Читать книгу Sharpe’s Rifles - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 11

‘Defeat,’ Blas Vivar said, ‘destroys discipline. You teach an army to march, to fight, to obey orders.’ Each virtue was stressed by a downward slash of the razor which spattered soapy water onto the kitchen floor. ‘But,’ he shrugged, ‘defeat brings ruin.’

Sharpe knew that the Spaniard was trying to find excuses for the disgraceful exhibition at the ruined farmstead. That was kind of him, but Sharpe was in no mood for kindness and he could find nothing to say in reply.

‘And that farmhouse is unlucky.’ Vivar turned back to the mirror fragment which he had propped on the window-ledge. ‘It always has been. In my grandfather’s time there was a murder there. Over a woman, naturally. And in my father’s time there was a suicide.’ He made the sign of the cross with the razor, then carefully shaved the angle of his jaw. ‘It’s haunted, Lieutenant. At night you can see ghosts there. It is a bad place. You are lucky I found you. You want to use this razor?’

‘I have my own.’

Vivar dried his blade and stowed it, with the mirror, in its leather case. Then he watched pensively as Sharpe spooned up the beans and pigs’ ears that the village priest had provided as supper. ‘Do you think,’ Vivar asked softly, ‘that, after your skirmish, the Dragoons followed your army?’

‘I didn’t see.’

‘Let us hope they did.’ Vivar ladled some of the mixture onto his own plate. ‘Perhaps they think I’ve joined the British retreat, yes?’

‘Perhaps.’ Sharpe wondered why Vivar was so interested in the French Dragoons who had been led by a red-coated chasseur and a black-coated civilian. He had eagerly questioned Sharpe about every detail of the fight by the bridge, but what most interested the Spaniard was which direction the enemy horsemen had taken after the fight, to which enquiry Sharpe could only offer his supposition that the Dragoons had ridden in pursuit of Sir John Moore’s army.

‘If you’re right, Lieutenant,’ Vivar raised a mug of wine in an ironic toast, ‘then that is the best news I’ve had in two weeks.’

‘Why were they pursuing you?’

‘They weren’t pursuing me,’ Vivar said. ‘They’re pursuing anyone in uniform, anyone. They just happened to catch my scent a few days ago. I want to be sure they’re not waiting in the next valley.’ Vivar explained to Sharpe that he had been travelling westwards but, forced into the highlands, he had lost all his horses and a good number of his men. He had been driven down to this small village by his desperate need for food and shelter.

That food had been willingly given. As the soldiers entered the small settlement Sharpe had noted how glad the villagers were to see Major Blas Vivar. Some of the men had even tried to kiss the Major’s hand, while the village priest, hurrying from his house, had ordered the women to heat up their ovens and uncover their winter stores. The soldiers, both Spanish and British, had been warmly welcomed. ‘My father,’ Vivar now explained to Sharpe, ‘was a lord in these mountains.’

‘Does that mean you’re a lord?’

‘I am the younger son. My brother is the Count now.’ Vivar crossed himself at this mention of his brother, a sign which Sharpe took to denote respect. ‘I am an hidalgo, of course,’ he went on, ‘so these people call me Don Blas.’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Hidalgo?’

Vivar politely disguised his surprise at Sharpe’s ignorance. ‘An hidalgo, Lieutenant, is a man who can trace his blood back to the old Christians of Spain. Pure blood, you understand, without a taint of Moor or Jew in it. I am hidalgo.’ He said it with a simple pride which made the claim all the more impressive. ‘And your father? He is a lord, too?’

‘I don’t know who my father is, or was.’

‘You don’t know …’ Vivar’s initial reaction was curiosity, then the implication of bastardy made him drop the subject. It was clear that Sharpe had fallen even lower in the Spaniard’s opinion. The Major glanced out of the window, judging the day’s dying. ‘So what will you do now, Lieutenant?’

‘I’m going south. To Lisbon.’

‘To take a ship home?’

Sharpe ignored the hint of scorn which suggested he was running away from the fight. ‘To take a ship home,’ he confirmed.

‘You have a map?’

‘No.’

Vivar broke a piece of bread to mop up the gravy. ‘You will find there are no roads south in these mountains.’

‘None?’

‘None passable in winter, and certainly not in this winter. You will have to go east to Astorga, or west to the sea, before you will find a southern road open.’

‘The French are to the east?’

