Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe’s Escape, Sharpe’s Fury, Sharpe’s Battle - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 14

The village of Sula, which was perched on the eastward slope of the ridge very close to where the northernmost road crossed the summit, was a small and unremarkable place. The houses were cramped, the dungheaps large, and for a long time the village had not even possessed a church, which had meant that a priest must be fetched from Moura, at the ridge’s foot, or else a friar summoned from the monastery, to give extreme unction to the dying, but the sacraments had usually arrived too late and so the dead of Sula had gone to their long darkness unshriven, which was why the local people liked to claim that the tiny hamlet was haunted by spectres.

On Thursday, 27th September 1810, the village was haunted by skirmishers. The whole first battalion of the 95th Rifles were in and around the hamlet, and with them were the 3rd Cazadores, many of whom were also armed with the Baker rifle, which meant that more than a thousand skirmishers in green and brown opened fire on the two advancing French columns, which had deployed almost as many skirmishers themselves, but the French had muskets and were opposed by rifles, and so the voltigeurs were the first to die in the small walled paddocks and terraced vineyards beneath the village. The sound of the fight was like dry brush burning, an unending crackle of muskets and rifles, which was augmented by the bass notes of the artillery on the crest that fired shell and shrapnel over the Portuguese and British skirmishers to tear great holes in the two columns struggling up the slope behind the voltigeurs. To the French officers in the column, scanning the ridge above, it seemed they were opposed only by skirmishers and artillery. The artillery had been placed on a ledge beyond the village and just below the skyline, and near the guns was a scatter of horsemen who watched from beside the white-painted stump of the windmill’s tower. The artillery was hurting the columns, smashing round shot through tight ranks and exploding shells above the files, but two batteries could never stop these great columns. The horsemen by the mill were no danger. There were only four or five riders visible when the cannon smoke thinned, and all wore cocked hats, which meant they were not cavalrymen, so it seemed that the British and Portuguese skirmishers, supported by cannon, were supposed to defeat the attack. Which meant the French must win, for there were no redcoats in sight, no damned lines to envelop a column with volley fire. The drummers beat the pas de charge and the men gave their war cry, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ One of the two columns divided into two smaller units to negotiate an outcrop of rock, then rejoined on the road as two shells exploded right over their front ranks. A dozen men were thrown down, the dusty road was suddenly red and sergeants dragged the dead and wounded aside so that the ranks behind would not be obstructed. Ahead of the column the sound of the skirmishing grew in intensity as the voltigeurs closed the range and opened on the riflemen with their muskets. There were so many skirmishers now that the noise of their battle was a continuous crackling. Smoke drifted off the hillside. ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ the French shouted and the first riflemen began picking at the columns’ front ranks. A bullet smacked an Eagle, ripping off the tip of a wing, and an officer went down in the front rank, gasping with pain as the files tramped round him. The voltigeurs, outranged by the rifles, were being driven back onto the columns and so Marshal Ney, who commanded this attack, ordered that more companies were to deploy as skirmishers to drive the riflemen and cazadores back up the slope.

The drummers kept up their monotonous rhythm. A round of shrapnel, designed to burst in the air and slam its load of bullets down and forward, exploded above the right-hand column and the drums momentarily ceased as a dozen boys went down and the men behind were spattered with their blood. ‘Close up!’ a sergeant shouted and a shell banged behind him and a hat went spiralling up in the air and fell on the road with a heavy thump because half the man’s head was still inside. A drummer boy, both legs broken and his belly slit by shell fragments, sat and kept up his drumming as the files went past him. The men patted his head for luck, leaving him to die among the vines.

Ahead of the columns the new French skirmishers deployed and their officers shouted them up the hill to close the range and so swamp the hated greenjackets with musket fire. The Baker rifle was a killer, but a slow one. To fire it accurately a man was supposed to wrap each ball in a greased leather patch, then ram it down on the charge, and ramming a patched bullet was hard work and made a rifle slow to load. A man could shoot a musket three times while a rifleman reloaded. Time could be saved by forgetting the patch, but then the ball did not grip the seven lands and grooves spiralling inside the barrel and the weapon became little more accurate than a musket. The reinforced voltigeurs climbed and the sheer weight of their fire forced the riflemen and cazadores back, then more Portuguese skirmishers joined the fight, the whole of the 1st cazadores, but the French countered with three more companies of blue-jacketed troops who ran out of the columns and broke down the vines to climb up to where the powder smoke dotted the hillside. Their muskets added more smoke and their bullets pressed the brown-and green-jacketed men back. A rifleman, shot in the lungs, was draped over one of the chestnut stakes holding the vines and a voltigeur drew his bayonet and stabbed the wounded man until he stopped twitching, then searched his pockets for coins or plunder. A sergeant pushed the voltigeur away from the corpse. ‘Kill the others first!’ he shouted. ‘Get uphill!’ The French fire was overwhelming now, a drenching of lead, and the cazadores and riflemen scrambled up to the village itself where they took cover behind low stone walls or in the windows of the small cottages from which shards of broken tiles cascaded as the roofs were spattered by French musketry and by the fragments of shell casing fired by the French guns in the valley. The voltigeurs were shouting, encouraging each other, advancing in rushes, pointing out targets. ‘Sauterelle! Sauterelle!’ a sergeant shouted, pointing at a rifleman of the 95th. The shout meant ‘grasshopper’, the French nickname for the green pests who dodged and shot, moved and reloaded, shot and moved again. A dozen muskets fired at the man who vanished in an alley as the tile pieces clattered behind him.

