Sharpes Siege   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

” She paused, as if to let her husband counter her argument, but Sharpe was quickly learning that in the great skirmish of marriage, happiness was bought by frequent retreats. Jane smiled. “And if I can endure this weather, then I must be quite as robust as any Rifleman.” The sea-wind, howling off Biscay, rattled the casements of her lodgings. Across the roofs Sharpe could see the thicket of masts and spars made by the shipping crammed into the inner harbour. One of those ships had brought the new uniforms that were being issued to his men.

It was not before time. The veterans of the South Essex, that Sharpe now had to call the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, had not been issued with new uniforms in three years. Their coats were ragged, faded, and patched, but now those old jackets, that had fought across Spain, were being discarded for new, bright cloth. Some French Battalion, seeing those new coats, would think of them as belonging to a fresh, unblooded unit and would doubtless pay dear for the mistake.

The orders to refit had given Sharpe this chance to be with his new wife, as it had given all the married men of the Battalion a chance to be with their wives. The Battalion had been stationed on the line of the River Nive, close to French patrols, and Sharpe had ordered the wives to stay in St Jean de Luz. These few days were thus made precious to Sharpe, days snatched from the frost-hard river-line, days to be with Jane, and days spoilt only by the illness that threatened Hogan’s life.

“I take him food from the Club,” Jane said.

„The Club?“

“Where we’re lunching, Richard.” She turned from the mirror with the expression of a woman well pleased with her own reflection. “Your good jacket, I think.”

In every town that the British occupied, and in which they spent more than a few days, one building became a club for officers. The building was never officially chosen, nor designated as such, but by some strange process and within a day of two of the Army’s arrival, one particular house was generally agreed to be the place where elegant gentlemen could retire to read the London papers, drink mulled wine before a decently tended fire, or play a few hands of whist of an evening. In St Jean de Luz the chosen house faced the outer harbour.

Major Richard Sharpe, born in a common lodging-house and risen from the gutter-bred ranks of Britain’s Army, had never used such temporary gentlemen’s clubs before, but new and beautiful wives must be humoured. “I didn’t suppose,” he spoke unhappily to Jane, “that women were allowed in gentlemens’ clubs?” He was reluctantly buttoning his new green uniform jacket.

“They are here,” Jane said, “and they’re serving an oyster pie for luncheon.” Which clinched the matter. Major and Mrs Richard Sharpe would dine out, and Major Sharpe had to dress in the stiff, uncomfortable uniform that he had bought for a royal reception in London and hated to wear. He reflected, as he climbed the wide stairs of the Officers’ Club with Jane on his arm, that there was much wisdom in the old advice that an officer should never take a well-bred wife to an ill-bred war.

Yet the frisson of irritation passed as he entered the crowded dining-room. Instead he felt the pang of pride that he always felt when he took Jane into a public place. She was undeniably beautiful, and her beauty was informed by a vivacity that gave her face character. She had eloped with him just months before, fleeing her uncle’s house on the drab Essex marshes to come to the war. She drew admiring glances from men at every table, while other officers’ wives, enduring the inconveniences of campaigning for the sake of love, looked enviously at Jane Sharpe’s easy beauty. Some, too, envied her the tall, black-haired and grimly scarred man who seemed so uncomfortable in the lavishness of the club’s indulgent comforts. Sharpe’s name was whispered from table to table; the name of the man who had taken an enemy standard, captured one of Badajoz’s foul breaches, and who, or so rumour said, had made himself rich from the blood-spattered plunder of Vitoria.

A white-gloved steward abandoned a table of senior officers to hasten to Jane’s side. “The cap’n wanted to sit ‘ere, ma’am,” the steward was unnecessarily brushing the seat of a chair close to one of the wide windows, “but I said as how it was being kept for someone special.”

Jane gave the steward a smile that would have enslaved a misogynist. “How very kind of you, Smithers.”

“So he’s over there.” Smithers nodded disparagingly towards a table by the fire where two naval officers sat in warm discomfort. The junior officer was a lieutenant, while one of the other man’s two epaulettes was bright and new, denoting a recent promotion to the rank of a full post captain.

Smithers looked devotedly back to Jane. “I’ve reserved a bottle or two of that claret you liked.”

Sharpe, who had been ignored by the steward, pronounced the wine good and hoped he was right. The oyster pie was certainly good. Jane said she would deliver a portion to Hogan’s lodgings that same afternoon and Sharpe again insisted that she should not actually enter the sickroom, and he saw a flicker of annoyance cross Jane’s face. Her irritation was not caused by Sharpe’s words, but by the sudden proximity of the naval captain who had rudely come to stand immediately behind Sharpe’s chair in a place where he could overhear the conversation of Major and Mrs Sharpe’s reunion.

The naval officer had not come to eavesdrop, but rather to stare through the rain-smeared window. His interest was in a small flotilla of boats that had appeared around the northern headland. The boats were squat and small, none more than fifty feet long, but each had a vast press of sail that drove the score of craft in a fast gaggle towards the harbour entrance. They were escorted by a naval brig that, in the absence of enemies, had its gunports closed.

“They’re chasse-mare’es,” Jane said to her husband.

“Chasse-marrys?”

“Coastal luggers, Richard. They carry forty tons of cargo each.” She smiled, pleased with her display of knowledge. “You forget I was raised on the coast. The smugglers in Dunkirk used chasse-mare’es. The Navy,” Jane said loudly enough for the intrusive naval captain to hear, “could never catch them.”

But the naval captain was oblivious to Mrs Sharpe’s goad. He stared at the straggling fleet of chasse-marees’that, emerging from a brief rain-squall, seemed to crab sideways to avoid a sand-bar that was marked by a broken line of dirty foam.