‘The French are everywhere.’ Vivar leaned back and stared at Sharpe. ‘I’m going west. Do you wish to join me?’

Sharpe knew that his chances of surviving in this strange land were slim. He had no map, spoke no Spanish, and had only the haziest notion of Spanish geography, yet at the same time Sharpe had no desire to ally himself with this aristocratic Spaniard who had witnessed his disgrace. There could be no more damning indictment of an officer’s failure of command than to be discovered brawling with one of his own men, and that sense of shame made him hesitate.

‘Or are you tempted to surrender?’ Vivar asked harshly.

‘Never.’ Sharpe’s answer was equally harsh.

His tone, so unexpectedly firm, made the Spaniard smile. Then Vivar glanced out of the window again. ‘We leave in an hour, Lieutenant. Tonight we cross the high road, and that must be done in darkness.’ He looked back at the Englishman. ‘Do you put yourself under my command?’

And Sharpe, who really had no choices left, agreed.

What was so very galling to Sharpe was that his Riflemen immediately accepted Vivar’s leadership. That dusk, parading in the trampled snow in front of the tiny church, the greenjackets listened to the Spaniard’s explanation. It was foolish, Vivar said, to try to go north, for the enemy was marching to secure the coastal harbours. To attempt to rejoin the retreating British army was equally foolish, for it meant dogging the French footsteps and the enemy would simply turn and snap them up as prisoners. Their best course lay south, but first it would be necessary to march westwards. Sharpe watched the Riflemen’s faces and for a second he hated them as they nodded their willing comprehension.

So tonight, Vivar said, they must cross the road on which the main French army advanced. He doubted if the road was garrisoned, but the Riflemen must be ready for a brief fight. He knew they would fight well. Were they not the vaunted British greencoats? He was proud to fight beside them. Sharpe saw the Riflemen grin. He also saw how Vivar had the easy manner of a born officer and for a second Sharpe hated the Spaniard too.

Rifleman Harper was missing from the ranks. The Irishman was under arrest and, by Sharpe’s orders, his wrists were first bound together then tied by a length of rope to the tail of a mule which the Major had commandeered from one of the villagers. The mule was carrying a great square chest that was wrapped in oilcloth and guarded by four of Vivar’s Spaniards who also, by default, acted as guards over the prisoner.

‘He’s an Irishman?’ Vivar asked Sharpe.

‘Yes.’

‘I like the Irish. What will you do with him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sharpe would have liked to have shot Harper there and then, but that would have turned the other Riflemen’s dislike into pure hatred. Besides, to circumvent the army’s careful disciplinary process and shoot him out of hand would have been to demonstrate a disdain of authority as great as that which had earned Harper punishment in the first place.

‘Wouldn’t we march faster if he was untied?’ Vivar asked.

‘And encourage him to desert to the French?’

‘The discipline of your men is your own affair,’ Vivar said delicately, thus intimating that he thought Sharpe had mishandled the whole business.

Sharpe pretended to ignore his disapproval. He knew the Spaniard despised him, for so far Vivar had seen nothing but incompetence from Sharpe, and it was an incompetence made worse by comparison with his own easy authority. Vivar had not just rescued the British soldiers from their precarious refuge in the old farm, but from their officer as well, and every Rifleman in the makeshift Company knew it.

Sharpe stood alone as the troops formed into companies for the march. The Spaniards would lead, then would come the mule with its box-shaped burden, and the Riflemen would bring up the rear. Sharpe knew he should say something to his men, that he should encourage them or inspect their equipment, do anything which would assert his authority, but he could not face their mocking eyes and so he stayed apart from them.

Major Vivar, apparently oblivious to Sharpe’s misery, crossed to the village priest and knelt in the snow for a benediction. Afterwards he accepted a small object from the priest, but what it was Sharpe could not tell.

It was a bitter night. The thin snowfall had stopped at dusk and gradually the clouds cleared in the eastern sky to reveal a brightness of cold stars. A fitful wind whipped the fallen snow into airy and fantastic shapes that curled and glinted above the path on which the men trudged like doomed animals. Their faces were wrapped with rags against the pitiless cold and their packs chafed their shoulders raw, yet Major Vivar seemed imbued with an inexhaustible energy. He roamed up and down the column, encouraging men in Spanish and English, telling them they were the best soldiers in the world. His enthusiasm was infectious forcing a grudging admiration from Richard Sharpe who saw how the scarlet-uniformed cavalrymen almost worshipped their officer.

