‘As the virgin said.’ Hogan grinned. ‘What news of you?’
‘Not much.’ Sharpe traced the letter ‘A’ in spilt wine on the table, then scrubbed it out. ‘Recruits are joining us at Elvas. Two hundred men and officers, so we’re told, but no news of a Colonel. Have you heard?’
Hogan spat out an olive pip. ‘Not a word. I’ll bet you two cases of wine to one, that you’ll get one before the siege.’
‘Which starts when?’
Hogan thought about it, juggling an olive in his hand. ‘Three weeks? The guns are coming round by sea. Everything’s moving.’
Sharpe looked through the small window by the back door at the rain which was pelting down, ‘You’ll need better weather.’
Hogan shrugged. ‘It can’t rain for ever.’
“That’s what Noah’s brother said.’
Hogan smiled. ‘Aye, but at least he was spared shoveling elephant dung for forty days.’
Sharpe grinned. The Battalion would soon be shoveling mud, digging forward to the great fortress and, as he thought of Badajoz, his expression changed. Hogan saw the worry.
‘What’s the problem?’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Would it be that gazette, now?’
Sharpe gave a minute shrug. ‘I suppose so.’
‘They’re fool’s gold, sure enough, but they can’t take it away from you, not now.’
‘Would you bet me some wine on that?’
Hogan said nothing. There was no answer. The Horse Guards had promoted officers who were totally blind, others who were only outside of the madhouse because of their money and connections, and they were certainly not in the habit of ratifying gazettes simply because a man was good at his job. Hogan shook his head, raised his glass again. ‘A pox to pen pushers.’
‘May they rot in agony.’
There was a heaving of bodies near the serving hatch, a welcoming smile on Hogan’s face, and Major Forrest joined them. Sharpe half listened to Hogan repeating his news, but his thoughts drifted away, back to that damned gazette. If only they would ratify it, he could relax. He tried to imagine what would happen if they did not, if he were to find himself a Lieutenant again. He would have to salute Knowles, call him ‘sir’, and someone else would lead the Company that Sharpe had trained, brought up, and led through two years of war. He remembered his first sight of them; cowed and helpless, but now they were as fine as any soldiers in the army. He could not imagine losing them, losing Harper? Good God! Losing Harper!
‘Good God!’ For a moment Sharpe thought Hogan had been reading his thoughts, and then he saw the Major staring across the room. Hogan shook his head. ‘If ever any beauty I did see which I desired and got, ‘twas but a dream of she.’ Teresa had come into the room and was crossing towards them. Hogan turned to Forrest. ‘Would she be your lady, Major? She can’t be Sharpe’s. The man has no taste! He hasn’t even heard of John Donne, let alone recognize a misquotation. No. Something as beautiful as that would only fall in love with a man of taste, a man like you, Major, or me.’ He twitched at his collar as Forrest blushed with pleasure.
Lieutenant Price had gone on his knees to Teresa, blocking her path, and was offering her his undying love in the form of a red pepper held up like a rose. The other Lieutenants encouraged him, shouted at Teresa that Harold Price had prospects, but she just blew him a kiss and stepped past him. Sharpe was so immensely proud of her. In any place in the world, in any drawing room, in any theatre, in any palace, let alone in a damp, smoky inn at Portalegre, she would be counted beautiful. The mother of his child. His woman. He stood up for her, embarrassed that his pleasure was obvious to so many, and offered her a chair. He introduced Hogan who dropped into his fluent Spanish and made her laugh. She glanced at Sharpe, eyes fond under the long, dark lashes, listened to the Irishman’s nonsense, and laughed again. The Engineer toasted her, flirted with her, and looked at Sharpe. ‘You’re a lucky man, Richard.’
‘I know, sir, I know.’
Lieutenant Price was left with the red pepper. He threw it across the room and followed it with a bellowed question. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Badajoz!’ The room roared with laughter.
Part Two
February-March 1812
Chapter 7
Halt!’ Boots thudded on to the roadway. ‘Stand bloody still, you bastards! Still!’ The Sergeant cackled, ground his few remaining teeth together, turned away and immediately spun back. ‘I said still! If you want your sodding bum scratched, Gutteridge, I’ll do it with my bayonet! Still!’ He turned to the young officer and snapped an immaculate salute. ‘Sir!’
