Mrs Parker ripped back the leather curtain to demand an end to the cursing, saw the naked men, and screamed. The curtain closed.
Sharpe stared his men down. He did not blame them for being frightened, for any soldier could be forgiven terror when defeat and chaos destroyed an army. These men were stranded, far from home, and bereft of the commissary that clothed and fed them, but they were still soldiers, under discipline, and that word reminded Sharpe of Major Vivar’s simple commandments. With one simple change, those three rules would suit him well.
Sharpe made his voice less harsh. “From now on we have three rules. Just three rules. Break one of them and I’ll break you. None of you will steal anything unless you have my permission to do so. None of you will get drunk without my permission. And you will fight like bastards when the enemy appears. Is that understood?”
Silence.
“I said, is that understood? Louder! Louder! Louder!”
The naked men were shouting their assent; shouting frantically, shouting to get this madman off their freezing backs. They looked a good deal more sober now.
“Sergeant Williams!”
“Sir?”
“Greatcoats on! You have two hours. Light fires, dry the clothes, then form up in threes again. I’ll stand guard.”
“Yes, sir.”
The carriage stood immobile, its Spanish coachman expressionless on his high box. Only when the Riflemen were in their dry greatcoats did the door fly open and a furious Mrs Parker appear. “Lieutenant!”
Sharpe knew what that voice portended. He whipped round. “Madam! You will keep silent!”
“I will…“
“Silence, God damn you!” Sharpe strode towards the coach and Mrs Parker, fearing violence, slammed the door.
But Sharpe went instead to the luggage box’from which he took a handful of the Spanish testaments. “Sergeant Williams? Kindling for the fires!” He threw the books down to the meadow while George Parker, who thought the world had gone mad, kept a politic silence.
Two hours later, in a very chastened silence, the Riflemen marched south.
At midday it stopped raining. The road joined a larger road, wider and muddier, which slowed the coach’s lumbering progress. Yet, as if in promise of better things to come, Sharpe could see a stretch of water far to his right. It was too wide to be a river, and thus was either a lake or an arm of the ocean which, like a Scottish sea-loch, stretched deep inland. George Parker opined that it was indeed a ria, a valley flooded by the sea, which could therefore lead to the patrolling ships of the Royal Navy.
That thought brought optimism, as did the country they now traversed. The road led through pastureland interspersed with stands of trees, stone walls, and small streams. The slopes were gentle and the few farms looked prosperous. Sharpe, trying to remember the map that Vivar had destroyed, knew they must be well south of Santiago de Com-postela. His despair of the night before was being eroded by the hopes of this southern road, and by the subdued look on his men’s faces. The glimpse of the sea had helped. Perhaps, in the very next town, there might be fishermen who could take these refugees out to where the Navy’s ships patrolled. George Parker, walking with Sharpe, agreed. “And if not, Lieutenant, then we certainly won’t need to go as far as Lisbon.”
“No, sir?”
“There’ll be English ships loading with wine at Oporto. And we can’t be more than a week from Oporto.”
One week to safety! Sharpe rejoiced in the thought. One week of hard marching on his broken boots. One week to prove that he could survive without Bias Vivar. One week of whipping these Riflemen into a disciplined unit. One week with Louisa Parker, and then at least two more weeks at sea as their ship beat north against the Biscay winds.
Two hours after midday, Sharpe called a halt. The sea was still invisible, yet its salt odour was thin among the straggly pine trees beneath which the carriage horses were given a feed of dried maize and hay. The Riflemen, after breaking apart the last of the monastery’s loaves, lay exhausted. They had just crossed a stretch of flooded meadows where the road had proved a morass from which the men had had to push the great carriage free. Now the road led gently upwards between mossy walls towards a stone farmhouse which lay, perhaps a mile to the south, on the next crest.