Sharpe's Rifles

CHAPTER 5

The villagers could have sent no warning of the French presence for there was no village any more, nor villagers.

The fires must have been set just as the ambush was sprung, for the houses still burned fiercely. The corpses, though, had frozen hard. The French had killed the people, then sheltered in their houses as they waited for Vivar’s small column to reach the high canyon.

It had never been much of a village; a poor place of goats and sheep, and of people who made a living from high pastures. The houses lay in a hollow sheltered by dwarf oaks and chestnut trees. Potatoes had grown in a few small fields that were edged with wild mulberries and furze. The houses had been mere thatched huts with dungheaps at their doors. They had been shared by men and animals alike, just as the houses Sharpe’s own Riflemen had known in England had been, and that nostalgic resemblance added to the poignancy of the day.

If anything could add to the poignancy of children and babies killed, of women raped, or of men crucified. Sergeant Williams, who had known his share of horror in a bad world, vomited. One of the Spanish infantrymen turned in silence on a French captive and, before Vivar could utter a word, disembowelled the man. Only then did the Cazador utter a howl of hatred.

Vivar ignored the killing and the howl. Instead, with an odd formality, he marched to Sharpe. “Would you…“ he began, but found it hard to continue. The stench of those bodies which burned inside the houses was thick. He swallowed. ”Would you place picquets, Lieutenant?“

“Yes, sir.”

That, at least, took the Riflemen away from the bodies of slaughtered infants and the burning hovels. All that was left of the village’s buildings were the church walls; walls of stone which could not be burned, though the church’s timber roof still flamed high to spew smoke above the valley’s rim where, among the trees, Sharpe placed his sentries. The French, if they still lingered, were invisible.

“Why did they do it, sir?” Dodd, a quiet man, appealed to Sharpe.

Sharpe could offer no answer.

Gataker, as fly a rogue as any in the army, stared empty-eyed at the landscape. Isaiah Tongue, whose education had been wasted by gin, winced as a terrible scream sounded from the village; then, realizing that the scream must have come from a captured Frenchman, spat to show that it had not troubled him.

Sharpe moved on, placing more sentries, finally reaching a spot from which, between two great granite boulders, he could see far to the south. He sat there alone, staring into the immense sky that promised yet more bad weather. His drawn sword was still in his hand and, almost in a daze, he tried to push it home into its metal scabbard. The blade, still sticky with blood, stopped halfway, and he saw to his astonishment that a bullet had pierced the scabbard and driven the lips of metal inwards.

“Sir?”

Sharpe looked round to see a nervous Sergeant Williams. “Sergeant?”

“We lost four men, sir.”

Sharpe had forgotten to ask, and he cursed himself for the omission. “Who?”

Williams named the dead, though the names meant nothing to Sharpe. “I thought we’d have lost more,” he said in wonderment.

“Sims is wounded, sir. And Cameron. There are some others, sir, but those are the worst.” The Sergeant was only doing his job, but he was shaking with nerves as he spoke to his officer.

Sharpe tried to gather his thoughts, but the memory of the dead children was withering his senses. He had seen dead children often enough, who had not? In these past weeks he had passed a score of the army’s children frozen to death in the ghastly retreat, but none of them had been murdered. He had seen children beaten till their blood ran, but not till they were dead. How could the French have waited in the village and not first hidden their obscene butchery? How could they have committed it in the first place?

Williams, troubled by Sharpe’s brooding silence, muttered something about finding a stream from which the men could fill their canteens. Sharpe nodded. “Make sure the French haven’t fouled the water, Sergeant.”

“Of course, sir.”

Sharpe twisted to look at the burly man. “And the men did well. Very well.”

“Thank you, sir.” Williams sounded relieved. He flinched as another scream sounded from the village.

“They did very well.” He said it too hastily, as if trying to distract both their thoughts from the scream. The French prisoners were being questioned, then would die. Sharpe stared south, wondering whether the clouds would send rain or snow. He remembered the man in the red coat, the chasseur of the Imperial Guard, and the man in the black coat beside him. Why those two men again? Because, he thought, they had known Vivar was coming, yet the one thing the French had not reckoned on was Riflemen. Sharpe thought of the moment at the hilltop when the first green-jacket had gone past him, sword-bayonet fixed, and he recalled another failing of his own. He had never ordered the swords to be fixed, but the men had done it themselves. “The men did very well,” Sharpe repeated, “tell them that.”

