Read Sharpe 12 - Sharpe's Battle for Free Online

were being stripped naked and stacked like cordwood next to a long, shallow grave that a group of diggers was trying to extend. Other men were piling French muskets or else hurling canteens, cartridge boxes, boots and blankets into a cart. Some of the plunder was even more exotic, for the retreating French had weighed themselves down with the loot of a thousand Portuguese villages and Wellington's men were now recovering church vestments, candlesticks and silver plate. “Astonishing what a soldier will carry on a retreat,” the General remarked to Hogan. “We found one dead man with a milking stool. A common milking stool! What was he thinking of? Taking it back to France?” He held the letter out to Hogan.
    “Damn,” he said mildly, then, more strongly, “God damn!” He waved his aides away, leaving him alone with Hogan. "The more I learn about His Most Catholic
    Majesty King Ferdinand VII, Hogan, the more I become convinced that he should have been drowned at birth."
    Hogan smiled. “The recognized method, my Lord, is smothering.”
    “Is it indeed?”
    “It is indeed, my Lord, and no one's ever the wiser. The mother simply explains how she rolled over in her sleep and trapped the blessed little creature beneath her body and thus, the holy church explains, another precious angel is born.”
    “In my family,” the General said, “unwanted children get posted into the army.”
    “It has much the same effect, my Lord, except in the matter of angels.”
    Wellington gave a brief laugh, then gestured with the letter. “So how did this reach us?”
    “The usual way, my Lord. Smuggled out of Valençay by Ferdinand's servants and brought south to the Pyrenees where it was given to partisans for forwarding to us.”
    “With a copy to London, eh? Any chance of intercepting the London copy?”
    “Alas, sir, gone these two weeks. Probably there already.”
    “Hell, damn and hell again. Damn!” Wellington stared gloomily at the bridge where a sling cart was salvaging the fallen barrel of a dismounted French cannon. “So what to do, eh, Hogan? What to do?”
    The problem was simple enough. The letter, copied to the Prince Regent in
    London, had come from the exiled King Ferdinand of Spain who was now a prisoner of Napoleon in the French château at Valençay. The letter was pleased to announce that His Most Catholic Majesty, in a spirit of cooperation with his cousin of England and in his great desire to drive the French invader from the sacred soil of his kingdom, had directed the Real Companïa Irlandesa of
    His Most Catholic Majesty's household guard to attach itself to His Britannic
    Majesty's forces under the command of the Viscount Wellington. Which gesture, though it sounded generous, was not to the Viscount Wellington's taste. He did not need a stray company of royal palace guards. A battalion of trained infantry with full fighting equipment might have been of some service, but a company of ceremonial troops was about as much use to the Viscount Wellington as a choir of psalm-singing eunuchs.
    “And they've already arrived,” Hogan said mildly.
    “They've what?” Wellington's question could be heard a hundred yards away where a dog, thinking it was being reproved, slunk away from some fly- blackened guts that trailed from the eviscerated body of a French artillery officer. “Where are they?” Wellington asked fiercely.
    “Somewhere on the Tagus, my Lord, being barged towards us.”
    “How the hell did they get here?”
    “According to my correspondent, my Lord, by ship. Our ships.” Hogan put a pinch of snuff on his left hand, then sniffed the powder up each nostril. He paused for a second, his eyes suddenly streaming, then sneezed. His horse's ears flicked back at the noise. “The commander of the Real Companïa Irlandesa claims he marched his men to Spain's east coast, my Lord,” Hogan went on,
    “then took ship to Menorca where our Royal Navy collected them.”
    Wellington snorted his derision.