Sharpe's Eagle (19 page)

The Lieutenant waved at the mules. "All this, sir."

Sharpe looked out of the courtyard into the bright street. Another mule stood patiently in the
late afternoon sunlight. "What's that?"

"A mule, sir." The Lieutenant smiled brightly. He saw Sharpe's face. "Sorry, sir. My little
joke." He became serious. "That's the supplies for the castle, sir. Sir Arthur's. You
understand."

"I do?" Sharpe walked under the arch towards the mule, the Lieutenant alongside, and waved the
muleteer away. "I happened to see the supplies delivered to the castle this morning, Lieutenant,
and nothing was missing."

The Lieutenant smiled helplessly. Sharpe was lying, they both knew that, but then so was the
Lieutenant, and they both knew that, too. Sharpe pulled the cover off the nearest keg. "Now that,
Lieutenant, is beef. I'll have both these kegs instead of two of the others."

"But, sir! This is for. ,

"Your dinner, Lieutenant? And you and your fellow officers will sell the rest. Right? I'll
take it."

The Lieutenant recovered the keg. "Why don't you let me give you a fine chicken we just
happened to find, Captain, as a gift, of course."

Sharpe put his hand on the mule. "You want me to sign, Lieutenant? I think I'll weigh the beef
first."

The Lieutenant was beaten. He smiled brightly and gave Sharpe the list. "I wouldn't want you
to go to the trouble, sir. Let's just say you'll take all the kegs, these included?"

Sharpe nodded. The day's bargaining was over and his own working party unloaded the mules and
took the beef down to the outskirts of Oropesa, where the men of the Battalion were quartered.
The supply situation was hope-less and getting worse. The Spanish army had been waiting at
Oropesa and they had long eaten any spare food from the surrounding countryside. The town's steep
streets were filled with troops, Spanish, British and Germans from the Legion, and there was
already friction between the allies. British and German patrols had ambushed

Spanish supply wagons, even killing their guards, to get hold of the food Cuesta had promised
to Wellesley but never delivered. The army's hopes of reaching Madrid by the middle of August had
faded when they saw the waiting Spanish troops. The Regimienta de la Santa Maria was at Oropesa
parading beneath two huge new colours, and Sharpe wondered whether General Cuesta kept a
limitless supply to replace the trophies that ended up in Paris. As he walked down the steep
street he watched two officers with their long swords tucked, in the strange Spanish fashion,
under their armpits, and nothing about them, from their splendid uniforms to their thin cigars,
gave the Rifleman any comfort about the army of Spain.

He felt his own hunger as he walked down the street. Josefina's servant had found food, at a
price, and at least tonight he would eat, and every mouthful was almost a day's pay. The two
rooms she had found were costing a fortnight's pay every night but, he thought, the hell with it.
If the worst came to pass and he was forced to choose between a West Indies commission and
civilian life, then damn the money and enjoy it. Rent the rooms, pay through the nose for a
scrawny chicken that would boil into grey scraps, and carry into the fever ward the remembrance
of Josefina's body and the extraordinary luxury of a wide, shared bed. So far there was only the
memory of the one night at the inn, and then she had ridden ahead, grudgingly escorted by Hogan,
while Sharpe spent two days marching through the dust and heat with the Battalion. He had seen
her briefly at midday, been dazzled by a smile of welcome, and now there was a whole evening, a
long night, and no march tomorrow.

"Sir!"

Sharpe turned. Sergeant Harper was running towards him; another man, one of the South Essex's
Light Company, with him. "Sir!"

"What is it?" Sharpe noticed that Harper was looking agitated and worried, an unusual sight,
but he felt a twinge of impatience as he returned their salutes. Damn them! He wanted to be with
Josefina. "Well?"

"It's the deserters, sir." Harper was almost wriggling in embarrassment.

"Deserters?"

"You know, sir. The ones who escaped at Castelo?"

The day they had met up with the South Essex. Sharpe remembered the men being flogged because
four deserters had slipped past the guard at night. He looked hard at Harper. "How do you
know?"

"Kirby's a mate of theirs, sir." He pointed to the man standing next to him. Sharpe looked at
him. He was a small man who had lost most of his teeth. "Well, Kirby?"

"Dunno, sir."

"You want to be flogged, Kirby?"

