Sharpe's Battle

'Good! Because that is precisely why I wanted you to meet the Dona Juanita,' Ducos said, and the lady smiled at the dragoon. 'The Dona 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 Dona Juanita your most important duty.'

'Supplies?' Loup asked. 'You mean guns? Ammunition?'

Dona 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 Dona 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 Companпa 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 Companпa 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. 'Dona,' 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 Besanзon. 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 Companпa 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 Companпa 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 Companпa 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 Dona 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 Companпa 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 wineskin 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