"Be careful of what you suggest, Captain," Kiely said in a supercilious tone.
Sharpe reacted like a dog smelling blood. "Listen, you bastard," he said, astonished to hear himself saying it, "I fought my way up from the gutter and I don't care if I have to fight you to get another bloody step up. I'll slaughter you, you drunken bugger, and then I'll feed your damned guts to your whore's dogs." He took a step towards Kiely who, scared of the rifleman's sudden vehemence, stepped back. "What I'm suggesting," Sharpe went on, "is that one of your bloody friends in the bloody gatehouse opened the bloody gates to the bloody French and that they didn't attack you, my Lord" — he spoke the honorific title as rudely as he could — "because they didn't want to kill their friends as well as their enemies. And don't tell me I'm wrong!" By now Sharpe was walking after Kiely who was trying to escape Sharpe's diatribe that had attracted the attention of a large number of riflemen and guardsmen. "Last night you said you'd beat the enemy without my help." Sharpe caught Kiely by the shoulder and turned him round so violently that Kiely was forced to stagger to keep his balance. "But you didn't even fight, you bastard," Sharpe went on. "You skulked inside while your men did the fighting for you."
Kiely's hand went to his sword hilt. "Do you want a duel, Sharpe?" he asked, his face flushed with embarrassment. His dignity was being flayed in front of his men and what made it worse was that he knew he had deserved their scorn, yet pride would never permit Lord Kiely to admit as much. For a second it looked as if he would flick his hand to strike Sharpe's cheek, but instead he settled for words. "I'll send you my second."
"No!" Sharpe said. "A pox on your bloody second, my Lord. If you want to fight me, then fight me now. Here. Right here! And I don't care what bloody weapons we use. Swords, pistols, muskets, rifles, bayonets, fist, feet." He was walking towards Kiely who backed away. "I'll fight you into the ground, my Lord, and I'll beat the offal out of your yellow hide, but I'll only do it here and now. Right here. Right now!" Sharpe had not meant to lose his temper, but he was glad that he had. Kiely seemed dumbstruck, helpless in the face of a fury he had never suspected existed.
"I won't fight like an animal," Kiely said weakly.
"You won't fight at all," Sharpe said, then laughed at the aristocrat. "Run away, my Lord. Go on. I'm done with you."
Kiely, utterly defeated, tried to walk away with some dignity, but reddened as some of the watching men cheered his departure. Sharpe shouted at them to shut the hell up, then turned to Harper. "The bloody French didn't try to get into the gatehouse," he told Harper, "because they knew their bloody friends were inside, just as they didn't steal their friends' horses."
"Stands to reason, sir," Harper agreed. He was watching Kiely walk away. "He's yellow, isn't he?"
"Front to back," Sharpe agreed.
"But what Captain Lacy says, sir," Harper went on, "is that it wasn't his Lordship who gave the order not to fight last night, but his woman. She said the French didn't know there was anyone in the gatehouse and so they should all keep quiet."
"A woman giving orders?" Sharpe asked in disgust.
Harper shrugged. "A rare hard woman, that one, sir. Captain Lacy says she was watching the fighting and loving every second of it."
"I'd have the witch on a bonfire fast enough, I can tell you," Sharpe said. "Bloody damn hellbitch."
"Damn what, Sharpe?" It was Colonel Runciman who asked the question, but who did not wait to hear an answer. Instead Runciman, who at last had a genuine war story to tell, hastened to describe how he had survived the attack. The Colonel, it seemed, had locked his door and hidden behind the great pile of spare ammunition that Sharpe had stacked in his day parlour, though now, in the daylight, the Colonel ascribed his salvation to divine intervention rather than to the fortuitous hiding place. "Maybe I am intended for higher things, Sharpe? My mother always believed as much. How else do you explain my survival?" Sharpe was more inclined to believe that the Colonel had lived because the French had been under orders to leave the whole gatehouse complex untouched, but he did not think it kind to say as much.
"I'm just glad you're alive, General," Sharpe said instead.
"I would have died hard, Sharpe! I had both my pistols double-shotted! I would have taken some of them with me, believe you me. No one can say a Runciman goes into eternity alone!" The Colonel shuddered as the night's horrors came back to him. "Have you seen any evidence of breakfast, Sharpe?" he asked in an attempt to restore his spirits.