The French skirmishers were all about the village’s eastern margin, enveloping it in musketry, and small groups ran up to the houses and fired at shadows in the smoke. The road was blocked with handcarts where it entered the village, but a company of French troops charged the makeshift barricade which spat smoke and flame as rifles fired from behind the carts. Three Frenchmen went down, but the rest reached the obstacle and fired at the greenjackets. A shell exploded overhead, driving down two more Frenchmen and shattering tiles on a roof. The first handcart was pulled away and the French poured through the gap. Rifles and muskets spat at them from windows and doors. More voltigeurs climbed garden walls or charged into alleyways and over dungheaps. British, Portuguese and French shells were exploding among the houses, smashing walls and filling the narrow lanes with smoke and with shrieking shards of metal and broken tile, but the voltigeurs outnumbered the riflemen and the cazadores and, because they were inside the village, the rifles lost the advantage of long-range accuracy, and the blue-coated men pushed forward, advancing group by group, clearing houses and gardens. The road was cleared as the last carts were dragged away. The column was close to the village now and the voltigeurs were hunting the last cazadores and riflemen from the upper houses. One cazador, trapped in an alley, swung his unloaded musket like a club and put down two Frenchmen before a third lunged a bayonet into his belly. The village had been abandoned by its inhabitants and the voltigeurs plundered the small houses, taking whatever small possessions the villagers had left in their haste to leave. One man fought another for possession of a wooden bucket, a thing not worth a sou, and both died when cazadores shot them through a window.

The smoke from the British guns made leprous clouds on the ridge top as the columns reached the village. The shells banged at the columns, but the files closed up and the men marched on and the drummers worked their sticks, pausing only so that the shout of ‘Vive l’Empereur’ could tell Marshal Masséna, down in the valley where the French gunners hammered their own shells up towards the ridge’s crest, that the attack continued.

The windmill on the ledge below the crest lay a third of a mile from the village. The voltigeurs cleared the last enemy skirmishers from Sula’s western edge, sending them scurrying up the more open ground that lay between the village and the mill. One column skirted the village, pushing down fences and clambering over two stone walls, but the other marched right through Sula’s centre. At least half a dozen roofs were burning, their rafters set alight by shells. Another shell exploded in the heart of the main street, flinging aside half a dozen infantrymen in smoke, blood and flame, and smearing the whitewashed walls of the houses with spatters of blood. ‘Close up!’ the sergeants shouted. ‘Close up!’ The drums echoed from the bloodied walls, while up on the ridge the British officers heard the rousing cheer, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ The voltigeurs were climbing ever closer, and were now so thick on the ground that their musketry was almost as dense as volley fire. The British and Portuguese skirmishers had vanished, gone northwards into some trees that crowned the northern crest, and all that seemed to be ahead of the French was the ledge where the horsemen stood close to the mill. Bullets began smacking against the mill’s white-painted stones. One of the artillery batteries was near the mill and its smoke helped to hide the horsemen, among whom was a small, scowling, black-haired, dark-faced man who was perched atop an oversize saddle on a horse that seemed much too big for him. He stared indignantly at the French as if their very presence offended him. Musket balls hummed past him, but he ignored them. An aide, worried by the intensity of the voltigeurs’ fire, considered suggesting that the small man should ride back a few paces, but checked himself from speaking. Such advice to Black Bob Craufurd, commander of the Light Division, would be construed as arrant weakness.

The columns were in the open ground beneath the mill now and the voltigeurs were being whipped by blasts of canister that flattened the grass as if a sudden gale gusted from the west. More canisters were fired, each taking its handful of casualties, and the voltigeur officers ordered their men back to the columns. Their job was done. The British and Portuguese skirmishers had been driven back and victory waited at the ridge top, and that victory was close, so very close, because the ridge was empty except for the two batteries of guns and the handful of horsemen.

Or so the French thought. But behind the ledge, where a path ran parallel to the ridge’s top, was dead ground, invisible from below, and in the concealment, lying down to protect themselves from the French artillery, were the 43rd and the 52nd. They were two light infantry battalions, the 43rd from Monmouthshire and the 52nd from Oxfordshire, and they reckoned themselves the best of the best. They had a right to that opinion, for they had been drilled to a savage hardness by the small, black-jowled man who scowled at the French from beside the mill. A gunner spun back from the muzzle of his nine-pounder, struck in the ribs by a French musket ball. He spat up blood, then his Sergeant dragged him away from the gun’s high wheel and rammed a canister home. ‘Fire!’ the gun Captain shouted, and the huge weapon slammed back, bucking up on its trail to spew a thundercloud of smoke in which the canister was torn apart to loose its load of musket balls into the French ranks. ‘Close up,’ the French sergeants shouted, and wounded men, leaving snails’ traces of blood, crawled back to the village where the stone walls would protect them from the gut-slitting blasts of canister. Yet there was not enough canister to finish the columns. They were too big. The outer ranks soaked up the punishment, left their dead and dying, while the ranks behind stepped over the corpses. The hidden redcoats could hear the drums getting closer, could hear the shouts of the infantry and the sound of the musket balls whickering close overhead. They waited, understanding from the swelling noise that Black Bob was letting the enemy get close, very close. This was not to be a firefight at extreme musket range, but a sudden, astonishing slaughter, and then they saw the gunners of one British battery, who were taking a drenching of musketry from the front rank of the left-hand column, abandon their pieces and run back to safety. There was an odd silence then. Not a real silence, of course, for the drums were still beating and the blue-coated French were shouting their war cry, but one British battery was deserted, its guns left to the enemy, and the other was reloading and so for a moment it seemed strangely quiet.

Then the French, who had been ripped by the round shot and torn by the dreadful canister, realized that the battery had been abandoned. They gave a great cheer and scrambled over rocks to touch the hot cannon, and officers shouted at them to ignore the guns. The guns could be taken away later, but for now all that mattered was to reach the crest and so win Portugal. Beneath them Marshal Masséna wondered whether Henriette would find the beds in the monastery comfortable, and whether he would be named Prince of Portugal and whether his cook could find something palatable among the discarded British rations to make for supper. Pertinent questions all, for the Army of Portugal was on the very brink of victory.

Then Black Bob took a breath.

‘Forward!’ Sharpe called. He had concentrated the riflemen, British and Portuguese, on the spur’s centre from where they could pour an accurate fire on the voltigeurs crouching among the knoll’s jumbled rocks. ‘Make it fast,’ he shouted. He knelt and fired his rifle, the smoke hiding whatever damage he did. ‘Forward! Forward!’ If this damned attack was to be done, he thought, then do it quickly, and he chivvied the riflemen on, then beckoned at the redcoats and the rest of the Portuguese who advanced in a two-deep line behind. The guns helped. One was firing canister, the balls rattling on the rocks, while the second was cutting its fuses desperately short so that the shells exploded just above the knoll. It would be hell there, Sharpe thought. The French were being assailed by rifle fire, canister and shell fragments, yet they stubbornly clung to the promontory.

