‘We’ve got a treat for the bastards, sir.’
He sounded so cheerful! Knowles swallowed, kept his sword low. Wait, he told himself, and was surprised to hear that he had spoken out loud and that his voice had sounded calm. He looked at his men. They were trusting him!
‘Well done, sir. May I?’ Harper had spoken softly. Knowles nodded, not sure what was happening.
‘Platoon!’ Harper was in front of the tiny line of men. He pointed to the ten men on the right. ‘Sideways, four paces. March!’ Then on the left the same order.
‘Platoon! Backwards. March!’
Knowles stepped back with them, watching as the French eased their horses into a trot, and then understood. While he had been standing watching the French, the Riflemen had moved the gun! Instead of pointing down the track it was now aimed at the French cavalry; somehow they had loaded it, and the canister which should have swept the British off the road like a housewife scattering roaches with a broom was now threatening the cavalry instead. Harper stood at the back of the gun, well clear of the wheel. The gunners had done most of the loading, the Riflemen had thrust the canister into the barrel and found the slow match that burned red at the end of the pole. The fuse was in the touch-hole. It was a reed filled with fine powder, and when Harper touched it the fire would flash down the tube and ignite the powder charge in its serge bag.
‘Hold your fire!’ Harper shouted clearly; he did not want the inexperienced men of the South Essex to fire when the gun went off. ‘Hold your fire!’
The cavalry were seventy yards away, just urging their horses into the canter, ten riders in the first rank. Harper guessed that fifty men were aimed at the tiny party round the gun, and there were fifty more in reserve. He touched the fuse onto the reed. There was a fizzing, a puff of smoke from the touch-hole, and then the enormous explosion. Grey-white smoke belched from the muzzle; the gun, on its five-foot wheels, lurched back its fifteen hundredweight that dug the trail into the soil and bounced the wheels off the ground. The thin metal canister split apart as it left the muzzle, and Harper watched through the smoke as the musket balls and scrap iron snatched the cavalry off the field. The first three ranks were destroyed; the other two were dazed, unable to advance over the bloody corpses and the wounded who staggered upright, bleeding and shocked. Harper heard Knowles shouting.
‘Hold your fire! Hold your fire!’
Good lad, thought the Irishman. The cavalry had split either side of the carnage; some of the reserve was galloping forward, but the horsemen seemed dazed by the sudden blow. They came on towards the gun but stayed clear of its line of fire, and Knowles watched the two wings of horsemen as they drew nearer. He waited, waited until they put spurs to their horses and tried to gallop the last few paces, and slashed his sword down.
‘Fire!’
The muskets coughed out flame and smoke. The leading horses dropped, making a barrier to those behind.
‘Change muskets!’ Knowles felt the stirrings of confidence, the realisation that he could do it!
‘Fire!’
A second volley destroyed the horsemen trying to close on the two sides of the gun. More horses fell, more men were pitched from their saddles in a flurry of arms, legs, sabres and scabbards. The horsemen behind went on, lapped round the back of the gun, and the rifles started their sharper reports and more horses were shot. Knowles was startled to see no more horsemen in front of the cannon; he turned his men round, changed to the third musket, and blasted a third volley over the heads of the kneeling Riflemen.
‘Thank you, sir!’
Harper grinned at the Lieutenant. The cavalry had gone, shattered by the canister, bloodied by the close volleys, prevented from closing with the infantry because of the barriers of dead and wounded horses. Harper watched as Knowles started his men reloading their muskets. He turned back to the gun. There was so much to remember! Sponge out, stop the vent; he summoned the Riflemen to reload their captured cannon.
Sharpe had seen the four-pounder fire, watched the horsemen cut down in a bloody swathe, then he had turned to the Chasseurs attacking his own formation. As the cavalry had come closer he had halted the three ranks, turned them to face the French except for the rear rank that about-turned to deal with the horsemen who would envelop the small formation. The horsemen were in savage mood. An easy victory had been snatched away from them, the gun had been captured, but there was still the insolent colour waving from the small group of infantry. They spurred towards Sharpe, their discipline ragged, their mood simply one of revenge and a determination to crush this tiny force like a boot heel stamping on a scorpion. Sharpe watched them come. Forrest glanced nervously at him and cleared his throat, but Sharpe shook his head.
‘Wait, Major, always wait.’
He and Forrest stood beneath the defiant colour. It taunted the French. They spurred towards it, the trumpet rang out its curdling charge, the Chasseurs screamed revenge, raised their sabres, and died.
Sharpe had let them come to forty yards, and the volley destroyed the first line that opposed the British. The second rank of French horsemen clapped spurs to their mounts. They were confident. Had the British not fired their volley? They jumped over the writhing remains of the first rank and to their horror saw that the red-coated ranks were not busy reloading but were calmly aiming their muskets again. Some pulled desperately at their reins, but it was too late. The volley from Sharpe’s second set of muskets piled the horses beside the bodies of the first line.
‘Change muskets!’
The rear rank fired, once and twice. Sharpe whirled, but the experienced sergeants had done well. His men were ringed with horses, dead and dying, stunned and wounded Chasseurs struggled from the mess and ran into the wide expanse of the field. The French had lost all cohesion, all chance of a further attack.
