‘Yes,’ Sharpe said.
There were fifty people being presented this evening. Most had brought their wives who laughed sycophantically whenever the courtiers on the dais laughed. None could hear the witticism that had provoked the laughter, but they laughed just the same.
The men were resplendent in uniform or court dress, their coats heavy with jewelled orders and bright sashes. Sharpe wore no decorations, unless the faded cloth badge that showed a wreath counted as a decoration. He had received that for going into a defended breach, being the first man to climb the broken, blood-slick stones at Badajoz, but it was a paltry thing beside the dazzling jewelled enamels of the great stars that shone from the other uniforms.
He had taken the wreath badge from his old jacket and insisted that the tailor sew it onto his brand new uniform. It felt odd to be dressed so finely, his waist circled by a tasselled red sash and his shoulder-wings bright with the stars of his rank. Sharpe reckoned the evening had cost him fifty guineas already, most of it to the tailor who had despaired of making the new uniform in time. Sharpe had growled that he would go to the Royal Court in his old uniform and give the tailor’s name as the man responsible, and, as he had expected, the work had been done.
His uniform might be new, but Sharpe still wore his comfortable old boots. Sharpe had obstinately refused to spend money on the black leather shoes proper to his uniform, and the Royal Equerry who had greeted Sharpe in the Entrance Hall of Carlton House had frowned at the knee-high boots. Polish them as he might, Sharpe could not rid them of the scuff marks, or disguise the stitches that closed the rent slashed in the left boot by an enemy’s knife. The Equerry, whose own buckled shoes shone like a mirror, wondered whether Major Sharpe would like to borrow proper footwear.
‘What’s wrong with the boots?’ Sharpe had asked.
‘They’re not regulation issue, Major.’
‘They’re regulation issue to colonels of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. I killed one of those bastards to get these boots, and I’m damned if I’m taking them off for you.’
The Equerry had sighed. ‘Very good, Major. If you so wish.’
By Sharpe’s side, in its battered scabbard, hung his cheap Heavy Cavalry sword. At Messrs Hopkinsons of St Alban’s Street, the army agents who were part bankers, part post office and part moneylenders to officers, he had a presentation sword from the Patriotic Fund, given to him as a reward for capturing the French Eagle at Talavera, but he felt uncomfortable with such a flimsy, over-decorated blade. He was a soldier, and he would come to this court with his own sword. But by God, he thought, he would rather be back in Spain. He would rather face a Battalion of French veterans than face this ordeal.
‘A pace forward, Major?’
He obeyed, and the step took him closer to the edge of the crowd so that he could see better. He did not like what he saw; plump, self-satisfied people crammed into rich, elegant clothes. Their laughter tinkled as emptily as the music. Those who looked at Sharpe seemed to show a mixture of surprise and pity at his dowdiness, as though a bedraggled fighting cock had somehow found its way into a peacock’s pen.
The women were mostly dressed in white, their dresses tightly bound beneath their breasts to fall sheer to the carpet. Their necklines were low, their throats circled by stones and gold, their faces fanned by busy, delicate spreads of ivory and feathers. A woman standing next to Sharpe, craning to see over the shoulder of a man in front of her, showed a cleavage in which sweat trickled to make small channels through the powder on her breasts.
‘You had a good voyage, Major?’ the courtier asked in a tone which suggested he did not care one way or the other.
‘Yes, very good, thank you.’
‘Another pace forward, I think.’
He shuffled the obedient step. He was to be the last person presented to His Royal Highness. From another room in this huge house came a tinkle of glasses and a burst of laughter. The musicians still sawed at their instruments. The faces of the crowd that lined the long carpet glistened in the candle-light. Everyone, with the exception of Sharpe, wore white gloves, even the men. He knew no one here, while everyone else seemed to know everybody else, and he felt foolish and unwelcome. The air that he breathed seemed heavy, warm and damp, not with the humidity of a summer day, but with strong scent and sweat and powder that he thought would choke in his gullet.