The wine was dark red in the crystal glasses, the deep polished table shone from a score of candles in their silver holders, the paintings whose ancient varnish reflected the circle of light showed grave and eminent ancestors of the Spanish family in whose Talavera mansion Sir Arthur Wellesley was host to a dinner party. Even the food was fairly equal to the occasion. In the week since the battle the supply situation had worsened, the Spanish promises unfulfilled, and the troops were on meagre half-rations. Wellesley, as befitted a General, had done better than most, and Sharpe had sipped a slightly watered down chicken soup, enjoyed jugged hare, eaten amply of Wellesley’s favourite mutton, and listened to his fellow guests grumble about the diet as they drank unending bottles of wine. “Daddy‘ Hill was there, rubicund and happy, continually smiling at Sharpe, shaking his head and saying, ”Bless me, Sharpe, an Eagle.“ Robert Crauford sat opposite Sharpe; Black Bob, whom Sharpe had not seen since the retreat to Corunna. Crauford had missed the Battle of Talavera by one day even though he had marched his crack Light Division forty-two miles in twenty-six hours to catch up with Wellesley. Among the troops he had brought from England were the First Battalion of the 95th Rifles, and Sharpe had already been generously entertained by their mess in celebration of his feat. They had done more than that. They had presented him with a new uniform and he sat at Wellesley’s table resplendent in smart green cloth, black leather, and silver trappings. He had kept his old uniform. Tomorrow, when the army marched again, he would prefer to wear the bloodstained cavalry overalls and the comfortable French boots rather than this immaculate uniform and fragile shoes.
Black Bob Crauford was in good form. He was the sternest disciplinarian in the army, a tyrant of excessive rages, loved and hated by his troops. Few Generals asked more of their men, or received it, and if his demands were backed up by savage punishments then at least the men knew Crauford’s justice was even-handed and impartial. Sharpe remembered seeing Crauford catch a company officer being carried piggy-back across an ice cold stream in the northern mountains.
“Drop him, sir! Drop him!” the General shouted from the dry safety of his horse to the astonished private and, to the delight of the suffering troops, the officer was dumped unceremoniously into the waist-high water. Now Crauford fixed Sharpe with a cynical eye and thumped the table, rattling the silverware. “You were lucky, Sharpe, lucky!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t you ”yes sir“ me.” Sharpe saw Wellesley watching with an amused eye. Crauford pushed a bottle of red wine towards Sharpe. “You lost damn near half your company! If you hadn’t come back with the Eagle you would have deserved to have been broken right back to private again. Aren’t I right?”
Sharpe inclined his head. “You are, sir.”
Crauford leaned back, satisfied, and raised his glass to the Rifleman. “But it was damn well done, all the same.”
There was laughter round the table. Lawford, a confection of silver and lace, and confirmed, at least temporarily, as Commanding Officer of the South Essex, leaned back and put two more opened bottles on the table. “How’s the excellent Sergeant Harper?”
Sharpe smiled. “Recovering, sir.”
“Was he wounded badly?” Hill leaned forward into the candlelight, his round, farmer’s face suffused with concern. Sharpe shook his head. “No, sir. The Sergeant’s mess of the First Battalion were kind enough to celebrate with him. I believe he proposed the theory that one man from Donegal could drink as much as any three Englishmen.”
Hogan slapped the table. The Irish Engineer was cheerfully drunk and he raised his glass to Wellesley. “We Irishmen are never beaten. Isn’t that so, sir?”
Wellesley raised his eyebrows. He had drunk even less than Sharpe. “I never count myself an Irishman, Captain Hogan, though perhaps I share that characteristic with them.”
“Damn that, sir,” Crauford growled. “I’ve heard you say that just because a man is born in a stable it doesn’t make him into a horse!”
There was more laughter. Sharpe leaned back and listened to the talk round the table and let the meal rest heavy in his stomach. The servants were bringing in brandy and cigars, which meant that the evening would soon be over, but he had enjoyed it. He was never comfortable at formal dinners; he had not been born to them, had been to few of them, but these men had made him feel at home and pretended not to notice when he waited for them to pick up their cutlery so that he would know which was the correct pair to use for each course. He had told once more the story of how he and Patrick Harper had hacked their way through the enemy line, of the death of Denny, and how they had been swept along with the fugitives before hacking their way clear with sword and axe.
He sipped his wine, wriggled his toes in the new shoes, and reflected again on his fortune. He remembered his despondency before the battle, of feeling that the promises could not be kept, yet it had all happened. Perhaps he really was lucky, as his men said, but he wished he knew how to preserve that luck. He remembered Gibbons’ falling body, the bayonet deep in his back, and the sight of Harper back from his bird-watching just in time to stop the sabre stabbing down into Sharpe. The next day all traces of the crime had been burned away. The dead, Gibbons among them, had been stacked in naked piles, and the living had thrust wooden faggots deep into the corpses and set fire to them. There had been far too many for burial, and for two days the fires were fed with more wood and the stench hung over the town until the ashes were scattered across the Portina valley and the only signs of the battle were the discarded equipment no-one could be bothered to retrieve and the scorched grass where the flames had roasted the wounded.
“Sharpe?”
He started. Someone had spoken his name, and he had missed what was said. “Sir? I’m sorry.”
Wellesley was smiling at him. “Captain Hogan was saying that you’ve been improving Anglo-Portuguese relations?”
Sharpe glanced at Hogan, who raised his eyebrows impishly. All week the Irishman had been determinedly cheerful about Josefina, and Sharpe, with three Generals watching him, had no option but to smile and give a modest shrug.
“Fortune favours the brave, eh, Sharpe?” Hill grinned.
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned back and let the conversation flow on. He missed her. It was only just over two weeks since the night he had followed her from the inn courtyard into the darkness by the stream, and since then he had spent only five nights with her. And now there would be no more. He had known as soon as he had reached Talavera, on the morning after the battle, and she had kissed him and smiled at him while in the background Agostino packed the leather saddlebags and folded up the dresses he had not had time to see her wear. She had walked with him through the town, clinging onto his elbow, looking up into his face as though she were a child. “It would never have lasted, Richard.”
“I know.” He believed otherwise.
“Do you?”
She wanted him to say goodbye gracefully, and it was the least he could do. He told her about Gibbons; about the final look before the bayonet took its revenge. She held his arm tight. “I’m sorry, Richard.”
“For Gibbons?”
“No. That you had to do it. It was my fault, I was a fool.”
“No.” It was strange, he thought, how when lovers say goodbye they take all the blame. “It wasn’t your fault. I promised to protect you. I didn’t.”
They walked into a small, sunlit square and stared at a convent which formed one side of the plaza. Fifteen hundred British wounded were in the building, and the army surgeons were working on the first floor. Screams came clearly from the windows and, with them, a grisly flow of severed limbs that piled up beside a tree: an ever growing heap of arms and legs that was guarded by two bored privates whose job was to chase away the hungry dogs from the mangled flesh. Sharpe shivered at the sight and prayed the soldiers’ prayer; that he would be delivered from the surgeons with their serrated blades and blood-stiff aprons.
Josefina had plucked his elbow and they turned away from the convent. “I have a present for you.”
He looked down at her. “I have nothing for you.”
She seemed embarrassed. “You owe Mr Hogan twenty guineas?”
“You’re not giving me money!” He let his anger show.
