Sharpe's Enemy (13 page)

Next to Harper was his seven-barrelled gun, much admired by Frederickson. It was the only loaded weapon that would go with the first party into the Convent. The men of that party had been hand picked, the cream of the three Companies, and they would attack only with swords, knives, and bayonets. Sharpe would lead that party. Harper beside him, and the signal for the other Riflemen to come forward was a blast from the Irish Sergeant’s gun. Harper picked the gun up, scratched at the touch-hole with wire, blew on it, then grinned happily. ‘Mutton pie, sir.’

‘Mutton pie?’

‘That’s what we’d be eating at home, so we would. Mutton pie, potatoes, and more mutton pie. Ma always makes mutton pie at Christmas.’

‘Goose.’ Frederickson said. ‘And once we had a roast swan. French wine.’ He smiled as he rammed a bullet into his pistol. ‘Mincemeat pies. Now that’s something to fill a belly. Good minced beef.’

‘We used to get minced tripe.’ Sharpe said.

Frederickson looked disbelieving, but Harper grinned at the eye-patched Captain. ‘If you ask him nicely, sir, he’ll tell you all about life in the Foundling Home.’

Frederickson looked at Sharpe. ‘Truly?’

‘Yes. Five years. I went when I was four.’

‘And you got tripe for Christmas?’

‘If we were lucky. Minced tripe and hard-boiled eggs, and it was called Mincemeat. We used to enjoy Christmas. There was no work that day.’

‘What was the work?’

Harper grinned, for he had heard the stories before. Sharpe put his head back on his pack and stared at the low, dark clouds. ‘We used to pick old ships’ cables apart, the ones that were coated with tar. You’d get a length of eight-inch cable, stiff as frozen leather, and if you were under six you had to pick apart a seven foot length every day.’ He grinned. ‘They sold the stuff to caulkers and upholsterers. Wasn’t as bad as the bone room.’

‘The what?’

‘Bone room. Some children used to pound bones into powder and it was made into some kind of paste. Half the bloody ivory you buy is bone paste. That’s why we liked Christmas. No work.’

Frederickson seemed fascinated. ‘So what happened at Christmas, sir?’

Sharpe thought back. He had forgotten much of it. Once he had run away from the Home and managed to stay away, he had tried to force the memories out of his mind. Now they were so remote that it seemed as if they belonged to some other man, far less fortunate. ‘There was a church service in the morning, I remember that. We used to get a long sermon telling us how bloody lucky we were. Then there was the meal. Tripe.’ He grinned.

‘And plum pudding, sir. You told me you got plum pudding once.’ Harper was loading the huge gun.

‘Once. Yes. It was a gift from someone or other. In the afternoon the quality would come and visit. Little boys and girls brought by their mothers to see how the orphans lived. God! We hated them! Mind you, it was the one bloody day of the winter when they heated the place. Couldn’t have the children of the rich catching a cold when they visited the poor.’ He held the sword up, stared at the blade reflectively. ‘Long time ago, Captain, long time ago.’

‘Did you ever go back?’

Sharpe sat up. ‘No.’ He paused. ‘I thought about it. Be nice to go back, dressed up in uniform, carrying this.’ He hefted the sword again, then grinned. ‘It’s probably all changed. The bastards who ran it are probably dead and the children probably sleep in beds and get three meals a day and don’t know how lucky they are.’ He stood up so that he could slide the sword into its scabbard.

Frederickson shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s changed much.’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter, Captain. Children are tough little things. Leave them to life and they manage.’ He made it sound brutal because he had managed, and he walked away from Frederickson and Harper because the conversation had made him think of his own daughter. Was she old enough to be excited by Christmas Eve? He did not know. He thought of her small round face, her dark hair that had looked so much like his when he had last seen her, and he wondered what kind of life she would have. A life without a father, a life that had come out of war, and he knew that he did not want to leave her alone to life.

He talked to the men, chatting easily, listening to their jokes and knowing their hidden fears. He had the Sergeants hand out another half dozen canteens of brandy and was touched because men offered him swigs of the precious liquid. He left his own advance party till last, the fifteen men sitting in their own group and putting the last touches to sword bayonets that were already sharp. Eight were Germans who spoke good English, good enough to understand urgent orders, and he waved them down as, with the formality of their race, they began getting to their feet. ‘Warm enough?’

