“Sergeant?” Tubbs called after Harper who was reluctantly going down the steps from the firestep. “We might save a few bottles, perhaps? For medicinal reasons?” Tubbs made the suggestion nervously, glancing at Sharpe. “Does not the good book entreat us to ‘take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake’?” Tubbs pleaded.
“Two dozen bottles in my room, Sergeant,” Sharpe said, “for my tummy’s sake.”
“Two dozen it is, sir,” Harper said and went on down the stairs.
“Only two dozen?” Tubbs pleaded.
“When it comes to bottles of liquor, Major,” Sharpe said, “Sergeant Harper can’t count. There’ll be six dozen in my room, and as many again hid somewhere else, but if I don’t make a point of breaking the rest then the boys will think this is a public house. It ain’t. We’ve got work to do.”
Or rather Major Tubbs had work, and to do it he had three Spanish labourers and one Scotsman, MacKeon, who was a Foreman of the Ordnance, which meant that MacKeon would do the work and Tubbs would take the credit for it, for that was the way of the world. Not that much credit would ensue from MacKeon’s efforts, but in their small way they would help win the war against the French who, a month before, had been whipped at Salamanca. Arthur Wellesley, now the Viscount Wellington of Talavera, had bamboozled them, dazzled them, unbalanced them and then half destroyed them. So the frogs had gone. They had marched north with their tails between their legs, and the French garrison of the tiny riverside fort of San Miguel had run with them, but they had left behind, locked in the fort’s store-room, close to five thousand muskets.
The priest of San Miguel de Tormes had discovered the muskets after the French left, and he remembered the supply convoy that had brought them.
The weapons were supposed to travel further south, to Soult’s army, but the cavalry regiment which should have escorted the convoy across the Sierra de Gredos had never turned up and then, in the manner of armies, the weapons were forgotten and the garrison commander had put them in the store-room where the priest had discovered them. The priest had also found the wine, which was locked away with the guns, and, being an honest man, he had padlocked the store-room again and sent word to the British, and now Major Tubbs had arrived to take possession of the muskets. His job was to make sure the guns were all serviceable, after which they would be cleaned, oiled and given to the guerilleros who harassed and ambushed and terrified the French forces who had occupied Spain. Sharpe, and his Light Company of the South Essex, were charged with the duty of guarding Tubbs’s men while they did their work.
But guard Tubbs’s men against what? Sharpe doubted there was a Frenchman within a hundred miles of this bridge across the River Tormes. Marmont, beaten at Salamanca, was retreating northwards, while Marshal Soult was pinned south of the River Guadiana by General Hill. In truth, Sharpe thought, the two officers and fifty three men of his Light Company could drink wine from now until MacKeon finished his work and it would make no difference, but Sharpe had not stayed alive by complacency. The frogs might have been defeated at Salamanca, but they were not yet beaten.
He ran down the stairs of the fort, crossed the courtyard and walked out of the gate onto the bridge where Patrick Harper and three riflemen had just begun the melancholy task of smashing the wine bottles. The Light Company, resting on the bridge, was protesting the destruction and, though the louder voices ceased as soon as Sharpe appeared, the company still let him know their feelings by thumping the butts of their rifles and muskets on the stones of the roadway. “Lieutenant Price!” Sharpe called.
“Sir?” The lanky Price had been resting in the shade of a wayside chapel built at the bridge’s northern end and now jerked up as though he had been woken.
“I saw some strange uniforms among those vines,” Sharpe pointed south down the long white road which stretched towards the hills of the Sierra de Gredos. “The vineyard beside that white farmhouse, see it?”