps the sutler would buy it for its dead-weight. Sharpe turned to shout for the Battalion clerk, but the shout never sounded. Instead he saw the Provosts.

The Provosts were led, strangely, by Major Michael Hogan. He was no policeman. He was Wellington’s chief of intelligence and Sharpe’s good friend. He was a middle-aged Irishman whose face was normally humorous and shrewd, but who this morning looked grim as the plague.

He reined in by Sharpe. Hogan led a spare horse. His voice was bleak, unnatural, forced. ‘I must ask for your sword, Richard.’

Sharpe’s smile, which had greeted his friend, changed to puzzlement. ‘My sword?’

Hogan sighed. He had volunteered for this, not because he wanted to do it, but because it was a friend’s duty. It was a duty, he knew, that would become grimmer as this bad day went on. ‘Your sword, Major Sharpe. You are under close arrest.’

Sharpe wanted to laugh. The words were not sinking in. ‘I’m what?’

‘You’re under arrest, Richard. As much as anything else for your own safety.’

‘My safety?’

‘The whole Spanish army is after your blood.’ Hogan held out his hand. ‘Your sword, Major, if you please.’ Behind Hogan the Provosts stirred on their horses.

‘What am I charged with?’ Suddenly Sharpe’s voice was bleak, though he was already obediently unbuckling his sword belt.

Hogan’s voice was equally bleak. ‘You are charged with murder.’

Sharpe stopped unbuckling the belt. He stared up at the small Major. ‘Murder?’

‘Your sword.’

Slowly, as if it was a dream, Sharpe took the sword from his waist. ‘Murder? Who?’

Hogan leaned down and took Sharpe’s sword. He wrapped the slings and belt about the metal scabbard. ‘The Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’ He watched Sharpe’s face, reading his friend’s innocence, but knowing just how hopeless things were. ‘There are witnesses.’

‘They’re lying!’

‘Mount up, Richard.’ He gestured at the spare horse. The Provosts, blank-faced men in red jackets and black hats, stared with hostility at the Rifleman. They carried short carbines in their saddle holsters. Hogan turned his horse. ‘The Spanish say you did it. They’re out for your blood. If I don’t get you under lock and key they’ll be dragging you to the nearest tree. Where’s your kit?’

‘In my billet.’

‘Which house?’

Sharpe told him, and Hogan detailed two of the Provosts to fetch the Rifleman’s belongings. ‘Catch us up!’

Hogan led him away, surrounded by Provosts, and Sharpe rode towards more trouble than he would have dreamed possible. He was accused of murder, and he was led, in the bright sunlight of a new morning, towards a prison cell, a trial and whatever then might follow.

CHAPTER SIX

They rode for an hour, threading the valleys towards the army’s headquarters. Major Hogan, out of embarrassment and awkwardness, kept Provosts between himself and Sharpe.

At the town, which they entered by back streets, Sharpe was taken to the house where Wellington himself was quartered. He dismounted, was led to the stable yard, and locked into a small, bare room without windows. It had a stone-flagged floor that, like the wall above, was stained with blood. Above the bloodstains on the limewashed wall were large rusty nails. Sharpe presumed that shot hares or rabbits had been hung there, but the conjunction of rusty nails and blood somehow took on a more sinister aspect. The only light came from above and below the ill-fitting door. There was a table, two chairs, and an insidious smell of horse urine.

Beyond the locked door Sharpe could hear the boots of his guard in the stable yard. He could hear, too, the homely sounds of pails clanking, water washing down stone, and horses moving in their stalls. He sat, put his heels on the table, and waited.

Hogan had ridden fast. Once at this house he had made a brief farewell, offered no words of hope, then left Sharpe alone. Murder. Sharpe knew the penalty for that well enough, but it seemed unreal. The Marqués dead? Nothing made sense. If he had been arrested for attempting to fight a duel, he could have understood it. He could have endured one of Wellington’s cold tongue lashings, but this predicament made no sense. He waited.

The sunlight that came beneath the lintel moved about the floor as the morning wore on. He smelt the burning tobacco of his sentry’s pipe. He heard men laugh in the stables. The bell of the village church struck eleven and then there came the scrape of the bolt in the door and Sharpe took his heels from the table and stood upright.

A lieutenant in the blue jacket of a cavalry regiment came into the room. He blinked as his eyes went from the bright sunshine into the makeshift cell’s shadow, and then he smiled nervously as he put a bundle of papers onto the table. ‘Major Sharpe?’

‘Yes.’ Somehow the young man looked familiar.

‘It’s Trumper-Jones, sir, Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones?’

The boy expected Sharpe to recognise him. Sharpe remembered there had been a cavalry Colonel called Trumper-Jones who had lost an arm and an eye at Rolica. ‘Did I meet your father?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ Trumper-Jones took off his hat and smiled. ‘We met last week.’

‘Last week?’

‘At the battle, sir?’

‘Battle? Oh.’ Sharpe remembered. ‘You’re an aide-de-camp to General Preston?’