Sharpe's Rifles (26 page)

“But we won’t be facing infantry.” Vivar tried to find a scrap of hope in the face of
disaster. “Only cavalry.”

“No infantry?” Sharpe sounded doubtful.

“There’s a few to protect the French headquarters,” Vivar said dismissively.

“But if they shake out like that,” Sharpe gestured at the dispirited volunteers, “they’ll
never stand against cavalry, let alone infantry.”

“The French cavalry are tired.” Vivar was clearly piqued by Sharpe’s insistent pessimism.
“They’ve worn their horses to the bone.”

“We should wait,” Sharpe said. “Wait till they’ve marched south.”

“You think they won’t garrison Galicia?” Vivar was stubborn in his refusal to wait. He
gestured for Davila and larper to join him. How long before the volunteers would >e hammered
into shape?

Davila, no infantryman, looked at Harper. The Irishman hrugged. “It’s desperate, sir. Bloody
desperate.”

Harper’s response was so unlike his usual cheerfulness hat it depressed even Vivar. The
Spaniard only needed :hese volunteers brought to a minimum of efficiency before aunching his
attack, but the Irishman’s gloom seemed to Dresage indefinite postponements, if not outright
abandonment.

Harper cleared his throat. “But what I don’t understand, sir, is why you’re trying to turn
them into soldiers at all.”

“To win a battle?” Sharpe suggested acidly.

“If it comes to a straight scrap between these lads and French Dragoons, we’re not going to
win,” Harper paused, “begging your pardon, sir.” None of the officers spoke. His voice took on a
note of authority, like a practical man demonstrating a simplicity to fools. “What’s the point in
training them to fight an open battle when that’s not what you’re expecting? Why do they need to
learn platoon fire? These lads have to fight in the streets, sir. That’s just gutter fighting, so
it is, and I’ll wager they’re as good at that as any Frenchman. Get them into the city, then set
them loose. I wouldn’t want to face the bastards.”

“Ten trained men can see off a rabble.” Sharpe, hearing his hopes of a postponement being
dashed by Harper’s words, spoke harshly.

“Aye, but we’ve got two hundred trained men,” Harper said, “and we just push them to wherever
there’s real trouble.”

“My God!” Vivar was suddenly elated. “Sergeant, you are right!”

“Nothing, sir.” Harper was obviously delighted at the praise.

“You are right!” Vivar slapped the Irishman’s shoulder. “I should have seen it. The people,
not the army, will free Spain, so why turn the people into an army? And we forget, gentlemen,
just what forces will be on our side in the city.

The citizens themselves! They’ll rise and fight for us, and we would never think of refusing
their help because they’re not trained!“ Vivar’s optimism, released by Harper’s words, was in
full flood. ”So, we can go soon. Gentlemen, we are ready!“

So now, Sharpe thought, even the training would be abandoned. An outnumbered rabble would
march on a city. Vivar made it all sound so easy, like filling a pit with rats then letting in
the terriers. Yet the pit was a city, and the rats were waiting.

Vivar’s volunteers might not be trained soldiers, but the Major insisted on swearing them into
the service of the Spanish Crown. The priests conducted the ceremony, and each man’s name was
solemnly recorded on paper as a duly sworn soldier of His Most Christian Majesty, Ferdinand VII.
Now the French could have no excuse for treating Vivar’s volunteers as civilian
criminals.

Yet soldiers needed uniforms, and there was no dyed cloth to make bright coats, nor any of the
other accoutrements of a soldier like shakos, belts, pouches, or gaiters. But there was plenty of
coarse brown homespun to be had, and from that humble material Vivar ordered simple tunics to be
made. There was also some white linen, fetched from a nunnery twenty miles away, which was made
into sashes. It was a very crude uniform, fastened with loops about bone buttons, but, if any
rules of war could be applied to Vivar’s expedition, the brown tunics passed as soldiers’
coats.

The wives of the volunteers cut and sewed the brown tunics while Louisa Parker, high in the
fortress, helped the Riflemen mend their green jackets. The coats were ragged, torn, threadbare
and scorched, yet the girl proved to have an extraordinary skill with the needle. She took
Sharpe’s green jacket and, in less than a day, made it seem almost new. “I even ironed out the
bugs,” she said happily, and folded back a seam at the collar to prove that the lice had truly
been exterminated by the stub of a broken sabre which she had used as a flatiron.

