Sharpe's Regiment (35 page)

He was leading his men through the smart, new houses of Polygon Street, their facades brilliant white in the sunlight. Maids stared at the men from the black railings that guarded the cellar steps, and sometimes faces would peer from the curtained windows above. Sharpe, mounted on his horse, could see into the parlour windows and, thinking of his action as a secret approach march, he feared that he might lead his men past the house of a senior army officer who, like a French
tirailleur
, would ambush them.

They marched without singing. To many of these men, like Charlie Weller, this was their first sight of London. It astonished them. So many rich, high, ornate houses, so many people, so many kitchen chimneys, so much horse-dung, so many carriages, so much to look at and be amazed by. Houses as tall as church spires, rows of them, and never the comforting sight of hills and trees at the end of a street to remind a boy that the country was always a short walk away. Hyde Park, which was sometimes visible through streets to their left, was not countryside. It was a great expanse of rolling lawn, dotted with trees, just like the squire’s park which was forbidden territory to any but the most impudent poachers.

They could hear the bands behind them and, sometimes, a cheer that would grow, swell, and fade on the breeze. A signal gun sounded, a blank charge of powder blasting into the hot, early afternoon air, and to Sharpe the sound was utterly familiar, while, to his men, it was an awesome reminder of what might face them in Spain and France.

They turned into the Queen’s Gate. There was no one to challenge them. The urchins still accompanied the troops, shouting out the steps in imitation of the sergeants. One got too close to Sergeant Lynch and reeled off the road with a well-aimed clip to his ear. At the Serpentine, Sharpe called a halt and ordered the officers to gather round him.

All the officers were mounted. He trotted with them over the grass, away from the four Companies. He was not sure of what he should say, but, now they were so close to the target, he expected trouble and these men had to know how to deal with it.

‘We’re here at the Prince Regent’s invitation.’ That shook them. It was not true, for the invitation hardly requested Sharpe to bring a stolen half Battalion with him, but the lie might give them confidence. ‘However, there’s been the usual army buggery so the parade marshals don’t know about us. Understand?’ They did not, but Sharpe’s voice discouraged an exploration of the misunderstanding.

Captain Smith looked desperately worried, while Captain Carline, who had grumbled all week about the lack of comforts on the march, plucked at his uniform in an attempt to make it look fit for royalty.

Sharpe felt a sudden terror of what he was about to do. ‘If any officer, I don’t care how senior, demands to know why you’re here, refer them to me. That’s all you do! Send them to me. My orders are the only ones you obey. Mine only!’

‘What are our orders, sir?’ Captain Smith asked nervously.

‘There is to be a re-enactment of the battle of Vitoria. Our orders are to take part in that. We’re to be the French. We stay in close order, you listen for my commands, and you ignore all others! As French troops today we don’t obey British officers.’ He grinned, and some men grinned with him. d‘Alembord and Price, who knew the truth of it, looked solemn.

‘We ignore senior officers, sir?’ Captain Smith frowned. ‘Can we do that, sir?’

Sharpe had been offering carrots all week, now, he thought, it was time for a bitterer diet. ‘You do what I say, Captain, just what I say. Every god-damned officer from Foulness has deserved worse than you’re going to get. Your only chance of survival, of honour, lies in my hands. So don’t upset me, or I will recommend your dismissals, trials, and imprisonment.’ That, after Sharpe’s friendliness of the past days, brought silence.

None of them, except d‘Alembord and Price, knew what he did. Yet the habit of obedience was strong in them so that, until an officer more senior than Sharpe gave them conflicting orders, they would obey him. That was what had brought Sharpe this far with their dubious help, but now he was taking them into a place that teemed with senior officers, with more Generals than Wellington had Battalions, and, for these crucial hours, he had to bind their obedience with something other than mere habit. He used the threat, and he trusted the threat would keep them docile.

He twisted to stare at the review. He could see the Ring and, flanking it, the two lines of carriages. No one looked his way. He was far from the Hyde Park Gate, but he could see no golden-haired girl in that direction, only a few grooms who exercised horses behind the carriage parks and who thought nothing strange this day about soldiers waiting by the Serpentine. Sharpe stared a long time, looking for Jane Gibbons, but he did not see her. He turned back. ‘The main thing, gentlemen, is to enjoy this.’

‘Enjoy it, sir?’ Smith asked.

