By: Bernard Cornwell

Paperback

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A new instalment in the bestselling Sharpe series.

Sharpe's Escape takes place in the summer of 1810, once again in the Peninsular War. The French are mounting their third and most dangerous invasion of Portugal. Captain Richard Sharpe with his company of redcoats and riflemen meets the invaders on the gaunt ridge of Bussaco. But there, despite a stunning British victory, the French are not stopped and the army have to fall back.

Sharpe has made enemies among the Portuguese and during the retreat through Coimbra, he and Sergeant Harper are lured into a trap designed to kill them. With the help of an Englishwoman, Sharpe survives, but is cut off from the army. He has to rejoin his regiment if the command is not to fall to the ambitious Lieutenant Slinbsby. At the Lines of Torres Vedras, the vast defences built to stop the French before Lisbon, Sharpe confronts his enemies in a climactic battle.

About the Author

Bernard Cornwell is the author of the acclaimed Richard Sharpe series, set during the Napoleonic Wars; the Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles, about American Civil War; the Warlord Trilogy, about Arthurian England; and, most recently, Stonehenge 2000 B.C.: A Novel and The Archer's Tale.

Bernard Cornwell worked for BBC TV for seven years, mostly as producer on the Nationwide programme, before taking charge of the Current Affairs department in Northern Ireland. In 1978 he became editor of Thames Television's Thames at Six. Mr. Cornwell lives with his wife on Cape Cod.

'The Richard Sharpe novels are notable for their wonderfully astringent view of history. Sharpe is a man first and a patriot second: he is as likely to pick a fight with one of his own side as charge blindly towards the enemy.' Sunday Telegraph 'No one is better than Bernard Cornwell in describing battles large and small, howitzer fire, cavalry charges or bayonet attacks.' Evening Standard

Chapter One

Mister Sharpe was in a bad mood. A filthy mood. He was looking for trouble in Sergeant Harper's opinion, and Harper was rarely wrong about Captain Sharpe, and Sergeant Harper knew well enough not to engage his Captain in conversation when Sharpe was in such a black temper, but on the other hand Harper liked to live dangerously. 'I see your uniform's been mended, sir,' he said cheerily. Sharpe ignored the comment. He just marched on, climbing the bare Portuguese slope under the searing sun. It was September 1810, almost autumn, yet the heat of late summer hammered the landscape like a furnace. At the top of the hill, another mile or so ahead of Sharpe, stood a barn-like stone building next to a gaunt telegraph station. The station was a black timber scaffolding supporting a high mast from which signaling arms hung motionless in the afternoon's heat.

'It's a rare nice piece of stitching on that jacket,' Harper went on, sounding as though he did not have a care in the world, 'and I can tell you didn't do it yourself. It looks like a woman's work, so it does?' He inflected the last three words as a question.

Sharpe still said nothing. His long, straight-bladed cavalry sword banged against his left thigh as he climbed. He had a rifle slung on his shoulder. An officer was notsupposed to carry a longarm like his men, but Sharpe had once been a private and he was used to carrying a proper gun to war.

'Was it someone you met in Lisbon, now?' Harper persisted.

Sharpe simmered, but pretended he had not heard. His uniform jacket, decently mended as Harper had noticed, was rifle green. He had been a rifleman. No, he still thought of himself as a rifleman, one of the elite men who carried the Baker rifle and wore the dark green instead of the red, but the tides of war had stranded him and a few of his men in a redcoat regiment and now he commanded the light company of the South Essex who were following him up the hill. Most wore the red jackets of the British infantry and carried smoothbore muskets, but a handful, like Sergeant Harper, still kept their old green jackets and fought with the rifle.

'So who was she?' Harper finally asked.

'Sergeant Harper,' Sharpe was finally goaded into speaking, 'if you want bloody trouble then keep bloody talking.'

'Yes, sir,' Harper said, grinning. He was an Ulsterman, a Catholic and a sergeant, and as such he was not supposed to be friends with an Englishman, a heathen and an officer, but he was. He liked Sharpe and knew Sharpe liked him, though he was wise enough not to say another word. Instead he whistled the opening bars of the song 'I Would That the Wars Were All Done.'

Sharpe inevitably thought of the words that accompanied the tune; 'In the meadow one morning, all pearly with dew, a fair pretty maiden plucked violets so blue,' and Harper's delicate insolence forced him to laugh aloud. He then swore at the Sergeant, who was grinning with triumph. 'It was Josefina,' Sharpe admitted.

'Miss Josefina now! How is she?'

'She's well enough,' Sharpe said vaguely.

'I'm glad to hear that,' Harper said with genuine feeling. 'So you took tea with her, did you, sir?'

'I took bloody tea with her, Sergeant, yes.'

'Of course you did, sir,' Harper said. He walked a few paces in silence, then decided to try his luck again. 'And I thought you were sweet on Miss Teresa, sir?'

'Miss Teresa?' Sharpe said, as though the name were quite unknown to him, though in the last few weeks he had hardly stopped thinking about the hawk-faced girl who rode across the frontier in Spain with the partisan forces. He glanced at the Sergeant, who had a look of placid innocence on his broad face. 'I like Teresa well enough,' Sharpe went on defensively, 'but I don't even know if I'll ever see her again!'

'But you'd like to,' Harper pointed out.

'Of course I would! But so what? There are girls you'd like to see again, but you don't behave like a bloody saint waiting for them, do you?'

'True enough,' Harper admitted. 'And I can see why you didn't want to come back to us, sir. There you were, drinking tea while Miss Josefina's sewing, and a fine time the two of you must have been having.'

'I didn't want to come back,' Sharpe said harshly, 'because I was promised a month's bloody leave. A month! And they gave me a week!'

Harper was not in the least sympathetic. The month's leave was supposed to be Sharpe's reward for bringing back a hoard of gold from behind enemy lines, but the whole of the light company had been on that jaunt and no one had suggested that the rest of them be given a month off. On the other hand Harper could well understand Sharpe's moroseness, for the thought of losing a whole month in Josefina's bed would make even a bishop hit the gin.

'One bloody week,' Sharpe snarled, 'bastard bloody army!' He stepped aside from the path and waited for the company to close up. In truth his foul mood had little to do with his truncated leave, but he could not admit to Harper what was really causing it. He stared back down the column, seeking out the figure of Lieutenant Slingsby. That was the problem. Lieutenant bloody Cornelius bloody Slingsby.

As the company reached Sharpe they sat beside the path. Sharpe commanded fifty-four rank and file now, thanks to a draft from England, and those newly arrived men stood out because they had bright-red coats. The uniforms of the other men had paled under the sun and were so liberally patched with brown Portuguese cloth that, from a distance, they looked more like tramps than soldiers. Slingsby, of course, had objected to that ...

ISBN: 9780007120147
ISBN-10: 0007120141
Series: Sharpe's
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 384
Published: January 2005
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Dimensions (cm): 17.9 x 11.0  x 2.9
Weight (kg): 0.234