Sharpe's Eagle (25 page)

Simmerson and Forrest appeared, both on foot, and stared at the artillerymen filling their
buckets. Sharpe said good morning and Simmerson, his antagonism blunted by nervousness, nodded
back. "Those musket shots?"

"Just clearing their charges, sir. Nothing else."

Simmerson grunted. He was doing his best to be civil, as if he realised at this moment that he
needed Sharpe's skill on his side. He pulled out a vast watch, opened the lid, and shook his
head. "Spanish are late."

The light began to lose its greyness. There was a sparkle on the far bank, and behind them
Sharpe could see the smoke of the hundreds of French cooking fires. "Permis-sion to relieve the
picquets, sir?"

"Yes, Sharpe, yes." Simmerson was making a huge effort to sound normal, and Sharpe wondered if
suddenly the Colonel was regretting the letter he had written. Some-times the imminence of battle
made seemingly intractable quarrels seem like things of no importance. Simmerson looked as if he
would say more, but instead he shook his head again and led Forrest further down the
line.

The sentries were changed, the minutes passed, the sun climbed over the mist, and the last
vestiges of night disappeared like fading cannon smoke in the western sky. Damn the Spanish,
thought Sharpe, as he listened to the bugles calling the French Regiments to parade. A group of
horsemen appeared on the far bank and inspected the British side through telescopes. There would
be no sur-prise now. The French officers would be able to see the batteries of guns, the saddled
cavalry horses, the rows of infantry lined in the trees. All surprise had gone, vanished with the
shadows and the cold, for the first time the French would know how many men opposed them, where
the attack was planned, and how they should meet it.

The sound of church bells came from the town and Sharpe wondered what Josefina was doing: had
the bells wakened her? He imagined her body stretching between warm sheets, a body that would not
be his till after battle. The sound of the bells reminded him of England and he thought of all
the village churches that would be filling with people. Would they be thinking of their army in
Spain? He doubted it. The British were not fond of their army. They celebrated its victories, of
course, but there had been no such celebrations for a long time. The navy was feted, Nelson's
captains had been household names, but Trafalgar was a memory and Nelson was in his tomb, and the
British went their way oblivious of the war. The morning became warm, the men somnolent; they
leaned against the cork trees and slept with their muskets propped on their knees. From somewhere
in the French camp was the harsh sound of a muleteer's bell reminding Sharpe of
normality.

"Sir!" A Sergeant was calling him from one of the companies higher in the grove. "Company
officers, sir. To the Colonel!"

Sharpe waved his reply, picked up the rifle, left Knowles in charge and walked up the grove.
He was late. The Captains stood in a bunch listening to a Lieutenant from Hill's staff. Sharpe
caught snatches of his words.

"Fast asleep. no battle. usual routine."

There was a buzz of questions. The Lieutenant, glorious in the silvered Dragoon uniform,
sounded bored. "The General requests that we keep posted, sir. But we're not expecting the French
to do anything."

He rode away leaving the officers puzzled. Sharpe made his way towards Forrest to find out
what he had missed, when he saw a familiar figure riding hard down the track. He walked into the
road and held up a hand. It was Lieutenant Colonel Lawford and he was furious. He saw Sharpe,
reined in, and swore.

"Bloody hell, Richard! Bloody, bloody, bloody hell! Bloody Spanish!"

"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 tomor-row. 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.

"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 infan-tryman 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.

"How are you?" Hogan asked.

"I'm fine." Sharpe grinned.

The Irishman turned to watch the Spanish filling up the positions he had prepared. On the
plain beyond, hidden by the trees where the Alberche River emptied itself into the Tagus, came
the crackle of musketry. It had gone on all afternoon like a distant forest fire, and Sharpe had
seen dozens of British wounded carried through the gate into town. The British had covered the
last mile of the Spanish retreat and the wounded men said that the French skirmishers had won the
day. Two British Battalions had been mauled badly; there was even a rumour that Welles-ley
himself had just escaped capture; the Spanish looked nervous, and Sharpe wondered what kind of
troops the French had found to hurl against the allied army. He looked down at Harper. The
Sergeant, with a dozen men, was guarding the gate of the town, not against the enemy, but to stop
any British or Spanish soldiers who might be tempted to lose themselves in Talavera's dark
alleyways and avoid the fight that was inevitable. The Battalion itself was on the Medellin, and
Sharpe waited for the orders that would send his company up the shallow Portina stream to find
the patch of grass they would defend in the morning.