Nods and smiles. ‘Yes, sir.’ They looked freezing.

One man, thin as a ramrod, licked his lips as he ran an oiled leather cloth over his sword bayonet. He held the blade up to the last light of the day and seemed satisfied. He put the bayonet down and, with meticulous care, folded the leather and put it into an oilskin packet. He looked up, saw Sharpe’s interest, and wordlessly handed the blade up to the Major. Sharpe put a thumb on the fore-edge. Christ! It was like a razor. ‘How do you get it that sharp?’

‘Trouble, sir, trouble. Work it every day.’ The man took the bayonet back and pushed it carefully into its scabbard.

Another man grinned at Sharpe. ‘Taylor wears a spike out every year, sir. Sharpens ’em too much. You should see his rifle, sir.‘ Taylor was obviously the showpiece of his company, used to the attention, and he handed the weapon to Sharpe.

Like the bayonet, this, too, had been worked on. The wood was oiled to a deep polish. The stock had been reshaped with a knife, giving a narrower grip behind the trigger while, on top of the butt, a leather pad had been nailed with brass-headed nails. A cheek-piece. Sharpe pulled the cock back, checking first that the gun was unloaded, and the flint seemed to rest uneasily at the full position. Sharpe touched the trigger and the flint snapped forward, almost without any pressure from Sharpe’s finger, and the thin man grinned. ‘Filed down, sir.’

Sharpe gave the rifle back. Taylor’s voice reminded him of Major Leroy’s of the South Essex. ‘Are you American, Taylor?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Loyalist?’

‘No, sir. Fugitive.’ Taylor seemed an unsmiling, laconic man.

‘From what?’

‘Merchantman, sir. Ran in Lisbon.’

‘He killed the Captain, sir.’ The other man volunteered with an admiring smile.

Sharpe looked at Taylor. The American shrugged. ‘Where are you from in America, Taylor?’

The cold eyes looked at Sharpe as if the mind behind them was thinking whether or not to answer. Then the shrug again. ‘Tennessee, sir.’

‘Never heard of it. Does it worry you we’re at war with the United States?’

‘No, sir.’ Taylor’s answer seemed to suggest that his country would manage quite well without his assistance. ‘I hear you’ve a man in your Company, sir, who thinks he can shoot?’

Sharpe knew he meant Daniel Hagman, the marksman of the South Essex. ‘That’s right.’

‘You tell him, sir, that Thomas Taylor is better.’

‘What’s your range?’

The eyes looked dispassionately at Sharpe. Again he seemed to think about his answer. ‘At two hundred yards I’m certain.’

‘So’s Hagman.’

The grin again. ‘I mean certain of putting a ball in one of his eyes, sir.’

It was an impossible boast, of course, but Sharpe liked the spirit in which it was made. Taylor, he guessed, would be an awkward man to lead, but so were many of the Riflemen. They were encouraged to be independent, to think for themselves on a battlefield, and the Rifle Regiments had thrown away much old fashioned blind discipline and relied more on morale as a motivating force. A new officer to the 95
^th
or the 6oth was expected to drill and train in the ranks, to learn the merits of the men he would command in battle, and that was a hard apprenticeship for some yet it forged trust and respect on both sides. Sharpe was sure of these men. They would fight, but what of Pot-au-Feu’s men in the Convent? All were trained soldiers and his one hope, that appeared more slender as the cold day wore on into night, was that soon the deserters would be hopeless with drink.

Evening, Christmas Eve, and clouds covered the sky so there was no star to guide them. The Christmas hymns were being sung in the parish churches at home. ‘High let us swell our tuneful notes, and join the angelic throng’. Sharpe remembered the words from the Foundling Home. ‘Good will to sinful men is shewn, and peace on earth is given’. There would be no good will for sinful men this night. Out of the darkness would come swords, bayonets and death. Christmas Eve, 1812, in the Gateway of God would be screams and pain, blood and anger, and Sharpe thought of the innocent women in the Convent and he let the anger begin. Let the waiting be done, he prayed, let the night arrive, and he wanted the flare of battle within him, he wanted Hakeswill dead, he wanted the night to come.

Christmas Eve turned to darkness. Wolves prowled in the saw-toothed peaks, a wind drove cold from the west, and the men in green jackets waited, shivering, and in their hearts was revenge and death.

