Sharpe's Rifles (33 page)

At midday a convoy of mules carried much of the fodder, together with the Riflemen’s packs, to
a safe place in the eastern hills. Vivar did not want his men encumbered by personal belongings
if the city had to be defended, and so the cache of packs and trophies would wait to be collected
after the withdrawal. Once the mules had gone, Sharpe ordered most of his Riflemen to rest while
he, fighting off a vast weariness, went in search of Bias Vivar. He walked first to the big plaza
which he found almost deserted; all but for a picquet of Cazadores who warily watched the
shuttered windows of the palace. There were also a few civilians making a crude barrier of
furniture, empty wine vats, and carts which would eventually surround the whole building that was
conveniently bounded on its other three sides by streets.

A single window was unshuttered in the palace facade, though no observer was visible there.
The flag was gone from above the double door which had been barricaded by planks supported by
timber buttresses. The French were thus penned inside their huge building.

They were also being taunted by crowds who, prevented by Cazadores from filling the big plaza,
jeered from the smaller open spaces to north and south of the cathedral. They cheered when they
saw Sharpe, then went back to insulting the hidden Frenchmen. Bagpipes added their squalling to
the noise. Children danced derision of the enemy, while the city bells still rang their mad
cacophony of victory. Sharpe, smiling his tired happiness at the citizens’ celebrations, climbed
the flight of steps which twisted towards the cathedral’s ornate western entrance. He stopped
halfway up, not from tiredness, but because he was suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of the
facade. Pillars and arches, statues and balustrades, escutcheons and scrolls: all were superbly
carved to the glory of Santiago who was buried inside. After the weeks of hardship and cold, of
battle and anger, the cathedral seemed to dwarf the ambitions of the men who fought across Spain.
Then he thought that this cathedral was like Vivar’s ambition. The Spaniard fought for something
he believed in, while Sharpe only fought like a pirate; out of a stubborn and bloody
pride.

“Do I perceive admiration in a soldier’s eyes?” The question, asked in a voice of gentle
teasing, came from a figure who moved forward on the stone platform at the top of the flight of
steps.

Sharpe instantly forgot the cathedral’s glories. “Miss Parker?” He knew he was smiling like a
fool, but he could not help it. It was not just a pirate’s pride that had made him fight, but his
memory of this girl who, in her blue skirt and rust-coloured cape, smiled back at him. He turned
and gestured at the silent French-held palace. “Isn’t it dangerous to be here?”

“My dear Lieutenant, I was inside the ogre’s den for a whole day! You think I am in more peril
now that you have gained such a victory?”

Sharpe .smiled at the compliment, then, as he climbed to the top of the steps, returned it. “A
victory, Miss Parker, to which you signally contributed.” He bowed to her. “My humblest
congratulations. I was wrong, and you were right.”

Louisa, delighted with the praise, laughed. “Colonel de l’Eclin believes he will ambush you in
the Ulla valley east of Padron. I watched him at three o’clock this morning.” She walked to the
very centre of the cathedral’s platform which made a kind of stage dominating the wide plaza. “He
stood in this very place, Lieutenant, and made a speech to his men. They filled the plaza! Rank
after rank of helmets gleaming in the torchlight, and all of the men cheering their Colonel. I
never thought to see such a thing! They cheered, then they rode off to their great
victory.”

Sharpe thought how slender had been this day’s margin of victory. An extra thousand men, under
de l’Eclin’s ruthlessly efficient command, would have destroyed Vivar’s attack. Yet the chasseur
Colonel, utterly deceived by Louisa, had been lured southwards. “How did you convince
him?”

“With copious tears and an evident reluctance to tell him anything. Eventually, though, he
wheedled the fatal truth from me.” Louisa seemed to mock her own cleverness. “In the end he gave
me a choice. I could stay in the city or rejoin my aunt in Corunna. I think he believed that if I
chose to stay here then I must have hopes of rescue, and that to express such a hope would reveal
that I lied to him. So I pleaded to rejoin my grieving family, and the Colonel rode away.” She
did a pirouette of joy. “I was supposed to leave for Corunna at midday today. Do you see what a
fate you have spared me?”

“Weren’t you frightened of staying?”

“Of course, weren’t you frightened of coming?”

He smiled. “I’m paid to be frightened.”

