Sharpe’s Gold: The Destruction of Almeida, August 1810

Ayres thought about his reply. The village was deserted, the inhabitants gone away from the French attack, but absence was not a relinquishing of ownership. He shook his head. ‘The chicken is Portuguese property, sir.’ He turned again. ‘Hang him!’

‘Halt!’ Sharpe bellowed and again movement stopped. ‘You’re not going to hang him, so just go your way.’

Ayres swivelled back to Sharpe. ‘He was caught redhanded and the bastard will hang. Your men are probably a pack of bloody thieves and they need an example and, by God, they will get one!’ He raised himself in his stirrups and shouted at the Company. ‘You will see him hang! And if you steal, then you will hang too!’

A click interrupted him. He looked down and the anger in his face was replaced by astonishment. Sharpe held his Baker rifle, cocked, so that the barrel was pointing at Ayres.

‘Let him go, Lieutenant.’

‘Have you gone mad?’

Ayres had gone white, had sagged back into his saddle. Sergeant Harper, instinctively, came and stood beside Sharpe and ignored the hand that waved him away. Ayres stared at the two men. Both tall, both with hard, fighters’ faces, and a memory tickled at him. He looked at Sharpe, at the face that appeared to have a perpetually mocking expression, caused by the scar that ran down the right cheek, and he suddenly remembered. Wild chickens, bird-catchers! The South Essex Light Company. Were these the two men who had captured the Eagle? Who had hacked their way into a French regiment and come out with the standard? He could believe it.

Sharpe watched the Lieutenant’s eyes waver and knew that he had won, but it was a victory that would cost him dearly. The army did not look kindly on men who held rifles on provosts, even empty rifles.

Ayres pushed Batten forward. ‘Have your thief, Captain. We shall meet again.’

Sharpe lowered the rifle. Ayres waited until Batten was clear of the horses, then wrenched the reins and led his men towards Celorico. ‘You’ll hear from me!’ His words were flung back. Sharpe could sense the trouble like a boiling, black cloud on the horizon. He turned to Batten.

‘Did you steal that bloody hen?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Batten flapped a hand after the provost. ‘He took it, sir.’ He made it sound unfair.

‘I wish he’d bloody taken you. I wish he’d bloody spread your guts across the bloody landscape.’ Batten backed away from Sharpe’s anger. ‘What are the bloody rules, Batten?’

The eyes blinked at Sharpe. ‘Rules, sir?’

‘You know the bloody rules. Tell me.’

The army issued regulations that were inches thick, but Sharpe gave his men three rules. They were simple, they worked, and if broken the men knew they could expect punishment. Batten cleared his throat.

‘To fight well, sir. Not to get drunk without permission, sir. And –’

‘Go on.’

‘Not to steal, sir, except from the enemy or when starving, sir.’

‘Were you starving?’

Batten clearly wanted to say he was, but there were still two days’ rations in every man’s haversack. ‘No, sir.’

Sharpe hit him, all his frustration pouring into one fist that slammed Batten’s chest, winded him, and knocked him gasping into the wet road. ‘You’re a bloody fool, Batten, a cringing, miserable, whoreson, slimy fool.’ He turned away from the man, whose musket had fallen into the mud. ‘Company! March!’

They marched behind the tall Rifleman as Batten picked himself up, brushed ineffectively at the water that had flowed into the lock of his gun, and then shambled after the Company. He pushed himself into his file and muttered at his silent companions. ‘He’s not supposed to hit me.’

‘Shut your mouth, Batten!’ Harper’s voice was as harsh as his Captain’s. ‘You know the rules. Would you rather be kicking your useless heels now?’

The Sergeant shouted at the Company to pick up their feet, bellowed the steps at them, and all the time he wondered what faced Sharpe now. A complaint from that bloody provost would mean an enquiry and probably a court-martial. And all for the miserable Batten, a failed horse-coper, whom Harper would gladly have killed himself. Lieutenant Knowles seemed to share Harper’s thoughts, for he fell in step beside the Irishman and looked at him with a troubled face. ‘All for one chicken, Sergeant?’

Harper looked down at the young Lieutenant. ‘I doubt it, sir.’ He turned to the ranks. ‘Daniel!’

