Sharpe's Battle Part 40

"b.i.t.c.h!" He had hated his mother, just as he hated the church. Juanita had shared Kiely's contempt for the church, but Juanita was another man's lover.

Maybe she had always been another man's lover. She had lain with Loup and G.o.d knows how many other men and all the while Kiely had been planning to make her a countess and to show off her beauty in all the great capitals of Europe.

Tears trickled down his cheeks as he thought of her betrayal and as he remembered his humiliation at the hands of Captain Sharpe. That last memory filled him with a sudden fury. "b.i.t.c.h!" he shouted at the Virgin Mary. He stood up and hurled the empty flask at her statue behind the altar. "Wh.o.r.e b.i.t.c.h!" he cried as the flask bounced harmlessly off the Virgin's blue robe.

The women screamed. The priest ran towards his Lords.h.i.+p, then stopped in terror because Kiely had drawn the pistol from his holster. The click of the gun's lock echoed loud in the cavernous church as Kiely thumbed back the heavy hammer.

"b.i.t.c.h!" Kiely spat the word at the statue. "Lying, whoring, thieving, two- faced, leprous b.i.t.c.h!" Tears poured down his cheeks as he aimed the pistol.

"No!" the priest implored as the women's shrieks filled the church. "Please!

No! Think of the blessed Virgin, please!"

Kiely turned on the man. "Call her a virgin, do you? You think she'd be a virgin after the Legions had hammered through Galilee?" He laughed wildly, then turned back to the statue. "You wh.o.r.e b.i.t.c.h!" he shouted as he trained the pistol again. "You filthy wh.o.r.e b.i.t.c.h!"

"No!" the priest cried despairingly.

Kiely pulled the trigger.

The heavy bullet smashed through his palate and punched out a palm-sized patch of his skull as it exited. Blood and brain splashed as high as the Virgin's diadem of stars, but none landed on Our Lady. Instead the gore spattered across the sanctuary steps, doused a handful of candles, then trickled down to the nave. Kiely's dead body fell back, his head a mangled horror of blood, brain and bone.

The screams in the church slowly died to be replaced by the rumble of wheels in the street as more guns were dragged towards the east.

And towards the French. Who were coming to reclaim Portugal and break the insolent British at a narrow bridge across the Coa.

Part Two

CHAPTER 7.

The Real Compania Irlandesa bivouacked on the plateau north and west of

Fuentes de Onoro. The village lay astride the southernmost road leading from

Ciudad Rodrigo to Almeida and in the night Wellington's army had closed about the village that now threatened to become a battlefield. The dawn mist hid the eastern countryside where the French army readied itself, while up on the plateau Wellington's forces were a smoke-obscured chaos of troops, horses and wagons. Guns were parked on the plateau's eastern crest, their barrels pointing across the Dos Casas stream that marked the army's forward line.

Donaju discovered Sharpe squinting sideways into a sc.r.a.p of mirror in an attempt to cut his own hair. The sides and the front were easy enough to trim, the difficulty always lay in the rear. "Just like soldiering," Sharpe said.

"You've heard about Kiely?" Donaju, suddenly in command of the Real Compania

Irlandesa, ignored Sharpe's gnomic comment.

Sharpe snipped, frowned, then tried to repair the damage by snipping again, but it only made things worse. "Blew his head off, I heard."

Donaju flinched at Sharpe's callousness, but made no protest. "I can't believe he would do such a thing," he said instead.

"Too much pride, not enough sense. Sounds like most b.l.o.o.d.y aristocrats to me.

These d.a.m.n scissors are blunt."

Donaju frowned. "Why don't you have a servant?"

"Can't afford one. Besides, I've always looked after myself."

"And cut your own hair?"

"There's a pretty girl among the battalion wives who usually cuts it," Sharpe said. But Sally Clayton, like the rest of the South Ess.e.x, was far away. The

South Ess.e.x was too shrunken by war to serve in the battle line and now was doing guard duty on the army's Portuguese depots and thus would be spared

Marshal Ma.s.sena's battle to relieve Almeida and cut the British retreat across the Goa.

"Father Sarsfield is burying Kiely tomorrow," Donaju said.

"Father Sarsfield might be burying a lot of us tomorrow," Sharpe said. "If they bury us at all. Have you ever seen a battlefield a year after the fighting? It's like a boneyard. Skulls lying about like boulders, and fox- chewed bones everywhere. b.u.g.g.e.r this," he said savagely as he gave his hair a last forlorn chop.

"Kiely can't even be buried in a churchyard"-Donaju did not want to think about battlefields on this ominous morning-"because it was suicide."

"There aren't many soldiers who get a proper grave," Sharpe said, "so I wouldn't grieve for Kiely. We'll be lucky if any of us get a proper hole, let alone a stone on top. Dan!" he shouted to Hagman.

"Sir?"

"Your b.l.o.o.d.y scissors are blunt."

"Sharpened them last night, sir," Hagman said stoically. "It's like my father always said, sir, only a bad workman blames his tools, sir."

Sharpe tossed the scissors across to Hagman, then brushed the cut strands of hair from his s.h.i.+rt. "You're better off without Kiely," he told Donaju.

"To guard the ammunition park?" Donaju said bitterly. "We would have done better to stay in Madrid."

"To be thought of as traitors?" Sharpe asked as he pulled on his jacket.

"Listen, Donaju, you're alive and Kiely isn't. You've got yourself a good company to command. So what if you're guarding the ammunition? You think that isn't important? What happens if the c.r.a.pauds break through?"

Donaju did not seem cheered by Sharpe's opinions. "We're orphans," he said self-pityingly. "No one cares what happens to us."

"Why do you want someone to care?" Sharpe asked bluntly. "You're a soldier,

Donaju, not a child. They issued you with a sword and a gun so you could take care of yourself, not have others take care of you. But as it happens, they do care. They care enough to send the whole lot of you to Cadiz, and I care enough to tell you that you've got two choices. You can go to Cadiz whipped and with your men knowing they've been whipped, or you can go back with your pride intact. It's up to you, but I know which one I'd choose."

This was the first Donaju had heard of the Real Compania Irlandesa's proposed move to Cadiz and he frowned as he tried to work out whether Sharpe was being serious. "You're sure about Cadiz?"

"Of course I'm sure," Sharpe said. "General Valverde's been pulling strings.

He doesn't think you should be here at all, so now you're off to join the rest of the Spanish army."

Donaju digested the news for a few seconds, then nodded approval. "Good," he said enthusiastically. "They should have sent us there in the first place." He sipped his mug of tea and made a wry face at the taste. "What happens to you now?"