The Ensign, visibly nervous of the tall Sergeant, returned the salute. ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
‘Don’t thank me, sir. My job, sir.’ The Sergeant gave his habitual cackle, a wild, discomfiting sound, and his eyes flicked left and right. The Sergeant’s eyes were blue, almost a baby blue, the Ensign decided, while the rest of him was yellow, fever yellow, a sickly cast over his hair, teeth and skin. The baby blue eyes settled on the Ensign. ‘Are you going to find the Captain, sir, are you? Tell him we’ve arrived, sir?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Give him my best, sir. My very best.’ The Sergeant cackled again, and the cackle turned into a racking cough, and the head twitched on its long, scrawny neck that had the terrible scar.
The Ensign walked into the courtyard that had SE/LC chalked on the gatepost. He was relieved to be away from the Sergeant, his constant bane on the long journey from the South Essex depot, and relieved that the other officers of the South Essex Light Company could now share the brunt of the Sergeant’s madness. No, that was not right. The Sergeant was not mad, the Ensign decided, but there was something about him that spoke of the possibility of utter horror that lurked just bellow the yellow surface. The Sergeant was terrifying: the Ensign, as he was to the recruits.
The soldiers in the courtyard were almost as frightening. They had the look that other veterans in Portugal had assumed, a look quite at odds with soldiering in England. Their uniforms had turned from scarlet into either a faded, whitish pink, or else into a dark, virulent purple. The commonest colour was brown where jackets and trousers had been repeatedly patched with coarse, peasant cloth. Their skins, even in winter, were dark brown. Above all, the Ensign noticed, was their air of confidence. They carried themselves casually, at home with their polished and battered weapons, and the Ensign felt ill at ease in his new scarlet jacket with its bright yellow facings. An Ensign was the lowest of all commissioned officers and William Matthews, a sixteen-year-old who pretended to shave, was scared by the first sight of these men he was supposed to command.
A man was bent beneath the yard pump, a second man working the handle so that water pulsed on to his head and naked back. As the man stood up Matthews saw a lattice of thick scars that had been caused by a flogging and the Ensign turned away, sickened by the sight. His father had warned him that the army attracted the filth of society, the troublemakers, and Matthews knew he had just seen such a piece of human flotsam. Another soldier, for some reason dressed in Rifle green, saw his expression and grinned. Matthews knew he was being watched, and judged, but then an officer appeared, dressed properly, and it was with relief that he crossed to the newcomer, a Lieutenant, and saluted. ‘Ensign Matthews, sir. Reporting with the recruits.’
The Lieutenant smiled vaguely, turned away, and vomited. ‘Oh, Christ!’ The Lieutenant seemed to be having trouble in breathing, but he stood upright again, painfully, and turned back to the Ensign. ‘My dear fellow, frightfully sorry. Bloody Portuguese put garlic in everything. I’m Harold Price.’ Price took off his shako and rubbed his head. ‘I missed your name. Frightfully sorry.’
‘Matthews, sir.’
‘Matthews. Matthews.’ Price said the name as if it might mean something, and then held his breath as his stomach heaved and, when the spasm had passed, breathed out slowly. ‘Forgive me, my dear Matthews. I think my stoma
ch’s delicate this morning. You wouldn’t, I suppose, do me the honour of lending me five pounds? Just for a day or two? Guineas would be better.’
His father had warned him of this, too, but Matthews felt it would be unwise to begin his acquaintance with his new Company by a churlish refusal. He was aware of the soldiers in the yard listening and he wondered if he was an innocent in some kind of private joke, but what eke could he do?
‘Of course, sir.’
Lieutenant Price looked astonished. ‘My dear fellow, how kind! Splendid! I’ll give you my note, of course.’
‘And hope the Ensign gets killed at Badajoz?’
Matthews spun round. The tall soldier, the one whose back was so horribly scarred, had spoken. The man’s face was scarred, too, and it gave him a knowing, even mocking expression, that was belied by his voice. He grinned at Matthews. ‘He’s doing it to everyone. Borrowing in the hope that they die. He should make a tidy enough profit.’
Matthews did not know what to say. The soldier had spoken in a kindly way, but he had not used the word ‘sir’, which was disconcerting, and Matthews had the feeling that what little authority his lowly rank endowed was already being dissipated. He hoped the Lieutenant would intervene, but Price’s expression was sheepish as he put the shako on his head and grinned at the scarred man. ‘This is Ensign Matthews, sir. He’s brought the replacements.’