Hagman, one of the Riflemen, broke ranks and fell in beside the Sergeant. He was the oldest man in the Company, in his forties, but the best marksman. A Cheshireman, raised as a poacher, Hagman could shoot the buttons off a French General’s coat at three hundred yards. ‘Sarge?’

‘How many chickens were there?’

Hagman flashed his toothless grin, glanced at the Company, then up at Harper. The Sergeant was a fair man, never demanding more than a fair share. ‘Dozen, Sarge.’

Harper looked at Knowles. ‘There you are, sir. At least sixteen wild chickens there. Probably twenty. God knows what they were doing there, why the owners didn’t take them.’

‘Difficult to catch, sir, chickens.’ Hagman chuckled. ‘That all, Sarge?’

Harper grinned down at the Rifleman. ‘A leg each for the officers, Daniel. And not the stringy ones.’

Hagman glanced at Knowles. ‘Very good, sir. Leg each.’ He went back to the ranks.

Knowles chuckled to himself. A leg each for the officers meant a good breast for the Sergeant, chicken broth for everyone, and nothing for Private Batten. And for Sharpe? Knowles felt his spirits drop. The war was lost, it was still raining, and tomorrow Captain Richard Sharpe would be in provost trouble, real trouble, right up to his sabre-scarred neck.

CHAPTER TWO

If anyone needed a symbol of impending defeat, then the Church of São Paolo in Celorico, the temporary headquarters of the South Essex, offered it in full. Sharpe stood in the choir watching the priest whitewash a gorgeous rood-screen. The screen was made of solid silver, ancient and intricate, a gift from some long-forgotten parishioner whose family’s faces were those of the grieving women and disciples who stared up at the crucifix. The priest, standing on a trestle, dripping thick lime paint down his cassock, looked from Sharpe to the screen, and shrugged.

‘It took three months to clean off last time.’

‘Last time?’

‘When the French left.’ The priest sounded bitter and he dabbed angrily with the bristles at the delicate traceries. ‘If they knew it was silver they would carve it into pieces and take it away.’ He splashed the nailed, hanging figure with a slap of paint and then, as if in apology, moved the brush to his left hand so that his right could sketch a perfunctory sign of the cross on his spattered gown.

‘Perhaps they won’t get this far.’

It sounded unconvincing, even to Sharpe, and the priest did not bother to reply. He just gave a humourless laugh and dipped the brush into his bucket. They know, thought Sharpe; they all know that the French are coming and the British falling back. The priest made him feel guilty, as if he were personally betraying the town and its inhabitants, and he moved down the church into the darkness by the main door where the Battalion’s commissariat officer was supervising the piling of fresh baked bread for the evening rations.

The door banged open, letting in the late-afternoon sunlight, and Lawford, dressed in his glittering best uniform, beckoned at Sharpe. ‘Ready?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Major Forrest was waiting outside and he smiled nervously at Sharpe. ‘Don’t worry, Richard.’

‘Worry?’ Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable William Lawford was angry. ‘He should damned well worry.’ He looked Sharpe up and down. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

Sharpe fingered the tear in his sleeve. ‘It’s all I’ve got, sir.’

‘All? What about that new uniform! Good Lord, Richard, you look like a tramp.’

‘Uniform’s in Lisbon, sir. In store. Light Companies should travel light.’

Lawford snorted. ‘And they shouldn’t threaten provosts with rifles either. Come on, we don’t want to be late.’ He crammed the tricorne hat on to his head and returned the salute of the two sentries who had listened, amused, to his outburst.

Sharpe held up his hand. ‘One moment, sir.’ He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the gold regimental badge that the Colonel wore on his white diagonal sash. It was a new badge, commissioned by Lawford after Talavera, and showed an eagle in chains – a message to the world that the South Essex was the only regiment in the Peninsula that had captured a French standard. Sharpe stood back satisfied. ‘That’s better, sir.’

Lawford took the hint, and smiled. ‘You’re a bastard, Sharpe. Just because you captured an Eagle doesn’t mean you can do what you like.’

‘While just because some idiot is dressed up as a provost, I suppose, means that he can?’

‘Yes,’ Lawford said. ‘It does. Come on.’