A night so dark it was like the Eve of Creation. A blackness complete, a darkness that did not even betray an horizon, a night of clouds and no moon. Christmas Eve.

The men made small noises as they waited in the gully. They were like animals crouching against a bitter cold. The small drizzle compounded the misery.

Sharpe would go first with his small group, then Frederickson, as Senior Captain, would bring on the main group of Riflemen. Harry Price would wait outside the Convent until the fight was over, or until, unthinkably, he must cover a wild retreat in the darkness.

It was a night when failure insisted on rehearsing itself in Sharpe’s head. He had peered over the gully’s rim in the dusk and he had stared long at the route he must take in the darkness, but suppose he got lost? Or suppose that some fool disobeyed orders and went forward with a loaded rifle, tripped, and blasted the night apart with an accidental shot? Suppose there was no track down the northern side of the valley? Sharpe knew there were thorn bushes on the valley’s flanks and he imagined leading his troops into the snagging spines and then he forced the pessimism away. It insisted on coming back. Suppose the hostages had been moved? Suppose he could not find them in the Convent? Perhaps they were dead. He wondered what kind of young, rich woman would marry Sir Augustus Farthingdale. She would probably think of Sharpe as some kind of horrid savage.

The line of the Christmas hymn kept going through his head, another unwelcome visitor to his thoughts. ‘Goodwill to sinful men is shewn’. Not tonight.

He had meant to go at midnight, but it was too dark for Frederickson or any of the other owners of watches to see their timepieces and it was too damned cold to wait in the interminable darkness. The men were numbed with the cold, somnolent with it, cut to the bone by the western wind and Sharpe decided to go early.

And there was light. It was a glow, hazed in the air, made by fires in the valley. The glow had been invisible from the gully, but as Sharpe led his force south, stumbling on the rough broken ground, the crest of the valley’s northern edge was limned by the flame-glow in the air. He could see the slight dip in that crest which he had marked as his target, and he sensed the path that led left and right and then on towards the flames of Adrados’ valley.

They carried only their weapons and ammunition. Their packs, haversacks, blankets and canteens were left in the gully. That equipment could be fetched in the morning, but this night they would fight unladen. The Riflemen would discard their greatcoats before the attack, revealing their dark-green uniforms which would be their distinguishing mark this night. Goodwill to sinful men.

Sharpe stopped, hearing noise ahead, and for a fraction of a second he feared that the enemy had a picquet line at the valley’s rim. He listened, relaxed. It was the sound of revelry, cheers and laughter, the roar of mens’ voices. Christmas Eve.

A bloody night to be born, Sharpe thought. Midwinter, when food was scarce and wolves prowled close to the hill villages. Perhaps it was warmer in Palestine, and perhaps the shepherds who saw the angels did not have to worry about wolves, but winter was still winter everywhere. Sharpe had always thought Spain a hot country and so it was in the summer when the sun baked the plains into dust, but in winter it could still be freezing and he thought of being born in a stable where the wind sliced like a knife between the cracks of the timber. He led them on again towards the Gateway of God, a dark line of men bringing blades in the night.

He dropped flat at the valley’s rim. Thorn trees were dark on the slope before him, the valley was lit by the fires in Castle, Convent, watchtower and village, and, glory to God in the highest, there was a path leading at an angle down through the thorns.

The sound of laughter came from the Convent. Sharpe could see other men silhouetted by the fires in the Castle’s big yard. It was cold.

He turned his head round and hissed at his men. ‘Count!’

‘One.’ Harper.

‘Two.’ A German Sergeant called Rossner.

‘Three.’ Thomas Taylor.

Frederickson dropped beside Sharpe, but stayed silent as the men counted themselves off in the darkness. All were present. Sharpe pointed to the foot of the slope where the dark path between the thorns debouched onto a rough pasture land that was stippled red and black by the firelight. ‘Wait at the tree-line.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Frederickson’s men would have only fifty yards to cover from the edge of the bushes to the door of the Convent. They would come when they heard the boom of the seven-barrelled gun, or if they heard a volley of musketry, but they would ignore a single musket shot. On a night like this, a night of drinking and celebration, the odd single shot would be nothing unusual. If Frederickson heard nothing while he counted off fifteen minutes, then he was to come anyway. Sharpe looked at the Captain whose black patch gave his face a spectral look in the darkness. He was beginning to like this man. ‘Your men are all right?’