`You know I have. You fetch it.’
There were limits to discretion, though. A man’s job was not to fetch bread, or be on time for a meal, and Harper sat silent as Isabella grumbled about the billet and as she complained to him about the landlady, and about Sergeant Pierce’s wife who had stolen a bucket of water, and told him that he should see a priest before the campaign began so as to make a good confession. Harper half listened to it all. `I smell trouble ahead.’
`You’re right.’ Isabella scooped the eggs onto a tin plate.
`Big trouble if you don’t fetch the bread.’ When she spoke English she did it with a northern Irish accent.
`Fetch it yourself, woman.’
She said something that Harper’s Spanish was not good enough to understand, but went to the corner of the room and unearthed the hidden loaf. `What kind of trouble, Patrick?’
`He’s bored.’
`The Major?’
`Aye.’ Harper deigned to cut the loaf with his rifle’s bayonet. `He’s bored, my love, and when he’s bored he gets into trouble.’
Isabella poured the ration wine. `Rainbows?’
Harper laughed. He was fond of saying that Major Sharpe was always chasing the pot of gold that lay at the end of every rainbow. He found the pots often enough, but, according to Harper, he always discarded them because the pots were the wrong shape. `Aye. The bugger’s chasing rainbows again.’
`He should get married.’
Harper kept a diplomatic silence, but his instinct, like Sharpe’s, suddenly sensed danger. He was remembering Sharpe’s sudden change of mood that day when he had mentioned the ribbon-merchant, and Harper feared because he knew Richard Sharpe was capable of chasing rainbows into hell itself. He looked at his woman, who waited for a word of praise, and smiled at her. `You’re right. He needs a woman.’
`Marriage,’ she said tartly, but he could see she was pleased. She pointed her spoon at him. `You look after him, Patrick.’
`He’s big enough to look after himself.’
`I know big men who can’t fetch bread.’
`You’re a lucky woman, so you are.’ He grinned at her, but inside he was wondering just what it was that had alarmed Sharpe. Like the prospect of marriage that he sensed for himself, he sensed trouble coming for his friend.
`Ah, Sharpe! No problems? Good!’ Lieutenant Colonel Leroy was pulling on thin kid-leather gloves. He had been a Major till a few weeks before, but now the loyalist American had achieved his ambition to command the Battalion. The glove on his right hand hid the terrible burn scars that he had earned a year before at Badajoz. Nothing could hide the awful, puckered, distorting scar that wrenched the right side of his face. He looked into the morning sky. `No rain today.’
`Let’s hope not.’
`Tent mules coming today?’
`So I’m told, sir.’
`God knows why we need tents.’ Leroy stooped to light a long, thin cigar from a candle that, on his orders, was kept alight in Battalion headquarters for just this purpose. `Tents will just soften the men. We might as well march to war with milkmaids. Can you lose the bloody things?’
`I’ll try, sir.’
Leroy put on his bicorne hat, pulling the front low to shadow his thin, terrible face. `What else today?’
`Mahoney’s taking Two and Three on a march. Firing practice for the new draft. Parade at two.’
`Parade?’ Leroy, whose voice still held the flat intonation of his native New England, scowled at his only Major. Joseph Forrest, the Battalion’s other Major, had been posted to the Lisbon Staff to help organize the stores that poured into that port. `Parade?’ Leroy asked. `What goddamned parade?’
`Your orders, sir. Church parade.’
`Christ, I’d forgotten.’ Leroy blew smoke towards Sharpe and grinned. `You take it, Richard, it’ll be good for you.’
`Thank you, sir.’
`Well, I’m off.’ Leroy sounded pleased. He had been invited to Brigade headquarters for the day and was anticipating equal measures of wine and gossip. He picked up his riding crop. `Make sure the parson gives the buggers a rousing sermon. Nothing like a good sermon to put men in a frog-killing mood. I hear there was a ribbon-merchant looking for you?’