Sharpe’s Regiment: The Invasion of France, June to November 1813

‘But you’re with the South Essex, yes?’

‘Yes, your Royal Highness.’ Then Sharpe remembered that after the first answer he was supposed to call him ‘sir’. ‘Sir,’ he added.

‘Yes?’

Sharpe thought he was going to faint because the fat, middle-aged man was leaning forward in the belief that Sharpe wished to say something. Sharpe’s right hand fidgeted, wanting to cross his body and hold the sword handle. ‘Very honoured, your Majesty.’ Sharpe was sure he was going to faint. The room was a thick, indistinct whirl of powder, white faces, music and heat.

‘No, no, no, no! I’m honoured. Yes, indeed! The honour is entirely mine, Major Sharpe!’ The Prince of Wales snapped his fingers, smiled at Sharpe, and the small orchestra abruptly stopped playing the delicate melody that had accompanied Sharpe’s lonely walk up the carpet and, instead, started to play a military tune. The music was accompanied by gasps from the audience, gasps that were followed by more applause that grew and was swelled by cheers that forced the musicians to play even louder.

‘Look!’ The Prince of Wales gestured to Sharpe’s right. ‘Look!’

The clapping continued. Sharpe turned. A passage had been made in the applauding crowd and, through it, marching in the old-fashioned goose-step that Sharpe had not seen in nearly twenty years, were three soldiers in uniforms of such pristine perfection that they must have been sewn onto their upright bodies. They had old-fashioned powdered hair, high stocks, but it was not the three soldiers, impressive and impractical though they were, that had started the new applause.

‘Bravo!’ The shouts were louder as Sharpe stared at what the central soldier carried in his hands.

Sharpe had seen that object before, on a hot day in a valley filled with smoke and foul with the stench of roasting flesh. The wounded, he remembered, had been unable to escape the grass-fires and so they had burned where they lay on the battlefield, the flames exploding their ammunition pouches and spreading the fire further.

He had seen it before, but not like this. Tonight the staff was oiled and polished, and the gilt ornament shone in the candlelight. Before, on that hot day when the musket wads had burned and the wounded had screamed for Jesus or their mothers, Sharpe had held the battered, bloody staff, and he had scythed it like a halberd, cutting down the enemy, while beside him, screaming in his wild Irish tongue, Sergeant Harper had slaughtered the standard-bearers and Sharpe had taken this Eagle, this first French Eagle to be captured by His Majesty’s forces.

Now it was polished. About the base of the Eagle was a laurel wreath. It seemed unfitting. Once those proud eyes and hooked beak and half-spread wings had been on a battlefield, and it still belonged there, not here, not with these fat, sweating, applauding people who stared and smiled and nodded at him as the staff was thrust towards him.

‘Take it! Take it!’ the Prince Regent said.

Sharpe felt like a circus animal. He took it. He lowered the staff and he stared at the Eagle, no bigger than a dinner plate, and he saw the one bent wingtip where he had struck a man’s skull with the standard, and he felt oddly sorry for the Eagle. Like him it was out of place here. It belonged in the smoke of battle. The men who had defended it had been brave, they had fought as well as men could fight, and it was not right that these gloating fools should applaud this humbled trophy.

‘You must remind me of everything that happened! Just exactly!’ The Prince was struggling from the dais, coming towards Sharpe. ‘I insist on everything, everything! Over supper!’ To Sharpe’s horror the Prince, who, during his father’s madness, was the Regent and acting monarch of England, put an arm about his shoulders and led him across the carpet. ‘Every single small detail, Major Sharpe, in utter detail. To supper! Bring your bird! Oh yes, it’s not every day we heroes meet. Come! Come!’

Sharpe went to supper with a Prince.

There were twenty-eight courses in the supper, most of them lukewarm because the distance from the kitchens was so great. There was champagne, wine, and more champagne. The musicians still played.

The Prince of Wales was extraordinarily solicitous of Sharpe. He fed Sharpe’s plate with morsels, encouraged his stories, chided when he thought Sharpe was being modest, and finally asked the Rifleman why he had come to England.

Sharpe took a breath and told him. He felt a small moment of pleasure, for he was doing what he had come to do; saving a Regiment. He saw some frowns about the table when he spoke of the missing Battalion, as if the subject was unfitting for such an evening, but the Prince was delighted. ‘Some of my men are missing, eh? That won’t do? Is Fenner here? Fenner? Find Fenner!’ Sharpe suddenly felt that blaze of victory, like the moment in battle when the enemy’s rear ranks are going back and the front was about to crumple. Here, in the Chinese Dining Room of Carlton House, Sharpe had persuaded the Prince Regent himself to put the question which Sharpe himself had so dreaded taking to Lord Fenner. ‘Ah! Fenner!’