Williams hesitated. “Sir? Wouldn’t it be better if you told them?”

“Me?” Sharpe turned abruptly towards the Sergeant.

“They did it for you, sir.” Williams was embarrassed, and made more so because Sharpe did not respond to his awkward words. “They were trying to prove something, sir. We all were. And hoping you’d…“

“Hoping what?” The question was asked too harshly, and Sharpe knew it. “I’m sorry.”

“We were hoping you’d let Harps go, sir. The men like him, you see, and the army’s always let men offpunishment, sir, if their comrades fight well.”

The bitterness Sharpe felt for the Irishman was too strong to let him grant the request immediately. Til tell the men they did well, Sergeant.“ He paused. ”And I’ll think about Harper.“

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Williams was plainly thankful that, for the first time since he had come under Sharpe’s orders, the Lieutenant had treated him with some civility.

Sharpe realized that too, and was shocked by it. He had been nervous of leading these men, and frightened of their insubordination, but he had not understood that they were also frightened of him. Sharpe knew himself to be a tough man, but he had always thought of himself as a reasonable one, yet now, in the mirror of William’s nervousness, he saw himself as something far worse; a bullying man who would use the small authority of his rank to frighten men. In fact, the very kind of officer Sharpe had most hated when he himself was under their embittered authority. He felt remorse for all the mistakes he had made with these men, and wondered how to make amends. He was too proud to apologize, so instead he made an embarrassed confession to the Sergeant. “I wasn’t sure any of the men would follow me up that hill.”

Williams grunted, half in amusement and half in understanding. “Those lads would, sir. You’ve got the cream of the Battalion there.”

“The cream?” Sharpe could not hide his surprise.

“The rogues, anyway.” Williams grinned. “Not me, sir. I was never much of a one for a scrap. I always hoped I’d never have to earn my pay, like.” He laughed. “But these boys, sir, most of them are right bastards.” The words were said with a kind of admiration. “Stands to reason, sir, if you think about it. I watched the lads when those crapauds attacked at the bridge, sir. Some were just ready to give up, but not these lads. They made sure they got away. You’ve got the tough ones, sir. Except for me. I was just lucky. But if you give these lads a chance to fight, sir, they’ll follow you.”

“They followed you, too,” Sharpe said. “I saw you on that hilltop. You were good.”

Williams touched the chevrons on his right sleeve. “I’d be ashamed of the stripes if I didn’t muck in. But no, sir, it was you. Bloody madness, it was, to charge that hill. But it worked!”

Sharpe shrugged the compliment away, but he recognized it for one and was secretly rather pleased. He might not be a born officer, but by God he was a born soldier. He was the son of a whore, bereft of God, but a God-damned soldier.

There were spades and shovels in the village that, taken back to the mouth of the canyon, were used to dig graves for the French dead.

Vivar walked with Sharpe to where the shallow graves were being scraped from the hard earth. The Spaniard stopped by one of the Dragoons who had died in the cavalry charge and whose body had since been stripped naked. The skin of the dead man’s body was as white as the churned snow, while his face had been turned brown by exposure to wind and sun. The bloodied face was framed by pigtails.

”Cadenettes,“ Vivar said abruptly. ”That’s what they call those. What do you call them, braids?“

“Pigtails.”

“It’s their mark.” He sounded bitter. “Their mark of being special, an elite.”

“Like the rosemary in your men’s hats?”

“No, not like that at all.” Vivar’s abrupt denial checked the words between the two men. They stood in embarrassed silence above the enemy dead.

Sharpe, feeling uncomfortable, broke the silence. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible for dismounted cavalry to break horsemen.”

The praise delighted the Major. “Nor would I have believed it possible for infantry to take that hill. It was stupid of you, Lieutenant, very stupid, and more brave that I could have dreamed possible. I thank you.”

Sharpe, as ever made awkward by a compliment, tried to shrug it away. “It was my Riflemen.”

