Sharpe wished him luck. If any cavalry regiment were likely to break apart a French battalion, it would be the Germans. The English cavalry were brave enough, well mounted, but with no discipline. English horsemen grew bored with patrols, with picquet duty, and dreamed only of the blood-curdling charge, swords high, that left their horses blown and the men scattered and vulnerable. Sharpe, like all infantry in the army, preferred the Germans because they knew their job and did it well.
Lossow grinned at the compliment. He was a square-faced man, with a pleasant and ready smile and eyes that looked out shrewdly from the web of lines traced on his face by staring too long at the enemy-held horizons. ‘Oh, one more thing, Captain. The bloody provosts are in the village.’ The phrase came awkwardly from Lossow’s lips, as if he did not usually use English swearwords except to describe the provosts, for whom any other language’s curse would be inadequate.
Sharpe thanked him and turned to the Company. ‘You heard Captain Lossow! There are provosts here. So keep your thieving hands to yourselves. Understand?’ They understood. No one wanted to be hung on the spot for being caught looting. ‘We stop for ten minutes. Dismiss them, Sergeant.’
The Germans left, cloaked against the rain, and Sharpe walked up the only street towards the church. It was a miserable village, poor and deserted, and the cottage doors swung emptily. The inhabitants had gone south and west, as the Portuguese government had ordered. When the French advanced they would find no crops, no animals, wells filled with stones or poisoned with dead sheep: a land of hunger and thirst.
Patrick Harper, sensing that Sharpe’s mood had lightened after the meeting with Lossow, fell into step beside his Captain. ‘Nothing here to loot, sir.’
Sharpe glanced at the men stooping into the cottages. ‘They’ll find something.’
The provosts were beside the church, three of them, mounted on black horses and standing like highwaymen waiting for a plump coach. Their equipment was new, their faces burned red, and Sharpe guessed they were fresh out from England, though why the Horse Guards sent provosts instead of fighting soldiers was a mystery. He nodded civilly to them. ‘Good morning.1
One of the three, with an officer’s sword jutting from beneath his cloak, nodded back. He seemed, like all of his kind, to be suspicious of any friendly gesture. He looked at their green Riflemen’s jackets. ‘There aren’t supposed to be any Riflemen in this area.’
Sharpe let the accusation go unanswered. If the provost thought they were deserters, then the provost was a fool. Deserters did not travel the open road in daylight, or wear uniforms, or stroll casually up to provosts. Sharpe and Harper, like the other eighteen Riflemen in the Company, had kept their old uniforms out of pride, preferring the dark green to the red of the line battalions.
The provost’s eyes flicked between the two men. ‘You have orders?’
‘The General wants to see us, sir.’ Harper spoke cheerfully.
A tiny smile came and went on the provost’s face. ‘You mean Lord Wellington wants to see you?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
Sharpe’s voice had a warning in it, but the provost seemed oblivious. He was looking Sharpe up and down, letting his suspicions show. Sharpe’s appearance was extraordinary. The green jacket, faded and torn, was worn over French cavalry overalls. On his feet were tall leather boots that had originally been bought in Paris by a Colonel of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. On his back, like most of his men, he carried a French pack, made of ox hide, and on his shoulder, though he was an officer, he slung a rifle. The officer’s epaulettes had gone, leaving broken stitches, and the scarlet sash was stained and faded. Even Sharpe’s sword, his other badge of rank, was irregular. As an officer of a Light Company he should have carried the curved sabre of the British Light Cavalry, but Richard Sharpe preferred the sword of the Heavy Cavalry, straight-bladed and ill balanced. Cavalrymen hated it; they claimed its weight made it impossible to parry swiftly, but Sharpe was six feet tall and strong enough to wield the thirty-five inches of ponderous steel with deceptive ease.