A courtier was conducting the Secretary of State at War towards the Prince’s table.

Lord Fenner was a tall man, in court dress, with a thin, pale face dominated by a prominent, hooked nose. There was, Sharpe thought, a worried expression on Lord Fenner’s face that seemed perpetual, as though he solemnly carried the nation’s burdens on his thin shoulders. He was, Sharpe guessed, in his early fifties. His voice, when he spoke to the Prince, was high and nasal; a voice of effortless aristocracy.

The Prince demanded to know why Lord Fenner wanted to abolish the South Essex. ‘Out with it, man!’

Fenner glanced at Sharpe, the glance of a man measuring an enemy. ‘It’s not our wish, sir, rather the Regiment’s own.’

The Prince turned surprised eyes on Sharpe, then looked again to Lord Fenner. ‘Their own wish?’

‘A paucity of recruits, sir.’

‘There were plenty of recruits!’ Sharpe said.

Lord Fenner smiled a pitying smile. ‘Under-age, undernourished, and unsuitable.’

The Prince was beginning to regret his sally on Sharpe’s behalf, but he gallantly persisted with the attack. ‘And the Second Battalion’s missing, eh? Tell me about that, Fenner!’

‘Missing, sir?’ Lord Fenner glanced at Sharpe, then back to the Prince. ‘Not missing, sir. Gone.’

‘Gone? Gone! Vanished into thin air, yes?’

Fenner gave a smile that subtly mixed boredom with sycophancy. ‘It exists on paper, sir.’ He made the subject sound trivial. ‘It’s a normal bureaucratic procedure. It enables us to assign stray men who would not otherwise be paid until they can be found a proper billet. I’m sure if Major Sharpe is fascinated by our paperwork I can arrange for a clerk to explain it to him. Or indeed to your Royal Highness.’ The last statement verged on rudeness, hinting that the Prince Regent, despite being Britain’s monarch while his father was ill, had no authority over the army or War Office.

No authority, but influence. The Prince’s brother, the Duke of York, commanded the army, while the War Office was run by politicians. The Prince Regent commanded nothing, though he had the massive power of patronage. Sharpe had tried, indeed had succeeded, in harnessing that influence, but Lord Fenner seemed untroubled by it. He smiled. ‘Your brother, sir, would doubtless welcome your interest?’

‘Oh Lord!’ the Prince laughed. Everyone knew of the bad blood that existed between the Prince and the Duke of York, the army Commander in Chief. ‘Freddie thinks the army belongs to him!’ The prospect of speaking to his brother was obviously hateful. ‘So, Fenner, there’s no missing Battalion, eh?’

‘I fear not, sir.’

The Prince turned his face that, extraordinarily, was thick with cream and powder, towards Sharpe. ‘You hear that, Major? Lost in a welter of paperwork, eh?’

Lord Fenner was watching Sharpe. He gave a smile so thin-lipped that it seemed like a threat. ‘Of course, sir, we shall do all we can to find Major Sharpe a new Regiment.’

‘Of course!’ The Prince beamed at Sharpe, then at Fenner. ‘And quickly, Fenner! Sharply, even!’

Fenner smiled politely at the jest. ‘You are in London, Major?’

‘At the Rose Tavern.’

‘You will receive fresh orders tomorrow.’ Major Sharpe had tried to outflank Lord Fenner and had failed. The Prince of Wales would not be allowed to interfere with the War Office or Horse Guards, and Lord Fenner’s tone suggested that the orders would be a harsh revenge for Sharpe’s temerity.

‘Send him to Spain, you hear me!’ The Prince waved peremptorily at Fenner, gobbled delightedly as a servant poured more wine, then put a fat hand on Sharpe’s arm. ‘A vain journey, eh Major? But it gives us a chance to meet again, yes?’ Sharpe was startled by the word ‘again’, but a warning look from Lord John Rossendale, who sat across the table, made him give a non-committal answer.

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘Tell me, Major, was it not hot on the day we took the Eagle?’

Lord John was making furious signs at Sharpe not to protest the word ‘we’. Sharpe nodded. ‘Very hot, sir.’

‘I do believe I remember it! Indeed, yes! Very hot!’ The Prince nodded at his companions. ‘Very hot!’