‘They’re Galicians.’ Vivar gestured at his Cazadores.

‘Local men?’ Sharpe asked.

‘The best in Spain.’ His pride was obvious. ‘They mock us in Madrid, Lieutenant. They say we Galicians are country fools, but I’d rather lead one country fool into battle than ten men from the city.’

‘I come from a city.’ Sharpe’s voice was surly.

Vivar laughed, but said nothing.

At midnight they crossed the road which led to the sea and saw evidence that the French had already passed. The road’s muddy surface had been ridged high by the guns, then frozen hard. On either verge white mounds showed where corpses had been left unburied. No enemy was in sight, no town or village lights showed in the valley, the soldiers were alone in an immensity of white cold.

An hour later they came to a river. Small bare oaks grew thick on its banks. Vivar scouted eastwards until he found a place where the freezing water ran shallow across gravel and between rocks that offered some kind of footing for the tired men but, before he would allow a single man to try the crossing, he took a small phial from his pouch. He uncorked it, then sprinkled some liquid into the river. ‘Safe now.’

‘Safe?’ Sharpe was intrigued.

‘Holy water, Lieutenant. The priest in the village gave it to me.’ Vivar seemed to think the explanation sufficient, but Sharpe demanded to know more.

‘Xanes, of course,’ the Spaniard said, then turned and ordered his Sergeant to lead the way.

‘Xanes?’ Sharpe stumbled over the odd world.

‘Water spirits.’ Vivar was entirely serious. ‘They live in every stream, Lieutenant, and can be mischievous. If we did not scare them away, they might lead us astray.’

‘Ghosts?’ Sharpe could not hide his astonishment.

‘No. A ghost, Lieutenant, is a creature that cannot escape from the earth. A ghost is a soul in torment, someone who lived and offended the Holy Sacraments. A xana was never human. A xana is,’ he shrugged, ‘a creature? Like an otter, or a water rat. Just something that lives in the stream. You must have them in England, surely?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Vivar looked appalled, then crossed himself. ‘Will you go now?’

Sharpe crossed the fast-flowing stream, safe from malicious sprites, and watched as his Riflemen followed. They avoided looking at him. Sergeant Williams, who carried the pack of a wounded man, stepped into deeper water rather than scramble up the bank where the officer stood.

The mule was prodded across the stream and Sharpe noticed with what care the soldiers guarded the oil-cloth-covered chest. He supposed it contained Major Vivar’s clothes and belongings. Harper, still tied to the packmule, spat towards him, a gesture Sharpe chose to ignore.

‘Now we climb,’ Vivar said with a note of satisfaction, as if the coming hardship was to be welcomed.

They climbed. They struggled up a steeply rising valley where the rocks were glossed by ice and the trees dripped snow onto their heads. The wind rose and the sky clouded again.

It began to sleet. The wind howled about their muffled ears. Men were sobbing with the misery and effort, but somehow Vivar kept them moving. ‘Upwards! Upwards! Where the cavalry can’t go, eh? Go on! Higher! Let’s join the angels! What’s the matter with you, Marcos? Your father would have danced up this slope when he was twice your age! You want the Englishmen to think a Spaniard has no strength? Shame on you! Climb!’

By dawn they had reached a saddle in the hills. Vivar led the exhausted men to a cave that was hidden by ice-sheathed laurels. ‘I shot a bear here,’ he told Sharpe proudly. ‘I was twelve, and my father sent me out alone to kill a bear.’ He snapped off a branch and tossed it towards the men who were building a fire. ‘That was twenty years ago.’ He spoke with a kind of wonder that so much time had passed.

Sharpe noted that Vivar was exactly his own age but, coming from the nobility was already a Major, while Sharpe came from the gutter and only an extraordinary stroke of fate had made him into a Lieutenant. He doubted if he would ever see another promotion, nor, seeing how badly he had handled these greenjackets, did he think he deserved one.

Vivar watched as the chest was fetched from the mule’s back and placed in the cave-mouth. He sat beside it, with a protective arm over its humped surface, and Sharpe saw that there was almost a reverence in the way he treated the box. Surely, Sharpe thought, no man, having endured the frozen hell that Vivar had been through, would take such care to protect a chest if it only contained clothes? ‘What’s in it?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Just papers.’ Vivar stared out at the creeping dawn. ‘Modern war generates papers, yes?’

