Sharpes Escape   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

"Of course it wasn't you," Knowles said. He could be pedantically obvious at times.

Sharpe grinned. "So Slingsby was recruited to make her respectable?"

"Exactly. He's not from the topmost drawer, of course, but his family is more than acceptable. His father's a rector somewhere on the Essex coast, I believe, but they're not wealthy, and so Lawford's family rewarded Slingsby with a commission in the 55th, with a promise to exchange into the South Essex as soon as there was a vacancy. Which there was when poor Herrold died."

"Herrold?"

"Number three company," Knowles said, "arrived on a Monday, caught fever on Tuesday and was dead by Friday."

"So the idea," Sharpe said, watching a French gun battery being dragged along the track by the stream below, "is that bloody Slingsby gets quick promotion so that he's a worthy husband for the woman what couldn't keep her knees together."

"I wouldn't say that," Knowles said indignantly, then thought for a second. "Well, yes, I would say that. But the Colonel wants him to do well. After all, Slingsby did the family a favor and now they're trying to do one back."

"By giving him my bloody job," Sharpe said.

"Don't be absurd, Richard."

"Why else is the bugger here? They move you out of the way, give the bastard a horse and hope to God the French kill me." He fell silent, not only because he had said too much, but because Patrick Harper was approaching.

The big Sergeant greeted Knowles cheerfully. "We miss you, sir, we do."

"I can say the same, Sergeant," Knowles responded with real pleasure. "You're well?"

"Still breathing, sir, and that's what counts." Harper turned to look down into the valley. "Look at those daft bastards, just lining up to be murdered."

"They'll take one look at this hill," Sharpe said, "and find another road."

Yet there was no sign that the French would take that good advice for the blue-uniformed battalions still marched steadily from the east and French gun batteries, dust flying from their big wheels, continued to arrive at the lower villages. Some French officers rode to the top of a spur which jutted east from the ridge and gazed through their telescopes at the few British and Portuguese officers visible where the better road crossed the ridge top. That road, the farther north of the two, zigzagged up the slope, climbing at first between gorse and heather, then cutting through vineyards beneath the small village perched on the slope.