Sharpe 16 - Sharpe's Honour by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online

Harper feared because he knew Richard Sharpe was capable of chasing rainbows into hell itself. He looked at his woman, who waited for a word of praise, and smiled at her. `You're right. He needs a woman.'
    `Marriage,' she said tartly, but he could see she was pleased. She pointed her spoon at him. `You look after him, Patrick.'
    `He's big enough to look after himself.'
    `I know big men who can't fetch bread.'
    `You're a lucky woman, so you are.' He grinned at her, but inside he was wondering just what it was that had alarmed Sharpe. Like the prospect of marriage that he sensed for himself, he sensed trouble coming for his friend.
    `Ah, Sharpe! No problems? Good!' Lieutenant Colonel Leroy was pulling on thin kid-leather gloves. He had been a Major till a few weeks before, but now the loyalist American had achieved his ambition to command the Battalion. The glove on his right hand hid the terrible burn scars that he had earned a year before at Badajoz. Nothing could hide the awful, puckered, distorting scar that wrenched the right side of his face. He looked into the morning sky. `No rain today.'
    `Let's hope not.'
    `Tent mules coming today?'
    `So I'm told, sir.'
    `God knows why we need tents.' Leroy stooped to light a long, thin cigar from a candle that, on his orders, was kept alight in Battalion headquarters for just this purpose. `Tents will just soften the men. We might as well march to war with milkmaids. Can you lose the bloody things?'
    `I'll try, sir.'
    Leroy put on his bicorne hat, pulling the front low to shadow his thin, terrible face. `What else today?'
    `Mahoney's taking Two and Three on a march. Firing practice for the new draft. Parade at two.'
    `Parade?' Leroy, whose voice still held the flat intonation of his native New England, scowled at his only Major. Joseph Forrest, the Battalion's other Major, had been posted to the Lisbon Staff to help organize the stores that poured into that port. `Parade?' Leroy asked. `What goddamned parade?'
    `Your orders, sir. Church parade.'
    `Christ, I'd forgotten.' Leroy blew smoke towards Sharpe and grinned. `You take it, Richard, it'll be good for you.'
    `Thank you, sir.'
    `Well, I'm off.' Leroy sounded pleased. He had been invited to Brigade headquarters for the day and was anticipating equal measures of wine and gossip. He picked up his riding crop. `Make sure the parson gives the buggers a rousing sermon. Nothing like a good sermon to put men in a frog-killing mood. I hear there was a ribbon-merchant looking for you?'
    `Yes.'
    `What did he want?'
    `He never found me.'
    `Well tell him `no', whatever he wants, and borrow money off him.'
    `Money?'
    Leroy turned in the doorway. `The adjutant tells me you owe the Mess sixteen guineas. True?' Sharpe nodded and Leroy pointed the riding crop at him. `Pay it, Richard. Don't want you dying and owing the god-damn Mess money.' He walked into the street to his waiting horse, and Sharpe turned to the table of paperwork that waited for him.
    `What the devil are you grinning at?'
    Paddock, the Battalion clerk, shook his head. `Nothing, sir.
    Sharpe sat to the pile of work. Paddock, he knew, was grinning because Leroy had told Sharpe to pay his debts, but Sharpe could not pay them. He owed the laundry-woman five shillings, the sutler two pounds, and Leroy, quite rightly, was demanding that Sharpe buy a horse. As a Captain, Sharpe had not wanted a horse, preferring to stay on his boots like his men, but as a Major the added height would be useful on a battlefield, as would the added speed. But a good horse was not to be had for under a hundred and thirty pounds and he did not know where the funds were to come from. He sighed. `Can't you forge my bloody signature?'
    `Yes, sir, but only on pay forms. Tea, Major?'
    `Any breakfast left?'
    `I'll go and look, sir.'
    Sharpe worked through the papers. Equipment reports and weekly reports and new standing orders from Brigade and Army. There was the usual warning from the Chaplain-General to keep an