Читать книгу Sharpe’s Battle: The Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 10

The view from the castle in Ciudad Rodrigo looked across the River Agueda towards the hills where the British forces gathered, yet this night was so dark and wet that nothing was visible except the flicker of two torches burning deep inside an arched tunnel that burrowed through the city’s enormous ramparts. The rain flickered silver-red past the flame light to make the cobbles slick. Every few moments a sentry would appear at the entrance of the tunnel and the fiery light would glint off the shining spike of his fixed bayonet, but otherwise there was no sign of life. The tricolour of France flew above the gate, but there was no light to show it flapping dispiritedly in the rain which was being gusted around the castle walls and sometimes even being driven into the deep embrasured window where a man leaned to watch the arch. The flickering torchlight was reflected in the thick pebbled lenses of his wire-bound spectacles.

‘Maybe he’s not coming,’ the woman said from the fireplace.

‘If Loup says he will be here,’ the man answered without turning round, ‘then he will be here.’ The man had a remarkably deep voice that belied his appearance for he was slim, almost fragile-looking, with a thin scholarly face, myopic eyes and cheeks pocked with the scars of childhood smallpox. He wore a plain dark-blue uniform with no badges of rank, but Pierre Ducos needed no gaudy chains or stars, no tassels or epaulettes or aiguillettes to signify his authority. Major Ducos was Napoleon’s man in Spain and everyone who mattered, from King Joseph downwards, knew it.

‘Loup,’ the woman said. ‘It means “wolf”, yes?’

This time Ducos did turn round. ‘Your countrymen call him El Lobo,’ he said, ‘and he frightens them.’

‘Superstitious people frighten easily,’ the woman said scornfully. She was tall and thin, and had a face that was memorable rather than beautiful. A hard, clever and singular face, once seen never forgotten, with a full mouth, deep-set eyes and a scornful expression. She was maybe thirty years old, but it was hard to tell for her skin had been so darkened by the sun that it looked like a peasant woman’s. Other well-born women took care to keep their skins as pale as chalk and soft as curds, but this woman did not care for fashionable looks nor for fashionable clothes. Her passion was hunting and when she followed her hounds she rode astride like a man and so she dressed like a man: in breeches, boots and spurs. This night she was uniformed as a French hussar with skin-tight sky-blue breeches that had an intricate pattern of Hungarian lace down the front of the thighs, a plum-coloured dolman with blue cuffs and plaited white-silk cordings and a scarlet pelisse edged with black fur. It was rumoured that Doña Juanita de Elia possessed a uniform from the regiment of every man she had ever slept with and that her wardrobe needed to be as large as most people’s parlours. To Major Ducos’s eyes the Doña Juanita de Elia was nothing but a flamboyant whore and a soldier’s plaything, and in Ducos’s murky world flamboyance was a lethal liability, but in Juanita’s own eyes she was an adventuress and an afrancesada, and any Spaniard willing to side with France in this war was useful to Pierre Ducos. And, he grudgingly allowed, this war-loving adventuress was willing to run great risks for France and so Ducos was willing to treat her with a respect he would not usually accord to women. ‘Tell me about El Lobo,’ the Doña Juanita demanded.

‘He’s a brigadier of dragoons,’ Ducos said, ‘who began his army career as a groom in the royal army. He’s brave, he’s demanding, he’s successful and, above all, he is ruthless.’ On the whole Ducos had little time for soldiers whom he considered to be romantic fools much given to posturing and gestures, but he approved of Loup. Loup was single-minded, fierce and utterly without illusions, qualities that Ducos himself possessed, and Ducos liked to think that, had he ever been a proper soldier, he would have been like Loup. It was true that Loup, like Juanita de Elia, affected a certain flamboyance, but Ducos forgave the Brigadier his wolf-fur pretensions because, quite simply, he was the best soldier Ducos had discovered in Spain and the Major was determined that Loup should be properly rewarded. ‘Loup will one day be a marshal of France,’ Ducos said, ‘and the sooner the better.’

‘But not if Marshal Masséna can help it?’ Juanita asked.

Ducos grunted. He collected gossip more assiduously than any man, but he disliked confirming it, yet Marshal Masséna’s dislike of Loup was so well known in the army that Ducos had no need to dissemble about it. ‘Soldiers are like stags, madame,’ Ducos said. ‘They fight to prove they are the best in their tribe and they dislike their fiercest rivals far more than the beasts that offer them no competition. So I would suggest to you, madame, that the Marshal’s dislike of Brigadier Loup is confirmation of Loup’s genuine abilities.’ It was also, Ducos thought, a typical piece of wasteful posturing. No wonder the war in Spain was taking so long and proving so troublesome when a marshal of France wasted petulance on the best brigadier in the army.

He turned back to the window as the sound of hooves echoed in the fortress’s entrance tunnel. Ducos listened as the challenge was given, then he heard the squeal of the gate hinges opening and a second later he saw a group of grey horsemen appear in the flamelit archway.

The Doña Juanita de Elia had come to stand beside Ducos. She was so close that he could smell the perfume on her gaudy uniform. ‘Which one is he?’ she asked.

‘The one in front,’ Ducos replied.

‘He rides well,’ Juanita de Elia said with grudging respect.

‘A natural horseman,’ Ducos said. ‘Not fancy. He doesn’t make his horse dance, he makes it fight.’ He moved away from the woman. He disliked perfume as much as he disliked opinionated whores.

The two waited in silent awkwardness. Juanita de Elia had long sensed that her weapons did not work on Ducos. She believed he disliked women, but the truth was that Pierre Ducos was oblivious of them. Once in a while he would use a soldier’s brothel, but only after a surgeon had provided him with the name of a clean girl. Most of the time he went without such distractions, preferring a monkish dedication to the Emperor’s cause. Now he sat at his table and leafed through papers as he tried to ignore the woman’s presence. Somewhere in the town a church clock struck nine, then a sergeant’s voice echoed from an inner courtyard as a squad of men was marched towards the ramparts. The rain fell relentlessly. Then, at last, boots and spurs sounded loud on the stairway leading to Ducos’s big chamber and the Doña Juanita looked up expectantly.

Brigadier Loup did not bother to knock on Ducos’s door. He burst in, already fuming with anger. ‘I lost two men! God damn it! Two good men! Lost to riflemen, Ducos, to British riflemen. Executed! They were put against a wall and shot like vermin!’ He had crossed to Ducos’s table and helped himself from the decanter of brandy. ‘I want a price put on the head of their captain, Ducos. I want the man’s balls in my men’s stewpot.’ He stopped suddenly, checked by the exotic sight of the uniformed woman standing beside the fire. For a second Loup had thought the figure in cavalry uniform was an especially effeminate young man, one of the dandified Parisians who spent more money on their tailor than on their horse and weapons, but then he realized that the dandy was a woman and that the cascading black plume was her hair and not a helmet’s embellishment. ‘Is she yours, Ducos?’ Loup asked nastily.

‘Monsieur,’ Ducos said very formally, ‘allow me to name the Doña Juanita de Elia. Madame? This is Brigadier General Guy Loup.’

Brigadier Loup stared at the woman by the fire and what he saw, he liked, and the Doña Juanita de Elia returned the Dragoon General’s stare and what she saw, she also liked. She saw a compact, one-eyed man with a brutal, weather-beaten face who wore his grey hair and beard short, and his grey, fur-trimmed uniform like an executioner’s costume. The fur glinted with rainwater that had brought out the smell of the pelts, a smell that mingled with the heady aromas of saddles, tobacco, sweat, gun oil, powder and horses. ‘Brigadier,’ she said politely.

‘Madame,’ Loup acknowledged her, then shamelessly looked up and down her skin-tight uniform, ‘or should it be Colonel?’

‘Brigadier at least,’ Juanita answered, ‘if not Maréchal.’

‘Two men?’ Ducos interrupted the flirtation. ‘How did you lose two men?’

Loup told the story of his day. He paced up and down the room as he spoke, biting into an apple he took from Ducos’s desk. He told how he had taken a small group of men into the hills to find the fugitives from the village of Fuentes de Oñoro, and how, having taken his revenge on the Spaniards, he had been surprised by the arrival of the greenjackets. ‘They were led by a captain called Sharpe,’ he said.