Sharpe wondered if the man, like his father, had lost his wits. He was speaking as if he had been there, in that valley of the Portina where the wounded sobbed for mercy. There had been small black snakes, Sharpe remembered, wriggling away from the grass-fires. His mind seemed a whirl of black snakes, memories, and sudden shock because his journey had been useless. Lord Fenner would order him away tomorrow; there would be no replacements for the South Essex, and a Regiment would die.

The Prince nudged Sharpe and smiled again. ‘We shocked them, Major, yes?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What a day, what a day!’ The Prince shook his head, sifting white powder from his hair into Sharpe’s wine. ‘Ah! A syllabub! Splendid! Serve the Major some. We have a French chef, Major. Did you know that?’

It was four in the morning before Sharpe escaped. He had been invited to play whist, refused on the grounds that he did not know how, and he only managed to leave the Prince’s company by promising to attend a levée in two days’ time.

He stood in the entrance of Carlton House in a mood of angry self-mockery. He had endured the flummery, the foolery, and he had failed. Lord Fenner, even faced with the Prince’s demand, had flicked the questions away as though they were flies. Fenner, Sharpe was sure, had also lied. Either that or Sergeant Carew, at Chelmsford, had not seen the recruiting party, but Sharpe believed Carew, he did not believe Fenner.

Sharpe had come to England for nothing. He stood, dressed in a uniform he had not wanted to buy, his head thick with the fumes of cigar smoke, and he reflected that, far from winning the victory he had anticipated at the moment when the Prince summoned Lord Fenner, he had been effortlessly beaten.

He went down the steps, acknowledging the salutes of the sentries, and out into Pall Mall where, to the amazement of Europe, gas lights flared and hissed in the night. It was warm still, the eastern sky just lightening into dawn over the haze of London’s smoke. He walked towards the dawn, his boot-heels making echoes in the empty street.

But not quite empty, for a carriage rattled behind him. He heard the hooves, the chains, the wheels, but he did not turn round. He supposed it was another of the Prince’s guests going home in the dawn.

The carriage slowed as it reached him. The coachman, high on his tasselled box, pulled on the reins to stop the vehicle, and Sharpe, annoyed by the intrusion, hurried. The coachman let the horses go faster until the carriage was beside the walking Rifleman and the door suddenly opened to flood yellow lantern-light onto the pavement.

‘Major Sharpe?’

He turned. The interior of the carriage was upholstered in dark blue and in its plushness, like a jewel in a padded box, was the slim woman with the startling green eyes. She was alone.

He touched the peak of his shako. ‘Ma’am.’

‘Perhaps I can help you home?’

‘I’ve a long way to go, Ma’am.’

‘I don’t.’ She gestured at the seat opposite her.

He paused, astonished at her boldness, then thought that such a simple conquest would be a fitting consolation on this night of failure. He climbed into the carriage, and went into the London night.

Much later, after the sun had risen and the morning was half gone, long after the time when Sharpe had told Harper to meet him at the Rose Tavern, she rolled onto him. Her red hair was tousled about her mocking face. ‘You’re Prinny’s latest toy. And mine.’ She said it bitterly, as though she hated herself for being in bed with him. She had made love as though she had not made love in a decade; she had been feverish, clawing, hungry, yet afterwards, even though stark naked, she had somehow managed to imply that she did Sharpe a great favour and that he did her a small one. She had not smiled since they reached her bedroom, nor did she smile now. ‘I suppose you’ll boast about this with your soldier friends?’

‘No.’ He stroked the skin of her back, his hands gentle in the deep, slim curve of her waist. She was, he thought, a beautiful, embittered woman, no more than his own age. She had not given him her name, refusing to answer the question.

She dug her fingernails into his shoulders. ‘You’ll tell them you bedded one of Prinny’s ladies, won’t you?’

‘Are you?’

She gave a gesture of disdain. ‘Prinny only likes grandmothers, Major. The older the better. He likes them rancid and ancient.’ She traced the scar on his face with one of her sharp nails. ‘So what did you think of Lord Fenner?’

‘He’s a lying bastard.’

For the first time she laughed. She searched his face with her green eyes. ‘You’re accurate, Major. He’s also a politician. He’d eat dung for money or power. How do you know he’s lying?’

He still stroked her, running his hands from her shoulderblades to her thighs. ‘He said my Second Battalion was disbanded, a paper convenience. It isn’t.’

‘How do you know?’ She said it with the trace of a sneer, as if a simple soldier back from the wars would know nothing.

