Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Regiment - The Invasion of France, June to November 1813

Sharpe had not wanted to go, but Harper and Isabella had been desperate to see the ‘Victory at Vitoria Enacted’ and eager for Sharpe to share the delight. He had agreed for Harper’s sake and now, as the pageant neared its end, Sharpe found himself enjoying the antics far more than he had expected. The effects, he thought, were clever, while some of the girls, conveniently introduced as persecuted peasants or grieving widows into the stage’s carnage, were luminously beautiful. There were worse ways, Sharpe thought, of spending an evening.

The audience screamed in delight as King Joseph began a panicked flight about the stage. British troops, come from the wings, chased him, and he successively shed his sword, his hat, his boots, his gilded coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, and finally, to the delighted shrieks of the women in the audience, his breeches. All that was left to him was a tiny French tricolour about his arse. He stood shivering on top of the cannon, clutching the flag. The drums rolled. A British soldier reached for the small flag, the drum-roll grew louder, louder, the audience shouted for the soldier to pull the flag away, there was a clash of cymbals, and Isabella screamed in shock and delight as the flag was snatched away at the very instant that the curtain fell.

The audience chanted for more, the orchestra swelled to fill the tiers of boxes with triumphal music, and the curtain, after a brief pause, lifted again to show the whole cast, King Joseph cloaked now, facing the audience with linked hands to sing ‘Proud Britons’. A great Union flag was lowered above their heads.

Sharpe was thinking of a sinuous, hungry, beautiful woman who had clawed at him and told him to go back to Spain. Sharpe wanted nothing more, but he knew that Lord Fenner had lied, that the Second Battalion existed, and, sitting here watching the flummery on stage he had suddenly dreamed up the perfect way to find them. Actors and costumes had put the thought into his head, and he told himself that he was foolish to think of meddling with things he did not understand. The mysterious, green-eyed woman had said that Lord Fenner would kill him, and though that threat did not worry Sharpe, nevertheless he sensed that there were enemies in this, his homeland, every bit as deadly as Napoleon’s blue-jacketed troops.

Isabella gasped and clapped. From either wing of the stage, sitting on trapezes slung on wires, two women dressed as Goddesses of Victory were swooping over the heads of the actors. The Goddesses were scantily clad, the gauze fluttering over their bare legs as they swung above the linked actors and dropped laurel wreaths at their feet. The men in the audience cheered whenever the motion of the two trapezes peeled the gauze away from the Goddesses’ legs.

The Goddesses of Victory were hoisted off stage when ‘Proud Britons’ was finished, and the orchestra went into a spirited ‘Rule Britannia’ which, though hardly appropriate for a soldier’s victory, had the advantage that the audience knew its words. The cast stood upright and solemn, singing with the audience, and when the song was done, and the audience beginning its applause, the narrator held up his hands once more for silence. Some of the young men in the pit were shouting for the half-naked Goddesses to be fetched back, but the narrator hushed them.

A drum was rolling softly, getting louder. ‘My Lords! Ladies and Gentlemen!’ A louder riffle of the drums, then soft again. ‘Tonight you have seen, presented through our humble skill, that great victory gained by noble Britons over the foul forces of the Corsican Ogre!’ There were boos for Napoleon. The drums rolled louder, then softer. The narrator silenced the audience. ‘Brave men they were, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen! Brave as the brave! Our gallant men, through shot and shell, through sabre and blade, through blood and fire, gained the day!’ Another drum-roll and another cheer.

The door to the box opened. Sharpe turned, but it was merely one of the women who looked after the patrons and he presumed that, as the pageant was ending, so the boxes were being opened onto the staircase.

‘Yet! My Lords, my Ladies and Gentlemen! Of all the brave, of all the gallant, of all the valorous men on that bloody field, there was none more brave, none more ardent, none more resolute, none more lion-hearted than … !’ He did not finish the sentence, instead he waved his hand towards the boxes and, to Sharpe’s horror, lanterns were coming into his box, bright lanterns, and in front of them were the two Goddesses of Victory, each with a laurel wreath, and the audience was standing and clapping, defying the cymbals that clashed to demand silence.

‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. You see in our humble midst the men who took the Eagle at Talavera, who braved the bloody breach at Badajoz, who humbled the Proud Tyrant at Vitoria. Major Richard Sharpe and his Sergeant Harper …’ and whatever else the narrator wanted to say was drowned by the cheers.

‘Stand up, love,’ whispered a Goddess of Victory in Sharpe’s ear. He stood, and to his utter mortification, she put the laurel wreath on his head.

‘For Christ’s sake, Patrick, let’s get out …’ But Harper, Sharpe saw, was loving it. The Irishman raised his clasped hands to the audience, the cheers were louder, and truly, in the small box, the giant Irish Sergeant looked huge enough to take on a whole French army by himself.

‘Wave to them, love,’ said the Goddess of Victory. ‘They paid good money.’

Sharpe waved half-heartedly and the audience doubled its noise again. The Goddess pulled at his sword. ‘Show it to them, dear.’

‘Leave it alone!’

‘Pardon me for living.’ She smiled at the audience, gesturing with her hand at Sharpe as though he was a dog walking on its back legs, and she his trainer. Her face was as thickly caked with paint and powder as the Prince Regent’s.

The drums called for silence, the narrator waved his hands and slowly the noise subsided. The faces, a great smear of them, still stared up at the two soldiers. Sharpe reached up to take the laurel wreath from his black hair, but the Goddess of Victory snatched his hand and held it.

‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen! The gallant heroes you see before you are, this very night, residing at the Rose Tavern next to this theatre, where, I am most reliably assured, they will, this night, regale you with the stories of their exploits, lubricated, no doubt, by your kind offerings of good British ale!’

The audience cheered again, and Sharpe cursed because he had allowed himself to be gulled into being an advertisement for a sleazy inn, famous for its whores and actresses. He pulled his hand from the Goddess’s, snatched the laurel wreath from his head, and flung it towards the stage. The audience loved it, thinking it a gesture for them, and the cheering became louder.

‘Sergeant Harper!’

‘Sir?’

‘Let’s get the god-damned hell out of here.’

Sergeant Patrick Harper knew that growl well enough. He gave one last, huge wave to the audience, tossed his own laurel wreath into the maelstrom, then followed his officer onto the stairs. Isabella, terrified of the Goddesses and lanternbearers, hurried after them.

‘Of all the god-damned bloody nonsense in this god-damned bloody world!’ Sharpe flung open the theatre door and stormed into Drury Lane. ‘God in his heaven!’

‘They didn’t mean harm, sir.’

‘Making a bloody monkey out of me!’ Last night it had been the Royal Court, stinking like a whore’s armpit, and now this! ‘There wasn’t a bloody castle at Vitoria!’ Sharpe said irrelevantly. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ The audience was coming into the light of the lanterns hung beneath the theatre’s canopy and some were clapping the two soldiers.