“They did it to please you, I think?” Vivar spoke meaningfully, trying to offer Sharpe some reassurance. When the Englishman offered no response, the Spaniard’s voice became more intense. “Men always behave best when they know what is expected of them. Today you showed them what you wanted, and it was simple victory.”

Sharpe muttered something about luck.

Vivar ignored the evasion. “You led them, Lieutenant, and they knew what was expected of them. Men should always know what their officers expect of them. I give my Cazadores three rules. They must not steal unless they will die for not stealing, they must look after their horses before themselves, and they must fight like heroes. Three rules only, but they work. Give men firm rules, Lieutenant, and they will follow you.”

Sharpe, standing on the lonely and cold-swept plateau, knew he was being offered a gift by Major Vivar. Perhaps there were no rules for being an officer, and perhaps the best officers were born to their excellence, but the Spaniard was offering Sharpe a key to success and, sensing the value of the gift, he smiled. “Thank you.”

“Rules!” Vivar went on as though Sharpe had not spoken. “Rules make real soldiers, not child-killers like these bastards.” He kicked the dead Frenchman, then shuddered. Other French corpses were being dragged across the slurried snow to the shallow grave. Til have one of my men make some crosses from burnt wood.“ Again Sharpe was surprised by this man. One moment he kicked the naked corpse of an enemy, the next he was taking care to mark those enemies‘

graves with crosses. Vivar saw his surprise. “It isn’t respect, Lieutenant.”

“No?”

“I fear their estadea, their spirits. The crosses will keep their filthy souls underground.” Vivar spat onto the body. “You think I’m a fool, but I’ve seen them, Lieutenant. The estadea are the lost spirits of the doomed dead and they look like a myriad of candles in the night mist. Their moaning is more terrible even than that.” He jerked his head towards another dying scream which sounded from the village. “For what they did to the children, Englishman, they deserve worse.”

Sharpe could not quarrel with the Major’s justification. “Why did they do it?” He could not imagine killing a child, nor how a man could even dream of such an act.

Vivar walked away from the French corpses, towards the edge of the small plateau across which the cavalry had charged. “When the French came here, Lieutenant, they were our allies. God damn our foolishness, but we invited them. They came to attack our enemies, the Portuguese, but once they were here they decided to stay. They thought Spain was feeble, rotten, defenceless.” Vivar paused, staring into the great void of the valley. “And maybe we were rotten. Not the people, Lieutenant. Never think that, never! But the government.” He spat. “So the French despised us. They thought we were a ripe fruit for the picking, and perhaps we were. Our armies?” Vivar shrugged in hopelessness. “Men cannot fight if they’re badly led. But the people are not rotten. The land isn’t rotten,” he slammed his heel into the snow-covered turf. “This is Spain, Lieutenant, beloved of God, and God will not desert us. Why do you think you and I won today?”

It was a question that expected no answer, and Sharpe made none.

Vivar gazed again at the far hills where the first rain showed as dark stains against the horizon. “The French despised us,” he picked up his earlier thought, “but learned to hate us. They found victory hard in Spain. They even learned to taste defeat. We forced an army to surrender at Bailen, and when they besieged Saragossa, the people humiliated them. And for that the French will not forgive us. Now they flood us with armies and think, if they kill us all, they can beat us.”

“But why do they kill children?” Sharp was still haunted by the memory of small and grievously tortured bodies.

Vivar grimaced at the question. “You fight against men in uniforms, Lieutenant. You know who your enemy is because he dresses in a blue coat for you and hangs gold lace on the coat as a target for your rifles. But the French don’t know who their enemies are. Any man with a knife could be their enemy, and so they fear us. And to stop us they will make the price of enmity too high. They will spread a greater fear through Spain, a fear of that!” He turned and jabbed a finger towards the smear of smoke that still rose from the village. “They fear us, but they will try to make us fear them even more. And maybe they will succeed.”

The sudden pessimism was startling from a man as indomitable as Bias Vivar. “You truly think so?” Sharpe asked.

“I think men should fear the death of their children.” Vivar, who had buried his own children, spoke very bleakly. “But I do not think the French will succeed. They’re victorious now, and the Spanish people mourn their children and wonder if there is any hope left, but if those people can be given just one small scrap of hope, just one glint in the darkness, then they will fight!” He snarled the last words, then, in a quicksilver change of mood, smiled apologetically at Sharpe. “I have a favour to ask of you.”

