A man ran up behind him. “Sir?”
Sharpe turned. It was the burly man who had tried to stop the Battalion parading in the timber yard. “Yes?”
“I wanted to thank you, sir.”
“Thank me? For what?” Sharpe spoke harshly. The man was embarrassed. “We would have been shot, sir.”
“I would happily have given the order myself.”
“Then thank you, sir.”
Sharpe was impressed. The man could have kept silent. “What’s your name?”
“Huckfield, sir.” He was educated, and Sharpe was curious.
“Where did you get your education, Huckfield?”
“I was a clerk, sir, in a foundry.”
“A foundry?”
“Yes, sir. In Shropshire. We made iron, sir, all day and night. It was a valley of fire and smoke. I thought this might-be more interesting.”
“You volunteered!” Sharpe’s astonishment showed in his voice.
Huckfield grinned. “Yes, sir.”
“Disappointed?”
“The air’s cleaner, sir.” Sharpe stared at him. He had heard men talk of the new ‘industry’ that was springing up in Britain. They had described, like Huckfield, whole landscapes that were bricked over and dotted with the giant furnaces producing iron and steel. He had heard stories of bridges thrown over rivers, bridges made entirely of metal, of boats and engines that worked from steam, but he had seen none of these things. One night, round a camp fire, someone had said that it was the future and that the days of men on foot and on horseback were numbered. That was fantasy, of course, but here was Huckfield who had seen these things and the image of a country given over to great black machines with bellies of fire made Sharpe feel uncertain. He nodded to the man.
“Forget this afternoon, Huckfield. Nothing happened.”
He ignored the man’s thanks. Being uncertain of the future was the price a soldier paid. Sharpe could not imagine being in an army that was not at war; he could not imagine what he might do if there was suddenly a peace and he had no job. But before then there was a battle to fight and an Eagle to win and a girl to fight for. He climbed up into the streets of Oropesa.
CHAPTER 17
In sixteen years’ soldiering Sharpe had rarely felt such certainty that battle was about to be joined. The Spanish and British armies had combined at Oropesa and marched on to Talavera, twenty-one thousand British and thirty-four thousand Spanish, a vast army swollen by mules, servants, wives, children, priests, pouring eastwards to where the mountains almost met the River Tagus and the vast arid plain ended at the town of Talavera. The wheels of one hundred and ten field guns ground the white roads to fine dust, the hooves of over six thousand cavalry stirred the powder into the air where it clung to the infantry who trudged through the heat and listened to the far-off crackle as the leading Spanish skirmishers pushed aside the screen of French light troops. To left and right Sharpe could see other plumes of dust where cavalry patrols rode parallel to the line of march; closer by, in the fields, the Battalion saw small groups of Spanish soldiers who had fallen out of the march and now lay, apparently unconcerned, chatting with their women, smoking, watching the long columns of British infantry file past.
The men were hungry. Hard as Wellesley tried, thorough as the Commissary could be, nevertheless there was simply not enough food for the whole army. The area between Oropesa and Talavera had already been scoured by the French, now it was searched by Spanish and British, and the Battalion had only eaten ‘Tommies’, pancakes made from flour and water, since they left Oropesa the day before. It was a time for tightening belts, but the prospects of action had raised men’s spirits, and when the Battalion marched past the bodies of three French skirmishers they forgot their hunger at their first sight of French infantry.
Sharpe told his Light Company that the dead men with their fringed epaulettes were the famous French Voltigeurs, the skirmishers, the men with whom the Light Company would fight their own private battle between the lines before the big Battalions clashed. The men of the South Essex, who had not seen enemy infantry before, stared curiously at the blue-jacketed bodies that had been thrown down beside a church wall. Dark stains marked the uniforms, their heads were bent back in the strange attitude of the dead, one man had a finger missing where Sharpe supposed it had been hacked off to get at a valuable ring. Ensign Denny stared at them with fascination: these were the famous French infantry that had marched the length and breadth of Europe; he looked at the moustached faces and wondered how he would feel when he saw similar faces, but animated, staring at him over the browned barrel of the French musket.
The French made no resistance to the west of Talavera or in the town itself. The armies marched through or past the town and on a mile until they stopped at dusk on the banks of a small river that flowed into the Tagus. The Battalion marched to the north of the town, and Sharpe wondered how Josefina would find a room there. Hogan had promised to look after her, and Sharpe stared at the crowds pressing into the narrow streets as though he might catch a glimpse of her. The men grumbled. They were tired and hungry and they resented being denied the pleasures of the town. They could see officers on horseback riding towards the old walls, their wives and children walked there, but the troops went on to the Alberche and camped in the cork groves that sloped down to the shallow river. Tomorrow they must fight. If they survived tomorrow then would come the time to buy drink in Talavera, but first they must cross the River Alberche and defeat the army of Marshal Victor. Fires were lit throughout the trees, the Battalions swiftly settling in for the night, glancing apprehensively at the far river-bank where hundreds of smoke plumes mingled and shivered over the French camp. The armies had finally been brought together, British, Spanish and French, and tomorrow they must fight, and Sharpe’s company squatted by their fires and wondered about the men just across the river who sat by similar fires and made the same jokes in a different language.
Sharpe and Harper strolled to the river’s edge where the Battalion’s leading picquets were settling for a night’s guard duty. Two men of the Light Company, dressed in greatcoats, nodded at Sharpe and jerked their thumbs across the river. A French picquet stood watching them, three men smoking pipes, while another Frenchman filled his canteen at the water’s edge. The man looked up, saw the Riflemen, and raised a hand. He shouted something but they did not understand him. Sharpe shivered slightly. The sun had lost its heat, was reddening in the west, and the chill of the night was already making itself felt. He waved back at the Frenchman and turned back towards the cork grove.
Now was the time for the rituals before battle. Sharpe walked through the trees and chatted with men who prepared themselves with the obsessions for detail that all men thought might protect them in the chaos of the fight. The Riflemen had stripped their locks, pinned the massive rifle main springs with nails, and brushed every scrap of dirt from the machinery. Men put new flints in their muskets or rifles, unscrewed them and put them in again, looking for the perfect fit that would never come loose, turn sideways, or shatter in the pan. Pots of boiling water were carried carefully from the fires and poured into the barrels of the guns to flush out every last powder deposit, because tomorrow a man’s life might depend on how fast he could reload his musket. Joining the noise of the insects were the sounds of hundreds of stones rubbing endlessly on bayonets, the countrymen sharpening the blades as they used to sharpen reaping hooks or wide-bladed scythes. Men repaired uniforms, sewed on buttons, made new laces, as though to be comfortable was to be safer. Sharpe had been through the ritual a hundred times; he would go through it again tonight the way that a knight in times far past must have strapped every piece of armour, tightened each piece, delayed the next until the first was secure. Some Riflemen emptied all the fine powder from their horns and spread the black grains on clean white cloth to ensure there were no damp lumps that could clog the measuring spout in battle. There were the same jokes: „Don’t wear your hat tomorrow, Sarge, the French might see your face and die laughing.“ That one always worked as long as the Sergeant did not see which man had shouted from the shadows; other men were asked to go and sleep with the French so their snoring would keep the enemy awake; the stale jokes were as much a part of the battle as the bullets which would begin to fly at first light.