“Of course the Peer knew about it,” Major-General Nairn was speaking of the duel, “but between you and me I don’t think he was unhappy about it. The Navy’s been rather irritating him lately.”
“I expected to be arrested,” Sharpe said.
“If you’d have killed the bugger, you would have been. Even Wellington can’t absolutely ignore a deceased Naval Captain, but it was clever of you just to crease the man’s bum.” Nairn gave a joyful bark of laughter at the thought of Bampfylde’s wound.
“I was trying to kill him,” Sharpe confessed.
“It was much cleverer of you to give him a sore arse. And let me say how very good it is to see you, my dear Sharpe. I trust Jane is well?”
“Indeed, sir.”
Sharpe’s tone caused Nairn to give the Rifleman an amused look. “Do I detect that you are in marital bad odour, Sharpe?”
“I stink, sir.”
It had taken Sharpe three days to catch up with the advancing army, and another half-day to find Nairn, whose brigade was on the left flank of the advance. Sharpe had eventually discovered the Scotsman on a hilltop above a ford which the British had captured that morning and through which a whole Division now marched. The French were only visible as a few retreating squadrons of cavalry far to the cast, though a battery of enemy artillery occasionally fired from a copse of trees about a mile beyond the river.
“You brought Frederickson?” Nairn now asked.
“His men are at the foot of the hill.”
“Creased his bum!” Nairn laughed again. “Can I assume from your marital odour that Jane is not with you?”
“She sailed for home two days ago, sir.”
“Best place for a woman. I never really did approve of officers carrying wives around like so much baggage. No offence, of course, Jane’s a lovely girl, but she’s still baggage to an army. Hello! Christ!” These last words were a greeting for a French cannonball that had thumped across the river and bounced uphill to force Nairn into a frantic evasion that almost spilled him from his saddle. The Scotsman calmed his horse, then gestured over the river. “You can see what’s happening, Sharpe. The bloody French try to stop us at every river, and we just outflank the buggers and keep moving.” At the foot of the slope Nairn’s brigade patiently waited their turn to cross the ford. The brigade was composed of one Highland battalion and two English county battalions.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” Sharpe asked Nairn.
“Damned if I know. Enjoy yourself. I am!” And indeed the Scotsman, who had endured years of dreary staff work for Wellington, revelled in his new command. Nairn’s only regret was that so far there had been no battle in which he could demonstrate how foolish Wellington had been in not giving him a brigade much earlier. “God damn it, Richard, there’s not much of the war left. I want one crack at the garlic-reekers.”
Sharpe might have been ordered to enjoy himself, but he soon discovered that being chief of staff to a brigade entailed enormously long days and seemingly endless problems. He worked wherever Nairn’s headquarters happened to be; sometimes in a sequestrated farmhouse, but more usually in a group of tents pitched wherever the brigade happened to bivouac. Sometimes Sharpe would hear the thump of guns to the east and he would know that a French rearguard was in action, but Sharpe had neither the time, nor the responsibility, to join the fighting. He only knew that every river crossed and every mile of country captured meant more work for the harried staff officers who had to marry men to food, weapons to ammunition, and Divisional Headquarters’ orders to a baser reality.
It was a salutary job. Sharpe had always expressed a combat soldier’s scorn for most staff officers, believing that such arrogant creatures were overpaid and underworked, but as Sharpe discovered the problems of organizing a brigade, so he learned that it was his job, rather than Nairn’s, to solve those problems. Thus one typical day, just two weeks after his arrival at the brigade, began with an appeal from the commander of a battery of horse artillery whose supply wagon had become lost in the tangle of French lanes behind the British advance. Retrieving the errant wagon was no part of Sharpe’s duties, except that the gunners were detailed to support Nairn’s forward positions and Sharpe knew that field guns without roundshot were useless, and so he sent an aide in search of the missing supplies.
