So Sharpe and his men must die, so that Europe’s glorious future could arrive.
CHAPTER 5
The loss of the telescope hurt Sharpe. He told himself it was a bauble, a useful frill, but it still hurt. It marked an achievement, not just the rescue of Sir Arthur Wellesley, but the promotion to commissioned rank afterward. Sometimes, when he scarcely dared believe that he was a King’s officer, he would look at the telescope and think how far he had traveled from the orphanage in Brewhouse Lane and at other times, though he was reluctant to admit it to himself, he enjoyed refusing to explain the plaque on the telescope’s barrel. Yet he knew other men knew. They looked at him, understood he had once fought like a demon under the Indian sun and were awed.
Now bloody Christopher had the glass.
„You’ll get it back, sir,” Harper tried to console him.
„I bloody will, too. I hear that Williamson got into a fight in the village last night?”
„Not much of a fight, sir. I pulled him off.”
„Who was he milling?”
„One of Lopes’s men, sir. As evil a bastard as Williamson.”
„Should I punish him?”
„God, no, sir. I looked after it.”
But Sharpe nevertheless declared the village out of bounds, which he knew would not be popular with his men. Harper spoke for them, pointing out that there were some pretty girls in Vila Real de Zedes. „There’s one wee slip of a thing there, sir,” he said, „that would bring tears to your eyes. The lads only want to walk down there of an evening to say hello.”
„And to leave some babies behind.”
„That too,” Harper agreed.
„And the girls can’t walk up here?” Sharpe asked. „I hear some do.”
„Some do, sir, I’m told, that’s true.”
„Including one wee slip of a thing that has red hair and can bring tears to your eyes?”
Harper watched a buzzard quartering the broom-clad slopes of the hill on which the fort was being made. „Some of us like to go to church in the village, sir,” he said, studiously not talking about the red-headed girl whose name was Maria.
Sharpe smiled. „So how many Catholics have we got?”
„There’s me, sir, and Donnelly and Carter and McNeill. Oh, and Slattery, of course. The rest of you are all going to hell.”
„Slattery!” Sharpe said. „Fergus isn’t a Christian.”
„I never said he was, sir, but he goes to mass.”
Sharpe could not help laughing. „So I’ll let the Catholics go to mass,” he said.
Harper grinned. „That means they’ll all be Catholic by Sunday.”
„This is the army,” Sharpe said, „so anyone wanting to convert has to get my permission. But you can take the other four to mass and you bring them back by midday, and if I find any of the other lads down there I’ll hold you responsible.”
„Me?”
„You’re a sergeant, aren’t you?”
„But when the lads see Lieutenant Vicente’s men going to the village, sir, they won’t see why they’re not allowed.”
„Vicente’s Portuguese. His men know the local rules. We don’t. And sooner or later there’s going to be a fight over girls that’ll bring tears to your eyes and we don’t need it, Pat.” The problem was not so much the girls, though Sharpe knew they could be a problem if one of his riflemen became drunk, and that was the true problem. There were two taverns in the village and both served cheap wine out of barrels and half his men would become paralyzed with drink given half a chance. And there was a temptation to relax the rules because the situation of the riflemen was so strange. They were out of touch with the army, not sure what was happening and without enough to do, and so Sharpe invented more work for them. The fort was now sprouting extra stone redoubts and Sharpe found tools in the Quinta’s barn and made his men clear the track through the woods and carry bundles of firewood up to the watchtower, and when that was done he led long patrols into the surrounding countryside. The patrols were not intended to seek out the enemy, but to tire the men so that they collapsed at sundown and slept till dawn, and each dawn Sharpe held a formal parade and put men on a charge if he found a button undone or a scrap of rust on a rifle lock. They moaned at him, but there was no trouble with the villagers.