The tall, scarred man nodded at the Ensign. ‘Glad you’re here, Matthews. I’m Sharpe, Captain Sharpe. What’s your name?’
‘Matthews, sir.’ The Ensign gaped at Sharpe. An officer who had been flogged? He realized his answer had been inadequate. ‘William, sir.’
‘Good morning and welcome.’ Sharpe was making an effort to be pleasant. He hated mornings and this morning, in particular, was unpleasant. Today Teresa was going from Elvas and riding the few miles, across the border, to Badajoz. Another parting. ‘Where did you leave the men?”
Matthews had not left them anywhere; the Sergeant had made all the decisions, but he pointed through the gate. ‘Outside, sir.’
‘Get them in, get them in.’ Sharpe rubbed his hair dry with a piece of sacking. ‘Sergeant Harper! Sergeant Read!’ Harper could settle the recruits into the Company, while Read, the Methodist teetotaler, could fuss over the Company books. It would be a busy day.
Sharpe dressed hurriedly. The rain had stopped, at least for the moment, but the wind still came cold from the north and brought with it high, streaked clouds that promised more bad weather in March. At least, being the first troops to arrive, the Battalion had the pick of Elvas’s billets and the men lived in comparative comfort even as they stared across the border at Badajoz. The two fortresses were just eleven miles apart, either side of a shallow valley, but, despite their closeness, they were vastly different. Badajoz was a city, the capital of a province, while Elvas was a small market town that found itself in the centre of wide, spreading defences. Impressive as were the Portuguese walls, they were small compared with the Spanish fortifications that barred the road to Madrid. Sharpe knew it was fanciful, but there seemed something sinister about the huge fortress to the east and he hated to think of Teresa going behind the towering walls and wide ditches. Yet she had to return to the child, his child, and he would have to find her and protect her when the moment came.
His thoughts of Teresa and Antonia suddenly stopped, wrenched violently away, replaced by a loathing thick as vomit. His past was here, in Elvas, a hated past. The same yellow face, with the same twitch, and the same cackle! My God! Here, in his Company? Their eyes met, and Sharpe saw the insolent grin that seemed to verge on total insanity. ‘Halt!’ The Sergeant glared at the replacements. ‘Left turn! Still, you bastards! Keep your bloody mouth shut, Smithers, or I’ll use it to clean out the stables!’ The Sergeant turned smartly, marched to Sharpe, and crashed to a halt. ‘Sir!’
Ensign Matthews looked between the two tall men. ‘Sir? This is Sergeant... ‘
‘I know Sergeant Hakeswill.’
The Sergeant cackled, showing his few yellow teeth. Spittle dribbled on to his stubbled chin. Sharpe tried to work out the Sergeant’s age. Hakeswill had to be forty, at least, maybe forty-five, but the eyes were still the eyes of a cunning child. They looked unblinkingly at Sharpe with amusement and scorn. Sharpe was aware that Hakeswill was trying to outstare him so he turned away and saw Harper buckling his belt as he came into the courtyard. He nodded at the Irishman. ‘Stand them easy, Sergeant. They need sleeping space and food.’
‘Sir.’
Sharpe turned back to Hakeswill ‘You’re joining this Company?’
‘Sir!’ He barked the reply, and Sharpe remembered how punctilious Hakeswill had always been in the etiquette of the army. No soldier drilled more exactly, replied more formally, yet every action seemed imbued with a kind of contempt. It was impossible to pin it down, yet it had something to do with the expression in those childlike eyes, as if there was a freak inside the rigorously correct soldier that watched and laughed as it fooled the army. Hakeswill’s face twitched into a grin. ‘Surprised, sir?’
Sharpe wanted to kill the man on the spot, to blot out those offensive eyes, still for ever the twitch and the teeth-grinding, the cackle and the grin. Many men had tried to kill Obadiah Hakeswill. The scar on his neck with its fiery red folds of skin had been put there when he was just twelve years old. He had been sentenced to death by hanging for stealing a lamb. He had been innocent of the charge. His real offence was that he had forced the vicar’s daughter to undress for him by holding a viper at her neck, its tongue flickering, and she had fumbled off her clothes and screamed as the boy attacked her. Her father had rescued the girl and it had been simpler to accuse the boy of stealing a lamb, more certain to end in death, and the deal had been struck with the Justices. No one, even then, had wanted Obadiah Hakeswill to live except, perhaps, his mother, and the vicar, if he could have thought of a way, would have gladly strung her alongside her foul son.