"Try Lord Kiely's cook, General. He was frying bacon not ten minutes ago and I don't suppose his Lordship's got much of an appetite. I just challenged the yellow bastard to a fight."
Runciman looked shocked. "You did what, Sharpe? A duel? Don't you know duelling is illegal in the army?"
"I never said anything about a duel, General. I just offered to beat the hell out of him right here and now, but he seemed to have other things on his mind."
Runciman shook his head. "Dear me, Sharpe, dear me. I can't think you'll come to a good end, but I shall be sad when it happens. What a scamp you are! Bacon? Lord Kiely's cook, you said?"
Runciman waddled away and Sharpe watched him go. "In ten years' time, Pat," Sharpe said, "he'll have turned last night's mess into a rare old story. How General Runciman saved the fort, armed to the jowls and fighting off the whole Loup Brigade."
"Runcibubble 's harmless," Harper said.
"He's harmless, Pat," Sharpe agreed, "so long as you keep the fool out of harm's way. And I almost failed to do that, didn't I?"
"You, sir? You didn't fail last night."
"Oh, but I did, Pat. I failed. I failed badly. I didn't see that Loup would out-clever me, and I didn't hammer the truth into Oliveira's skull, and I never saw how dangerously trapped we were in those barracks." He flinched, remembering the fetid, humid, dust-laden darkness of the night and the awful, scrabbling sound as the French tried to break through the thin masonry shell. "We survived because some poor fool set light to an ammunition wagon," Sharpe admitted, "not because we outfought Loup. We didn't. He won and we got beat."
"But we're alive, sir."
"So's Loup, Pat, so's Loup, God damn him."
But Tom Garrard was not alive. Tom Garrard had died, though at first Sharpe did not recognize his friend, for the body was so scorched and mutilated by fire. Garrard was lying face down in the very centre of the blackened spot where one of the ammunition wagons had stood and at first the only clue to his identity was the bent, blackened scrap of metal in an outstretched hand that had been fire-shrunken into a charred claw. Sharpe spotted the glint of metal and stepped through the still hot ashes to prise the box clear of the shrivelled grip. Two fingers snapped off the hand as Sharpe freed the tinder box. He brushed the black fingers aside, then levered open the lid to see that though all the linen kindling had long been consumed the picture of the redcoat was undamaged. Sharpe cleaned the engraving with a hand, then wiped a tear from his eye. "Tom Garrard saved our lives last night, Pat."
"He did?"
"He blew up the ammunition on purpose and killed himself doing it." The presence of the tinderbox could mean nothing else. Tom Garrard, in the wake of his battalion's defeat, had somehow managed to reach the ammunition wagons and light a fire he had known would blow his own soul clear into eternity. "Oh, dear God," Sharpe said, then fell silent as he remembered the years of friendship. "He was at Assaye with me," he went on after a while, "and at Gawilghur too. He was from Ripon, a farmer's boy, only his father was a tenant and the landlord threw him out when he was three days late with the rent after a bad harvest so Tom saved his folks the need to feed another mouth by joining the 33rd. He used to send money home, God knows how on a soldier's pay. In another two years, Pat, he'd have made colonel in the Portuguese, and then he planned to go home to Ripon and beat ten kinds of hell out of the landlord who drove him into the army in the first place. That's what he told me last night."
"Now you'll have to do it for him," Harper said.
"Aye. That bugger
'll get a thumping he never dreamed of," Sharpe said. He tried to close the tinderbox, but the heat had distorted the metal. He took a last glance at the picture, then tossed the box back into the ashes. Then he and Harper climbed the ramparts where they had charged the small group of voltigeurs the night before and from where the full horror of the night could be seen. The San Isidro was a smoking, blackened wreck, littered with bodies and reeking of blood. Rifleman Thompson, the only greenjacket to die in the night, was being carried in a blanket towards a hastily dug grave beside the fort's ruined church.
"Poor Thompson," Harper said. "I gave him hell for waking me last night. Poor bugger was only going outside for a piss and tripped over me."
"Lucky he did," Sharpe said.
Harper walked to the tower door that still had the dents driven into it by the butt of his volley gun. The big Irishman fingered the marks ruefully. "Those bastards must have known we were trying to get refuge, sir," he said.
"At least one of those bastards wanted us dead, Pat. And if I ever find out who, then God help him," Sharpe said. He noticed that no one had thought to raise any flags on the battlements.