At breakfast a patrol of the King’s German Legion light cavalry fetched a score of French prisoners to the farmhouse that was Nairn’s temporary headquarters. The cavalry commander bellowed for a competent officer and, when Sharpe appeared, the man waved at the frightened enemy soldiers. “I don’t want the buggers!” He and his men galloped away and Sharpe had to feed the Frenchmen, guard them, and find medical help for the half- dozen men whose faces and shoulders had been slashed by the German sabres.
A message arrived from Division ordering Nairn to move his brigade three miles eastward. The brigade was supposed to be enjoying a rest day while the southern divisions caught up, but evidently the orders had been changed. Sharpe sent an aide in search of Nairn who had snatched the opportunity to go duck-shooting, then, just as he had all the clerks, cooks, prisoners, and officers’ servants ready to move, another message cancelled the first. The mules were unloaded and urgent messages sent to countermand the march orders which had long gone to the battalions. Another aide was sent to tell Nairn he could continue slaughtering ducks.
Then three provosts brought a Highlander to headquarters. They had caught the man stealing a goose from a French villager and, though the Scotsman was undoubtedly guilty, and the goose indisputably dead, Sharpe had no doubt that Nairn would find some reason for sparing a fellow Scotsman’s life. Two Spanish officers arrived asking for directions to General Morillo’s Division and, because they were in no hurry, and because Wellington had stressed how vital it was that the Spanish allies were treated well, Sharpe pressed them to stay to lunch which promised to be hastily cooked stolen goose and hard-baked bread.
A village priest arrived to seek assurances that the women of his parish would be safe from the molestation of the British, and in the very next breath mentioned that he had seen some of Marshal Soult’s cavalry to the north-west of his village. Sharpe did not believe the report, which would have implied that the French were attempting an outflanking march, but he had to report the sighting to Division who then did nothing about it.
In the afternoon there were a dozen new standing orders for the clerks to copy and send to Nairn’s three battalions. Sharpe wondered if he would now have time to join the Spaniards who were lingering over the lunch table, but then the problem of the brigade’s cattle landed on his lap.
“They’re just no damned good, sir.” The head drover, a Yorkshireman, stared gloomily at the beasts which had been driven into a pasture behind the headquarters. These animals had been sent as the brigade’s walking larder which the Yorkshireman was supposed to herd forward as the army advanced. “It’s the wet that’s done it, sir.”
“They look plump,” Sharpe said, hoping that optimism would drive the problem away.
“They’re fleshy, right enough,” the Yorkshireman allowed, “but you should see their hooves, sir. It’s fair cruel to do that to a beast.”
Sharpe stooped by the nearest cow and saw how the hoof had separated from the pelt. The gap was filled with a milky, frothy ooze.
“Once they start seeping like that,” the drover said grimly, “then you’ve lost the beasts. They’ve walked their last mile, sir, and I can’t understand the nature of a man who’d do this to a creature. You can’t walk cattle like men, sir, they have to rest.” The Yorkshireman was bitter and resentful.
Two hundred cattle stared reproachfully as Sharpe straightened up. “Are they all like it?”
“All but a handful, sir, and it’ll mean a killing. Nothing else will serve.”
So butchers had to be fetched, ammunition authorised, and barrels and salt found for the meat. All afternoon the sound of bellowing and musket shots, mingling with the stench of blood and powder smoke, filled headquarters. The sounds and smells at least served to drive away the two Spaniards who otherwise seemed intent on draining away Nairn’s precious hoard of captured brandy. An aide arrived from Division demanding to know what the firing was, and Sharpe sent the man back with a curt complaint about the quality of the cattle. The complaint, he knew, would be ignored.
At the day’s end, and despite its unrelenting activity, Sharpe felt that most of his work was still unfinished. He said as much to Nairn when they met before supper in the farm’s parlour. The Scotsman, as ever, was ebullient. “Four brace of duck! Almost as satisfying as a good battle.”
