“I’ve got enough work without fighting battles,” Sharpe grumbled.
“There speaks the true staff officer.” Nairn stretched out his legs so his servant could tug off his muddied boots. “Any important news?” he asked Sharpe.
Sharpe decided not to worry Nairn with the problem of the cattle. “The only remarkable aspect of today, sir, is that Colonel Taplow didn’t make any trouble.”
Lieutenant Colonel Taplow commanded one of Nairn’s two English battalions. He was a short and choleric man with a manner of astonishing incivility who perceived slights to his dignity in every order. Nairn rather liked the foul man. “Taplow’s easy enough to understand. Think of him as typically English; stubborn, stupid, and solid. Like a lump of undercookcd pork.”
“Or salt beef,” Sharpe would not rise to the Scotsman’s bait, “and I hope you like salt beef, sir, because you’re going to get a damned lot of it.”
Next day the advance continued. Every village greeted the British with a sullen curiosity that later turned to astonished approval when the villagers discovered that, unlike their own armies, this one paid for the food they took from barns and storehouses. Soldiers found French girls who then joined the Spanish and Portuguese wives who straggled behind the advancing battalions. The women were more trouble than the soldiers, for many of the Spanish wives had an ineradicable hatred of the French that could lead to quick savage knife fights. Sharpe once had to kick two women apart, then, when the Spanish girl turned from her French enemy and tried to stab Sharpe, he stunned her with his rifle butt before spurring his horse onwards.
Sergeant Harper, before leaving St Jean de Luz, had sent his own Spanish wife home. She and the baby had gone to Pasajes, just across the French border, with orders to wait there for Harper. “She’ll do just fine, sir,” Harper said to Sharpe. “She’s happier with her own people, so she is.”
“You don’t worry about her?”
Harper was astonished at the question. “Why should I? I gave the lass money, so I did. She knows I’ll fetch her and the child when it’s time.”
Harper might not have worried about his Isabella, but Sharpe found Jane’s absence hard to bear. He persuaded himself that it was unreasonable to expect any letters to have yet reached him from Britain, but he still eagerly searched each new bag of mail that came to the brigade. At other times he tried to imagine where Jane was and what she did. He constructed a dream in his head of the house she would buy; a gracious stone house set in a placid gentle countryside. There would be a place in the house where he could hang up his ugly heavy sword, and another place for his battered rifle. He imagined friends visiting, and long conversations by candlelight in which they would remember these lengthening spring days as they pursued an army across its homeland. He imagined a nursery where his children would grow up far from the stink of powder smoke.
They were a soldier’s dreams of peace, and peace was in the air like the smell of almond blossom. Each day brought a new rumour of the war’s ending; Napoleon was confidently said to have taken poison, then a contrary rumour claimed that the Emperor had broken a Russian army north of Paris, but the very next day a Spanish Colonel swore on the six bleeding wounds of Christ that the Prussians had trounced Bonaparte and fed his body to their hunting dogs. An Italian deserter from Marshal Soult’s army reported that the Emperor had fled to the United States, while the chaplain of Colonel Taplow’s fusiliers was entirely certain that Napoleon was negotiating a personal peace with Britain’s Prince Regent; the chaplain had heard as much from his wife whose brother was a dancing-master to a discarded mistress of the Prince.
Fed by such rumours the talk of the army turned more and more to the mysterious condition of peacetime. Except for a few months in 1803, most men had never known Britain and France to be at peace. These men were soldiers, their trade was to kill Frenchmen, and peace was as much a threat as a promise. The threats of peace were very real, unemployment and poverty, while the promises of peace were more tenuous and, for most men in the army, nonexistent. An officer could resign his commission, take his half pay, and chance his arm at civilian life, but most of the soldiers had enlisted for life, and peace for them would simply mean their dispersal to garrisons across the world. A few would be discharged, but without pension and with a bleak future in a world where other men had learned useful skills.
“You’ll get me papers?” Harper nevertheless asked Sharpe one night.
„I’ll get you papers, Patrick, I promise.“ The ‘papers’ were the certificate of discharge that would guarantee that Sergeant Patrick Harper had been retired because of wounds. ”What will you do then?“ Sharpe asked.
Harper had no doubts. “Fetch the wife, sir, then go home.”
“To Donegal?”
“Where else?”
Sharpe was thinking that Donegal was a long way from Dorset. “We’ll miss our friends,” he said instead.
“That’s the truth, sir.”
Sharpe was visiting Captain William Frederickson’s company that had taken over a windmill on a shallow hill above a wide, tree-bordered stream. The Riflemen’s supper was roast pork, a dish that Captain Frederickson was very partial to and which meant that no sow or piglet was safe if it was close to his line of march. Sharpe was given a generous helping of the stolen meat, after which Frederickson led him up the dizzying cradle of ladders which climbed to the mill’s cap. There Frederickson opened a small door and the two officers crawled out on to a tiny platform that gave access to the mill’s big axle. A spitting rain was being gusted by an east wind. “There,” Frederickson pointed eastwards.
Beyond the stream, and beyond the dark loom of some further woods, there was a glimmering smear of light in the night sky. Only one thing could make a light such as that: the flames of an army’s bivouac fires reflecting of low clouds. The two Rifle officers were looking towards the French.
“They’re camped around Toulouse,” Frederickson said.
“Toulouse?” Sharpe repeated vaguely.
“It’s a French city, though I wouldn’t expect anyone as exalted as a staff officer to know that. It’s also the place where Marshal Soult doubtless hopes to stop us, unless the war ends first.”
“Perhaps it’s all wishful thinking.” Sharpe took the bottle of wine that Frederickson offered him. “Honey’s escaped from disaster before.”
“There’ll be peace,” Frederickson said firmly. “Everyone’s tired of the fighting.” He paused. “I wonder what the devil we’ll all do in peacetime?”
“Rest,” Sharpe said.
“In your Dorset home?” Frederickson, knowing that Jane had gone home to purchase a country property, was amused. “And after a month of it you’ll be wishing to hell that you were back here in the rain, wondering just what the bastards are planning, and whether you’ve got enough ammunition for the morning.”
“Have you?” Sharpe asked with professional concern.
“I stole four cartridge boxes from Taplow’s quartermaster.” Sweet William fell silent as a billow of wind stirred the furled and tethered mill-sails.
Sharpe gazed towards the French encampment. “Is it a big city?”
“Big enough.”
“Fortified?”
“I would imagine so.” Frederickson took the wine bottle back and tipped it to his mouth. “And I imagine it will be a bastard of a city to take.”
“They all are,” Sharpe said drily. “Do you remember Badajoz?”
“I doubt I’ll ever forget it,” Frederickson said, though nor would any man who had fought across that ditch of blood.
“We took that at Eastertime,” Sharpe said, “and next week is Easter.”
“Is it, by God?” Frederickson asked. “By God, so it is.”
Both men fell silent, both wondering whether this would be their last Easter. If peace was a promise, then it was a promise barred by that great red smear of light for, unless the French surrendered in the next few days, then a battle would have to be fought. One last battle.
“What will you do, William?” Sharpe took the bottle and drank.
Frederickson did not need the question explained. “Stay in the army. I don’t know another life and I don’t think I’d be a good tradesman.” He fumbled with flint and steel, struck a spark to his tinder box, then lit a cheroot. “I find I have a talent for violence,” he said with amusement.
