“Aye.” Harper watched the snow settle in the darkening valley. “Donegal looks something like this, so it does. Only this is a better land.”
“Better?” Sharpe was surprised. He was also obscurely pleased that the big man had deigned to have this conversation which made him suddenly more likeable. “Better?” Sharpe had to ask again.
“The English never ruled here. Did they, sir?” The insolence was back. Harper, standing, stared down at the sitting Sharpe and there was nothing but scorn in his voice. “This is unsoiled country, so it is.”
Sharpe knew he had been lured into the question which had released this man’s derision. “I thought you were fetching timber.”
“I was.”
“Then fetch it and go.”
Later, after he had visited the shivering picquets, Sharpe went back to the barn and sat by the wall where he listened to the low voices of the men who gathered about Rifleman Harper. They laughed softly, letting Sharpe know that he was excluded from the company of soldiers, even of the damned. He was alone.
Murray died in the night. He did it without noise or fuss, just sliding decorously into death.
“The lads want to bury him.” Williams said it as though he expected Sharpe to disapprove.
Sharpe was standing in the barn’s doorway. “Of course.”
“He said to give you this.” Williams held out the big sword.
It was an awkward moment and Sharpe was aware of the men’s gaze as he took the cumbersome weapon. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
“He always said it was better than a sabre in a fight, sir,” Williams said. “Puts the fear of God into the bloody Frogs, it does. Right butcher’s blade, it is.”
“I’m sure.”
The moment of intimacy, forged by the gift of the sword, seemed to give Williams confidence. “We were talking last night, sir.”
“We?”
“Me and the lads.”
“And?” Sharpe jumped from the barn’s raised doorway into a world made dazzling by new snow. The whole valley glittered under a pale sun that was threatened by thickening clouds.
The Sergeant followed him. “They’re not going, sir. Not going south.” His tone was respectful, but very firm.
Sharpe walked away from the barn. His boots squeaked in the fresh snow. They also let in damp because, like the boots of the men he was supposed to command, they were torn, gaping, and barely held together with rags and twine; hardly the footwear of a privileged officer whom these frightened Riflemen would follow through the valley of the shadow of death. “And who made that decision, Sergeant?”
“We all did, sir.”
“Since when, Sergeant, has this army been a…“ Sharpe paused, trying to remember the word he had once heard at a mess dinner. ”A democracy?“
Williams had never heard the word. “A what, sir?”
Sharpe could not explain what it meant, so tried a different approach. “Since when did Sergeants outrank Lieutenants?”
“It isn’t that, sir.” Williams was embarrassed.
“Then what is it?”
The Sergeant hesitated, but he was being watched by men who clustered in the barn’s gaping entrance, and under their critical gaze he found courage and volubility. “It’s madness, sir. That’s what it is. We can’t go south in this weather! We’ll starve! And we don’t even know if there’s still a garrison at Lisbon.”
“That’s true, we don’t.”
“So we’ll go north, sir.” Williams said it confidingly, as though he did Sharpe a great favour by the suggestion.
“There are ports up there, sir, and we’ll find a boat. I mean the Navy’s still off the coast, sir. They’ll find us.”
“How do you know the Navy’s there?”
Williams shrugged modestly. “It isn’t me who knows, sir.”
“Harper?” Sharpe guessed.
“Harps! Lord no, sir. He’s just a bog-Paddy, isn’t he? He wouldn’t know nothing, sir. No, it’s Rifleman Tongue, sir. He’s a clever man. He can read. It was the drink that did him in, sir, you see. Only the drink. But he’s an educated man, sir, and he told us, see, how the Navy’s off the coast, sir, and how we can go north and find a boat.” Williams, encouraged by Sharpe’s silence, gestured towards the steep northern hills. “It can’t be far, sir, not to the coast. Maybe three days? Four?”
Sharpe walked a few paces further from the barn. The snow was about four inches thick, though it had drifted into deeper tracts where the ground was hollowed. It was not too deep for marching, which was all Sharpe cared about this morning. The clouds were beginning to mist the sun as Sharpe glanced into the Sergeant’s face. “Has it occurred to you, Sergeant, that the French are invading this country from the north and east?”
“Are they, sir?”
“And that if we go north, we’re likely to march straight into them? Or is that what you want? You were quite ready to surrender yesterday.”
“We might have to be a bit clever, sir. Dodge about a bit.” Williams made the matter of avoiding the French sound like a child’s game of hide and seek.
Sharpe raised his voice so that every man could hear him. “We’re going south, Sergeant. We’ll head down this valley today and find shelter tonight. After that we turn south. We leave in one hour.”
“Sir…“
“One hour, Sergeant! So if you wish to dig a grave for Captain Murray, start now. And if you wish to disobey me, Sergeant Williams, then make the grave large enough for yourself as well. Do you understand me?”
Williams paused, wanting to offer defiance, but he quailed before Sharpe’s gaze. There was a moment of tension when authority trembled in the balance, then he nodded acceptance. “Yes, sir.”
“Then get on with it.”
Sharpe turned away. He was shaking inside. He had sounded calm enough giving Williams his parting orders, but he was not at all certain those orders would be obeyed. These men had no habit of obeying Lieutenant Sharpe. They were cold, far from home, surrounded by the enemy, and convinced that a journey north would take them to safety far faster than a journey to the south. They knew their own army had been outmanoeuvred and driven into retreat, and they had seen the remnants of the Spanish armies that had been similarly broken and scattered. The French spread victorious across the land, and these Riflemen were bereft and frightened.
Sharpe was also frightened. These men could call the bluff of his tenuous authority with a terrifying ease. Worse, if they perceived him as a threat to their survival, then he could only expect a blade in the back. His name would be recorded as an officer who had died in the debacle of Sir John Moore’s retreat, or perhaps his death would not even be noticed by anyone for he had no family. He was not even sure he had friends any more, for when a man was lifted from the ranks into the officers’ mess he left his friends far behind.
Sharpe supposed he should turn back to impose his will on the makeshift company, but he was too shaken, and unwilling to face their resentment. He persuaded himself that he had a useful task to perform in the ruined farmhouse where, with a horrid feeling that he evaded his real duty, he took out his telescope.
Lieutenant Richard Sharpe was not a wealthy man. His uniform was no better than those of the men he led, except that his threadbare officer’s trousers had silver buttons down their seams. His boots were as ragged, his rations as poor, and his weapons as battered as any of the other Riflemen’s equipment. Yet he possessed one object of value and beauty.
It was the telescope; a beautiful instrument made by Matthew Burge in London and presented to Sergeant Richard Sharpe by General Sir Arthur Wellesley. There was a brass plate recording the date of the battle in India where Sharpe, a redcoat then, had saved the General’s life. That act had also brought a battlefield commission and, staring through the glass, he now resented that commission. It had made him a man apart, an enemy to his own kind. There had been a time when men crowded about Richard Sharpe’s campfire, and sought Richard Sharpe’s approval, but no longer.
