Sharpe's Regiment Part 27

'Carlton House,' Sharpe smiled. 'We are invited.'

'Dressed like that? I suppose you can say it's a costume ball. Very well! We shall all go to Prinny's! Jane and I can turn up on the arm of a hero. Dear Miss Gibbons,' and the Countess offered Jane her hand, 'do me the honour of waiting in my carriage.'

When the Countess had Sharpe alone she stared up at him. 'You didn't tell me about her?'

'There seemed no need.'

She smiled. 'True. One hardly discusses one's intended while under Vauxhall's bushes.' She laughed. 'You wouldn't do that, Major, would you? I would, but not you. You're too kind. Did anyone ever tell you that you were kind?'

'No, Ma'am.'

'Don't call me "Ma'am". You make me sound ancient.' Her fingers were touching the silver whistle on his crossbelt, and her startling green eyes were filled with amus.e.m.e.nt. 'If you weren't such an alley-cat, I might have taken you for myself.'

'I would have been most fortunate.'

'Thank you. Are you in love?'

Sharpe was embarra.s.sed. 'Yes. Yes, I am.'

'Whatever love is. It will probably end in disaster, of course.'

Sharpe frowned. 'You think so?'

She laughed. 'Not if you look after her, and I think you're quite good at that.' She smiled. 'She's very pretty, if you like that innocent colouring. You have good taste in women, Major. I wanted to thank you.'

'Thank me?' Sharpe was feeling confused.

'You didn't get the proof for me, did you? But you were still on the battlefield, Major, and you were an ally of memorable strength.' She turned towards her coach. 'Now come along. It's not done to keep a Prince waiting, not even that fat fool.' She laughed, for she had won, and she would have her revenge, and because her son was safe.

Victory was suddenly very sweet. The Prince thought Sharpe's uniform "monstrous good". He was kindness itself to both of them.

'Who is she?' Sir William Lawford watched Jane Gibbons, who had been drawn away by Lord John Rossendale.

'I'm marrying her. She's called Jane Gibbons.'

'Gibbons? Gibbons?' Lawford frowned. 'Never heard of them.'

'Her father was a saddler.'

'Ah!' Lawford smiled. 'I wouldn't have heard of her then, would I? Still, she'll be a good match for you. Pretty, eh?'

'I think so.'

Lawford stared at Sharpe in silence for a few seconds. 'So you're feeling pleased with yourself, eh? You did it all on your own, didn't need my help?'

'I hope you were not offended, sir.'

'Offended! Lord, no. You were a fool, Richard. Do you know what a d.a.m.n fool thing you did today? Do you know? You're lucky to have a head on your shoulders, let alone your d.a.m.ned Majority.'

'I'm sure, sir.'

Lawford, with his wonderful dexterity, struck a light with his tinder box and lit a cigar. 'Do you know what I had arranged for you, Richard?'

'Arranged for me, sir?'

'A Rifle Battalion of your own. Yours. Rifles. Lieutenant Colonel Sharpe.' He smiled to show how foolish Sharpe had been in distrusting his help. 'Admittedly in the American War, but we can't have everything.'

A Rifle Battalion of his own? Sharpe felt the dreadful lure of the bribe, the savage l.u.s.t for such a wonderful instrument of war to be given to him, and then he remembered the disconsolate men on the wharves of Pasajes, the men in faded, patched red coats who trusted him to bring them back their pride from England. 'I couldn't have accepted, sir.'

'Easy to say when you don't have the choice,' Lawford laughed. 'So you thought you didn't need me, eh?'

'But I do, sir.' Sharpe wondered how Lawford could have so misjudged him. Did Sir William really believe that Sharpe would abandon men for a promotion? The thought hurt, but he would not show it. He smiled instead. 'I want a service from you, and perhaps I can offer you one in return.'

Lawford, with a politician's distrust, frowned at the thought of a bargain not of his own invention. 'What can you offer me, Richard?'

Sharpe was awkward for this was not his territory. 'It occurs to me, sir, if you'll forgive me, but if you talk with Lady Camoynes, you might find that she has sudden influence in the Horse Guards and War Office. I should do it swiftly, sir, say tonight? I suspect there will be promotions, sir, within the government.' Lawford, who hardly expected to receive that kind of advice from a man who had once been his Sergeant, stared with some pique at Sharpe.

'You know the Lady Camoynes?'

'Not well," Sharpe said hastily. 'She was kind enough to speak to me once or twice.'

Lawford grunted. 'I hope you were polite, Richard.'

'Indeed, sir,' Sharpe smiled. 'I was very humble.'

'Good.' Lawford looked at the dreadful, battle-stained green jacket. 'Because you do sometimes seem to have difficulty in knowing your proper place.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And what favour can I do for you?'

'I think, sir, that Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood will be trying to resign his commission and I would be grateful, sir, if it could be put to him that unless he accepts command of the First Battalion in Spain then criminal charges might be brought? Would that be possible?'

