“What’s happened?”
Lawford could barely contain his anger. “The bloody Spanish refused to wake up! Can you believe it?”
Other officers drew round. Lawford took off his hat and wiped his forehead; he had deep circles under his eyes. “We get up at two o’clock in the bloody morning to save their bloody country and they can’t be bothered to get out of bed!” Lawford looked round as though hoping to see a Spaniard on whom to vent his seething fury. “We rode over there at six. Cuesta’s in his bloody coach lying on bloody cushions and says his army is too tired to fight! Can you believe it? We had them. Like that!” He pinched a finger and thumb together. “We would have murdered them this morning! We could have wiped Victor off the map. But no. It’s manana, manana, tomorrow and tomorrow! There won’t be a bloody tomorrow! Victor’s no fool, he’ll march today. Damn, damn, damn.” The Honourable William Lawford stared down at Sharpe. “You know what happens now?”
“No.”
Lawford pointed towards the east. “Jourdan’s over there, with Joseph Bonaparte. They’ll join up with Victor, then we’ll have twice as many to fight. Twice as many! And there are rumours that Souk has scraped an army together and is coming from the north. God! The chance we lost today! You know what I think?” Sharpe shook his head. “I think the bastard wouldn’t fight because it’s Sunday. He’s got priests mumbling prayers round his bloody bed on wheels. Bloody Catholics! And there’s still no bloody food!”
Sharpe felt the tiredness course through him. “What do we do now?”
“Now? We bloody wait. Cuesta says we’ll attack tomorrow. We won’t because the French won’t be there.” Lawford dropped his shoulders and let out a sigh. “Do you know where Hill is?”
Sharpe pointed along the track and Lawford rode on. Damn the Spaniards, thought Sharpe, damn everything. He was officer of the day and he would have to organise the picquets, inspect the lines, scrape together some supplies from the Commissary, who would have none. He would not be able to see Josefina. There would be no battle, no Eagle, not even a taste of garlic sausage. Damn.
CHAPTER 17
“I saw a man today… „
“Yes?” Sharpe looked over at Josefina. She was sitting naked on the bed with her knees drawn up and trying to file her toe-nails on the edge of his sword. She was laughing at her attempts, and then she dropped the blade and looked at him. “He was lovely. A blue coat with white bits here.” She brushed her breasts with her hands. “And lots of gold lace.”
“On a horse?”
She nodded. “And there was a bag hanging down… „
“His sabretache. And a curved sword?” She nodded again and Sharpe grinned at her. “Sounds like the Prince of Wales Dragoons. Very rich.”
“How do you know?”
“All cavalrymen are rich. Unintelligent, but rich.”
She cocked her head in her characteristic gesture and frowned slightly. “Unintelligent?”
“All cavalry officers are. The horse has all the brains and they have all the money.”
“Ah, well.” She shrugged her bare shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. I have enough brains for two.” She looked at him and grinned. “You’re jealous.”
“Yes.” He had picked up her penchant for honesty. She nodded seriously.
“I’m bored, Richard.”
“I know.”
“Not with you.” She looked up from her toe-nails and stared at him gravely. “You’re good for me. But we’ve been here a week and nothing is happening.”
Sharpe leaned forward and tugged his boots up over the overalls. “Don’t worry. Something will happen tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?”
“Tomorrow we fight.” This time though, he thought, we will be outnumbered.
She pulled her knees tight into her body, clasped them, and looked questioningly at him. “Are you frightened?”
“Yes.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Who’ll win?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you get your Eagle?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded seriously. “I have a present for you. I will give it to you after the battle.”
He was embarrassed. He did not have the money to buy presents. “I don’t want it. I want you.”
“You have me already.” She knew what he meant, but she deliberately misunderstood him. She watched him stand up. “You want your sword?”
“Yes.” Sharpe buckled the belt tight, pulling the scabbard into place.
She grinned at him. “Come and get it.” She lay the great blade on the bed and, rolling over, laid her naked belly on its chill steel.
