Бернард Корнуэлл: Sharpe's Company

'Isabella?

"The wee girl, sir.

'She's still here? Sharpe's back felt as if it had been struck by a French four-pounder.

Harper blushed. 'I think she may want to stay on with me, for a wee bit, you understand. That's if you don't mind, sir.

'Mind? Why should I mind? But how the hell do you know? You don't speak Spanish, she doesn't speak English.

'A man can tell these things. Harper said the words mysteriously, as if Sharpe would not understand. Then he smiled. 'But I'm glad you're doing the right thing, sir, so I am.

Sharpe had laughed. 'Who the hell are you to tell me what the right thing is?

Harper shrugged. 'I'm the true faith, so I am. You'll have to bring the wee one up a Catholic. 'I don't intend to bring the wee one up. 'Aye, that's true. It's woman's work, sure enough. 'I don't mean that. He meant that Teresa would not stay with the army, nor he go to the hills, and so he would still be away from his child and his wife. Not for a while, but the time would come when she would leave, and he wondered if he was marrying only to give Antonia a name, her legitimacy, something he had never had himself. He was embarrassed by the ceremony, if a frightened priest standing among grinning soldiers constituted a ceremony, yet he felt a shy joy, was touched by pride because Teresa was beside him, and he supposed he loved her. Jane Gibbons was many miles and more impossibilities away. He listened to the words, felt awkward, and watched the happiness on Teresa's aunt's face.

Man and wife, father of a child, Captain of a company, and Sharpe looked up, past the trees, into the wide sky where the kestrels hung, and then Teresa plucked his elbow, spoke something in Spanish and he thought he knew what she had said. He looked down at her, at the slim beauty, the dark, strong eyes, and he felt a terrible fool because Harper was grinning, just as Hogan and the Company were grinning, and the girl, Isabella, was crying for happiness. Sharpe smiled at his wife. 'I love you. He kissed her, remembering that first kiss, beneath the lances, and it had led here. He smiled at the thought, because he was glad, and Teresa, happy that he was smiling, clutched his arm.

'I can kiss the bride, Richard? Hogan beamed at them both, clasped Teresa, and planted a huge kiss on her that made Sharpe's men cheer. The aunt clapped them, spoke in quick-fire Spanish at Sharpe, and then brushed at the remains of dirt and blood on his uniform. Then Lieutenant Price insisted on kissing the bride, and the bride insisted on kissing Patrick Harper, and Sharpe tried to hide his happiness because he believed that to show an emotion, any emotion, was to expose a weakness.

'Here. Hogan held up a cup of wine. "With the compliments of the bride's uncle. Your health, Richard.

'It's a funny way to get married.

They're all funny ways, whichever way you do it. Hogan beckoned to the servant who was holding Antonia, made the girl hold the baby up and he trickled red wine into its mouth. 'There, my love. It's not every wee girl who gets to go to her parents' wedding.

At least the child was well. The illness, whatever it was, had gone and the doctors, thanking God because they had done nothing, said it was a malady that went with growing. They had shrugged, pocketed their fee, and wondered why God spared the bastards.

They left the city that afternoon, an armed group that could defend itself against the violence that still ravaged Badajoz. The dead lay on the streets. They climbed out through the Santa Maria breach and the ditch was still full, thick with bodies, so thick that heat came from the hundreds and hundreds of dead. Some men searched in the carnage, looking for brothers, sons, or friends. Others stood at the ditch's edge and wept for an army, as Wellington had wept when he stood on the glacis, and the great heap steamed in the April chill. Teresa, seeing the breaches for the first time, muttered in Spanish and Sharpe saw her eyes go up to the walls, to the silent guns, and he knew she was imagining their power.

Colonel Windham was on the glacis, staring down to where his friend Collett had died, and he turned as Sharpe and his party climbed the ladders from the ditch. 'Sharpe?

'Sir?

Windham saluted him, strangely formal amongst so much death. 'You're a brave man, Sharpe.

Sharpe was embarrassed. He shrugged. 'Thank you. And you, sir. I saw the attack. He stopped, out of words, and then remembered the portrait. He took it from inside his jacket and handed over the wrinkled, stained picture of the Colonel's wife. 'I thought you'd like this, sir.

Windham looked at it, turned it over, back again, and then looked at Sharpe. 'How on earth did you find it?"

'It was in the hat, sir, of a man called Obadiah Hakeswill, who stole it. He also stole my telescope. The glass had been in Hakeswill's haversack, and was now in Sharpe's. He jerked a head towards Harper, standing with Isabella. 'Sergeant Harper, sir, did not steal a thing.;

Windham nodded. The breeze tugged at the tassel on his hat. 'You've given him back his Sergeantcy? The Colonel smiled in resignation.

'Yes, sir. And I'll give him his rifle and green jacket next. If you have no objection.

'No, Sharpe. The Company is yours. Windham smiled briefly at Sharpe, perhaps remembering the conversations about humility, then looked at Harper. 'Sergeant!

'Sir? Harper stepped forward, stood to attention.

'I owe you an apology. Windham was obviously embarrassed deeply by the need to speak so to a Sergeant.

'No apology needed, sir! Harper's face was straight, his bearing formal. 'A striped back is very attractive to the ladies, sir.

'Blood and hounds! Windham was relieved to be off the hook. He nodded at Sharpe. 'Carry on, Captain Sharpe.

They walked back to the camp, leaving the stench of the dead behind them, and the sounds of the city faded as they walked. They passed the trenches and the batteries, and Sharpe saw where a gunner had planted spring flowers on a parapet. The weather was turning, warming to a dry summer, and he knew that the army would be marching soon, north and east, going into the heart of Spain.

Badajoz was done.

That night, two miles down the Seville road, a twitching figure scrabbled down beneath a field marker, muttering to himself, knowing he could not be killed, and pulled out the oilcloth bundle of stolen goods. Hakeswill was deserting. He knew he could not go back. There was a witness to the death of Knowles, the portrait had been in the Sergeant's hat, and he understood that only a firing squad awaited him. He sniffed the night air and was not worried. He would go somewhere and find something, as he always did, and this was not the first night that he had been utterly alone, homeless, and his dark shape loped into the night, seeking mischief.

A man went into a breach for one thing only, pride, and Sharpe had been there. He had stood at the top of a breach, fear defeated, and gone down into a horror that tarnished victory as blood tarnished a sword. He lay awake and thought of streets running with wine, silver, madness and blood.

He had hoped for so much; for a Captaincy, for revenge on a clerk, for a company, for a woman he loved and a child he had never seen, and the hopes had been won at Badajoz. He lay in Leroy's tent, its owner in hospital with a terrible wound, the night was quiet, dark, silent for the first time in weeks, and a great victory had been won. The gates of Spain had been burst open. He looked at his woman, beautiful in the firelight that seeped through the canvas, and he marveled that he was married. Then he looked at the child, dark hair and snub nosed, that slept between them and the love welled up, incomprehensible, uncontrollable. He kissed his daughter, Antonia, and in the flame light she seemed terribly small and vulnerable. Yet she was alive, and his, his only relative by blood. She was his, to be protected as he must protect all those other souls who liked him, were proud of him, and proud to be in his ranks — Sharpe's Company.