Sharpe's Battle

Sharpe said, then fell silent as he remembered the years of friendship. 'He was at Assaye with me,' he went on after a while, 'and at Gawilghur too. He was from Ripon, a farmer's boy, only his father was a tenant and the landlord threw him out when he was three days late with the rent after a bad harvest so Tom saved his folks the need to feed another mouth by joining the 33rd. He used to send money home, God knows how on a soldier's pay. In another two years, Pat, he'd have made colonel in the Portuguese, and then he planned to go home to Ripon and beat ten kinds of hell out of the landlord who drove him into the army in the first place. That's what he told me last night.'

'Now you'll have to do it for him,' Harper said.

'Aye. That bugger'll get a thumping he never dreamed of,' Sharpe said. He tried to close the tinderbox, but the heat had distorted the metal. He took a last glance at the picture, then tossed the box back into the ashes. Then he and Harper climbed the ramparts where they had charged the small group of voltigeurs the night before and from where the full horror of the night could be seen. The San Isidro was a smoking, blackened wreck, littered with bodies and reeking of blood. Rifleman Thompson, the only greenjacket to die in the night, was being carried in a blanket towards a hastily dug grave beside the fort's ruined church.

'Poor Thompson,' Harper said. 'I gave him hell for waking me last night. Poor bugger was only going outside for a piss and tripped over me.'

'Lucky he did,' Sharpe said.

Harper walked to the tower door that still had the dents driven into it by the butt of his volley gun. The big Irishman fingered the marks ruefully. 'Those bastards must have known we were trying to get refuge, sir,' he said.

'At least one of those bastards wanted us dead, Pat. And if I ever find out who, then God help him,' Sharpe said. He noticed that no one had thought to raise any flags on the battlements.

'Rifleman Cooper!' Sharpe called.

'Sir?'

'Flags!'

The first outsiders to arrive at San Isidro were a strong troop of King's German Legion cavalry who scouted the valley before climbing to the fort. Their captain reported a score of dead at the foot of the slope, then saw the far greater number of bodies lying in the fort's open area. 'Mein Gott! What happened?'

'Ask Colonel the Lord Kiely,' Sharpe said, and jerked a thumb at Kiely who was visible on the gatehouse turret. Other Real Companпa Irlandesa officers were supervising the squads collecting the Portuguese dead, while Father Sarsfield had taken charge of a dozen men and their wives who were caring for the Portuguese wounded, though without a surgeon there was little they could do except bandage, pray and fetch water. One by one the wounded died, some crying out in delirium, but most staying calm as the priest held their hands, asked their names and gave them the viaticum.

The next outsiders to arrive were a group of staff officers, mostly British, some Portuguese and one Spaniard, General Valverde. Hogan led the party, and for a solemn half-hour the Irish Major walked about the horror with an appalled expression, but when he left the other staff officers to join Sharpe he was grinning with an inappropriate cheerfulness. 'A tragedy, Richard!' Hogan said happily.

Sharpe was offended by his friend's cheerfulness. 'It was a bloody hard night, sir.'

'I'm sure, I'm sure,' Hogan said, trying and failing to sound sympathetic. The Major could not contain his happiness. 'Though it's a pity about Oliveira's cacadores. He was a good man and it was a fine battalion.'

'I warned him.'

'I'm sure you did, Richard, I'm sure you did. But it's always the same in war, isn't it? The wrong people get the hind teat. If only the Real Companпa Irlandesa could have been decimated, Richard, that would have been a great convenience right now, a real convenience. Still and all, still and all, this will do. This will do very well.'

'Do for what?' Sharpe asked fiercely. 'Do you know what happened here last night, sir? We were betrayed. Some bastard opened the gates to Loup.'

