Sharpe’s Eagle: The Talavera Campaign, July 1809

CHAPTER FOUR

Patrick Harper marched with a long easy stride, happy to feel the road beneath his feet, happy they had at last crossed the unmarked frontier and were going somewhere, anywhere. They had left in the small, dark hours so that the bulk of the march would be done before the sun was at its hottest and he looked forward to an afternoon of inactivity and hoped that the bivouac Major Forrest had ridden ahead to find would be near a stream where he could drift a line down the water with one of his maggots impaled on the hook. The South Essex were somewhere behind them; Sharpe had started the day’s march at the Rifle Regiment’s fast pace, three steps walking, three running, and Harper was glad that they were free of the suspicious atmosphere of the Battalion. He grinned as he remembered the stocks. There was a sobering rumour that the Colonel had ordered Sharpe to pay for every one of the seventy-nine ruined collars and that, to Harper’s mind, was a terrible price to pay. He had not asked Sharpe the truth of the rumour; if he had he would have been told to mind his own business, though, for Patrick Harper, Sharpe was his business. The Lieutenant might be moody, irritable, and liable to snap at the Sergeant as a means of venting frustration, but Harper, if pressed, would have described Sharpe as a friend. It was not a word that a Sergeant could use of an officer, but Harper could have thought of no other. Sharpe was the best soldier the Irishman had seen on a battlefield, with a countryman’s eye for ground and a hunter’s instinct for using it, but Sharpe looked for advice to only one man in a battle, Sergeant Harper. It was an easy relationship, of trust and respect, and Patrick Harper saw his business as keeping Richard Sharpe alive and amused.

He enjoyed being a soldier, even in the army of the nation that had taken his family’s land and trampled on their religion. He had been reared on the tales of the great Irish heroes, he could recite by heart the story of Cuchulain single-handedly defeating the forces of Connaught and who did the English have to put beside that great hero? But Ireland was Ireland and hunger drove men to strange places. If Harper had followed his heart he would be fighting against the English, not for them, but like so many of his countrymen he had found a refuge from poverty and persecution in the ranks of the enemy. He never forgot home. He carried in his head a picture of Donegal, a county of twisted rock and thin soil, of mountains, lakes, wide bogs and the smallholdings where families scratched a thin living. And what families! Harper was the fourth of his mother’s eleven children who survived infancy and she always said that she never knew how she had come to bear such ‘a big wee one’. ‘To feed Patrick is like feeding three of the others’ she would say and he would more often go hungry. Then came the day when he left to seek his own fortune. He had walked from the Blue Stack mountains to the walled streets of Derry and there got drunk, and found himself enlisted. Now, eight years later and twenty-four years old, he was a Sergeant. They would never believe that in Tangaveane!

It was hard now to think of the English as enemies. Familiarity had bred too many friendships. The army was one place where strong men could do well and Patrick Harper liked the responsibility he had earned and enjoyed the respect of other tough men, like Sharpe. He remembered the stories of his countrymen who had fought the redcoats in the hills and fields of Ireland and sometimes he wondered what his future would be if he were to go back and live in Donegal again. That problem of loyalty was too difficult and he kept it in the back of his mind, hidden away with the vestiges of his religion. Perhaps the war would go on for ever, or perhaps St Patrick would return and convert the English to the true faith? Who could tell? But for the moment he was content to be a soldier and took his pleasure where it could be found. Yesterday he had seen a peregrine falcon, high over the road, and Patrick Harper’s soul had soared to meet it. He knew every bird in Ulster, loved them, and as he walked he searched the land and sky for new birds because the Sergeant never tired of watching them. In the hills north of Oporto he had caught a quick glimpse of a strange magpie with a long blue tail, unlike anything he had seen before, and he wanted to see another. The expectation and the waiting were part of his content and his pleasure.

A hare started up in a field next to the road. A voice shouted ‘Mine’ and they all paused while the man knelt, took quick aim, and fired. He missed and Riflemen jeered as the hare twisted and disappeared in the rocks. Daniel Hagman did not miss often, he had learned to shoot from his poacher father, and all the Riflemen were secretly proud of the Cheshire man’s ability with the rifle. As he reloaded he shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Sorry, sir. Getting too old.’

Sharpe laughed. Hagman was forty but he could still outshoot the rest of the company. The hare had been running at two hundred yards and it would have been a miracle if it had ended up in the evening’s cooking pots.

‘We’ll take a rest,’ Sharpe said. ‘Ten minutes.’ He set two men as sentries. The French were miles away, there were British cavalry ahead of them on the road, but soldiers stayed alive by taking precautions and this was strange country so Sharpe kept a watch and the men marched with loaded weapons. He took off his pack and pouches, glad to be rid of the eighty pounds of weight, and sat beside Harper who was leaning back and staring into the clear sky. ‘A hot day for a march, Sergeant.’