‘Because they’re still recruiting. Disbanded regiments don’t recruit.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘Look for them.’

She stared at him, then, in a gesture that was surprisingly gentle, pushed his dark hair away from his face. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t?’

She seemed to sneer again, then hooked her legs round his. ‘Stay in London, Major. Prinny’s court is full of little whores. Enjoy yourself. Didn’t Fenner say he’d help you find another regiment? Let him.’

‘Why?’

‘Turn over.’ Her hands were pulling at him, her nails tearing at his skin. He felt as scarred as if he had fought a major battle.

She would not give him her name, she would only give her lean, hungry body. She was like a cat, he thought, a green-eyed, lithe cat who, when he dressed, lay naked on the silk sheets and stared at him with her mysterious, disdainful eyes. ‘Shall I give you some advice, Major Sharpe?’

He had pulled on his boots. ‘Yes.’

‘Don’t look for that Battalion, Major.’

‘So it does exist?’

‘If you say so.’ She pulled the sheets over her body. ‘Stay in London. Let Prinny slobber all over you, but don’t make an enemy of Lord Fenner.’

He smiled. ‘What can he do to me?’

‘Kill you. Don’t look for it, Major.’

He leaned down to kiss her, but she turned her face away. He straightened up. ‘I came to England to find it.’

‘Go away, Major.’ She watched him buckle on his sword. ‘There are stairs at the back, no one will see you leave. Go back to Spain!’

Sharpe stared at her from the open door. The house beyond this bedroom seemed vacant. ‘There are men in Spain who need me, who trust me.’ She stared at him, saying nothing, and he felt that his words were inadequate. ‘They’re not special men, they wouldn’t look very well in Carlton House, but they are fighting for all of you. That’s why I’m here.’

She mocked his appeal with a sneer. ‘Go away.’

‘If you know something about my Battalion, tell me.’

‘I’m telling you to go away.’ She said it savagely, as though she despised herself for having taken him to her bed. ‘Go!’

‘I’m at the Rose Tavern in Drury Lane. A letter there will reach me. I don’t need to know who you are. The Rose Tavern.’

She turned away from him again, not replying, and Sharpe, walking out into the back alley and blinking at the sudden sunlight, wished he were truly at home; in Spain, with his men, at the place where the war was being fought. This city of luxury, lies, and deceit seemed suddenly foul. He had come to London, he had achieved nothing, and he walked slowly back to Drury Lane.

CHAPTER THREE

The British soldiers, red coats bright and muskets tipped with bayonets, went into the smoke. They cheered. They charged. A drummer beat them on.

The French ran. They scrambled desperately at the hillside while, behind them, the redcoats came from the smoke to fire a single volley. Two of the French, their blue jackets unmarked, turned and fell. One gushed blood from his mouth. His arms went up. He span slowly, screaming foully, to collapse at the feet of the advancing British infantry whose boots gleamed with unnatural brilliance. A French officer, his wig awry, knelt in quivering fear and held clasped hands towards the victorious British soldiers.

‘And then, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. The cavalry!’

The orchestra went into a brazen, jaunty piece of music as four mounted men, wooden sabres in their hands, rode onto the wide stage. The audience cheered them.

The ten defeated Frenchmen, needed again, formed a line at the bottom of the plaster hill, levelled their muskets, and the four cavalrymen lined knee to knee. The limelights glared on their spurs and scabbard chains.

‘Across Vitoria’s proud plain, Ladies and Gentlemen, the thunder of their hooves was loud!’ The drums rolled menacingly. ‘Their swords were lifted to shine in the bright sunshine of that great day!’ The four sabres raggedly lifted. ‘And then, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, the pride of France was humbled, the troops of the Ogre brought down, and the world watched in awe the terrible prowess of our British Cavalry!’

The pit orchestra worked itself into a cacophonous frenzy and the four horsemen trotted over the stage, screaming and waving their sabres. The wooden blades hacked down on the ten men who, once again, squeezed their bags of false blood and strewed themselves artistically about the stage’s apron.

Sergeant Patrick Harper watched enthralled. He shook his head in admiration. ‘That’s just grand, sir.’

The drums were rolling again, louder and louder, drowning the screams of the dying actors and the excited shouts of the audience.

The back of the stage was opening up. It was, Sharpe admitted, impressive. Where, just a moment before, there had been a field of grass with some carefully arranged rock hills, all mysterious with the smoke from the small pots, now there was a magnificent castle, that, as it leaved outwards, pushed the hills and smoke aside.

