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The Sharpe Fan Fictions of A Lady.

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Bernard Cornwell’s

William Lawford Home from Spain



This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

William Lawford Home from Spain. Copyright © 2025 by A Lady

DEDICATIONS William Lawford Home from Spain is for Sable Crow who supports our fanfiction with her website SharpeTales.net.

And

Bernard Cornwell who brought Richard Sharpe into our world.

William Lawford Home from Spain

A Novel by “A Lady” Based on Characters created by Bernard Cornwell Chapter 2






March, 1812

Durford, England



In the event, Windham turned out to be a jovial fellow. At any other time I should have been delighted to meet him. As I said, I cannot claim that I knew Windham – I do not think that we had ever been introduced – and my only knowledge of him, his temperament, his intentions regarding the deployment of the officers, established and newly-commissioned, of the South Essex – were derived from the letter which he had written to me in advance of his arrival, the tone of which had been brisk and businesslike and polite, and I had expected to meet a man whose demeanour reflected this – but on this occasion he chose to greet me in the most cordial manner, as if we had been old friends – indeed, as if he wished to continue a conversation which we had been compelled to leave off some short time ago, and that now he meant to take up again.

I had been hoping to keep things as formal and as concise as possible on account of my continuing in a state of health which was far from good; I felt weary all the time (my sleep was broken nightly by dreadful dreams - often of my captivity in Seringapatam - usually I remembered little of these in the morning beyond a general sense of horror and fear and darkness – at the time my greatest fear whilst we were in the dungeon was that the jettis would be sent for and my uncle and I would be made to watch whilst with their bare hands they twisted Richard’s head through one hundred and eighty degrees, or drove a six-inch nail into his skull; that did not happen, of course, but I still dreamed of it with monotonous regularity.

There was only one other dream that I ever vividly recalled, another recurring one, that terrible one in which I re-lived the sight of Lieutenant George Davison’s head exploding and disappearing in a shower of blood, brain and bone as it had been struck by an eight-pound round-shot on its third graze as he had stood next to me, in Flanders – that will be with me to the day I die - but my state of continual fatigue and tendency to fall into a doze as I read in my arm-chair in the afternoons were evidence of this, and the constant phantom movements of my lost arm, together with random attacks of intense pain in that limb which was no longer there, conspired with these to give me little rest) and in low spirits and simply wanted to keep this interview as short and matter-of-fact as possible: but he seemed determined upon expansive amiability that morning, almost as if he were the host, comfortably at home, and I were visiting him, which I found irksome.

On the way to the drawing-room I had chanced to catch sight of myself in a glass, clad in civilian clothes which in addition to being long-outmoded no longer fitted me properly (I had lost weight in the Peninsula prior to Ciudad Rodrigo, and since that disaster, and the repeated attentions of the surgeons as they attempted to resolve the persistent problems with the stump, and fever, I had lost even more), pinned sleeve, pinched and haggard features, and a hobbling gait on account of an embarrassing mishap in the library several days earlier – and it had been born in upon me that, in truth, I was no longer in command of what had been for two and a half years my Regiment – the South Essex – the first of all the British Regiments to take an Eagle and who therefore wore the image of the chained imperial bird proudly upon their brass shako-plates (my innovation;7 I paid to have them made, seven-hundred-odd of them, in the first instance, and then another seven hundred when it was decided to establish a second Battalion – I should have invoiced Simmerson for those, once I had found out what had been going on! – vanity, thy name is Lawford! although of course it should have been Fitz-Simons).

FOOTNOTES

7 This was actually a masterstroke of psychology on Lawford’s part. After Wellington had sent him to oust Simmerson and assume command of the South Essex in the middle of a battle, Lawford found that he had inherited a body of beaten men, who, prior to Talavera, had been reduced to the lowly status of a battalion of detachments. They had been given a mocking nick-name – the Wide-Awake Boys - by their peers in other Regiments, for being a dozy bunch of yokels who had lost the King’s Colour on their first outing. They had been demoralised and humiliated and had seemed to Lawford to be more afraid of their own officers (with good reason) than they were of the French. In having the Chained-Eagle shako plates made, at his own expense (using some of the legacy which he had received from his mother’s estate), to be worn by each of the men, Lawford made it so that the Wide-Awake Boys now felt that they could own that jibing label, for they all now partook of the glory represented by the capture of the French standard by Lieutenant Sharpe and Sergeant Harper. It was noted by the rest of Wellington’s army that after this, the men of the South Essex quickly regained their pride and self-respect and were able to go forward into the rest of the Peninsular Campaign with renewed confidence in themselves, and in their new Colonel. Ed.



