`What if you don’t see him, Sergeant?’
`I’ve been thinking about it, so I have, sir.’ Harper thumped his shako into shape with a fist. Isabella was rolling her own blanket beside him. Harper smiled. `There’s no way Nosey would hang him, not after Sharpe saved his life, sir. And there’s no way the frogs can kill him, so he has to be alive. He’ll be back, sir, and if we’re in a fight, that’s where he’ll be. A pound says I’m right.’
`D’Alembord grinned. `You haven’t got a pound.’
`I will tonight, though. Farrell! You heathen bastard! Get up!’ Harper looked back to his officer. `A pound?’
`You need your money, Harps. You’re getting married.’
`Christ! Don’t talk about it.’ Harper sounded gloomy. `I’ll still lay the pound/sir.’
`I accept.’
In the valley a trumpet sounded. In the darkness thousands of men prepared themselves. Behind them was a epic march through the hills, and beyond the next hill was Vitoria.
They marched before dawn, the columns splitting again, but all going eastwards, going towards the enemy. The columns twisted through the misted valleys, going towards Vitoria, going towards the treasure of an empire, and going to battle.
CHAPTER 19
The rain, at last, had stopped, and the dawn of Monday, June 21st, 1813, brought a dazzling, blinding sun that lanced over the Pamplona valley, over the spires of Vitoria, and into the eyes of the few British horsemen who had climbed the hills to the west of the city.
They could see nothing of the French beneath them. The wide valley in which Vitoria stood was shrouded in mist, a mist that was thickened by the smoke of myriad camp-fires. The watching horsemen appeared to be alone in a wild, dazzling landscape.
The sky was brilliantly clear. The valleys were hidden by mist, and the east was filled with the searing glory of the rising sun, yet to north and south the British horsemen could see the successive ridges of the hills etched in startling clarity against a pale sky. After the days of rain and low cloud it seemed almost indecent to be fighting on such a day as this. Yet fight they must, for, by the will of Marshal Jourdan and General Wellington, one hundred and forty thousand men had come to this misted plain from which, like a strange island in a white sea, the spires of Vitoria’s cathedral jutted golden in the sun.
From the west, in the valleys that were mysterious with shredding mist and shadow, the British army marched. They were cold from the night and few men spoke or sang as they marched, waiting for the sun and the smell of powder to warm their spirits. In every Company the sibilant hiss of stone on steel could be heard. The sharpening stones were handed round and the men honed their bayonets as they marched and prayed they would not need to use them.
They had marched across the roof of Spain, coming from Portugal to this place where, like a knife put to a throat, they threatened the Great Road that was France’s lifeline in Spain. The men knew, because their officers had told them, that a battle was imminent. Some, who had stood in the battle-line before, tried not to think of what was to come while others, who had never before seen an enemy army, wondered if they would live to remember the sight. Some, remembering the long hard marches in the high inhospitable hills, feared defeat, for, if this army was broken today and forced to retreat, they would face days of being hunted in the high valleys by the long-bladed French horsemen.
Wellington, this day, commanded Spanish, Portuguese and British troops. With him, too, was the King’s German Legion. They marched towards the valley of Vitoria, and with them went their women and children who would wait at the field’s edge while their men fought. With the army, too, were sutlers and merchants, salesmen of patent medicines, friars and priests. There were whores, beggars, horse-thieves, and politicians, and, like a lumbering, ponderous beast, the whole great mass curled and heaved itself towards the valley, towards Vitoria and towards a fight.