The bass drum began a thunderous rhythm, a rhythm that made the audience clap with it and cheer in anticipation. The cymbals shivered the theatre, and the narrator, high on a pulpit beside the stage, raised his hands for silence.

‘My Lords! Ladies! Gentlemen! Pray silence for His Majesty, his unutterable Majesty, his foul, proud, Napoleonic Majesty, King Joseph!’

An actor, mounted on a black horse, carrying a sword and wearing on his face a scowl of utmost ferocity, pranced onto the stage and, pretending to notice the audience for the first time, stared haughtily at the packed theatre.

The stalls booed him. He spat at them, waved his sword, and the boos became louder. The horse staled.

‘King Joseph!’ the narrator cried above the threatre’s din. ‘Brother to the Ogre himself, a Bonaparte! Made King of Spain by his brother, tyrant to the proud nation of Spain, hated wherever liberty is loved!’

The audience jeered louder. Isabella, fetched from the house in Southwark, leaned on the plush cushion at the front of the box and stared in awe. She had never been inside a theatre before, and thought it was magical.

King Joseph shouted orders to the ragged file of resurrected French soldiers. ‘Kill the English! Slaughter them!’

The audience cat-called. A cannon was wheeled from the castle gateway, pointed at the audience, and a shower of sparks and smoke gushed from its muzzle.

Isabella gasped. Patrick Harper was wide-eyed with wonder at the spectacle.

The token for this box had been given to Sharpe by the landlord of the Rose Tavern. ‘You should go, Major,’ the man had said confidingly. ‘You was there, sir, it’ll bring it all back! And free oysters and champagne on the house, sir?’

Sharpe had not wanted to go, but Harper and Isabella had been desperate to see the ‘Victory at Vitoria Enacted’ and eager for Sharpe to share the delight. He had agreed for Harper’s sake and now, as the pageant neared its end, Sharpe found himself enjoying the antics far more than he had expected. The effects, he thought, were clever, while some of the girls, conveniently introduced as persecuted peasants or grieving widows into the stage’s carnage, were luminously beautiful. There were worse ways, Sharpe thought, of spending an evening.

The audience screamed in delight as King Joseph began a panicked flight about the stage. British troops, come from the wings, chased him, and he successively shed his sword, his hat, his boots, his gilded coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, and finally, to the delighted shrieks of the women in the audience, his breeches. All that was left to him was a tiny French tricolour about his arse. He stood shivering on top of the cannon, clutching the flag. The drums rolled. A British soldier reached for the small flag, the drum-roll grew louder, louder, the audience shouted for the soldier to pull the flag away, there was a clash of cymbals, and Isabella screamed in shock and delight as the flag was snatched away at the very instant that the curtain fell.

The audience chanted for more, the orchestra swelled to fill the tiers of boxes with triumphal music, and the curtain, after a brief pause, lifted again to show the whole cast, King Joseph cloaked now, facing the audience with linked hands to sing ‘Proud Britons’. A great Union flag was lowered above their heads.

Sharpe was thinking of a sinuous, hungry, beautiful woman who had clawed at him and told him to go back to Spain. Sharpe wanted nothing more, but he knew that Lord Fenner had lied, that the Second Battalion existed, and, sitting here watching the flummery on stage he had suddenly dreamed up the perfect way to find them. Actors and costumes had put the thought into his head, and he told himself that he was foolish to think of meddling with things he did not understand. The mysterious, green-eyed woman had said that Lord Fenner would kill him, and though that threat did not worry Sharpe, nevertheless he sensed that there were enemies in this, his homeland, every bit as deadly as Napoleon’s blue-jacketed troops.

Isabella gasped and clapped. From either wing of the stage, sitting on trapezes slung on wires, two women dressed as Goddesses of Victory were swooping over the heads of the actors. The Goddesses were scantily clad, the gauze fluttering over their bare legs as they swung above the linked actors and dropped laurel wreaths at their feet. The men in the audience cheered whenever the motion of the two trapezes peeled the gauze away from the Goddesses’ legs.

The Goddesses of Victory were hoisted off stage when ‘Proud Britons’ was finished, and the orchestra went into a spirited ‘Rule Britannia’ which, though hardly appropriate for a soldier’s victory, had the advantage that the audience knew its words. The cast stood upright and solemn, singing with the audience, and when the song was done, and the audience beginning its applause, the narrator held up his hands once more for silence. Some of the young men in the pit were shouting for the half-naked Goddesses to be fetched back, but the narrator hushed them.