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

‘But not unknown, surely?’ Sharpe had suppressed his urge to vent his irritation on the clerk. ‘I thought it was your job to approve these documents.’

‘Or disapprove them!’ The clerk laughed again and the half-pay officers grinned. ‘Disapprove, Mr Sharpe, or disapprove!’ Rain fell down the chimney and hissed on the meagre coal fire. The clerk, his thin shoulders heaving with silent laughter, tugged a pair of spectacles from the recesses of his clothing and clipped them on to his nose as if the gazette, seen through smeared glass, might reveal new cause for merriment. ‘We disapprove them, sir, most of the time. You allow one and you allow all. It upsets the system, you know. There are rules, regulations, standing orders!’ And the clerk shook his head because it was obvious Sharpe understood nothing of the army.

Sharpe waited for the head-shaking to cease. ‘It seems to have taken you a long time to make any decision on this gazette.’

‘And still not made!’ The clerk said it proudly, making it seem that the length of time proved the gravity of the Horse Guards’ wisdom. Then he seemed to relent and offered Sharpe a rueful smile. ‘The truth is, Mr Sharpe, that there was a mistake. A regrettable mistake and your visit has happily rectified the mistake.’ He peered over his glasses at the tall Rifleman. ‘We are really most grateful to you for drawing it to our attention.’

‘Mistake?’

‘It was filed wrongly.’ The clerk plucked another piece of paper from his left hand. ‘Under Lieutenant Robert Sharp, no “e”, who died of the fever in 1810. His papers were, otherwise, in perfect order.’

‘Which mine are not?’

‘Indeed, no, but you are still alive.’ The clerk looked peevishly at Sharpe. ‘We do a have a chance of tidying up when an officer is translated to glory.’ He took off his glasses and cleaned them with Sharpe’s folded gazette. ‘It will be attended to, Mr Sharpe, with expedition. I promise you. With expedition!’

‘Soon?’

‘That’s what I said, isn’t it? It would be wrong to say more.’ The clerk pushed his spectacles back into place. ‘Now, if you’ll pardon me, there is a war on and I have other duties!’

It had been a mistake, Sharpe realized afterwards, to visit Whitehall, but it was done and he could only go on waiting. Surely, he told himself a dozen times each day, they could not disapprove the gazette. Not after he had taken the Eagle? After he had brought the gold out of the burning Almeida, and after he had savaged the finest French troops in the deathtraps of Fuentes de Oñoro? He stared gloomily across the snow at the scar in Ciudad Rodrigo’s defences. He knew he should have volunteered for the Forlorn Hope. If he had led it, and survived, then no one could have denied him the Captaincy. He would have proved himself, captured the rank, and the pox-scarred bureaucrats of Whitehall could scratch themselves into a well-ordered eternity because nothing they could do, nothing, could have taken the Captaincy away from him. A pox on the bloody lot of them!

‘Richard Sharpe!’ A quiet voice behind him, full of pleasure, and Sharpe twisted round.

‘Sir!’

‘I could feel a pricking in my thumbs! I knew you had to be back with the army.’ Major Michael Hogan slithered on the snow towards him. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m well.’ Sharpe scrambled to his feet. He beat the snow off his greatcoat and shook Hogan’s gloved hand.

The Engineer laughed at him. ‘You look like a drowned tinker, so you do, but it’s good to see you.’ The Irish voice was rich and warm. ‘And how was England?’

‘Cold and wet.’

‘Ah well, it’s a Protestant country.’ Hogan conveniently ignored the freezing dampness of the Spanish countryside around them. ‘And how is Sergeant Harper? Did he enjoy England?’

‘He did, and most of what he enjoyed was plump and giggled.’

Hogan laughed. ‘A man of sense. You will give him my best wishes?’

‘I will.’ The two men stared at the town. The British siege guns, long, iron twenty-four-pounders, were still firing, their reports muffled by the snow, and their shots erupting flurries of snow and stone from the walls either side of the main breach. Sharpe glanced at Hogan. ‘Is it a secret we’re attacking tonight?’

‘It is a secret. Everyone knows, of course, they always do. Even before the General. Rumour has it for seven o’clock.’

‘And does rumour extend to the South Essex?’

Hogan shook his head; he was attached to Wellington’s staff and knew what was being planned. ‘No, but I was hoping I could persuade your Colonel to lend me your Company.’

‘Mine?’ Sharpe was pleased. ‘Why?’

‘Not for much. I don’t want you lads in the breach, but the Engineers are short-handed, as ever, and there’s a heap of stuff to be carried up the glacis. Would you be happy?’

‘Of course.’ Sharpe wondered whether to tell Hogan of his wish that he had gone with the Forlorn Hope, but he knew that the Irish Engineer would think he was mad, so he said nothing. Instead he lent Hogan his telescope and waited silently as the Engineer stared at the breach. Hogan grunted. ‘It’s practical.’

‘You’re sure?’ Sharpe took the glass back, his fingers instinctively feeling for the inlet brass plate; ‘In Gratitude. AW. 23 September 1803’.

‘We’re never sure. But I can’t see it getting any better.’ The Engineers had the job of pronouncing when a breach was ‘practical’, when, in their judgment, the rubble slope could be climbed by the attacking infantry. Sharpe looked at the small, middle-aged Major.

‘You don’t sound very happy.’