‘Left turn! Forward!’
He ran on. He could see Harper and Knowles. The young Lieutenant looked calm, and Sharpe could see the ring of French dead that showed he had learnt to hold his fire. The cannon fired again, shrouding the group in smoke, and Sharpe glanced back to see more horsemen fall where they were reforming ranks off to his right. A few horsemen still galloped round them; once Sharpe stopped and fired a volley of twenty muskets to drive off a group of six Chasseurs who came galloping up on the flank. Then his men reached the gun. Sharpe grabbed Harper, pounded him on the back, grinned up at the huge Irishman, and turned to congratulate Knowles. They had done it! Captured the gun, driven off the cavalry, inflicted terrible damage on men and horses, and without a single scratch to themselves.
And that was it. With the gun in his hands Sharpe knew the French dare not attack again. He watched them circle well clear of its range as the British formed a square. Forrest was beaming, looking for all the world like a Bishop who had conducted a particularly pleasing confirmation service. ‘We did it, Sharpe! We did it!’ Sharpe looked up at the colour over the small square. A little honour had been regained, not enough, but a little. A French gun had been captured, the Chasseurs had been mauled, some of the South Essex had learned to fight. But that was not all. Lashed to the trail of the captured gun, festooned on the limber, were ropes. Long, tough, French ropes that could span a broken bridge instead of haul the gun up steep slopes. Ropes, timber from the gun’s carriage; all he needed to start taking the wounded back across the river.
At the bridge Lennox watched as a Chasseur officer walked his horse towards the British square. Negotiating again; but it would be too late for him. He felt cold and numb, the pain had passed, and he knew that there was not long. He gripped the sword; some atavistic memory told him it was his pass into a better heaven, perhaps where his wife waited. He felt content, lazy but content. He had watched Sharpe walk suicidally forward, wondered what he was doing, then heard the distinctive crack of the rifles, seen the figures running on the gun, and watched as the French cavalry broke themselves on the massed volleys of the infantry. Now it was over. The French would pick up their wounded and go, and Sharpe
would come back to the bridge. And he would keep the promise, Lennox knew that now; a man who could plan the capture of that gun would have the daring to do what Lennox wanted. That way there could be no shame in this day’s work. The image of the colour, far up the smoke-veiled field, dimmed in the Scotsman’s eyes. The sun was hot but it was damned cold all the same. He gripped the sword and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 10
‘Damn you, Sharpe! I will break you! I will see you never hold rank again! You will go back to the gutter you came from!’ Simmerson’s face was contorted with anger; even his jug ears had reddened with fury. He stood with Gibbons and Forrest, and the Major tried ineffectually to stem Sir Henry’s anger. The Colonel shook Forrest’s arm off his elbow. ‘I’ll have you court-martialled. I’ll write to my cousin. Sharpe, you are finished! Done!’
Sharpe stood on the other side of the room, his own face rigid with the effort of controlling his own anger and scorn. He looked out of the window. They were back in Plasencia, in the Mirabel Palace which was Wellesley’s temporary headquarters, and he stared down the Sancho Polo street at the huddled rooftops of the poorer quarter of the town which were crammed inside the city’s ramparts. Carriages passed below, smart equipages with uniformed drivers, carrying veiled Spanish ladies on mysterious journeys. The Battalion had limped home the night before, its wounded carried in commandeered ox-carts which had solid axles that screeched, Harper said, like the banshees. Mingled with the endless noise was the cries of the wounded. Many had died; many more would die in the slow grip of gangrene in the days ahead. Sharpe had been under arrest, his sword taken from him, marching with his incredulous Riflemen who decided the world had gone mad and swore vengeance for him should Simmerson have his way.
The door opened and Lieutenant Colonel Lawford came into the room. His face had none of the animation Sharpe had seen at their reunion just five days before; he looked coldly on them all; like the rest of the army he felt demeaned and shamed by the loss of the colour. ‘Gentlemen.’ His voice was icily polite. ‘Sir Arthur will see you now. You have ten minutes.’
Simmerson marched through the open door, Gibbons close behind him. Forrest beckoned Sharpe to precede him but Sharpe hung back. The Major smiled at him, a hopeless smile; Forrest was lost in this web of carnage and blame.
The General sat behind a plain oak table piled with papers and hand-drawn maps. There was nowhere for Simmerson to sit, so the four officers lined up in front of the table like schoolboys hauled in front of the Headmaster. Lawford went and stood behind the General, who ignored all of them, just scratched away with a pen on a piece of paper. Finally the sentence was done. Wellesley’s face was unreadable.
‘Well, Sir Henry?’
Sir Henry Simmerson’s eyes darted round the room as though he might find inspiration written on the walls. The General’s tone had been cold. The Colonel licked his lips and cleared his throat.
‘We destroyed the bridge, sir.’
‘And your Battalion.’
The words were said softly. Sharpe had seen Wellesley like this before, masking a burning anger with an apparent and misleading quietness. Simmerson sniffed and tossed his head.
