Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (83 page)

The kitchen doors opened again and this time a variety of dishes appeared, all hot, and orderlies put new plates before each diner. The smell was tantalizing. Dubreton clapped his hands. ‘Lady’Farthingdale! Sir Augustus! Ladies and gentlemen. You will have to forgive us. No goose this Christmas, no hog’s head, not even a roasted swan. Alas! I tried for beef in our guests’ honour, but nothing. You will have to put up with this humble dish. Major Sharpe? You will assist Lady Farthingdale? Sir Augustus? Allow me.‘

There were three kinds of meat on one set of plates, next to dishes of beans that seemed to be topped with breadcrumbs, and then there were bowls of crisp, brown, roasted potatoes. Sharpe had a passion for roasted potatoes and he worked out in his head how many bowls were on the table, how many potatoes in each, and how many guests had to share them. He offered some to Josefina. ‘Milady?’

‘No thank you, Major.’ Her knee rubbed his. Sharpe was sure that Sir Augustus must see what was happening, Josefina was so close to him now that their elbows rubbed whenever they ate. There had been a time when he had murdered for this woman and back then he would never have believed that such a grand passion could fade into mere affection.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’ Sharpe helped himself to her share of the potatoes as well as his own. He would hide the excess under the beans.

Dubreton helped himself last, then looked to see that everyone had a full plate. ‘This should cheer your English hearts. Your Lord Wellington’s favourite dish, mutton!’ But mutton as Sharpe had never seen it, nothing like the yellow-brown, greasy meat that the Peer ate with such relish. Dubreton’s thin face was full of pleasure. ‘You roast the mutton, but only a little, and then you add the garlic sausage and the half roasted duck. Alas, it should be goose, but we have none. You cook them in the beans, then separate them.’ The beans were delicious, white and swollen, and there were tiny squares of crisp, roasted pork rind among them. Dubreton speared a single bean. ‘You cook the beans in water and you must throw the water away, you know that?’

The British shook their heads, looking puzzled, and Dubreton continued. ‘The water of flageolots is stinking, horrid. You can tell a slattern because she does not throw it far enough from the house. However!’ He held the bean up, smiled. ‘You can bottle the water, yes? Then you will have a substance that will take the most stubborn stains from linen. You see how much you have to learn from us? Now eat!’

Dubreton had apologized for the main course, but the apology was needless for the food, once more, exceeded Sharpe’s experience and the potatoes, to his secret delight, were so crisp that each threatened to explode like a small shell and skid across the white table-cloth. He drank the lighter wine and he understood why Dubreton had insisted that they save it for this course, and he felt wonderfully good, relaxed, and he laughed as Harry Price complained that beans always gave him flatulence and solemnly speared each one to release the hidden gas he insisted was within. The mention of gas prompted a question from Dubreton whether it was true that London already had gas lighting, and Sharpe said it was, and Madame Dubreton wanted to know exactly where and then she sighed at the answer. ‘Pall Mall! I haven’t seen the Mall for nine years.’

‘You will, Ma’am, again.‘

Josefina leaned close to Sharpe, her hair brushing his own. ‘Will you take me to London?’

‘Whenever you like.’

‘Tonight?’ She was smiling at him, teasing him, her thigh. pressing rhythmically against his.

‘I didn’t hear your words, my dear?’ Sir Augustus, unable to contain his anger, leaned forward.

She smiled at him prettily. ‘I was counting the potatoes on Major Sharpe’s plate. I think he is very greedy.’

‘A man needs his strength.’ Ducos said, his eyes going back and forth between Sharpe and Josefina.

‘Which is why you eat so little, Major?’ She smiled at Ducos and it was true that the small, plain-dressed man picked fussily at his food and ate little. She leaned back towards Sharpe and put her fork over his plate. ‘One, two, three, four, five, you’ve eaten part of that one, six.’ Her knee and thigh were hard against him. She lowered her voice. ‘He sleeps like the dead. Three o’clock?‘

‘Qui vive?’
The shout was from outside the inn, the French challenge.

Josefina’s fork was in her left hand, her right hand was beneath the table, its fingers running up the junction of green cloth and leather of his French overalls. ‘Eight, nine. Ten potatoes, Major? Yes?’

‘Three and a half would be better.’ He said. He could smell her hair. She was hovering over his plate with the fork, deciding which potato to prong. She picked one, leaned away from him, and held the potato to his mouth. ‘For your strength, Major.’