‘Sharpe,’ Ducos repeated, then leafed through an immense ledger in which he recorded every scrap of information about the Emperor’s enemies. It was Ducos’s job to know about those enemies and to recommend how they could be destroyed, and his intelligence was as copious as his power. ‘Sharpe,’ he said again as he found the entry he sought. ‘A rifleman, you say? I suspect he may be the same man who captured an eagle at Talavera. Was he with greenjackets only? Or did he have redcoats with him?’

‘He had redcoats.’

‘Then it is the same man. For a reason we have never discovered he serves in a red-jacketed battalion.’ Ducos was adding to his notes in the book that contained similar entries on over five hundred enemy officers. Some of the entries were scored through with a single black line denoting that the men were dead and Ducos sometimes imagined a glorious day when all these enemy heroes, British, Portuguese and Spanish alike, would be black-lined by a rampaging French army. ‘Captain Sharpe,’ Ducos now said, ‘is reckoned a famous man in Wellington’s forces. He came up from the ranks, Brigadier, a rare feat in Britain.’

‘I don’t care if he came up from the jakes, Ducos, I want his scalp and I want his balls.’

Ducos disapproved of such private rivalries, fearing that they interfered with more important duties. He closed the ledger. ‘Would it not be better,’ he suggested coldly, ‘if you allowed me to issue a formal complaint about the execution? Wellington will hardly approve.’

‘No,’ Loup said. ‘I don’t need lawyers taking revenge for me.’ Loup’s anger was not caused by the death of his two men, for death was a risk all soldiers learned to abide, but rather by the manner of their death. Soldiers should die in battle or in bed, not against a wall like common criminals. Loup was also piqued that another soldier had got the better of him. ‘But if I can’t kill him in the next few weeks, Ducos, you can write your damned letter.’ The permission was grudging. ‘Soldiers are harder to kill than civilians,’ Loup went on, ‘and we’ve been fighting civilians too long. Now my brigade will have to learn how to destroy uniformed enemies as well.’

‘I thought most French soldiers would rather fight other regulars than fight guerrilleros,’ the Doña Juanita said.

Loup nodded. ‘Most do, but not me, madame. I have specialized in fighting the guerrilla.’

‘Tell me how,’ she asked.

Loup glanced at Ducos as if seeking permission, and Ducos nodded. Ducos was annoyed by the attraction he sensed between these two. It was an attraction as elemental as the lust of a tomcat, a lust so palpable that Ducos almost wrinkled his nose at the stench of it. Leave these two alone for half a minute, he thought, and their uniforms would make a single heap on the floor. It was not their lust that offended him, but rather the fact that it distracted them from their proper business. ‘Go on,’ he told Loup.

Loup shrugged as though there was no real secret involved. ‘I’ve got the best-trained troops in the army. Better than the Imperial Guard. They fight well, they kill well and they’re rewarded well. I keep them separate. They’re not billeted with other troops, they don’t mix with other troops, and that way no one knows where they are or what they’re doing. If you send six hundred men marching from here to Madrid then I guarantee you that every guerrillero between here and Seville will know about it before they leave. But not with my men. We don’t tell anyone what we’re doing or where we’re going, we just go there and do it. And we have our own places to live. I emptied a village of its inhabitants and made it my depot, but we don’t just stay there. We travel where we will, sleep where we will, and if guerrilleros attack us they die, and not just them, but their mothers, their children, their priests and their grandchildren die with them. We horrify them, madame, just as they try to horrify us, and by now my wolf pack is more horrifying than the partisans.’

‘Good,’ Juanita said simply.

‘Brigadier Loup’s patrol area is remarkably free of partisans,’ Ducos said in generous tribute.

‘But not entirely free,’ Loup added grimly. ‘El Castrador survives, but I’ll use his own knife on him yet. Maybe the arrival of the British will encourage him to show his face again.’

‘Which is why we are here,’ Ducos said, taking command of the room. ‘Our job is to make certain that the British do not stay here, but are sent packing.’ And then, in his deep and almost hypnotic voice, he described the military situation as he comprehended it. Brigadier General Loup, who had spent the last year fighting to keep the passes through the frontier hills free of partisans and who had thus been spared the disasters that had afflicted Marshal Masséna’s army in Portugal, listened raptly as Ducos told the real story and not the patriotic lies that were peddled in the columns of the Moniteur. ‘Wellington is clever,’ Ducos admitted. ‘He’s not brilliant, but he is clever and we under-estimated him.’ The existence of the Lines of Torres Vedras had been unknown to the French until they marched within cannon shot of the defences and there they had waited, ever hungrier, ever colder, through a long winter. Now the army was back on the Spanish frontier and waiting for Wellington’s assault.

It was an assault that would be hard and bloody because of the two massive fortresses that barred the only passable roads through the frontier mountains. Ciudad Rodrigo was the northern fastness and Badajoz the southern. Badajoz had been in Spanish hands till a month before and Masséna’s engineers had despaired of ever reducing its massive walls, but Ducos had arranged a huge bribe and the Spanish commander had yielded the keys to the fortress. Now both keys of Spain, Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo, were firmly in the Emperor’s grip.

But there was a third border fortress which also lay in French hands. Almeida was inside Portugal and, though it was not so important as Ciudad Rodrigo or Badajoz, and though its massive castle had been destroyed with the neighbouring cathedral in an earth-shattering explosion of gunpowder just the previous year, the town’s thick star-shaped walls and its strong French garrison still presented a formidable obstacle. Any British force laying siege to Ciudad Rodrigo would have to use thousands of men to guard against the threat of Almeida’s garrison sallying out to raid the supply roads and Ducos reckoned that Wellington would never abide that menace in his army’s rear. ‘Wellington’s first priority will be to capture Almeida,’ Ducos said, ‘and Marshal Masséna will do his best to relieve the fortress from the British siege. In other words, Brigadier’ – Ducos was speaking more to Loup than to the Doña Juanita – ‘there will be a battle fought close to Almeida. Not much is certain in war, but I think we can be certain of that.’

Loup stared at the map, then nodded agreement. ‘Unless Marshal Masséna withdraws the garrison?’ he said in a tone of contempt suggesting that Masséna, his enemy, was capable of any foolishness.

‘He won’t,’ Ducos said with the certainty of a man who had the power to dictate strategy to marshals of France. ‘And the reason he will not is here,’ Ducos said, and he tapped the map as he spoke. ‘Look,’ he said, and Loup bent obediently over the map. The fortress of Almeida was depicted like a star to imitate its jagged, star-shaped fortifications. Around it were the hatch marks of hills, but behind it, between Almeida and the rest of Portugal, ran a deep river. The Coa. ‘It runs in a gorge, Brigadier,’ Ducos said, ‘and is crossed by a single bridge at Castello Bom.’

‘I know it well.’

‘So if we defeat General Wellington on this side of the river,’ Ducos said, ‘then the fugitives of his army will be forced to retreat across a single bridge scarce three metres wide. That is why we shall leave the garrison in Almeida, because its presence will force Lord Wellington to fight on this bank of the Coa and when he does fight we shall destroy him. And once the British are gone, Brigadier, we shall employ your tactics of horror to end all resistance in Portugal and Spain.’

Loup straightened up. He was impressed by Ducos’s analysis, but also dubious of it. He needed a few seconds to phrase his objection and made the time by lighting a long, dark cigar. He blew smoke out, then decided there was no politic way to voice his doubt, so he just stated it baldly. ‘I’ve not fought the British in battle, Major, but I hear they’re stubborn bastards in defence.’ Loup tapped the map. ‘I know that country well. It’s full of hill ranges and river valleys. Give Wellington a hill and you could die of old age before you could shift the bugger loose. That’s what I hear, anyway.’ Loup finished with a shrug, as if to deprecate his own opinion.

Ducos smiled. ‘Supposing, Brigadier, that Wellington’s army is rotted from the inside?’

Loup considered the question, then nodded. ‘He’ll break,’ he confirmed simply.

‘Good! Because that is precisely why I wanted you to meet the Doña Juanita,’ Ducos said, and the lady smiled at the dragoon. ‘The Doña Juanita will be crossing the lines,’ Ducos continued, ‘and living among our enemies. From time to time, Brigadier, she will come to you for certain supplies that I shall provide. I want you to make the provision of those supplies to Doña Juanita your most important duty.’