“Thank you.” Sharpe took the coat and saw how she had turned the collar, darned the sleeves,
and patched the black facings. His trousers could not be restored to their original grey, so she
had sewn patches of brown homespun over the worst rents. “You look like a harlequin,
Lieutenant.”

“A fool?”

It was the evening of the day on which Harper had convinced Vivar of the uselessness of
training the volunteers. Sharpe, as on previous evenings, walked the ramparts with Louisa. He
prized these moments. As the fears of defeat grew on him, these snatched conversations were
passages of hope. He liked to stare at the firelight reflected from her face, he liked the
gentleness which sometimes softened her vivacity. She was gentle now as she leaned against the
parapet. “Do you suppose my uncle and aunt are in Santiago?”

“Perhaps.”

Louisa was swathed in a Cazador’s scarlet cloak and wore a close fitting bonnet. “Perhaps my
aunt won’t take me back. Perhaps she will be so scandalized by my terrible behaviour that I will
be cast from chapel and home.”

“Is that likely?”

“I don’t know.” Louisa was wistful. “I sometimes suspect that’s what I want to
happen.”

“Want?” Sharpe was surprised.

“To be cast adrift in the middle of the biggest adventure in the world? Why ever not?” Louisa
laughed. “When I was a child, Lieutenant, I was told it was perilous to cross the village green
in case the gypsies took me. And if soldiers ever appeared in the village-‘ she shook her head to
demonstrate the enormity of such an occasion’s danger. ”Now I’m in the middle of a war and
accompanied only by soldiers!“ She smiled at the predicament, then gave Sharpe a look which
mingled curiosity and warmth. ”Don Bias says you’re the best soldier he’s ever known.“

Sharpe thought it odd that she used Vivar’s Christian name, then supposed it was the polite
usage of an hidalgo. ‘He exaggerates.“

“What he actually said, ”Louisa spoke more slowly, and Sharpe sensed she was delivering a
message to him, “was that if you had more confidence in yourself, you’d be the best. I suppose I
shouldn’t have told you that?” He wondered if the criticism were true and Louisa, mistaking his
silence for hurt, apologized.

“I’m sure it is true,” Sharpe said hastily.

“Do you like being a soldier?”

“I always dreamed of having a farm. God knows why, because I know nothing of the business. I’d
probably plant the turnips upside down.” He stared at the campfires in the deep valley; tiny
sparks of warmth and light in an immensity of cold darkness. “I imagined I’d have a couple of
horses in a stable, a stream to fish,” he paused, shrugged, “children.”

Louisa smiled. “I used to dream of living in a great castle. There would be secret passages,
dungeons, and mysterious horsemen bringing messages in the night. I think I should have preferred
to have lived in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Catholic priests in the shrubbery and Spaniards in
the channel? Except those old enemies are now our friends, aren’t they?”

“Even the priests?”

“They aren’t the ogres I thought they were.” She was silent for a second. “But if you’re
brought up too firmly in one persuasion then you’re bound to be curious about the enemy, are you
not? And we English were always taught to hate Catholics.”

“I wasn’t.”

“But you know what I mean. Aren’t you curious about the French?”

“Not really.”

Louisa frowned. “I find myself curious about the Catholics. I even find myself with a most
unProtestant affection for them now. I’m sure Mr Bufford would be scandalized.”

“Will he ever know?” Sharpe asked.

Louisa shrugged. “I shall have to describe my adventures to him, shall I not? And I shall have
to confess that the Inquisition didn’t torture me or try to burn me at the stake.” She stared
into the night. “One day this will all seem like a dream?”

“Will it?”

“Not for you,” she said ruefully. “But one day I will find it hard to believe that any of this
even happened. I will be Mrs Bufford of Godalming, a most respectably dull lady.”

“You could stay here,” Sharpe said, and felt immensely brave for saying it.

“Could I?” Louisa turned to him. There was a glow to their left where a Rifleman drew on his
pipe, but they both ignored it. She turned away and traced some indeterminate pattern on the
parapet. “Are you saying that the British army will stay in Portugal?”

The question surprised Sharpe, who thought he had broken through to a more intimate layer of
conversation. “I don’t know.”

“I think the Lisbon garrison must have gone already,” Louisa said flatly. “And if not, what
possible use would such a small garrison be when the French march south? No, Lieutenant, the
Emperor has taught us a smart lesson, and I fear we’ll not dare risk our army again.”

