Harper cleared his throat. “But what I don’t understand, sir, is why you’re trying to turn them into soldiers at all.”
“To win a battle?” Sharpe suggested acidly.
“If it comes to a straight scrap between these lads and French Dragoons, we’re not going to win,” Harper paused, “begging your pardon, sir.” None of the officers spoke. His voice took on a note of authority, like a practical man demonstrating a simplicity to fools. “What’s the point in training them to fight an open battle when that’s not what you’re expecting? Why do they need to learn platoon fire? These lads have to fight in the streets, sir. That’s just gutter fighting, so it is, and I’ll wager they’re as good at that as any Frenchman. Get them into the city, then set them loose. I wouldn’t want to face the bastards.”
“Ten trained men can see off a rabble.” Sharpe, hearing his hopes of a postponement being dashed by Harper’s words, spoke harshly.
“Aye, but we’ve got two hundred trained men,” Harper said, “and we just push them to wherever there’s real trouble.”
“My God!” Vivar was suddenly elated. “Sergeant, you are right!”
“Nothing, sir.” Harper was obviously delighted at the praise.
“You are right!” Vivar slapped the Irishman’s shoulder. “I should have seen it. The people, not the army, will free Spain, so why turn the people into an army? And we forget, gentlemen, just what forces will be on our side in the city.
The citizens themselves! They’ll rise and fight for us, and we would never think of refusing their help because they’re not trained!“ Vivar’s optimism, released by Harper’s words, was in full flood. ”So, we can go soon. Gentlemen, we are ready!“
So now, Sharpe thought, even the training would be abandoned. An outnumbered rabble would march on a city. Vivar made it all sound so easy, like filling a pit with rats then letting in the terriers. Yet the pit was a city, and the rats were waiting.
Vivar’s volunteers might not be trained soldiers, but the Major insisted on swearing them into the service of the Spanish Crown. The priests conducted the ceremony, and each man’s name was solemnly recorded on paper as a duly sworn soldier of His Most Christian Majesty, Ferdinand VII. Now the French could have no excuse for treating Vivar’s volunteers as civilian criminals.
Yet soldiers needed uniforms, and there was no dyed cloth to make bright coats, nor any of the other accoutrements of a soldier like shakos, belts, pouches, or gaiters. But there was plenty of coarse brown homespun to be had, and from that humble material Vivar ordered simple tunics to be made. There was also some white linen, fetched from a nunnery twenty miles away, which was made into sashes. It was a very crude uniform, fastened with loops about bone buttons, but, if any rules of war could be applied to Vivar’s expedition, the brown tunics passed as soldiers’ coats.
The wives of the volunteers cut and sewed the brown tunics while Louisa Parker, high in the fortress, helped the Riflemen mend their green jackets. The coats were ragged, torn, threadbare and scorched, yet the girl proved to have an extraordinary skill with the needle. She took Sharpe’s green jacket and, in less than a day, made it seem almost new. “I even ironed out the bugs,” she said happily, and folded back a seam at the collar to prove that the lice had truly been exterminated by the stub of a broken sabre which she had used as a flatiron.
“Thank you.” Sharpe took the coat and saw how she had turned the collar, darned the sleeves, and patched the black facings. His trousers could not be restored to their original grey, so she had sewn patches of brown homespun over the worst rents. “You look like a harlequin, Lieutenant.”
“A fool?”
It was the evening of the day on which Harper had convinced Vivar of the uselessness of training the volunteers. Sharpe, as on previous evenings, walked the ramparts with Louisa. He prized these moments. As the fears of defeat grew on him, these snatched conversations were passages of hope. He liked to stare at the firelight reflected from her face, he liked the gentleness which sometimes softened her vivacity. She was gentle now as she leaned against the parapet. “Do you suppose my uncle and aunt are in Santiago?”