‘Supplies?’ Loup asked. ‘You mean guns? Ammunition?’

Doña Juanita answered for Ducos. ‘Nothing, Brigadier, that cannot be carried in the panniers of a packhorse.’

Loup looked at Ducos. ‘You think it’s easy to ride from one army to another? Hell, Ducos, the British have a cavalry screen and there are partisans and our own picquets and God knows how many other British sentries. It isn’t like riding in the Bois de Boulogne.’

Ducos looked unconcerned. ‘The Doña Juanita will make her own arrangements and I have faith in those. What you must do, Brigadier, is acquaint the lady with your lair. She must know where to find you, and how. You can arrange that?’

Loup nodded, then looked at the woman. ‘You can ride with me tomorrow?’

‘All day, Brigadier.’

‘Then we ride tomorrow,’ Loup said, ‘and maybe the next day too?’

‘Maybe, General, maybe,’ the woman answered.

Ducos again interrupted their flirtation. It was late, his supper was waiting and he still had several hours of paperwork to be completed. ‘Your men,’ he said to Loup, ‘are now the army’s picquet line. So I want you to be alert for the arrival of a new unit in the British army.’

Loup, suspecting he was being taught how to suck eggs, frowned. ‘We’re always alert to such things, Major. We’re soldiers, remember?’

‘Especially alert, Brigadier.’ Ducos was unruffled by Loup’s scorn. ‘A Spanish unit, the Real Compañía Irlandesa, is expected to join the British soon and I want to know when they arrive and where they are positioned. It is important, Brigadier.’

Loup glanced at Juanita, suspecting that the Real Compañía Irlandesa was somehow connected with her mission, but her face gave nothing away. Never mind, Loup thought, the woman would tell him everything before the next two nights were done. He looked back to Ducos. ‘If a dog farts in the British lines, Major, you’ll know about it.’

‘Good!’ Ducos said, ending the conversation. ‘I won’t keep you, Brigadier. I’m sure you have plans for the evening.’

Loup, thus dismissed, picked up his helmet with its plume of wet grey hair. ‘Doña,’ he said as he reached the staircase door, ‘isn’t that the title of a married woman?’

‘My husband, General, is buried in South America.’ Juanita shrugged. ‘The yellow fever, alas.’

‘And my wife, madame,’ Loup said, ‘is buried in her kitchen in Besançon. Alas.’ He held a hand towards the door, offering to escort her down the winding stairs, but Ducos held the Spanish woman back.

‘You’re ready to go?’ Ducos asked Juanita when Loup was gone out of earshot.

‘So soon?’ Juanita answered.

Ducos shrugged. ‘I suspect the Real Compañía Irlandesa will have reached the British lines by now. Certainly by the month’s end.’

Juanita nodded. ‘I’m ready.’ She paused. ‘And the British, Ducos, will surely suspect the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s motives?’

‘Of course they will. They would be fools not to. And I want them to be suspicious. Our task, madame, is to unsettle our enemy, so let them be wary of the Real Compañía Irlandesa and perhaps they will overlook the real threat?’ Ducos took off his spectacles and polished their lenses on the skirts of his plain jacket. ‘And Lord Kiely? You’re sure of his affections?’

‘He is a drunken fool, Major,’ Juanita answered. ‘He will do whatever I tell him.’

‘Don’t make him jealous,’ Ducos warned.

Juanita smiled. ‘You may lecture me on many things, Ducos, but when it comes to men and their moods, believe me, I know all there is to know. Do not worry about my Lord Kiely. He will be kept very sweet and very obedient. Is that all?’

Ducos looped his spectacles back into place. ‘That is all. May I wish you a good night’s rest, madame?’

‘I’m sure it will be a splendid night, Ducos.’ The Doña Juanita smiled and walked from the room. Ducos listened as her spurs jangled down the steps, then heard her laugh as she encountered Loup who had been waiting at the foot of the steps. Ducos closed the door on the sound of their laughter and walked slowly back to the window. In the night the rain beat on, but in Ducos’s busy mind there was nothing but the vision of glory. This did not just depend on Juanita and Loup doing their duty, but rather on the clever scheme of a man whom even Ducos acknowledged as his equal, a man whose passion to defeat the British equalled Ducos’s passion to see France triumphant, and a man who was already behind the British lines where he would sow the mischief that would first rot the British army, then lead it into a trap beside a narrow ravine. Ducos’s thin body seemed to quiver as the vision unfolded in his imagination. He saw an insolent British army eroded from within, then trapped and beaten. He saw France triumphant. He saw a river gorge crammed to its rocky brim with bloody carcasses. He saw his Emperor ruling over all Europe and then, who could tell, over the whole known world. Alexander had done it, why not Bonaparte?

And it would begin, with a little cunning from Ducos and his most secret agent, on the banks of the Coa near the fortress of Almeida.

‘This is a chance, Sharpe, upon my soul it is a chance. A veritable chance. Not many chances come in a man’s life and a man must seize them. My father taught me that. He was a bishop, you see, and a fellow doesn’t rise from being curate to bishop without seizing his chances. You comprehend me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Colonel Claud Runciman’s massive buttocks were well set on the inn bench while before him, on a plain wooden table, were the remnants of a huge meal. There were chicken bones, the straggling stalks of a bunch of grapes, orange peel, rabbit vertebrae, a piece of unidentifiable gristle and a collapsed wineskin. The copious food had forced Colonel Runciman to unbutton his coat, waistcoat and shirt in order to loosen the strings of his corset and the subsequent distending of his belly had stretched a watch chain hung thick with seals tight across a strip of pale, drum-taut flesh. The Colonel belched prodigiously. ‘There’s a hunchbacked girl somewhere about who serves the food, Sharpe,’ Runciman said. ‘If you see the lass, tell her I’ll take some pie. With some cheese, perhaps. But not if it’s goat’s cheese. Can’t abide goat’s cheese; it gives me spleen, d’you see?’ Runciman’s red coat had the yellow facings and silver lace of the 37th, a good line regiment from Hampshire that had not seen the Colonel’s ample shadow in many a year. Recently Runciman had been the Wagon Master General in charge of the drivers and teams of the Royal Wagon Train and their auxiliary Portuguese muleteers, but now he had been appointed liaison officer to the Real Compañía Irlandesa.

‘It’s an honour, of course,’ he told Sharpe, ‘but neither unexpected nor undeserved. I told Wellington when he made me Wagon Master General that I’d do the job as a favour to him, but that I expected a reward for it. A fellow doesn’t want to spend his life thumping sense into thick-witted wagon drivers, good God, no. There’s the hunchback, Sharpe! There she is! Stop her, Sharpe, there’s a kind fellow! Tell her I want pie and a proper cheese!’

The pie and cheese were arranged and another wine-skin was fetched, along with a bowl of cherries, to satisfy the last possible vestiges of Runciman’s appetite. A group of cavalry officers sitting at a table on the far side of the yard were making wagers on how much food Runciman could consume, but Runciman was oblivious of their mockery. ‘It’s a chance,’ he said again when he was well tucked into his pie. ‘I can’t tell what’s in it for you, of course, because a chap like you probably doesn’t expect too much out of life anyway, but I reckon I’ve got a chance at a Golden Fleece.’ He peered up at Sharpe. ‘You do know what real means, don’t you?’

‘Royal, sir.’

‘So you’re not completely uneducated then, eh? Royal indeed, Sharpe. The royal guard! These Irish fellows are royal! Not a pack of common carriers and mule-drivers. They’ve got royal connections, Sharpe, and that means royal rewards! I’ve half an idea that the Spanish court might even give a pension with the Order of the Golden Fleece. The thing comes with a nice star and a golden collar, but a pension would be very acceptable. A reward for a job well done, don’t you see? And that’s just from the Spanish! The good Lord alone knows what London might cough up. A knighthood? The Prince Regent will want to know we’ve done a good job, Sharpe, he’ll take an interest, don’t you see? He’ll be expecting us to treat these fellows proper, as befits a royal guard. Order of the Bath at the very least, I should think. Maybe even a viscountcy? And why not? There’s only one problem.’ Colonel Runciman belched again, then raised a buttock for a few seconds. ‘My God, but that’s better,’ he said. ‘Let the effusions out, that’s what my doctor says. There’s no future in keeping noxious effusions in the body, he tells me, in case the body rots from within. Now, Sharpe, the fly in our unguent is the fact these royal guards are all Irish. Have you ever commanded the Irish?’

