Sharpe's Regiment (7 page)

He went down the steps, acknowledging the salutes of the sentries, and out into Pall Mall where, to the amazement of Europe, gas lights flared and hissed in the night. It was warm still, the eastern sky just lightening into dawn over the haze of London’s smoke. He walked towards the dawn, his boot-heels making echoes in the empty street.

But not quite empty, for a carriage rattled behind him. He heard the hooves, the chains, the wheels, but he did not turn round. He supposed it was another of the Prince’s guests going home in the dawn.

The carriage slowed as it reached him. The coachman, high on his tasselled box, pulled on the reins to stop the vehicle, and Sharpe, annoyed by the intrusion, hurried. The coachman let the horses go faster until the carriage was beside the walking Rifleman and the door suddenly opened to flood yellow lantern-light onto the pavement.

‘Major Sharpe?’

He turned. The interior of the carriage was upholstered in dark blue and in its plushness, like a jewel in a padded box, was the slim woman with the startling green eyes. She was alone.

He touched the peak of his shako. ‘Ma’am.‘

‘Perhaps I can help you home?’

‘I’ve a long way to go, Ma’am.‘

‘I don’t.’ She gestured at the seat opposite her.

He paused, astonished at her boldness, then thought that such a simple conquest would be a fitting consolation on this night of failure. He climbed into the carriage, and went into the London night.

 

Much later, after the sun had risen and the morning was half gone, long after the time when Sharpe had told Harper to meet him at the Rose Tavern, she rolled onto him. Her red hair was tousled about her mocking face. ‘You’re Prinny’s latest toy. And mine.’ She said it bitterly, as though she hated herself for being in bed with him. She had made love as though she had not made love in a decade; she had been feverish, clawing, hungry, yet afterwards, even though stark naked, she had somehow managed to imply that she did Sharpe a great favour and that he did her a small one. She had not smiled since they reached her bedroom, nor did she smile now. ‘I suppose you’ll boast about this with your soldier friends?’

‘No.’ He stroked the skin of her back, his hands gentle in the deep, slim curve of her waist. She was, he thought, a beautiful, embittered woman, no more than his own age. She had not given him her name, refusing to answer the question.

She dug her fingernails into his shoulders. ‘You’ll tell them you bedded one of Prinny’s ladies, won’t you?’

‘Are you?’

She gave a gesture of disdain. ‘Prinny only likes grandmothers, Major. The older the better. He likes them rancid and ancient.’ She traced the scar on his face with one of her sharp nails. ‘So what did you think of Lord Fenner?’

‘He’s a lying bastard.’

For the first time she laughed. She searched his face with her green eyes. ‘You’re accurate, Major. He’s also a politician. He’d eat dung for money or power. How do you know he’s lying?’

He still stroked her, running his hands from her shoulderblades to her thighs. ‘He said my Second Battalion was disbanded, a paper convenience. It isn’t.’

‘How do you know?’ She said it with the trace of a sneer, as if a simple soldier back from the wars would know nothing.

‘Because they’re still recruiting. Disbanded regiments don’t recruit.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘Look for them.’

She stared at him, then, in a gesture that was surprisingly gentle, pushed his dark hair away from his face. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t?’

She seemed to sneer again, then hooked her legs round his. ‘Stay in London, Major. Prinny’s court is full of little whores. Enjoy yourself. Didn’t Fenner say he’d help you find another regiment? Let him.’

‘Why?’

‘Turn over.’ Her hands were pulling at him, her nails tearing at his skin. He felt as scarred as if he had fought a major battle.

She would not give him her name, she would only give her lean, hungry body. She was like a cat, he thought, a green-eyed, lithe cat who, when he dressed, lay naked on the silk sheets and stared at him with her mysterious, disdainful eyes. ‘Shall I give you some advice, Major Sharpe?’

He had pulled on his boots. ‘Yes.’

‘Don’t look for that Battalion, Major.’

‘So it does exist?’

‘If you say so.’ She pulled the sheets over her body. ‘Stay in London. Let Prinny slobber all over you, but don’t make an enemy of Lord Fenner.’

He smiled. ‘What can he do to me?’

‘Kill you. Don’t look for it, Major.’