Sharpe wondered where she had gained such firm opinions on strategy. “What I meant when I said
you could stay here…“ he began clumsily.

“Forgive me, I know,” Louisa interrupted him quickly, and there was a very awkward silence
between them until she spoke again. “I do know what you’re saying, and I am very sensible of the
honour you do me, but I do not want you to ask anything of me.” The formal words were said in a
very small voice.

Sharpe had wanted to say that he would offer her everything that was in his power. It might
not be much; in terms of money it was nothing, yet in slavish adoration it was everything. He had
not said that, yet Louisa, out of his incoherence, had understood everything and now he felt
embarrassed and rejected.

Louisa must have sensed that embarrassment, and regretted causing it. “I don’t want you to ask
anything of me yet, Lieutenant. Will you give me until the city’s captured?”

“Of course.” Hope flared again in Sharpe, to mingle with the shame left by his clumsy
proposal. He supposed he had spoken too soon, and too impetuously, yet Louisa’s evident desire to
stay in Spain and avoid the fate of matrimony to Mr Bufford had provoked his words.

The sentry paced further away from them, the smell of his tobacco drifting back along the
ramparts. The fire in the courtyard blazed bright as a man threw a log onto it. Louisa turned to
watch the sparks whirl up to the height of the tower’s crenellations. From somewhere deep in the
fortress came the wailing noise of one of the Galician bagpipes that inevitably provoked cries of
feigned horror from Sharpe’s men. She smiled at the sound of the dutiful protests, then frowned
accusingly at Sharpe. “You don’t think Don Bias will succeed in taking the city, do
you?”

“Of course I…“

“No,” she interrupted him. “I listen to you. You think there are too many Frenchmen in
Santiago. And in private you say that this is Don Bias’s madness.”

Sharpe was somewhat disconcerted by the accusation. He had not admitted his real fears to
Louisa, yet she had truly perceived them. “It is madness,” he said defensively. “Even Major Vivar
says it is.”

“He says it is God’s madness, which is different,” Louisa said in gentle reproof. “But it
would work better, wouldn’t it, if there were less Frenchmen in the city?”

“It would work better,” Sharpe said drily, “if I had four Battalions of good redcoats, two
batteries of nine pounders, and two hundred more Rifles.”

“Suppose,” Louisa began, then checked her.words.

“Go on.”

“Suppose the French thought that you had marched to a hiding place near the city. A place
where you planned to wait during the day so you could attack just after dark? And suppose,” she
hurried on to prevent him interrupting, “that the French knew where you were hiding?”

Sharpe shrugged. “They’d send men out to slaughter us, of course.”

“And if you were in another place entirely,” Louisa spoke now with the same enthusiasm with
which she had greeted the mystery of the strongbox, “you could attack while they were out of the
city!”

“It’s all very complicated,” Sharpe said in muted criticism.

“But supposing I was to tell them that?”

Sharpe, astonished, said nothing. Then he shook his head abruptly. “Don’t be
ridiculous!”

“No, truly! If I went to Santiago,” Louisa rode over his protest by raising her voice, “if I
went there and said that’s what you were doing, they’d believe me! I’d say that you wouldn’t let
me come with you, and that you insisted I had to go on my own to Portugal, but I preferred to
find my aunt and uncle. They’d believe me!”

“Never!” Sharpe wanted to stop this outburst of nonsense. “Major Vivar’s already played that
trick on them. He spread rumours that he’d travelled with me, which sent the French haring off
south. They won’t fall for it again.” He regretted extinguishing such enthusiasm, but her idea
was quite hopeless. “Even if you tell the French that we’re hiding somewhere, they won’t send
cavalry out to find us until after dawn. And by then it will be too late to attack. If there was
a way of stripping the garrison at night…“ He shrugged, intimating that there was no
way.

“It was just a notion.” Louisa, chastened, stared at the bats which flickered past the
ramparts in the night.

Tt was kind of you to want to help.“

“I do want to help.”

“Just by being here, you help.” Sharpe tried to sound gallant. The sentry turned at the
rampart’s end and paced slowly back towards them. Sharpe sensed that the girl would retire to her
room at any moment and, though he risked further embarrassment, he could not bear to let the
moment pass without reinforcing his thin hopes. “Did I offend you earlier?” he asked
clumsily.