‘A few, sir.’

‘Well, I’ve commanded dozens of the rogues. Ever since they amalgamated the Train with the Irish Corps of Wagoners, and there ain’t much about the Irish that I don’t know. Ever served in Ireland, Sharpe?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I was there once. Garrison duty at Dublin Castle. Six months of misery, Sharpe, without a single properly cooked meal. God knows, Sharpe, I strive to be a good Christian and to love my fellow man, but the Irish do sometimes make it difficult. Not that some of them ain’t the nicest fellows you could ever meet, but they can be obtuse! Dear me, Sharpe, I sometimes wondered if they were gulling me. Pretending not to understand the simplest orders. Do you find that? And there’s something else, Sharpe. We’ll have to be politic, you and I. The Irish’ – and here Runciman leaned awkwardly forward as though confiding something important to Sharpe – ‘are very largely Romish, Sharpe. Papists! We shall have to watch our theological discourse if we’re not to unsettle their tempers! You and I might know that the Pope is the reincarnation of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, but it won’t help our cause if we say it out loud. Know what I mean?’

‘You mean there’ll be no Golden Fleece, sir?’

‘Good fellow, knew you’d comprehend. Exactly. We have to be diplomatic, Sharpe. We have to be understanding. We have to treat these fellows as if they were Englishmen.’ Runciman thought about that statement, then frowned. ‘Or almost English, anyway. You came up from the ranks, ain’t that right? So these things might not be obvious to you, but if you just remember to keep silent about the Pope you can’t go far wrong. And tell your chaps the same,’ he added hastily.

‘A fair number of my fellows are Catholics themselves, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘And Irish.’

‘They would be, they would be. A third of this army is Irish! If there was ever a mutiny, Sharpe …’ Colonel Runciman shuddered at the prospect of the papist redcoats running wild. ‘Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’ he went on. ‘So ignore their infamous heresies, Sharpe, just ignore them. Ignorance is the only possible cause for papism, my dear father always said, and a burning at the stake the only known cure. He was a bishop, so he understood these matters. Oh, and one other thing, Sharpe, I’d be obliged if you didn’t call me Colonel Runciman. They haven’t replaced me yet, so I’m still the Wagon Master General, so it ought to be General Runciman.’

‘Of course, General,’ Sharpe said, hiding a smile. After nineteen years in the army he knew Colonel Runciman’s type. The man had purchased his promotions all the way to lieutenant colonel and there got stuck because promotion above that rank depended entirely on seniority and merit, but if Runciman wanted to be called General then Sharpe would play along for a while. He also sensed that Runciman was hardly likely to prove a difficult man so there was small point in antagonizing him.

‘Good fellow! Ah! You see that scrawny chap who’s just going?’ Runciman pointed to a man leaving the inn through its arched entrance. ‘I swear he’s left half a skin of wine on his table. See it? Go and snaffle it, Sharpe, there’s a stout fellow, before that hunchbacked girl gets her paws on it. I’d go myself, but the damn gout is pinching me something hard today. Off you go, man, I’m thirsty!’

Sharpe was saved the indignity of scavenging the tables like a beggar by the arrival of Major Michael Hogan who waved Sharpe back towards the wreckage of Runciman’s luncheon. ‘Good afternoon to you, Colonel,’ Hogan said, ‘and it’s a grand day too, is it not?’ Hogan, Sharpe noticed, was deliberately exaggerating his Irish accent.

‘Hot,’ Runciman said, dabbing with his napkin at the perspiration that dripped down his plump cheeks and then, suddenly conscious of his naked belly, he vainly tried to tug the edges of his corset together. ‘Damnably hot,’ he said.

‘It’s the sun, Colonel,’ Hogan said very earnestly. ‘I’ve noticed that the sun seems to heat up the day. Have you noticed that?’

‘Well, of course it’s the sun!’ Runciman said, confused.

‘So I’m right! Isn’t that amazing? But what about winter, Colonel?’

Runciman threw an anguished glance towards the abandoned wineskin. He was about to order Sharpe to fetch it when the serving girl whisked it away. ‘Damn,’ Runciman said sadly.

‘You spoke, Colonel?’ Hogan asked, helping himself to a handful of Runciman’s cherries.

‘Nothing, Hogan, nothing but a twinge of gout. I need some more Husson’s Water, but the stuff is damned hard to find. Maybe you could put a request to the Horse Guards in London? They must realize we need medication here? And one other thing, Hogan?’

‘Speak, Colonel. I am ever yours to command.’

Runciman coloured. He knew he was being mocked but, though he outranked the Irishman, he was nervous of Hogan’s intimacy with Wellington. ‘I am still, as you know, Wagon Master General,’ Runciman said heavily.

‘So you are, Colonel, so you are. And a damned fine one too, I might say. The Peer was only saying to me the other day. Hogan, says he, have you ever seen wagons so finely mastered in all your born days?’

‘Wellington said that?’ Runciman asked in astonishment.

‘He did, Colonel, he did.’

‘Well, I’m not really surprised,’ Runciman said. ‘My dear mother always said I had a talent for organization, Hogan. But the thing is, Major,’ Runciman went on, ‘that until a replacement is found then I am still the Wagon Master General’ – he stressed the word ‘General’ – ‘and I would be vastly obliged if you addressed me as –’

‘My dear Wagon Master,’ Hogan interrupted Runciman’s laborious request, ‘why didn’t you say so earlier? Of course I shall address you as Wagon Master, and I apologize for not thinking of that simple courtesy myself. But now, Wagon Master, if you’ll excuse me, the Real Compañía Irlandesa have reached the edge of town and we need to review them. If you’re ready?’ Hogan gestured to the inn’s gateway.

Runciman quailed at the prospect of exerting himself. ‘Right now, Hogan? This minute? But I can’t. Doctor’s orders. A man of my constitution needs to take a rest after …’ He paused, seeking the right word. ‘After …’ he went on and failed again.

‘Rest after labour?’ Hogan suggested sweetly. ‘Very well, Wagon Master, I’ll tell Lord Kiely you’ll meet him and his officers at General Valverde’s reception this evening while Sharpe takes the men up to San Isidro.’

‘This evening at Valverde’s, Hogan,’ Runciman agreed. ‘Very good. And Hogan. About my being Wagon Master General –’

‘No need to thank me, Wagon Master. You’d just embarrass me with gratitude, so not another word! I shall respect your wishes and tell everyone else to do the same. Now come, Richard! Where are your green fellows?’

‘In a taproom at the front of the inn, sir,’ Sharpe said. His riflemen were to join Sharpe in the San Isidro Fort, an abandoned stronghold on the Portuguese border, where they would help train the Real Compañía Irlandesa in musketry and skirmishing.

‘My God, Richard, but Runciman’s a fool!’ Hogan said happily as the two men walked through the inn’s gateway. ‘He’s a genial fool, but he must have been the worst Wagon Master General in history. McGilligan’s dog would have done a better job, and McGilligan’s dog was famously blind, epileptic and frequently drunk. You never knew McGilligan, did you? A good engineer, but he fell off the Old Mole at Gibraltar and drowned himself after drinking two quarts of sherry, God rest his soul. The poor dog was inconsolable and had to be shot. The 73rd Highlanders did the deed with a full firing party and military honours to follow. But Runciman’s just the fellow to flatter the Irish and make them think we’re taking them seriously, but that’s not your job. You understand me?’

‘No, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘don’t understand you in the least, sir.’

‘You’re being awkward, Richard,’ Hogan said, then stopped and took hold of one of Sharpe’s silver coat buttons to emphasize his next words. ‘The object of all we now do is to upset Lord Kiely. Your job is to insert yourself into Lord Kiely’s fundament and be an irritant. We don’t want him here and we don’t want his bloody Royal Company here, but we can’t tell them to bugger off because it wouldn’t be diplomatic, so your job is to make them go away voluntarily. Oh! Sorry now,’ he apologized because the button had come away in his fingers. ‘The buggers are up to no good, Richard, and we have to find a diplomatic way of getting rid of them, so whatever you can do to upset them, do it, and rely on Runciman the Rotund to smooth things over so they don’t think we’re being deliberately rude.’ Hogan smiled. ‘They’ll just blame you for not being a gentleman.’