He slung his rifle. He did not have time to reload and, besides, he wanted the attack over quickly and so, in anticipation, he drew his sword. Why the hell did the bastards not run? ‘Forward!’ he shouted and felt a ball smack past his cheek, the wind of it like a small hot puff of air. More smoke showed among the rocks as the voltigeurs opened on the riflemen, but none of the musket balls hit for the range was long. The rifles made a deeper, quicker noise than the muskets. ‘Forward!’ Sharpe shouted again, conscious that Vicente had brought the three-company line close behind the skirmishers. The riflemen darted forward, knelt, aimed and fired, and a musket ball whipped through the heather to Sharpe’s left. A Frenchman firing low, he thought, a man with experience, and he was a hundred paces from the knoll now and fear had dried his mouth. The enemy was hidden, his own men were in the open, and another ball went close enough for him to feel the wind of its passing. A cazador was down, clutching his right thigh, his rifle fallen in the heather. ‘Leave him!’ Sharpe shouted at two men going to help the man. ‘Keep firing! Forward! Forward!’ The noise of the big attack to the north was at full intensity, guns and muskets, then the two artillery pieces supporting Sharpe’s attack fired together and he saw a shell burst right at the edge of the rocks and heard the canister strike stone and a Frenchman seemed to stand up slowly, his blue coat turning red before he jerked back down.

‘Aim true!’ Sharpe shouted at his men. In the excitement of battle there was a temptation to snatch at shots, to waste bullets, and he was close enough now to see the crouching enemy. Hagman fired, then took a loaded rifle from young Perkins and fired again. More musket smoke puffed from the rocks. God, they were stubborn! The riflemen ran another ten paces forward, knelt, fired and reloaded. Another cazador was hit, this time in the shoulder and the man stumbled down the spur’s side. A ball hit Sharpe’s shako, jerking it back on its cords so that it hung from his neck. Harper fired his rifle, then unslung the seven-barrelled gun, anticipating the order to rush the rocks and Sharpe turned to find Vicente almost on his heels.

‘Let me give one volley,’ the Portuguese said.

‘Rifles!’ Sharpe bellowed. ‘Down! Down!’

The riflemen flattened themselves, Vicente halted his men. ‘Present!’ The orders in the Portuguese army were given in English, a concession to the many British officers. Sharpe edged into their ranks.

‘Fire!’ Vicente shouted, and the volley cracked on the spur, pumping out smoke, just as the two cannon fired and the knoll was suddenly a tangled hell of bullets, shell scraps and blood.

‘Charge!’ Sharpe shouted and he ran ahead, saw Ensign Iliffe off to his left with his sabre drawn. The Portuguese were shouting as they advanced, their words indistinguishable, but plainly full of hate for the French. They all began to run. It was all fury now, fury and hate and terror and anger, and smoke showed in the rocks as the French fired and a man screamed behind Sharpe who found Harper beside him, the big man running clumsily, and they were just ten paces from the nearest rocks when suddenly a rank of a dozen Frenchmen stood up, an officer in their centre, and presented muskets.

Harper had the volley gun low, at his hip, but he instinctively pulled the trigger and the seven bullets smacked into the row of Frenchmen, blasting a hole in the centre of their small line. The officer was hit hard, falling backwards, and the others seemed more shocked by the noise of the gun than by its bullets, for suddenly they were turning and running. One or two shot first, but no bullet came anywhere near Sharpe who jumped onto the rocks and saw that the voltigeurs had taken enough. They were spilling over the spur’s steep edges while the wounded French officer, who had been hit by Harper’s bullet, was screaming at them to stay and fight. Sharpe silenced the man with a back blow of the sword that half stunned him. Cazadores and riflemen and redcoats were scrambling onto the knoll now, desperate to catch the French before they escaped. Some of the enemy were slow and they screamed as they were caught by the bayonets. A sergeant, reckoning escape was impossible, turned and lunged his own bayonet at Harper, who knocked it aside with the seven-barrel gun and then hit the man on the jaw with a fist and the French Sergeant went back as if he had been hit by a nine-pounder ball. Harper made sure of him by banging the volley gun’s butt on his forehead.

A score of Frenchmen were still on the knoll, some trapped by fear of the drop off its eastern edge. ‘Put your guns down!’ Sharpe roared at them, but none spoke English and instead they turned, bayonets levelled, and Sharpe cracked a musket aside with the heavy sword and then stabbed it forward into a man’s belly, twisting the steel so the flesh did not grip the blade, and then yanking the weapon back so that blood splashed onto the stones. He slipped on the blood, heard a musket bang, swept the sword at another Frenchman and Vicente was there, his own big sword hacking down on a corporal. Sharpe pushed himself up, saw a Frenchman standing on the edge of the rocks and lunged the sword at the man’s back so that he seemed to dive off the cliff. There was a heartbeat’s silence after the man vanished, then a sound from far below like a sack of offal falling onto stone from a high roof.

And silence again, blessed silence, except for the percussive sound of the guns to the north. The French were gone from the knoll. They were running down the ridge, pursued by rifle fire, and Vicente’s Portuguese began to cheer.

‘Sergeant Harper!’ Sharpe shouted.

‘Sir?’ Harper was searching a dead man’s clothes.

‘Butcher’s bill,’ Sharpe ordered. He wiped his sword on a blue jacket, then thrust it back into his scabbard. A French shell exploded harmlessly below the rocks as Sharpe sat, suddenly tired, and remembered the half sausage in his pouch. He ate it, then pushed his bullet-riddled shako into some kind of order before putting the hat back on. It was strange, he thought, but in the last few minutes he had been quite unaware of his damaged ribs, but now the pain stabbed at him. There was a dead voltigeur at his feet and the corpse was wearing one of the old-fashioned short sabres that all French skirmishers used to carry, but had abandoned because the blades were useful for nothing except reaping crops. The man looked oddly peaceful, not a mark visible on his body, and Sharpe wondered if he was feigning death and prodded him with his boot. The man did not react. A fly crawled on the voltigeur’s eyeball and Sharpe reckoned the man had to be dead.