He leaned down to kiss her, but she turned her face away. He straightened up. ‘I came to England to find it.’

‘Go away, Major.’ She watched him buckle on his sword. ‘There are stairs at the back, no one will see you leave. Go back to Spain!’

Sharpe stared at her from the open door. The house beyond this bedroom seemed vacant. ‘There are men in Spain who need me, who trust me.’ She stared at him, saying nothing, and he felt that his words were inadequate. ‘They’re not special men, they wouldn’t look very well in Carlton House, but they are fighting for all of you. That’s why I’m here.’

She mocked his appeal with a sneer. ‘Go away.’

‘If you know something about my Battalion, tell me.’

‘I’m telling you to go away.’ She said it savagely, as though she despised herself for having taken him to her bed. ‘Go!’

‘I’m at the Rose Tavern in Drury Lane. A letter there will reach me. I don’t need to know who you are. The Rose Tavern.’

She turned away from him again, not replying, and Sharpe, walking out into the back alley and blinking at the sudden sunlight, wished he were truly at home; in Spain, with his men, at the place where the war was being fought. This city of luxury, lies, and deceit seemed suddenly foul. He had come to London, he had achieved nothing, and he walked slowly back to Drury Lane.

The British soldiers, red coats bright and muskets tipped with bayonets, went into the smoke. They cheered. They charged. A drummer beat them on.

The French ran. They scrambled desperately at the hillside while, behind them, the redcoats came from the smoke to fire a single volley. Two of the French, their blue jackets unmarked, turned and fell. One gushed blood from his mouth. His arms went up. He span slowly, screaming foully, to collapse at the feet of the advancing British infantry whose boots gleamed with unnatural brilliance. A French officer, his wig awry, knelt in quivering fear and held clasped hands towards the victorious British soldiers.

‘And then, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. The cavalry!’

The orchestra went into a brazen, jaunty piece of music as four mounted men, wooden sabres in their hands, rode onto the wide stage. The audience cheered them.

The ten defeated Frenchmen, needed again, formed a line at the bottom of the plaster hill, levelled their muskets, and the four cavalrymen lined knee to knee. The limelights glared on their spurs and scabbard chains.

‘Across Vitoria’s proud plain, Ladies and Gentlemen, the thunder of their hooves was loud!’ The drums rolled menacingly. ‘Their swords were lifted to shine in the bright sunshine of that great day!’ The four sabres raggedly lifted. ‘And then, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, the pride of France was humbled, the troops of the Ogre brought down, and the world watched in awe the terrible prowess of our British Cavalry!’

The pit orchestra worked itself into a cacophonous frenzy and the four horsemen trotted over the stage, screaming and waving their sabres. The wooden blades hacked down on the ten men who, once again, squeezed their bags of false blood and strewed themselves artistically about the stage’s apron.

Sergeant Patrick Harper watched enthralled. He shook his head in admiration. ‘That’s just grand, sir.’

The drums were rolling again, louder and louder, drowning the screams of the dying actors and the excited shouts of the audience.

The back of the stage was opening up. It was, Sharpe admitted, impressive. Where, just a moment before, there had been a field of grass with some carefully arranged rock hills, all mysterious with the smoke from the small pots, now there was a magnificent castle, that, as it leaved outwards, pushed the hills and smoke aside.

The bass drum began a thunderous rhythm, a rhythm that made the audience clap with it and cheer in anticipation. The cymbals shivered the theatre, and the narrator, high on a pulpit beside the stage, raised his hands for silence.

‘My Lords! Ladies! Gentlemen! Pray silence for His Majesty, his unutterable Majesty, his foul, proud, Napoleonic Majesty, King Joseph!’

An actor, mounted on a black horse, carrying a sword and wearing on his face a scowl of utmost ferocity, pranced onto the stage and, pretending to notice the audience for the first time, stared haughtily at the packed theatre.

The stalls booed him. He spat at them, waved his sword, and the boos became louder. The horse staled.

‘King Joseph!’ the narrator cried above the threatre’s din. ‘Brother to the Ogre himself, a Bonaparte! Made King of Spain by his brother, tyrant to the proud nation of Spain, hated wherever liberty is loved!’

The audience jeered louder. Isabella, fetched from the house in Southwark, leaned on the plush cushion at the front of the box and stared in awe. She had never been inside a theatre before, and thought it was magical.

