Sharpe's Battle Part 18

Hampshire."

"And I've never seen a woman ride from Madrid to Portugal without a servant or a lick of luggage," Sharpe said. "I wouldn't trust her, General."

"You wouldn't trust who, Sharpe?" Lord Kiely asked. He was riding back towards the British officers.

"Brigadier Loup, sir," Sharpe lied smoothly. "I was explaining to General

Runciman the significance of the grey uniforms." Sharpe pointed towards the dragoons who were now carrying the dead man's body back up the hillside.

"A grey uniform didn't help that dragoon today!" Kiely was still animated by the duel and apparently unashamed of the way it had ended. His face seemed younger and more attractive as though the arrival of his mistress had restored the l.u.s.tre of youth to Kiely's drink-ravaged looks.

"Chivalry didn't help him either," Sharpe said sourly. Runciman, suspecting that Sharpe's words might provoke another duel, hissed in remonstrance.

Kiely just sneered at Sharpe. "He broke the rules of chivalry, Sharpe. Not me!

The man was evidently going for his pistol. I reckon he knew he would be dead the moment I recovered my sword." His expression dared Sharpe to contradict him.

"Funny how chivalry becomes sordid, isn't it, my Lord?" Sharpe said instead.

"But then war is sordid. It might start with chivalrous intentions, but it always ends with men screaming for their mothers and having their guts flensed out by cannon b.a.l.l.s. You can dress a man in scarlet and gold, my Lord, and tell him it's a n.o.ble cause he graces, but he'll still end up bleeding to death and s.h.i.tting himself in a panic. Chivalry stinks, my Lord, because it's the most sordid b.l.o.o.d.y thing on earth."

Kiely was still holding his sword, but now he slid the long blade home into its scabbard. "I don't need lectures on chivalry from you, Sharpe. Your job is to be a drillmaster. And to stop my rogues from deserting. If, indeed, you can stop them."

"I can do that, my Lord," Sharpe promised. "I can do that."

And that afternoon he went to keep his word.

Sharpe walked south from San Isidro following the spine of the hills as they dropped ever lower towards the main border road. Where the hills petered out into rolling meadowland there was a small village of narrow twisting streets, stone-walled gardens and low-roofed cottages that huddled on a slope climbing from a fast-flowing stream up to a rocky ridge where the village church was crowned by the ragged sticks of a stork's nest. The village was called Fuentes de Onoro, the village that had provoked Loup's fury, and it lay only two miles from Wellington's headquarters in the town of Vilar Formoso. That proximity worried Sharpe who feared his errand might be questioned by an inquisitive staff officer, but the only British troops in Fuentes de Onoro were a small picquet of the 60th Rifles who were positioned just north of the village and took no notice of Sharpe. On the stream's eastern bank were a few scattered houses, some walled gardens and orchards and a small chapel that were all reached from the main village by a footbridge constructed of stone slabs supported on boulders standing beside a ford where a patrol of King's German

Legion cavalry was watering its horses. The Germans warned Sharpe that there were no allied troops on the further bank. "Nothing but French over there," the cavalry's Captain said and then, when he discovered Sharpe's ident.i.ty, he insisted on sharing a flask of brandy with the rifleman. They exchanged news of Von Lossow, a KGL friend of Sharpe's, then the Captain led his men out of the stream and onto the long straight road that led towards Ciudad Rodrigo.

"I'm looking for trouble," he called over his shoulder as he pulled himself up into the saddle, "and with G.o.d's help I'll find it!"

Sharpe turned the other way and climbed the village street to where a tiny inn served a robust red wine. It was not much of an inn, but then Fuentes de Onoro was not much of a village. The place lay just inside the Spanish border and had been plundered by the French as they had marched into Portugal then raked over again as they marched back out, and the villagers were justifiably suspicious of all soldiers. Sharpe took his wineskin out of the inn's smoky interior to a small vegetable garden where he sat beneath a grapevine with a half severed trunk. The damage seemed not to have affected the plant which was putting out vigorous new tendrils and bright fresh leaves. He dozed there, almost too weary to lift the wineskin.