‘It will be, sir, so it will. But better than that damned cold last winter.’

Sharpe grinned. ‘You managed to keep warm enough.’

‘We did what we could, sir, we did what we could. You remember the Holy Father in the Friary?’ Sharpe nodded but there was no way to stop Patrick Harper once he was launched into a good story. ‘He told us there was no drink in the place! No drink, and we were as cold as the sea in winter! It was a terrible thing to hear a man of God lie so.’

‘You taught him a lesson, Sarge!’ Pendleton, the baby of the company, just seventeen and a thief from the streets of Bristol, grinned over the road at the Irishman. Harper nodded. ‘We did, lad. You remember? No priest runs out of drink and we found it. My God, a barrel big enough to drown an army’s thirst and it did us that night. And we tipped the Holy Father head first into the wine to teach him that lying is a mortal sin.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘I could do with a drop right now.’ He looked innocently round the men resting on the verges. ‘Would anyone have a drop?’

There was silence. Sharpe leaned back and hid his smile. He knew what Harper was doing and he could guess what would happen next. The Rifles were one of the few Regiments that could pick and choose its recruits, rejecting all but the best, but even so it suffered from the besetting sin of the whole army; drunkenness. Sharpe guessed there were at least half a dozen bottles of wine within a few paces and Harper was going to find them. He heard the Sergeant get to his feet. ‘Right! Inspection.’

‘Sergeant!’ That was Gataker, too fly for his own good. ‘You inspected the water bottles this morning! You know we haven’t got any.’

‘I know you haven’t any in your water bottles but that’s not the same thing, is it?’ There was still no response. ‘Lay your ammunition out! Now!’

There were groans. Both the Portuguese and the Spanish would gladly sell wine to a man in exchange for a handful of cartridges made with British gunpowder, the finest in the world, and it was a fair bet that if any man had less than his eighty rounds then Harper would find a bottle hid deep in that man’s pack. Sharpe heard the sound of rummaging and scuffling. He opened his eyes to see seven bottles had magically appeared. Harper stood over them triumphantly. ‘We share these out tonight. Well done, lads, I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’ He turned to Sharpe. ‘Do you want a cartridge count, sir?’

‘No, we’ll get on.’ He knew the men could be trusted not to sell more than a handful of cartridges. He looked at the huge Irishman. ‘How many cartridges would you have, Sergeant?’

Harper’s face was sublimely honest. ‘Eighty, sir.’

‘Show me your powder horn.’

Harper smiled. ‘I thought you might like a drop of something tonight, sir?’

‘Let’s get on, then.’ Sharpe grinned at Harper’s discomfiture. In addition to the eighty rounds, twenty more than the rest of the army carried, Riflemen also carried a horn of fine powder that made for better shooting when there was time to use it. ‘All right, Sergeant. Ten minutes fast, then we’ll march easy.’

At midday they found Major Forrest with his small, mounted advance party waving to them from a stand of trees that grew between the road and the stream Harper had been hoping for. The Major led the Riflemen to the spot he had chosen for them. ‘I thought, Sharpe, that it might be best if you were some way from the Colonel?’

‘Don’t worry, sir.’ Sharpe grinned at the nervous Major. ‘I think that’s an excellent idea.’

Forrest was still worried. He looked at Sharpe’s men who were already hacking at the branches. ‘Sir Henry insists on fires being built in straight lines, Sharpe.’

Sharpe held up his hands. ‘Not a flame out of place, sir, I promise you.’

An hour later the Battalion arrived and the men threw themselves on to the ground and rested their heads on their packs. Some went to the stream and sat with blistered, swollen feet in the cool water. Sentries were posted, weapons stacked, the smell of tobacco drifted through the trees, and a desultory game of football started far away from the pile of baggage that marked the temporary officers’ mess. Last to arrive were the wives and children mixed with the Portuguese muleteers and their animals, Hogan and his mules, and the herd of cattle, driven by hired labour, that would provide the evening meals until the last beast was killed.

In the somnolent afternoon Sharpe felt restless. He had no family to write to and no desire to join Harper vainly tempting non-existent fish with his maggots. Hogan was sleeping, snoring gently in a patch of shade, so Sharpe got up from the grass, took his rifle, and strolled towards the picquet line and beyond. It was a beautiful day. No cloud disturbed the sky, the water in the stream flowed clear, a whisper of a breeze stirred the grass and flickered the pale leaves of the olive trees. He walked between the stream and a field of growing corn, jumped a crude, wicker dam that stopped an irrigation channel, and into a rock-strewn field of stunted olives. Nothing moved. Insects buzzed and clicked, a horse whinnied from the camp site, the sound of the water faded behind him. Someone had told him it was July. Perhaps it was his birthday. He did not know on which day he had been born but before his mother died he remembered her calling him a July-baby, or was it June? He remembered little else of her. Dark hair and a voice in the darkness. She had died when he was an infant and there was no other family.