It was strange, Sharpe thought, how Lawford was the sum of all he disliked about privilege and wealth, yet he liked Lawford and was content to serve him. They were the same age, thirty-three, but Lawford had always been an officer, had never worried about promotion, because he could afford the next step, and never concerned himself where the next year’s money would come from. Seven years ago, Lawford had been a Lieutenant and Richard Sharpe his Sergeant, both fighting the Mahrattas in India, and the Sergeant had kept the officer alive in the dungeons of the Tippoo Sultan. In return, Lawford taught the Sergeant to read and write and thus qualified him for a commission if ever he were foolish enough to perform some act of bravery on a battlefield that could hoist a man from the ranks into the officers’ exalted company.

Sharpe followed Lawford through the crowded streets towards Wellington’s headquarters, and seeing the Colonel’s exquisite uniform and expensive accoutrements, he wondered where they would be in another seven years. Lawford was ambitious, as was Sharpe, but the Colonel had the birth and the money for great things. He’ll be a general, Sharpe thought, and he grinned because he knew that Lawford would still need him or someone like him. Sharpe was Lawford’s eyes and his ears, his professional soldier, the man who could read the faces of the failed criminals, drunks, and desperate men who had somehow become the best infantry in the world. And more than that, Sharpe could read the ground, could read the enemy, and Lawford, for whom the army was a means to a glorious and exalted end, relied on his ex-Sergeant’s instinct and talent. Lawford, Sharpe decided, had done well in the last year. He had taken over an embittered, brutalized, and frightened Regiment and turned them into a unit as good as any battalion in the line. Sharpe’s Eagle had helped. It had wiped out the stain of Valdelacasa, where the South Essex, under Sir Henry Simmerson, had lost a colour and their pride; but it was not just the Eagle. Lawford, with his politician’s instincts, had trusted the men while he worked them hard, had given them back their confidence. And the badge, which every man wore on his shako, shared the glory of Talavera with every soldier in the Regiment.

Lawford led them through the press of officers and townspeople. Major Forrest kept glancing at Sharpe with an avuncular smile that made him look, more than ever, like a kindly country vicar dressed as a soldier for the village pageant. He tried to reassure Sharpe. ‘It won’t come to a court-martial, Richard; it can’t! You’ll probably have to apologize, or something, and it will all blow over.’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘I won’t bloody apologize, sir.’

Lawford stopped and turned round, his finger pushed into Sharpe’s chest. ‘If you are ordered to apologize, Richard Sharpe, you will damned well apologize. You will grovel, squirm, cringe and toady to order. Do you understand?’

Sharpe clicked the heels of his tall French boots. ‘Sir!’

Lawford exploded in rare anger. ‘Christ Almighty, Richard, don’t you bloody understand? This is a general-court-martial offence. Ayres has screamed his head off to the Provost Marshal and the Provost Marshal has screamed to the General that the authority of the provost must not be undermined. And the General, Mr Sharpe, is rather sympathetic to that point of view.’ Lawford’s passion had attracted a small crowd of interested spectators. His anger faded as suddenly as it had erupted, but he still jabbed his finger into Sharpe’s chest. ‘The General wants more provosts, not fewer, and he is understandably not happy with the thought that Captain Richard Sharpe is declaring open season on them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Lawford was not placated by Sharpe’s crestfallen expression, which the Colonel suspected was not motivated by true regret. ‘And do not think, Captain Sharpe, that just because the General ordered us here he will look kindly on your action. He’s saved your miserable skin often enough in the past and he may not be of a mind to do it again. Understand?’

There was a burst of applause from a group of cavalry officers standing by a wine shop. Lawford shot them a withering look and strode on, followed by someone’s ironic mimicry of the bugle call for the full charge. Sharpe followed. Lawford could be right. The General had summoned the South Essex, no one knew why, and Sharpe had hoped that it was for some special task, something to wipe out the memory of the winter’s boredom. But the scene with Lieutenant Ayres could change that for Sharpe, condemn him to a court-martial, to a future far more dreary even than patrol work on an empty border.

Four ox-carts stood outside Wellington’s headquarters, another reminder that the army would move soon, but otherwise everything was peaceful. The only unusual object was a tall mast that jutted from the roof of the house, topped by a crosspiece, from which hung four tarred sheep bladders. Sharpe looked at them curiously. This was the first time he had seen the new telegraph and he wished that it was working so that he could watch the black, inflated bladders running up and down on their ropes and sending messages, via other similar stations, to the far-off fortress of Almeida and to the troops guarding the river Coa. The system had been copied from the Royal Navy and sailors had been sent to man the telegraph. Each letter of the alphabet had its own arrangement of the four black bags, and common words, like ‘regiment’, ‘enemy’, and ‘general’, were abbreviated to a single display that could be seen, miles away, through a huge naval telescope. Sharpe had heard that a message could travel twenty miles in less than ten minutes and he wondered, as they came close to the two bored sentries guarding the General’s headquarters, what other modern devices would be thrown up by the necessity of the long war against Napoleon.

