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

‘What’s the matter?’

He knew the moment had come when she would talk.

She was silent for a few seconds, staring into the fire, then she turned abruptly to him, her expression fierce. ‘You are going to Badajoz?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure?’ She seemed desperate for his certainty.

Sharpe shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure. The army will go there, but we may be sent to Lisbon, or maybe stay here. I don’t know. Why?’

‘Because I want you to be there.’

Sharpe waited for her to continue, but she stopped talking and stared, instead, into the fire. The wine was sour, but he drank some, and then pulled the stiff blanket up round her shoulders. She looked sad. ‘Why do you want me to be there?’ he asked gently.

‘Because I will be there.’

‘You’ll be there.’ He spoke the words as if they described the most normal thing on earth, but inside he was grasping for a reason, any reason, that would take Teresa into the largest French fortress in Spain.

She nodded. ‘Inside. I’ve been there, Richard, since April.’

‘In Badajoz? Fighting?’

‘No. They don’t know me as “La Aguja”. They think I am Teresa Moreno, niece of Rafael Moreno. That’s my father’s brother.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘The French even let me carry a rifle outside the city, can you imagine that? To protect myself against the horrid Guerrilleros.’ She laughed. ‘We live there, my aunt, uncle, myself, and we trade in furs, leather, and we want peace so the profits can be high.’ She made a face.

‘I don’t understand.’

She leaned away from him, poked at the fire with the bayonet, and then drank more wine. ‘Will there be trouble there?’

‘Trouble?’

‘Like tonight? Killings? Thieving? Rape?’

‘If the French fight, yes.’

‘They will fight.’ She looked at him. ‘You must find me in the city, you understand?’

He nodded, puzzled. ‘I understand.’ A dog howled outside at the soft, falling snow. ‘But why in Badajoz?’

‘You’ll be angry.’

‘I won’t be angry. Why Badajoz?’

Again she was silent, biting her lip and searching his face, and then she took his hand and placed it, beneath the blanket, on her bare stomach. ‘Is it different?’

‘No.’ He stroked her skin, not understanding. She breathed deep.

‘I had a baby.’ His hand went still on the warm flesh. She shrugged. ‘I said you’d be angry.’

‘A baby?’ His mind seemed to whirl like the snow above the flames.

‘Your baby. Our daughter.’ Tears came to her eyes, and she buried her head on his shoulder. ‘She’s ill, Richard, so ill, and she cannot travel. She could die. She is so little.’

‘Our daughter? Mine?’ He felt the beginnings of joy.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you call her?’

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears. ‘Antonia. It was my mother’s name. If it had been a boy I would have called him Ricardo.’

‘Antonia.’ He said the name. ‘I like it.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re not angry?’

‘Why should I be?’

She shrugged. ‘Soldiers do not need children.’

He pulled her close, remembering the first kiss, not many miles from here, under the rainstorm as the French Lancers searched the streambed. They had been given so little time together. He remembered the parting in the shadow of Almeida’s smoke. ‘How old is she?’

‘Just over seven months. She’s very small.’

He supposed she would be. Tiny, vulnerable, ill, and inside Badajoz, surrounded by the French, ringed with the walls that rose dark above the Guadiana. His daughter.

Teresa shook her head. ‘I thought you’d be angry.’ She spoke the words as soft as the snow that fell beyond the shuttered windows.

‘Angry? No. I’m …’ But the words could not be found. A daughter? His? And this woman was the mother of his child? It seemed to sink in, with a wonderment and a confusion, and there were no words for him. More than a daughter, a family, and Sharpe thought he had no family, not since his mother died near thirty years before, and he held Teresa tight, crushing her, because he did not want her to see his eyes. He had a family, at last, a family.

In Badajoz.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Badajoz!’

The Battalion found the joke endlessly amusing. It took just one man in a company to shout the question and the rest of the men took a deep breath and bawled out the answer. They exaggerated the Spanish pronunciation; the guttural, choking sound of the ‘j’ drawn out to the final ‘th’ sound of the Spanish ‘z’. The name, shouted by the South Essex, sounded like four hundred men simultaneously vomiting and spitting, and the amusement had carried them far down the familiar Portuguese roads. They marched close to the frontier, going south.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Badajoz!’

It was still cold. The snow had gone, except from the hilltops, and the final ice had melted in the rivers, but the wind stayed in the north and brought daily rain that flogged through the greatcoats, soaked blankets, and made the nightly billets steamy and damp. Most of the army was still in the north, close to Ciudad Rodrigo, attempting to persuade the French that no move was contemplated against the huge southern fortress that guarded the invasion route from Lisbon.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Badajoz!’

Lawford was alive, feverish and weak, but growing stronger in the convent hospital where Crauford had died. In a month or so, as his old battalion faced Badajoz, the Colonel would be shipped home and, doubtless, taken by carriage from the dockside to the family estate. He had smiled when Sharpe visited him, and struggled to sit up. ‘It’s only the left arm, Richard.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I can still ride, carry a sword. I’ll be back.’

‘I hope so, sir.’

Lawford shook his head. ‘Bloody foolish thing to do, eh? Still, you were wrong about one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘No one shot me, and I didn’t wear the cloak.’

‘Then you deserved to be shot.’

Lawford smiled. ‘I’ll take your advice next time.’

If there was a next time, Sharpe thought. Lawford might be back, as he hoped, but not for months, and not with the South Essex. There would be a new Colonel and the rumours had blown through the Regiment like musket smoke over a battlefield. There had been a suggestion, greeted with dismay, that Sir Henry Simmerson might return to Spain, but Sharpe doubted whether the old Colonel would want to give up his lucrative job with the new-fangled Income Tax. Another thought was that Forrest might be promoted, then that was discounted, and other names came and went. Every Lieutenant Colonel whose path brought him near the South Essex was carefully scrutinized in case he should be the new man, but, as they marched one dawn across the Tagus, into the south, Forrest still commanded and there was no news of Lawford’s replacement.

Teresa rode with the Battalion. The Light Company knew her, remembered her from the fighting around Almeida and, somehow, though Sharpe never spoke of it, the men learned of the child’s existence. Harper, marching with his effortless stride, grinned at Sharpe. ‘Not to worry, sir. The baby’ll be all right, so she will. The lads will all look out for her.’

The wives of the Battalion, marching at the rear with their children, brought small presents to Sharpe and Teresa. A blanket, a pair of baby’s mittens knitted from an unravelled sock, a carved rattle. Sharpe was surprised, touched and embarrassed by the pleasure the news had caused.