Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe’s Company, Sharpe’s Sword, Sharpe’s Enemy - Bernard Cornwell

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now the Sergeants came forward. Hakeswill stood ramrod straight, his face twitching, as his pack was turned upside down. Nothing would be found, of course. The Sergeant gave Windham a snapping salute.

      Harper came forward, grinning with amusement that anyone should think him capable of such an act. Hakeswill first, then Harper, and Sharpe began running up the hillside because, of course, Hakeswill wanted Harper out of the way. Patrick Harper saw Sharpe coming and raised his eyebrows, taking the insult of the search with the same calm tolerance with which he met most of life’s indignities, and then the face registered shock.

      ‘Sir?’ The Sergeant Major was straightening up.

      Sharpe had realized what was happening, but too late. He should have got to Harper sooner. Before the parade.

      ‘Officer of the Day!’ Windham’s voice was harsh. ‘Put the Sergeant under arrest.’

      They only found one thing, but it was enough. On top of the pack, not even hidden, was the silver frame that had enclosed the picture of Windham’s wife. The glass had been smashed and the portrait was missing, razored from the filigree that had itself been bent. Windham held the frame, seemed to quiver with rage, and looked up at the huge Sergeant. ‘Where’s the picture?’

      ‘I know nothing about it, sir. Nothing. So help me, sir, I did not take it.’

      ‘I’ll flog you! By God! I will flog you!’ He turned on his heel.

      The Light Company stood frozen, the rain dripping from shako peaks, their uniforms soaked. They seemed shocked. The rest of the Battalion, crouched in their inadequate shelters, watched as the Officer of the Day assembled a guard and Harper was taken away. Sharpe did not move.

      The Company was dismissed. Fires were lit under the shelters in a vain attempt to drive out the dampness. Bullocks were slaughtered for the evening meal, the musket smoke lingering over the panicked survivors of the herd, and Sharpe let the rain chill his skin as he felt a terrible impotence. Knowles tried to move him. ‘Come and eat with us. Be my guest. Please.’

      Sharpe shook his head. ‘No. I must be here for the Court-Martial.’

      Knowles looked worried. ‘What’s happening to the Battalion, sir?’

      ‘Happening, Robert? Nothing.’

      He would kill Hakeswill one day, but now he needed proof or otherwise Harper could never be cleared. Sharpe did not know how to get the truth. Hakeswill was cunning and Sharpe knew that the truth could not be beaten out of him. He would laugh at a beating. But one day Sharpe would bury the sword in that belly and let the rottenness burst out like putrescent ooze. He would kill the bastard.

      The bugles sounded sunset, the end of the regulation day, the fourth day of Badajoz.

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      It rained all night; Sharpe knew, for he was awake most of it, listening to the ceaseless water, the wind, and the sporadic shot from the French cannon that tried to disturb the digging of the batteries. There was no counterfire from the British; the siege guns, still wrapped in straw and sacking, were waiting for a break in the weather so that the carts could be dragged over the hill and the massive guns put into their emplacements.

      Sharpe sat with Harper at the top of the hill and stared down at the dull lights inside the city. They looked far away, blurred by the weather, and Sharpe tried to distinguish the Cathedral and thought of the sick child nearby.

      Harper should not have been with him. He was under guard, sentenced to be flogged and reduced to the ranks, but Sharpe had simply told the sentries to look the other way while he and Harper climbed to the hilltop. Sharpe glanced at the Irishman. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Nothing to be sorry for, sir. You did all you could.’

      Which had amounted to very little. Sharpe had pleaded, begged almost, but the filigree frame was proof enough for the Regimental Court Martial. Sharpe had testified that Harper had been with him all afternoon, fighting the French attack, and that his own telescope had disappeared in that time so the Sergeant could not have been responsible. Windham had been implacable. The telescope, he said, must have been stolen by another thief. Harper was guilty, broken down to a Private, and sentenced to a flogging.

      Harper was thinking of the morning. The Donegal voice was soft. ‘A hundred strokes, eh? Could be worse.’ Twelve hundred lashes was the maximum sentence.

      Sharpe handed a bottle to him. Both men were swathed in lengths of tarred canvas on which the rain drummed. ‘I got two hundred.’

      ‘The army’s going soft, so it is.’ Harper laughed. ‘And back to a bloody Private, too! They don’t even call me a Rifleman in this bloody Regiment. Private bloody Harper.’ He drank. ‘And when do they think I stole the bloody things?’

      ‘Tuesday.’

      ‘God save Ireland! St Patrick’s Day?’

      ‘You were missing from the lines.’

      ‘Jesus! I was with you. Drinking.’

      ‘I know. I told them.’

      There was silence between them, a companionable misery. From the slope below came the chink of pickaxes as the batteries were sunk below the topsoil. At least, Sharpe reflected, the two of them had plenty of drink. The Light Company had pooled their resources, scrounged and stolen more, and beneath the canvas shelters there were at least a dozen canteens of rum or wine. ‘I’m sorry, Patrick.’

      ‘Save your breath, sir. It’ll not hurt.’ He knew he was lying. ‘I’ll kill that bastard!’

      ‘After me.’ They sat and thought about the comforting idea of killing Hakeswill. The Sergeant was taking precautions. He had pitched his shelter just yards from the officers’ crude, canvas tents, and Sharpe knew that there was no hope, this night, of their successfully spiriting Hakeswill away to some silent, lonely place.

      The Irishman chuckled softly and Sharpe looked at him. ‘What?’

      ‘I was thinking of the Colonel. What was on the bloody portrait?’

      ‘His wife.’

      ‘She must be a rare beauty.’

      ‘No.’ Sharpe uncorked another canteen. ‘She looked a sour bitch, but you can never tell with paintings. Anyway, our Colonel approves of marriage. He thinks it keeps a man out of trouble.’

      ‘It’s probably true.’ Harper sounded unconvinced. ‘I hear a rumour that you and Miss Teresa are married. How the hell did that get started?’

      ‘I told the Colonel.’

      ‘You did!’ Harper laughed. ‘Mind you, you should marry her. Make an honest woman of her.’

      ‘And what about Jane Gibbons?’

      Harper grinned. He had met the blonde girl, the sister of the man he had killed, and he shook his head. ‘She’ll not have you. You have to be born in a big house to marry that kind; lots of money and all that. You’re just a foot soldier, like the rest of us. A fancy red sash won’t get you into her bed. At least, not for keeps.’

      Sharpe chuckled. ‘You think I should marry Teresa?’

      ‘Why not? She’s a skinny thing, so she is, but you could put some meat on her bones.’ Harper profoundly disapproved of Sharpe’s taste for slim women.

      They sat silent again, listening to the rain pelt on the canvas, and sharing a friendship that rarely had a chance to be expressed or defined. Sharpe had a reputation, with those who did not know him well, of being a man short on words and it was true, he thought, except with a handful of friends. Harper and Hogan; Lossow, the German cavalryman, and that was about all. Exiles to a man, cut off from their own countries and fighting with a strange army.

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