“Of course.”

“The Irishman, Patrick Harper. Release him.”

“Release him?” Sharpe was taken aback, not by the request as such, but by the sudden change in Vivar’s manner. A moment before he had been vengeful and steel-hard, now he was diffidently polite, like a petitioner.

“I know,” Vivar said hastily, “that the Irishman’s sin is grievous. He deserves to be flogged half to death, if not beyond death, but he did a thing most precious to me.”

Sharpe, embarrassed by Vivar’s humble tone, shrugged. “Of course.”

“I shall talk to him, and tell him his duties of obedience.”

“He can be released.” Sharpe had already half persuaded himself of the necessity of releasing Harper, if only to prove his own reasonableness to Sergeant Williams.

“I’ve already released him,” Vivar admitted, “but I thought it best to seek your approval.” He grinned, saw that Sharpe would offer no protest, then stooped to pick up a fallen French helmet. He ripped away the canvas cover which both protected the fine brass and prevented it from reflecting the sunlight to betray the Dragoon’s position. “A pretty bauble,” he said scathingly, “something to hang on the staircase when the war’s over.”

Sharpe was not interested in a dented Dragoon’s helmet; instead he was realizing that the ‘thing most precious’ Harper had done for Vivar was to protect the strongbox. He remembered the horror on the Spaniard’s face when he thought the chest might be lost. Like a stab of sunlight searing through a rent in dark clouds, Sharpe at last understood. The chasseur had been chasing Vivar, and that chase had unwittingly drawn the Dragoons across the tail of the British army where they had casually broken four companies of Riflemen, but then they had kept going. Not after the retreating British, but after the strongbox. “What’s in the chest, Major?” he asked accusingly.

“I told you, papers,” Vivar answered carelessly as he tore away the last shreds of canvas from the helmet.

“The French came here to capture that strongbox.”

“The prisoners told me they came for food. I’m sure they were speaking the truth, Lieutenant. Men who face death usually do, and they all told me the same story. They were a forage party.” Vivar polished the helmet’s brass with his sleeve, then held the helmet out for Sharpe’s inspection. “Shoddy workmanship. See how badly the chinstrap is riveted?”

Sharpe again ignored the helmet. “They came here for that chest, didn’t they? They’ve been following you, and they must have known you had to cross these mountains.”

Vivar frowned at the helmet. “I don’t think I shall keep it. I shall find a better one before the killing’s done.”

“They’re the same men who attacked our rearguard. We’re lucky they didn’t send the whole Regiment up here, Major!”

“The prisoners said that only the men on fit horses could come this far.” It seemed a partial affirmation of Sharpe’s suspicions, but Vivar immediately denied the rest. “I assure you they only came here for forage and food. They told me they’ve stripped the villages in the valley bare, so now they must climb high for their food.”

“What’s in the chest, Major?” Sharpe persisted.

“Curiosity!” Vivar turned away and began to walk towards the village. “Curiosity!” He drew back his arm and hurled the helmet far into the void where the plateau dropped steeply away. The helmet glittered, turned, then fell with a crash into the undergrowth. “Curiosity! An English disease, Lieutenant, which leads to death. Avoid it!”

The fires died in the night, all but for one burning house that Vivar’s men fed with wood cut from the surrounding trees in which they roasted hunks of horsemeat that had been threaded onto their swords. The Riflemen cooked the horsemeat on their ramrods. All were glad that the villagers’ bodies had been buried. The picquets were pulled back to the very edge of the burnt village where they shivered in the cold wind. The afternoon rain had stopped at dusk, and in the night there were even gaps in the high flying clouds which allowed a wan moonlight to illumine the jagged hills from which the snow had part-melted to leave the landscape looking strangely leprous. Somewhere in those hills a wolf howled.

Sharpe’s men provided the sentries for the first half of the night. At midnight he walked around the village and spoke a few awkward words with each man. The conversations were stilted because none of the greenjackets could forget the morning when they had conspired for Sharpe’s death, but a Welshman, Jenkins, more loquacious than the others, wondered where Sir John Moore’s army was now.

“God knows,” Sharpe said. “Far away.”

“Defeated, sir?”

“Maybe.”

