Sharpe's Eagle (8 page)

"The middle one is the prettiest."

"Thank you." Gibbons spoke with a heavy irony. "That's civil of you, Sharpe." He was about to
urge his horse forward when Sharpe put a hand on the bridle.

"Spanish officers, I hear, are very fond of duelling."

"Ah." Gibbons stared icily down on Sharpe. "You may have a point." He wheeled his horse back
down the road.

Hogan was shouting at the priest, in Spanish, trying to discover why they had stopped. The
priest smiled his blackened smile and raised his eyes to heaven as if to say it was all God's
will and there was nothing to be done about it.

"Damn this!" Hogan looked round urgently. "Damn! Don't they know how much time we've lost?
Where's the Colonel?"

Simmerson was not far behind. He and Forrest arrived with a clatter of hooves. "What the
devil's happening?"

"I don't know, sir. Spanish have sat down."

Simmerson licked his lips. "Don't they know we're in a hurry?" No-one spoke. The Colonel
looked round the officers as though one of them might suggest an answer. "Come on, then. We'll
see what it's about. Hogan, will you translate?"

Sharpe fell his men out as the mounted officers rode up the column, and the Riflemen sat
beside the road with their packs beside them. The Spanish appeared to be asleep. The sun was high
and the road surface reflected a searing heat. Sharpe touched the muzzle of his rifle by mistake
and flinched from the hot metal. Sweat trickled down his neck, and the glare of the sun,
reflected from the metal ornaments of the Spanish infantry, was dazzling. There were still
fifteen miles to go. The three women rode their horses slowly towards the head of the Regimienta,
one of them turned and waved coquettishly to the Rifle-men and Harper blew her a kiss, and when
they had gone the dust drifted gently onto the thin grass of the verge.

Fifteen minutes of silence passed before Simmerson, Forrest and Hogan pounded back from their
meeting with the Spanish Colonel. Sir Henry was not pleased. "Damn them! They've stopped for the
day!"

Sharpe looked questioningly at Hogan. The Engineer nodded. "It's true. There's an inn up
there, and the officers have settled in."

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" Simmerson was pounding the pommel of his saddle. "What are we to
do?"

The mounted officers glanced at each other. Simmerson was the man who had to make the decision
and none of them answered his question, but there was only one thing to do. Sharpe looked at
Harper.

"Form up, Sergeant."

Harper bellowed orders. The Spanish muleteers, their rest disturbed, looked curiously as the
Riflemen pulled on their packs and formed ranks.

"Bayonets, Sergeant."

The order was given and the long, brass-handled sword-bayonets rasped from the scabbards. Each
blade was twenty-three inches long, each sharp and brilliant in the sun. Simmerson looked
nervously at the weapons. "What the devil are you doing, Sharpe?"

"Only one thing to do, sir."

Simmerson looked left and right at Forrest and Hogan, but they offered him no help. "Are you
proposing we should simply carry on, Sharpe?"

It's what you should have proposed, thought Sharpe, but instead he nodded. "Isn't that what
you intended, sir?"

Simmerson was not sure. Wellesley had impressed on him the need for speed, but there was also
the duty not to offend a touchy ally. But what if the bridge should already be occupied by the
French? He looked at the Riflemen, grim in their dark uniforms, and then at the Spanish who
lolled in the roadway smoking cigarettes. "Very well."

"Sir." Sharpe turned away to Harper. "Four ranks, Sergeant."

Harper took a deep breath. "Company! Double files to the right!"

There were times when Sharpe's men, for all their tattered uniforms, knew how to startle a
Militia Colonel. With a snap and a precision that would have done credit to the Guards, the
even-numbered files stepped backwards; the whole company, without another word of command, turned
to the right and instead of two ranks there were now four facing towards the Spanish. Harper had
paused for a second while the movement was carried out. "Quick march!"

They marched. Their boots crashed onto the road scattering mules and muleteers before them.
The priest took one look, kicked his heels, and the donkey bolted into the field.

"Come on, you bastards!" Harper shouted. "March as if you mean it!"

