Sharpe's Regiment (8 page)

‘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 Chist’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‘, 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 lantern-bearers, 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.

‘Sir!’ Harper shouted at Sharpe who had plunged into an alleyway. ‘You’re going the wrong way!’

‘I’m not going near the bloody tavern!’

Harper smiled. Sharpe in a temper was a fearsome thing, but the huge Irishman had been long enough with the officer not to be worried. ‘Sir.’ He said it patiently, as though he spoke to a fool.

‘What?’

‘They’re not meaning any harm, sir. It’s a few free drinks, eh?’ He said the last as if it was an irrefutable argument.

Sharpe stared at him belligerently. Isabella clung to the big Sergeant, her dark eyes staring fearfully at Sharpe. He cleared his throat, growled, and shrugged. ‘You go.’

‘Sir! They’ll want to see you.’

‘I’ll be there later. One hour!’

Harper nodded, knowing he would do no better. ‘One hour, sir.’

‘Maybe.’ Sharpe crammed his shako onto his head, hitched his sword into place, and walked into the alley.

‘Where’s he going?’ Isabella asked.

‘Christ knows.’ The big Sergeant shrugged. ‘Back to the woman he was with last night, I suppose.’

‘He said he was walking!’ Isabella said indignantly.

Harper laughed. He turned to the crowd, bowed to them and, like a monstrous pied piper, led his public towards the taproom where they could buy him drink and listen to the tales, the loving, long, splendidly-told tales of an Irish soldier.

 

Anne, the Dowager Countess Camoynes, listened for a few moments to the orchestra playing in the great marbled hall where, this evening, an Earl entertained a few close friends. The friends, numbering some four or five hundred, were vastly impressed by the Earl’s largesse. He had built, in his garden, a mock waterfall that led to a plethora of small pools in which, lit by paper lanterns, jewels gleamed. The guests could fish for the jewels with small, ivory handled nets. The Prince Regent, who had fished for half an hour, had declared the entertainment to be capital.

Lady Camoynes, sheathed in purple silk, fanned her face with a lace fan. She smiled at acquaintances, then went to the open air to stand on the garden steps. More than most guests here she needed to fish in the fake pools for the emeralds and rubies that glinted beneath the small golden fish, but she dared not do it for fear of the hidden laughter. All society knew of her debts, and all wondered how she clung onto the perquisites of her rank like the carriage and liveried servants. It was rumoured, in the fashionable houses of the quality, that she must be exchanging her slim body for a bare income, and she could do nothing to fight the rumours for she was too poor to afford that pride and, besides, there was truth in the sniggering whispers.

She sipped from a glass of champagne and watched the Prince Regent make his stately progress about the tables set on the lawn’s edge. He was dressed this night in a coat of silver cloth, edged with gold lace. Lady Camoynes thought with malicious delight of the people of England who, in their good sense, hated this Royal family with its mad King and fat, gaudy, wastrel Princes.

‘My dear Anne.’ She turned. Lord Fenner stood behind her on the steps of the house. He watched the Prince, then put a pinch of snuff on the back of his hand. ‘I have to thank you.’

‘For what, Simon?’

Lord Fenner stepped down to her level. He sniffed the powdered tobacco into his hooked nose, arched his eyebrows as he fought the sneeze, then snapped the box shut. ‘For your little tete-à-tete with Major Sharpe. I trust it was as satisfying to you as it was to me.’ He smiled maliciously. Lady Camoynes said nothing. Her green eyes looked at the waterfall, ignoring Lord Fenner, who laughed. ‘I trust you didn’t bed him.’ She was amused at his jealousy. Lord Fenner had once asked Anne Camoynes to marry him, she had refused, and he had retaliated by buying her dead husband’s debts. Still she had refused to be his wife, even though his hold over her forced her to his bed. Now familiarity had bred contempt in Fenner. He no longer wanted her in marriage, just in thrall. ‘Well, Anne? Did you bed your peasant hero?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘I just worry what strange pox he might have fetched from Spain. I think you owe me an answer, Anne. Is he poxed?’

‘I would have no way of knowing.’ She stared at the laughing people who dipped their nets into the jewelled pools.

‘If I find I need a physician’s services I shall charge it to your account.’ Fenner laughed and pushed the snuffbox into a pocket of his waistcoat. ‘But thank you for your note.’