“And to be frightening. You look very grim, Lieutenant.” Louisa walked to some crates that lay
open beside the cathedral door, sat on one of them, and pushed an errant curl from her eyes.
“These crates,” she said, “were filled with plunder from the cathedral. The French took most of
it away last week, but Don Bias has saved some.”

“That will please him.”

“Not very much,” Louisa said tartly. “The French desecrated the cathedral. They plundered the
treasury and tore down most of the screens. Don Bias is not happy. But the gonfalon arrived
safely and is under guard, so the miracle can proceed.”

“Good.” Sharpe sat, drew sword and, with the blade across his knees, scrubbed at the blood
which would pit the steel with rust if it were not removed.

“Don Bias is inside. He’s preparing the high altar for his nonsense.” Louisa defused the word
with a smile. “Doubtless you wish he would get it over with swiftly, so you can
withdraw?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“But he won’t,” Louisa said firmly. “The priests are insisting that the nonsense must be done
properly and with due ceremony. This is a miracle, Lieutenant, that must be observed by witnesses
who can carry news of it throughout

Spain. We wait for the coming of some monks and friars.“ She laughed delightedly. ”It’s like
something out of the Middle Ages, isn’t it?“

“Indeed.”

“But Don Bias is serious, so we must both treat it with the utmost gravity. Shall we go inside
to see him?” Louisa spoke with sudden enthusiasm. “You should also see the Gate of Glory,
Lieutenant, it really is a very remarkable piece of masonry. Much more impressive than the doors
to a Methodist meeting house, though it’s monstrously disloyal of me to say as much.”

Sharpe was silent for a few seconds. He did not want to see the Gate of Glory, whatever that
might be, nor share this girl with the Spaniards who prepared the cathedral for the evening’s
rigmarole. He wanted to sit here with her, sharing the moment of victory.

“I do believe,” Louisa said, “that these have been the happiest days of my life. I do envy
you.”

“Envy me?”

“It’s the lack of restraint, Lieutenant. Suddenly there are no rules any more, are there? You
wish to tell a lie? You lie! You desire to tear a town into tatters? You do it! You wish to light
a fire? Then strike the flint! Perhaps I should become one of your Riflemen?”

Sharpe laughed. “I accept.”

“But instead,” Louisa folded her arms demurely, “I must travel south to Lisbon, and there take
a ship to England.”

“Must you?” Sharpe blurted out.

Louisa was silent for a second. The smell of smoke from one of the burning houses drifted
across the plaza, then was dispelled by a gust of wind. “Isn’t that what you’re going to do?” she
asked.

The hope soared in him. “It depends on whether we keep a garrison is Lisbon. I’m sure we
will,” he added lamely.

“It seems unlikely, after our defeats.” Louisa turned to watch a group of Spanish youths who
had succeeded in slipping past the Cazadores who guarded the plaza. The boys held a captured
tricolour which they first set alight, then brandished towards the trapped enemy. If they hoped
to stir the Frenchmen in the palace by their defiance, they failed.

“So I am doomed to return home,” Louisa gazed at the capering boys as she spoke, “and for
what, Lieutenant? In England I shall resume my needlework and spend hours with my watercolours.
Doubtless I shall be a curiosity for a while; the squire will want to hear of my quaint
adventures. Mister Bufford will resume his courtship and reassure me that never again, so long as
there is breath in his body, shall I be exposed to such foul danger! I shall play the pianoforte,
and spend weeks deciding whether to buy pink ribbons or blue for next year’s gowns. I shall take
alms to the poor, and tea with the ladies of the town. It will all be so very unarduous,
Lieutenant Sharpe.”

Sharpe felt adrift in an irony he was not clever enough to understand. “So you have decided to
marry Mr Bufford?” he asked in trepidation, fearing that the answer would dash all his fragile
hopes.

“I’m not heiress enough to attract anyone more exalted,” Louisa said with a feigned self-pity.
She brushed a scrap of fallen ash from her skirts. “But it’s surely the sensible thing for me to
do, is it not, Lieutenant? To marry Mr Bufford and live in his very pleasant house? I shall have
roses planted against the south wall and once in a while, a very long while, I shall see a
paragraph in the newspapers and it will tell of a battle faraway, and I’ll remember how very
horrid powder smoke smells and how sad a soldier can look when he’s scraping blood off his
sword.”

Her last words, which seemed so very intimate, restored Sharpe’s optimism. He looked up at
her.