The landscape crouched beneath the heat, still and silent, the Battalion swallowed up in the countryside as though it did not exist. He looked back down the road the Battalion had marched and far away, too far to see properly, there was a dust cloud where the main army was still on the road. He sat beside a gnarled tree trunk, rifle across his knees, and stared into the heat haze. A lizard darted across the ground, paused, looked at him, then ran up a tree trunk and froze as if he would lose sight of it because of its stillness. A speck of movement in the sky made him look up and high in the blue a hawk slid silently, its wings motionless, its head searching the ground for prey. Patrick would have known instantly what it was but to Sharpe the bird was just another hunter and today, he thought, there is nothing for us hunters and, as if in agreement, the bird stirred its wings and in a moment had gone out of view. He felt comfortable and lazy, at peace with the world, glad to be a Rifleman in Spain. He looked at the stunted olives with their promise of a thin harvest and wondered what family would shake the branches in the autumn, whose lives were bounded by the stream, the shallow fields, and the high, climbing road he would probably never see again.

Then there was a noise. Too hesitant and far off to sound an alarm in his head, but strange and persistent enough to make him alert and send his right hand to curl unconsciously round the narrow part of the rifle’s stock. There were horses on the road, only two from the sound of their hooves, but they were moving slowly and uncertainly and the sound suggested that something was wrong. He doubted that the French would have cavalry patrols in this part of Spain but he still got to his feet and moved silently through the grove, instinctively choosing a path that kept his green uniform hidden and shadowed until he stood in the bright sunlight and surprised the traveller.

It was the girl. She was still dressed like a man, in the black trousers and boots, with the same wide-brimmed hat that shadowed her beauty. She was walking, or rather limping like her horse, and at the sight of Sharpe she stopped and looked at him angrily as if she was annoyed at being seen unexpectedly. The servant, a slight, dark man leading the heavily loaded mule, stopped ten paces behind and stared mutely at the tall, scarred Rifleman. The mare also looked at Sharpe, swished its tail at the flies, and stood patiently with one hind leg lifted off the ground. The shoe was hanging loose, held by a single nail, and the animal must have suffered agonies on the heat of the stony road. Sharpe nodded at the hind foot. ‘Why didn’t you take the shoe off?’

Her voice was surprisingly soft. ‘Can you do it?’ She smiled at him, the anger going from her face, and for a second Sharpe said nothing. He guessed she was in her early twenties but she carried her looks with the assurance of someone who knew that beauty could be a better inheritance than money or land. She seemed amused at his hesitation, as though she was accustomed to her effect on men, and she raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘Can you?’

Sharpe nodded and moved to the horse’s rear. He pulled the hoof towards him, holding the pastern firmly, and the mare trembled but stayed still. The shoe would have fallen off within a few paces and he pulled it clear with the slightest tug and let the leg go. He held the shoe out to the girl. ‘You’re lucky.’

Her eyes were huge and dark. ‘Why?’

‘It can probably be put back on, I don’t know.’ He felt clumsy and awkward in her presence, aware of her beauty, suddenly tongue-tied because he wanted her very much. She made no move to take the shoe so he pushed it under the strap of a bulging saddlebag. ‘Someone will know how to shoe a horse up there.’ He nodded up the road. ‘There’s a Battalion camped up there.’

‘The South Essex?’ Her English was good, tinged with a Portuguese accent.

‘Yes.’

She nodded. ‘Good. I was following them when the shoe came off.’ She looked at her servant and smiled. ‘Poor Agostino. He’s frightened of horses.’

‘And you, ma’am?’ Sharpe wanted to keep her talking. It was not unusual for women to follow the army; already Sir Arthur Wellesley’s troops had collected English, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese wives, mistresses, and whores, but it was unusual to see a beautiful girl, well horsed, attended by a servant, and Sharpe’s curiosity was aroused. More than his curiosity. He wanted this girl. It was a reaction to her beauty as much as a reaction to the knowledge that a girl with this kind of looks did not need a shabby Lieutenant without a private fortune. She could take her pick of the rich officers, but that did not stop Sharpe looking at her and desiring her. She seemed to read his thoughts.

‘You think I should be afraid?’

Sharpe shrugged, glancing up the road where the Battalion’s smoke drifted into the evening. ‘Soldiers aren’t delicate, ma’am.’

‘Thank you for warning me.’ She was mocking him. She looked down at his faded red sash. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘Lieutenant Sharpe, ma’am.’

‘Lieutenant Sharpe.’ She smiled again, spitting him with her beauty. ‘You must know Christian Gibbons?’

