Sharpe loaded his rifle with the swift movements of a man long trained to the army. The men stared in disbelief as he brought the brass butt into his shoulder and aimed the weapon at their front file. “I said jump in the stream! Go!”
He cocked the rifle.
The men jumped.
The drop from the bridge parapet was perhaps eight feet and the stream, swollen by melting snow and winter rains, was four feet deep. The water was icy cold, but Sharpe stood on the parapet and ordered each man to soak himself in the bitter flood. He used the rifle as an encouragement. “You! Get your bloody head under! Harper! Duck, man, duck!” Only the sober, the wounded and, in deference to his flimsy authority, Sergeant Williams, were spared the ordeal. “Sergeant! Form threes on the bank. Hurry now!”
The shivering men waded from the stream and formed three miserable ranks on the grass. The coach lumbered to a halt and George Parker, his face nervous, was ejected from the door. “Lieutenant? My dear wife is concerned that you might abandon us by your swift pace.” Parker then saw the soaked parade and his jaw fell.
“They’re drunk.” Sharpe said it loudly enough for the men to hear. “Pickled. Stewed. God-damn useless! I’ve been sweating the bloody liquor out of the bastards.”
Parker flapped a hand in protest at the blasphemy but Sharpe ignored him. Instead he shouted at his men. “Strip!”
There was a pause of disbelief. “Strip!”
They stripped themselves naked. Forty freezing men, pale and miserable, stood in the drizzle.
Sharpe stared down at them. “I don’t care if you all bloody die.” That got their attention. “At any moment now, you bastards, the bloody French could be coming down that road,” he jerked his thumb back up the hill, “and I’ve a good mind to leave you here for them. You’re good for nothing! I thought you were Rifles! I thought you were the best! I’ve seen bloody militia Battalions that were better than you! I’ve seen bloody cavalrymen who looked more like soldiers!” That was a difficult insult to beat, but Sharpe tried. “I’ve seen bloody Methodists who were tougher than you bastards!”
Mrs Parker ripped back the leather curtain to demand an end to the cursing, saw the naked men, and screamed. The curtain closed.
Sharpe stared his men down. He did not blame them for being frightened, for any soldier could be forgiven terror when defeat and chaos destroyed an army. These men were stranded, far from home, and bereft of the commissary that clothed and fed them, but they were still soldiers, under discipline, and that word reminded Sharpe of Major Vivar’s simple commandments. With one simple change, those three rules would suit him well.
Sharpe made his voice less harsh. “From now on we have three rules. Just three rules. Break one of them and I’ll break you. None of you will steal anything unless you have my permission to do so. None of you will get drunk without my permission. And you will fight like bastards when the enemy appears. Is that understood?”
Silence.
“I said, is that understood? Louder! Louder! Louder!”
The naked men were shouting their assent; shouting frantically, shouting to get this madman off their freezing backs. They looked a good deal more sober now.
“Sergeant Williams!”
“Sir?”
“Greatcoats on! You have two hours. Light fires, dry the clothes, then form up in threes again. I’ll stand guard.”
“Yes, sir.”
The carriage stood immobile, its Spanish coachman expressionless on his high box. Only when the Riflemen were in their dry greatcoats did the door fly open and a furious Mrs Parker appear. “Lieutenant!”
Sharpe knew what that voice portended. He whipped round. “Madam! You will keep silent!”
“I will…“
“Silence, God damn you!” Sharpe strode towards the coach and Mrs Parker, fearing violence, slammed the door.
But Sharpe went instead to the luggage box’from which he took a handful of the Spanish testaments. “Sergeant Williams? Kindling for the fires!” He threw the books down to the meadow while George Parker, who thought the world had gone mad, kept a politic silence.
Two hours later, in a very chastened silence, the Riflemen marched south.
At midday it stopped raining. The road joined a larger road, wider and muddier, which slowed the coach’s lumbering progress. Yet, as if in promise of better things to come, Sharpe could see a stretch of water far to his right. It was too wide to be a river, and thus was either a lake or an arm of the ocean which, like a Scottish sea- loch, stretched deep inland. George Parker opined that it was indeed a ria, a valley flooded by the sea, which could therefore lead to the patrolling ships of the Royal Navy.
That thought brought optimism, as did the country they now traversed. The road led through pastureland interspersed with stands of trees, stone walls, and small streams. The slopes were gentle and the few farms looked prosperous. Sharpe, trying to remember the map that Vivar had destroyed, knew they must be well south of Santiago de Com-postela. His despair of the night before was being eroded by the hopes of this southern road, and by the subdued look on his men’s faces. The glimpse of the sea had helped. Perhaps, in the very next town, there might be fishermen who could take these refugees out to where the Navy’s ships patrolled. George Parker, walking with Sharpe, agreed. “And if not, Lieutenant, then we certainly won’t need to go as far as Lisbon.”
“No, sir?”
“There’ll be English ships loading with wine at Oporto. And we can’t be more than a week from Oporto.”
One week to safety! Sharpe rejoiced in the thought. One week of hard marching on his broken boots. One week to prove that he could survive without Bias Vivar. One week of whipping these Riflemen into a disciplined unit. One week with Louisa Parker, and then at least two more weeks at sea as their ship beat north against the Biscay winds.
Two hours after midday, Sharpe called a halt. The sea was still invisible, yet its salt odour was thin among the straggly pine trees beneath which the carriage horses were given a feed of dried maize and hay. The Riflemen, after breaking apart the last of the monastery’s loaves, lay exhausted. They had just crossed a stretch of flooded meadows where the road had proved a morass from which the men had had to push the great carriage free. Now the road led gently upwards between mossy walls towards a stone farmhouse which lay, perhaps a mile to the south, on the next crest.
The Parkers sat on rugs beside their carriage. Mrs Parker would not look at Sharpe since his outburst beside the stream, but Louisa gave him a happy and conspiratorial smile that caused Sharpe instant embarrassment for he feared his men would see it and jump to the correct and unavoidable conclusion that the Lieutenant was smitten. To avoid betraying his feelings, Sharpe walked from beneath the stand of pines to where a single picquet squatted beside the road.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing, sir.” It was Hagman, the oldest Rifleman, and one of the very few not to have drunk himself insensible during the night. He was chewing tobacco and his eyes never left the northern skyline. “It’s going to rain again.”
“You think so?”
“Know so.”
Sharpe squatted. The clouds seemed endless, black and grey, rolling from the invisible sea. “Why did you join the army?” he asked.
Hagman, whose toothless mouth gave his already ugly face a nutcracker profile, grinned. “Caught poaching, sir. Magistrate gave me a choice, sir. Clink or the ranks.”
“Married?”
“That’s why I chose the ranks, sir.” Hagman laughed, then spat a stream of yellow spittle into a puddle. “God-damned sawny-mouthed bitch of a sodding witch she was, sir.”
Sharpe laughed, then went utterly still.