Sharpe crossed to her. “Give it to me.”
“Get it yourself.”
Her body was warm and strong, the muscles hardened by exercise, and she clung to him. Sharpe pushed her face away and stared into her eyes. “What will happen?” he asked.
“You will get your Eagle. You always get what you want.”
“I want you.”
She shut her eyes and kissed him hard, then pulled away and smiled at him. “We’re just stragglers, Richard. We drifted together, but we’re both on a journey.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You do. We’re going two different ways. You want a home. You want someone to love you and want you, someone to take the burden away from you.”
“And you?”
She smiled. “I want silk dresses and music. Candles in the dawn.” He began to say something, but she put a finger on his lips. “I know what you think. That’s just silliness, but it’s what I want. Perhaps one day I’ll want something sensible.”
“Am I sensible?”
“There are times, my love, when you take things a little too seriously.”
“Are you saying goodbye?”
She laughed. “There! You see? You are taking things too seriously.” She kissed him swiftly, on the tip of his nose. “Come after the battle. Get your present.”
He reached down for the handle of his sword. “Move over, I don’t want to cut you.”
She moved to one side and touched the blade with her finger. “How many men have you killed with it?”
“I don’t know.” It slid into the scabbard, the weight congenial on his hip. He crouched by the bed and took her naked waist in his hands. He stared at her body as if trying to commit it to memory: the fullness of it, the beauty of it, the mystery that made it seem unattainable. She touched his face with a finger.
“Go and fight.”
“I’ll be back.”
“I know.”
Everything seemed unreal to Sharpe. The soldiers in Talavera’s streets, the people who avoided his passage, the afternoon itself. Tomorrow there would be a battle. Hundreds would die, mangled by roundshot, sliced by cavalry sabres, pierced by musket shot, yet still the town was busy. People were in love, out of love, bought their food, made jokes, yet tomorrow there would be a battle. He wanted Josefina. He could hardly think of the battle, of the Eagle—only of her teasing face. She was going from him, he knew that, yet he could not accept it. The battle was almost an irrelevance to the overwhelming need to entrap her, to make her his, and he knew it could not happen.
He walked to the town gate that overlooked the plain to the west. The Light Company was mounting a guard on the gate, and Sharpe nodded at Harper and then climbed the steep steps to the parapet, where Hogan stared down into the olive groves and woods that were full of Spanish soldiers filing into the positions Wellesley had carefully prepared for them. Cuesta, after refusing to attack on the Sunday, had impetuously marched after the retreating French. Now, four days later, his army was scuttling back and bringing behind them a French army that had more than doubled in size. Tomorrow, Sharpe knew, this Spanish army would have to fight. The French would wake them up, and the allied army that could have taken its victory last Sunday would now have to fight a defensive battle against the united forces of Victor, Jourdan and Joseph Bonaparte.
Not, Sharpe thought bitterly, that the Spanish would have to do too much of the actual killing. Wellesley had drawn his army back to create a defensive line next to Talavera itself. The right-hand end of the line was made up of the town walls, olive groves, tangled fields and woods, all made impregnable by Hogan’s hard work. He had felled trees, thrown up earthworks, strengthened walls, and in the tangle of barricades and obstacles the Spanish troops took up their positions. No French infantryman could hope to fight his way across Hogan’s breastworks as long as the defenders stayed at their posts; instead the French army would swing north to the left side of Wellesley’s line, where the British would wait for the attack. Sharpe looked at the northern plain. There were no obstacles there that an engineer could make more formidable; there was just the Portina stream that a man could cross without the water coming over his boot-tops, and rolling grassland that was an invitation for the massed French Battalions and their long lines of splendid cavalry. In the distance was the Medellin, the hill which dominated the plain, and Sharpe had walked the grass often enough to know what would happen tomorrow. The French columns would cross the stream and attack the gentle slopes of the Medellin. That was the killing place. The Spanish troops, thirty thousand of them, could stay safely behind their breastworks and watch as the Eagles stormed the British in the open northern plain and the smoke covered Medellin.