“There is a small problem.”
“Sir?” Harper sounded guarded.
“King’s Regulations, Sergeant, concerning the interior economy of a regiment, insist that no non- commissioned officer is on any account to be permitted to act as an officer’s servant.”
“You looked the rules up, did you, sir?”
“I just quoted them to you.”
Harper smiled. Then he hooked his big powder-stained fingers into the frayed hems of his Sergeant’s badge. “I never wanted the stripes in the first place.”
“I seem to remember it was one hell of a struggle to make you wear them.”
“Should have saved your breath, sir.” Harper ripped the stripes off his sleeve. He stared ruefully at the patch of dirty cloth for a moment, then threw it overboard. “Busted back to the ranks,” he said, then laughed.
Sharpe watched the drifting stripes, and he thought how many hard years had passed since he had first persuaded Harper to put up that patch of white cloth. It was all coming to an end, Sharpe thought; all that he had held most dear and known best.
And ahead of him. beyond this placid river with its fishermen, herons, moorhens, and reeds, what then? The future was like a great mist, in which even Jane was indistinct. Sharpe touched the crumpled letter in his pocket, and persuaded himself that when he found Jane all would be well. He would discover that her letters had gone astray, nothing more.
Frederickson came forward and saw the bare patch on Harper’s sleeve,
“I demoted Rifleman Harper to the ranks.“ Sharpe explained.
“May one ask why?”
“For being Irish.” Sharpe said, then he thought how much he would miss Patrick Harper’s friendship, but consoled himself that Jane was waiting for him, and thus he had all the happiness in the world to anticipate and then to enjoy.
So they floated on.
The quays at Bordeaux were busier than they had been for years. Wharves which had been kept empty by the Royal Navy’s blockade Were suddenly sprouting with masts and spars. Fat-bellied merchant ships queued in the river for their turn at the stone quays where the soldiers waited between netted mounds of supplies. Cannon barrels were slung into holds, while the gun carriages were broken down to be stacked against bulkheads. Protesting horses were lowered into floating stalls. A British Army, fresh from victory, was being hurried out of France. “The very least they could have done,” Harper grumbled, “was let us march into Paris.”
That was a small grudge against the larger tragedies that were now the daily coin of the Bordeaux quays. Those tragedies were occasioned by an army decree which ruled that only those soldiers’ wives who could prove they had married with the permission of their husband’s commanding officers would be carried home. All other women, and their children, were to be abandoned in Bordeaux.
The abandoned women were mostly Portuguese and Spanish who had left their villages when the army marched through. Some had been sold to a soldier by their families. Sharpe could remember when a strong young girl could be bought for marriage for just five guineas. Most of the women had gone through a camp-marriage, which was no marriage in the eyes of the Church, but many had persuaded a village priest to give a blessing to their union. It did not matter now for, unless the regimental records confirmed a Colonel’s permission, the marriage was reckoned to be false. Thousands of women were thus forcibly taken off the quays, then prevented from rejoining their men by a cordon of provosts armed with loaded muskets. The wailing of the women and their small children was ceaseless.
“How are they supposed to get home?” Harper asked.
“Walk,” Frederickson said harshly.
“God save Ireland,” Harper said, “but I hate this damned army.”
On the morning that Frederickson’s Riflemen joined the chaos on the quays three men from redcoat battalions tried to desert to join their wives. One successfully swam upstream, his dark head constantly surrounded by the splashes of musket-balls. Men already on the ships cheered him. A Naval gig, ordered to cut him off, somehow managed to tangle her oars and Sharpe guessed that the sailors had no stomach for their job and had deliberately made a nonsense of the attempt. Two other redcoats, trying to climb a wall of the docks, were caught and charged with attempted desertion.
Frederickson was busy scribbling pieces of paper which would serve as marriage certificates for the six men of his company who might otherwise lose their women. Sharpe, as the more senior officer, gladly added his own signature, then glossed his name with the description of Temporary Brigade Commander. He doubted if the papers would work, but they had to be tried.
Sharpe and Frederickson carried the papers, along with all the company’s other musters, returns and order books, to an office that was guarded by provosts and administered by civilian officials of the Transport Board. Sharpe wanted to challenge their authority with his reputation, but when he reached the office the city’s multitude of church clocks successively pealed midday in a cacophony of time that sounded like a celebration of victory. It was also the signal for the Transport Board officials to close their ledgers for luncheon. They would return, they said, at three o’clock. Till then the Riflemen must wait, though if the officers wished to take luncheon in the city, then they were permitted to pass the picquet-line of provosts.
Sharpe and Frederickson left the company under Rifleman Harper’s command and, out of curiosity, went to find their luncheon in the city. Yet, just as soon as the two officers were beyond the barrier, they were besieged by crying women. One held up a baby as though the infant’s mute appeal would be sufficient to change the heartless decision of the authorities. Sharpe tried to explain that he had no standing in the matter. This group of women were Spanish. They had no money, they were not permitted to see their men, they were just expected to walk home. No one cared about them. Some had spent five years with the British army, carrying packs and muskets like their men, but now they were to be discarded. “Are we to be whores?” one screamed at Sharpe. “He wants us to be a whore!” The woman pointed at a civilian who was standing a few yards away. It appeared he was a Frenchman who had come to the docks to recruit women for his house. The man, seeing Sharpe look at him, smiled and bowed.
“I don’t like that man,” Frederickson said mildly.
“Nor me.” Sharpe gazed at the well-dressed Frenchman who, under the scrutiny, feigned boredom. “Shall we let him know how much we dislike him?”
“It would probably make both of us feel a great deal better if we did. You’ll cut off his retreat?”
Sharpe gently extricated himself from the women, then sauntered past the Frenchman who was content to wait until the Spanish women had finished their importuning of the Riflemen. The Frenchman had watched every British officer so besieged, and knew that the women must soon abandon their hopeless appeals and that afterwards the prettiest among them would be glad of his offer of employment. He lit himself a cigar, blew smoke towards the gulls that screamed about the ships’ topmasts, and thought that never before, and perhaps never again, would whores be no so cheap. Then, suddenly, he saw a one-eyed and toothless Rifleman moving fast towards him. The Frenchman twisted to run away.
He twisted to find himself facing another scarred Rifleman. “Good afternoon,” Sharpe said.
The Frenchman tried to swerve round Sharpe, but the Rifleman reached out a hand, checked the Frenchman, then turned him and pushed him towards Frederickson. Frederickson, who had removed his eyepatch and false teeth in honour of the occasion, let the Frenchman come, then kicked him massively between the legs.
The man collapsed. Frederickson stooped and retrieved the man’s fallen cigar.
The Frenchman was breathless on the cobbles, his hands clutching a pain that was like a thousand red-hot musket balls exploding outwards from his groin. For a few seconds he could not draw breath, then he gasped and afterwards screamed so loud that even the gulls seemed to be silenced. The provosts twitched towards the sound, then decided that the two Rifle officers were best left in peace.
“Shut your bloody face, you pimp.” Sharpe slapped the man’s cheek hard enough to loosen teeth, then began cutting open his pockets and seams much as if the Frenchman was a battlefield corpse. He found a few coins that he distributed to the women. It was a small gesture, and one that was shrunk to nothing in the face of the women’s plight. It was also a gesture that could not be repeated for the sake of every woman who accosted the two Riflemen as they crossed the city’s bridge.
