Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe’s Company, Sharpe’s Sword, Sharpe’s Enemy

The French cannon opened fire, the roundshot ploughing into mud-soaked red, and the British leaped for the damaged trench. Harper looked at Sharpe’s drawn and gory sword. ‘Like old times, sir.’

Sharpe looked round his small group. All his Riflemen were there, grinning at him, and a good number of the rest of the Light Company. He grinned at them, then picked up a piece of wet sacking and wiped the sword blade. ‘You’d better get back to the Company.’

‘Rather stay here, sir.’ Sharpe could not see who had spoken. He looked at Harper.

‘Take them back, Sergeant.’

‘Sir.’ Harper grinned at him. ‘And thank you, sir.’

‘For nothing.’ He was left alone. Small groups wandered the area of fighting and picked up the wounded and stacked the dead. There were a lot of bodies, more, he guessed, than had been in the breach at Ciudad Rodrigo. A spade brought down on a man’s head is a vicious instrument and the British troops had been frustrated and ready for a fight, for a savage brawl in the mud. A dead Frenchman was curled at Sharpe’s feet and the Rifleman crouched and ran his hands through the corpse’s pockets and pouches. There was nothing worth taking. A letter folded into quarters which smeared as soon as Sharpe pulled it into the rain, a copper coin, and a loose musket ball that may have been the dead man’s talisman. Round the neck, thick with blood, was a cheap metal crucifix. He had tried to grow a moustache, to look like a veteran, but the hairs were wispy and thin. He was hardly more than a boy. One of his boot soles had come loose, was hanging free and vibrating fitfully as the rain struck it. Had that killed him? Had the sole come loose in the fight and, as his comrades ran, had he limped, or stumbled, and had a British bayonet sliced into his neck? The ink washed off the letter, ran into the mud, but Sharpe could see the last word on the page that was written larger than the rest. ‘Maman.’

He looked at the city, now fringed again with the long flames as the guns hammered the threnody that would not cease till the siege was over. Teresa was there. He looked at the Cathedral tower, squat and arched with bell windows, and thought how close the bell must sound to her. The Cathedral only seemed to have the one bell, a harsh bell whose note died almost as soon as it was struck on the hour and its quarters. He wondered, quite suddenly, if she ever sang to the child? And what was mother in Spanish? Maman? Like the French?

‘Sir! Sir!’ It was Ensign Matthews, blinking through the rain. ‘Sir? Is that you, sir? Captain Sharpe?’

‘It’s me.’ Sharpe did not correct the Captain to Lieutenant.

‘You’d better come, sir.’

‘What is it?’

‘The officers’ baggage, sir. It’s been rifled.’

‘Rifled?’ He was scrambling out of the trench.

‘The Colonel’s lost some silver, sir. Everyone’s lost something, sir.’

Sharpe swore. He had been in charge of the baggage and, instead of guarding it, he had been brawling in the mud. He swore again and began to run.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘God damn it!’ Colonel Windham paced up and down in the tiny sheepfold. He was carrying a riding crop and he cut with it in his fury, slashing at the pile of baggage. When he bent his head to look at the rifled baggage, water cascaded from his bicorne hat. ‘God damn it!’

‘When did it happen?’ Sharpe asked Major Forrest.

‘We don’t know.’ Forrest smiled nervously at the Rifleman.

Windham swivelled. ‘Happen? When? This Goddamned afternoon, Sharpe, when you were supposed to be in Goddamned command!’ There were another dozen officers crowded back against the walls of the sheepfold and they looked to Sharpe with accusing faces. They were all wary of the Colonel’s anger.

‘Do we know it was this afternoon?’ Sharpe insisted.

Windham looked as if he would like to whip Sharpe with his riding crop. Instead he swore again, and turned away. It was not the officers’ day-to-day baggage that had been burgled, but their valuables which had been stored in leather mule-bags. None of the baggage, as far as Sharpe knew, had been touched for three days. It contained the kind of things that a man would only unpack if he were in comfortable quarters for a long period; silverware, crystal, the luxuries that reminded them of home comforts. Windham growled at Major Collett. ‘What’s missing?’

