Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold. Bernard Cornwell

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER 5

      The loss of the telescope hurt Sharpe. He told himself it was a bauble, a useful frill, but it still hurt. It marked an achievement, not just the rescue of Sir Arthur Wellesley, but the promotion to commissioned rank afterwards. Sometimes, when he scarcely dared believe that he was a King’s officer, he would look at the telescope and think how far he had travelled from the orphanage in Brewhouse Lane and at other times, though he was reluctant to admit it to himself, he enjoyed refusing to explain the plaque on the telescope’s barrel. Yet he knew other men knew. They looked at him, understood he had once fought like a demon under the Indian sun and were awed.

      Now bloody Christopher had the glass.

      ‘You’ll get it back, sir,’ Harper tried to console him.

      ‘I bloody will, too. I hear that Williamson got into a fight in the village last night?’

      ‘Not much of a fight, sir. I pulled him off.’

      ‘Who was he milling?’

      ‘One of Lopes’s men, sir. As evil a bastard as Williamson.’

      ‘Should I punish him?’

      ‘God, no, sir. I looked after it.’

      But Sharpe nevertheless declared the village out of bounds, which he knew would not be popular with his men. Harper spoke for them, pointing out that there were some pretty girls in Vila Real de Zedes. ‘There’s one wee slip of a thing there, sir,’ he said, ‘that would bring tears to your eyes. The lads only want to walk down there of an evening to say hello.’

      ‘And to leave some babies behind.’

      ‘That too,’ Harper agreed.

      ‘And the girls can’t walk up here?’ Sharpe asked. ‘I hear some do.’

      ‘Some do, sir, I’m told, that’s true.’

      ‘Including one wee slip of a thing that has red hair and can bring tears to your eyes?’

      Harper watched a buzzard quartering the broom-clad slopes of the hill on which the fort was being made. ‘Some of us like to go to church in the village, sir,’ he said, studiously not talking about the red-headed girl whose name was Maria.

      Sharpe smiled. ‘So how many Catholics have we got?’

      ‘There’s me, sir, and Donnelly and Carter and McNeill. Oh, and Slattery, of course. The rest of you are all going to hell.’

      ‘Slattery!’ Sharpe said. ‘Fergus isn’t a Christian.’

      ‘I never said he was, sir, but he goes to mass.’

      Sharpe could not help laughing. ‘So I’ll let the Catholics go to mass,’ he said.

      Harper grinned. ‘That means they’ll all be Catholic by Sunday.’

      ‘This is the army,’ Sharpe said, ‘so anyone wanting to convert has to get my permission. But you can take the other four to mass and you bring them back by midday, and if I find any of the other lads down there I’ll hold you responsible.’

      ‘Me?’

      ‘You’re a sergeant, aren’t you?’

      ‘But when the lads see Lieutenant Vicente’s men going to the village, sir, they won’t see why they’re not allowed.’

      ‘Vicente’s Portuguese. His men know the local rules. We don’t. And sooner or later there’s going to be a fight over girls that’ll bring tears to your eyes and we don’t need it, Pat.’ The problem was not so much the girls, though Sharpe knew they could be a problem if one of his riflemen became drunk, and that was the true problem. There were two taverns in the village and both served cheap wine out of barrels and half his men would become paralysed with drink given half a chance. And there was a temptation to relax the rules because the situation of the riflemen was so strange. They were out of touch with the army, not sure what was happening and without enough to do, and so Sharpe invented more work for them. The fort was now sprouting extra stone redoubts and Sharpe found tools in the Quinta’s barn and made his men clear the track through the woods and carry bundles of firewood up to the watchtower, and when that was done he led long patrols into the surrounding countryside. The patrols were not intended to seek out the enemy, but to tire the men so that they collapsed at sundown and slept till dawn, and each dawn Sharpe held a formal parade and put men on a charge if he found a button undone or a scrap of rust on a rifle lock. They moaned at him, but there was no trouble with the villagers.

      The barrels in the village taverns were not the only danger. The cellar of the Quinta was full of port barrels and racks of bottled white wine, and Williamson managed to find the key that was supposedly hidden in a kitchen jar, then he and Sims and Gataker got helplessly drunk on Savages’ finest, a carouse that ended well past midnight with the three men hurling stones at the Quinta’s shutters.

      The three had ostensibly been on picquet under the eye of Dodd, a reliable man, and Sharpe dealt with him first. ‘Why didn’t you report them?’

      ‘I didn’t know where they were, sir.’ Dodd kept his eyes on the wall above Sharpe’s head. He was lying, of course, but only because the men always protected each other. Sharpe had when he was in the ranks and he did not expect anything else of Matthew Dodd, just as Dodd did not expect anything except a punishment.

      Sharpe looked at Harper. ‘Got work for him, Sergeant?’

      ‘The cook was complaining that all the kitchen copper needed a proper cleaning, sir.’

      ‘Make him sweat,’ Sharpe said, ‘and no wine ration for a week.’ The men were entitled to a pint of rum a day and in the absence of the raw spirit Sharpe was doling out red from a barrel he had commandeered from the Quinta’s cellar. He punished Sims and Gataker by making them wear full uniform and greatcoats and then march up and down the drive with rucksacks filled with stones. They did it under Harper’s enthusiastic eye and when they vomited with exhaustion and the effects of a hangover the Sergeant kicked them to their feet, made them clear the vomit off the driveway with their own hands, and then keep marching.

      Vicente arranged for a mason from the village to brick up the wine cellar’s entrance, and while that was being done, and while Dodd scrubbed the coppers with sand and vinegar, Sharpe took Williamson up into the woods. He was tempted to flog the man, for he was very close to hating Williamson, but Sharpe had once been flogged himself and he was СКАЧАТЬ