Sharpe's Eagle Read Free Page B

welcomed by Wellesley.
    "Is that him?" He pointed to a portly man riding a grey horse in the centre of the

Battalion.
    Hogan nodded. "That is Sir Henry Simmerson, whom God preserve or preferably not."
    Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson had a red face lined with purple veins and pendulous

with jowls. His eyes, at the distance Sharpe was seeing them, seemed small and red, and on either

side of the suspicious, questing face there sprung prominent ears that looked like the

protrud-ing trunnions either side of a cannon barrel. He looked, Sharpe thought, like a pig on

horseback. "I've not heard of the man."
    "That's not surprising. He's done nothing." Hogan was scornful. "Landed money, in Parliament

for Paglesham, justice of the peace and, God help us, a Militia Colonel." Hogan seemed surprised

by his own lack of charity. "He means well. He won't be content till those lads are the best

damned Battalion in the army but I think the man has a terrible shock coming when he finds the

difference be-tween us and the Militia."
    Like other Regular officers Hogan had little time for the Militia, Britain's second army. It

was used exclusively within Britain itself, never had to fight, never went hungry, never slept in

an open field beneath a cloudburst, yet it paraded with a glorious pomp and

self-importance.
    Hogan laughed. "Mustn't complain. We're lucky to have Sir Henry."
    "Lucky?" Sharpe looked at the greying Engineer.
    "Oh, yes. Sir Henry only arrived in Abrantes yesterday but he tells us he's a great expert on

war. The man's not yet seen a Frenchman but he's lectured the General on how to beat them!" Hogan

laughed and shook his head. "Maybe he'll learn. One battle could take the starch out of

him."
    Sharpe looked at the companies marching steadily through the square like automatons. The brass

badges on their shakoes reflected the sun but the faces beneath the brilliance were

expressionless. Sharpe loved the army, it was his home, the refuge that an orphan had needed

sixteen years before, but he liked it most of all because it gave him, in a clumsy way, the

opportunity to prove again and again that he was valued. He could chafe against the rich and the

privileged but he acknowledged that the army had taken him from the gutter and put an officer's

sash round his waist and Sharpe could think of no other job that would offer a low-born bastard

on the run from the law the chance of rank and responsibility. But Sharpe had also been lucky. In

sixteen years he had rarely stopped fighting, and it had been his fortune that the battles in

Flanders, India and Portugal had called for men like himself who reacted to danger the way a

gambler reacted to a deck of cards. Sharpe suspected he would hate the peacetime army, with its

church parades and pointless drills, its petty jealousies and endless polish, and in the South

Essex he saw the peacetime army he did not want. "I suppose he's a flogger?"
    Hogan grimaced. "Floggings, punishment parades, extra drills. You name it and Sir Henry uses

it. He will have, he says, only the best. And they are. What do you think of them?"
    Sharpe laughed grimly. "God keep me from the South Essex. That's not too much to ask, is

it?"
    Hogan smiled. "I'm afraid it is."
    Sharpe looked at him, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Hogan shrugged. "I told you there was

more. If a Spanish Regiment marches to Valdelacasa then Sir Arthur feels, for the sake of

diplomacy, that a British one should go as well. Show the flag; that kind of thing." He glanced

at the polished ranks and back to Sharpe. "Sir Henry Simmerson and his fine men are going with

us."
    Sharpe groaned. "You mean we have to take orders from him?"
    Hogan pursed his lips. "Not exactly. Strictly speaking you will take your orders from me." He

had spoken primly, like a lawyer, and Sharpe glanced at him curiously. There could be only one

reason why Wellesley had subordinated Sharpe and his Riflemen