‘The fault was hardly mine, sir.’
‘Ah!’ The General’s eyebrows went up; he laid down his quill and leaned back in the chair. ‘Whose then, sir?’
‘I regret to say, sir, that Lieutenant Sharpe disobeyed an order even though it was repeated to him. Major Forrest heard me give the order to Lieutenant Gibbons, who then carried it to Sharpe. By his action Lieutenant Sharpe exposed the Battalion and betrayed it.’ Simmerson had found his rehearsed theme and he warmed to his task. ‘I am requesting, sir, that Lieutenant Sharpe be court-martialled…’
Wellesley held up a hand and stopped the flow of words. He looked, almost casually, at Sharpe, and there was something frightening about those blue eyes over the great, hooked nose that looked, judged, and were quite inscrutable. The eyes flicked to Forrest.
‘You heard this order, Major?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You, Lieutenant. What happened?’
Gibbons arched his eyebrows and glanced at Sharpe. His tone was bored, supercilious. ‘I ordered Lieutenant Sharpe to deploy his Riflemen, sir. He refused. Captain Hogan joined in his refusal.’ Simmerson looked pleased. The General’s fingers beat a brief tattoo on the table. ‘Ah, Captain Hogan. I saw him an hour ago.’ Wellesley drew out a piece of paper and looked at it. Sharpe knew it was all an act: Wellesley knew precisely what was on the paper but he was drawing out the tension. The blue eyes came up to Simmerson again; the tone of voice was still mild. ‘I have served with Captain Hogan for many years, Sir Henry. He was in India. I have always found him a most trustworthy man.’ He raised his eyebrows in a query, as though inviting Simmerson to put him right. Simmerson, inevitably, accepted the invitation.
‘Hogan, sir, is an Engineer. He was not in a position to make decisions about the deployment of troops.’ He sounded pleased with himself, even anxious to show Wellesley that he bore the General no ill-will despite their political opposition.
Somewhere in the palace a clock whirred loudly and then chimed ten o’clock. Wellesley sat, his fingers drumming the table, and then jerked his gaze up to Simmerson.
‘Your request is denied, Sir Henry. I will not court-martial Lieutenant Sharpe.’ He paused for a second, looked at the paper and back to Simmerson. ‘We have decisions to take about your Battalion, Sir Henry, I think you had better stay.’
Lawford moved to the door. Wellesley’s voice had been hard and cold, the tone final, but Simmerson exploded, his voice rising indignantly.
‘He lost my colour! He disobeyed!’
Wellesley’s fist hit the table with a crash. ‘Sir! I know what order he disobeyed! I would have disobeyed it! You proposed sending skirmishers against cavalry! Is that right, sir?’
Simmerson said nothing. He was aghast at the tumult of anger that had overwhelmed him. Wellesley went on.
‘First, Sir Henry, you had no business in taking your Battalion over the bridge. It was unnecessary, time wasting, and damned foolish. Secondly.’ He was ticking off on his fingers. ‘Only a fool, sir, deploys skirmishers against cavalry. Third. You have disgraced this army, which I have spent a year in the making, in the face of our foes and of our allies. Fourthly.’ Wellesley’s voice was biting hard. ‘The only credit gained in this miserable engagement was by Lieutenant Sharpe. I understand, sir, that he regained one of your lost colours and moreover captured a French gun and used it with some effect on your attackers. Is that correct?’
No-one spoke. Sharpe stared rigidly ahead at a picture on the wall behind the General. He heard a rustle of paper. Wellesley had picked up the sheet from the desk. His voice was lower.
‘You have lost, sir, as well as your colour, two hundred and forty-two men either killed or injured. You lost a Major, three Captains, five Lieutenants, four Ensigns and ten Sergeants. Are my figures correct?’ Again no-one spoke. Wellesley stood up. ‘Your orders, sir, were those of a fool! The next time, Sir Henry, I suggest you fly a white flag and save the French the trouble of unsheathing their swords! The job you had to do, sir, could have been done by a company; I was forced by diplomacy to commit a Battalion, and I sent yours, sir, so that your men would have a sight and taste of the French. I was wrong! As a result one of our colours is now on its way to Paris to be paraded in front of the mob. Tell me if I malign you?’
Simmerson had blanched white. Sharpe had never seen Wellesley so angry. He seemed to have forgotten the presence of the others and he directed his words at Simmerson with a vengeful force.
‘You on longer have a Battalion, Sir Henry. It ceased to exist when you threw away your men and a colour! The South Essex is a single Battalion regiment, is that right?’ Simmerson nodded and muttered assent. ‘So you can hardly make up your numbers from home. I wish, Sir Henry, I could send you home! But I cannot. My hands are tied, sir, by Parliament and the Horse Guards and by medd
ling politicians, like your cousin. I am declaring your Battalion, Sir Henry, to be a Battalion of Detachments. I will attach new officers myself and draft men into your ranks. You will serve in General Hill’s Division.’
‘But, sir. Sir?’ Simmerson was overwhelmed by the information. To be called a Battalion of Detachments? It was unthinkable! He stammered a protest. Wellesley interrupted him.