Бернард Корнуэлл: Sharpe's Skirmish

"We did, " Sharpe said, "we did." He paused, thinking, and it almost seemed he was going to tell the story, but instead he touched a finger to the long scar that ran up one cheek and which gave him such a grim appearance.

"I fetched this scar in that fight, " he said, then shook his head, "but if you'll forgive me, it's time to check the sentries." He picked up his shako, rifle and sword belt and ducked out the door.

"It was a battle, " Teresa said, imitating Sharpe, "in India. We won. So what really happened, Mister MacKeon?"

"He just told you, didn't he? It was a battle in India, and we won it."

The Scotsman scowled and lapsed into his previous silence.

Sharpe crossed the bridge, spoke to the two men who stood guard at the southern end, then went back to the picquets at the northern side, and afterwards he climbed the wooden ladders in the fortress, past the room where Hickey still stared forlornly at Teresa, and found Patrick Harper on the southern parapet. Harper nodded a greeting, then passed his canteen to Sharpe.

"I'm not thirsty, Pat."

"That's medicine in there, so it is."

«Ah,» Sharpe tipped the canteen and drank some of the red wine. "So how many bottles did you keep back?"

"None that I know of, sir, " Harper said in a voice of injured innocence, "but I might have missed a few. It's dark in that store-room, so it is, especially when the door's shut, and it's easy to miss a few dark bottles in a black place." He drank from the canteen. "But the boys got your message, Mister Sharpe, so they did, and if one of them gets drunk I'll kill him myself."

"And keep Mister Price away from the bottles, " Sharpe said. Lieutenant Price was a good companion, but much too fond of liquor.

"I'll do my best, so I will, " Harper said, then stared south down the long white road that finally vanished among the distant hills. There was a half moon in the western sky and the olive groves, which filled the landscape to the west, looked silvered and calm. The river slid under the bridge, swirling on its long loop about the plain where Marshal Marmont had been thrashed by Wellington. "Are we expecting trouble here?" Harper asked.

"No, Pat, " Sharpe said. "Soft duty."

"Soft duty, eh? Then why give it to you?"

"I'm still recovering from the wound." Sharpe said, patting his belly where a Frenchman's pistol bullet had injured him.

"So it's a convalescent, you are, eh?" Harper chuckled. "Good job there's still some medicine about the place."

Sharpe leaned on the stone parapet. He wondered how old the fortress was.

Five hundred years? More? It was in dreadful condition, nothing more than a square stone shell of weathered walls that were thick with weeds and so riven with cracks that they looked as if one good kick would bring them down. The fort must have been abandoned years ago, but the present war had revived the its usefulness as a look-out post and so the Spanish, and then the French, had rebuilt its collapsed floors in timber, and put a staircase of wooden ladders up to the western parapet. An original stone stairway still ran down to the courtyard where an archway, missing its gates, opened onto the northern approach to the bridge. The store-room where the muskets had been found occupied the whole western side of the fort and was the only stone room left in San Miguel. It had an elegant curved ceiling and Sharpe guessed the room must have once been the main hall, or perhaps even a chapel. Then, after the rest of the fort's interior collapsed, someone had driven a door through the northern wall and used the store-room as a cattle byre. Now, for a time at least, the ruined fort had been restored to martial duty, though it had precious little value except as an observation post. The place would not last five minutes against a cannonade.

Sharpe stared at the moonlit fields across the river. There was a farm just two hundred yards down the road, a small place with a white-walled yard and a tower above the entrance gate. Good place for a battery of cannon, he thought, because the artillerymen could knock loopholes in the farmyard wall and so be safe from rifle fire, and the frogs would have the fort reduced to dust and rubble in less time than it would take to soft boil an egg, and then their infantry would come from the olive groves on the other side of the road, and how the hell would he defend San Miguel then? But there would be no attack, he told himself, and even if there were, the partisans in the Sierra de Gredos would send warning of the French approach and Sharpe would have a full day in which to summon reinforcements from Salamanca.

But that would not happen. He was only supposed to stay here one week, after which a Spanish garrison would arrive. One week for Tubbs to sort through the captured muskets, and that week should be uneventful. A rest.

"I don't know why they bother to send a full Commissary to do this work,»

Sharpe said, staring down into the courtyard where Tubbs's ox-wagon waited for the muskets.

"I don't think 'they' sent him, " Harper said, "he sent himself, sir, if you follow my meaning."

"Which I don't."

Harper held out a huge right hand and rocked it to and fro. "There's five thousand muskets, sir, near enough, and who's to say how many Mister Tubbs will condemn? And who's to know when he sells the condemned ones? There's a pretty penny to be made, so there is."

"He's on the take?"

"Who isn't?" Harper asked, "and Mister MacKeon reckons Tubbs will condemn at least half of them, and if they only fetched a shilling apiece that'd be a fair profit."

"I should have known the bastard was on the fiddle, " Sharpe growled.

"How were you to know?" Harper asked. "I wouldn't have guessed if Mister MacKeon hadn't told me. He's an interesting fellow. You know he was once a swoddy? In the 96th, he was. He reckoned he'd seen you in India."

"So he says."

"And he says you took a fortress all by yourself?"

"He was drunk, " Sharpe said.

"And he says you should tell me the story."

Sharpe grimaced. "That's just what you need, Pat, another war story. What time are you being relieved?"

"Two in the morning, sir." Harper said, then watched as Sharpe turned and went down the ladders. "And good night to you too, sir, " he said, and just then Sharpe came back up again.

"I don't like it, Pat."

"Don't like what, sir?"

"This." Sharpe crossed to the parapet and frowned southwards. "I just don't like it."

Harper shrugged. "The Crapauds can't come from Salamanca, sir, because it's in our hands, so it is, and they can't come through those big hills, " he pointed south, "because they're full of guerilleros, and that means they can't come at all, sir."

Sharpe nodded. Everything the big Irish sergeant said made sense, but even Sharpe could not shake his unease. "There was a fellow called Manu Bappoo in India, Pat."

"Mannie who, sir?"

"Manu Bappoo, " Sharpe repeated the name, "and he was a good soldier.

Better than most of them, but we still beat the bugger somewhere or other, can't remember the name of the place, and Bappoo went running back to Gawilghur. It was a fortress, see? Great big place it was, not like this.

And high up, high in the bloody sky, and Manu Bappoo reckoned he was safe there. He couldn't be beaten up there, Pat, because no one had ever taken that fortress, and no one even reckoned it could be took." Sharpe paused, remembering Gawilghur's dark walls and the sheer cliffs that protected them. Hell in a high place. "He was over-confident, see? Just like us here."

"So what happened?" Harper asked.

"Some daft bugger in a red coat climbed a cliff, " Sharpe said, "and that was the end of Manu Bappoo."

"No cliffs here, sir."

"But keep your eyes peeled. I just don't like it."

"Goodnight, Mister Sharpe, " Harper said when Sharpe had disappeared a second time down the makeshift staircase. Then the Irishman turned back to the south where nothing moved, except a falling star that blazed briefly in the sky and then was gone.