Lawford blew a long stream of cigar smoke as he watched Sharpe. 'And why, in the name of G.o.d, do you want to serve under Girdwood?'

'I don't intend to serve under him, sir.'

Sir William smiled very slowly, understanding. 'I think I know the right ear, yes. May I say I'm glad that I am not your enemy, Richard?'

'I'm glad of that too, sir.'

He took Jane Gibbons away from the court. He was going back to Spain, and there were a hundred things he wanted to do before the Battalion left. They walked down the ma.s.sive staircase towards the octagon room, and Jane suddenly gasped and gripped his arm. 'Major!'

'You can call me Richard now.'

She was not listening. She stared fearfully towards the bottom of the staircase.

The defeated, knowing that the next day they would buy themselves out of scandal, and eager to stop the smallest rumours from sullying their reputation, had decided to brazen this night out. They had come to Carlton House. Lord Fenner saw Sharpe and stepped back so that he would not be forced to recognise his enemy.

But Sir Henry Simmerson, who had just handed his cloak to a servant, did not have the same sense. He stared in outraged anger. His niece, dressed in her simple blue country dress, was coming down the Prince Regent's stairs on the arm of the man Sir Henry hated most in all the world. 'Jane! I ordered you home! I'll have the skin off you!'

'Sir Henry!' It was Sharpe who replied. His voice, echoing in the marbled splendour of the hall, seemed unnaturally loud. He put his right hand over Jane's to calm her fears.

Sir Henry stared at them, and Sharpe, in the same loud voice, spoke two brief words that, though much used in Britain's army, were rarely heard in Carlton House. Then, with his bride on his arm and his sword at his side, he went into the night. He was going to Spain.

EPILOGUE FRANCE, November 1813

EPILOGUE.

Dawn showed a landscape whitened by frost and slashed by dark valleys. Smoke, like wisps of morning mist, drifted from the steep hillsides where troops brewed tea or cleared their muskets of an overnight charge. Men, stamping their boots and slapping their mittened hands against the cold, stared northwards at the heaped hills that were rocky, precipitous, and held by the enemy.

Sergeant Major Harper laughed. 'You look disappointed, Charlie. What is it? You thought they had horns and tails?'

Private Charles Weller, now in d'Alembord's Light Company, was staring in awe at a small group of men who, a good half mile away from where Weller stood, struggled uphill with buckets of water to their rock-embrasured trenches at the hill's top. 'They're French?'

'The real article, Charlie. Old Trousers, frogs, me-sewers, whatever you want to call the b.u.g.g.e.rs. And just like us.'

'Like us?' Weller had been raised in a country that spoke of Frenchmen as monkeys, as devils, as anything but humans.

'Just like us.' Harper sipped his tea and thought about it. 'Bit slower with their muskets and a bit nippier on their feet, but that's all. Christ, it's cold!'

It was November in the mountains. The Prince of Wales' Own Volunteers had marched through high, rocky pa.s.ses, shrouded in sudden fogs, the moss-grown precipices dripping with water that soaked the thin, spongy turf of the high valleys. Goats and eagles shared the rocks, wolves howled in the darkness. A storm had greeted the Battalion one night, the lightning slas.h.i.+ng down to whiten the cliffs and crack at rocks like the whip of doom.

Somewhere in that land of fogs and rains and lightning and night-howling cold, they had crossed into France. No one was certain exactly where. One moment they were in Spain, and the next the word went through the ranks that they had entered the land of the enemy. No one cheered. They were in an army that had fought and struggled since 1793 to cross this frontier, but they were too tired to raise a cheer. The straps of their packs had chafed through the wet uniforms, their boots were filled with water, and the sergeants had threatened to crucify any man who let his powder get wet.

'Remember one thing, Charlie.' Harper tossed the dregs of his tea away. 'Get yourself a French pack soon as you b.l.o.o.d.y can. More comfortable.' It was possible to tell the veterans of the Regiment, not just by their faded uniforms that were patched with brown Spanish cloth, but by their good French packs. Weller grinned. His red coat, which had been so bright in Chelmsford, had turned a strange pink, the cheap dye washed by the rain to drip onto his grey trousers which were now reddened about the thighs. 'Will we fight today?'

'That's what we're here for.' Harper stared down at the French-held hills. The British held the higher ground, but between them and the southern plains of France was this last range of enemy-held hills, hills protected by fortifications, trenches, and marshy, treacherous ground in the valleys. Wellington, whose men had prised the French from the higher peaks in weeks of hard, confused fighting, wanted to be out of these hills before the snows came. No army could winter here. If the forts that had been hacked out of the rocks on the last foothills were not taken, then the British would have to slink back into Spain. Harper turned round. 'Private Clayton!'

'Sarge?'

'Look after this little b.u.g.g.e.r.' Harper cuffed Weller. 'Don't want him dying in his first battle. And, Charlie?'

'Sarge?'

'Keep your b.l.o.o.d.y dog away from the Portuguese. They eat them when they get hungry.'

