boy grinned. ‘So now what?’
‘We find Wellington.’ Sharpe looked at Carbine and suddenly knew that everything would be all right. He laughed aloud, his tiredness forgotten. ‘We’re going to win the bloody war, Angel. You and I, just you and I!’ He patted the patient, strong horse. Carbine would take him to Wellington, he would vindicate himself and, he laughed at the thought, do everything that Helene wanted him to do, but with his honour intact. ‘We’re going to win the goddamned war!’
The army tried to sleep. Some men succeeded, others listened to the rain on canvas, to the owls calling in the valleys and, from the hills, the howling of wolves that made the horses nervous. Children cried and were soothed by their mothers.
An hour after midnight the rain stopped and, slow and ragged, the sky cleared. Stars showed for the first time in weeks. The wind was still cold, shivering the picquets who stared into the shadows and thought of the morning.
The bugles called the army awake when the stars were still bright. The breakfast was cold. The tents were collapsed and folded. Men muttered and shivered and thanked God it was not raining. Sufficient unto this day was the evil that awaited them.
Captain d’Alembord, stumbling through the mud and long grass with a mug of tea in his hand, shouted into the darkness for his Company. Sergeant Harper’s voice answered.
The Captain stood shivering by the small fire. ‘Thank God it’s not raining.’
‘Aye.’ Harper looked pleased.
‘The Colonel says it’s true.’
‘Might as well get it over with.’ The huge Sergeant was rolling up his blanket. The South Essex had marched without tents.
Captain d’Alembord, who had never fought in a real battle, was nervous. ‘They reckon they’re waiting over the hills.’
‘But not far away, eh?’ Harper laughed. ‘So there’ll be a fight, yes?’
‘So they say.’
‘With all the trimmings, sir. It’ll be a grand day for it, if it doesn’t rain.’
‘I’m sure we’ll acquit ourselves nobly, Sergeant.’
‘We always do, sir.’ Harper was strapping the blanket to his pack. ‘Farrell!’ The roar of Harper’s voice made d’Alembord jump.
‘Sarge?’ A plaintive voice sounded from the darkness.
‘Get up, you protestant bastard! We’ve got a battle to fight!’
Some men laughed, some men groaned. Harper grinned reassuringly at Captain d’Alembord. ‘The lads will be all right, sir, don’t you fret.’ Captain d’Alembord, quite understandably, was fretting whether he would be all right. He smiled.
‘Finish the tea, Sergeant?’
‘You’re a grand man, sir, so you are. I thank you.’ Harper tilted the mug and swallowed what was left in great gulps. ‘Would you be a betting man, sir?’
‘I am.’
‘I have a feeling we’ll be seeing an old friend today.’ The Sergeant said it comfortably, his voice utterly confident.
Captain d’Alembord, who had come to trust Sergeant Harper, sighed. He knew that the Irishman had never accepted Sharpe’s death and the Captain feared what would happen when it dawned on Harper that the Major was truly dead. There were stories that, before he met Sharpe, Harper had been the wildest man in the army and d’Alembord feared he would become so again. The officer chose his words carefully. This was the first time that Harper had spoken of Sharpe to him since the hanging, and d’Alembord did not want to be too savage in breaking the Irishman’s hopes.
‘What if you don’t see him, Sergeant?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it, so I have, sir.’ Harper thumped his shako into shape with a fist. Isabella was rolling her own blanket beside him. Harper smiled. ‘There’s no way Nosey would hang him, not after Sharpe saved his life, sir. And there’s no way the frogs can kill him, so he has to be alive. He’ll be back, sir, and if we’re in a fight, that’s where he’ll be. A pound says I’m right.’
D’Alembord grinned. ‘You haven’t got a pound.’
‘I will tonight, though. Farrell! You heathen bastard! Get up!’ Harper looked back to his officer. ‘A pound?’
‘You need your money, Harps. You’re getting married.’
‘Christ! Don’t talk about it.’ Harper sounded gloomy. ‘I’ll still lay the pound, sir.’
‘I accept.’
In the valley a trumpet sounded. In the darkness thousands of men prepared themselves. Behind them was an epic march through the hills, and beyond the next hill was Vitoria.
They marched before dawn, the columns splitting again, but all going eastwards, going towards the enemy. The columns twisted through the misted valleys, going towards Vitoria, going towards the treasure of an empire, and going to battle.
The rain, at last, had stopped, and the dawn of Monday, June 21st, 1813, brought a dazzling, blinding sun that lanced over the Pamplona valley, over the spires of Vitoria, and into the eyes of the few British horsemen who had climbed the hills to the west of the city.
They could see nothing of the French beneath them. The wide valley in which Vitoria stood was shrouded in mist, a mist that was thickened by the smoke of myriad campfires. The watching horsemen appeared to be alone in a wild, dazzling landscape.
The sky was brilliantly clear. The valleys were hidden by mist, and the east was filled with the searing glory of the rising sun, yet to north and south the British horsemen could see the successive ridges of the hills etched in startling clarity against a pale sky. After the days of rain and low cloud it seemed almost indecent to be fighting on such a day as this. Yet fight they must, for, by the will of Marshal Jourdan and General Wellington, one hundred and forty thousand men had come to this misted plain from which, like a strange island in a white sea, the spires of Vitoria’s cathedral jutted golden in the sun.
From the west, in the valleys that were mysterious with shredding mist and shadow, the British army marched. They were cold from the night and few men spoke or sang as they marched, waiting for the sun and the smell of powder to warm their spirits. In every Company the sibilant hiss of stone on steel could be heard. The sharpening stones were handed round and the men honed their bayonets as they marched and prayed they would not need to use them.
They had marched across the roof of Spain, coming from Portugal to this place where, like a knife put to a throat, they threatened the Great Road that was France’s lifeline in Spain. The men knew, because their officers had told them, that a battle was imminent. Some, who had stood in the battle-line before, tried not to think of what was to come while others, who had never before seen an enemy army, wondered if they would live to remember the sight. Some, remembering the long hard marches in the high inhospitable hills, feared defeat, for, if this army was broken today and forced to retreat, they would face days of being hunted in the high valleys by the long-bladed French horsemen.
Wellington, this day, commanded Spanish, Portuguese and British troops. With him, too, was the King’s German Legion. They marched towards the valley of Vitoria, and with them went their women and children who would wait at the field’s edge while their men fought. With the army, too, were sutlers and merchants, salesmen of patent medicines, friars and priests. There were whores, beggars, horse-thieves, and politicians, and, like a lumbering, ponderous beast, the whole great mass curled and heaved itself towards the valley, towards Vitoria and towards a fight.
The French were confident this day. Their enemies had an edge in numbers, it was true, but numbers were not all in warfare. The French had picked their battlefield,