Lady Camoynes had written, in the early afternoon, that Sharpe intended to search for the Second Battalion. She sensed how important this matter was to Fenner and she suddenly wondered how she could turn that concern to her own profit. She looked at Fenner. ‘What are you going to do with Major Sharpe, Simon?’

‘Do? Nothing! My Lord!’ He bowed to a man who climbed the steps, then glanced into Lady Camoynes’ startling green eyes. ‘I’ve sent him orders that will pack him off to Spain. Tomorrow.’

‘That’s all?’

He stared at her speculatively. ‘Would it concern you if there was more? Would you warn him, Anne?’ There was a shriek of laughter at the end of the garden as a choice ruby was fished up from a pool. Lord Fenner stared at the man who had found the ruby and who now placed it, to much laughter, in the cleavage of a young woman who was one of the actresses so loved by the Prince and his circle. ‘Would it worry you, Anne, if I said that Major Sharpe will be dead by morning?’

‘Will he?’

He looked at her, his eyes shamelessly staring at her body beneath its sheath of silk. ‘Did you know, Anne, that there was a report that he was hanged this summer?’

‘Hanged?’

‘It turned out to be false. So his death is overdue. Does it worry you? Did you like him?’

‘I talked to him, that was all.’

‘And no doubt he was flattered.’ Fenner stared into her eyes. ‘Don’t try and warn him, Anne. Not unless you want me to foreclose on the Gloucester estate.’ He smiled, knowing he had his victory over her, then dropped a bag at her feet. ‘I’ll let you stoop for that, Anne. It’s your payment for talking to the peasant.’ He gave her the merest hint of a bow. ‘If both my lanterns are lit when you go home, do come to see me.’ He walked away from her, going towards the revellers about the waterfall.

Anne, Dowager Countess of Camoynes, moved so that the hem of her dress hid the bag, then, when no one seemed to be watching, she bent quickly and picked it up. It was damp. It must, she thought, contain jewels from the garden pools, jewels that would help her pay off the debt that her husband’s death had bequeathed to her and which she paid in Fenner’s bed. She paid so that her only son, away at school, could inherit his father’s estates. She hated Fenner and she despised herself, and she could see no escape from the trap that her dead husband’s profligacy had made for her. No man would marry her, despite her beauty, for her widow’s jointure was the monstrous, hateful debt.

She turned back into the house, unable to watch the jewels fetched from the water any longer, and she thought of the Rifleman. She had not meant to take Sharpe to her bed, she had not wanted to show any weakness to the gutter-bred soldier, yet she had been astonished by the sudden need to hold onto a man. She had hated Sharpe last night because she could not possess him for ever, because she wanted him, because he was gentle. He was also, she suddenly thought, Fenner’s enemy, and any man who was Lord Fenner’s enemy must be her friend.

Tonight, if Fenner was right, Sharpe would die. Lady Camoynes paused, the damp bag of stones in her hand, and dreamed suddenly of revenge. If Sharpe survived this night, if he proved he could win this one battle over her enemy, then perhaps he would be a worthy ally for total victory. She turned to stare into the garden and her embittered, thin face smiled. She would have an ally, a soldier, a hero, so she would take the risk and have her vengeance if only, on this night of laughter and luxury, her soldier lived.

Richard Sharpe walked into a bad place. He did it knowingly, deliberately, and without fear.

It was called a rookery, one of many in London, but this was as foul a rookery as any the city could boast. The houses were tiny, crammed together, and built so flimsily that sometimes, without any apparent cause, they slumped into the alleyways in a thunderous cascade of timber, bricks and tiles that killed the people who lived a dozen to a room. This was a place of disease, poverty, hunger, and filth beyond reason. It was Sharpe’s home.

He had lived in this rookery as a child. He had learned his first skills here, how to pick locks and open barred shutters. Here he had coupled with his first woman and killed his first man, and both before he was thirteen.

He walked slowly. It was a dark place, lit intermittently by the flaring torches of the gin shops. The alleys were crowded, the people had suspicious eyes that were sunk in thin, starved, vicious faces. They wore rags. Children cried. Somewhere a woman screamed and a man bellowed at her. There was no privacy in a place such as this, a whole life was lived open to the gaze of predatory neighbours.

‘Sir?’ A thin hand wavered at a doorway. He shook his head at the girl, walked on, then suddenly turned back. The girl, her head wrapped in a scarf, stood above a stinking, legless man who held a knife. The man jerked his head. ‘You can go in the alley with her.’

Sharpe stooped to the man. ‘Where do I find Maggie Joyce?’