“Sally-Manker,” Harper offered helpfully.
“That was the place! There were skulls as thick as bluebottles in cowshit!” Clayton spoke loudly to impress the new recruits who were listening avidly to the conversation, nor did he drop his voice as a blue-coated battalion of Dutch-Belgian infantry marched close by towards their bivouac. “I hope those yellow bastards aren’t next to us tomorrow,” Clayton said malevolently.
There were growls of agreement. The officers and men of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers might be divided between the experienced and the inexperienced, but they were united in their hatred of all outsiders, unless those outsiders had proved themselves as tough, resourceful and uncomplaining as the redcoats. To these men the battalion was their life, their family and probably their death as well. Properly led they would fight for their battalion with a feral and terrifying ferocity, though ill-led, as Sharpe well knew, they could fall apart like a rusted musket. The thought made Sharpe glance towards Colonel Ford.
Clayton still stared with loathing at the Dutch-Belgians. “I’ll wager those buggers won’t go hungry tonight. Bastards can’t fight, but they look plump enough. No shortage of bloody food there!”
Daniel Hagman suddenly laughed aloud. “You remember that ripe ham we sold to the Portuguese? That was you, Mr Sharpe!”
“No, it wasn’t,” Sharpe said.
The veterans jeered knowingly and affectionately.
“It was you!” Clayton, a clever and cheeky rogue, pointed an accusing finger at Sharpe, then told the story for the benefit of the newcomers. “There were these Portuguese boys, right? It was after some scrap or other and the bastards were hungry as hell, so Mr Sharpe here chopped the bums off some French dead and smoked them over a fire, and then sold them to the Portuguese as joints of ham.”
The newcomers grinned nervously towards the grim-faced officer who seemed oddly embarrassed by the tale.
“The Portuguese never complained.” Harper justified the barbarity.
“Did you really do that?” d’Alembord asked Sharpe very quietly.
“Christ, no. It was some other Riflemen. The Portuguese had eaten their pet dog, so they decided to get even with them.” Sharpe was surprised that the story was now ascribed to him, but he had noticed how men liked to attach outrageous stories to his exploits and it was hopeless to deny the more exotic feats.
“We could do with some of them Portuguese tomorrow.” Daniel Hagman lit his pipe with a glowing twig from the fire. “They were proper little fighters, they were.” The admiration was genuine and earned muttered agreement from the veterans.
“But we’ll be all right tomorrow, won’t we, Mr Sharpe?” Charlie Weller asked with undisguised anxiety.
“You’ll be all right, lads. Just remember. Kill their officers first, aim at the bellies of the infantry and at the horses of the cavalry.” The answer was given for the benefit of the men at the outer reaches of Sharpe’s audience; the men who had not fought before and who needed simple rules to keep them confident in the chaos of battle.
Weller put a finger into the can of water and found it still lukewarm. He took a twist of dry kindling that he had stored deep in his clothes and put it onto the flames. Sharpe hoped the boy would survive, for Weller was different from the other men. He was a country boy who had joined the army out of a sense of patriotism and adventure. Those motives had helped make him a good soldier, though no better than most of the men who had taken the King’s shilling for altogether less honourable motives. Clayton was a thief, and probably would have been hanged if he had not donned the red coat, but his sly cunning made him a good skirmisher. Most of the other men around the fire were drunkards and criminals. They were the leavings of Britain, the unwanted men, the scum of the earth, but in battle they were as stubborn as mules. To Sharpe’s mind they were gutter fighters, and he would not have wanted them any other way. They were not impressive to look at; small, scarred, gap-toothed and dirty, but tomorrow they would show an emperor how a redcoat could fight, though tonight their main concern was when the rum ration would reach them.