Windham was; and for the moment I felt the knowledge that I was nobody now, to be addressed as Colonel only by courtesy, on a Lieutenant-Colonel’s half-pay, without a position, no longer at the centre of Battalion bustle, and missing the gay ebullience of the lively young officers (especially, it must be said, I missed the handsome ones – no harm in looking, I used to tell myself, conveniently choosing not to remember what had resulted from my furtive glances at Richard Sharpe a dozen years and more before - although none below the rank of Captain; no nineteen-year-old Lieutenants still with the bloom of youth upon their cheeks – I should have disgusted even myself!) hit me with full force, and that I was moreover occupying a house which, however fine, was not and never would be mine, and from which my justifiably dissatisfied wife had fled, the intelligence of which had reach me upon the very morning of the catastrophe which had effectively removed my purpose in life and the meaning of my existence at the very moment in which it had removed my arm.

Colonel Windham was that very day continuing his journey down to Portsmouth to embark at once for the Peninsula, and he was wearing his full Regimentals, the sight of which as I entered the room gave me a great pang at my heart. He was a tall man who must once have cut quite an impressive figure, and I could see that he had been handsome; but the features of his face were now puffy, his complexion florid, and he was running to fat. His hair was mostly grey, although that was a point in his favour, I thought, having discovered in myself whilst in Dublin a liking for older men (so long as they had taken pains to ensure that they were well-preserved). Indeed, he reminded me a little of Colonel Hargreaves, except that James had taken care to look after himself properly: not to eat or drink to excess, and to take exercise and keep in trim, in defiance of the years.

I suppose Windham must have been between fifty and sixty years of age, although his high colour and excess poundage made him appear older and gave him a distinctly grandfatherly air. I was just reflecting on how much better the scarlet coat and the gold lace and the crimson sash, the snugly-fitted spotless white breeches and the gold-tassled Hessian boots had suited me, and how I had worn the ensemble with a certain degree of panache and élan, and even, dare I say it, with an elegant yet self-deprecating not-quite-swagger which had been apt to draw all eyes upon myself (as at the breach at Rodrigo; seized with the certainty that I would be killed that night I had arrayed myself carefully in my very best, determined that, if I had to die, I should at least die looking like what Richard used to call, although I suspect with some element of irony, a proper officer, and hopefully behaving at least a little like one) – unlike Windham, who just looked over-dressed and vaguely, lumpishly, uncomfortable, like a trussed and gilded sucking-pig – unworthy thought – when he turned from his contemplation of the view through the windows across the nearer park to the distant woods, and with a beaming smile strode forward to greet me.

“Lawford!” he said, holding out his hand, “How are you, how are you? You are lame, I see. Another souvenir of Ciudad Rodrigo?”

Yes; very definitely he was Colonel Windham, being cheerfully condescending as if towards a callow subaltern, which I suppose was, inevitably, how he was bound to see me, my being probably a good twenty years younger than himself. He was, I could tell, expecting to hear that I was very well (people always were: sometimes, if I liked them well enough not to want to worry them unduly, I would lie obligingly). I almost decided to invite him to collude with me in the comforting fiction that, actually, I had never felt better, but something perverse in me made me answer instead in a way not calculated to put him at his ease.

“I suffered a recent fall from the library steps here at Durford. It was a foolish accident. I forgot that I – “ I indicated my empty sleeve. “I sprained my foot. It will resolve itself in time. But I am afraid you find me in rather indifferent health, if I am honest, Windham,” I said, taking the proffered paw – the full hand of banemas, as it were, not the languid two fingers I had once condescendingly been offered by Simmerson when I had been introduced to him aboard the vessel bound for Oporto all those years before (really only three years, it then occurred to me, but it felt like a lifetime). I had intended to shake it once and then let it drop, but Windham was one of those hearty people who do not feel as if they have greeted you sufficiently until they have crushed your knuckles as effectively as an operative of Bonaparte’s secret police-force, should one ever be unfortunate enough to find oneself being interrogated by one of those fanatical Jacobin bastards. Eventually Windham restored my hand to me – my only hand, now, I emphasise, and so the reader will understand that it was become uncommon precious to me – and, peering earnestly into my face, he said,

“I’m not surprised, not surprised at all – costive ye look to me, so you do – egg-bound, I’d say – too much egg in the diet does that to a man. Jessica says that, so it must be so.”

“Jessica?” I said, confused, having been for some time now under the impression that it was I who, as Colonel of the South Essex, had been married to a woman so named.

