Free Sharpe 12 - Sharpe's Battle by Bernard Cornwell Page B

don't want his bloody Royal Company here, but we can't tell them to bugger off because it wouldn't be diplomatic, so your job is to make them go away voluntarily. Oh!
    Sorry now," he apologized because the button had come away in his fingers.
    “The buggers are up to no good, Richard, and we have to find a diplomatic way of getting rid of them, so whatever you can do to upset them, do it, and rely on Runciman the Rotund to smooth things over so they don't think we're being deliberately rude.” Hogan smiled. “They'll just blame you for not being a gentleman.”
    “But I'm not, am I?”
    “As it happens, you are, it's one of your faults, but let's not worry about that now. Just get rid of Kiely for me, Richard, with all his merry men. Make them cringe! Make them suffer! But above all, Richard, please, please make the bastards go away.”
    The Real Companïa Irlandesa might be called a company, but in fact it was a small battalion, one of the five that made up the household guard of Spain's royalty. Three hundred and four guardsmen had been on the company's books when it had last served in the Escorial Palace outside Madrid, but the imprisonment of Spain's king and benign neglect by the occupying French had reduced its ranks, and the journey by sea around Spain to join the British army had thinned the files even more, so that by the time the Real Companïa Irlandesa paraded on the outskirts of Vilar Formoso there were a mere one hundred and sixty-three men left. The one hundred and sixty-three men were accompanied by thirteen officers, a chaplain, eighty-nine wives, seventy-four children, sixteen servants, twenty-two horses, a dozen mules, “and one mistress,” Hogan told Sharpe.
    “One mistress?” Sharpe asked in disbelief.
    “There's probably a score of mistresses,” Hogan said, "two score! A walking brothel, in all likelihood, but his Lordship tells me we have to arrange accommodation suitable for himself and a lady friend. Not that she's here yet, you understand, but his Lordship tells me she's coming. The Dona Juanita de
    Elia is supposed to charm her way across the enemy lines in order to warm his
    Lordship's bed and if she's the same Juanita de Elia that I've heard about then she's well practised in bed warming. You know what they say of her? That she collects a uniform from the regiment of every man she sleeps with!" Hogan chuckled.
    “If she crosses the lines here,” Sharpe said, “she'll be damned lucky to escape the Loup Brigade.”
    “How the hell do you know about Loup?” Hogan asked instantly. For most of the time the Irishman was a genial and witty soul, but Sharpe knew the bonhomie disguised a very keen mind and the tone of the question was a sudden baring of that steel.
    Yet Hogan was also a friend and for a split second Sharpe was tempted to confess how he had met the Brigadier and illegally executed two of his grey- uniformed soldiers, but then decided that was a deed best forgotten. “Everyone knows about Loup here,” he answered instead. “You can't spend a day on this frontier without hearing about Loup.”
    “That's true enough,” Hogan admitted, his suspicions allayed. “But don't be tempted to inquire further, Richard. He's a bad boy. Let me worry about Loup while you worry about that shambles.” Hogan and Sharpe, followed by the riflemen, had turned a corner to see the Real Companïa Irlandesa slouching in parade order on a patch of waste land opposite a half-finished church. “Our new allies,” Hogan said sourly, “believe it or not, in fatigue dress.”
    Fatigue dress was meant to be a soldier's duty uniform for everyday wear, but the fatigue uniform of the Real Companïa Irlandesa was much gaudier and smarter than the full dress finery of most British line battalions. The guardsmen wore short red jackets with black-edged, gilt-fringed swallowtails behind. The same gold-trimmed black cord edged their buttonholes and collars, while the facings, cuffs and turnbacks of their