“Not especially,” Sharpe tried to sound offhand, “but I feel responsible.”
“That is a most dangerous thing to feel for a young woman; responsibility can lead to affection, and affection thus born, I think, is not so lasting as…“ Vivar’s voice faded away. Sharpe had pulled his ragged and torn shirt over his head, and the Spaniard stared with horror at his naked back. ”Lieutenant?“
“I was flogged.” Sharpe, so used to the terrible scars, was always surprised when other people found them remarkable. “It was in India.”
“What had you done?”
“Nothing. A Sergeant didn’t like me, that’s all. The bastard lied.” Sharpe plunged his head under the frigid water, then came up gasping and dripping. He unfolded his razor and began scraping at his chin’s dark stubble. “It was a very long time ago.”
Vivar shuddered, then, sensing that Sharpe would not talk further about it, dipped his own razor in the water. “Myself, I do not think the French will kill Louisa.”
Sharpe grunted, as if to intimate that he did not really care one way or the other.
“The French, I think,” Vivar went on, “do not hate the English as much as they hate the Spanish. Besides, Louisa is a girl of great beauty, and such girls provoke men’s feelings of responsibility.” Vivar waved his razor towards Sharpe as proof of the assertion. “She also has an air of innocence which, I think, will both protect her and make de l’Eclin believe her.” He paused to scrape at the angle of his jaw. “I told her she should weep. Men always believe weeping women.”
“That could make him take her damned head off,” Sharpe said harshly.
“I would be most sorry if they did,” Vivar said slowly. “Most sorry.”
“Would you?” Sharpe, for the first time, heard the betrayal of genuine emotion in the Spaniard’s voice. He stared at Vivar, and repeated the question accusingly, “Would you?”
“Why ever should I not? Of course, I hardly know her, but she seems a most admirable young lady.” Vivar paused, evidently contemplating Louisa’s virtues, then shrugged. “It’s a pity she’s a heretic, but better to be a Methodist than an unbeliever like yourself. At least she’s halfway to heaven.”
Sharpe felt a pang of jealousy. It was evident that Bias Vivar had taken more of an interest in Louisa than he had either detected or believed possible.
“Not that it matters,” Vivar said casually. “I hope she lives. But if she dies? Then I shall pray for her soul.”
Sharpe shuddered in the cold, wondering how many souls would need prayers spoken before the next two days were done.
Vivar’s expedition trudged through a thin cold rain which pecked at the day’s dying.
They followed mountain paths that twisted over barren spurs and led through wild valleys. Once they passed a village sacked by the French. Not a building remained intact, not a person was in sight, not an animal still lived. Nor did one of Vivar’s men speak as they passed the charred beams from which the rain dripped slow.
They had started well before noon, for there were many miles to travel before dawn. Vivar’s Cazadores led. One squadron of the cavalry was mounted to patrol the land ahead of the march. Behind those picquets came the dis-mounted Cazadores, leading their horses. Behind them were the volunteers. The two priests rode just in front of Sharpe’s Riflemen who formed the rearguard. The strongbox travelled with the two priests. The precious cargo had been strapped to a macho, a mule whose vocal cords had been slit so it could not bray to warn the enemy.
Sergeant Patrick Harper was pleased to be marching to battle. The white silk stripes were bright on his ragged sleeve. “The lads are just fine, sir. My boys are delighted, so they are.”
“They’re all your boys,” Sharpe said, by which he meant that Harper’s especial responsibility extended beyond the group of Irish soldiers.
Harper nodded. “So they are, sir, and so they are.” He gave a quick glance at the marching greenjackets and was evidently satisfied that they needed no injunction to move faster. “They’ll be glad to be having a crack at the bastards, so they will.”
“Some of them must be worried?” Sharpe asked, hoping to draw Harper out about a rumoured incident earlier in the week, but the Sergeant blithely disregarded the hint.
“You don’t fight the bloody crapauds without being worried, sir, but think how worried the French would be if they knew the Rifles were coming. And Irish Rifles, too!”
Sharpe decided to question him directly. “What happened between you and Gataker?”
Harper shot him a look of perfect innocence. “Nothing at all, sir.”
Sharpe did not press the matter. He had heard that Gataker, a fly and shifty man, had opposed their involvement in Vivar’s scheme. The greenjackets had no business fighting private battles, he had claimed, especially ones likely to leave most of them dead or maimed. The pessimism could have spread swiftly, but Harper had put a ruthless stop to it and Gataker’s black eye had been explained as a tumble down the gatehouse stairs. “Terrible dark steps there,” was all Harper would say on the matter.
It was for just such swift resolutions of problems that
Sharpe had wanted the Irishman’s promotion, and it had proved an instant success. Harper had assumed the authority easily, and if that authority stemmed more from his strength and personality than from the silk stripes on his right sleeve, then so much the better. Captain Murray’s dying words had been proved right; with Harper on his side, Sharpe’s problems were halved.
The Riflemen marched into the night. It became dark as Hades and, though an occasional granite outcrop loomed blacker than the surrounding darkness, it seemed to Sharpe that they moved blind through a featureless landscape.
Yet this was the country of Bias Vivar’s volunteers. There were herdsmen among them who knew these hills as well as Sharpe had known his childhood alleys about St Giles in London. These men were now scattered throughout the column as guides, their services abetted by the cigars which Vivar had distributed amongst his small force. He was certain no Frenchmen would be this deep in the hills to smell the tobacco, and the small glowing lights acted as tiny beacons to keep the marching men closed up.
Yet, despite the guides and the cigars, their pace slowed in the night and became even slower as the rain made the paths slippery. The frequent streams were swollen, and Vivar insisted that each one was sprinkled with holy water before the vanguard splashed through. The men were tired and hungry, and in the darkness their fears became treacherous; the fears of men who go to an unequal battle and in whom apprehension festers until it becomes close to terror.
The rain stopped two hours before the dawn. There was no wind. Frost made the grass brittle. The cigars were finished, but their usefulness was ended anyway for a mist silted the last valleys before the city.
When the rain stopped, Vivar called a halt.
He stopped because there was a danger that the French might have put heavy picquets into the villages which lay in the hills about the city. Refugees from Santiago de Com-postela knew of no such precautions, but Vivar guarded against it by ordering that any piece of equipment which might rattle or clang must be tied down. Musket and rifle-slings, canteens and mess tins, all were muffled. It still seemed to Sharpe, as they moved off, that the troops made sufficient noise to wake the dead; horseshoes clicked on stone, iron boot-heels thumped frosted earth, but no French picquet startled the darkness with a volley of musketry to warn the distant city.
The Riflemen now led the march. Vivar followed with his cavalry, but the greenjackets led because they were the experienced infantry who would spearhead the attack. Cavalry could not assault a barricaded town; only infantry could achieve such a thing, and this time it had to be done without loaded firearms. Sharpe had reluctantly agreed that his Riflemen would make the assault with the bayonet alone.