Читать книгу Sharpe’s Company - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 14

They found a house, hard by the walls, that had been used by French gunners. There was food in the kitchen, hard bread and cold tongue, and Sharpe lit a fire and watched Teresa as she stabbed the loaf with her bayonet and ripped the blade downwards. He laughed.

She glared at him. ‘What’s funny?’

‘I don’t see you as a housewife.’

She pointed the blade at him. ‘Listen, Englishman, I can keep a house, but not for a man who laughs at me.’ She shrugged. ‘What happens when the war ends?’

He laughed again. ‘You go back to your kitchen, woman.’

She nodded, sad at the thought. She carried a gun, as other Spanish women carried guns, because too many men had shirked the role, but when peace came the men would be brave again and push the women back to the stoves. Sharpe saw the wistfulness on her face. ‘So what must we talk about?’

‘Later.’ She brought the plate over to the fire and laughed at the unsavoury lumps of food. ‘Eat first.’

They were both ravenous. They washed the food down with watered brandy and then, beneath blankets that had once graced the backs of French cavalry horses, they made love by the fire and Sharpe wished he could trap the moment, make it last for ever. The quietness of a small house in a captured city; the only noises the calls of sentries on the wall, the barking of a dog, the dying crackle of the small fire. She would not stay, he knew that, to be a camp follower. Teresa wanted to fight the French, to revenge herself on a nation that had raped and murdered her mother. Perhaps, he thought, he could not expect, could never expect this happiness to be for ever. All happiness is fleeting and his mind shied away from the thought of Lawford lying in the Convent. Teresa would go back to the hills, to the ambushes and torture, the harried French in the rock landscape. If he had not been a soldier, Sharpe thought, if he had been a gamekeeper or a coachman, or any one of the other jobs he might have found, then he might have found, too, a settled existence. But not like this, never as a soldier.

Teresa’s hand pushed over the skin of his chest, then round to his back, and her fingers were light on the thick, ridged scars. ‘Did you find the men who flogged you?’

‘Not yet.’ He had been flogged, years before, when he was a Private.

‘What were their names?’

‘Captain Morris and Sergeant Hakeswill.’ He said the names tonelessly. They were deep in his mind, waiting vengeance.

‘You’ll find them.’

‘Yes.’

She smiled. ‘You’ll hurt them?’

‘Very much.’

‘Good.’

Sharpe grinned. ‘I thought Christians were supposed to forgive their enemies.’

She shook her head, the hair tickling him. ‘Only when they’re dead. Anyway.’ She plucked a hair from his chest. ‘You’re not a Christian.’

‘You are.’

She shrugged. ‘The priests don’t like me. I have been learning English from a priest, Father Pedro. He’s nice, but the others …’ She spat at the fire. ‘They do not let me take the Mass. Because I am bad.’ She said something in quick, guttural Spanish, something that would have confirmed the opinion of the priests. She sat up and looked round the room. ‘Those pigs must have left some wine.’

‘I didn’t see any.’

‘You didn’t look. You only wanted me under the blankets.’ She stood up and searched the room. Sharpe watched her, loving the straightness of her body, the strength in her slimness. She opened cupboards and pulled their contents violently on to the floor. ‘Here.’ She tossed him a wooden shelf, loose from a cabinet. ‘Put it on the fire.’

Sharpe sprinkled it with powder, to help it light, and when he turned back she had found wine and brandished it to him. ‘You see? The pigs always have wine.’ She saw him looking at her and her face became serious. ‘Am I different?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’ She stood facing him, naked, her face worried.

‘I’m sure. You’re beautiful.’ He was puzzled. ‘Should there be something different?’

She shrugged, crossed the room and sat beside him. The cork was half out of the bottle and she pulled it free and smelt the wine. ‘Awful.’ She drank some and handed the bottle to Sharpe.

‘What’s the matter?’

He knew the moment had come when she would talk.

She was silent for a few seconds, staring into the fire, then she turned abruptly to him, her expression fierce. ‘You are going to Badajoz?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure?’ She seemed desperate for his certainty.

Sharpe shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure. The army will go there, but we may be sent to Lisbon, or maybe stay here. I don’t know. Why?’

‘Because I want you to be there.’

Sharpe waited for her to continue, but she stopped talking and stared, instead, into the fire. The wine was sour, but he drank some, and then pulled the stiff blanket up round her shoulders. She looked sad. ‘Why do you want me to be there?’ he asked gently.

‘Because I will be there.’

‘You’ll be there.’ He spoke the words as if they described the most normal thing on earth, but inside he was grasping for a reason, any reason, that would take Teresa into the largest French fortress in Spain.

She nodded. ‘Inside. I’ve been there, Richard, since April.’

‘In Badajoz? Fighting?’

‘No. They don’t know me as “La Aguja”. They think I am Teresa Moreno, niece of Rafael Moreno. That’s my father’s brother.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘The French even let me carry a rifle outside the city, can you imagine that? To protect myself against the horrid Guerrilleros.’ She laughed. ‘We live there, my aunt, uncle, myself, and we trade in furs, leather, and we want peace so the profits can be high.’ She made a face.

‘I don’t understand.’

She leaned away from him, poked at the fire with the bayonet, and then drank more wine. ‘Will there be trouble there?’

‘Trouble?’

‘Like tonight? Killings? Thieving? Rape?’

‘If the French fight, yes.’

‘They will fight.’ She looked at him. ‘You must find me in the city, you understand?’

He nodded, puzzled. ‘I understand.’ A dog howled outside at the soft, falling snow. ‘But why in Badajoz?’

‘You’ll be angry.’

‘I won’t be angry. Why Badajoz?’

Again she was silent, biting her lip and searching his face, and then she took his hand and placed it, beneath the blanket, on her bare stomach. ‘Is it different?’

‘No.’ He stroked her skin, not understanding. She breathed deep.

‘I had a baby.’ His hand went still on the warm flesh. She shrugged. ‘I said you’d be angry.’

‘A baby?’ His mind seemed to whirl like the snow above the flames.

‘Your baby. Our daughter.’ Tears came to her eyes, and she buried her head on his shoulder. ‘She’s ill, Richard, so ill, and she cannot travel. She could die. She is so little.’

‘Our daughter? Mine?’ He felt the beginnings of joy.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you call her?’

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears. ‘Antonia. It was my mother’s name. If it had been a boy I would have called him Ricardo.’

‘Antonia.’ He said the name. ‘I like it.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re not angry?’

‘Why should I be?’

She shrugged. ‘Soldiers do not need children.’

He pulled her close, remembering the first kiss, not many miles from here, under the rainstorm as the French Lancers searched the streambed. They had been given so little time together. He remembered the parting in the shadow of Almeida’s smoke. ‘How old is she?’

‘Just over seven months. She’s very small.’

He supposed she would be. Tiny, vulnerable, ill, and inside Badajoz, surrounded by the French, ringed with the walls that rose dark above the Guadiana. His daughter.

Teresa shook her head. ‘I thought you’d be angry.’ She spoke the words as soft as the snow that fell beyond the shuttered windows.

‘Angry? No. I’m …’ But the words could not be found. A daughter? His? And this woman was the mother of his child? It seemed to sink in, with a wonderment and a confusion, and there were no words for him. More than a daughter, a family, and Sharpe thought he had no family, not since his mother died near thirty years before, and he held Teresa tight, crushing her, because he did not want her to see his eyes. He had a family, at last, a family.

In Badajoz.