They did. They pushed their tempo up to the Light Infantry quick march and stamped with their
boots so that the dust flew up. Behind them the South Essex were formed and following, before
them the Regimienta split apart into the fields, the officers running from the white-walled inn
and screaming at the Riflemen. Sharpe ignored them. The Spanish Colonel, a vision of golden lace,
appeared at the inn doorway to see his Regiment in tatters. The men had scattered into the fields
and the British were on their way to the bridge. The Colonel was without his boots and in his
hand he held a glass of wine. As they drew level with the inn Sharpe turned to his men.

"Company! To the right! Salute!"

He drew the long blade, held it in the ceremonial salute, and his men grinned as they
presented their arms towards the Colonel. There was little he could do. He wanted to protest but
honour was honour, and the salute should be returned. The Spaniard was in a quandary. In one
hand, the wine, and in the other a long cigar. Sharpe watched the debate on the Spanish Colonel's
face as he looked from one hand to the other, trying to decide which to abandon, but in the end
the Colonel of the Santa Maria stood to attention in his stockings and held the wine glass and
cigar at a dutifully ceremonious angle.

"Eyes front!"

Hogan laughed out loud. "Well done, Sharpe!" He looked at his watch. "We'll make the bridge
before night-fall. Let's hope the French don't."

Let's hope the French don't make it at all, thought Sharpe. Defeating an ally was one thing
but his doubts about the ability of the South Essex to face the French were as real as ever. He
looked at the white, dusty road stretching over the featureless plain and in a fleeting, horrid
moment wondered whether he would return. He pushed the thought away and gripped the stock of his
rifle. With his other hand he unconsciously felt the lump over his breastbone. Harper saw the
gesture. Sharpe thought it was a secret that round his neck he had a leather bag in which he kept
his worldly wealth, but all his men knew it was there, and Sergeant Harper knew that
when

Sharpe touched the bag with its few gold coins looted from old battlefields then the
Lieutenant was worried. And if Sharpe was worried? Harper turned to the Riflemen. "Come on, you
bastards! This isn't a funeral! Faster!"

Valdelacasa did not exist as a place where human beings lived, loved, or traded, it was simply
a ruined building and a great stone bridge that had been built to span the river at a time when
the Tagus was wider than the flow which now slid darkly between the three central arches of the
Roman stonework. And from the bridge, with its attendant building, the land spread outwards in a
vast, shallow bowl bisected by the river in one direction and the road which led to and from the
bridge in the other. The Battalion had marched down the almost imperceptible incline as the
shadows of dusk began to creep across the pale grasslands. There was no farming, no cattle, no
signs of life: just the ancient ruin, the bridge, and the water slipping silently towards the
far-off sea.

"I don't like it, sir." Harper's face had been genuinely worried.

"Why not?"

"No birds, sir. Not even a vulture."

Sharpe had to admit it was true, there was not a bird to be seen or heard. It was like a place
forgotten, and as they marched towards the building the men in green jackets were unnaturally
quiet as if infected by some ancient gloom.

"There's no sign of the French." Sharpe could see no movement in the darkening
landscape.

"It's not the French that worry me." Harper was really concerned. "It's this place, sir. It's
not good."

"You're being Irish, Sergeant."

"That may be, sir. But tell me why there's no village here. The soil is better than the stuff
we've marched past, there's a bridge, so why no village?"

Why not? It seemed an obvious place for a village, but on the other hand they had passed only
one small hamlet in the last ten miles so it was possible that there were simply not enough
people in the vast remoteness of the Estremaduran plain to inhabit every likely spot. Sharpe
tried to ignore Harper's concern but, coming as it did on top of his own gloomy presentiments, he
had begun to feel that Valdelacasa really did have a sinister air about it. Hogan did not
help.

"That's the Puente de los Malditos, the Bridge of the Accursed." Hogan walked his horse beside
them and nodded at the building. "That must have been the convent. The Moors beheaded every
single nun. The story goes that they were killed on the bridge, that their heads were thrown into
the water but the bodies left to rot. They say no-one lives here because the spirits walk the
bridge at night looking for their heads."