“You see, Lieutenant,” Louisa forestalled anything he might say, “there comes a moment in
anyone’s life when a choice presents itself. Isn’t that true?”

The hope, so ill-based, so impractical, so irresistible, soared inside Sharpe. “Yes,” he said.
He did not know exactly how she could stay with the army, or how the finances, which were the
bane of most impractical romances, would be worked through, but other officers’ wives had houses
in Lisbon, so why not Louisa?

“I’m not convinced I want the roses and the embroidery.” Louisa seemed nervous and febrile
suddenly, like an untrained horse edging skittishly towards the skirmish line. “I know that I
should want those things, and I know I am most foolish in despising them, but I like Spain! I
like the excitement here. There isn’t much excitement in England.”

“No.” Sharpe hardly dared move for fear he would scare away her acceptance.

“You think I am wrong to crave excitement?” Louisa did not wait for an answer, but instead
asked another question. “Do you really think a British army will stay to fight in
Portugal?”

“Of course!”

“I don’t think it will.” Louisa turned to stare at the youths who were stamping on the ashes
of the burnt French flag. “Sir John Moore is dead,” she continued, “his army is gone, and we
don’t even know if the Lisbon garrison still remains. And if it does, Lieutenant, how can such a
small garrison hope to resist the armies of France?”

Sharpe stubbornly clung to his belief that the British army had not surrendered its hopes.
“The last news we heard from Lisbon was that the garrison was in place. It can be reinforced! We
won two battles in Portugal last year, why not more this year?”

Louisa shook her head. “I think we British have been trounced, Lieutenant, and I suspect we
shall abandon Spain to its fate. It’s been a hundred years since a British army was successful in
Europe, what makes us think we can be successful now?”

Sharpe at last sensed that Louisa’s ambitions and his own hopes were not, after all, in step.
Her nervousness was not that of a girl shyly accepting a proposal, but of a girl anxious not to
cause hurt by her rejection. He looked up at her. “Do you believe that, Miss Parker? Or is that
Major Vivar’s opinion?”

Louisa paused, then spoke so softly that her voice scarcely carried to Sharpe over the din of
the church bells. “Don Bias has asked me to stay in Spain, Lieutenant.”

“Oh.” Sharpe closed his eyes as though the sunlight in the plaza was hurting him. He did not
know what to say. There was nothing so foolish, he thought, as a man rejected.

“I can take instruction in the faith,” Louisa said, “and I can become a part of this country.
I don’t want to run away from Spain. I don’t want to go back to England and think of all the
excitement that beckons here. And I cannot…“ She stopped in embarrassment.

She did not need to finish. She could not throw herself away on a common soldier, an ageing
Lieutenant, a pauper in a tattered uniform whose only prospect was to decay in some country
barracks. “Yes,” Sharpe said helplessly.

“I cannot ignore the moment,” she said dramatically.

“Your family…“ Sharpe began.

“Will hate it!” Louisa forced a laugh. “I am trying to persuade myself that is not the sole
reason why I intend to accept Don Bias’s offer.”

Sharpe made himself look up at her. “You will marry?”

She looked very gravely at him. “Yes, Mr Sharpe, I shall marry Don Bias.” There was relief in
her voice now that the truth was out. “It is a sudden decision, I know, but I must have the
bravery to seize the moment.”

“Yes.” He could think of nothing else to say.

Louisa watched him in silence. There were tears in her eyes, but Sharpe did not see them. “I’m
sorry,” she began.

“No.” Sharpe stood. “I had no expectations, none.”

“I am pleased to hear that,” Louisa said very formally. She stepped back as Sharpe walked to
the platform’s edge, then frowned as he went down the cathedral steps. “Didn’t you have to see
Don Bias?”

“No.” Sharpe did not care any longer. He sheathed his sword and walked away. He felt he had
fought for nothing, there was nothing left worth fighting for, and his hopes were like the ashes
of the burnt flag in the empty plaza. It was all for nothing.

   F
or Lieutenant Richard Sharpe to aspire to Miss Louisa
Parker was, in its way, as daring as Vivar’s plan to capture an enemy-held city. She came from a
respectable family which, though it sometimes trembled on the edges of genteel poverty, was far
above Sharpe’s ignoble station. He was a peasant by birth, an officer by accident, and a pauper
by profession.