‘But I’m not, am I?’

‘As it happens, you are, it’s one of your faults, but let’s not worry about that now. Just get rid of Kiely for me, Richard, with all his merry men. Make them cringe! Make them suffer! But above all, Richard, please, please make the bastards go away.’

The Real Compañía Irlandesa might be called a company, but in fact it was a small battalion, one of the five that made up the household guard of Spain’s royalty. Three hundred and four guardsmen had been on the company’s books when it had last served in the Escorial Palace outside Madrid, but the imprisonment of Spain’s king and benign neglect by the occupying French had reduced its ranks, and the journey by sea around Spain to join the British army had thinned the files even more, so that by the time the Real Compañía Irlandesa paraded on the outskirts of Vilar Formoso there were a mere one hundred and sixty-three men left. The one hundred and sixty-three men were accompanied by thirteen officers, a chaplain, eighty-nine wives, seventy-four children, sixteen servants, twenty-two horses, a dozen mules, ‘and one mistress,’ Hogan told Sharpe.

‘One mistress?’ Sharpe asked in disbelief.

‘There’s probably a score of mistresses,’ Hogan said, ‘two score! A walking brothel, in all likelihood, but his Lordship tells me we have to arrange accommodation suitable for himself and a lady friend. Not that she’s here yet, you understand, but his Lordship tells me she’s coming. The Doña Juanita de Elia is supposed to charm her way across the enemy lines in order to warm his Lordship’s bed and if she’s the same Juanita de Elia that I’ve heard about then she’s well practised in bed warming. You know what they say of her? That she collects a uniform from the regiment of every man she sleeps with!’ Hogan chuckled.

‘If she crosses the lines here,’ Sharpe said, ‘she’ll be damned lucky to escape the Loup Brigade.’

‘How the hell do you know about Loup?’ Hogan asked instantly. For most of the time the Irishman was a genial and witty soul, but Sharpe knew the bonhomie disguised a very keen mind and the tone of the question was a sudden baring of that steel.

Yet Hogan was also a friend and for a split second Sharpe was tempted to confess how he had met the Brigadier and illegally executed two of his grey-uniformed soldiers, but then decided that was a deed best forgotten. ‘Everyone knows about Loup here,’ he answered instead. ‘You can’t spend a day on this frontier without hearing about Loup.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Hogan admitted, his suspicions allayed. ‘But don’t be tempted to inquire further, Richard. He’s a bad boy. Let me worry about Loup while you worry about that shambles.’ Hogan and Sharpe, followed by the riflemen, had turned a corner to see the Real Compañía Irlandesa slouching in parade order on a patch of waste land opposite a half-finished church. ‘Our new allies,’ Hogan said sourly, ‘believe it or not, in fatigue dress.’

Fatigue dress was meant to be a soldier’s duty uniform for everyday wear, but the fatigue uniform of the Real Compañía Irlandesa was much gaudier and smarter than the full dress finery of most British line battalions. The guardsmen wore short red jackets with black-edged, gilt-fringed swallowtails behind. The same gold-trimmed black cord edged their buttonholes and collars, while the facings, cuffs and turnbacks of their coats were of emerald green. Their breeches and waistcoats had once been white, their calf-length boots, belts and crossbelts were of black leather, while their sashes were green, the same green as the high plume that each man wore on the side of his black bicorne hat. The gilded hat badges showed a tower and a rearing lion, the same symbols that were displayed on the gorgeous green and gold shoulder sashes worn by the sergeants and drummer boys. As Sharpe walked closer he saw that the splendid uniforms were frayed, patched and discoloured, yet they still made a brave display in the bright spring sunshine. The men themselves looked anything but brave, instead appearing dispirited, weary and aggravated.

‘Where are their officers?’ Sharpe asked Hogan.

‘Gone to a tavern for luncheon.’

‘They don’t eat with their men?’

‘Evidently not.’ Hogan’s disapproval was acid, but not as bitter as Sharpe’s. ‘Now don’t be getting sympathetic, Richard,’ Hogan warned. ‘You’re not supposed to like these boys, remember?’

‘Do they speak English?’ Sharpe asked.

‘As well as you or I. About half of them are Irish born, the other half are descended from Irish emigrants, and a good few, I have to say, once wore red coats,’ Hogan said, meaning that they were deserters from the British army.

Sharpe turned and beckoned Harper towards him. ‘Let’s have a look at this palace guard, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Put ’em in open order.’

‘What do I call them?’ Harper asked.

‘Battalion?’ Sharpe guessed.

Harper took a deep breath. ‘’Talion! ’Shun!’ His voice was loud enough to make the closest men wince and the further ones jump in surprise, but only a few men snapped to attention. ‘For inspection! Open order march!’ Harper bellowed, and again very few guardsmen moved. Some just gaped at Harper while the majority looked towards their own sergeants for guidance. One of those gorgeously sashed sergeants came towards Sharpe, evidently to inquire what authority the riflemen possessed, but Harper did not wait for explanations. ‘Move, you bastards!’ he bellowed in his Donegal accent. ‘You’re in a war now, not guarding the royal pisspot. Behave like the good whores we all are and open up, now!’

‘And I can remember when you didn’t want to be a sergeant,’ Sharpe said to Harper under his breath as the startled guards at last obeyed the greenjacket Sergeant’s command. ‘Are you coming, Major?’ Sharpe asked Hogan.

‘I’ll wait here, Richard.’

‘Come on then, Pat,’ Sharpe said, and the two men began inspecting the company’s front rank. An inevitable band of small mocking boys from the town fell into step behind the two greenjackets and pretended to be officers, but a thump on the ear from the Irishman’s fist sent the boldest boy snivelling away and the others dispersed rather than face more punishment.

Sharpe inspected the muskets rather than the men, though he made sure that he looked into each soldier’s eyes in an attempt to gauge what kind of confidence and willingness these men had. The soldiers returned his inspection resentfully, and no wonder, Sharpe thought, for many of these guards were Irishmen who must have been feeling all kinds of confusion at being attached to the British army. They had volunteered for the Real Compañía Irlandesa to protect a Most Catholic King, yet here they were being harried by the army of a Protestant monarch. Worse still, many of them would be avid Irish patriots, fierce for their country as only exiles can be, yet now they were being asked to fight alongside the ranks of that country’s foreign oppressors. Yet, as Sharpe walked down the rank, he sensed more nervousness than anger and he wondered if these men were simply fearful of being asked to become proper soldiers for, if their muskets were any indication, the Real Compañía Irlandesa had long abandoned any pretensions to soldiering. Their muskets were a disgrace. The men carried the serviceable and sturdy Spanish-issue musket with its straight-backed hammer; however these guns were anything but serviceable, for there was rust on the locks and fouling caked inside the barrels. Some of them had no flints, others had no leather flint-seatings, while one gun did not even have the doghead screw to hold the flint in place. ‘Did you ever fire this musket, son?’ Sharpe asked the soldier.

‘No, sir.’

‘Have you ever fired a musket, son?’

The boy looked nervously towards his own sergeant. ‘Answer the officer, lad!’ Harper growled.

‘Once, sir. One day,’ the soldier said. ‘Just the once.’

‘If you wanted to kill someone with this gun, son, you’d have to beat them over the head with it. Mind you’ – Sharpe pushed the musket back into the soldier’s hands – ‘you look big enough for that.’

‘What’s your name, soldier?’ Harper asked him.

‘Rourke, sir.’

‘Don’t call me “sir”. I’m a sergeant. Where are you from?’

‘My da’s from Galway, Sergeant.’

‘And I’m from Tangaveane in County Donegal and I’m ashamed, boy, ashamed, that a fellow Irishman can’t keep a gun in half decent order. Jesus, boy, you couldn’t shoot a Frenchman with that thing, let alone an Englishman.’ Harper unslung his own rifle and held it under Rourke’s nose. ‘Look at that, boy! Clean enough to pick the dirt out of King George’s nose. That’s how a gun should look! ’Ware right, sir.’ Harper added the last three words under his breath.