Harper picked his way back through the rocks. ‘Mister Iliffe, sir,’ he said.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s dead, sir,’ Harper said, ‘and none of the others are even scratched.’

‘Iliffe? Dead?’ For some reason it did not make sense to Sharpe.

‘He wouldn’t have felt a thing, sir.’ Harper tapped his forehead. ‘Straight in.’

Sharpe swore. He had not liked Iliffe until today, but in battle the boy had shown courage. He had been terrified, so terrified he had vomited at the prospect of fighting, but once the bullets began to fly he had conquered that fear and that was admirable. Sharpe walked to the body, took off his hat and stared down at Iliffe who looked vaguely surprised. ‘He would have made a good soldier,’ Sharpe said, and the men of the light company murmured agreement.

Sergeant Read took four men and carried Iliffe’s body back to battalion. Lawford would not be pleased, Sharpe thought, then wondered why the hell it could not have been Slingsby shot through the forehead. That would have been a good morning’s work for a voltigeur, Sharpe thought, and wondered why the hell his own bullet had missed. He glanced up at the sun and realized it was still mid morning. He felt as if he had been fighting all day, but back in England some folk would not even have finished their breakfasts yet.

It was a pity about Iliffe, he thought, then drank some water, listened to the guns, and waited.

‘Now!’ General Craufurd shouted and the two battalions stood, appearing to the French as though they had suddenly sprung from the bare ground. ‘Ten paces forward!’ Craufurd bellowed, and they marched smartly, hefting loaded muskets. ‘Fifty-second!’ Craufurd called to the battalion nearest him in a voice that was raw with anger and savage with resolve. ‘Avenge Moore!’ The 52nd had been at Corunna where, in defeating the French, they had lost their beloved general, Sir John Moore.

‘Present!’ the Colonel of the 52nd shouted.

The enemy were close, less than twenty-five yards away. They were staring upwards where the long red line had so unexpectedly appeared. Even the novices in the battered French ranks knew what was coming. The British line overlapped the columns, every musket was aimed at the leading French files, and a French officer made the sign of the cross as the red line seemed to take a quarter turn to the right as the guns went up into men’s shoulders.

‘Fire!’

The ledge vanished in smoke as over a thousand musket balls thumped into the columns. Dozens of men fell and the living, still marching upwards in obedience to the drumbeats, found they could not get across the writhing pile of injured men. Ahead of them they could hear the scrape of ramrods going into musket barrels. The British gunners of the remaining battery shot four barrel-loads of canister that tore into the survivors, clouding the columns’ head with sprays of blood. ‘Fire by half companies!’ a voice shouted.

‘Fire!’

The volley fire began: the rippling, merciless, incessant clockwork drill of death. The British and Portuguese skirmishers had reformed on the left and added their own fire so that the heads of the columns were ringed by flame and smoke, pummelled by bullets, flayed by the canister spitting down from the ledge. A hundred fires began in the grass as flaming wadding spat from the barrels.

The fire was not just coming from the front. The skirmishers and the outer companies of the 43rd and the 52nd had wheeled down the slope to wrap themselves around the beleaguered French, who were now being shot at from three sides. The smoke of the half-company volleys rippled up and down the red lines, the balls slapped into flesh and banged into muskets, and the French advance had been stopped. No troops could advance into the bank of smoke that was ripped by flame as the volleys flared.

‘Bayonets! Bayonets!’ Craufurd shouted. There was a pause as men took out the seventeen-inch blades and slotted them over blackened musket muzzles. ‘Now kill them!’ Black Bob shouted. He was feeling exultant, watching his hard-trained men tear four times their number into ruin.

The men with loaded muskets fired, and the redcoats were going down the hill, steadily at first, but then the two ranks met the French dead and they lost their cohesion as they negotiated the bodies, and there, just yards away, were the living. The British gave a great shout of rage and charged. ‘Kill them!’ Black Bob was right behind the ranks, sword drawn, glaring at the French as the redcoats lunged with their blades.

It was slaughterhouse work. Most of the French in the leading ranks who had survived the musketry and the canister were wounded. They were also crammed together, and now the redcoats came at them with bayonets. The long blades stabbed forward, were twisted and pulled back. The loudest noise on the ridge was screaming now, men shouting for mercy, calling for God, cursing the enemy, and still the half-company volleys whipped in from the flanks so that no Frenchmen could deploy into line. They had been marched up a hill of death and were penned like sheep just below its summit and the bullets killed them from the flanks and the blades took them at the front, and the only escape from the torment was back down the hill.

They broke. One moment they were a mass of men cowering under an onslaught of steel and lead, and the next, starting with the rearmost ranks, they were a rabble. The front ranks, trapped by the men behind, could not escape and they were easy meat for the savage seventeen-inch blades, but the men at the back fled. Drums rolled down the hill, abandoned by boys too terrified to do anything except escape, and, as they went, the British and Portuguese skirmishers came from the flanks to pursue them. The last of the Frenchmen broke, pursued by redcoats, and some were caught in the village where the blades went to work again and the cobbles and the white stones of the houses were painted with more blood and the screams could be heard down in the valley where Masséna watched, open-mouthed. Some Frenchmen became entangled in the vines and the cazadores caught them there and slit their throats. Riflemen poured bullets after the fugitives. A man shouted for mercy in a village house and the shout turned into a terrible scream as two bayonets took his life.

And then the French were gone. They had been swamped by panic and the slope around the village was littered with abandoned muskets and bodies. Some of the enemy were fortunate. Two riflemen rounded up prisoners and prodded them up towards the windmill where the British gunners had reclaimed their battery. A French captain, who had only kept his life by pretending to be dead, yielded his sword to a lieutenant of the 52nd. The Lieutenant, a courteous man, bowed in acknowledgement and gave the blade back. ‘You will do me the honour of accompanying me up the hill,’ the Lieutenant said, and he then tried to make conversation in his school French. The weather had gone suddenly cold, had it not? The French Captain agreed it had, but he also would have agreed if the Englishman had remarked how warm it was. The Captain was shaking. He was covered in blood, none of it his own, but all from wounds inflicted by canister on men who had climbed near him. He saw his men lying dead, saw others dying, saw them looking up from the ground and trying to call for help he could not give. He remembered the bayonets coming at him and the joy of the killing plain on the faces of the men who held them. ‘It was a storm,’ he said, not knowing what he said.