“My wife, d’ye see – splendid woman, splendid - ! Look here – “

Windham sounded the depths of the pocket of his greatcoat, which was draped over the arm of a chair nearby (having apparently declined Wilson’s offer of removing it for storage until his departure – “Fellow was obsequious to a degree – can’t abide obsequiousness in servants!”) extracted an object, and held it out for my inspection. I saw a silver frame which held a half-miniature portrait of a hard-faced woman of dyspeptic appearance who looked, I thought, pretty much egg-bound herself. “Jessica, Mrs Colonel Windham,” he explained. “Greatest blessing of my life, the married state, although I am come but lately to it!”

“I am happy for you, sir.”

“Brian! Call me Brian! Jessica would probably advise a tea-spoon of castor oil, and a mustard plaster applied to the belly daily, a lenitive diet - and these marvellous things – “ producing them from a pocket in his coat-tails with a flourish – “Doctor Foster’s Patent Senna Pills! You may have these if you wish: I carry a generous supply in my baggage, mainly for distribution to other sufferers who might desire to feel the benefit.”

“Colonel – Brian – I thank you for your kindness – most obliged - but I should not wish to take any preparation which might act at cross-purposes to those prescribed to me by my own physician.”

“Ah! So! Just so. Yes, indeed!”

Chastened, Windham restored the bottle of pills to the inner recesses of his tail-coat pocket. Meanwhile I reflected upon the strange circumstance of our both being married to women who went by the name of Jessica, and wondered whether I could detect in this the hand of fate. After a second or two of cogitation I decided that I could not, and that it was merely a distressing and bizarre coincidence that the man who had replaced me in command of the South Essex was happily married to a woman who bore the same name as my own estranged and absconded wife.

“Yes, Jessica, splendid woman, as I say – missing her already,” said Windham, with a profound sigh which was very much open to interpretation, stowing the portrait back in its place in his greatcoat-pocket. “We have not been married half a year, and already she is doing such a great deal of good to our tenants.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” I said, noting his choice of preposition.

“Physics their children herself, you know – visits all the cottages of the estate every Friday without fail to give them their salubrious doses of castor-oil and sulphur! Yes – physics them herself!”

“Remarkable. Their gratitude must know no bounds.”

“They declare themselves most grateful! Indeed they do! And tracts, too, of course.”

“Tracts?”

“To counter all that subversive Methodist nonsense with which they like to fill their heads. They think we don’t notice how they slope away to the Meeting House in Godalming of a Saturday night, although they come to Church of a Sunday morning prompt enough – be evicted, else, just so! – but we do, oh, we do indeed!”

“Of course. She must be the very type and paragon of English womanhood. And occupied in so godly a fashion, she will be better able to support your absence in the Peninsula, abiding your return to find your tenantry in the best of health and, more to the point, perhaps, better able to turn your enterprises to a profit.”

“Just so! Just so! There is the very nub of it! Arthur was not wrong when he wrote me that you were no fool! Speaking of tracts, a fine tract of hunting country you have here! Much in the way of hunting, do you?”

“Once I hunted. Riding is still a great pleasure, or will be, I hope, once I am sufficiently recovered – I do not see why I should not ride regularly once more, although perhaps a little less exuberantly than hitherto. I used to go out with the hunt during the customary season, of course, when I was a young man at home and my fa- the Viscount - still lived. I cannot say, in all honesty, that I enjoyed the pursuit of the fox to any great degree, but I rode to keep our neighbours happy, to persuade them in troubled times that the old ways were being properly kept up. I am sure that I can yet ride, in despite of this – “ carefully indicating my empty sleeve (this time I did not thoughtlessly slap at the stump – I had learned my lesson); there was wishful thinking, for I had not yet attempted any such thing - “and intend to follow the hunt when next it meets, to please our neighbours and to reassure our tenants, who naturally fear change when so much in the world is no longer what it was even twenty years ago; but I shall not attempt the great hedges again. I should probably kill myself. Although some might perhaps consider it preferable that I should end up dead in a ditch with a broken neck, so I could be neatly tidied out of the way at last. That would resolve many difficulties.”

“No, no! You do not think that, surely?”

I bowed, non-committal, and smiled at him in a way intended to convey irony, although Windham did not strike me as a man apt to appreciate that particular rhetorical device.

“William – might I call you William?”

“Please do, since you have already given me leave to address you by your Christian name. Sir, by your letter I see that you come here in order to ask me for information concerning certain of my officers. My former officers, I should say.”

“Quite,” said Windham, evidently chastened by my tone, which, whilst not repulsive, continued cool and businesslike. “Just so. Arthur assures me that you are a great judge of character – show great discernment with the, shall we say – “ (adopting a confidential tone) “ - difficult cases.”