Sharpe turned to see two horsemen galloping across the waste ground towards him. The horses’ hooves spurted dust. The leading horse was a fine black stallion being ridden by an officer who was wearing the gorgeous uniform of the Real Compañía Irlandesa and whose coat, saddlecloth, hat and trappings fairly dripped with gold tassels, fringes and loops. The second horseman was equally splendidly uniformed and mounted, while behind them a small group of other riders curbed their horses when Hogan intercepted them. The Irish Major, still on foot, hurried after the two leading horsemen, but was too late to stop them from reaching Sharpe. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ the first man asked as he reined in above Sharpe. He had a thin, tanned face with a moustache trained and greased into fine points. Sharpe guessed the man was still in his twenties, but despite his youth he possessed a sour and ravaged face that had all the effortless superiority of a creature born to high office.

‘I’m making an inspection,’ Sharpe answered coldly.

The second man reined in on Sharpe’s other side. He was older than his companion and was wearing the bright-yellow coat and breeches of a Spanish dragoon, though the uniform was so crusted with looped chains and gold frogging that Sharpe assumed the man had to be at least a general. His thin, moustached face had the same imperious air as his companion’s. ‘Haven’t you learned to ask a commanding officer’s permission before inspecting his men?’ he asked with a distinct Spanish accent, then snapped an order in Spanish to his younger companion.

‘Sergeant Major Noonan,’ the younger man shouted, evidently relaying the older man’s command, ‘close order, now!’

The Real Compañía Irlandesa’s Sergeant Major obediently marched the men back into close order just as Hogan reached Sharpe’s side. ‘There you are, my Lords’ – Hogan was addressing both horsemen – ‘and how was your Lordships’ luncheon?’

‘It was shit, Hogan. I wouldn’t feed it to a hound,’ the younger man, whom Sharpe assumed was Lord Kiely, said in a brittle voice that dripped with aloofness but was also touched by the faint slur of alcohol. His Lordship, Sharpe decided, had drunk well at lunch, well enough to loosen whatever inhibitions he might have possessed. ‘You know this creature, Hogan?’ His Lordship now waved towards Sharpe.

‘Indeed I do, my Lord. Allow me to name Captain Richard Sharpe of the South Essex, the man Wellington himself chose to be your tactical adviser. And Richard? I have the honour to present the Earl of Kiely, Colonel of the Real Compañía Irlandesa.’

Kiely looked grimly at the tattered rifleman. ‘So you’re supposed to be our drillmaster?’ He sounded dubious.

‘I give lessons in killing too, my Lord,’ Sharpe said.

The older Spaniard in the yellow uniform scoffed at Sharpe’s claim. ‘These men don’t need lessons in killing,’ he said in his accented English. ‘They’re soldiers of Spain and they know how to kill. They need lessons in dying.’

Hogan interrupted. ‘Allow me to name His Excellency Don Luis Valverde,’ he said to Sharpe. ‘The General is Spain’s most valued representative to our army.’ Hogan gave Sharpe a wink that neither horseman could see.

‘Lessons in dying, my Lord?’ Sharpe asked the General, puzzled by the man’s statement and wondering whether it sprang from an incomplete mastery of English.

For answer the yellow-uniformed General touched his horse’s flanks with the tips of his spurs to make the animal walk obediently along the line of the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s front rank and, superbly oblivious of whether Sharpe was following him or not, lectured the rifleman from his saddle. ‘These men are going to war, Captain Sharpe,’ General Valverde said in a voice loud enough for a good portion of the guard to hear him. ‘They are going to fight for Spain, for King Ferdinand and Saint James, and fighting means standing tall and straight in front of your enemy. Fighting means staring your enemy in the eye while he shoots at you, and the side that wins, Captain Sharpe, is the side that stands tallest, straightest and longest. So you don’t teach men how to kill or how to fight, but rather how to stand still while all hell comes at them. That’s what you teach them, Captain Sharpe. Teach them drill. Teach them obedience. Teach them to stand longer than the French. Teach them’ – the General at last twisted in his saddle to look down on the rifleman – ‘to die.’

‘I’d rather teach them to shoot,’ Sharpe said.

The General scoffed at the remark. ‘Of course they can shoot,’ he said. ‘They’re soldiers!’

‘They can shoot with those muskets?’ Sharpe asked derisively.

Valverde stared down at Sharpe with a look of pity on his face. ‘For the last two years, Captain Sharpe, these men have stayed at their post of duty on the sufferance of the French.’ Valverde spoke in the tone he might have used to a small and unintelligent child. ‘Do you really think they would have been allowed to stay there if they had posed a threat to Bonaparte? The more their weapons decayed, the more the French trusted them, but now they are here and you can provide them with new weapons.’

‘To do what with?’ Sharpe asked. ‘To stand and die like bullocks?’

‘So how would you like them to fight?’ Lord Kiely had followed the two men and asked the question from behind Sharpe.

‘Like my men, my Lord,’ Sharpe said, ‘smartly. And you begin fighting smartly by killing the enemy officers.’ Sharpe raised his voice so that the whole of the Real Compañía Irlandesa could hear him. ‘You don’t go into battle to stand and die like bullocks in a slaughteryard, you go to win, and you begin to win when you drop the enemy officers dead.’ Sharpe had walked away from Kiely and Valverde now and was using the voice he had developed as a sergeant, a voice pitched to cut across windy parade grounds and through the deadly clamour of battlefields. ‘You start by looking for the enemy officers. They’re easy to recognize because they’re the overpaid, overdressed bastards with swords and you aim for them first. Kill them any way you can. Shoot them, club them, bayonet them, strangle them if you must, but kill the bastards and after that you kill the sergeants and then you can begin murdering the rest of the poor leaderless bastards. Isn’t that right, Sergeant Harper?’

‘That’s the way of it, sure enough,’ Harper called back.

‘And how many officers have you killed in battle, Sergeant?’ Sharpe asked, without looking at the rifle Sergeant.

‘More than I can number, sir.’

‘And were they all Frog officers, Sergeant Harper?’ Sharpe asked, and Harper, surprised by the question, did not answer, so Sharpe provided the answer himself. ‘Of course they were not. We’ve killed officers in blue coats, officers in white coats and even officers in red coats, because I don’t care what army an officer fights for, or what colour coat he wears or what king he serves, a bad officer is better off dead and a good soldier had better learn how to kill him. Ain’t that right, Sergeant Harper?’

‘Right as rain, sir.’

‘My name is Captain Sharpe.’ Sharpe stood in the centre front of the Real Compañía Irlandesa. The faces watching him showed a mixture of astonishment and surprise, but he had their attention now and neither Kiely nor Valverde had dared to interfere. ‘My name is Captain Sharpe,’ he said again, ‘and I began where you are. In the ranks, and I’m going to end up where he is, in the saddle.’ He pointed at Lord Kiely. ‘But in the meantime my job is to teach you to be soldiers. I dare say there are some good killers among you and some fine fighters too, but soon you’re going to be good soldiers as well. But for tonight we’ve all got a fair step to go before dark and once we’re there you’ll get food, shelter and we’ll find out when you were last paid. Sergeant Harper! We’ll finish the inspection later. Get them moving!’

‘Sir!’ Harper shouted. ‘’Talion will turn to the right. Right turn! By the left! March!’

Sharpe did not even look at Lord Kiely, let alone seek his Lordship’s permission to march the Real Compañía Irlandesa away. Instead he just watched as Harper led the guard off the waste ground towards the main road. He heard footsteps behind, but still he did not turn. ‘By God, Sharpe, but you push your luck.’ It was Major Hogan who spoke.

‘It’s all I’ve got to push, sir,’ Sharpe said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t born to rank, sir, I don’t have a purse to buy it and I don’t have the privileges to attract it, so I need to push what bit of luck I’ve got.’

‘By giving lectures on assassinating officers?’ Hogan’s voice was frigid with disapproval. ‘The Peer won’t like that, Richard. It smacks of republicanism.’