'Of course he did, Richard!' Hogan said soothingly. 'Haven't I been saying all along that they couldn't be trusted? The Real Companпa Irlandesa aren't here to help us, Richard, but to help the French.' He pointed to the dead. 'You need further proof? But of course this is good news. Until this morning it was impossible to send the bastards packing because that would have offended London and the Spanish court. But now, don't you see, we can thank the Spanish King for the valued assistance of his personal guard, we can claim that the Real Companпa Irlandesa was instrumental in seeing off a strong French raid over the frontier, and then, honours even, we can send the treacherous buggers to Cadiz and let them rot.' Hogan was positively exultant. 'We are off the hook, Richard, the French malevolence is defeated, and all because of last night. The French made a mistake. They should have left you alone, but plainly Monsieur Loup couldn't resist the bait. It's all so clever, Richard, that I wish I'd thought of it myself, but I didn't. But no matter; this'll mean goodbye to our gallant allies and an end to all those rumours about Ireland.'

'My men didn't spread those rumours,' Sharpe insisted.

'Your men?' Hogan mocked. 'These aren't your men, Richard. They're Kiely's, or more likely Bonaparte's, but they're not your men.'

'They're good men, sir, and they fought well.'

Hogan shook his head at the anger in Sharpe's voice, then steered his friend along the eastern battlements with a touch on the rifle-man's elbow. 'Let me try and explain something to you, Richard,' Hogan said. 'One third of this army is Irish. There's not a battalion that doesn't have its ranks full of my countrymen and most of those Irishmen are not lovers of King George. Why should they be? But they're here because there's no work at home and because there's no food at home and because the army, God bless it, has the sense to treat the Irish well. But just suppose, Richard, just suppose, that we can upset all those good men from County Cork and County Offaly, and all those brave souls from Inniskilling and Ballybofey, and suppose we can upset them so badly that they mutiny. How long will this army hold together? A week? Two days? One hour? The French, Richard, very nearly ripped this army into two parts and don't think they won't try again, because they will. Only the next rumour will be more subtle, and the only way I can stop that next rumour is by ridding the army of the Real Companпa Irlandesa, because even if you're right and they didn't spread the tales of rape and massacre, then someone close to them did. So tomorrow morning, Richard, you're going to march these bastards down to headquarters where they will surrender those nice new muskets you somehow filched for them and draw rations for a long march. In effect, Richard, they are under arrest until we can find the transport to carry them to Cadiz and there's nothing you can do about it. It's all been ordered.' Hogan took a piece of paper from his pouch and gave it to the rifleman. 'And it isn't an order from me, Richard, but from the Peer.'

Sharpe unfolded the paper. He felt aggrieved at what he perceived to be an injustice. Men like Captain Donaju only wanted to fight the French, but instead they were to be shuffled aside. They were to be marched down to headquarters and disarmed like a battalion of turncoats. Sharpe felt a temptation to crumple Wellington's written order into a ball, but sensibly resisted the impulse. 'If you want to get rid of the troublemakers,' he said instead, 'then start with Kiely and his bloody whore, start with the—'

'Don't teach me my job,' Hogan interrupted tartly. 'I can't act against Kiely and his whore because they're not in the British army. Valverde could get rid of them, but he won't, so the easy thing to do, the politic thing, is to get rid of the whole damned pack of them. And tomorrow morning, Richard, you do just that.'

Sharpe took a deep breath to curb his anger. 'Why tomorrow?' he asked when he trusted himself to speak again. 'Why not now?'

'Because it will take you the rest of today to bury the dead.'

'And why order me to do it?' Sharpe asked sullenly. 'Why not Runciman, or Kiely?'

'Because those two gentlemen,' Hogan answered, 'will be going back with me to make their reports. There's going to be a court of inquiry and I need to make damn sure that the court discovers exactly what I want it to discover.'

'Why the hell do we want a court of inquiry?' Sharpe asked sourly. 'We know what happened. We got beat.'

Hogan sighed. 'We need a court of inquiry, Richard, because a decent Portuguese battalion got torn to