“I do not wish to presume, sir, but I imagine your chief concern is in regard to Brevet-Captain Richard Sharpe.”

“Perceptive indeed! And once again, straight to the heart of the matter! The Nelson principle, eh? Go right at ‘em! Sharpe it is, who is my principal puzzle, haha! and I cannot pretend otherwise. He is risen from the ranks, I gather – I have heard how rough and harsh he has been towards his fellow-officers on occasion – I ran into Henry Simmerson in White’s recently and he told me all about him! Told me Sharpe was an ill-conditioned ruffian, gutter-born and bred – ditch-deliver’d by a drab, he actually said - !” – here Windham paused and looked at me, as if waiting for me to refute the slander, but as I could not, I said nothing; so, looking at me now with some consternation he went on – “with a tongue like a viper, the manners of an hyena and the morals of an alley-cat, although I gathered from other sources that there was bad blood between them and that Simmerson therefore spoke from a position of prejudice. Is Sharpe at least capable of acting polite when the need arises? I am quite anxious to hear that he is, but Simmerson says he ain’t, you see.”

“Not polite. Politeness implies gentle breeding, which he has not. But I have always found him to be civil. He can demonstrate an innate courtesy which does not have its origin in breeding - when he thinks a man merits it.”

“But he is truly not a gentleman?”

From the tone in which Windham said this, I should not have been surprised if he had gone on to say and is it true what I have heard, that he was raised by wolves? I took great care to choose my words before I answered him.

“Not as the world understands it – Brian – although I think I have never met a better natural gentleman.”

“Natural gentleman be damned! How is he in the mess? Can he at least pass for one of us? Does he, how might I put this – does the fellow fit?”

I could not help myself: I laughed.

“Like a foot in a glove, you could say,” I said.

“I see,” said Windham, frowning slightly. “Carries his halberd in his face, then, as the saying goes, does he? Don’t hold with it myself, no matter how good the man is. The Twenty-third have a lot to answer for, raising that fellow up from Sergeant fifty-odd years ago – set a dangerous precedent! Still, that’s the Welsh for you.”

“You do know why Sharpe was raised from the ranks?” I said.

“Some foolhardy thing he did in India, I gather.”

“Lord Wellington did not tell you then – that Sharpe saved his life at the Battle of Assaye in the Year Three?”

“Did he so? Upon my word! He wrote in cryptic hints, is all.”

“His Lordship cannot speak of it – perhaps it is too painful, or perhaps he simply has little recollection of what happened – he was stunned and insensible for some of the time, I believe, whilst Sharpe was fighting off his assailants – I did not see it; I was overseeing patrols of the highway, down in the South – Doondiah Waugh’s bandits – “

“What, like the Rapparees we hear about in Ireland?”

“Somewhat less deadly, at least to the British. But we all heard the story. Embroidered a little, perhaps – not by Sharpe, but you know how things go on in the mess once the port and the brandy have down the rounds - and grown in the telling, as is the way of these things. But Sharpe was very valiant that day, no doubt of it. Wellesley commissioned him, and he was appointed into the Seventy-Fourth, which had lost so many officers in that battle. That did not resolve well for him, but after he came home to England and transferred into the Ninety-Fifth he never looked back.” (I said that with my fingers figuratively crossed behind my back; I knew perfectly well that Richard’s early experiences with the new-formed Rifle Regiment had been fraught with frustration and unhappiness for him, for he – a valiant fighting soldier, a true warrior - had found himself disregarded by his new superiors on account of his lack of birth and education, and they had made a quartermaster of him, banishing him to the stores at Shorncliffe Barracks, then the not uncommon fate of ageing second lieutenants who had been raised from the ranks – I saw for myself how bitterly afflicted he must have been, to a degree which took me quite aback, when I had occasion to discipline him in that way for a time in the autumn of the Year Ten; the 95th had been supposed to be different from the long-established Redcoat regiments: newly-created, innovative, forward-thinking; but in some ways it had proved as hidebound as all that had gone before, and officers risen from the ranks had still been regarded very much as square pegs in round holes.)

“I am grateful to you for making that clear,” said Windham then, thoughtfully, “although it makes it all the harder…”

“The men love him. He understands them, he knows them – because he was one of them, and for a long time – he marched in the ranks for ten years before he exchanged his musket for a bloody sash scavenged from the battlefield, and a notched Heavy Cavalry sword. He might not be one of them any longer, even though he is not, as you put it, one of us, neither; but they would nevertheless gladly follow him into the mouth of Hades if he asked it of them. He gives them confidence. He is as the spirit of the Army to them. He is their talisman, their Colour – their banner and standard – “

“Extraordinary!” said Windham, to that; so I laid it on more thickly yet -

“ - their Palladium, even, if you like - and they will rally to him. When he is with them, they win, you see. Always. That is what matters. Not that he knows how to comport himself at a formal dinner or whether he is proficient in polite small-talk. He does not, and is not, I should say. But he deserves to be – he should be – ought to be - confirmed as Captain of m – of your Light Company.” (Damme, but it hurt me like the pains of Hades to say that last thing!)

