The South Essex had become pack mules. The Engineers had over a hundred carts waiting to cross the river and two had snapped their axles. The South Essex would have to carry the loads across the water. Windham reined in beside Sharpe. ‘All ready, Mr. Sharpe?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Keep the baggage close when we cross!’
‘Yes, sir.’ No, sir, three bags full, sir. ‘Sir?’
‘Mr. Sharpe?’ Windham was eager to be away.
‘Have you forwarded my request, sir?’
‘No, Mr. Sharpe, much too early My compliments!’ The Colonel touched the tassel on his bicorne and wheeled his horse away.
Sharpe hitched his sword up, useless to him for counting spades and pick-axes, and trudged over the mud towards the Battalion’s baggage. Each company kept a mule that carried the books, the endless paperwork that went with a Captaincy, a few paltry supplies and, quite illegally, some officers’ baggage as well. Other mules carried the Battalion supplies; the spare arms chest, uniforms, more paperwork, and the surgeon’s grim load. Mixed with the mules were the officers’ servants, leading spare horses and packhorses, and, mingled among them all, the children. They shrieked and played round the animals’ legs, watched by their mothers who crouched beneath makeshift shelters waiting for the order to march. By regulation there should be just sixty wives with the Battalion, but inevitably, after three years at war, the South Essex had collected far more. There were nearer three hundred women marching with the Battalion, the same number of children, and they were a mixture of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Spanish and Portuguese; there was even a Frenchwoman, left behind in the fighting at Fuentes de Onoro, who had chosen to stay with her captors and had married a Sergeant in Sterritt’s Company. Some were whores, following the army’s meager pennies, some were proper wives with papers to prove it, while some called themselves wives and did not need the ceremony. All were tough. Many had married twice or three times in the war, having lost their husbands to a French bullet or a Spanish fever.
The previous morning Windham had cancelled the wives’ parade. In barracks the parade made some sense; it kept a Colonel in touch with the families and gave a good officer a chance to detect brutality, but the women of the South Essex did not like the parade, were not used to it, and had showed their discontent. The very first time that Sharpe had lined them for Windham’s inspection Private Clayton’s wife, a pretty girl, had been suckling her baby. The Colonel had stopped, glanced down, and frowned at her. ‘This is hardly the time, woman!’
She had grinned, lifted her breasts towards him. ‘When ‘e’s ‘ungry, ‘e’s ‘ungry, just like ‘is father.’ There was a chorus of laughter from the wives, jeers from the men, and Windham had strode away. Jessica would have known what to do, but not he.
Now, as Sharpe approached the rain-swept baggage, the women grinned at him from beneath their blankets. Lily Grimes, a tiny woman of irrepressible cheerfulness, and a voice with the piercing quality of a well-honed bayonet, gave him a mock salute. ‘Given up parading us, Cap’n?’ The women always called him Captain.
‘That’s right, Lily.’
She sniffed. ‘He’s mad.’
‘Who?’
‘Bloody Colonel. What did he want us to parade for, anyway?’
Sharpe grinned. ‘He worries about you, Lily. He likes to keep an eye on you.’
She shook her head. ‘He wants to look at Sally Clayton’s tits more like.’ She laughed and peered up at Sharpe. ‘You didn’t look away either, Cap’n. I watched you. ”
‘I was just wishing it had been you, Lily. ”
She shrieked with laughter. ‘Any time, Cap’n, you just ask. ‘
Sharpe laughed, walked away from her. He admired the wives, and he liked them. They endured all the discomforts of the campaign; the nights under pouring rain, the hard rations, the long marches, yet they never gave up. They watched their men go into battle and afterwards they searched the field for a corpse or a wounded husband, and all the while they brought up their children and looked after their men. Sharpe had seen Lily carrying two of her children up a hard road, her husband’s musket, and the family’s few belongings as well. They were tough.