‘I really couldn’t say, sir.’ Sharpe did not know whether his request to Lawford had borne fruit and that the threat of court-martial and disgrace had forced Girdwood to Spain, or whether the man, from his tortuous dreams of glory, simply wanted to fight his battle against the French. ‘He’s here, sir, that’s all I know.’
‘While you,’ a finger stabbed at Sharpe, ‘are commanding this Battalion, yes? You’re a clever bastard, Mr Sharpe, and when you’ve driven that poor fool mad I’ll make sure you get a real bastard of a colonel to run you ragged.’
Major General Nairn was right in his surmise that Sharpe had arranged for Girdwood to command the Battalion because it enabled Sharpe to be the real commander. Girdwood, shamed and humbled by Sharpe in England, could not compete with him in Spain. The Lieutenant Colonel had tried. On their first formal parade, when the Battalion, strengthened and filled by the men from Foulness, had formed up before the storehouses of Pasajes, Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood had publicly reprimanded Major Sharpe. It was his attempt to assert his authority, to make, as he had said in private to Sharpe, a new beginning with old things forgotten.
The parade had been a formal affair, the Companies lined in their proper order, with Captains in front and Sergeants behind. Before the hoisted Colours, facing the whole parade, Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood sat his horse. Four paces behind the Colours, in the allotted place of the senior major, Sharpe stood.
‘Major Sharpe!’ Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, surveying his command, shouted over the heads of the Colour party.
‘Sir!’
‘Retire two paces, if you please!’ The manual of drill did, indeed, stipulate that the senior major should be six paces behind the rear ranks.
Every man in the Battalion, not just those from Foulness, but the veterans too, recognised this as a trial of strength. A small thing, no doubt; but if Major Sharpe, so publicly reprimanded for his lack of military precision, took the two backward paces then Girdwood would have succeeded in asserting his formal authority over all these men. The Colonel, recognising the moment, chose to speak in a clipped, loud voice. ‘Now, if you please, Major!’
‘Sir!’ Major Sharpe said. He filled his lungs. “Talion! ‘Talion will march two paces forward on my word of command! ‘Talion, move!’
Since that moment, which had brought smiles to every face in the Battalion, Sharpe had commanded. From that moment on he paraded beside Girdwood, in the front of the Battalion, and, though he was careful to be seen consulting with the Lieutenant Colonel, and though Girdwood still presided silently in the Mess, there was not a man in the Prince of Wales’ Own Volunteers who did not know who truly gave the Battalion its orders.
Major General Nairn, on his last visit to Sharpe before the Battalion was ordered forward through the mountains, had stared astonished at the still closed door. ‘You’re not being a bit hard on him, Sharpe?’
‘Yes, sir. I am.’ Sharpe admitted. ‘At Foulness, sir, that bugger gave orders that deserters were to be shot out of hand. I saw one killed. Guessing from the books I’d say he had about a dozen others shot. No trial, no nothing. Just bang. He also hunted men in the marshland as if they were rats. He stole a lot of money.’ Sharpe frowned. ‘So have I, in my time, but only from the enemy. I don’t steal from my men. Besides, he wants to see a battle, so I’m doing him a favour.’
‘A favour?’
‘I’ll fight his bloody battle for him, which means we stand a chance of winning.’ Sharpe laughed at his own immodesty.
‘Any other enemies here, Major Sharpe?’ Nairn asked with mock innocence.
Sharpe smiled, thought of Sergeant Lynch, and lied. ‘No, sir.’
‘Doesn’t look any different to Spain, does it?’ Harper, with a fresh mug of tea, stood beside Sharpe on the great hill and looked down on the enemy’s last fortresses before the open country.
Sharpe propped a broken mirror above a bowl of water and stropped his razor on the side of his right boot. ‘Buggers didn’t have trenches in Spain.’ He had searched the French positions with his telescope. He did not much like what he saw. The French had made the great hump of hill beneath him into a remarkable fortress. They had built dry stone walls that connected their small forts, dug trenches, and at the very end of the hill, that lay like a ridge among lesser hills, there was a series of concentric walls that surrounded a pinnacle of rock. The rock was crowned with embrasures, packed, doubtless, with muskets that could not be reached by British cannon, for no cannon could be placed in a position to reach the pinnacle. This, Sharpe knew, would be an infantryman’s job. An attack uphill, against stone and trenches, against an enemy fanatical to protect their homeland.