He had lived somehow. They had strung him up, but he was still alive, with the stretched, scrawny neck and its livid scar to prove he had once been hanged. He had found his way into the army and into a way of life that suited him. He put up a hand and rubbed the scar below his left ear. ‘Be all right, sir, now that I’m here.’
Sharpe knew what he meant. There was a legend that Hakeswill the indestructible man, the survivor of a judicial execution, could not be killed and the legend did not diminish with time. Sharpe had seen two files of men blown away by grapeshot, yet Hakeswill, standing immediately to their front, had not been touched.
Hakeswill’s face twitched, hiding the laugh that was prompted by Sharpe’s unexpressed hatred. The twitch stopped. ‘I’m glad I’m here, sir. Proud of you, I am, proud. My best recruit.’ He had spoken loudly, letting the courtyard know of their joint history; and there was a challenge, too, as unspoken as their hatred, which announced that Hakeswill would not submit easily to the discipline of a man he had once drilled and tyrannized.
‘How’s Captain Morris, Hakeswill?’
The Sergeant grinned, then cackled into Sharpe’s face so that the officer caught the foul breath. ‘Remember him, sir, do you? He’s a Major now, sir, so I hear. In Dublin. Mind you, sir, you was a naughty boy, you’ll pardon an old soldier for saying so.’
There was silence in the courtyard. Every man was listening to the words, aware of the hostility between the two men. Sharpe dropped his voice, so no one but Hakeswill could hear. ‘If you lay a finger on any man in this Company, Sergeant, I’ll bloody kill you.’ Hakeswill grinned, was about to reply, but Sharpe was faster. ‘Shun!’ Hakeswill snapped upright, his face suddenly clouded with anger because he had been denied his reply. ‘About turn!’
Sharpe left him there, facing a wall. God damn it! Hakeswill! The scars were on Sharpe’s back because of Hakeswill and Morris, and Sharpe had sworn on that far-off day that he would inflict as much pain on them as they had on him. Hakeswill had beaten a Private into bloody insensibility; the
man had recovered his consciousness, but never his senses, and Sharpe had been a witness. He had tried to stop the hammering and, for his efforts, was accused by Morris and Hakeswill of the beating. He had been tied to a cart’s wheel and flogged.
Now, suddenly face to face with his enemy after all these years, he felt an uneasy sense of helplessness. Hakeswill seemed untouchable. He had the confidence of a man who simply did not care what happened to him, because he knew he was indestructible. The Sergeant went through life with a suppurating hatred of other men, and, from behind his mask of military conformity, spread poison and fear throughout the companies he served. Hakeswill, Sharpe knew, would not have changed, any more than his appearance had changed. The same great belly, perhaps a few inches bigger, a few more lines on the face, another tooth or two missing, yet still the same yellow skin and the mad stare, and Sharpe remembered, uncomfortably, that once Hakeswill had told him they were alike. Both on the run, both without family, and the only way to survive, the Sergeant said, was to hit hard and hit first.
He looked at the recruits. They were wary, as well they might be, cautious of this new Company. Sharpe, though they could not know it, shared their unease. Hakeswill, of all people, in his Company? Then he remembered the gazette, and knew that the Company might not be his, and he felt his thoughts begin their profitless descent into gloom so he snapped them away. ‘Sergeant Harper?’
‘Sir?’
‘What’s happening today?’
‘Football, sir. Grenadier Company playing the Portuguese. Heavy casualties expected.’
Sharpe knew that Harper was trying to cheer up the newcomers and so he dutifully smiled. ‘A light day, then, for your first day. Enjoy it. Tomorrow we work.’ Tomorrow he would be without Teresa, tomorrow would be a day nearer Badajoz and tomorrow he might be a Lieutenant. He realized the recruits, some of whom he had found himself, were waiting for him to continue. He forced another smile. ‘Welcome to the South Essex. I’m glad you’re here. This is a good Company and I’m sure it will stay that way.’ The words sounded incredibly lame, even to himself, as if he knew they were untrue.
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