‘How long have you been a Lieutenant?’
‘Two years and nine months, sir.’ Sharpe was hardly surprised that the answer was given so fully and so quickly. Most Lieutenants counted the days till they had three years’ seniority. ‘So you’ll be a Captain by Christmas?’
Knowles sounded embarrassed. ‘My father’s paying, sir. He promised me the money after Talavera.’
‘You deserve it.’ Sharpe felt the pang of jealousy. He could never afford fifteen hundred pounds for a Captaincy, and Knowles was lucky in his father. Sharpe laughed, disguising his mood. ‘If my gazette fails, Robert, then by Christmas we’ll have changed places!’ He stood up, looked across the dark valley. ‘Time to go. God knows how we find the way. But good luck.’
A thousand miles away, north and east, a small man with an untidy hank of hair and an insatiable appetite for work looked at the pile of papers he had dealt with and grunted approvingly as he re-read the last paragraphs of the latest despatch from Marshal Andre Massena. He wondered if the Marshal, whom he himself had made into the Prince of Essling, was losing his touch. The British army was so small – the newspapers from London said a mere twenty-three thousand with twenty-two thousand Portuguese allies – while the French armies were so big, and Massena seemed to be taking the devil of a long time. But the despatch said that he was going forward, into Portugal, and soon the British would have their backs to the sea and would face nothing but terror, shame, and defeat. The small man yawned. He knew everything that happened in his huge Empire, even that the Prince of Essling had taken a young woman to the war to keep his bed warm at night, but he would be forgiven. A man needed that, especially as the years went on, and victory forgave all. He laughed out loud, startling a servant and flickering the candles, as he remembered a secret agent’s report that said Massena’s mistress was disguised in Hussar uniform. But what did that matter? The Empire was safe and the small man went to his bed, to his Princess, in utter ignorance of the Company that marched through his territory in the hope of giving him many sleepless nights in the months to come.
CHAPTER 12
It was a nightmare journey and only Hagman’s instincts, honed by years of poaching dark countryside, took the Riflemen safely back over the paths where they had been escorted earlier in the day. Sharpe wondered how Knowles, with the larger number of men, was surviving, but there were poachers not unlike Hagman in the Redcoats and there was no point in worrying. The Riflemen made good time, cursing through the rocks, stumbling on the streambeds, going faster than the less well-trained men of the South Essex could travel. The Rifles were the elite of the army, the best trained, the best equipped, the finest infantry of an army which boasted the best foot soldiers in the world, but none of their training, their vaunted self-reliance, had prepared them for the job of sneaking into Casatejada under the noses of suspicious Partisans.
Perversely the moon made an appearance as the green-jacketed men reached the final crest before the village. It sailed clear of the ragged cloud-edge and showed the village, innocent and silent, in the centre of the valley. The men dropped to the ground, pushed their rifles forward, but nothing moved in the moonlight except the barley rippling in the breeze and the maize clattering on its long stalks. Sharpe stared at the village, reliving the hopelessness of trying to get near it unseen, and tonight there would be no hope of persuading its defenders to light fires, dazzle themselves, and thus give the attackers an advantage. He stood up. ‘Come on.’
They made a wide circuit, round the southern end of the valley, moving fast in the moonlight and hoping that if their shadowed bodies were dimly seen against the dark background of the hills the sentries in the village would think that it was one of the wolf-packs that ran in the uplands. Twice on the journey the Riflemen had heard the wolves near them, once seen a ragged profile on a crest, but they had not been troubled. The cemetery was on the eastern side of the street and the Riflemen had to circle the village so they could approach from the darkness. Sharpe kept looking towards the east, fearing the first sliver of dawn, fearing the approach to the village. ‘Down!’