Sharpe’s Company. Bernard Cornwell

the room. ‘Sharpe? With an “e”?’

      Sharpe nodded. Around him a group of half-pay officers, sick, lame or half-blind, listened curiously. They were all seeking appointments and hoping Sharpe would be disappointed. The clerk blew dust off the papers in his hand.

      ‘It’s irregular.’ He peered at Sharpe’s dark green jacket. ‘You said the South Essex Regiment?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But that, if I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, is the uniform of the 95th?’ The clerk gave a small, self-satisfied laugh, as if in celebration of a small victory. Sharpe said nothing. He wore the uniform of the Rifles because he was proud of his old Regiment, because the job with the South Essex was only ever intended as a temporary attachment, and how was he to tell this pinched bureaucrat about leading his small band of Riflemen from the horrors of the Corunna retreat down to join the army in Portugal where they had been arbitrarily joined to the redcoats of the South Essex. The clerk twitched his nose and sniffed. ‘Irregular, Mr Sharpe, very irregular.’ He selected the top piece of paper with ink-stained fingers. ‘This is the document.’

      He held Sharpe’s gazette as if the document might reinfect him with smallpox. ‘You were given a Captaincy in 1809?’

      ‘By Lord Wellington.’

      The name cut no ice in Whitehall. ‘Who should have known better. Dear me, Mr Sharpe, he should have known better! It’s irregular.’

      ‘But not unknown, surely?’ Sharpe had suppressed his urge to vent his irritation on the clerk. ‘I thought it was your job to approve these documents.’

      ‘Or disapprove them!’ The clerk laughed again and the half-pay officers grinned. ‘Disapprove, Mr Sharpe, or disapprove!’ Rain fell down the chimney and hissed on the meagre coal fire. The clerk, his thin shoulders heaving with silent laughter, tugged a pair of spectacles from the recesses of his clothing and clipped them on to his nose as if the gazette, seen through smeared glass, might reveal new cause for merriment. ‘We disapprove them, sir, most of the time. You allow one and you allow all. It upsets the system, you know. There are rules, regulations, standing orders!’ And the clerk shook his head because it was obvious Sharpe understood nothing of the army.

      Sharpe waited for the head-shaking to cease. ‘It seems to have taken you a long time to make any decision on this gazette.’

      ‘And still not made!’ The clerk said it proudly, making it seem that the length of time proved the gravity of the Horse Guards’ wisdom. Then he seemed to relent and offered Sharpe a rueful smile. ‘The truth is, Mr Sharpe, that there was a mistake. A regrettable mistake and your visit has happily rectified the mistake.’ He peered over his glasses at the tall Rifleman. ‘We are really most grateful to you for drawing it to our attention.’

      ‘Mistake?’

      ‘It was filed wrongly.’ The clerk plucked another piece of paper from his left hand. ‘Under Lieutenant Robert Sharp, no “e”, who died of the fever in 1810. His papers were, otherwise, in perfect order.’

      ‘Which mine are not?’

      ‘Indeed, no, but you are still alive.’ The clerk looked peevishly at Sharpe. ‘We do a have a chance of tidying up when an officer is translated to glory.’ He took off his glasses and cleaned them with Sharpe’s folded gazette. ‘It will be attended to, Mr Sharpe, with expedition. I promise you. With expedition!’

      ‘Soon?’

      ‘That’s what I said, isn’t it? It would be wrong to say more.’ The clerk pushed his spectacles back into place. ‘Now, if you’ll pardon me, there is a war on and I have other duties!’

      It had been a mistake, Sharpe realized afterwards, to visit Whitehall, but it was done and he could only go on waiting. Surely, he told himself a dozen times each day, they could not disapprove the gazette. Not after he had taken the Eagle? After he had brought the gold out of the burning Almeida, and after he had savaged the finest French troops in the deathtraps of Fuentes de Oñoro? He stared gloomily across the snow at the scar in Ciudad Rodrigo’s defences. He knew he should have volunteered for the Forlorn Hope. If he had led it, and survived, then no one could have denied him the Captaincy. He would have proved himself, captured the rank, and the pox-scarred bureaucrats of Whitehall could scratch themselves into a well-ordered eternity because nothing they could do, nothing, could have taken the Captaincy away from him. A pox on the bloody lot of them!

      ‘Richard Sharpe!’ A quiet voice behind him, full of pleasure, and Sharpe twisted round.

      ‘Sir!’

      ‘I could feel a pricking in my thumbs! I knew you had to be back with the army.’ Major Michael Hogan slithered on the snow towards him. ‘How are you?’

      ‘I’m well.’ Sharpe scrambled to his feet. He beat the snow off his greatcoat and shook Hogan’s gloved hand.

      The Engineer laughed at him. ‘You look like a drowned tinker, so you do, but it’s good to see you.’ The Irish voice was rich and warm. ‘And how was England?’

      ‘Cold and wet.’

      ‘Ah well, it’s a Protestant country.’ Hogan conveniently ignored the freezing dampness of the Spanish countryside around them. ‘And how is Sergeant Harper? Did he enjoy England?’

      ‘He did, and most of what he enjoyed was plump and giggled.’

      Hogan laughed. ‘A man of sense. You will give him my best wishes?’

      ‘I will.’ The two men stared at the town. The British siege guns, long, iron twenty-four-pounders, were still firing, their reports muffled by the snow, and their shots erupting flurries of snow and stone from the walls either side of the main breach. Sharpe glanced at Hogan. ‘Is it a secret we’re attacking tonight?’

      ‘It is a secret. Everyone knows, of course, they always do. Even before the General. Rumour has it for seven o’clock.’

      ‘And does rumour extend to the South Essex?’

      Hogan shook his head; he was attached to Wellington’s staff and knew what was being planned. ‘No, but I was hoping I could persuade your Colonel to lend me your Company.’

      ‘Mine?’ Sharpe was pleased. ‘Why?’

      ‘Not for much. I don’t want you lads in the breach, but the Engineers are short-handed, as ever, and there’s a heap of stuff to be carried up the glacis. Would you be happy?’

      ‘Of course.’ Sharpe wondered whether to tell Hogan of his wish that he had gone with the Forlorn Hope, but he knew that the Irish Engineer would think he was mad, so he said nothing. Instead he lent Hogan his telescope and waited silently as the Engineer stared at the breach. Hogan grunted. ‘It’s practical.’

      ‘You’re sure?’ Sharpe took the glass back, his fingers instinctively feeling for the inlet brass plate; ‘In Gratitude. AW. 23 September 1803’.

      ‘We’re never sure. But I can’t see it getting any better.’ The Engineers had the job of pronouncing when a breach was ‘practical’, when, in their judgment, the rubble slope could be climbed by the attacking infantry. Sharpe looked at the small, middle-aged Major.

      ‘You don’t sound very happy.’

      ‘Of course not. No one likes a siege.’ Hogan was trying, like Sharpe earlier, to imagine what horrors the French had prepared in the breach. A siege, in theory, was the most scientific of all fighting. The attackers battered holes in the defence and both sides knew when the breaches were practical, but the advantage was all with the defenders. They knew where the main attack was coming, when, and roughly how many men could be fed into the breach. There the science stopped. There was great skill needed to site the batteries, in sapping forward, but once the science of the Engineers had opened up the breach, it was left to the infantry to climb the defences and die on the rubble. The siege guns did what they could. They would fire till the last moment, as they were firing now, but soon the bayonets would