‘Not now the heat’s broken, I think,’ the Lieutenant said, misunderstanding his captive’s words. The bandsmen of the 43rd and 52nd were collecting the wounded, almost all of them French, and carrying them up to the mill where those that survived would be put on carts and taken to the monastery where the surgeons waited. ‘We were hoping for a game of cricket if tomorrow stays fine,’ the Lieutenant said. ‘Have you had the privilege of watching cricket, monsieur?’

‘Cricket?’ The Captain gaped at the redcoat.

‘The Light Division officers hope to play the rest of the army,’ the Lieutenant said, ‘unless war or the weather intervenes.’

‘I have never seen cricket,’ the Frenchman said.

‘When you get to heaven, monsieur,’ the Lieutenant said gravely, ‘and I pray that will be many happy years hence, you will find that your days are spent in playing cricket.’

Just to the south there was more sudden firing. It sounded like British volleys, for they were regular and fast, but it was four Portuguese battalions that guarded the ridge to the right of the Light Division. The smaller French column, meant to reinforce the success of the two that had climbed through Sula, had swung away from the village and found itself split from the main attack by a deep, wooded ravine, and so the men climbed on their own, going through a grove of pines, and when they emerged onto the open hillside above they saw nothing but Portuguese troops ahead. No redcoats. The column outnumbered the Portuguese. They also knew their enemy for they had beaten the Portuguese before and did not fear the men in brown and blue as they feared the British muskets. This would be a simple victory, a hammer blow against a despised enemy, but then the Portuguese opened fire and the volleys rippled like clockwork and the musket balls were fired low and the guns were reloaded swiftly and the column, like those to the north, found itself assailed from three sides and suddenly the despised enemy was driving the French ignominiously downhill. And so the last French column ran, defeated by men fighting for their homeland, and then the whole ridge was empty of the Emperor’s men except for the dead and the wounded and the captured. A drummer boy cried as he lay in the vines. He was eleven years old and had a bullet in his lung. His father, a sergeant, was lying dead twenty paces away where a bird pecked at his eyes. Now that the guns had stopped the black feathered birds were coming to the ridge and its feast of flesh.

Smoke drifted off the hill. Guns cooled. Men passed round water bottles.

The French were back in the valley. ‘There is a road around the north of the ridge,’ an aide reminded Marshal Masséna, who said nothing. He just stared at what was left of his attacks on the hill. Beaten, all of them. Beaten to nothing. Defeated. And the enemy, hidden once more behind the ridge’s crest, waited for him to try again.

‘You remember Miss Savage?’ Vicente asked Sharpe. They were sitting at the end of the knoll, staring down at the beaten French.

‘Kate? Of course I remember Kate,’ Sharpe said. ‘I often wondered what happened to her.’

‘She married me,’ Vicente said, and looked absurdly pleased with himself.

‘Good God,’ Sharpe said, then decided that probably sounded like a rude response. ‘Well done!’

‘I shaved off my moustache,’ Vicente said, ‘as you suggested. And she said yes.’

‘Never did understand moustaches,’ Sharpe said, ‘must be like kissing a blacking brush.’

‘And we have a child,’ Vicente went on, ‘a girl.’

‘Quick work, Jorge!’

‘We are very happy,’ Vicente said solemnly.

‘Good for you,’ Sharpe said, and meant it. Kate Savage had run away from her home in Oporto, and Sharpe, with Vicente’s help, had rescued her. That had been eighteen months before and Sharpe had often wondered what had happened to the English girl who had inherited her father’s vineyards and port lodge.

‘Kate is still in Porto, of course,’ Vicente said.

‘With her mother?’

‘She went back to England,’ Vicente said, ‘just after I joined my new regiment in Coimbra.’

‘Why there?’

‘It is where I grew up,’ Vicente said, ‘and my parents still live there. I went to the university of Coimbra, so really it is home. But from now on I shall live in Porto. When the war is over.’

‘Be a lawyer again?’

‘I hope so.’ Vicente made the sign of the cross. ‘I know what you think of the law, Richard, but it is the one barrier between man and bestiality.’

‘Didn’t do much to stop the French.’

‘War is above the law, which is why it is so bad. War lets loose all the things which the law restrains.’

‘Like me,’ Sharpe said.

‘You are not such a bad man,’ Vicente said with a smile.

Sharpe looked down into the valley. The French had at last withdrawn to where they had been the previous evening, only now they were throwing up earthworks beyond the stream where infantry dug trenches and used the spoil to make bulwarks. ‘Those buggers think we’re coming down to finish them off,’ he said.

‘Will we?’

‘Christ, no! We’ve got the high ground. No point in giving it up.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Wait for orders, Jorge, wait for orders. And I reckon mine are coming now.’ Sharpe nodded towards Major Forrest who was riding his horse along the spine of the spur.

Forrest stopped by the rocks and looked down at the French dead, then took off his hat and nodded to Sharpe. ‘The Colonel wants the company back,’ he said, sounding tired.

‘Major Forrest,’ Sharpe said, ‘let me introduce you to Captain Vicente. I fought with him at Oporto.’

‘Honoured,’ Forrest said, ‘honoured.’ His red sleeve was dark with blood from the musket ball that had struck him. He hesitated, trying to think of something complimentary to say to Vicente, but nothing occurred to him, so he looked back to Sharpe. ‘The Colonel wants the company now, Sharpe,’ he said.

‘On your feet, lads!’ Sharpe stood himself and shook Vicente’s hand. ‘Keep a look out for us, Jorge,’ he said, ‘we might need your help again. And give my regards to Kate.’

Sharpe walked the company back across ground scorched by musket and rifle fire. The ridge was quiet now, no guns firing, just the wind sighing on the grass. Forrest rode beside Sharpe, but said nothing until they reached the battalion’s lines. The South Essex were in ranks, but sitting and sprawling on the grass, and Forrest gestured to the left-hand end of the line as if to order the light company to take their place. ‘Lieutenant Slingsby will command them for the moment,’ Forrest said.

‘He’ll do what?’ Sharpe asked, shocked.

‘For the moment,’ Forrest said placatingly, ‘because right now the Colonel wants you, Sharpe, and I daresay he isn’t pleased.’

