JК
Sharpes Havoc :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 222 из 242Hogan’s mule baulked at the cold, fast water and the Captain proposed abandoning the animal, but then Javali smacked the beast hard across the face and, while it was still blinking, picked it up and carried itbodily through the wide stream. The riflemen cheered the display of strength while the mule, safe on the opposite bank, snapped its yellow teeth at the goatherd who simply smacked it again. „Useful lad, that,” Harper said approvingly. The big Irish Sergeant was soaked to the skin and as cold and tired as any of the other men, but he seemed to relish the hardship. „It’s no worse than herding back home,” he maintained as they trudged on. „I remember once my uncle was taking a flock of mutton, prime meat the lot of them, walking them on the hoof to Belfast and half the buggers ran like shite when we’d not even got to Letterkenny! Jesus, all that money gone to waste.”
„Did you get them back?” Perkins asked.
„You’re joking, lad. I searched half the bloody night and all I got was a clip round the ear from my uncle. Mind you, it was his fault, he’d never herded so much as a rabbit before and didn’t know one end of a sheep from the other, but he was told there was good cash for mutton in Belfast so he stole the flock off a skinflint in Colcarney and set off to make his fortune.”
„Do you have wolves in Ireland?” Vicente wanted to know.
„In red coats,” Harper said, and saw Sharpe scowl. „My grandfather now,” he went on hurriedly, „claimed to see a pack of them at Derrynagrial. Big, they were, he said, and with red eyes and teeth like graveyard stones and he told my grandmother that they chased him all the way to the Glenleheel bridge, but he was a drunk. Jesus, he could soak the stuff up.”
Javali wanted to know what they were talking about and immediately had his own tales of wolves attacking his goats and how he had fought one with nothing but a stick and a sharp-edged stone, and then he claimed to have raised a wolf cub and told how the village priest had insisted on killing it because the devil lived in wolves, and Sergeant Macedo said that was true and described how a sentry at Almeida had been eaten by wolves one cold winter’s night.
„Do you have wolves in England?” Vicente asked Sharpe.
„Only lawyers.”
„Richard!” Hogan chided him.
They were going north now. The road that the French would use from Ponte Nova to the Spanish frontier twisted into the hills until it met another tributary of the Cavado, the Misarella, and the Saltador bridge crossed the upper reaches of that river. Sharpe would rather have gone down to the road and marched ahead of the French, but Hogan would not hear of it.
„Did you get them back?” Perkins asked.
„You’re joking, lad. I searched half the bloody night and all I got was a clip round the ear from my uncle. Mind you, it was his fault, he’d never herded so much as a rabbit before and didn’t know one end of a sheep from the other, but he was told there was good cash for mutton in Belfast so he stole the flock off a skinflint in Colcarney and set off to make his fortune.”
„Do you have wolves in Ireland?” Vicente wanted to know.
„In red coats,” Harper said, and saw Sharpe scowl. „My grandfather now,” he went on hurriedly, „claimed to see a pack of them at Derrynagrial. Big, they were, he said, and with red eyes and teeth like graveyard stones and he told my grandmother that they chased him all the way to the Glenleheel bridge, but he was a drunk. Jesus, he could soak the stuff up.”
Javali wanted to know what they were talking about and immediately had his own tales of wolves attacking his goats and how he had fought one with nothing but a stick and a sharp-edged stone, and then he claimed to have raised a wolf cub and told how the village priest had insisted on killing it because the devil lived in wolves, and Sergeant Macedo said that was true and described how a sentry at Almeida had been eaten by wolves one cold winter’s night.
„Do you have wolves in England?” Vicente asked Sharpe.
„Only lawyers.”
„Richard!” Hogan chided him.
They were going north now. The road that the French would use from Ponte Nova to the Spanish frontier twisted into the hills until it met another tributary of the Cavado, the Misarella, and the Saltador bridge crossed the upper reaches of that river. Sharpe would rather have gone down to the road and marched ahead of the French, but Hogan would not hear of it.