And they were not ladies; three years in the Peninsula had made sure of that. Some dressed in old uniforms, most were garbed in voluminous, filthy skirts with tattered shawls and scarves around their heads. They were tanned dark brown, with calloused hands and feet, and most could strip a corpse bare in ten seconds, a house in thirty. They were foul-mouthed, loud, and utterly immodest. No women could live with a battalion and be anything else. They slept with their men, often enough, in open fields with nothing but a tree or hedge to give an illusion of privacy. The women washed themselves, relieved themselves, made love, gave birth, and all in plain sight of a thousand eyes. To a fastidious observer they were a fearful sight, yet Sharpe liked them. They were tough, loyal, kind and uncomplaining.
Major Collett bawled an order for the Battalion to make ready, and Sharpe turned to his command; the baggage. It was chaos. Two children had succeeded in cutting the pannier from one of the Sutler’s mules, and the Sutler, a Spaniard who was a kind of traveling shop-keeper with the Battalion, was screaming at the children, but not daring to let go of the straw halter that tethered his other mules.
Sharpe yelled at them. ‘Make ready!’ They took no notice. The Sutler’s assistants caught the children, snatched back the bottles, but then the mothers, sensing loot, attacked the assistants for beating the children. It was pandemonium, his new command.
‘Richard!’ Sharpe twisted back. Major Hogan was behind him.
‘Sir.’
Hogan grinned down from his horse. ‘We’re very formal today.’
‘We’re very responsible. Look.’ Sharpe waved at the baggage train. ‘My new Company.’
‘I heard.’ Hogan slipped from his horse, stretched, and then turned as there were sudden shouts from the bridge. An officer’s horse had become frightened by the sliding, grey water. It was nervously backing in short, jerking steps towards the infantry company behind. The Captain, panicking, was whipping the beast, increasing its terror, and the horse began to rear fitfully.
‘Get off!’ Hogan shouted. He had a surprisingly loud voice. Tool! Get off! Dismount!’
The officer lashed down at the horse, wrenched the reins, and the horse put all its force into bucking the rider off its back. It succeeded. The horse slammed up, screaming, and the officer tumbled from the saddle, bounced once on the roadway’s edge, and disappeared downstream into the river. ‘Stupid bastard!’ Hogan was angry. A Sergeant threw a length of timber into the water, but it fell short, and Sharpe could see the Captain flailing the river, struggling against the freezing current that took him away from the bridge. ‘He’s had it.’
No one dived in to save the officer. By the time a man had stripped himself of pack, haversack, ammunition pouch, weapons and boots the Captain would be long gone. The horse, free of its burden, stood shivering on the bridge and a Private soothed it, then led it calmly to the southern bank. The Captain had disappeared.
‘There’s a vacancy.’ Sharpe laughed.
‘Bitter?’
‘Bitter, sir? No, sir. Being a Lieutenant is very satisfying.’
Hogan gave a sad smile. ‘I hear you were drunk.’
‘No.’ He had been drunk three times since the day Teresa left, the day he had lost the Company. Sharpe shrugged. ‘You know that gazette was refused in January? No one dared tell me. Then the new man arrives so someone has to tell me. So I look after the baggage while some half-cooked youngster destroys my Company.’
‘Is he that bad?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ Sharpe’s anger had taken himself by surprise.
‘Do you want me to talk to the General?’
‘No!’ Pride would stop Sharpe bleating for help, but then he turned back. ‘Yes, you can talk to the General. Tell him I’ll lead the Forlorn Hope for him at Badajoz. ‘
Hogan paused with a pinch of snuff half-way to his nostrils. He put it back in the box, carefully, and snapped the lid shut. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m serious.’
Hogan shook his head. ‘You don’t need it, Richard. God! There’ll be promotion by the grave load! Don’t you understand? You’ll be a Captain within a month.’