The French gunners, fearful of hitting their own men, stopped firing. A bugle sounded and, on its note, the hundreds of steel bayonets dropped into the attack position and the French cheered and charged.
CHAPTER 13
It was unfortunate for Captain Rymer. He had been anticipating, with resolve and trepidation, the first time he would lead his own Company into action. He had not imagined it to be like this. Instead he had seen himself on a wide hillside, under a brilliant sky, with the standards snapping in the wind and himself, sabre drawn, taking a skirmish line against the very centre of the enemy’s battle. He sometimes considered a wound, nothing too ghastly, but enough to make him a hero back home and his imagination, leaping vast distances, saw him modestly telling the story to a group of admiring ladies, while other men, untested in battle, could only look on in jealousy.
Instead of which he was at the bottom of a muddy trench, soaked to the skin, in charge of men armed only with spades and facing one thousand fully-armed Frenchmen. Rymer froze. The Company looked to him and past him to Sharpe. The Rifleman hesitated for a second, saw Rymer’s indecision, and waved his arm. ‘Back!’
There was no point in trying to fight; not yet, not till the armed companies could come together and make a proper counter-attack. The working parties scrambled out of the trench, ran back over the wet grass, then turned to watch the enemy jump into the deserted workings. The French ignored them; they were interested in just two things. They wanted to capture and destroy as much of the parallel as they could and, more important, take back to the city every spade and pickaxe they could find. For each such mundane trophy, they had been promised a reward of one dollar.
Sharpe began walking to the top of the hill, parallel to the trench, keeping pace with the French who hurled spades and picks to their comrades beyond the parapet. In front of the enemy, like startled rabbits, other working parties leaped from the earth and scampered for safety. No one had been hurt in the attack. Sharpe doubted if any man had tried to fire a musket or lunge with a bayonet. It was almost farcical.
Above the enemy was chaos. The British, mostly unarmed, moved like a herd while the enemy, just yards away, systematically stripped the parallel. Some of the French tried to push the parapet down, but the earth was so sodden that it was impossible. The British, glad of a diversion from the unending digging, jeered at them. One or two Frenchmen levelled their muskets, but the British were fifty yards away, doubtful musket range, and the rain was still pouring down. The French were unwilling to unwrap their locks if there was not to be a real fight.
‘Bloody chaos, sir.’ Sergeant Harper had caught up with Sharpe, strode easily alongside with a spade gripped in his hand. He grinned cheerfully.
Sergeant Hakeswill, the front of his uniform still smeared with thick mud, ran past them. He gave them one malevolent glance and hurried on towards the rear of the hill. Sharpe wondered what the man was doing and then forgot about it as Captain Rymer caught him. ‘Shouldn’t we be doing something?’
Sharpe shrugged. ‘See if anyone’s missing?’ There was not much else to be done, not till the guard companies that had been ordered to carry weapons could organize an attack on the busy French.
An Engineer in blue coat and wearing an ornate cocked hat ran towards the French. He was shouting at the working parties that were still scrambling for safety. ‘Keep your spades! Keep your spades!’ It had taken dozens of ox-carts to bring the precious tools from Lisbon and now they were being casually abandoned to the French. Sharpe recognized the blue-coated man as Colonel Fletcher, the Chief Engineer.
A few men turned back to pick up their discarded spades and the leading French troops tugged the rags off their muskets, aimed, and shot. It was a miracle that any fired, but three were dry enough, the smoke coughed and Colonel Fletcher fell backwards, hands clutching at his groin. There was a French cheer as the Colonel was carried away to safety.
The South Essex Grenadier Company came running past Sharpe, muskets at the trail, with Captain Leroy at their head. He had his inevitable cigar in his mouth, sodden and unlit, and as he ran past he raised an eyebrow to Sharpe in ironic acknowledgement of the chaos. There was another armed Company just ahead and Leroy lined his men up next to them. The American looked back to Sharpe. ‘Want to join in?’
The French had captured half the first parallel, three hundred yards of trench, and were still pushing up the hill. The two companies of British infantry, outnumbered ten to one, pulled out their bayonets and twisted the blades on to the muskets. Leroy looked at his men. ‘Don’t bother pulling your triggers. Just cut the bastards.’ He drew his sword and swished the thin blade through the rain. A third company, panting and hurried, attached themselves to the small line. The Captains nodded to each other and ordered the advance.
Other companies were scrambling into position, but the first danger to the French was from the three companies advancing from the flank. They lined the trench, unwrapped the rags from the musket locks, and waited. Sharpe doubted if one musket in ten would work. He drew his own sword, suddenly happy to feel the weight in his hand after the weeks of boredom, and then the British line began a stumbling run as if they wanted to reach the trench before the French could fire their muskets.
A French officer’s sword flashed down. ‘Tirez!’ Sharpe saw the men’s faces flinch as they pulled the triggers, but the rain had done the work for the British. A few shots banged out, but most of the flints sparked on to wet powder that was like thick putty, and the French cursed and waited with their bayonets.