He opened his mouth, the fork came forward, and then the challenge was repeated, the door was hammered, opened, and the thick curtain was swept aside letting in a flurry of freezing air.

The diners stopped, forks halfway to their mouths, Josefina’s fork an inch from Sharpe’s lips, and there in the doorway stood Patrick Harper, grinning, and beside him, much smaller, her eyes dark, her hair black inside her hood, was Teresa. Sharpe’s wife.

‘Hello, husband.’

She would not enter the inn, not Teresa, not while French officers were there. She hated the French with all the passion of her passionate soul. They had raped and killed her mother, she repaid them by killing as many as she could find and ambush in the border hills. Sharpe walked with her down the village street, towards the Convent, and she looked up at him. ‘Forgotten how to eat, Richard?’

‘She was only being playful.’

‘Playful!’ She laughed at him. The light of the straw torches showed her thin, strong face. There was none of Josefina’s softness here, this woman had the face of a hawk; a beautiful hawk, but still a killer, a hunter, a creature of supple strength and small pity. The face was proud, the face of old Spain, mellowed only by lustrous, large eyes. The mother of his child. ‘That’s the whore-bitch Josefina, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you still wear her ring, yes?’

Sharpe stopped, surprised. He had forgotten it, and Josefina had not mentioned it, but he did still wear the silver ring engraved with an Eagle that Josefina had bought for him before the battle of Talavera and before he had taken the eagle standard from the French. He looked at the ring, then up to Teresa’s eyes. ‘Jealous?’

‘Richard.’ She smiled. ‘You wear the ring for the eagle, not her, I know that. Still, I suspect you think she is very beautiful, yes?’

‘Too fat.’

‘Too fat! You think anyone’s too fat who’s wider than a ramrod.’ She was facing him and she punched him lightly on the arm. ‘One day I’m going to become fat, very fat, and I, will see if you truly love me.’

‘I love you.’

‘And you think that forgives all.’ She smiled at him, stood on tiptoe, and he kissed her, aware of the interested gaze of a dozen French sentries as well as Harper’s looming figure twenty yards away. She frowned. ‘Is that how you love me?’

He kissed her again, holding her this time, and she slid her face against his cheek and whispered in his ear, and then she pulled away to see the expression on his face.

‘Truly?’ He asked.

‘Yes. This way.’ She took him by the hand and walked with him beyond the light of the torches, out into the open field. The mist was still thin, the stars still showing hazed overhead, but the clouds had spread further south and promised foul weather. She stopped him when they were well beyond the earshot of any Frenchman in the village.

‘Six Battalions, Richard. They’re in a village three miles down the road.’ She gestured eastwards. ‘And that’s not all.’

‘Go on.’

‘Five miles beyond them there’s more. Far more. We saw five batteries of guns, maybe six. More cavalry, more infantry, and big carts. Supply carts.’

‘Jesus.’ He felt himself sobering fast in the cold air, under the impact of Teresa’s news.

The Partisans were moving, spurred by Nairn’s request, and Teresa had ridden with a dozen men north and east. With instinctive wariness she had circled towards her destination, coming at Adrados from the east, and in the Christmas dusk she had seen the French troops that were hidden in the valley and aimed like a lance towards Portugal. She guessed ten French Battalions, at least, maybe more, and Sharpe knew that those troops had not been marched into the winter hills just to subdue Pot-au-Feu.

For what, then? To conquer north Portugal, as Nairn had suggested? That seemed a paltry ambition, a feather to lay in the scale against the leaden weight of the French defeat in Russia, but what then? Why was a French corps this far north, when the real prizes would be to recapture the border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz? If the Peer lost those towns then the campaign of 1813 would be set back by weeks, even months.

Teresa clung to his arm. ‘Why do they say they’re here?’

‘The same reason as us. To destroy Pot-au-Feu.’

‘Bastard liars.’

Sharpe shivered in the cold. He could see the fires at the watchtower and he thought of Frederickson preparing a defence, but a defence that had never been designed to beat off batteries of artillery and massed infantry.

Teresa’s face was pale in the darkness. ‘So what will you do?’

‘It’s not up to me. I’m not in command.’

‘Major?’

‘Yes?’

She laughed. ‘A Major! Are you pleased?’

He laughed.‘Yes.’

