Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Company - The Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812

‘Teresa?’ The wind snatched snow from a rooftop, whirled it crazily above the sparks of the burning house. ‘Teresa?’ He reached out for her and she came to him and he held her as he had held her that first time, two years ago, beneath the blades of the French lancers. ‘Teresa? It’s you?’

She looked up at him, mocking him. ‘You forgot me.’

‘Christ in heaven! Where have you been?’ He began to laugh, his misery banished, and touched her face as if he wanted to prove it was her. ‘Teresa?’

She laughed, too, with real pleasure and put a finger to his scarred cheek. ‘I thought you might forget me.’

‘Forget you? No.’ He shook his head, suddenly tongue-tied, though there was so much to say. He had hoped to find her the year before when the army had marched to Fuentes de Oñoro just a few miles from Ciudad Rodrigo. This was Teresa’s country. He had thought she might look for him last year, but there had been no sign of her, and then he had gone to England and met Jane Gibbons. He pushed that thought away and looked instead at Teresa and wondered how he could have forgotten this face, the life in it, the sheer force of her presence.

She smiled and jerked her head at the rifle on her shoulder. ‘I still have your gun.’

‘How many have you killed with it?’

‘Nineteen.’ She made a grimace. ‘Not enough.’ She hated the French with a pure, terrifying hatred. She turned in his arms and stared at the prisoners. ‘How many did you kill tonight?’

Sharpe thought of the fight in the casement. He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Two maybe, three?’

She looked up at him again and grinned. ‘Not enough. Did you miss me?’

He had forgotten how she would mock him. He nodded, embarrassed. ‘Yes.’

‘I missed you.’ The statement was said matter-of-factly, almost flatly, that gave it a ring of absolute truth. She pulled away from him. ‘Listen.’ She jerked her head at the other horsemen. ‘They are impatient. Are you going to Badajoz?’

He was confused by her sudden question. ‘Badajoz?’ He nodded. It was an open secret. Nothing had been said to the army, but every man knew that both fortresses must be taken. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Good. Then I’m staying. I must tell my people.’ She turned to her horse.

‘You’re what?’

‘You don’t want me to?’ She was mocking him again, and laughed. ‘I will explain, Richard, later. Do we have somewhere to stay?’

‘No.’

‘We’ll find somewhere.’ She swung herself on to the horse and nodded again towards the Partisans. ‘They want to be on their way. I’ll tell them they can go. Will you wait here?’

He saluted her. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘That’s better.’ She smiled at him, dazzling him with her beauty, with the joy on her face, and then she spurred back across the slush.

He grinned and turned back to the fire, facing its warmth, and felt a vast relief that she had come. He wished she would never go. Then he wondered at her words, hearing, distantly in his mind, the faint alarm at the very mention of the name. Badajoz. Tonight was a victory, but it led only to one place, to the place where the British, the French, the Spanish; to where the gunners and the infantry, the cavalry and the Engineers, all marched.

And now, it seemed, the lovers were marching too. To Badajoz.

They found a house, hard by the walls, that had been used by French gunners. There was food in the kitchen, hard bread and cold tongue, and Sharpe lit a fire and watched Teresa as she stabbed the loaf with her bayonet and ripped the blade downwards. He laughed.

She glared at him. ‘What’s funny?’

‘I don’t see you as a housewife.’

She pointed the blade at him. ‘Listen, Englishman, I can keep a house, but not for a man who laughs at me.’ She shrugged. ‘What happens when the war ends?’

He laughed again. ‘You go back to your kitchen, woman.’

She nodded, sad at the thought. She carried a gun, as other Spanish women carried guns, because too many men had shirked the role, but when peace came the men would be brave again and push the women back to the stoves. Sharpe saw the wistfulness on her face. ‘So what must we talk about?’

‘Later.’ She brought the plate over to the fire and laughed at the unsavoury lumps of food. ‘Eat first.’

They were both ravenous. They washed the food down with watered brandy and then, beneath blankets that had once graced the backs of French cavalry horses, they made love by the fire and Sharpe wished he could trap the moment, make it last for ever. The quietness of a small house in a captured city; the only noises the calls of sentries on the wall, the barking of a dog, the dying crackle of the small fire. She would not stay, he knew that, to be a camp follower. Teresa wanted to fight the French, to revenge herself on a nation that had raped and murdered her mother. Perhaps, he thought, he could not expect, could never expect this happiness to be for ever. All happiness is fleeting and his mind shied away from the thought of Lawford lying in the Convent. Teresa would go back to the hills, to the ambushes and torture, the harried French in the rock landscape. If he had not been a soldier, Sharpe thought, if he had been a gamekeeper or a coachman, or any one of the other jobs he might have found, then he might have found, too, a settled existence. But not like this, never as a soldier.

Teresa’s hand pushed over the skin of his chest, then round to his back, and her fingers were light on the thick, ridged scars. ‘Did you find the men who flogged you?’

‘Not yet.’ He had been flogged, years before, when he was a Private.

‘What were their names?’

‘Captain Morris and Sergeant Hakeswill.’ He said the names tonelessly. They were deep in his mind, waiting vengeance.

‘You’ll find them.’

‘Yes.’

She smiled. ‘You’ll hurt them?’

‘Very much.’

‘Good.’

Sharpe grinned. ‘I thought Christians were supposed to forgive their enemies.’

She shook her head, the hair tickling him. ‘Only when they’re dead. Anyway.’ She plucked a hair from his chest. ‘You’re not a Christian.’

‘You are.’

She shrugged. ‘The priests don’t like me. I have been learning English from a priest, Father Pedro. He’s nice, but the others …’ She spat at the fire. ‘They do not let me take the Mass. Because I am bad.’ She said something in quick, guttural Spanish, something that would have confirmed the opinion of the priests. She sat up and looked round the room. ‘Those pigs must have left some wine.’

‘I didn’t see any.’

‘You didn’t look. You only wanted me under the blankets.’ She stood up and searched the room. Sharpe watched her, loving the straightness of her body, the strength in her slimness. She opened cupboards and pulled their contents violently on to the floor. ‘Here.’ She tossed him a wooden shelf, loose from a cabinet. ‘Put it on the fire.’

Sharpe sprinkled it with powder, to help it light, and when he turned back she had found wine and brandished it to him. ‘You see? The pigs always have wine.’ She saw him looking at her and her face became serious. ‘Am I different?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’ She stood facing him, naked, her face worried.

‘I’m sure. You’re beautiful.’ He was puzzled. ‘Should there be something different?’

She shrugged, crossed the room and sat beside him. The cork was half out of the bottle and she pulled it free and smelt the wine. ‘Awful.’ She drank some and handed the bottle to Sharpe.