‘Bugger republicanism,’ Sharpe said savagely. ‘But you were the one who told me the Real Compañía Irlandesa can’t be trusted. But I tell you, sir, that if there’s any mischief there, it isn’t coming from the ranks. Those soldiers weren’t trusted with French mischief. They don’t have enough power. Those men are what soldiers always are: victims of their officers, and if you want to find where the French have sown their mischief, sir, then you look among those damned, overpaid, overdressed, overfed bloody officers,’ and Sharpe threw a scornful glance towards the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s officers who seemed unsure whether or not they were supposed to follow their men northwards. ‘That’s where your rotten apples are, sir,’ Sharpe went on, ‘not in the ranks. I’d as happily fight alongside those guardsmen as alongside any other soldier in the world, but I wouldn’t trust my life to that rabble of perfumed fools.’

Hogan made a calming gesture with his hand, as if he feared Sharpe’s voice might reach the worried officers. ‘You make your point, Richard.’

‘My point, sir, is that you told me to make them miserable. So that’s what I’m doing.’

‘I just wasn’t sure I wanted you to start a revolution in the process, Richard,’ Hogan said, ‘and certainly not in front of Valverde. You have to be nice to Valverde. One day, with any luck, you can kill him for me, but until that happy day arrives you have to butter the bastard up. If we’re ever going to get proper command of the Spanish armies, Richard, then bastards like Don Luis Valverde have to be well buttered, so please don’t preach revolution in front of him. He’s just a simple-minded aristocrat who isn’t capable of thinking much beyond his next meal or his last mistress, but if we’re going to beat the French we need his support. And he expects us to treat the Real Compañía Irlandesa well, so when he’s nearby, Richard, be diplomatic, will you?’ Hogan turned as the group of Real Compañía Irlandesa’s officers led by Lord Kiely and General Valverde came close. Riding between the two aristocrats was a tall, plump, white-haired priest mounted on a bony roan mare.

‘This is Father Sarsfield’ – Kiely introduced the priest to Hogan, conspicuously ignoring Sharpe – ‘who is our chaplain. Father Sarsfield and Captain Donaju will travel with the company tonight, the rest of the company’s officers will attend General Valverde’s reception.’

‘Where you’ll meet Colonel Runciman,’ Hogan promised. ‘I think you’ll find him much to your Lordship’s taste.’

‘You mean he knows how to treat royal troops?’ General Valverde asked, looking pointedly at Sharpe as he spoke.

‘I know how to treat royal guards, sir,’ Sharpe intervened. ‘This isn’t the first royal bodyguard I’ve met.’

Kiely and Valverde both stared down at Sharpe with looks little short of loathing, but Kiely could not resist the bait of Sharpe’s comment. ‘You refer, I suppose, to the Hanoverian’s lackeys?’ he said in his half-drunken voice.

‘No, my Lord,’ Sharpe said. ‘This was in India. They were royal guards protecting a fat little royal bugger called the Sultan Tippoo.’

‘And you trained them too, no doubt?’ Valverde inquired.

‘I killed them,’ Sharpe said, ‘and the fat little bugger too.’ His words wiped the supercilious look off both men’s thin faces, while Sharpe himself was suddenly overwhelmed with a memory of the Tippoo’s water-tunnel filled with the shouting bodyguard armed with jewelled muskets and broad-bladed sabres. Sharpe had been thigh-deep in scummy water, fighting in the shadows, digging out the bodyguard one by one to reach that fat, glittering-eyed, buttery-skinned bastard who had tortured some of Sharpe’s companions to death. He remembered the echoing shouts, the musket flashes reflecting from the broken water and the glint of the gems draped over the Tippoo’s silk clothes. He remembered the Tippoo’s death too, one of the few killings that had ever lodged in Sharpe’s memory as a thing of comfort. ‘He was a right royal bastard,’ Sharpe said feelingly, ‘but he died like a man.’

‘Captain Sharpe,’ Hogan put in hastily, ‘has something of a reputation in our army. Indeed, you may have heard of him yourself, my Lord? It was Captain Sharpe who took the Talavera eagle.’

‘With Sergeant Harper,’ Sharpe put in, and Kiely’s officers stared at Sharpe with a new curiosity. Any soldier who had taken an enemy standard was a man of renown and the faces of most of the guards’ officers showed that respect, but it was the chaplain, Father Sarsfield, who reacted most fulsomely.

‘My God and don’t I remember it!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘And didn’t it just excite all the Spanish patriots in Madrid?’ He climbed clumsily down from his horse and held a plump hand out to Sharpe. ‘It’s an honour, Captain, an honour! Even though you are a heathen Protestant!’ This last was said with a broad and friendly grin. ‘Are you a heathen, Sharpe?’ the priest asked more earnestly.

‘I’m nothing, Father.’

‘We’re all something in God’s eyes, my son, and loved for it. You and I shall talk, Sharpe. I shall tell you of God and you shall tell me how to strip the damned French of their eagles.’ The chaplain turned a smiling face on Hogan. ‘By God, Major, but you do us proud by giving us a man like Sharpe!’ The priest’s approval of the rifleman had made the other officers of the Real Compañía Irlandesa relax, though Kiely’s face was still dark with distaste.

‘Have you finished, Father?’ Kiely asked sarcastically.

‘I shall be on my way with Captain Sharpe, my Lord, and we shall see you in the morning?’

Kiely nodded, then turned his horse away. His other officers followed, leaving Sharpe, the priest and Captain Donaju to follow the straggling column formed by the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s baggage, wives and servants.

By nightfall the Real Compañía Irlandesa was safe inside the remote San Isidro Fort that Wellington had chosen to be their new barracks. The fort was old, outdated and had long been abandoned by the Portuguese so that the tired, newly arrived men first had to clean out the filthy stone barracks rooms that were to be their new home. The fort’s towering gatehouse was reserved for the officers, and Father Sarsfield and Donaju made themselves comfortable there while Sharpe and his riflemen took possession of one of the magazines for their own lodgings. Sarsfield had brought a royal banner of Spain in his baggage that was proudly hoisted on the old fort’s ramparts next to the union flag of Britain. ‘I’m sixty years old,’ the chaplain told Sharpe as he stood beneath Britain’s flag, ‘and I never thought the day would come when I’d serve under that banner.’

Sharpe looked up at the British flag. ‘Does it worry you, Father?’

‘Napoleon worries me more, my son. Defeat Napoleon, then we can start on the lesser enemies like yourself!’ The comment was made in a friendly tone. ‘What also worries me, my son,’ Father Sarsfield went on, ‘is that I’ve eight bottles of decent red wine and a handful of good cigars and only Captain Donaju to share them with. Will you do me the honour of joining us for supper now? And tell me, do you play an instrument, perhaps? No? Sad. I used to have a violin, but it was lost somewhere, but Sergeant Connors is a rare man on the flute and the men in his section sing most beautifully. They sing of home, Captain.’

‘Of Madrid?’ Sharpe asked mischievously.

Sarsfield smiled. ‘Of Ireland, Captain, of our home across the water where few of us have ever set foot and most of us never shall. Come, let’s have supper.’ Father Sarsfield put a companionable arm across Sharpe’s shoulder and steered him towards the gatehouse. A cold wind blew over the bare mountains as night fell and the first cooking fires curled their blue smoke into the sky. Wolves howled in the hills. There were wolves throughout Spain and Portugal and in winter they would sometimes come right up to the picquet line in the hope of snatching a meal from an unwary soldier, but this night the wolves reminded Sharpe of the grey-uniformed Frenchmen in Loup’s brigade. Sharpe supped with the chaplain and afterwards, under a star-shining sky, he toured the ramparts with Harper. Beneath them the Real Compañía Irlandesa grumbled about their accommodations and about the fate that had stranded them on this inhospitable border between Spain and Portugal, but Sharpe, who had orders to make them miserable, wondered if instead he could make them into real soldiers who would follow him over the hills and far into Spain to where a wolf needed to be hunted, trapped and slaughtered.

Pierre Ducos waited nervously for news of the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s arrival in Wellington’s army. The Frenchman’s greatest fear was that the unit would be positioned so far behind the fighting front that it would be useless for his purposes, but that was a risk Ducos was forced to run. Ever since French intelligence had intercepted Lord Kiely’s letter requesting King Ferdinand’s permission to take the Real Compañía Irlandesa to war on the allied side, Ducos had known that the success of his scheme depended as much on the allies’ unwitting cooperation as on his own cleverness. Yet Ducos’s cleverness would achieve nothing if the Irishmen failed to arrive, and so he waited with mounting impatience.