He forgot the telegraph as they stepped into the cool hallway of the house and he felt a twinge of fear at the coming interview. In a curious fashion his career had been linked to Wellington. They had shared battlefields in Flanders, India, and now in the Peninsula, and in his pack Sharpe carried a telescope that had been a present from the General. There was a small, curved, brass plate let into the walnut tube and on it was inscribed IN GRATITUDE. AW. SEPTEMBER 23RD, 1803. Sir Arthur Wellesley believed that Sergeant Sharpe had saved his life, though Sharpe, if he was honest, could remember little of the event except that the General’s horse had been piked and the Indian bayonets and curved tulwars were coming forward and what else did a Sergeant do except get in the way and fight back? That had been the battle of Assaye, a bastard of a fight, and Sharpe had watched his officers die in the shot from the ornate guns and, his blood up, he had taken the survivors on and the enemy had been beaten. Only just, by God, but victory was victory. After that he was made into an officer, dressed up like a prize bull, and the same man who had rewarded him then must decide his fate now.

‘His Lordship will see you now.’ A suave young Major smiled at them through the door as though they had been invited for tea. It had been a year since Sharpe had seen Wellington, but nothing had changed: still the table covered with papers, the same blue eyes that gave nothing away above the beak of a nose, and the handsome mouth that was grudging with a smile. Sharpe was glad there were no provosts in the room so at least he would not have to grovel in front of the General, but even so he felt apprehensive of this quiet man’s anger and he watched, cautiously, as the quill pen was laid down and the expressionless eyes looked up at him. There was no recognition in them.

‘Did you threaten Lieutenant Ayres with a rifle, Captain Sharpe?’ There was the faintest stress on the ‘Captain’.

‘Yes, sir.’

Wellington nodded. He looked tired. He stood up and moved to the window, peering through as though expecting something. There was silence in the room, broken only by the jingle of chains and rumbling of wheels as a battery of artillery drove by in the street. It struck Sharpe that the General was on edge. Wellington turned back to him.

‘Do you know, Captain Sharpe, the damage it does our cause if our soldiers thieve or rape?’ His voice was scathingly quiet.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I hope you do, Captain Sharpe, I hope you do.’ He sat down again. ‘Our enemies are encouraged to steal because that is the only way they can be fed. The result is that they are hated wherever they march. I spend money – my God, how much money – on providing rations and transport and buying food from the populace so that our soldiers have no need to steal. We do this so they will be welcomed by the local people and helped by them. Do you understand?’

Sharpe wished the lecture would end. ‘Yes, sir.’

There was suddenly a strange noise overhead, a shuffling and rattling, and Wellington’s eyes shot to the ceiling as if he could read what the noise might mean. It occurred to Sharpe that the telegraph was working, the inflated bladders running up and down the ropes, bringing a coded message from the troops facing the French. The General listened for a few seconds, then dropped his face to Sharpe again. ‘Your gazette has not yet been ratified.’

There were few things the General could have said more calculated to worry Sharpe. Officially he was still a Lieutenant, only a Lieutenant, and his Captaincy had been awarded by a gazette from Wellington a year ago. If the Horse Guards in Whitehall did not approve, and he knew they usually rejected such irregular promotions, then he was soon to be a Lieutenant again. He said nothing as Wellington watched him. If this were a warning shot, then he would take it in silence.

The General sighed, picked up a piece of paper, put it down again. ‘The soldier has been punished?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He thought of Batten, winded, on the ground.

‘Then do not, pray, let it happen again. Not even, Captain Sharpe, to wild chickens.’

My God, thought Sharpe, he knows everything that happens in this army. There was silence. Was that the end of it? No court-martial? No apology? He coughed and Wellington looked up.

‘Yes?’

‘I was expecting more, sir. Court-martials and drumheads.’