"Rifleman Cooper!" Sharpe called.
"Sir?"
"Flags!"
The first outsiders to arrive at San Isidro were a strong troop of King's German Legion cavalry who scouted the valley before climbing to the fort. Their captain reported a score of dead at the foot of the slope, then saw the far greater number of bodies lying in the fort's open area. "Mein Gott! What happened?"
"Ask Colonel the Lord Kiely," Sharpe said, and jerked a thumb at Kiely who was visible on the gatehouse turret. Other Real Companпa Irlandesa officers were supervising the squads collecting the Portuguese dead, while Father Sarsfield had taken charge of a dozen men and their wives who were caring for the Portuguese wounded, though without a surgeon there was little they could do except bandage, pray and fetch water. One by one the wounded died, some crying out in delirium, but most staying calm as the priest held their hands, asked their names and gave them the viaticum.
The next outsiders to arrive were a group of staff officers, mostly British, some Portuguese and one Spaniard, General Valverde. Hogan led the party, and for a solemn half-hour the Irish Major walked about the horror with an appalled expression, but when he left the other staff officers to join Sharpe he was grinning with an inappropriate cheerfulness. "A tragedy, Richard!" Hogan said happily.
Sharpe was offended by his friend's cheerfulness. "It was a bloody hard night, sir."
"I'm sure, I'm sure," Hogan said, trying and failing to sound sympathetic. The Major could not contain his happiness. "Though it's a pity about Oliveira's cacadores. He was a good man and it was a fine battalion."
"I warned him."
"I'm sure you did, Richard, I'm sure you did. But it's always the same in war, isn't it? The wrong people get the hind teat. If only the Real Companпa Irlandesa could have been decimated, Richard, that would have been a great convenience right now, a real convenience. Still and all, still and all, this will do. This will do very well."
"Do for what?" Sharpe asked fiercely. "Do you know what happened here last night, sir? We were betrayed. Some bastard opened the gates to Loup."
"Of course he did, Richard!" Hogan said soothingly. "Haven't I been saying all along that they couldn't be trusted? The Real Companпa Irlandesa aren't here to help us, Richard, but to help the French." He pointed to the dead. "You need further proof? But of course this is good news. Until this morning it was impossible to send the bastards packing because that would have offended London and the Spanish court. But now, don't you see, we can thank the Spanish King for the valued assistance of his personal guard, we can claim that the Real Companпa Irlandesa was instrumental in seeing off a strong French raid over the frontier, and then, honours even, we can send the treacherous buggers to Cadiz and let them rot." Hogan was positively exultant. "We are off the hook, Richard, the French malevolence is defeated, and all because of last night. The French made a mistake. They should have left you alone, but plainly Monsieur Loup couldn't resist the bait. It's all so clever, Richard, that I wish I'd thought of it myself, but I didn't. But no matter; this'll mean goodbye to our gallant allies and an end to all those rumours about Ireland."
"My men didn't spread those rumours," Sharpe insisted.
"Your men?" Hogan mocked. "These aren't your men, Richard. They're Kiely's, or more likely Bonaparte's, but they're not your men."
"They're good men, sir, and they fought well."
Hogan shook his head at the anger in Sharpe's voice, then steered his friend along the eastern battlements with a touch on the rifle-man's elbow. "Let me try and explain something to you, Richard," Hogan said. "One third of this army is Irish. There's not a battalion that doesn't have its ranks full of my countrymen and most of those Irishmen are not lovers of King George. Why should they be? But they're here because there's no work at home and because there's no food at home and because the army, God bless it, has the sense to treat the Irish well. But just suppose, Richard, just suppose, that we can upset all those good men from County Cork and County Offaly, and all those brave souls from Inniskilling and Ballybofey, and suppose we can upset them so badly that they mutiny. How long will this army hold together? A week? Two days? One hour? The French, Richard, very nearly ripped this army into two parts and don't think they won't try again, because they will. Only the next rumour will be more subtle, and the only way I can stop that next rumour is by ridding the army of the Real Companпa Irlandesa, because even if you're right and they didn't spread the tales of rape and massacre, then someone close to them did. So tomorrow morning, Richard, you're going to march these bastards down to headquarters where they will surrender those nice new muskets you somehow filched for them and draw rations for a long march. In effect, Richard, they are under arrest until we can find the transport to carry them to Cadiz and there's nothing you can do about it. It's all been ordered." Hogan took a piece of paper from his pouch and gave it to the rifleman. "And it isn't an order from me, Richard, but from the Peer."
