“Forget this afternoon, Huckfield. Nothing happened.”
He ignored the man’s thanks. Being uncertain of the future was the price a soldier paid. Sharpe could not imagine being in an army that was not at war; he could not imagine what he might do if there was suddenly a peace and he had no job. But before then there was a battle to fight and an Eagle to win and a girl to fight for. He climbed up into the streets of Oropesa.
CHAPTER 17
In sixteen years’ soldiering Sharpe had rarely felt such certainty that battle was about to be joined. The Spanish and British armies had combined at Oropesa and marched on to Talavera, twenty-one thousand British and thirty-four thousand Spanish, a vast army swollen by mules, servants, wives, children, priests, pouring eastwards to where the mountains almost met the River Tagus and the vast arid plain ended at the town of Talavera. The wheels of one hundred and ten field guns ground the white roads to fine dust, the hooves of over six thousand cavalry stirred the powder into the air where it clung to the infantry who trudged through the heat and listened to the far-off crackle as the leading Spanish skirmishers pushed aside the screen of French light troops. To left and right Sharpe could see other plumes of dust where cavalry patrols rode parallel to the line of march; closer by, in the fields, the Battalion saw small groups of Spanish soldiers who had fallen out of the march and now lay, apparently uncon-cerned, chatting with their women, smoking, watching the long columns of British infantry file past.
The men were hungry. Hard as Wellesley tried, thor-ough as the Commissary could be, nevertheless there was simply not enough food for the whole army. The area between Oropesa and Talavera had already been scoured by the French, now it was searched by Spanish and British, and the Battalion had only eaten `Tommies’, pancakes made from flour and water, since they left Oropesa the day before. It was a time for tightening belts, but the prospects of action had raised men’s spirits, and when the Battalion marched past the bodies of three French skirmishers they forgot their hunger at their first sight of French infantry.
Sharpe told his Light Company that the dead men with their fringed epaulettes were the famous French Volti-geurs, the skirmishers, the men with whom the Light Company would fight their own private battle between the lines before the big Battalions clashed. The men of the South Essex, who had not seen enemy infantry before, stared curiously at the blue-jacketed bodies that had been thrown down beside a church wall. Dark stains marked the uniforms, their heads were bent back in the strange attitude of the dead, one man had a finger missing where Sharpe supposed it had been hacked off to get at a valuable ring. Ensign Denny stared at them with fascination: these were the famous French infantry that had marched the length and breadth of Europe; he looked at the moustached faces and wondered how he would feel when he saw similar faces, but animated, staring at him over the browned barrel of the French musket.
The French made no resistance to the west of Talavera or in the town itself. The armies marched through or past the town and on a mile until they stopped at dusk on the banks of a small river that flowed into the Tagus. The Battalion marched to the north of the town, and Sharpe wondered how Josefina would find a room there. Hogan had promised to look after her, and Sharpe stared at the crowds pressing into the narrow streets as though he might catch a glimpse of her. The men grumbled. They were tired and hungry and they resented being denied the pleasures of the town. They could see officers on horse-back riding towards the old walls, their wives and children walked there, but the troops went on to the Alberche and camped in the cork groves that sloped down to the shallow river. Tomorrow they must fight. If they survived tomor-row then would come the time to buy drink in Talavera, but first they must cross the River Alberche and defeat the army of Marshal Victor. Fires were lit throughout the trees, the Battalions swiftly settling in for the night, glancing apprehensively at the far river-bank where hundreds of smoke plumes mingled and shivered over the French camp. The armies had finally been brought together, British, Spanish and French, and tomorrow they must fight, and Sharpe’s company squatted by their fires and wondered about the men just across the river who sat by similar fires and made the same jokes in a different language.