‘Of course not. No one likes a siege.’ Hogan was trying, like Sharpe earlier, to imagine what horrors the French had prepared in the breach. A siege, in theory, was the most scientific of all fighting. The attackers battered holes in the defence and both sides knew when the breaches were practical, but the advantage was all with the defenders. They knew where the main attack was coming, when, and roughly how many men could be fed into the breach. There the science stopped. There was great skill needed to site the batteries, in sapping forward, but once the science of the Engineers had opened up the breach, it was left to the infantry to climb the defences and die on the rubble. The siege guns did what they could. They would fire till the last moment, as they were firing now, but soon the bayonets would take over and only raw anger would take the attackers through the prepared horror. Sharpe felt again the fear of going into a breach.

The Irishman seemed to sense his thoughts. He clapped Sharpe on the shoulder. ‘I’ve a feeling about this one, Richard. It’s going to be all right.’ He changed the subject. ‘Have you heard from your woman?’

‘Which one?’

Hogan snorted. ‘Which one! Teresa, of course.’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘Not for sixteen months. I don’t know where she’s been.’ Or even, he thought, if she was still alive. She fought the French in the ‘Guerrilla’, the ‘little war’, and the hills and rocks of her battles were not far from Ciudad Rodrigo. He had not seen her since they parted below Almeida and, thinking of her, he felt a sudden longing inside him. She had the face of a hawk, slim and cruel, with dark hair and eyes. Teresa was beautiful as a fine sword was beautiful; slim and hard.

Then, in England, he had met Jane Gibbons whose brother, Lieutenant Christian Gibbons, had tried to kill him at Talavera. Gibbons had died. Jane Gibbons was beautiful as men dream of beauty; blonde and feminine, slim as Teresa was slim, but there the resemblance ended. The Spanish girl could strip a Baker rifle lock in thirty seconds, could kill a man at two hundred paces, could lay an ambush and knew how to give a captured Frenchman a lingering death as payment for her own mother’s rape and murder. Jane Gibbons could play the pianoforte, write a pretty letter, knew how to use a fan at a county dance, and took her delight in spending money at Chelmsford’s milliners. They were as different from each other as steel is from silk, yet Sharpe wanted both, though he knew such dreams were futile.

‘She’s alive.’ Hogan’s voice was soft.

‘Alive?’

‘Teresa.’ Hogan would know. Despite the shortage of Engineers, Wellington had put Hogan on his own staff. The Irishman spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and French, could break the enemy’s codes, and spent much of his time working with the Guerrilleros or with Wellington’s Exploring Officers who rode, alone and in uniform, behind French lines. Hogan collected what Wellington called his ‘intelligence’ and Sharpe knew that if Teresa were still fighting, then Hogan would have news.

‘What have you heard?’

‘Not much. She went south for a long time, by herself, but I heard she was back up here. Her brother is leading the band, not herself, but they still call her “La Aguja”.’

Sharpe smiled. He had given her the nickname himself; the needle. ‘Why did she go south?’

‘I don’t know.’ Hogan smiled at him. ‘Cheer yourself up. You’ll see her again. Besides, I’d like to meet her!’

Sharpe shook his head. It had been a long time and she had made no effort to find him. ‘There must be a last woman, sir, like a last battle.’

Hogan whooped with laughter. ‘God in heaven! A last woman. You gloomy bastard! You’ll be telling me next that you’re training for the Priesthood.’ He wiped a tear from his eye. ‘A last woman, indeed!’ He turned to stare once more at the town. ‘Listen, my friend, I must be busy, or I’ll be the last Irishman on Wellington’s staff. Will you look after yourself now?’

Sharpe grinned and nodded. ‘I’ll survive.’

‘That’s a useful delusion. It’s good you’re back.’ He smiled and began trudging through the snow towards Wellington’s headquarters. Sharpe turned back towards Ciudad Rodrigo. Survival. It was a bad time to be fighting. The turn of a year was when men looked ahead, dreamed of far-away pleasures, of a small house and a good woman, and friends of an evening. Winter was a time when armies stayed in their quarters, waiting for the spring sunshine to dry the roads and shrink the rivers, but Wellington had marched in the first days of the New Year, and the French garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo had woken one cold morning to find that war and death had come early in 1812.

Ciudad Rodrigo was just the beginning. There were only two roads from Portugal into Spain that could take the weight of heavy artillery, the endless grinding of supply carts, and the pounding of battalions and squadrons. Ciudad Rodrigo guarded the northern road and tonight, as the church bell sounded seven, Wellington planned to take the fortress. Then, as all the army knew, as all Spain knew, there was the southern road to capture. To be safe, to protect Portugal, to attack into Spain, the British must control both roads, and to control the southern road they must first take Badajoz.

Badajoz. Sharpe had been there, after Talavera and before the Spanish army had feebly surrendered the city to the French. Ciudad Rodrigo was big, but small compared with Badajoz; the walls in this snow looked formidable, but they were puny next to the bastions of Badajoz. Richard Sharpe let his thoughts go south, drifting with the cannon-smoke over Ciudad Rodrigo, south over the mountains, to where the vast fortress cast dark shadows on the cold waters of the Guadiana River. Badajoz. Twice the British had failed to take the city from the French. Soon they must try again.

He turned away, to rejoin his Company at the foot of the hill. There could be a miracle, of course. The garrison of Badajoz might get the fever, the magazine might blow up, the war might end, but Sharpe knew they were vain hopes in a cold wind. He thought of his Captaincy, of his gazette, and though he knew that Lawford, his Colonel, would never take the Light Company from his command, he still wondered why he had not volunteered for the Forlorn Hope. It would have made his rank secure and he would have passed the test of overcoming the fear that each man had of being first into a defended breach. He had not volunteered and if he could not prove his bravery, that had been proved so many times before, in the breach at Ciudad Rodrigo, then the proof would have to come later.