King Joseph shouted orders to the ragged file of resurrected French soldiers. ‘Kill the English! Slaughter them!’

The audience cat-called. A cannon was wheeled from the castle gateway, pointed at the audience, and a shower of sparks and smoke gushed from its muzzle.

Isabella gasped. Patrick Harper was wide-eyed with wonder at the spectacle.

The token for this box had been given to Sharpe by the landlord of the Rose Tavern. ‘You should go, Major,’ the man had said confidingly. ‘You was there, sir, it’ll bring it all back! And free oysters and champagne on the house, sir?’

Sharpe had not wanted to go, but Harper and Isabella had been desperate to see the “Victory at Vitoria Enacted” and eager for Sharpe to share the delight. He had agreed for Harper’s sake and now, as the pageant neared its end, Sharpe found himself enjoying the antics far more than he had expected. The effects, he thought, were clever, while some of the girls, conveniently introduced as persecuted peasants or grieving widows into the stage’s carnage, were luminously beautiful. There were worse ways, Sharpe thought; of spending an evening.

The audience screamed in delight as King Joseph began a panicked flight about the stage. British troops, come from the wings, chased him, and he successively shed his sword, his hat, his boots, his gilded coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, and finally, to the delighted shrieks of the women in the audience, his breeches. All that was left to him was a tiny French tricolour about his arse. He stood shivering on top of the cannon, clutching the flag. The drums rolled. A British soldier reached for the small flag, the drum roll grew louder, louder, the audience shouted for the soldier to pull the flag away, there was a clash of cymbals, and Isabella screamed in shock and delight as the flag was snatched away at the very instant that the curtain fell.

The audience chanted for more, the orchestra swelled to fill the tiers of boxes with triumphal music, and the curtain, after a brief pause, lifted again to show the whole cast, King Joseph cloaked now, facing the audience with linked hands to sing “Proud Britons”. A great Union flag was lowered above their heads.

Sharpe was thinking of a sinuous, hungry, beautiful woman who had clawed at him and told him to go back to Spain. Sharpe wanted nothing more, but he knew that Lord Fenner had lied, that the Second Battalion existed, and, sitting here watching the flummery on stage he had suddenly dreamed up the perfect way to find them. Actors and costumes had put the thought into his head, and he told himself that he was foolish to think of meddling with things he did not understand. The mysterious, green-eyed woman had said that Lord Fenner would kill him, and though that threat did not worry Sharpe, nevertheless he sensed that there were enemies in this, his homeland, every bit as deadly as Napoleon’s blue-jacketed troops.

Isabella gasped and clapped. From either wing of the stage, sitting on trapezes slung on wires, two women dressed as Goddesses of Victory were swooping over the heads of the actors. The Goddesses were scantily clad, the gauze fluttering over their bare legs as they swung above the linked actors and dropped laurel wreaths at their feet. The men in the audience cheered whenever the motion of the two trapezes peeled the gauze away from the Goddesses’ legs.

The Goddesses of Victory were hoisted off stage when “Proud Britons” was finished, and the orchestra went into a spirited “Rule Britannia” which, though hardly appropriate for a soldier’s victory, had the advantage that the audience knew its words. The cast stood upright and solemn, singing with the audience, and when the song was done, and the audience beginning its applause, the narrator held up his hands once more for silence. Some of tne young men in the pit were shouting for the half-naked Goddesses to be fetched back, but the narrator hushed them.

A drum was rolling softly, getting louder. ‘My Lords! Ladies and Gentlemen!’ A louder riffle of the drums, then soft again. ‘Tonight you have seen, presented through our humble skill, that great victory gained by noble Britons over the foul forces of the Corsican Ogre!’ There were boos for Napoleon. The drums rolled louder, then softer. The narrator silenced the audience. ‘Brave men they were, my Lords Ladies, and Gentlemen! Brave as the brave! Our gallant men, through shot and shell, through sabre and blade, through blood and fire, gained the day!’ Another drum roll and another cheer.

The door to the box opened. Sharpe turned, but it was merely one of the women who looked after the patrons and he presumed that, as the pageant was ending, so the boxes were being opened onto the staircase.