It was not a long list. Forrest had lost a money draft, but it had been found screwed up and thrown away in the mud. Whoever had slit the bags had not known what to do with the paper. There was a pair of snuffboxes gone, a gold chain that Sharpe suspected had been looted from Ciudad Rodrigo; certainly the officer who reported that loss had been voluble about his poverty before the siege and remarkably silent afterwards. There was a set of gold scabbard furniture, too valuable to wear in battle, a pair of silver spurs and a pair of jewelled ear-rings that an embarrassed Lieutenant claimed was a present for his mother. Major Collett had lost a shaving mirror with a silver lid and a watch that he said was worth a small fortune. Most important of all was the Colonel’s loss; the silver-filigree-framed portrait of his wife, the chinless, stern Jessica. The Colonel, rumour had it, was particularly fond of his wife; she had brought him a small fortune and the hunting rights for half of Leicestershire, and Colonel Windham was furious at the loss. Sharpe remembered the portrait sitting on the low table in Elvas.

Windham pointed the whip at Sharpe. ‘Did you lose anything?’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘I’ve nothing here, sir.’ Everything he owned he carried on his back, except for the Patriotic Fund sword and the gold stolen at Almeida which were with his London agents.

‘Where’s your pack?’

‘With the others, sir.’

‘Is it marked?’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

‘Fetch it, Sharpe.’

It did not make sense. Was the Colonel accusing Sharpe of being the thief? If so, why ask Sharpe to fetch his own pack and, in so doing, have an opportunity of hiding the stolen goods? He found the pack, brought it back to the sheepfold. ‘Do you want to search it, sir?’

‘Don’t be a fool, Sharpe. You’re an officer.’ And thereby, went the unspoken words, and despite all evidence to the contrary, a gentleman. ‘I want to see how far our thief’s net was cast. See if anything’s missing, man!’

Sharpe unbuckled the straps. The French pack was crammed with spare, dirty clothes; two spare locks for his rifle, and a half bottle of rum. He kept only one valuable in the pack and he did not need to look for it; it was gone. He looked up at Windham. ‘I’m missing a telescope.’

‘Telescope? Anything special about it?’

Something very special; the inlet brass plate that was inscribed In Gratitude. AW. 23 September 1803. It had gone. Sharpe pushed his hand desperately down through the clothes, but it was gone. Damn the thief! The telescope had been a gift from Wellington, a valued gift, and Sharpe cursed himself for leaving the pack with all the others. Yet they had been guarded. As the sheepfold with the officers’ valuables had been guarded. Windham listened to Sharpe’s description and nodded with satisfaction. ‘That proves one thing.’

‘Proves? What, sir?’

Windham smiled. ‘I think we know where our thief comes from. Only one Company would know that pack!’ He pointed at Sharpe’s gradually soaking clothes in their French pig-skin pack. He turned to Major Collett. ‘Parade the Light Company, Jack. Search every man.’

Sharpe tried to protest. ‘Sir?’

Windham whipped round on him, held out the crop accusingly. ‘If you had stayed on guard, Sharpe, instead of gallivanting on the hill, this would not have happened. Stay out of it!’

Hakeswill! It had to be Hakeswill! Sharpe knew it, and knew with an utter certainty that the accusation would never be proved. The theft of the telescope, at least, had to have been done in the afternoon because Sharpe had seen the glass in his pack at midday. The Light Company, or most of them, had been with Sharpe fighting the French, but he suddenly remembered the awkward, lumbering figure of the yellow-faced Sergeant hurrying back towards the baggage. The loot would all be hidden by now. And the guards whom Sharpe had left to watch the baggage would all have wandered to the hilltop to see the fight. He strapped up the buckles of his pack. Major Forrest waited till the other officers had filed out the gate. ‘I’m sorry, Sharpe.’

‘I don’t think it’s the Light Company, sir.’

‘I meant about the telescope.’

Sharpe grunted. Forrest was a decent man, always wanting others to be content. The Rifleman shrugged. ‘It’s gone, sir. It won’t come back.’ Hakeswill was too clever a thief to be discovered.

Forrest shook his head unhappily. ‘I don’t believe it. And we used to be such a happy battalion!’ His face suddenly changed, became curious. ‘Sharpe?’

‘Sir?’

‘Colonel Windham said you were married. I didn’t like to contradict him.’

‘Did you, sir?’

‘Good Lord, no! Are you?’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

‘But he said you told him you were.’