Sharpe unfolded the paper. He felt aggrieved at what he perceived to be an injustice. Men like Captain Donaju only wanted to fight the French, but instead they were to be shuffled aside. They were to be marched down to headquarters and disarmed like a battalion of turncoats. Sharpe felt a temptation to crumple Wellington's written order into a ball, but sensibly resisted the impulse. "If you want to get rid of the troublemakers," he said instead, "then start with Kiely and his bloody whore, start with the—"
"Don't teach me my job," Hogan interrupted tartly. "I can't act against Kiely and his whore because they're not in the British army. Valverde could get rid of them, but he won't, so the easy thing to do, the politic thing, is to get rid of the whole damned pack of them. And tomorrow morning, Richard, you do just that."
Sharpe took a deep breath to curb his anger. "Why tomorrow?" he asked when he trusted himself to speak again. "Why not now?"
"Because it will take you the rest of today to bury the dead."
"And why order me to do it?" Sharpe asked sullenly. "Why not Runciman, or Kiely?"
"Because those two gentlemen," Hogan answered, "will be going back with me to make their reports. There's going to be a court of inquiry and I need to make damn sure that the court discovers exactly what I want it to discover."
"Why the hell do we want a court of inquiry?" Sharpe asked sourly. "We know what happened. We got beat."
Hogan sighed. "We need a court of inquiry, Richard, because a decent Portuguese battalion got torn to scraps, and the Portuguese government is not going to like that. Worse still, our enemies in the Spanish junta will love it. They'll say the events of last night prove that foreign troops can't be trusted under British command, and right now, Richard, what we want more than anything else is to have the Peer made the Generalisimo of Spain. We won't win otherwise. So what we need to do now, just to make sure that bloody Valverde doesn't have too much sunshine in which to
make his hay, is hold a solemn court of inquiry and find a British officer on whom all the blame can be laid. We need, God bless the poor bastard, a scapegoat."
Sharpe felt the long, slow dawning of disaster. The Portuguese and Spanish wanted a scapegoat, and Richard Sharpe would make a fine victim, a victim who would be trussed and basted by the reports Hogan would concoct this afternoon at headquarters. "I tried to tell Oliveira that Loup was going to attack," Sharpe said, "but he wouldn't believe me—"
"Richard! Richard!" Hogan interrupted in a long-suffering tone. "You're not the scapegoat! Good God, man, you're nothing but a captain, and only a captain on sufferance. Aren't you a lieutenant on the list? You think we can go to the Portuguese government and say we allowed a greenjacket lieutenant to destroy a prime regiment of caзadores? Good Lord alive, man, if we're going to make a sacrifice then the very least we can do is find a big, plump beast with enough fat on its carcass to make the fire sizzle when we throw it on the flames."
"Runciman," Sharpe said.
Hogan smiled wolfishly. "Exactly. Our Wagon Master will be sacrificed to make the Portuguese happy and to persuade the Spanish that Wellington can be trusted not to massacre their precious soldiers. I can't sacrifice Kiely, though I'd love to, because that will upset the Spaniards and I can't sacrifice you because you're too junior and, besides, I need you for the next time I've got a fool's errand, but Colonel Claud Runciman was born for this moment, Richard. This is Claud's proud and sole purpose in life: to sacrifice his honour, his rank and his reputation to keep Lisbon and Cadiz happy." Hogan paused, thinking. "Maybe we'll even shoot him. Only pour encourager les autres."
Sharpe guessed he was supposed to recognize the French phrase, but it meant nothing to him and he was too depressed to ask for a translation. He also felt desperately sorry for Runciman. "Whatever you do, sir," Sharpe said, "don't shoot him. It wasn't his fault. It was mine."
"If anyone's," Hogan said brusquely, "it was Oliveira's responsibility. He was a good man, but he should have listened to you, but I dare not blame Oliveira. The Portuguese need him as a hero, just as the Spanish need Kiely. So we'll pick on Runciman instead. It ain't justice, Richard, but politics, and like all politics it ain't pretty, but well done it can work wonders. I'll leave you to bury the dead and tomorrow morning you report to headquarters with all your Irishmen disarmed. We're looking for a place to billet them where they can't get into trouble, and you, of course, can then go back to some proper soldiering."
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