It was not a question that demanded an answer, but rather a comment to discourage further questions. Sharpe asked none.

Vivar took off his cocked hat and carefully removed a half-smoked cigar that was stored inside its sweatband. He gave an apologetic shrug that he had no cigar to offer Sharpe, then struck a flame from his tinder box. The pungent smell of tobacco teased Sharpe’s nostrils. ‘I saved it,’ Vivar said, ‘till I was close to home.’

‘Very close?’

Vivar waved the cigar in a gesture that encompassed the whole view. ‘My father was lord of all this land.’

‘Will we go to your house?’

‘I hope to see you safe on your southern road first.’

Sharpe, piqued by the curiosity the poor have about the lordly rich, felt oddly disappointed. ‘Is it a large house?’

‘Which house?’ Vivar asked drily. ‘There are three, all of them large. One is an abandoned castle, one is in the city of Orense, and one is in the country. They all belong to my brother, but Tomas has never loved Galicia. He prefers to live where there are kings and courtiers so, on his sufferance, I can call the houses mine.’

‘Lucky you,’ Sharpe said sourly.

‘To live in a great house?’ Vivar shook his head. ‘Your house may be more humble, Lieutenant, but at least you can call it your own. Mine is in a country taken by the French.’ He stared at Rifleman Harper who, still tied to the mule’s tail, hunched in the wet snow. ‘Just as his is in a country taken by the English.’

The bitterness of the accusation surprised Sharpe who, beginning to admire the Spaniard, was disconcerted to hear such sudden hostility. Perhaps Vivar himself thought he had spoken too harshly, for he offered Sharpe a rueful shrug. ‘You have to understand that my wife’s mother was Irish. Her family settled here to escape your persecution.’

‘Is that how you learned English?’

‘That, and from good tutors.’ Vivar drew on the cigar. A slip of snow, loosened by the fire in the cave, slid from the lip of rock. ‘My father believed that we should speak the language of the enemy.’ He spoke with a wry amusement. ‘It seems strange that you and I should now be fighting on the same side, does it not? I was raised to believe that the English are heathenish barbarians, enemies of God and the true faith, and now I must convince myself that you are our friends.’

‘At least we have the same enemies,’ Sharpe said.

‘Perhaps that is a more accurate description,’ he agreed.

The two officers sat in an awkward silence. The smoke from Vivar’s cigar whirled above the snow to disappear in the misting dawn. Sharpe, feeling the silence hang heavy between them, asked if the Major’s wife was waiting in one of the three houses.

Vivar paused before answering, and when he did so his voice was as bleak as the country they watched. ‘My wife died seven years ago. I was on garrison duty in Florida, and the yellow fever took her.’

Like most men to whom such a revelation is vouchsafed, Sharpe had not the first idea how to respond. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said clumsily.

‘She died,’ Vivar went on relentlessly, ‘as did both of my small children. I had hoped my son would come back here to kill his first bear, as I did, but God willed it otherwise.’ There was another silence, even more awkward than the first. ‘And you, Lieutenant? Are you married?’

‘I can’t afford to marry.’

‘Then find a wealthy woman,’ Vivar said with a grim earnestness.

‘No wealthy woman would have me,’ Sharpe said, then, seeing the puzzlement on the Spaniard’s face, he explained. ‘I wasn’t born to the right family, Major. My mother was a whore. What you call a puta.’

‘I know the word, Lieutenant.’ Vivar’s tone was level, but it could not disguise his distaste. ‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ he said finally.

Sharpe was angered by the imputation of dishonesty. ‘Why the hell should I care what you believe?’

‘I don’t suppose you should.’ Vivar carefully wrapped and stored the remains of his cigar, then leaned back against the chest. ‘You watch now, Lieutenant, and I’ll sleep for an hour.’ He tipped the hat over his eyes and Sharpe saw the bedraggled sprig of rosemary that was pinned to its crown. All Vivar’s men wore the rosemary, and Sharpe supposed it was some regimental tradition.

Below them the Irishman stirred. Sharpe hoped that the cold was slicing to the very marrow of Harper’s bones. He hoped the Irishman’s broken nose, hidden beneath a snow-whitened scarf, was hurting like the devil. Harper, as if sensing these malevolent thoughts, turned to stare at the officer and the look in his eyes, beneath their frosted brows, told Sharpe that so long as Harper lived, and so long as nights were dark, he should beware.