That was an understatement. The Honourable William Lawford was in a temper, though, being a man of exquisite politeness, the anger only showed as a slight tightening of the lips and a distinctly unfriendly glance as Sharpe arrived at his tent. Lawford ducked out into the sunlight and nodded at Forrest. ‘You’ll stay, Major,’ he said, and waited as Forrest dismounted and gave his reins to Lawford’s servant, who led the horse away. ‘Knowles!’ Lawford summoned the Adjutant from the tent. Knowles gave Sharpe a sympathetic look, which only made Lawford angrier. ‘You had best stay, Knowles,’ he said, ‘but keep other folk away. I don’t want what is said here bruited about the battalion.’

Knowles put on his hat and stood a few yards away. Forrest hovered to one side as Lawford looked at Sharpe. ‘Perhaps, Captain’ he spoke icily, ‘you can explain yourself?’

‘Explain myself, sir?’

‘Ensign Iliffe is dead.’

‘I regret it, sir.’

‘Good God! The boy is entrusted to my care! Now I have to write to his father and say the lad’s life was tossed away by an irresponsible officer who committed his company to an attack without any authorization from me!’ Lawford paused, evidently too angry to frame his next words, then slapped his hand against his sword scabbard. ‘I command this battalion, Sharpe!’ he said. ‘Perhaps you have never realized that? Do you think you can swan around as you like, killing men as you see fit, without reference to me?’

‘I had orders, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly.

‘Orders?’ Lawford demanded. ‘I gave no order!’

‘I was ordered by Colonel Rogers-Jones, sir.’

‘Who the devil is Colonel Rogers-Jones?’

‘I believe he commands a battalion of cazadores,’ Forrest put in quietly.

‘God damn it, Sharpe,’ Lawford snapped, ‘Colonel Rogers bloody Jones does not command the South Essex!’

‘I had orders from a colonel, sir,’ Sharpe insisted, ‘and I obeyed.’ He paused. ‘And I recalled your advice, sir.’

‘My advice?’ Lawford asked.

‘Last night, sir, you told me you wanted your skirmishers to be audacious and aggressive. So we were.’

‘I also want my officers to be gentlemen,’ Lawford said, ‘to show courtesy.’

Sharpe sensed that they had reached the real point of this meeting. Lawford, it was true, had a genuine grievance that Sharpe had committed the light company to an attack without his permission, but no officer could truly object to a man fighting the enemy. The complaint had been merely a ranging shot for the assault that was about to come. Sharpe said nothing, but just stared fixedly at a spot between the Colonel’s eyes.

‘Lieutenant Slingsby,’ the Colonel said, ‘tells me that you insulted him. That you invited him to a duel. That you called him illegitimate. That you swore at him.’

Sharpe cast his mind back to the brief confrontation on the ridge’s forward slope just after he had pulled the company out of the French panic. ‘I doubt I called him illegitimate, sir,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t use that sort of word. I probably called him a bastard.’

Knowles stared westwards. Forrest looked down at the grass to hide a smile. Lawford looked astonished. ‘You called him what?’

‘A bastard, sir.’

‘That is entirely unacceptable between fellow officers,’ Lawford said.

Sharpe said nothing. It was usually the best thing to do.

‘Have you nothing to say?’ Lawford demanded.

‘I have never done a thing,’ Sharpe was goaded into speaking ‘except for the good of this battalion.’

That vehement statement rather took Lawford aback. He blinked. ‘No one is decrying your service, Sharpe,’ he said stiffly. ‘I am, rather, attempting to inculcate the manners of an officer into your behaviour. I will not tolerate crass rudeness to a fellow officer.’

‘You’d tolerate losing half your light company, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Half my light company?’

‘My fellow officer,’ Sharpe did not bother to hide his sarcasm, ‘had the light company in skirmish order underneath the French. When they broke, sir, which they did, he’d have lost them all. They’d have been swept away. Luckily for the battalion, sir, I was there and did what had to be done.’

‘That is not what I observed,’ Lawford said.

‘It happened,’ Sharpe said bluntly.

Forrest cleared his throat and stared pointedly at a blade of grass by his right toe. Lawford took the hint. ‘Major?’

‘I rather think Lieutenant Slingsby had taken the light company a bit too far, sir,’ Forrest observed mildly.

‘Audacity and aggression,’ Lawford said, ‘are not reprehensible in an officer. I applaud Lieutenant Slingsby for his enthusiasm, and that is no reason, Sharpe, for you to insult him.’

Time to bite his tongue again, Sharpe thought, so he kept quiet.

‘And I will not abide duelling between my officers’ Lawford was back in stride ‘and I will not abide gratuitous insults. Lieutenant Slingsby is an experienced and enthusiastic officer, an undoubted asset to the battalion, Sharpe, an asset. Is that understood, Sharpe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So you will apologize to him.’

I bloody well will not, Sharpe thought, and kept staring at the spot between Lawford’s eyes.

‘Did you hear me, Sharpe?’

‘I did, sir.’

‘So you will apologize?’

‘No, sir.’

Lawford looked outraged, but for a few seconds was lost for words. ‘The consequences, Sharpe,’ he finally managed to speak, ‘will be dire if you disobey me in this.’

Sharpe shifted his gaze so that he was looking at Lawford’s right eye. Looking straight at Lawford and making the Colonel feel uncomfortable. Sharpe saw weakness there, then decided that was wrong. Lawford was not a weak man, but he lacked ruthlessness. Most men did. Most men were reasonable, they sought accommodation and found mutual ground. They were happy enough to fire volleys, but shrank from getting in close with a bayonet. But now was the time for Lawford to wield the blade. He had expected Sharpe to apologize to Slingsby, and why not? It was a small enough gesture, it appeared to solve the problem, but Sharpe was refusing and Lawford did not know what to do about it. ‘I will not apologize,’ Sharpe said very harshly, ‘sir.’ And the last word had all the insolence that could be invested in a single syllable.

Lawford looked furious, but again said nothing for a few seconds. Then, abruptly, he nodded. ‘You were a quartermaster once, I believe?’

‘I was, sir.’

‘Mister Kiley is indisposed. For the moment, while I decide what to do with you, you will assume his duties.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe responded woodenly, betraying no reaction.