Weller, landing at Pasajes in early October, had adopted the first stray dog that he found. It was a mongrel of startling ugliness, with one ear missing and a tail shortened by a fight. It proved to be a coward against all other dogs, but devoted to its new master, who had tried to christen it b.u.t.tons. The name did not stick. The rest of the Light Company, because of its ugliness and cowardice, called the dog Boney.

Major Richard Sharpe had let it be known throughout the Battalion that dogs would make suitable pets for soldiers. As a result of Sharpe's encouragement, the Prince of Wales' Own Volunteers looked, at times, as if they had collected every stray mongrel and flighty b.i.t.c.h in Europe.

Major General Nairn had greeted Sharpe like a long lost friend. During the three weeks that the Battalion was given to re-order its Companies and train the new men to fight in the way of the veterans, Nairn often rode over to share an evening meal with Sharpe and listen to the stories brought from England. He met Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood briefly. 'Is he mad, Sharpe?' They were sitting in the wine-shop that was the officers' Mess.

'He just keeps himself to himself, sir.'

'He's mad!' Nairn stared reverently into his gla.s.s of whisky. Sharpe had brought two cases from London and presented them to the General. 'Mad!' Nairn said. 'Reminds me of a Minister I knew in Kirkcaldy. The Reverend Robert MacTeague. Ate nothing but vegetables! Can you credit that? Thought his wife was pregnant of a moonbeam. She probably was, I doubt if he knew his business in that area, and all those cabbages? Must sap a man, Sharpe. He didn't drink, either, not a drop! Said it was the devil's brew.' He turned and stared towards the door of Girdwood's room. Light showed beneath the door which had remained closed all evening. 'What does he do in there?'

'Writes poetry, sir.'

'Christ!' Nairn stared at Sharpe, then drank a good swallow of whisky. 'You're not serious?'

'I am, sir.'

The old Scotsman shook his head sadly. 'Why doesn't the b.u.g.g.e.r resign?'

'I really couldn't say, sir.' Sharpe did not know whether his request to Lawford had borne fruit and that the threat of court-martial and disgrace had forced Girdwood to Spain, or whether the man, from his tortuous dreams of glory, simply wanted to fight his battle against the French. 'He's here, sir, that's all I know.'

'While you,' a finger stabbed at Sharpe, 'are commanding this Battalion, yes? You're a clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Mr Sharpe, and when you've driven that poor fool mad I'll make sure you get a real b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a colonel to run you ragged.'

Major General Nairn was right in his surmise that Sharpe had arranged for Girdwood to command the Battalion because it enabled Sharpe to be the real commander. Girdwood, shamed and humbled by Sharpe in England, could not compete with him in Spain. The Lieutenant Colonel had tried. On their first formal parade, when the Battalion, strengthened and filled by the men from Foulness, had formed up before the storehouses of Pasajes, Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood had publicly reprimanded Major Sharpe. It was his attempt to a.s.sert his authority, to make, as he had said in private to Sharpe, a new beginning with old things forgotten.

The parade had been a formal affair, the Companies lined in their proper order, with Captains in front and Sergeants behind. Before the hoisted Colours, facing the whole parade, Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood sat his horse. Four paces behind the Colours, in the allotted place of the senior major, Sharpe stood.

'Major Sharpe!' Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, surveying his command, shouted over the heads of the Colour party.

'Sir!'

'Retire two paces, if you please!' The manual of drill did, indeed, stipulate that the senior major should be six paces behind the rear ranks.

Every man in the Battalion, not just those from Foulness, but the veterans too, recognised this as a trial of strength. A small thing, no doubt; but if Major Sharpe, so publicly reprimanded for his lack of military precision, took the two backward paces then Girdwood would have succeeded in a.s.serting his formal authority over all these men. The Colonel, recognising the moment, chose to speak in a clipped, loud voice. 'Now, if you please, Major!'

'Sir!' Major Sharpe said. He filled his lungs. "Talion! 'Talion will march two paces forward on my word of command! 'Talion, move!'

Since that moment, which had brought smiles to every face in the Battalion, Sharpe had commanded. From that moment on he paraded beside Girdwood, in the front of the Battalion, and, though he was careful to be seen consulting with the Lieutenant Colonel, and though Girdwood still presided silently in the Mess, there was not a man in the Prince of Wales' Own Volunteers who did not know who truly gave the Battalion its orders.

Major General Nairn, on his last visit to Sharpe before the Battalion was ordered forward through the mountains, had stared astonished at the still closed door. 'You're not being a bit hard on him, Sharpe?'

'Yes, sir. I am.' Sharpe admitted. 'At Foulness, sir, that b.u.g.g.e.r gave orders that deserters were to be shot out of hand. I saw one killed. Guessing from the books I'd say he had about a dozen others shot. No trial, no nothing. Just bang. He also hunted men in the marshland as if they were rats. He stole a lot of money.' Sharpe frowned. 'So have I, in my time, but only from the enemy. I don't steal from my men. Besides, he wants to see a battle, so I'm doing him a favour.'

'A favour?'