The man's eyes jerked up to his, astonished. "What, sir?"

"If you don't tell me I'll have to presume you are helping them to escape."

Harper and Kirby were silent. Finally the Sergeant looked at Sharpe. "Kirby saw one of them in
the street, sir. He went back with him. Two of them are wounded, sir. Kirby came to see
me."

"And in turn you came to see me." Sharpe kept his voice harsh. "And what do you expect me to
do?"

Again they said nothing. Sharpe knew that they hoped he could work a miracle; that somehow
lucky Captain Sharpe could find a way to save the four men from the savage punishment the army
gave to deserters. He felt an unreasonable anger mount inside him, alloyed with impa-tience. What
did they think he was? "Fetch six men, Sergeant. Three Riflemen and three others. Meet me here in
five minutes. Kirby, stay here."

Harper stood to attention. "But, sir. ,

"Go!"

There was a translucent quality to the air, that quality of light just before dusk when the
sun seems suspended in coloured liquid. A gnat buzzed irritatingly round Sharpe's face, and he
slapped at it. The church bells rang the Anglus, a woman hurrying down the street crossed
herself, and Sharpe cursed inside because he had promised Josefina to join her just after six
o'clock. Damn the deserters! Damn Harper for expecting a miracle! Did the Sergeant really think
that Sharpe would condone deser-tion? Behind him, frightened and nervous, Kirby fidgeted in the
roadway, and Sharpe thought gloomily of what this could mean to the Battalion. The whole army was
frustrated but at least they could look forward with a mixture of fear and eagerness to the
inevitable battle that gave their present discomforts some purpose. The South Essex did not share
the anticipation. It had been disgraced at Valdelacasa, its colour shamefully lost, and the men
of the Battalion had no stomach for another fight. The South Essex was sullen and bitter. Every
man in it would wish the deserters well.

Harper reappeared with his men, all of them armed, all of them looking apprehensively at
Sharpe. One of them asked nervously if the deserters would be shot.

"I don't know," Sharpe snapped. "Lead on, Kirby."

They walked down the hill into the poorest section of the town, into a tangle of alleyways
where half-dressed children played in the filth that was hurled from the night-buckets into the
roadway. Washing hung between the high balconies, obscuring the light, and the closeness of the
walls seemed to heighten the stench. It was a smell the men had first encountered in Lisbon, and
they had become accustomed to it even though its source made walking through the streets after
dark a risky and nauseat-ing business. The men were silent and resentful, following Sharpe
reluctantly to a duty they had no wish to perform.

"Here, sir." Kirby pointed to a building that was little more than a hovel. It had partly
collapsed, and the rest looked as if it could fall at any moment. Sharpe turned to the men. "You
wait here. Sergeant, Peters, come with me."

Peters was from the South Essex. Sharpe had noted him as a sensible man, older than most, and
he needed someone from the deserters' own Battalion so that no-one could think that the
green-jacketed Riflemen had ganged up on the South Essex.

He pushed open the door. He had half expected someone to be waiting with a gun but instead he
found himself looking at a room of unimaginable squalor. The four men were on the floor, two of
them lying, the others sitting by the dead embers of a fire. Light filtered thickly through holes
that had once been windows and through the broken roof and upper floors. The men were dressed in
rags.

Sharpe crossed to the two sick men. He crouched and looked at their faces; they were white and
shivering, the pulse beat almost gone. He turned to the others.

"Who are you?"

"Corporal Moss, sir." The man had a fortnight's growth of beard and his cheeks were sunken.
They had obviously not been eating. "This is Private Ibbotson." He pointed to his companion. "And
those are Privates Campbell and Trapper, sir." Moss was being punctilious and polite, as though
it could save him from his fate. Dust lay heavy in the air; the room was filled with the stench
of illness and ordure.

"Why are you in Oropesa?"

"Came to rejoin the Regiment, sir," Moss said, but it was said too quickly. There was silence.
Ibbotson sat by the dead fire and stared at the ground between his knees. He was the only one
with a weapon, a bayonet held in his left hand, and Sharpe guessed that he did not approve of
what was happening.

"Where are your weapons?"

"Lost `em, sir. And the uniforms." Moss was eager to please.

"You mean you sold them."