The Riflemen heard him in silence. When Hogan had finished Sharpe was surprised to see his
huge Sergeant surreptitiously cross himself, and he guessed that they would spend a restless
night. He was right. The darkness was total, there was no wood on the plain so the men could
build no fires, and in the small hours a wind brought clouds that covered the moon. The Riflemen
were guard-ing the southern end of the bridge, the bank on which the French were loose, and it
was a nervous night as shadows played tricks and the chill sentries were not certain whether they
imagined the noises that could either be headless nuns or patrolling Frenchmen. Just before dawn
Sharpe heard the sound of a bird's wings, followed by the call of an owl, and he wondered whether
to tell Harper that there were birds after all. He decided not; he remembered that owls were
supposed to be harbingers of death, and the news might worry the Irishman even more.

But the new day, even if it did not bring the Regimienta who were presumably still at the inn,
brought a brilliant blue sky with only a scattering of high, passing clouds that followed the
night's belt of light rain. Harsh ringing blows came from the bridge where Hogan's artificers
hammered down the parapet at the spot chosen for the explosion and the apprehensions of the night
seemed, for the moment, to be like a bad dream. The Riflemen were relieved by Lennox's Light
Company and, with nothing else to do, Harper stripped naked and waded into the river.

"That's better. I haven't washed in a month." He looked up at Sharpe. "Is anything happening,
sir?"

"No sign of them." Sharpe must have stared at the horizon, a mile to the south, fifty times
since dawn but there had been no sign of the French. He watched as Harper came dripping wet out
of the river and shook himself like a wolfhound. "Perhaps they're not here, sir."

Sharpe shook his head. "I don't know, Sergeant. I've a feeling they're not far away." He
turned and looked across the river, at the road they had marched the day before. "Still no sight
of the Spanish."

Harper was drying himself with his shirt. "Perhaps they'll not turn up, sir."

It had occurred to Sharpe that possibly the whole job would be done before the Regimienta
reached Valdelacasa, and he wondered why he still felt the stirrings of concern about the
mission. Simmerson had behaved with restraint, the artificers were hard at work, and there were
no French in sight. What could go wrong? He walked to the entrance of the bridge and nodded to
Lennox. "Anything?"

The Scotsman shook his head. "All's quiet. I reckon Sir Henry won't get his battle today.
"

"He wanted one?"

Lennox laughed. "Keen as mustard. I suspect he thinks Napoleon himself is coming."

Sharpe turned and stared down the road. Nothing moved. "They're not far away. I can feel
it."

Lennox looked at him seriously. "You think so? I thought it was us Scots who had the second
sight." He turned and looked with Sharpe at the empty horizon. "Maybe you're right, Sharpe. But
they're too late."

Sharpe agreed and walked onto the bridge. He chatted with Knowles and Denny and, as he left
them to join Hogan, he reflected gloomily on the atmosphere in the officers' mess of the South
Essex. Most of the officers were supporters of Simmerson, men who had first earned their
commissions with the Militia, and there was bad feeling between them and the men from the regular
army. Sharpe liked Lennox, enjoyed his company, but most of the other officers thought the
Scotsman was too easy with his company, too much like the Riflemen. Leroy was a decent man, a
loyalist American, but he kept his thoughts to himself as did the few others who had little trust
in their Colonel's ability. He pitied the younger officers, learning their trade in such a
school, and was glad that as soon as this bridge was destroyed his Riflemen would get away from
the South Essex into more congenial company.

Hogan was up to his neck in a hole in the bridge. Sharpe peered down and saw, in the rubble,
the curving stone-work of two arches.

"How much powder will you use?"

"All there is!" Hogan was happy, a man enjoying his work. "This isn't easy. Those Romans built
well. You see those blocks?" He pointed to the exposed stones of the arches. "They're all shaped
and hammered into place. If I put a charge on top of one of those arches I'll probably make the
damn bridge stronger! I can't put the powder underneath, more's the pity."

"Why not?"

"No time, Sharpe, no time. You have to contain an explosion. If I sling those kegs under the
arch all I'll do is frighten the fishes. No, I'm going to do this one upside down and inside
out." He was half talking to himself, his mind full of weights of powder and lengths of
fuse.

"Upside down and inside out?"