He nodded, knowing the unfairness of life. Money could buy anything: a commission, promotion, a sword fashioned to a man’s height and strength, even a woman like this. ‘I know him.’

‘And you don’t like him!’ She laughed, knowing that her instinct was right. ‘But I do.’ She clicked her tongue at the horse and gathered up the reins. ‘I expect we will meet again. I am going with you to Madrid.’

Sharpe did not want her to go. ‘You’re a long way from home.’

She turned back, mocking him with a smile. ‘So are you, Lieutenant, so are you.’

She led the limping mare, followed by the mute servant, towards the stand of trees and the first drifts of blue smoke where the cooking fires were being blown into life. Sharpe watched her go, let his eyes see her slim figure beneath the man’s clothes, and felt the envy and heaviness of his desire. He walked back into the olive grove as if by leaving the road he could wipe her from his memory and regain the peace of the afternoon. Damn Gibbons and his money, damn all the officers who could pay for the beauties who rode their thoroughbred mares behind the army. He encouraged his sour thoughts, swirled them round his head to try to convince himself that he did not want her, but as he walked between the trees he felt the horse-shoe nail still held in his right palm. He looked at it, a short, bent nail, and tucked it carefully into his ammunition pouch. He told himself it would come in useful; he needed a nail to jam the main-spring of the rifle when he stripped the lock for cleaning, but better nails were plentiful and he knew he was keeping it because it had been hers. Angrily he fished among the fat cartridges and threw the nail far away.

From the Battalion there came the sound of musket fire and he knew that two bullocks had been slaughtered for the evening meal. There would be wine with the stew, and Hogan’s brandy after it, and stories about old friends and forgotten campaigns. He had been looking forward to the meal, to the evening, but suddenly everything was changed. The girl was in the camp, her laughter would invade the peace, and he thought, as he walked back by the stream, that he did not even know her name.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Regimiento de la Santa Maria would have conquered the world if words and display had been enough. But punctuality was not among their more obvious military virtues.

The South Essex had marched hard for four days to reach the rendezvous at Plasencia but the town was empty of Spanish troops. Storks flapped lazily from their nests among the steep roofs that climbed to the ancient cathedral which dominated both the town and the circling plain, but of the Santa Maria there was no sign. The Battalion waited. Simmerson had bivouacked outside the walls and the men watched jealously as other units arrived and marched into the tantalising streets with their wine-shops and women. Three men disobeyed the standing order to stay away from the town and were caught, helplessly drunk, by the Provost-Marshal and received a flogging as the Battalion paraded beside the River Jerte.

Finally, two days late, the Spanish Regiment arrived and the South Essex mustered at five in the morning to begin their march south to Valdelacasa. There was a chill in the air which the rising sun would disperse but as five thirty, the hour set for departure, came and went there was still no sign of the Santa Maria and the men stamped their feet and rubbed their hands to ward off the cold. The hour of six chimed from the bells in the town. The children who were waiting with their mothers to see the Battalion depart grew bored and ran through the ranks despite all the shouting that began with Simmerson and worked its way down to the Sergeants and Corporals. The Battalion was paraded beside the Roman bridge that spanned the river and Sharpe followed a grumbling Captain Hogan on to the ancient arches and stared into the water that tumbled round the vast granite boulders which had been left in the river-bed in some long-ago upheaval of the earth. Hogan was impatient. ‘Damn them! Why can’t we just march and let the beggars catch us up?’ He knew well why it was impossible. The answer was called diplomacy and part of the price of cooperation with the touchy Spanish forces was that the native Regiment must march first. Sharpe said nothing. He stared into the water at the long weeds which waved sinuously in the current. He shivered in the dawn breeze. He shared Hogan’s impatience and it was alloyed with frustrations that stirred inside him like the slow-moving river weed. He looked up at the cathedral, touched by the rising sun, and tried to pin down his apprehensions about the operation at Valdelacasa. It sounded simple. A day’s march to the bridge, a day for Hogan to destroy the already crumbling arches, and a day’s march back to Plasencia where Wellesley was gathering his forces for the next stage of the advance into Spain. But there was something, some instinct as difficult to pin down as the grey shadows that receded in the dawn, that told him it would not be that easy. It was not the Spanish that worried him. Like Hogan he knew that their presence was a political imperative and a military farce. If they proved as useless as their reputation suggested that should not matter, the South Essex was strong enough to cope with whatever was needed. And that was the problem. Simmerson had never met the enemy and Sharpe had little faith in the Colonel’s ability to do the right thing. If there really were French on the south bank of the Tagus, and if the South Essex had to repel an attack on the bridge while Hogan laid his charges, then Sharpe would have preferred an old soldier to be making the decisions and not this Colonel of Militia whose head was stuffed with theories on battles and tactics learned on the safe fields of Essex.