"The French tried to cut the vine down." A voice spoke in sudden Spanish behind Sharpe. "They tried to destroy everything. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds." The man belched.

It was a vast belch, loud enough to stir a cat sleeping on the garden's far wall. Sharpe turned to see a mountainous creature dressed in filthy brown leggings, a bloodstained cotton shirt, a green French dragoon coat that had split at all the seams in order to accommodate its new owner's bulk, and a leather ap.r.o.n that was caked black and stiff with dried blood. The man and his clothes stank of old food, bad breath, stale blood and decay. At his belt there hung an old-fashioned, unscabbarded sabre with a blade as dark, thick and filthy as a pole-axe, a horse pistol, a small bone-handled knife with a curiously hooked blade and a wooden whistle. "You're Captain Sharpe?" the enormous man asked as Sharpe rose to greet him.

"Yes."

"And my whistle tells you who I am, does it not?"

Sharpe shook his head. "No."

"You mean that castrators in England don't signal their coming with a blast on the whistle?"

"I've never heard of them doing it," Sharpe said.

El Castrador sat heavily on a bench opposite Sharpe. "No whistles? Where would

I be without my little whistle? It tells a village I am coming. I blow it and the villagers bring out their hogs, beeves and foals, and I bring out my little knife." The man flicked the small, wickedly curved blade and laughed.

He had brought his own wineskin which he now squirted into his mouth before shaking his head in rueful nostalgia. "And in the old days, my friend," El

Castrador went on wistfully, "the mothers would bring out their little boys to be cut, and two years later the boys would travel to Lisbon or Madrid to sing so sweetly! My father, now, he cut many boys. One of his youngsters even sang for the Pope! Can you imagine? For the Pope in Rome! And all because of this little knife." He fingered the small bone-handled cutter.

"And sometimes the boys died?" Sharpe guessed.

El Castrador shrugged. "Boys are easily replaced, my friend. One cannot afford to be sentimental about small children." He jetted more red wine down his vast gullet. "I had eight boys, only three survived and that, believe me, is two too many."

"No girls?"

"Four." El Castrador fell silent for a second or two, then sighed. "That

French b.a.s.t.a.r.d Loup took them. You know of Loup?"

"I know him."

"He took them and gave them to his men. El Lobo and his men like young girls."

He touched the knife at his belt, then gave Sharpe a long speculative look.

"So you are La Aguja's Englishman."

Sharpe nodded.

"Ah! Teresa!" The Spaniard sighed. "We were angry when we heard she had given herself to an Englishman, but now I see you, Captain, I can understand. How is she?"

"Fighting the French near Badajoz, but she sends her greetings." In fact

Teresa had not written to Sharpe in weeks, but her name was a talisman among all the partisans and had been sufficient to arrange this meeting with the man who had been so roundly defeated by Brigadier Loup. Loup had tamed this part of the Spanish frontier and wherever Sharpe went he heard the Frenchman's name mentioned with an awed hatred. Every piece of mischief was the fault of Loup, every death, every house fire, every flood, every sick child, every robbed hive, every stillborn calf, every unseasonable frost; all were the wolf's work.

"She will be proud of you, Englishman," El Castrador said.

"She will?" Sharpe asked. "Why?"

"Because El Lobo has placed a price on your head," El Castrador said. "Did you not know?"

"I didn't know."

"One hundred dollars," El Castrador said slowly, with relish, as though he was tempted by the price himself.

"A pittance," Sharpe said disparagingly. Twenty-five pounds might be a small fortune to most people, a good year's pay indeed for most working folk, but still Sharpe reckoned his life was worth more than twenty-five pounds. "The reward on Teresa's head is two hundred dollars," he said resentfully.

"But we partisans kill more French than you English," El Castrador said, "so it is only right that we should be worth more." Sharpe tactfully refrained from asking whether there was any reward on El Castrador's own matted and lice-ridden head. Sharpe suspected the man had lost most of his power because of his defeats, but at least, Sharpe thought, El Castrador lived while most of his men were dead, killed by the wolf after being cut in the same way that El

Castrador had cut his captives. There were times when Sharpe was very glad he did not fight the guerrilla.