Moss shrugged. "Yes, sir."

"And you drank away the money?"

"Yes, sir."

There was a sudden noise in the next room, and Sharpe whirled to face the doorway. There was
nothing there. Moss shook his head. "Rats, sir. Bloody armies of them."

Sharpe looked back to the deserters. Ibbotson was now staring at him, the frightening stare of
a crazed fanatic. For a moment Sharpe wondered if he was planning to use the bayonet.

"What are you doing here, Ibbotson? You don't want to rejoin the Regiment."

The man said nothing. Instead he lifted his right arm that had been hidden behind his body.
There was no hand, just a stump wrapped in blood-soaked rags.

"Ibbs got in a fight, sir," Moss said. "Lost `is 'and. He's no use to anyone no more, sir.
"E's right-handed, you see," he added lamely.

"You mean he's no use to the French."

There was silence. The dust hung thick in the air. "That's right." Ibbotson had spoken. He had
an educated voice. Moss tried to quieten him but Ibbotson ignored the Corporal. "We would have
been with the French a week ago but these fools decided to drink."

Sharpe stared at him. It was strange to hear a cultured voice coming from the rags, stubble
and blood-soaked bandages. The man was ill, he probably had gangrene, but it hardly mattered now.
By admitting they were running towards the enemy Ibbotson had condemned all four. If they had
been caught trying to get to a neutral country they might have been sent, as Sharpe might be, to
the garrison in the West Indies, where the fever would kill them anyway, but there was only one
punishment for men who deserted to the enemy. Corporal Moss knew it. He looked up at Sharpe and
pleaded. "Honest, sir, we didn't know what we was doing. We waited `ere, sir. ,

"Shut your teeth, Moss!" Ibbotson glared at him then turned to Sharpe; his hand moved the
bayonet higher but it was only to emphasise his remarks. "We're going to lose this war. Any fool
can see that! There are more French armies than Britain could raise in a hundred years. Look at
you!" His voice was filled with scorn. "You might beat one General, then another, but they'll
keep coming! And they'll win! And do you know why? Because they have an idea. It's called
freedom, and justice, and equality!" He stopped abruptly, his eyes blazing.

"What are you, Ibbotson?" Sharpe asked.

"A man."

Sharpe smiled at the dramatic challenge in the answer. The argument wasn't new, Rifleman
Tongue could be relied on to trot it out most nights, but Sharpe was curious why an educated man
like Ibbotson should be in the ranks of the army and preaching the French shibboleths of
freedom.

"You're educated Ibbotson. Where are you from?"

Ibbotson did not answer. He stared at Sharpe, clutching his bayonet. There was silence. Behind
him Sharpe heard Harper and Peters shuffle their feet on the hard earth floor. Moss cleared his
throat and beckoned at Ibbotson. "E's a vicar's son, sir." He said it as if it explained
everything.

Sharpe looked at Ibbotson. The son of a vicarage? Perhaps the father had died or the family
was too large, and penury could lie at the end of both those roads. But what fate had driven
Ibbotson to join the army? To pit his puny strength against the drunks and hardened criminals who
were the usual scrapings gathered by the recruiting parties? Ibbotson stared back at him and
then, to Sharpe's disgust, began to cry. He let go of the bayonet and buried his face in the
crook of his left elbow, and Sharpe wondered if he were suddenly thinking of a vicarage garden
beside a church and a long-lost mother baking bread in the ripeness of an English summer. He
turned to Harper.

"They're under arrest, Sergeant. You'll have to carry those two."

He stepped outside the hovel into the foetid alleyway. "Kirby?"

"Sir?"

"You can go." The man ran off. Sharpe did not want him to face the four deserters whose arrest
he had caused. "You others. Inside."

He stared up between the narrowing walls at the patch of sky. Swallows flashed across the
opening, the colours were deepening into night, and tomorrow there would be executions. But first
there was Josefina. Harper came to the door. "We're ready, sir."

"Then let's go."

Sharpe woke with a start, sat up, instinctively reached for a weapon and then, realising where
he was, sank back on the pillow. He was covered with sweat though the night was cool and a small
breeze stirred the edges of the curtains either side of the open window, through which he could
see a full moon. Josefina sat beside the bed, watching him, a glass of wine in her hand. "You
were dreaming."