Little news came from behind the British lines. There had been a time when Loup’s men could ride with impunity on either side of the frontier, but now the British and Portuguese armies were firmly clamped along the border and Loup had to depend for his intelligence on the unreliable and minuscule handful of civilians willing to sell information to the hated French, on interrogations of deserters and on educated guesses formed from the observations of his own men as they peered through spyglasses across the mountainous border.

And it was one of those scouts who first brought Loup news of the Real Compañía Irlandesa. A troop of grey dragoons had gone to one of the lonely hill tops which offered a long view into Portugal, and from where, with luck, a patrol might see some evidence of a British concentration of forces that could signal a new advance. The lookout post dominated a wide, barren valley where a stream glittered before the land rose to the rocky ridge on which the long-abandoned fort of San Isidro stood. The fort was of little military value for the road it guarded had long fallen into disuse and a century of neglect had eroded its ramparts and ditches into mockeries of their former strength so that now the San Isidro was home to ravens, foxes, bats, wandering shepherds, lawless men, and the occasional patrol of Loup’s grey dragoons who might spend a night in one of the cavernous barracks rooms to stay out of the rain.

Yet now there were men in the fort, and the patrol leader brought Loup news of them. The new garrison was not a full battalion, he said, just a couple of hundred men. The fort itself, as Loup well knew, would need at least a thousand men to man its crumbling walls, so a mere two hundred hardly constituted a garrison, yet strangely the newcomers had brought their wives and children with them. The dragoons’ troop leader, a Captain Braudel, thought the men were British. ‘They’re wearing red coats,’ he said, ‘but not the usual stovepipe hats.’ He meant shakoes. ‘They’ve got bicornes.’

‘Infantry, you say?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No cavalry? Any artillery?’

‘Didn’t see any.’

Loup picked at his teeth with a sliver of wood. ‘So what were they doing?’

‘Doing drill,’ Braudel said. Loup grunted. He was not much interested in a group of strange soldiers taking up residence in San Isidro. The fort did not threaten him and if the newcomers were content to sit tight and make themselves comfortable then Loup would not stir them into wakefulness. Then Captain Braudel stirred Loup himself into wakefulness. ‘But some of them were unblocking a well,’ the Captain said, ‘only they weren’t redcoats. They were wearing green.’

Loup stared at him. ‘Dark green?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Riflemen. Damned riflemen. And Loup remembered the insolent face of the man who had insulted him, the man who had once insulted all France by taking an eagle touched by the Emperor himself. Maybe Sharpe was in the San Isidro Fort? Ducos had denigrated Loup’s thirst for vengeance, calling it unworthy of a great soldier, but Loup believed that a soldier made his reputation by picking his fights and winning them famously. Sharpe had defied Loup, the first man to openly defy him in many a long month, and Sharpe was a champion among France’s enemies, so Loup’s vengeance was not just personal, but would send ripples throughout the armies that waited to fight the battle that would decide whether Britain lunged into Spain or was sent reeling back into Portugal.

So that afternoon Loup himself visited the hill top, taking his finest spyglass which he trained on the old fort with its weed-grown walls and half-filled dry moat. Two flags hung limply in the windless air. One flag was British, but Loup could not tell what the second was. Beyond the flags the red-coated soldiers were doing musket drill, but Loup did not watch them long, instead he inched the telescope southwards until, at last, he saw two men in green coats strolling along the deserted ramparts. He could not see their faces at this distance, but he could tell that one of the men was wearing a long straight sword and Loup knew that British light infantry officers wore curved sabres. ‘Sharpe,’ he said aloud as he collapsed the telescope.

A scuffle behind made him turn round. Four of his wolf-grey men were guarding a pair of prisoners. One captive was in a gaudily trimmed red coat while the other was presumably the man’s wife or lover. ‘Found them hiding in the rocks down there,’ said the Sergeant who was holding one of the soldier’s arms.

‘He says he’s a deserter, sir,’ Captain Braudel added, ‘and that’s his wife.’ Braudel spat a stream of tobacco juice onto a rock.

Loup scrambled down from the ridge. The soldier’s uniform, he now saw, was not British. The waistcoat and sash, the half boots and the plumed bicorne were all too fancy for British taste, indeed they were so fancy that for a second Loup wondered if the captive was an officer, then he realized that Braudel would never have treated a captured officer with such disdain. Braudel clearly liked the woman who now raised shy eyes to stare at Loup. She was dark-haired, attractive and probably, Loup guessed, about fifteen or sixteen. Loup had heard that the Spanish and Portuguese peasants sold such daughters as wives to allied soldiers for a hundred francs apiece, the cost of a good meal in Paris. The French army, on the other hand, just took their girls for nothing. ‘What’s your name?’ Loup asked the deserter in Spanish.

‘Grogan, sir. Sean Grogan.’

‘Your unit, Grogan?’

‘Real Compañía Irlandesa, señor.’ Guardsman Grogan was plainly willing to cooperate with his captors and so Loup signalled the Sergeant to release him.

Loup questioned Grogan for ten minutes, hearing how the Real Compañía Irlandesa had travelled by sea from Valencia, and how the men had been happy enough with the idea of joining the rest of the Spanish army at Cadiz, but how they resented being forced to serve with the British. Many of the men, the fugitive claimed, had fled from British servitude, and they had not enlisted with the King of Spain just to return to King George’s tyranny.

Loup cut short the protests. ‘When did you run?’ he asked.

‘Last night, sir. Half a dozen of us did. And a good many ran the night before.’

‘There is an Englishman in the fort, a rifle officer. You know him?’

Grogan frowned, as though he found the question odd, but then he nodded. ‘Captain Sharpe, sir. He’s supposed to be training us.’

‘To do what?’

‘To fight, sir,’ Grogan said nervously. He found this one-eyed, calm-spoken Frenchman very disconcerting. ‘But we know how to fight already,’ he added defiantly.

‘I’m sure you do,’ Loup said sympathetically. He poked at his teeth for a second, then spat the makeshift toothpick away. ‘So you ran away, soldier, because you didn’t want to serve King George, is that it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But you’d certainly fight for His Majesty the Emperor?’

Grogan hesitated. ‘I would, sir,’ he finally said, but without any conviction.

‘Is that why you deserted?’ Loup asked. ‘To fight for the Emperor? Or were you hoping to get back to your comfortable barracks in the Escorial?’

Grogan shrugged. ‘We were going to her family’s house in Madrid, sir.’ He jerked his head towards his wife. ‘Her father’s a cobbler, and I’m not such a bad hand with a needle and thread myself. I thought I’d learn the trade.’

‘It’s always good to have a trade, soldier,’ Loup said with a smile. He took a pistol from his belt and toyed with it for a moment before he pulled back the heavy cock. ‘My trade is killing,’ he added in the same pleasant voice and then, without showing a trace of emotion, he lifted the gun, aimed it at Grogan’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

The woman screamed as her husband’s blood splashed across her face. Grogan was thrown violently back, blood spraying and misting the air, then his body thumped and slid backwards down the hill. ‘He didn’t really want to fight for us at all,’ Loup said. ‘He’d have been just another useless mouth to feed.’

‘And the woman, sir?’ Braudel asked. She was bending over her dead husband and screaming at the French.

‘She’s yours, Paul,’ Loup said. ‘But only after you have delivered a message to Madame Juanita de Elia. Give madame my undying compliments, tell her that her toy Irish soldiers have arrived and are conveniently close to us, and that tomorrow morning we shall mount a little drama for their amusement. Tell her also that she would do well to spend the night with us.’

Braudel smirked. ‘She’ll be pleased, sir.’

‘Which is more than your woman will be,’ Loup said, glancing at the howling Spanish girl. ‘Tell this widow, Paul, that if she does not shut up I will tear her tongue out and feed it to the Doña Juanita’s hounds. Now come on.’ He led his men down the hill to where the horses had been picketed. Tonight the Doña Juanita de Elia would come to the wolf’s stronghold, and tomorrow she would ride to the enemy like a plague rat sent to destroy them from within.

And somewhere, some time before victory was final, Sharpe would feel France’s vengeance for two dead men. For Loup was a soldier, and he did not forget, did not forgive and never lost.