LITMIR.BIZ

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attacks on the hill. Beaten, all of them. Beaten to nothing. Defeated. And the enemy, hidden once more behind the ridge’s crest, waited for him to try again.

      ‘You remember Miss Savage?’ Vicente asked Sharpe. They were sitting at the end of the knoll, staring down at the beaten French.

      ‘Kate? Of course I remember Kate,’ Sharpe said. ‘I often wondered what happened to her.’

      ‘She married me,’ Vicente said, and looked absurdly pleased with himself.

      ‘Good God,’ Sharpe said, then decided that probably sounded like a rude response. ‘Well done!’

      ‘I shaved off my moustache,’ Vicente said, ‘as you suggested. And she said yes.’

      ‘Never did understand moustaches,’ Sharpe said, ‘must be like kissing a blacking brush.’

      ‘And we have a child,’ Vicente went on, ‘a girl.’

      ‘Quick work, Jorge!’

      ‘We are very happy,’ Vicente said solemnly.

      ‘Good for you,’ Sharpe said, and meant it. Kate Savage had run away from her home in Oporto, and Sharpe, with Vicente’s help, had rescued her. That had been eighteen months before and Sharpe had often wondered what had happened to the English girl who had inherited her father’s vineyards and port lodge.

      ‘Kate is still in Porto, of course,’ Vicente said.

      ‘With her mother?’

      ‘She went back to England,’ Vicente said, ‘just after I joined my new regiment in Coimbra.’

      ‘Why there?’

      ‘It is where I grew up,’ Vicente said, ‘and my parents still live there. I went to the university of Coimbra, so really it is home. But from now on I shall live in Porto. When the war is over.’

      ‘Be a lawyer again?’

      ‘I hope so.’ Vicente made the sign of the cross. ‘I know what you think of the law, Richard, but it is the one barrier between man and bestiality.’

      ‘Didn’t do much to stop the French.’

      ‘War is above the law, which is why it is so bad. War lets loose all the things which the law restrains.’

      ‘Like me,’ Sharpe said.

      ‘You are not such a bad man,’ Vicente said with a smile.

      Sharpe looked down into the valley. The French had at last withdrawn to where they had been the previous evening, only now they were throwing up earthworks beyond the stream where infantry dug trenches and used the spoil to make bulwarks. ‘Those buggers think we’re coming down to finish them off,’ he said.

      ‘Will we?’

      ‘Christ, no! We’ve got the high ground. No point in giving it up.’

      ‘So what do we do?’

      ‘Wait for orders, Jorge, wait for orders. And I reckon mine are coming now.’ Sharpe nodded towards Major Forrest who was riding his horse along the spine of the spur.

      Forrest stopped by the rocks and looked down at the French dead, then took off his hat and nodded to Sharpe. ‘The Colonel wants the company back,’ he said, sounding tired.

      ‘Major Forrest,’ Sharpe said, ‘let me introduce you to Captain Vicente. I fought with him at Oporto.’

      ‘Honoured,’ Forrest said, ‘honoured.’ His red sleeve was dark with blood from the musket ball that had struck him. He hesitated, trying to think of something complimentary to say to Vicente, but nothing occurred to him, so he looked back to Sharpe. ‘The Colonel wants the company now, Sharpe,’ he said.

      ‘On your feet, lads!’ Sharpe stood himself and shook Vicente’s hand. ‘Keep a look out for us, Jorge,’ he said, ‘we might need your help again. And give my regards to Kate.’

      Sharpe walked the company back across ground scorched by musket and rifle fire. The ridge was quiet now, no guns firing, just the wind sighing on the grass. Forrest rode beside Sharpe, but said nothing until they reached the battalion’s lines. The South Essex were in ranks, but sitting and sprawling on the grass, and Forrest gestured to the left-hand end of the line as if to order the light company to take their place. ‘Lieutenant Slingsby will command them for the moment,’ Forrest said.

      ‘He’ll do what?’ Sharpe asked, shocked.

      ‘For the moment,’ Forrest said placatingly, ‘because right now the Colonel wants you, Sharpe, and I daresay he isn’t pleased.’

      That was an understatement. The Honourable William Lawford was in a temper, though, being a man of exquisite politeness, the anger only showed as a slight tightening of the lips and a distinctly unfriendly glance as Sharpe arrived at his tent. Lawford ducked out into the sunlight and nodded at Forrest. ‘You’ll stay, Major,’ he said, and waited as Forrest dismounted and gave his reins to Lawford’s servant, who led the horse away. ‘Knowles!’ Lawford summoned the Adjutant from the tent. Knowles gave Sharpe a sympathetic look, which only made Lawford angrier. ‘You had best stay, Knowles,’ he said, ‘but keep other folk away. I don’t want what is said here bruited about the battalion.’

      Knowles put on his hat and stood a few yards away. Forrest hovered to one side as Lawford looked at Sharpe. ‘Perhaps, Captain’ he spoke icily, ‘you can explain yourself?’

      ‘Explain myself, sir?’

      ‘Ensign Iliffe is dead.’

      ‘I regret it, sir.’

      ‘Good God! The boy is entrusted to my care! Now I have to write to his father and say the lad’s life was tossed away by an irresponsible officer who committed his company to an attack without any authorization from me!’ Lawford paused, evidently too angry to frame his next words, then slapped his hand against his sword scabbard. ‘I command this battalion, Sharpe!’ he said. ‘Perhaps you have never realized that? Do you think you can swan around as you like, killing men as you see fit, without reference to me?’

      ‘I had orders, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly.

      ‘Orders?’ Lawford demanded. ‘I gave no order!’

      ‘I was ordered by Colonel Rogers-Jones, sir.’

      ‘Who the devil is Colonel Rogers-Jones?’

      ‘I believe he commands a battalion of cazadores,’ Forrest put in quietly.

      ‘God damn it, Sharpe,’ Lawford snapped, ‘Colonel Rogers bloody Jones does not command the South Essex!’

      ‘I had orders from a colonel, sir,’ Sharpe insisted, ‘and I obeyed.’ He paused. ‘And I recalled your advice, sir.’

      ‘My advice?’ Lawford asked.

      ‘Last night, sir, you told me you wanted your skirmishers to be audacious and aggressive. So we were.’

      ‘I also want my officers to be gentlemen,’ Lawford said, ‘to show courtesy.’

      Sharpe sensed that they had reached the real point of this meeting. Lawford, it was true, had a genuine grievance that Sharpe had committed the light company to an attack without his permission, but no officer could truly object to a man fighting the enemy. The complaint had been merely a ranging shot for the assault that was about to come. Sharpe said nothing, but just stared fixedly at a spot between the Colonel’s eyes.

      ‘Lieutenant Slingsby,’ the Colonel said, ‘tells me that you insulted him. That you invited him to a duel. That you called him illegitimate. That you swore at him.’

      Sharpe cast his mind back to the brief confrontation on the ridge’s forward slope just after he had pulled the company out of the French panic. ‘I doubt I called him illegitimate, sir,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t use that sort of word. I probably called him a bastard.’

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