“But Boney left, sir?” The question was asked eagerly, as if the Emperor’s absence gave the fugitive Riflemen renewed hope.

“So we were told.” Napoleon was supposed to have left Spain already, but that was small reason for optimism. He had no need to stay. Everywhere his enemies were in retreat, and his Marshals, who had conquered Europe, could be trusted to finish Spain and Portugal.

Sharpe walked on past the burned-out houses. The sole of his right boot was hanging loose, and his trousers gaped at his thighs. At least he had repaired the broken scabbard, yet otherwise his uniform hung off him like a scarecrow’s rags. He went to the place where the road climbed up towards the canyon and where, beside a stone trough that the women who had once lived in this village had used as a washing place, a three-man picquet was posted. “See anything?”

“Not a thing, sir. Quiet as a dry alehouse.”

It was Harper who had answered and who now rose up, huge and formidable, from the shadow of the trough. The two men stared at each other, then, awkwardly, the Irishman pulled off his shako in the formal salute. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“The Major talked to me, he did. We was frightened, you see, sir, and…“

“I said it doesn’t matter!”

Harper nodded. His broken nose was still swollen and would never again be straight. The big Irishman grinned. “If you’ll not mind me saying it, sir, but you’ve got a punch on you like a Ballinderry heifer.”

The comment might have been offered as a peace-token, but Sharpe’s memory of the fight in the ruined farmhouse was too fresh and too sore to accept it. “I’ve let you off a damned sharp hook, Rifleman Harper, but that does not give you the God-damned right to say whatever comes into your head. So put your bloody hat on, and go back to work.”

Sharpe turned and walked away, ready to whip round instantly if a single insolent sound was uttered, but Harper had the sense to keep silent. The wind made the only noise, a sighing sound as it passed through the trees before lifting the sparks of the big fire high into the night. Sharpe went close to the fire, letting its heat warm his chilled and wet uniform. He supposed he had blundered again, that he should have accepted the friendly words as the peace-offering they were undoubtedly meant to be, but his pride had stung him into savagery.

“You should get some sleep, sir.” It was Sergeant Williams, muffled against the cold, who appeared in the firelight. “I’ll look after the lads.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“No.” The word was said as agreement. “It’s thinking of them dead nippers what does it.”

“Yes.”

“Bastards,” Williams said. He held his hands towards the blaze. “There was one no older than my Mary.”

“How old is she?”

“Five, sir. Pretty wee thing, she is. Not like her father.”

Sharpe smiled. “Did your wife come out to Spain with you?”

“No, sir. Helps in her da’s bakery, she does. He wasn’t too pleased when she married a soldier, but they never are.”

That’s true.“

The Sergeant stretched. “But I’ll have some rare tales to tell when I get back to Spitalfields.” He was silent for a moment, perhaps thinking of home. “Funny, really.”

“What is?”

“Why these bastards came all this way to get supplies. Isn’t that what the Major said, sir?”

“Yes.” French forces were supposed to live off the land, stealing what they could to stay alive, but Sharpe, like

Williams, could not believe that the enemy horsemen had climbed to this remote village when other, more tempting places lay in the valleys. “They were the same men,” he said, “who attacked us on the road.” Which, in a way, had worked to Sharpe’s advantage, because the French Dragoons, unable to resist using the captured rifles, had proved inept with the unfamiliar weapons.

Sergeant Williams nodded. “Bugger in a red coat, right?”

“Yes. And a fellow in black.”

“It’s my belief they’re after that box the Spanish lads are carrying.” Williams lowered his voice as though one of the sleeping Cazadores might hear him. “It’s the sort of box you carry jewels in, isn’t it? Could be a King’s bloody ransom in that thing, sir.”

“Major Vivar says it holds papers.”

“Papers!” The Sergeant’s voice was scornful.

“Well, I don’t suppose we’re going to find out,” Sharpe said. “And I wouldn’t recommend being too inquisitive, Sergeant. The Major doesn’t take kindly to curiosity.”

“No, sir.” Williams sounded disappointed at his lack of enthusiasm.

But Sharpe merely hid his own inquisitiveness for, after a few more moments of desultory conversation and after bidding the Sergeant a good night, he went softly and slowly towards the church. He used the stealth he had learned as a child in the London rookery where, if a boy did not steal, he starved.