“Oh dear! Thing is, William – the dashed thing is – “

Windham now looked very uncomfortable indeed, and not just on account of the strait-jacket stiffness and tightness of his coat.

“Brian?”

“I’ve had this new chap foisted upon me – family obligations – professional pressure – you know the sort of thing – “ (I do, oh, how well I do! thought I at that!) “ - chap called Rymer. Captain Thomas Rymer. Sound fellow, very sound; I was at Harrow with his grandfather. Family has a large estate in Dorset and owns half of Barbados to boot. Your family owns the other half, of course – the boot on the other foot, as it were, haha!” (The poor fellow obviously thought he had again just committed a witticism.) “Hunting man,” he added, somewhat deflated, seeing that I had declined to join him in his mirth.

“Commission bought and paid for, no doubt. He has money: Your Sharpe has none: ergo, Rymer must have the Light Company.”

“That’s the bu- the nub of it again! You are sharp as a razor!” (Occam’s Razor, I thought, to that, thinking of my namesake, although I had always considered that I was not an entity whose existence could be explained very simply - but did not say it aloud – instinct told me that I should most likely have drawn a blank.) “As sharp as your Brevet-Captain Sharpe, indeed, haha! Now, William - I must indeed tell you frankly he has no chance of having the Light Company as things stand at the present. Rymer comes of what the Spaniards would call the true blood – we don’t have Hidalgos in England, but you know what I mean, and besides, we have something at least similar to those Spanish bu– chaps; I mean, you are one yourself – “

Finally I managed to emit something like a laugh. “Boot. Other foot. I am sorry. Slow on the uptake today.” Oddly, it suddenly occurred to me that Windham would have blundered on and made that jest if it had been a leg of which I had been deprived, and not an arm, and that he had avoided that pitfall by merest random chance.

“Hm, well, to mince the matter, I need to make Rymer the Captain of the Light Company, that is the long and short of it: but what to do with you Sharpe, eh?”

“Short of a transfer it will be back to Lieutenant. That will hurt him extremely. I saw him in such a towering sulk when passed over for the captaincy of the Light Company eighteen months since it would have astonished Agamemnon and made him stretch his eyes searching for superlatives. I wished he had kept to his tent, like Achilles, but alas! he did not, and instead went about the camp, fomenting discord. I do not mean that he croaked against me or the other officer in question – “ (in my mind I crossed my fingers again at that; I knew that of course he had, Richard being Richard!) “ - but the men and the Battalion wives (I apply that word loosely) have a soft place for him in their hearts, and they smoked his unhappiness. The situation became quite painful. If he is to find himself in such a bleak place again, you really must seek to persuade him that it will truly be only for a little.”

Poor Windham was puce now. He looked ripe for an apoplexy. It occurs to me that even if he had not been assassinated by that perfidious Frenchman at Salamanca in July, four months after this interview, he might not in any case have lived to see Burgos that September.

“But it will only be for a little! We are up against Badajoz directly I arrive in Spain, it seems! That will be a bloody business, going on form. I’ve been studying the previous to-ings and fro-ings concerning Badajoz, and it strikes me it’s an absolute bugger of a place – ! Sorry, dearest!”

At that, I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh!” exclaimed Windham, looking all at once as guilty as a child caught stealing an extra piece of cake when it foolishly thinks the adults too absorbed in their tedious tea-time conversation to notice. “At home, when I forget myself as to vocabulary, Jessica always reproves me. She mislikes it greatly when I lapse into strong coarse soldierly language. It is a habit I cannot seem to break. I only saw her last this morning, and I am still in the way of apologising for it!” You poor soul, I thought. Aloud, I said,

“You have previously intimated that you have not long been married, sir.”