Lawford hesitated, as though there was something more to be said, then crammed on his cocked hat and turned away.

‘Sir,’ Sharpe said.

Lawford turned, said nothing.

‘Mister Iliffe, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘He fought well today. If you’re writing to his family, sir, then you can tell them truthfully that he fought very well.’

‘A pity, then, that he’s dead,’ Lawford said bitterly and walked away, beckoning Knowles to accompany him.

Forrest sighed. ‘Why not just apologize, Richard?’

‘Because he damned well nearly had my company killed.’

‘I know that,’ Forrest said, ‘and the Colonel knows it, and Mister Slingsby knows it and your company knows it. So eat humble pie, Sharpe, and go back to them.’

‘He’ Sharpe pointed at the retreating figure of the Colonel ‘wants rid of me. He wants his goddamned brother-in-law in charge of the skirmishers.’

‘He doesn’t want rid of you, Sharpe,’ Forrest said patiently. ‘Good God, he knows how good you are! But he has to bring on Slingsby. Family business, eh? His wife wants him to make Slingsby’s career, and what a wife wants, Sharpe, a wife gets.’

‘He wants rid of me,’ Sharpe insisted. ‘And if I apologize, Major, then sooner or later I’d still be out on my ear, so I might as well go now.’

‘Don’t go far,’ Forrest said with a smile.

‘Why not?’

‘Mister Slingsby drinks,’ Forrest said quietly.

‘He does?’

‘Far too much,’ Forrest said. ‘He’s holding it in check for now, hoping a new battalion will give him a new beginning, but I fear for him. I had a similar problem myself, Richard, though I’ll thank you not to tell anyone. I suspect our Mister Slingsby will revert to his old behaviour in the end. Most men do.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘Not yet, Sharpe, not yet.’ Forrest smiled. ‘But think on what I’ve said. Mutter an apology to the man, eh? And let it all blow over.’

When hell froze over, Sharpe thought. Because he would not apologize.

And Slingsby had the light company.

Major Ferreira had read his brother’s letter shortly after the last French column had been defeated. ‘He wants an answer, senhor,’ Miguel, Ferragus’s messenger, had said. ‘One word.’

Ferreira stared through the cannon smoke that hung in skeins over the hillside where so many French had died. This was a victory, he thought, but it would not be long before the French found the road looping about the ridge’s northern end. Or perhaps the victorious British and Portuguese would sweep down Bussaco’s long hillside and attack the French in the valley? Yet there was no sign of such an attack. No gallopers rode to give generals fresh instructions, and the longer Wellington waited the more time the French had to throw up earthworks beyond the stream. No, the Major thought, this battle was over and Lord Wellington probably intended to fall back towards Lisbon and offer another battle in the hills north of the city.

‘One word,’ Miguel had prompted the Major again.

Ferreira had nodded. ‘Sim,’ he said, though he said it heavily. Yes, it meant, and once the fatal word was spoken he turned his horse and spurred northwards past the victorious Light Division, behind the windmill that was pocked with the marks left by musket balls and then down through the small trees growing on the northern end of the ridge. No one remarked his going. He was known to be an occasional explorer, one of the Portuguese officers who, like their British counterparts, rode out to scout the enemy’s position, and besides, there were Portuguese militia in the Caramula hills north of the ridge and it was not surprising that an officer rode to check on their position.

Yet Ferreira, even though his departure from the army had appeared quite innocent, rode with trepidation. His whole future, the future of his family, depended on the next few hours. The Major had inherited wealth, but he had never made any. His investments had failed, and it had only been his brother’s return that had restored his fortunes, and that fortune would be threatened if the French took over Portugal. What Major Ferreira must do now was change horses, leap from the patriotic saddle into a French one, yet do it in such a way that no one would ever know, and he would do it only to preserve his name, his fortune and his family’s future.

He rode for three hours and it was past midday when he turned eastwards, climbing to a prominent hill. He knew that the Portuguese militia guarding the road about the northern end of the ridge were well behind him, and as far as he knew there were no British or Portuguese cavalry patrols in these hills, but he still made the sign of the cross and composed a silent prayer that he would not be seen by anyone from his own side. And he did think of the British and Portuguese army as his side. He was a patriot, but what use was a penniless patriot?

He stopped at the hilltop. Stopped there for a long time until he was certain that any French cavalry vedettes would have seen him, and then he rode slowly down the hill’s eastern face. He stopped halfway down. Now, anyone approaching him could see that he was not luring them to an ambush. There was no dead ground behind him, nowhere for a cavalry unit to hide. There was just Major Ferreira on a long, bare hillside.

And ten minutes after he stopped, a score of green-coated dragoons appeared a half-mile away. The horsemen spread into a line. Some had their carbines out of their holsters, but most had drawn swords and Ferreira dismounted to show them that he was not trying to escape. The officer in charge of the dragoons stared upwards, searching for danger, and finally he must have concluded that all was well for he rode forward with a half-dozen of his men. The horses’ hooves left puffs of dust on the dry hillside. Ferreira, as the dragoons came nearer, spread his arms to show he carried no weapons, then stood quite still as the horsemen surrounded him. A blade dipped near his throat, held by the officer, whose uniform had been faded by the sun. ‘I have a letter of introduction,’ Ferreira said in French.

‘To whom?’ It was the officer who answered.

‘To you,’ Ferreira answered, ‘from Colonel Barreto.’

‘And who in the name of holy Christ is Colonel Barreto?’

‘An aide to Marshal Masséna.’

‘Show me the letter.’

Ferreira brought the piece of paper from a pocket, unfolded it and handed it up to the French officer, who leaned from his saddle to take it. The letter, creased and dirty, explained to any French officer that the bearer could be trusted and should be given every help possible. Barreto had given Ferreira the letter when the Major had been negotiating the gift of the flour, but it came in more useful now. The dragoon officer read it swiftly, glanced once at Ferreira, then tossed the letter back. ‘So what do you want?’

‘To see Colonel Barreto, of course,’ Ferreira said.