He walked round the church, then stood for a long time in the shadows by the door. He listened. He heard the fire’s crackle and the wind’s rising noise, but nothing else. Still he waited, straining to hear a single sound from within the old stone building. He heard nothing. He could smell the fallen and burnt timbers within the building, but he could sense no human presence. The nearest Spaniards were thirty paces away, rolled in their cloaks, asleep.

The church door was ajar. Sharpe edged through and, once inside the church, stopped again.

Moonlight illuminated the sanctuary. The walls were scorched black, the altar was gone, yet Vivar’s men had begun to clear the desecration by forcing the burnt roof timbers aside to make an aisle which led to the altar steps. At the top of those steps, black like the walls, was the strongbox.

Sharpe waited. He looked round the building’s small interior; watching for movement, but there was none. A small black window opened on the church’s southern wall, but that was the only aperture. Nothing showed in the opening, except darkness, suggesting that the small window opened into a cupboard or a deep shelf.

Sharpe walked forward between the fallen timbers, some of which still smouldered. Once his loose right sole crunched a black lump of burnt wood, but that was the only sound he made.

He stopped at the foot of the two steps which had led to the altar and squatted there. Curled on the lid of the strongbox was a jet rosary, its small crucifix shining in the moonlight. Within this box, Sharpe thought, lay something that had drawn French soldiers into the frozen highlands. Vivar had said it was papers, but even the most religious of men would not guard papers with a crucifix.

The chest was wrapped in oilcloth that had been sewn tight. During the fight two bullets had embedded themselves in the big box, breaking the cloth, and Sharpe, fingering under the holes and past the lumpen bullets, felt the hard smoothness of the wood. He traced the shapes of the hasps and padlocks beneath the oilcloth. The padlocks were old-fashioned ball-locks that Sharpe knew he could open in seconds with a rifle’s cleaning pin.

He rocked back on his heels, staring at the chest. Four Riflemen had died because of it and yet more might die, and that, Sharpe decided, gave him the right to know what lay inside. He knew he would not be able to disguise that the box had been opened, but he had no intention of stealing its contents so had no scruples about leaving the oilcloth torn and the locks picked.

He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out the clasp knife he used for food. He opened its blade and reached forward to cut the cloth.

“Touch it, Englishman, and you die.”

Sharpe twisted to his right. The click of a pistol’s lock sounded from the small dark window. “Major?”

“The sick could watch the Mass from this window, Lieutenant.” Vivar’s voice sounded from the blackness. “It’s a good place for a sentry,”

“What is the sentry guarding?”

“Just papers.” Vivar’s voice was cold. “Put your knife away, Lieutenant, and stay there.”

Sharpe obeyed. After a moment the Major appeared in the church doorway. “Don’t do that again, Lieutenant. I will kill to protect what is in that box.”

Sharpe felt like a small boy caught by a watchman, but he tried to brazen out the confrontation. “Papers?”

“Papers,” Vivar said bleakly. He looked up at the sky where silvered clouds flew fast beside the moon. “It isn’t a night for killing, Englishman. The estadea are already restless.” He walked up the aisle. “Now I think you should try to sleep. We have far to go in the morning.”

Sharpe, chastened, went past Vivar to the church door. With one hand on the jamb, he turned to look back at the chest. Vivar, his back to him, was already on his knees in front of the mysterious strongbox.

Sharpe, embarrassed to see a man praying, paused.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Vivar had not turned round.

“Did your prisoners tell you who the chasseur is? The man in red who led them here?”

“No, Lieutenant.” The Spaniard’s voice was very patient, as though by answering he merely humoured a child’s caprice. “I did not think to ask them.”

“Or the man in black? The civilian?”

Vivar paused for a second. “Does the wolf know the names of the hounds?”

“Who is he, Major?”

The rosary’s beads clicked. “Goodnight, Lieutenant.”.

Sharpe knew he would fetch no answers, only more mysteries to rival the insubstantiality of the estadea. He half-closed the charred door, then went to his cold bed of bare earth and listened to the wind moan in the spirit-haunted night. Somewhere a wolf howled, and one of the captured horses whinnied softly. In the chapel a man prayed. Sharpe slept.