Two hours after dawn the sleet turned to a persistent rain that cut runnels in the snow, dripped from trees, and transformed the bright world into a grey and dirty place of cold misery. The strongbox was put back on the mule and the sentries posted on its flanks. Harper, who had finally been allowed into the cave’s shelter, was tied once more to the animal’s tail.

Their route lay downhill. They followed a streambed which tumbled to the bottom of a valley so huge that it dwarfed the hundred soldiers into insignificant dark scraps. In front of them was an even wider, deeper valley which lay athwart the first. It was an immense space of wind and sleet. ‘We cross that valley,’ Vivar explained, ‘climb those far hills, then we drop down to the pilgrim way. That will lead you west to the coast road.’

First, though, the two officers used their telescopes to search the wide valley. No horsemen stirred there, indeed no living thing broke the grey monotony of its landscape. ‘What’s the pilgrim way?’ Sharpe asked.

‘The road to Santiago de Compostela. You’ve heard of it?’

‘Never.’

Vivar was clearly annoyed by the Englishman’s ignorance. ‘You’ve heard of St James?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘He was an apostle, Lieutenant, and he is buried at Santiago de Compostela. Santiago is his name. He is Spain’s patron saint, and in the old days thousands upon thousands of Christians visited his shrine. Not just Spaniards, but the devout of all Christendom.’

‘In the old days?’ Sharpe asked.

‘A few still visit, but the world is not what it used to be. The devil stalks abroad, Lieutenant.’

They waded a stream and Sharpe noted how this time Vivar took no precautions against the water spirits. He asked why and the Spaniard explained that the xanes were only troublesome at night.

Sharpe scoffed at the assertion. ‘I’ve crossed a thousand streams at night and never been troubled.’

‘How would you know? Perhaps you’ve taken a thousand wrong turnings! You’re like a blind man describing colour!’

Sharpe heard the anger in the Spaniard’s voice, but he would not back down. ‘Perhaps you’re only troubled if you believe in the spirits. I don’t.’

Vivar spat left and right to ward off evil. ‘Do you know what Voltaire called the English?’

Sharpe had not even heard of Voltaire, but a man raised from the ranks to the officers’ mess becomes adept at hiding his ignorance. ‘I’m sure he admired us.’

Vivar sneered at his reply. ‘He said the English are a people without God. I think it is true. Do you believe in God, Lieutenant?’

Sharpe heard the intensity in the question, but could not match it with any responding interest. ‘I never think about it.’

‘You don’t think about it?’ Vivar was horrified.

Sharpe bridled. ‘Why the hell should I?’

‘Because without God there is nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing!’ The Spaniard’s sudden passion was furious. ‘Nothing!’ He shouted the word again, astonishing the tired men who twisted to see what had prompted such an outburst.

The two officers walked in embarrassed silence, breaking a virgin field of snow with their boots. The snow was pitted by rain and turning yellow where it thawed into ditches. A village lay two miles to their right, but Vivar was hurrying now and was unwilling to turn aside. They pushed through a brake of trees and Sharpe wondered why the Spaniard had not thought it necessary to throw picquets ahead of the marching men, but he assumed Vivar must be certain that no Frenchmen had yet penetrated this far from the main roads. He did not like to mention it, for the atmosphere was strained enough between them.

They crossed the wider valley and began to climb again. Vivar was using tracks he had known since childhood, tracks that climbed from the frozen fields to a treacherous mountain road which zigzagged perilously up the steep slope. They passed a wayside shrine where Vivar crossed himself. His men followed his example, as did the Irishmen among his greenjackets. There were fifteen of them; fifteen troublemakers who would hate Sharpe because of Rifleman Harper.

Sergeant Williams must have had much the same thoughts, for he caught up with Sharpe and, with a sheepish expression, fell into step with him. ‘It wasn’t Harps’s fault, sir.’

‘What wasn’t?’

‘What happened yesterday, sir.’

Sharpe knew the Sergeant was trying to make peace, but his embarrassment at his loss of dignity made his response harsh. ‘You mean you were all agreed?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You all agreed to murder an officer?’

Williams flinched from the accusation. ‘It wasn’t like that, sir.’

‘Don’t tell me what it was like, you bastard! If you were all agreed, Sergeant, then you all deserve a flogging, even if none of you had the guts to help Harper.’

Williams did not like the charge of cowardice. ‘Harps insisted on doing it alone, sir. He said it should be a fair fight or none at all.’

