He smiled. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Because, Richard,’ and she touched his face with her finger, ‘this war will not last for ever, and when peace comes, you will need money.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ There was a thump on the door, a hearty, loud, hammering of a thump, and Sharpe raised his voice. ‘Who is it?’
‘Officer of the day, sir!’ It was Captain d’Alembord’s voice
‘What is it?’
‘I need you, sir.’
La Marquesa smiled. ‘Go on. I’ll wait.’
Sharpe unlocked the door. ‘I only just got here, Peter!’
The tall, elegant Captain, who was more than a little drunk, bowed lavishly to Sharpe. ‘Your presence is demanded, sir. You’ll forgive me, ma’am?’
They stopped at the stair’s head. Half the Battalion were in the dining room that was littered with broken plates and discarded cutlery. Sharpe doubted whether three-quarters of these men had ever eaten in such style. Someone had discovered, in a locked chest, a French tricolour that was being paraded noisily about the room. Most of the men were drunk. Some were asleep. Only at the head table was there a hint of decorum, and even there, not much.
Sergeant Patrick Harper presided. Next to him, resplendent in white, with a veil of lace that had been taken from the French baggage park, sat Isabella. About her throat was a necklace of diamonds. Sharpe doubted whether her husband would let her wear it again, at least not till they were safely away from the thieves of the British army.
Sharpe had never seen a man so frightened as Harper. He had shaken in the cathedral. Sharpe had given his Sergeant two big glasses of whisky, but even they had not stopped his fear. ‘It’s ridiculous, sir! Getting married.’
‘Women like it, Patrick.’
‘Why do they need us? Why don’t they just do it and tell us afterwards. Christ!’
‘Are you sure you want to go through with it?’
‘And let her down? Of course I’ll do it!’ He was indignant. ‘I just don’t have to enjoy doing it!’
He was enjoying himself now. He was drunk, better fed than a soldier had a right to be, and with a pretty, pregnant, dark-eyed girl beside him.
‘It’s astonishing,’ Captain d’Alembord observed, ‘how she keeps him in order.’
Sharpe smiled. He was a Major again, reinstated to his rank, and in temporary command of the South Essex. The command would only be temporary. He had not served long enough as a Major to be given the next rank, and so he must wait, with these men, to see who replaced Lieutenant Colonel Leroy.
Wellington, furious almost beyond words at the looting of the baggage park, had spared praise for Sharpe. The Inquisitor, his bruises explained as a tumble down his stairs, had provided the Generalissimo with a list of those men who had offered support to a peace with France. Already those men were being visited, were listening to quiet arguments that were not quite threats, but which were unmistakeable just the same.
The Inquisitor had offered another explanation of the Marques’ death, an explanation listened to in silence by those Spanish officers brought to hear it. They had looked at Sharpe, at Wellington, and a few, seeing the jest inherent in what they saw, had laughed.
La Marquesa, who had provoked a smile from Wellington’s anger, had taken her fortune from the Inquisitor’s house. She had been promised safe conduct as soon as the roads to the frontier were cleared of the last French garrisons. Wellington, as ever susceptible to a pretty face, had listened to her account of the treaty and rewarded her treachery by restoring her wealth. She would go home, and Sharpe was back where he belonged; with his men.
He had eaten with them this night, made an embarrassing speech to them, and laughed when they had cheered the Marquesa and, because of her dress, shouted at her to jump up and down. Now, standing at the stair’s head with Captain d’Alembord, he felt a surge of affection for these soldiers whose life was so hard and whose pleasures so few and who knew how to take both hardship and pleasure in their stride. He looked at Captain d’Alembord. ‘Why did you need me?’
‘We just thought you’d gone to bed early, sir. Thought you might like to drink another toast.’
Sharpe laughed. He went down the stairs and listened to the cheers and laughter of his men, saw the worried hotel proprietor who winced every time another plate or glass broke, and he walked up to the head table, reached for a bottle of champagne, smiled at Angel who had been given a place of honour, then turned back to the stairs.
‘Where are you going, sir?’ a voice shouted.
He did not reply, instead he waved the champagne, took the stairs two at a time, and the cheers, jeers, and whistles wafted him up to the landing, and the suggestions were thick about him as he turned at the top, raised the bottle, and bowed to them. He motioned for silence that was a long time coming, but finally the faces stared up at him, flushed with drink, and grinning broadly at the Major who had come back from the dead to lead them to victory.
He wondered what he should say. Wellington, in his rage at the men who had plundered the baggage park, had called his army ‘the scum of the earth’. Sharpe laughed aloud, He was proud of them.
‘Talion?’ He paused. They waited. ‘Morning parade at seven o’clock, married men included. Goodnight.’
He turned, laughed, and their insults followed him to the door of his room.
He went inside. The first thing he saw was a pair of shoes lying on their side. Beyond the shoes was a cream dress, fallen on the floor.
She was in bed. She smiled at the champagne, then at him, and Richard Sharpe, leaning on the locked door, thought that this was what had driven him across Spain to this city. This woman, treacherous as sin, who would love and betray him in the same moment. She was as faithful as a morning mist, as hard as a sword- bayonet, and that, he thought, made her a suitable reward for a soldier.
He unbuckled his sword, dropped it on a chair, and sat on the bed. The Marquesa pulled his face to hers, kissed him, and put her hands to the buttons of his jacket. She was the whore of gold, she was the enemy, and she had known that this man, in the cause of her greed, would give to her his sword, his strength, and even his life. He would give her all that he had, all but for the one small thing that she had wanted; the one small thing she could not take; Sharpe’s honour.
HISTORICAL NOTE
‘The material captured,’ wrote Charles Oman in his great History of the Peninsular War, ‘was such as no European army had ever laid hands on… since Alexander’s Macedonians plundered the camp of the Persian king after the battle of Issus.’
‘Many of our men,’ wrote Commissary Schaumann, ‘and particularly those who found diamonds, became rich people that day.’
Edward Costello, a Rifleman, reckoned that he made about a thousand pounds on the evening of the battle, helped by a ‘few whacks of my rifle’.
The plunder of Vitoria was truly spectacular. In military terms it was stunning; ail the French guns save two, a hundred and fifty-one in all, and of the two guns the French did manage to salvage, one was lost during the retreat. But it was not the guns that the soldiers were interested in acquiring.
No one truly knows the value of the plunder. I suspect the figure of five million pounds is a low estimate, and it could well have been seven million. In today’s money that translates to something like ?154,000,000 ($234,000,000). Much of it was in such ‘non-negotiable’ items as paintings by Rubens, though even those had their uses as tarpaulins. Eventually the paintings were recovered and some of them, presented to Wellington by the restored King Ferdinand VII, can be seen at Stratfield Saye or at Apsley House in London. One object that was never recovered was the Crown of Spain.
Some of the plunder was extremely negotiable, and not just the gold. Schaumann, a German officer in