‘Patrick’s pleased. He says you deserve it. I hope you’re not going to run away from them.’

‘Not if I can help it.’ He turned and looked at the village. ‘No. We won’t run away, but we’ll need help.’

She nodded, turning with him. ‘My men are riding for help in the morning.’ She named a half-dozen Partisan leaders who were within a day’s ride.

‘And you?’

She pulled her cloak tight about her. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Go west. Take a message to our lines. So far they don’t even know there are any French in the valley.’

She nodded. ‘And the message?’

‘That we’re holding the Gateway of God.’

She liked that, smiling in the darkness, her teeth white and even. She looked north. ‘I’ll go soon, tonight, before the snow.’

He wished she would wait till morning, but she was right, and Sharpe despised himself for needing her protection against his assignation at half past three. There would be no assignation, not this night, because he had a defence to prepare and a battle to fight in the dawn. Teresa seemed to sense his thoughts for she smiled at him, and her voice was teasing. ‘I think the whore-bitch will be safe from you tonight.’

‘I think so.’

They walked slowly towards the lights in the village street and Teresa brought out a wrapped package from beneath her cloak and handed it to him. ‘Open it.’

Sharpe pulled the string open, undid the cloth wrapping, and there was a doll inside the parcel. He moved closer to the light, and smiled. The doll was a Rifleman.

Teresa seemed worried. ‘You like it?’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘I made it for Antonia.’ She wanted Sharpe to like it.

He held it into the light and he saw the care and trouble that had gone into the tiny uniform. The doll was just six inches high, yet the green jacket showed every piece of black piping, small loops intricate at the facings crossed by a thin, black crossbelt. The face was carved from wood. He lifted off the tiny black-peaked shako and saw black hair beneath.

‘Wool.’ She smiled. ‘I was going to give it to her for Christmas. Today. It will wait.’

‘How is she?’

‘Lovely.’ Teresa took the doll back and began to wrap it with delicate care. ‘Lucia looks after her.’Lucia was Teresa’s sister-in-law. ‘She’s very good with her. I suppose she has to be, we’re not the best parents in the world.’ She shrugged.

‘Tell her the doll’s from me, too.’ He had nothing to give his daughter.

She nodded. ‘It’s supposed to be you.’ She smiled. ‘She can have a doll and call it Father. I’ll tell her it’s from you as well.’

Sharpe thought of his words to Frederickson. Leave her to life. He did not want that. Antonia was his only flesh and blood, but she did not know him, nor he her, and he looked up into the mist at a blurred star and thought how selfish he was. He preferred to live on the blade-edge of danger and glory rather than raise a family in peace and security. Antonia was a child of war, and war, as Ducos had said, brought death more often than life. ‘Does she speak yet?’

‘A few words.’Teresa’s voice was subdued. ‘Mamma. She calls Ramon “Gogga”, I don’t know why.’ She laughed, but there was little pleasure in her voice.

Antonia would speak Spanish. She had no one to call Father except her uncle, Ramon, and she was lucky in him. More fortunate in her uncle than in her father.

‘Major! Major Sharpe!’

The voice hailed him from the inn door, then Dubreton stepped into the street and walked towards them. ‘Major?’

Sharpe put a hand on Teresa’s shoulder, waited till the French Colonel was close. ‘My wife, M’sieu. Teresa? This is Colonel Dubreton.‘

Dubreton bowed to her. ‘La Aguja. You’re as beautiful as you are dangerous, Ma’am.‘ He gestured towards the inn. ’It would be my pleasure to have you join us. The ladies have withdrawn, but you would be welcome, I know.‘

Teresa, to Sharpe’s surprise, spoke politely. ‘I’m tired, Colonel. I would prefer to wait for my husband in the Castle.’

‘Of course, Madame.’ Dubreton paused. ‘Your husband has done me a great service, Madame, a personal service. To him I owe my wife’s safety. If it is ever in my power, then I will feel honoured to repay that debt.’

Teresa smiled. ‘You’ll forgive me if I hope it is never in your power?’

‘I regret we are enemies.’

‘You can leave Spain, then we need not be.’

‘To be your friend, Madame, makes the idea of losing this war bearable.’

She laughed, pleased with the compliment, and to Sharpe’s utter astonishment held out her hand and let the Frenchman kiss it. ‘Would you call my horse, Colonel? One of your men is holding it.’