Bernard Cornwell – 1809 01 Sharpe’S Rifles

“He’s under arrest,” Sharpe said. He threw down the sword-bayonet and pushed Harper in the chest. “Out! Out!” He pushed him through the hovel’s door, out to where the other greenjackets waited in the snow. “Sergeant Williams!”

“Sir?” Williams stared with awe at their bloodied faces. “Sir?”

“Rifleman Harper is under close arrest.” Sharpe shoved Harper a last time, tumbling him into the snow, then turned back to the Spaniard’s mocking gaze.

“You seem to be in trouble, Lieutenant?” Vivar’s derision was made worse by the amusement in his voice.

The shame of the situation galled Sharpe, just as the Spaniard’s tone stung him. “It’s none of your business.”

“Sir,” Major Vivar chided him.

“None of your bloody business, sir.”

Vivar shrugged. “This is Spain, Lieutenant. What happens here is more my business than yours, I think?” His English was excellent, and spoken with a cold courtesy that made Sharpe feel mulish.

But the Englishman could not help his mulishness. “All we want to do,” Sharpe smeared blood from his mouth onto his dark green sleeve, “is get out of your damned country.”

There was a hint of renewed anger in the Spaniard’s eyes. “I think I shall be glad to see you gone, Lieutenant. So perhaps I’d better help you leave?”

Sharpe, for better or worse, had found an ally.

CHAPTER 3

“Defeat,” Bias Vivar said, “destroys discipline. You teach an army to march, to fight, to obey orders.” Each virtue was stressed by a downward slash of the razor which spattered soapy water onto the kitchen floor. “But,” he shrugged, “defeat brings ruin.”

Sharpe knew that the Spaniard was trying to find excuses for the disgraceful exhibition at the ruined farmstead. That was kind of him, but Sharpe was in no mood for kindness and he could find nothing to say in reply.

“And that farmhouse is unlucky.” Vivar turned back to the mirror fragment which he had propped on the window-ledge. “It always has been. In my grandfather’s time there was a murder there. Over a woman, naturally. And in my father’s time there was a suicide.” He made the sign of the cross with the razor, then carefully shaved the angle of his jaw. “It’s haunted, Lieutenant. At night you can see ghosts there. It is a bad place. You are lucky I found you. You want to use this razor?”

“I have my own.”

Vivar dried his blade and stowed it, with the mirror, in its leather case. Then he watched pensively as Sharpe spooned up the beans and pigs’ ears that the village priest had provided as supper. “Do you think,” Vivar asked softly, “that, after your skirmish, the Dragoons followed your army?”

“I didn’t see.”

“Let us hope they did.” Vivar ladled some of the mixture onto his own plate. “Perhaps they think I’ve joined the British retreat, yes?”

“Perhaps.” Sharpe wondered why Vivar was so interested in the French Dragoons who had been led by a red-coated chasseur and a black-coated civilian. He had eagerly questioned Sharpe about every detail of the fight by the bridge, but what most interested the Spaniard was which direction the enemy horsemen had taken after the fight, to which enquiry Sharpe could only offer his supposition that the Dragoons had ridden in pursuit of Sir John Moore’s army.

“If you’re right, Lieutenant,” Vivar raised a mug of wine in an ironic toast, “then that is the best news I’ve had in two weeks.”

“Why were they pursuing you?”

“They weren’t pursuing me,” Vivar said. “They’re pursuing anyone in uniform, anyone. They just happened to catch my scent a few days ago. I want to be sure they’re not waiting in the next valley.” Vivar explained to Sharpe that he had been travelling westwards but, forced into the highlands, he had lost all his horses and a good number of his men. He had been driven down to this small village by his desperate need for food and shelter.

That food had been willingly given. As the soldiers entered the small settlement Sharpe had noted how glad the villagers were to see Major Bias Vivar. Some of the men had even tried to kiss the Major’s hand, while the village priest, hurrying from his house, had ordered the women to heat up their ovens and uncover their winter stores. The soldiers, both Spanish and British, had been warmly welcomed. “My father,” Vivar now explained to Sharpe, “was a lord in these mountains.”

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