‘Of course, Captain. We’re going to win a battle.’ Sharpe laughed, though he felt despair too. ‘To your Companies, gentlemen!’ She had not come. She had not come, and his best hope was gone. Now he must fight.

Sharpe took his place at the head of his men. He was glad to hear the bands playing for it filled him with the right warlike spirit. The music; heart-stirring martial tunes, came faint over the park’s grassland, and the big drums punched the warm air like cannon fire. Regimental Sergeant Major Harper, marching Sharpe’s force towards the review, unconsciously called the steps to match the music’s rhythm. The men marched in silence, muskets shouldered, and, though they marched in the heart of England itself, they were marching to war

Jane Gibbons’ journey to London had not been hard, a carter from Great Wakering had carried her to Rochford, and from there she had paid to travel in a stage that dropped her at Charing Cross, but London filled her with dread. She had visited it before, but never on her own, and she knew no one. She had money, eight of the guineas were left of those that, in a dew-wet dawn, she had rescued from the table in the pergola.

She carried two bags, a reticule, a parasol, and Rascal was on a leash. She was glad of the small white dog. The smells of the city were strange, the people frightening, and the noise overwhelming. She had never seen so many cripples. On her previous visits, insulated from the misery by the glass windows of her uncle’s coach, she had not realised how much horror stirred and shuffled on London’s pavements. She stooped to pat the dog. ‘It’s all right, Rascal, it’s all right.’ She wondered how she was to find him food, let alone shelter for herself.

‘Missy!’

She looked up to see a well-dressed man tipping his hat to her. ‘Sir?’

‘You look lost, Missy. From out of town?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And in need of lodgings, I warrant?’ He smiled, and because three of his teeth were missing and the others so blackened that it was hard to see them, she shuddered. He stooped for her large bag. ‘You’ll allow me to carry it?’

‘Leave it!’

‘Now, Miss, I can tell...’

‘No!’ Her voice attracted curious glances. She turned away from the man, struggling with her ungainly luggage and wondering whether it had been truly necessary to pack so many dresses, as well as the silver backed hair-brushes and the picture of the boats she liked so much. She had her jewellery, those small few pieces of her mother’s that Sir Henry had not taken, and she had her parents’ portraits. She had the first two cantos of
Childe Harold
, her paints, and a vast iron flintlock pistol taken from her uncle’s library wall which she was not sure would work, and for which she had no ammunition, but which she thought might frighten away any assailants. She lugged it all west, past the Royal Mews where, it was said, a great space would be made to commemorate Nelson and Trafalgar. She turned into Whitehall.

Twice again men offered her lodgings. Clean lodgings, they said, respectable, run by a gentlewoman, but Jane Gibbons was not so foolish as to accept. Other men smiled at her, struck by her innocence and beauty, and it was those errant looks, as much as the bolder approach of the pimps, that drove her to seek refuge.

She chose sensibly. She picked her helpers as carefully as Richard Sharpe chose his battlegrounds, and the chosen pair was a gaitered cleric, red-faced and amiable, and his middle-aged wife who, like her husband, gaped at the London sights.

Jane explained that she had been sent to London by her mother, there to meet her father, but he had not been on the Portsmouth stage and she feared he might not now come until the next day. She had money, she explained, and wished no charity, but merely to be directed to a clean, safe place where she might sleep.

The Reverend and Mrs Octavius Godolphin were staying in Tothill Street, at Mrs Paul’s Lodgings, a most respectable house that ministered to the visiting clergy, and the Reverend and Mrs Godolphin, whose children were grown and gone from home, were delighted to offer their sheltering wings to Miss Gibbons. A cab was summoned, Mrs Paul was introduced, and nothing would suffice but that Miss Gibbons should accompany them to evensong and then share a shoulder of lamb for which they would not dream of taking payment. She went safe to bed, secured from an evil world by the multiplicity of bolts and bars on Mrs Paul’s front door, and the Reverend Godolphin reminded her to say her prayers for her father’s safe journey on the morrow. It all seemed, to Jane, like a great adventure.

The next morning, Saturday morning, when prayers had been said around Mrs Paul’s great table, Jane persuaded the Reverend and Mrs Godolphin that she had no need of their company to wait at Charing Cross. The persuasion was hard, but she achieved it and, leaving her luggage and Rascal under the watchful eye of Mrs Paul, she took a cab to her uncle’s house.

