The pit orchestra worked itself into a cacophonous frenzy and the four horsemen trotted over the stage, screaming and waving their sabres. The wooden blades hacked down on the ten men who, once again, squeezed their bags of false blood and strewed themselves artistically about the stage's apron.
Sergeant Patrick Harper watched enthralled. He shook his head in admiration. 'That's just grand, sir.
The drums were rolling again, louder and louder, drowning the screams of the dying actors and the excited shouts of the audience.
The back of the stage was opening up. It was, Sharpe admitted, impressive. Where, just a moment before, there had been a field of grass with some carefully arranged rock hills, all mysterious with the smoke from the small pots, now there was a magnificent castle, that, as it leaved outwards, pushed the hills and smoke aside.
The bass drum began a thunderous rhythm, a rhythm that made the audience clap with it and cheer in anticipation. The cymbals shivered the theatre, and the narrator, high on a pulpit beside the stage, raised his hands for silence.
'My Lords! Ladies! Gentlemen! Pray silence for His Majesty, his unutterable Majesty, his foul, proud, Napoleonic Majesty, King Joseph!
An actor, mounted on a black horse, carrying a sword and wearing on his face a scowl of utmost ferocity, pranced onto the stage and, pretending to notice the audience for the first time, stared haughtily at the packed theatre.
The stalls booed him. He spat at them, waved his sword, and the boos became louder. The horse staled.
'King Joseph! the narrator cried above the threatre's din. 'Brother to the Ogre himself, a Bonaparte! Made King of Spain by his brother, tyrant to the proud nation of Spain, hated wherever liberty is loved!
The audience jeered louder. Isabella, fetched from the house in Southwark, leaned on the plush cushion at the front of the box and stared in awe. She had never been inside a theatre before, and thought it was magical.
King Joseph shouted orders to the ragged file of resurrected French soldiers. 'Kill the English! Slaughter them!
The audience cat-called. A cannon was wheeled from the castle gateway, pointed at the audience, and a shower of sparks and smoke gushed from its muzzle.
Isabella gasped. Patrick Harper was wide-eyed with wonder at the spectacle.
The token for this box had been given to Sharpe by the landlord of the Rose Tavern. 'You should go, Major, the man had said confidingly. 'You was there, sir, it'll bring it all back! And free oysters and champagne on the house, sir?
Sharpe had not wanted to go, but Harper and Isabella had been desperate to see the "Victory at Vitoria Enacted" and eager for Sharpe to share the delight. He had agreed for Harper's sake and now, as the pageant neared its end, Sharpe found himself enjoying the antics far more than he had expected. The effects, he thought, were clever, while some of the girls, conveniently introduced as persecuted peasants or grieving widows into the stage's carnage, were luminously beautiful. There were worse ways, Sharpe thought, of spending an evening.
The audience screamed in delight as King Joseph began a panicked flight about the stage. British troops, come from the wings, chased him, and he successively shed his sword, his hat, his boots, his gilded coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, and finally, to the delighted shrieks of the women in the audience, his breeches. All that was left to him was a tiny French tricolour about his arse. He stood shivering on top of the cannon, clutching the flag. The drums rolled. A British soldier reached for the small flag, the drum roll grew louder, louder, the audience shouted for the soldier to pull the flag away, there was a clash of cymbals, and Isabella screamed in shock and delight as the flag was snatched away at the very instant that the curtain fell.
The audience chanted for more, the orchestra swelled to fill the tiers of boxes with triumphal music, and the curtain, after a brief pause, lifted again to show the whole cast, King Joseph cloaked now, facing the audience with linked hands to sing "Proud Britons". A great Union flag was lowered above their heads.
Sharpe was thinking of a sinuous, hungry, beautiful woman who had clawed at him and told him to go back to Spain. Sharpe wanted nothing more, but he knew that Lord Fenner had lied, that the Second Battalion existed, and, sitting here watching the flummery on stage he had suddenly dreamed up the perfect way to find them. Actors and costumes had put the thought into his head, and he told himself that he was foolish to think of meddling with things he did not understand. The mysterious, green-eyed woman had said that Lord Fenner would kill him, and though that threat did not worry Sharpe, nevertheless he sensed that there were enemies in this, his homeland, every bit as deadly as Napoleon's blue-jacketed troops.
Isabella gasped and clapped. From either wing of the stage, sitting on trapezes slung on wires, two women dressed as Goddesses of Victory were swooping over the heads of the actors. The Goddesses were scantily clad, the gauze fluttering over their bare legs as they swung above the linked actors and dropped laurel wreaths at their feet. The men in the audience cheered whenever the motion of the two trapezes peeled the gauze away from the Goddesses' legs.
The Goddesses of Victory were hoisted off stage when "Proud Britons" was finished, and the orchestra went into a spirited "Rule Britannia" which, though hardly appropriate for a soldier's victory, had the advantage that the audience knew its words. The cast stood upright and solemn, singing with the audience, and when the song was done, and the audience beginning its applause, the narrator held up his hands once more for silence. Some of the young men in the pit were shouting for the half-naked Goddesses to be fetched back, but the narrator hushed them.
A drum was rolling softly, getting louder. 'My Lords! Ladies and Gentlemen! A louder riffle of the drums, then soft again. 'Tonight you have seen, presented through our humble skill, that great victory gained by noble Britons over the foul forces of the Corsican Ogre! There were boos for Napoleon. The drums rolled louder, then softer. The narrator silenced the audience. 'Brave men they were, my Lords Ladies, and Gentlemen! Brave as the brave! Our gallant men, through shot and shell, through sabre and blade, through blood and fire, gained the day! Another drum roll and another cheer.
The door to the box opened. Sharpe turned, but it was merely one of the women who looked after the patrons and he presumed that, as the pageant was ending, so the boxes were being opened onto the staircase.
'Yet! My Lords, my Ladies, and Gentlemen! Of all the brave, of all the gallant, of all the valorous men on that bloody field, there was none more brave, none more ardent, none more resolute, none more lion-hearted than. .! He did not finish the sentence, instead he waved his hand towards the boxes and, to Sharpe's horror, lanterns were coming into his box, bright lanterns, and in front of them were the two Goddesses of Victory, each with a laurel wreath, and the audience was standing and clapping, defying the cymbals that clashed to demand silence.
'My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. You see in our humble midst the men who took the Eagle at Talavera, who braved the bloody breach at Badajoz, who humbled the Proud Tyrant at Vitoria. Major Richard Sharpe and his Sergeant Harper. . and whatever else the narrator wanted to say was drowned by the cheers.
'Stand up, love, whispered a Goddess of Victory in Sharpe's ear. He stood, and to his utter mortification, she put the laurel wreath on his head.