Sharpe was too angry to be affected by this curious revelation of a mutineer’s honour. ‘You want me to weep for him?’ He knew he had handled these men wrongly, utterly wrongly, but he did not know how else he could have behaved. Perhaps Captain Murray had been right. Perhaps officers were born to it, perhaps you needed privileged birth to have Vivar’s easy authority, and Sharpe’s resentment made him snap at the greenjackets who shambled past him on the wet road. ‘Stop straggling! You’re bloody soldiers, not prinking choirboys. Pick your bloody feet up! Move it!’

They moved. One of the greenjackets muttered a word of command and the rest fell into step, shouldered arms, and began to march as only the Light Infantry could march. They were showing the Lieutenant that they were still the best. They were showing their derision for him by displaying their skill and Major Vivar’s good humour was restored by the arrogant demonstration. He watched the greenjackets scatter his own men aside, then called for them to slow down and resume their place at the rear of the column. He was still laughing when Sharpe caught up with him.

‘You sounded like a Sergeant, Lieutenant,’ Vivar said.

‘I was a Sergeant once. I was the best God-damned bloody Sergeant in the God-damned bloody army.’

The Spaniard was astonished. ‘You were a Sergeant?’

‘Do you think the son of a whore would be allowed to join as an officer? I was a Sergeant, and a private before that.’

Vivar stared at the Englishman as though he had suddenly sprouted horns. ‘I didn’t know your army promoted from the ranks?’ Whatever anger he had felt with Sharpe an hour or so before evaporated into a fascinated curiosity.

‘It’s rare. But men like me don’t become real officers, Major. It’s a reward, you see, for being a fool. For being stupidly brave. And then they make us into Drillmasters or Quartermasters. They think we can manage those tasks. We’re not given fighting commands.’ Sharpe’s bitterness was rank in the cold morning, and he supposed he was making the self-pitying confession because it explained his failures to this competent Spanish officer. ‘They think we all take to drink, and perhaps we do. Who wants to be an officer, anyway?’

But Vivar was not interested in Sharpe’s misery. ‘So you’ve seen much fighting?’

‘In India. And in Portugal last year.’

Vivar’s opinion of Sharpe was changing. Till now he had seen the Englishman as an ageing, unsuccessful Lieutenant who had failed to either buy or win promotion. Now he saw that Sharpe’s promotion had been extraordinary, far beyond the dreams of a common man. ‘Do you like battle?’

It seemed an odd question to Sharpe, but he answered it as best he could. ‘I have no other skill.’

‘Then I think you will make a good officer, Lieutenant. There’ll be much fighting before Napoleon is sent down to roast in hell.’

They climbed another mile, until the slope flattened out and the troops trudged between immense rocks that loomed above the road. Vivar, his friendliness restored, told Sharpe that a battle had been fought in this high place where the eagles nested. The Moors had used this same road and the Christian archers had ambushed them from the rocks on either side. ‘We drove them back and made the very road stink with their blood.’ Vivar stared at the towering bluffs as if the stone still echoed with the screams of dying pagans. ‘That must be nearly nine hundred years ago.’ He spoke as if it were yesterday, and he himself had carried a sword to the fight. ‘Each year the villagers celebrate a Mass to remember the event.’

‘There’s a village here?’

‘A mile beyond the gorge. We can rest there.’

Sharpe saw what a magnificent site the canyon made for an ambush. The Christian forces, hidden in the high rocks, would have had an eagle’s view of the road and the Moors, climbing to the gorge, would have been watched every step of the way to the killing arrows. ‘And how do you know the French aren’t waiting for us?’ Emboldened by Vivar’s renewed affability, he raised the question which had worried him earlier. ‘We’ve got no picquets.’

‘Because the French won’t have reached this far into Spain,’ Vivar said confidently, ‘and if they had, then the villagers would have sent warning down all the roads, and even if the warnings missed us, we’d smell the French horses.’ The French, always careless of their cavalry horses, drove them until their saddle and crupper sores could be smelt half a mile away. ‘One day,’ Vivar added cheerfully, ‘the French will flog their last horse to death and we’ll ride over that loathsome country.’ The thought gave him a renewed energy and he turned towards the marching men. ‘Not far before you can rest!’

At which point, from above the gorge where the Moors had been ambushed, and in front of Sharpe where the road led down towards the pilgrim way, the French opened fire.