She watched the house from the street corner, half hidden by plane trees, and after a half-hour she saw her uncle leave in his open carriage. Her heart was thumping as she walked down Devonshire Terrace and as she pulled the shiny knob that rang a bell deep in the house. She saw soldiers marching at the end of the street, going towards the Queen’s Gate of the park, then the door behind her opened. ‘Miss Jane!’

‘Good morning.’ She smiled at Cross, her uncle’s London butler. ‘My uncle sent me to fetch some books for him.’

‘This is a surprise!’ Cross, a timid man, smiled as he beckoned her inside. ‘He did not mention that you were in London.’

‘We’re with Mrs Grey’s sister. Isn’t the weather lovely?’

‘It won’t last, Miss Jane. Some books, you said?’

‘Big red account books. I expect they’re in the study, Cross.’

‘Leather books?’

‘Yes. The ones he brings to Paglesham every month.’

‘But I distinctly remember the master took them with him. Just now!’

She stared at him, feeling all her hopes crumble. She had so wanted to do this thing for Major Sharpe, a man who had given her hope and pleasure if only because of her uncle’s emnity towards him. ‘He took them?’ Her voice was faint.

‘Indeed, Miss Jane!’

‘Cross!’ A voice barked. ‘My boots, Cross! Where the devil are my boots?’ Lieutenant Colonel Bartholomew Girdwood opened the parlour door and stared into the hall. His eyes widened. ‘Jane?’

But she had gone. She snatched open the heavy door, threw herself down the steps, and ran as if every pimp in London chased her.

‘Jane!’ Girdwood shouted from the top step, but she had gone. Far away, from the park, he heard the music which reminded him that he was late for the Review. Damned strange, he thought, but he had never truly understood women. Women, dogs and the Irish. All unnecessary things that got in the way. ‘God-damn it, where are my boots? Is the cab coming?’

‘It’s been sent for, Colonel, it’s been sent for.’ Cross brought the boots and helped the Colonel dress for the great celebration of the battle of Vitoria which, this fine day, would grace the Royal park.

 

The massed bands played the inevitable “Rule Britannia” as the French trophies were paraded about Hyde Park. Enemy guns, a mere fraction of the artillery that Wellington had captured, led the procession that was bright with the flags and guidons that were the lesser standards of the French. The flags were serried in colourful abundance, but it was the eight Eagles, brightly polished and held erect in gaudy chariots, that fetched the warmest applause.

Each French Regiment was given an Eagle standard. Not all of those on display had been taken in battle. Two, Sharpe knew, had been found in a captured French fortress, neither of them incised with their regimental numbers, obviously stored against the day when they might be needed for fresh units. One had been thrown from a high bridge by a trapped French unit, and it had taken days of diving by Spanish peasants to bring the trophy up from the river bed. They had presented it to Wellington and now, as if it had been taken in battle, it was solemnly paraded past the Prince of Wales.

The others had been fought for. There was the Eagle of Barossa, captured by the Irish 87th, which, like the Talavera Eagle, had been taken by a sergeant and an officer together. Harper stared at the distant procession. ‘Which one’s ours, sir?’

‘The first one.’

Captain Hamish Smith, seeing for the first time the distant gleam of a French Eagle, looked in some awe at the two Riflemen. They had actually done that most splendid thing, brought an enemy Colour from a battlefield, and no soldier, however grubby his career, could fail to be moved.

‘We’ve captured more than eight,’ Harper said cheerfully.

‘More, RSM?’ Smith asked.

‘There was two taken at Sally-manker, sir, but the lads broke one of them up, so they did. Thought it was gold! I heard of another one sold to an officer. Be murder if anyone found out!’

Sharpe laughed. He had heard the rumours, but had never known if they were true.

He had marched the half Battalion across the Serpentine bridge, then turned eastwards along the King’s private road. He had stared towards the Hyde Park Gate, but Jane Gibbons was not there. He told himself that he had not expected to see her, which was true, but he was disappointed just the same. Now the men were at the southern assembly field, deserted by all the troops except some disconsolate militia who today had to pretend to be the French. They wore grubby blue fatigue jackets and carried red, white and blue tricolours; miserable thin flags run up for the day and which were doubtless destined to be captured before the afternoon was done.