“Since Christmas. Met her in Bath in September. Maiden aunt of a god-daughter of mine. Somehow everywhere I went alone, if I walked behind a pillar in the Abbey, she would be there – if I loitered in a colonnade by the Baths, there she would be – if I rounded a corner by the Pump Room, she would be there too – and always without a chaperone - after a fifth such meeting over the punch-bowl in the supper room at a public ball, on which occasion my hand inadvertently touched hers – you know how mortifying such – anyway, I thought, for her sake – “

“A fifth such meeting?” I said, just a little sceptically, thinking that matters had now advanced to more than a little beyond the realms of the merely random. Jessica Windham, I thought, was as calculating and cunning a vixen as had ever contrived to leave her umbrella behind in her Bath lodging-house on a morning when rain was prophesied. And sure enough -

“And the very next day, when I was walking in Milsom Street, there was a sudden shower of rain, and I chanced to look up, and there she was, on the other side of the thoroughfare - without an umbrella! What could I do? It was Fate indeed. After that, I thought that I must ask her – for the good of her reputation, you understand – “

“Of course, Brian. Especially given that it was in Bath. If it had been Cheltenham, say, or Harrogate, you might have contrived an escape – but never in Bath. Everyone is watching everyone else there, all the time.” Good God! I was thinking, meanwhile. She took you for a flat, and she was not wrong!

“Excellent woman, though, excellent! I have not looked back!”

I formed the quick impression that he had rather wished that Jessica had, to remain in Bath turned to a pillar of salt,8 a watchful crystalline caryatid addition to that town’s collection of neo-classical statuary, perpetual example to and moral guardian of elderly maiden ladies, as he made good his escape. The poor fellow – was he actually squirming?

FOOTNOTES

8 A reference to Genesis 19:26. In a pendant to the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s wife succumbs to the temptation to look behind as she and her husband flee, to see the fate of the sinful cities, and is turned into a pillar of salt for her disobedience. Ed.


“This recollects me – earlier you referred to the Battalion wives and hinted that they are not all they seem to be?”
“Some of the men are properly married. Most who have women with them are not.”
“You mean the men are – the men are living in – in sin?”
“I should not choose to put it like that.”
“To be honest, neither should I, but Jessica would be most affronted to learn of it. She might even insist on coming out to join me so that she can preach the Good News to them!”
A worried frown appeared then on Windham’s face. My heart went out to him.
“That Good News being that they are all bound for eternal damnation, I suppose,” I said; then, seeing Windham’s expression as it began to dawn upon him that I had impugned his wife’s intentions, I went on,
“Pardon me, Brian; I was being facetious – a besetting fault. In that case, Mrs Colonel Windham must not learn of it,” I said, with a smile which I intended to be conspiratorial. “Put in for a parson – a padre, as the men in the Peninsula have begun to call them. Wellington don’t like ‘em, it is true; but they do very little actual harm, and often not a little good. A few pithy sermons at the drum-head and the right sort of encouragement to the men to make honest women of them would be just as efficacious. Some of the women who follow the drum are nasty puzzles and draggle-tails, it is true, but most of them are decent and honest enough, after their fashion, and do good work in the laundering and cookery line – valuable additions to the camp.”
“But I have kept no secrets from Jessica! I confessed to her concerning my unregenerate past on our wedding-night. She was shocked, but she forgave me, on condition that I should not seek to hide aught from her in the future.”
“I am sure that Mrs Windham will be quite busy enough at home with her brimstone and her tracts. You need not trouble her tender conscience regarding the unorthodox arrangements of the men.”
“Quite so! Just so!” Windham said, after all brightening at the prospect of keeping his Jessica in the dark as far as the mores of the South Essex was concerned. “There will be promotions,” he went on, reverting to the former topic, “although it pains me to say it – for many good men will meet their deaths, no doubt of it. That fortress, William, Badajoz, was designed to be all over a murder-hole; it is lethal in its entirety, and no exaggeration.”
“So I understand,” I said; and now I found that I had ceased to envy Windham his command of what had been still, to me, until then, my Regiment. Badajoz, that sinister brooding blot upon the Spanish landscape, was a killer; we all knew that. It had demonstrated its grim propensity for the awful slaughter of those who would try to take it by storm twice before in the course of the four-year campaign. I recalled that the night before Ciudad Rodrigo I had thought, if I survive this, then next comes Badajoz; and that must be the end of me, for a man’s luck cannot hold forever. At the time I had been convinced that I should not survive to experience Badajoz, however, for I had received a shock to my nerves that morning even before the arrival of Jessica’s letter, when the verse from St Luke – “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee” – had come unbidden to my mind even as I had been shaving myself in my tent, standing before the glass from which it had seemed that a stranger had of a sudden taken the place of my reflection, staring grimly back at me. Mozart had soothed my fainting spirit then, as I sat at the spinet which I had rescued from that abandoned villa on the road from Coimbra as we had made our way towards Wellington’s new fortifications before Lisbon in the autumn of the Year Ten (I preferred to believe that I had rescued it, at any rate). I thought of my friends, who would come up to Badajoz, that place of evil omen, in a month’s time or thereabouts, and instantly my heart was leaden on their account.
“So there will always be places for good officers.”
“But in the meantime Sharpe will smart, and he will kick against the pricks.”
“Ha! Like St Paul!” said Windham, clearly pleased to have smoked the reference.9

FOOTNOTES

9 Acts 9:6. Ed.



“Not all that much like, save as far as determination and resolve are concerned. St Paul was a very difficult man, first in the cause of the Synagogue and then in that of Christ; Sharpe in his own cause. He really can be a very difficult man indeed when he deems that his pride and honour have been slighted.”