It took an hour and a half to reach the village of Moura where Ney’s men, who had attacked towards the windmill above Sula, were resting. The surgeons were busy in the village and Ferreira had to steer his horse past a pile of severed arms and legs that lay just outside an open window. Next to the stream, where the flat stones provided a place for the village women to do their laundry, there was now a heap of corpses. Most had been stripped of their uniforms and their white skin was laced with blood. Ferreira averted his eyes as he followed the dragoons to a small hill just beyond the village where, in the shadow of Moura’s windmill, Marshal Masséna was eating a meal of bread, cheese and cold chicken. Ferreira dismounted and waited as the dragoon officer threaded his way through the aides, and, as he waited, the Major stared at the ridge and wondered that any general would think to throw his men up such a slope.

‘Major Ferreira!’ The voice was sour. A tall man in the uniform of a French colonel of dragoons approached him. ‘Give me one reason, Major,’ the Colonel said, pointing to the mill, ‘why we shouldn’t put you against that wall and shoot you.’ The Colonel, though dressed as a Frenchman, was Portuguese. He had been an officer in the old Portuguese army and had seen his home burned and his family killed by the ordenança, the Portuguese militia that had turned on the privileged classes in the chaos of the first French invasions. Colonel Barreto had joined the French, not because he hated Portugal, but because he saw no future for his country unless it was rid of superstition and anarchy. The French, he believed, would bring the blessings of modernity to Portugal, but only if the French forces were fed. ‘You promised us flour!’ Barreto said angrily. ‘And instead there was British infantry waiting for us!’

‘In war, Colonel, things go wrong,’ Ferreira said humbly. ‘The flour was there, my brother was there, and then a British company arrived. I tried to send them away, but they would not go.’ Ferreira knew he sounded weak, but he was terrified. Not of the French, but in case some officer on the ridge saw him through a telescope. He doubted that would happen. The ridge top was a long way away and his blue Portuguese jacket would look much like a French coat at that distance, but he was still frightened. Treachery was a hard trade.

Barreto seemed to accept the explanation. ‘I found the remnants of the flour,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s a pity, Major. This army is hungry. You know what we found in this village? One half barrel of lemons. What damn good is that?’

‘Coimbra,’ Ferreira said, ‘is full of food.’

‘Full of food, eh?’ Barreto asked sceptically.

‘Wheat, barley, rice, beans, figs, salt cod, beef,’ Ferreira said flatly.

‘And how, in God’s name, do we reach Coimbra, eh?’ Barreto had switched to French because a group of Masséna’s other aides had come to listen to the conversation. The Colonel pointed to the ridge. ‘Those bastards, Ferreira, are between us and Coimbra.’

‘There is a road round the ridge,’ Ferreira said.

‘A road,’ Barreto said, ‘which goes through the defile of Caramula, and how many damn redcoats are waiting for us there?’

‘None,’ Ferreira said. ‘There is only the Portuguese militia. No more than fifteen hundred. In three days, Colonel, you can be in Coimbra.’

‘And in three days,’ Barreto said, ‘the British will empty Coimbra of food.’

‘My brother guarantees you three months’ supply,’ Ferreira said, ‘but only…’ He faltered and stopped.

‘Only what?’ a Frenchman asked.

‘When your army enters a town, monsieur,’ Ferreira spoke very humbly, ‘they do not behave well. There is plundering, theft, murder. It has happened every time.’

‘So?’

‘So if your men get into my brother’s warehouses, what will they do?’

‘Take everything,’ the Frenchman said.

‘And destroy what they cannot take,’ Ferreira finished the statement. He looked back to Barreto. ‘My brother wants two things, Colonel. He wants a fair payment for the food he will supply to you, and he wants his property guarded from the moment you enter the city.’

‘We take what we want,’ another Frenchman put in, ‘we don’t pay our enemies for food.’

‘If I do not tell my brother that you agree,’ Ferreira said, his voice harder now, ‘then there will be no food when you arrive in Coimbra. You can take nothing, monsieur, or you can pay for something and eat.’

There was a moment’s silence, then Barreto nodded abruptly. ‘I will talk to the Marshal,’ he said and turned away.

One of the French aides, a tall and thin major, offered Ferreira a pinch of snuff. ‘I hear,’ he said, ‘that the British are building defences in front of Lisbon?’

Ferreira shrugged as if to suggest the Frenchman’s fears were trivial. ‘There are one or two new forts,’ he admitted, for he had seen them for himself when he was riding north from Lisbon, ‘but they are small works,’ he went on. ‘What they are also building, monsieur, is a new port at São Julião.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘South of Lisbon.’

‘They’re building a port?’

‘A new harbour, monsieur,’ Ferreira confirmed. ‘They fear trying to evacuate their troops through Lisbon. There might be riots. São Julião is a remote place and it will be easy for the British to take to their ships there without trouble.’

‘And the forts you saw?’

‘They overlook the main road to Lisbon,’ Ferreira said, ‘but there are other roads.’

‘And how far were they from Lisbon?’

‘Twenty miles,’ Ferreira guessed.

‘And there are hills there?’

‘Not so steep as that.’ Ferreira nodded towards the looming ridge.

‘So they hope to delay us in the hills, yes, as they retreat to their new port?’

‘I would think so, monsieur.’

‘So we will need food,’ the Frenchman concluded. ‘And what does your brother want besides money and protection?’

‘He wants to survive, monsieur.’

‘It is what we all want,’ the Frenchman said. He was gazing at the blue bodies that lay on the ridge’s eastern slope. ‘God send us back to France soon.’

To Ferreira’s surprise the Marshal himself returned with Colonel Barreto. The one-eyed Masséna stared hard at Ferreira who returned the gaze, seeing how old and tired the Frenchman looked. Finally Masséna nodded. ‘Tell your brother we will pay him a price and tell him Colonel Barreto will take troops to protect his property. You know where that property is, Colonel?’

‘Major Ferreira will tell me,’ Barreto said.

‘Good. It’s time my men had a proper meal.’ Masséna walked back to his cold chicken, bread, cheese and wine while Barreto and Ferreira first haggled over the price to be paid, then made arrangements to safeguard the food. And when that was all done Ferreira rode back the way he had come. He rode in the afternoon sun, chilled by an autumn wind, and no one saw him and no one in the British or Portuguese army thought it strange that he had been away since the battle’s end.

And on the ridge, and in the valley beneath, the troops waited.