Sharpe heard Lawford stir in embarrassment but the General did not seem worried. He stood up and used one of his few, thin smiles.

‘I would quite happily, Captain Sharpe, string up you and that damned Sergeant. But I suspect we need you. What do you think of our chances this summer?’

Again there was silence. The change of tack had taken them all by surprise. Lawford cleared his throat. ‘There’s clearly some concern, my lord, about the intentions of the enemy and our response.’

Another wintry smile. ‘The enemy intend to push us into the sea, and soon. How do we respond?’ Wellington, it occurred to Sharpe, was using up time. He was waiting for something or someone.

Lawford was feeling uncomfortable. The question was one he would rather hear answered by the General. ‘Bring them to battle, sir?’

‘Thirty thousand troops, plus twenty-five thousand untried Portuguese, against three hundred and fifty thousand men?’

Wellington let the figures hang in the air like the dust that shifted silently in the slanting sunlight over his desk. Overhead the feet of the men operating the telegraph still shuffled. The figures, Sharpe knew, were unfair. Masséna needed thousands of those men to contain the Guerrilleros, the partisans, but even so the disparity in numbers was appalling. Wellington sniffed. There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in.’

‘Sir.’

The Major who had shown them into the room handed a slip of paper to the General, who read it, closed his eyes momentarily, and sighed.

‘The rest of the message is still coming?’

‘Yes, sir. But the gist is there.’

The Major left and Wellington leaned back in his chair. The news had been bad, Sharpe could tell, but not, perhaps, unexpected. He remembered that Wellington had once said that running a campaign was like driving a team of horses with a rope harness. The ropes kept breaking and all a General could do was tie a knot and keep going. A rope was unravelling, here and now, an important one, and Sharpe watched the fingers drum on the edge of the table. The eyes came up to Sharpe again, flicked to Lawford.

‘Colonel?’

‘Sir?’

‘I am borrowing Captain Sharpe from you, and his Company. I doubt whether I need them for more than one month.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Lawford looked at Sharpe and shrugged.

Wellington stood again. He seemed to be relieved, as if a decision had been made. ‘The war is not lost, gentlemen, though I know my confidence is not universally shared.’ He sounded bitter, angry with the defeatists whose letters home were quoted in the newspapers. ‘We may bring the French to battle, and if we do we will win.’ Sharpe never doubted it. Of all Britain’s generals this was the only one who knew how to beat the French. ‘If we win we will only delay their advance.’ He opened a map, stared at it blankly, and let it snap shut again into a roll. ‘No, gentlemen, our survival depends on something else. Something that you, Captain Sharpe, must bring me. Must, do you hear? Must.’

Sharpe had never heard the General so insistent. ‘Yes, sir.’

Lawford coughed. ‘And if he fails, my lord?’

The wintry smile again. ‘He had better not.’ He looked at Sharpe. ‘You are not the only card in my hand, Mr Sharpe, but you are … important. There are things happening, gentlemen, that this army does not know about. If it did it would be generally more optimistic.’ He sat down again, leaving them mystified. Sharpe suspected the mystification was on purpose. He was spreading some counter-rumours to the defeatists, and that, too, was part of a general’s job. He looked up again. ‘You are now under my orders, Captain Sharpe. Your men must be ready to march this night. They must not be encumbered with wives or unnecessary baggage, and they must have full ammunition.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you will be back here in one hour. You have two tasks to perform.’

Sharpe wondered if he was to be told what they were. ‘Sir?’

‘First, Mr Sharpe, you will receive your orders. Not from me but from an old companion of yours.’ Wellington saw Sharpe’s quizzical look. ‘Major Hogan.’

Sharpe’s face betrayed his pleasure. Hogan, the engineer, the quiet Irishman who was a friend, whose sense Sharpe had leaned on in the difficult days leading to Talavera. Wellington saw the pleasure and tried to puncture it. ‘But before that, Mr Sharpe, you will apologize to Lieutenant Ayres.’ He watched for Sharpe’s reaction.

‘But of course, sir. I had always planned to.’ Sharpe looked shocked at the thought that he might ever have contemplated another course of action and, through his innocently wide eyes, wondered if he saw a flicker of amusement behind the General’s cold, blue gaze.

Wellington looked away, to Lawford, and with his usual disarming speed suddenly became affable. ‘You’re well, Colonel?’