“But I do have your assurance that he is a good officer, William? Diligent, quick-witted, resourceful, can take the initiative in a tight corner?”

“He is a Rifleman, Brian. They are trained to be so. Sharpe is a very good officer. He might not have been at first, but he had an excellent tutor in a Colonel of the Spanish army, Don Blas Vivar – you will hear that name once you are in the Peninsula - who gave him an intensive course in how to be an effective leader of men as they undertook a desperate, even hare-brained, mission together. All he needed was a corrective steer, some few simple words of advice, and most of all, to be given confidence in himself and in his own ability to lead. I understand that your hands are tied, but for the Light Company, there is really no better candidate for captain – the trouble is, he knows it only too well! And the men dote upon him, as I have said. Two years ago at Bussaco I tried a substitute Captain for the Light Company, to satisfy family demands, as it appears now you must do also. That proved to be folly. I could have lost many men - the Colours – the battle, even - for that. Sharpe saved me from ignominy by his quick thinking when he could have left me to flounder, and if he had, I should not have blamed him, for I should have deserved it – I had been compelled by circumstances to treat him shabbily. He has a good heart, you see, for all that sometimes his outward manner and appearance suggests that he is something of a cheval-de-frise in human guise. He’s been in England these last few months before Christmas, you know – recruiting for the Wide-Awake Boys – his second such foray - “

“Ah! I meant to ask you – why is the South Essex called that?”

“It was a nick-name, at first meant to be insulting. An ironic reference to the particularly rustic nature of their remote home county, bounded upon three sides by the flood as it is - by the German Ocean to the east and the Thames to the south and the Stour to the north - and then applied in double irony after they proved insufficiently vigilant to prevent the French from running away with their King’s Colour at Valdelacasa. But then, when Sharpe captured the Eagle at Talavera, they began to take pride in it. They wear it as a badge of honour now, so to speak, along with the chained Eagle upon their shako-plates.”

“I see.”

“For all his pride, Sharpe is still surprisingly humble. He does not bridle at being given Sergeants’ work even after all this time, for in some matters indeed he is not haughty. He drummed up a goodly detachment of recruits back in the autumn. They are to rendezvous with you in Elvas later this month. And he does not mind himself and his men being put to labouring work, so long as he is respectfully requested to undertake such work.10 He will set an uncomplaining example to his men if required to dig or forage, so long as he has been asked to do so with politeness. Some of his fellow-officers despise him for that, and say once a peasant, always a peasant, but I have always found that tendency in him, the willingness to serve, to bend his back and get his hands dirty, quite admirable. My late Uncle, an adherent of the Scottish Kirk, would have called that behaviour Christ-like, although I do not think most of my Anglican colleagues would concur, unless they were secret enthusiasts.11”

FOOTNOTES

10 Lawford is probably remembering Private Sharpe of India days. Captain Sharpe of the Peninsular Campaign took a very dim view of himself and his men being set to labouring, as Windham was soon to discover. Ed.

11 Methodists. For a long period of its early history, Methodism existed within Anglicanism, but its adherents incited the suspicions of the Establishment on account of their ‘enthusiasm’ (a fervour which was interpreted as fanaticism). Ed.



Windham was silent for a little, considering. Then an idea seemed to occur to him, and, somewhat bizarrely to my mind, he said,

“This Richard Sharpe – does he hunt?”

I smiled at that: my first instinct had been to gape – how could Sharpe, with his background, possibly ride to hounds? If he had been born a countryman there was a reasonable chance that he might have gone out with the local hunt in the capacity of a servant - but with a great effort I managed to control myself. Just.

“Thomas Rymer hunts foxes,” I said. “Richard Sharpe hunts the King’s enemies. But it seems that is not good enough for the panjandrums at Horse Guards.”

I think my tone made it quite clear that the subject of Sharpe was now concluded. I then let Windham have my considered opinions concerning the other officers whom he had inherited - Major Joseph Forrest, Lieutenant Robert Knowles and Lieutenant Harold Price – all decent, willing, conscientious men, able enough within their limits.

