as a battery of artillery drove by in the street. It struck Sharpe that the General was on edge. Wellington turned back to him.
‘Do you know, Captain Sharpe, the damage it does our cause if our soldiers thieve or rape?’ His voice was scathingly quiet.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I hope you do, Captain Sharpe, I hope you do.’ He sat down again. ‘Our enemies are encouraged to steal because that is the only way they can be fed. The result is that they are hated wherever they march. I spend money – my God, how much money – on providing rations and transport and buying food from the populace so that our soldiers have no need to steal. We do this so they will be welcomed by the local people and helped by them. Do you understand?’
Sharpe wished the lecture would end. ‘Yes, sir.’
There was suddenly a strange noise overhead, a shuffling and rattling, and Wellington’s eyes shot to the ceiling as if he could read what the noise might mean. It occurred to Sharpe that the telegraph was working, the inflated bladders running up and down the ropes, bringing a coded message from the troops facing the French. The General listened for a few seconds, then dropped his face to Sharpe again. ‘Your gazette has not yet been ratified.’
There were few things the General could have said more calculated to worry Sharpe. Officially he was still a Lieutenant, only a Lieutenant, and his Captaincy had been awarded by a gazette from Wellington a year ago. If the Horse Guards in Whitehall did not approve, and he knew they usually rejected such irregular promotions, then he was soon to be a Lieutenant again. He said nothing as Wellington watched him. If this were a warning shot, then he would take it in silence.
The General sighed, picked up a piece of paper, put it down again. ‘The soldier has been punished?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He thought of Batten, winded, on the ground.
‘Then do not, pray, let it happen again. Not even, Captain Sharpe, to wild chickens.’
My God, thought Sharpe, he knows everything that happens in this army. There was silence. Was that the end of it? No court-martial? No apology? He coughed and Wellington looked up.
‘Yes?’
‘I was expecting more, sir. Court-martials and drumheads.’
Sharpe heard Lawford stir in embarrassment but the General did not seem worried. He stood up and used one of his few, thin smiles.
‘I would quite happily, Captain Sharpe, string up you and that damned Sergeant. But I suspect we need you. What do you think of our chances this summer?’
Again there was silence. The change of tack had taken them all by surprise. Lawford cleared his throat. ‘There’s clearly some concern, my lord, about the intentions of the enemy and our response.’
Another wintry smile. ‘The enemy intend to push us into the sea, and soon. How do we respond?’ Wellington, it occurred to Sharpe, was using up time. He was waiting for something or someone.
Lawford was feeling uncomfortable. The question was one he would rather hear answered by the General. ‘Bring them to battle, sir?’
‘Thirty thousand troops, plus twenty-five thousand untried Portuguese, against three hundred and fifty thousand men?’
Wellington let the figures hang in the air like the dust that shifted silently in the slanting sunlight over his desk. Overhead the feet of the men operating the telegraph still shuffled. The figures, Sharpe knew, were unfair. Masséna needed thousands of those men to contain the Guerrilleros, the partisans, but even so the disparity in numbers was appalling. Wellington sniffed. There was a knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
‘Sir.’
The Major who had shown them into the room handed a slip of paper to the General, who read it, closed his eyes momentarily, and sighed.
‘The rest of the message is still coming?’
‘Yes, sir. But the gist is there.’
The Major left and Wellington leaned back in his chair. The news had been bad, Sharpe could tell, but not, perhaps, unexpected. He remembered that Wellington had once said that running a campaign was like driving a team of horses with a rope harness. The ropes kept breaking and all a General could do was tie a knot and keep going. A rope was unravelling, here and now, an important one, and Sharpe watched the fingers drum on the edge of the table. The eyes came up to Sharpe again, flicked to Lawford.
‘Colonel?’
‘Sir?’
‘I am borrowing Captain Sharpe from you, and his Company. I doubt whether I need them for more than one month.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Lawford looked at Sharpe and shrugged.
Wellington stood again. He seemed to be relieved, as if a decision had been made. ‘The war is not lost, gentlemen, though I know my confidence is not universally shared.’ He sounded bitter, angry with the defeatists whose letters home were quoted in the newspapers. ‘We may bring the French to battle, and if we do we will win.’ Sharpe never doubted it. Of all Britain’s generals this was the only one who knew how to beat the French. ‘If we win we will only delay their advance.’ He opened a map, stared at it blankly, and let it snap shut again into a roll. ‘No, gentlemen, our survival depends on something else. Something that you, Captain Sharpe, must bring me. Must, do you hear? Must.’
Sharpe had never heard the General so insistent. ‘Yes, sir.’
Lawford coughed. ‘And if he fails, my lord?’
The wintry smile again. ‘He had better not.’ He looked at Sharpe. ‘You are not the only card in my hand, Mr Sharpe, but you are … important. There are things happening, gentlemen, that this army does not know about. If it did it would be generally more optimistic.’ He sat down again, leaving them mystified. Sharpe suspected the mystification was on purpose. He was spreading some counter-rumours to the defeatists, and that, too, was part of a general’s job. He looked up again. ‘You are now under my orders, Captain Sharpe. Your men must be ready to march this night. They must not be encumbered with wives or unnecessary baggage, and they must have full ammunition.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you will be back here in one hour. You have two tasks to perform.’
Sharpe wondered if he was to be told what they were. ‘Sir?’
‘First, Mr Sharpe, you will receive your orders. Not from me but from an old companion of yours.’ Wellington saw Sharpe’s quizzical look. ‘Major Hogan.’
Sharpe’s face betrayed his pleasure. Hogan, the engineer, the quiet Irishman who was a friend, whose sense Sharpe had leaned on in the difficult days leading to Talavera. Wellington saw the pleasure and tried to puncture it. ‘But before that, Mr Sharpe, you will apologize to Lieutenant Ayres.’ He watched for Sharpe’s reaction.
‘But of course, sir. I had always planned to.’ Sharpe looked shocked at the thought that he might ever have contemplated another course of action and, through his innocently wide eyes, wondered if he saw a flicker of amusement behind the General’s cold, blue gaze.
Wellington
