Mrs Parker was no happier at the news than the Riflemen. “Rising at four? You think a body can survive without sleep, Lieutenant?”
“I think, ma’am, that it’s best to be travelling before the French.” Sharpe hesitated, not willing to make another request of this disobliging woman, but knowing he could not trust himself to judge the hours in the night’s blackness. “I was wondering, ma’am, if you had a clock, or a watch?”
“A timepiece, Lieutenant?” Mrs Parker asked the question to gain time in which to marshal her forces of rejection.
“Please, ma’am.”
Louisa smiled at Sharpe from her seat on the shelf in the alcove which formed the bed. Her aunt, seeing the smile, snatched the alcove’s curtain closed. “You, of course, will sleep outside this door. Lieutenant?”
Sharpe, thinking of timepieces, was taken aback by the peremptory demand. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?”
“There are defenceless females in this room, Lieutenant! British females!”
“I’m certain you will be safe, ma’am.” Sharpe pointed at the heavy bolt inside the door.
“Have you no conception of your responsibilities, Lieutenant?” Mrs Parker advanced in wrath. “Is it any wonder that you have never secured promotion beyond your lowly rank?”
“Ma’am, I…“
“Do not interrupt me! I will have none of your barrack manners here, Lieutenant. Have you seen the Papist creatures who are drinking like animals in this tavern? Do you know what horrors strong drink provokes? And let me remind you that Mr Parker paid his taxes in England, which entitles us to your protection.”
George Parker, trying to read his scriptures by the light of a tallow dip, looked beseechingly at Sharpe. “Please, Lieutenant?”
“I shall sleep outside, ma’am, but I need a timepiece/
Mrs Parker, pleased with her small victory, smiled.
“If you are to guard us, Lieutenant, then you will want to be wakeful. Turning an hourglass will keep you from slumbering. George?”
George Parker rooted about in his valise to produce an hourglass that he handed, with an apologetic grimace, to Sharpe. Mrs Parker nodded satisfaction. “It lacks twenty-five minutes of ten o’clock, Lieutenant, and the glass takes one hour to evacuate itself.” She waved an imperious hand in dismissal.
Sharpe leaned on the wall outside the Parker’s room. He put the hourglass on a window sill and watched the first grains trickle through. Damn the bloody woman. No wonder the army discouraged the spread of Methodism in its ranks. Yet in one way Sharpe was glad to be a bodyguard, even to someone as disobliging as Mrs Parker, for it gave him an excuse not to go back to the stable where his Riflemen would make their displeasure and disdain clear once more. There had been a time when the company of such men had been his life and pleasure, but now, because he was an officer, he was bereft of such companionship. He felt an immense and hopeless weariness, and wished this damned journey was over.
He cut one more button from his trousers which already gaped to show a length of scarred thigh, and bought himself a skin of wine. He drank it quickly and miserably, then dragged a bench close to the family’s door. The tavern customers, suspicious of the ragged, harsh-faced, foreign soldier, kept clear of him. The bench was close to a small unshuttered window that gave Sharpe a view of the stables. He half suspected that the Riflemen might attempt another mutiny, perhaps sneaking off in the darkness to rejoin their beloved Major Vivar, but except for a few men who appeared in the stableyard to urinate, all seemed calm. Calm, but not quiet. Sharpe could hear the Riflemen’s laughter and it galled his loneliness. Gradually the laughter turned to silence.
He could not sleep. The tavern emptied, except for two drovers who snored cheerfully by the dying fire and the potman who made his bed under the serving hatch. Sharpe felt the beginnings of a headache. He suddenly missed Vivar. The Spaniard’s cheerfulness and certainty had made the long march bearable, and now he felt adrift in chaos. What if the British garrison had left Lisbon? Or what if there were no naval ships off the coast? Was he doomed to wander through Spain till, at last, the French solved his problems by making him a prisoner? And what if they did? The war must soon end with French victory, and the French would send their prisoners home. Sharpe would go back to England as just another failed officer who must eke out a bare existence on half-pay. He turned the hourglass and scratched another mark on the limewashed wall.