Price tended to drink to excess if left unsupervised, but for the most part he was amiable and competent and knew his duty. He had served me well as adjutant. The other two had no particular talents, as far as I had seen, but performed tolerably well under guidance.

Major Thomas Leroy, I told Windham, was outstanding, and although too much given to certain New World eccentricities, was a fine officer, and even, possibly, in my opinion, a future commander of a Battalion – I saw certain qualities in him which reminded me of Sharpe, I said – meaning Sharpe’s virtues of honour, courage and tenacity, and a white-heat ferocity when cast into the Babylonian furnace12 of vicious hand-to-hand fighting, and an ability to inspire the men with the desire to imitate him even if they could not hope to emulate him - and not the more problematic things about him – Leroy had not a surly nor a rude nor insubordinate fibre in his being; he was a thorough gentleman in nearly all points, almost as if he had been raised an Englishman, and I wished then very much that I could have said the same for Sharpe.

FOOTNOTES

12 A reference to an incident recounted in chapter 3 of the Book of Daniel. Ed.



Major Michael Hogan was, of course, a law unto himself, and whilst he often lurked in the vicinity of the South Essex, having a particular connection with Sharpe and his Riflemen which went back three years to when that small remnant had been orphaned from the Army on their retreat to Vigo with Craufurd’s Light Brigade, he was not part of the Wide-Awakes, being one of Wellington’s foremost intelligencers, although he still hid that particular talent beneath the convenient bushel of his former principal role of engineer.

I also gave Windham a brief of the guerrillero leaders with whom he could expect to have to deal, chief amongst whom was, of course, Sharpe’s lover Comandante Teresa Moreno; at my description of that lady Windham’s shade deepened from puce to purple, and I began to wonder whether I ought to ring the bell and ask for Dr Fazackerley to be summoned from Petersfield, against the possibility that the Colonel was indeed about to suffer a stroke.

It was a long morning: luncheon, a brief tour of the grounds and home park by foot and by carriage (Windham had expressed himself keen to visit the stables and the keepers’ hatcheries – poachers, eh, did I have much trouble with poachers? he wanted to know - Jessica meant to experiment with a new specification of man-trap during his absence (I hoped that Daniel Hagman would not hear about that), and had commissioned the village’s blacksmith to fashion half-a-dozen from the schemas which she had obtained, for which the man had been so grateful - he had nine children and a tenth on the way! - and to see the state of the timber, to compare with his own); farewell; and finally he was on his way the eighteen miles to Portsmouth.

At last! I thought, unworthily, as I stood upon the lower steps before the door of the house at two o’clock that afternoon, waving him off with a feeling of immense relief, a copy of Jessica Windham’s recipe for a linctus which the Colonel had kindly written down from memory on my own note-paper and pressed upon me with his very best, and I did not doubt entirely sincere, wishes for my continuing journey back towards good health, tucked into my coat-pocket.

It was whilst I was standing there that I suddenly noticed that Spring appeared to be breaking out. It did not please me however. I thought, Why? What is the point? Then I reflected that it must have begun to happen during those weeks when I was immured in the library like an anchorite, with the shutters of the library windows closed and the curtains drawn, candles burning all the day, myself huddled on the bed which Mrs Milland had had set up there on my instructions, sent from Spain before my embarkation, seeking oblivion - relief from spiritual misery and from physical pain – sometimes in laudanum, for I confess I had lately begun to resort to that, probably more than was justifiable from a medicinal point of view, seeing as Dr Fazz had prescribed it to me to deal with the pain and sleeplessness, but chiefly in reading.

I confess I had quite forgot the Spring. I looked out across the Park disapprovingly. I missed the winter. I had liked it dark and drear! The host of golden daffodils beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze were superfluous to my requirements. Wordsworth was welcome to them; in fact, at that moment I felt that he could put them where the sun did not shine. I did not want flowers and sunlight and fal-lal-la. But the bloody trees all had that particular green look about them which in my mood that day I found ominous, the green which is that shade of peridot and moss, the almost luminous light yellow-green of reviving nature – all the ones which were not that old oak in the middle of my field of sight, in any event. That stubborn old thing was alone tardy in joining in the foolish annual riot of hope and optimism, and I did not blame him. You and me both, old cock, I said, in my heart. Friend Oak and I, we had liked being dead.

It had been pleasant and comfortable, and safe, because if you are dead no harm can be done to you. They ought just to have let us alone: him standing stark there in the Park and me lying broken on the breach at Ciudad Rodrigo, where, bizarrely, I had felt peaceful and at ease. I should have been happy to die. Only they had not let me.

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Fiction Index | Sharpe Tales Home | William Lawford Home from Spain.Index | Chapter 3

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