The British cheered. The frustration of days and nights of rain, of the interminable digging, was suddenly to be vented on the enemy; and men who had nothing but spades, or even bare hands, came in behind the armed companies and screamed defiance at the French. Sharpe swung the sword, slipped, and half fell, half jumped into the trench. A bayonet stabbed at him and he hammered it to one side and kicked the man down. Other Frenchmen were trying to scramble out the far side of the parallel, helped by comrades on the parapet. The British bayonets reached for them and blue-uniformed bodies slumped down.
‘Watch right!’ Someone shouted. A group of French were working their way up the trench, rescuing the men overwhelmed at the point of the British attack, and then they themselves were suddenly fighting for survival. A motley band of soldiers, mostly armed with spades, waded into the French and Sharpe could see Harper swinging murderously with his makeshift weapon. The Sergeant leaped into the trench, swept a bayonet to one side, and rammed the blade of his spade into the man’s solar plexus. He was shouting his Gaelic challenge, clearing the trench with massive, scything blows, and no Frenchman would stand and fight.
The enemy still possessed the parapet. They clubbed down at the British in the trench, jabbed with long bayonets, and, every once in a while, succeeded in making a musket fire down into the parallel. Sharpe knew they had to be forced away. He hacked at the feet of the men nearest him, clawed at the side, and a boot kicked him back to the trench floor.
The French were recovering, drawing their forces together, and the parallel was an unhealthy place. There was a ragged volley of shots as a rank of the enemy uncovered their flintlocks, men fell into the water that poured like a small stream down the trench. Sharpe swung again at the enemy’s legs, dodged a bayonet, and knew that the sensible thing was to retreat. He ran down the trench, the mud fouled and slippery beneath his boots, and then a massive hand checked him and Sergeant Harper grinned at him. ‘This is better than digging, sir.’ He was holding a captured musket, the bayonet bloodied and bent.
Sharpe turned. The French still held a portion of the trench in the centre of the parallel, but the British were attacking from the hill. Only to the north, where Sharpe and Harper caught their breath in the bloodied trench, were the French undisturbed. They were not planning to stay long. Already their officers were sending back half companies, loaded with captured tools, and the sight made Sharpe climb up on the parapet of the French side of the trench. About ha
lf of his old Company were with Harper, some with captured muskets, most with spades. He grinned at them, glad to be back. ‘Come on, lads. Up here.’
One Company of Frenchmen formed a guard facing north and the officer watched nervously as Sharpe’s ragged band, their uniforms plastered with wet mud, came towards them. They would not attack. The British were not properly armed, under-strength, but suddenly a sword was raised and the small group burst on him, and it was bayonets against spades, and two tall devils were hacking at his men. No one likes hand-to-hand combat, but Sharpe and Harper hurled themselves at the Company and the South Essex came with them. They snarled at the French, clubbed them with spades, and Harper used his captured musket like a mace. The French went backwards, stumbling on the slick mud, blinded by rain, and still the madmen came at them. Sharpe pushed with the sword, going for faces and throats, once having to parry a Sergeant’s efficient bayonet. He knocked the blade aside, the Frenchman slipped, the sword was up and falling like an axe into the man’s head. Sharpe tried to stop the blow, the Sergeant was defenceless, and the sword swerved and thudded into the wet earth of the parapet. The French were running, back to their main body, and the half-company of the South Essex were left with a dozen prisoners who had fallen on the slippery ground. The French Sergeant, his single arm-stripe bloodied in the fight, looked round his own dead and then at the sword which had so nearly killed him. He had seen the tall officer change the death-stroke, swerve the blow, and he nodded to him. ‘Merci, Monsieur.’
Harper looked at the dozen men. ‘What do we do with them, sir?’
‘Let them go.’ It was no place to take prisoners. They took their weapons and hurled them across the parallel, out of reach, and searched each Frenchman for wine or brandy. Ahead of Sharpe the battle still raged. The main body of the French had fought their way to within fifty yards of the first battery, but had been held. Scattered parties of men, some armed, some with nothing more than lengths of timber, were charging the French and starting vicious fights in the mud. Officers on horseback galloped at the fringe of the fight, trying to restore order to chaos, but the British soldiers did not want order. They wanted a break from the tedium of digging and the drowning rain, and they wanted a fight. It was like a street brawl. There was no smoke because the muskets would not fire; the noise of the fight was metal clashing on metal, wood on metal, the screams of the wounded and sobs of the dying. From the side, where Sharpe and his half-company shared brandy with their prisoners, it looked like hundreds of swamp monsters grappling in grotesque slow motions.
Sharpe pointed the French Sergeant towards the city. ‘Go!’
The Frenchman grinned, gave Sharpe a friendly salute, and led his small band away. Twenty yards from the trench they stopped, picked up six spades. Harper shouted. ‘Bring them back!’ The French Sergeant made a rude gesture and began running towards Badajoz.
‘Let them go.’ Sharpe turned back to the fight. ‘Come on.’
They trudged up beside the parapet, the rain sweeping across them and down on to the dead in the trench. Broken spades and shattered muskets littered the slope. The sound of the fight, the sound of men clawing each other to death in the mud, was muffled by the rain. A French officer had organized a small group with spades and was trying to fill in the parallel. Sharpe began to hurry, the ground treacherous, and he turned to see his men strung out as they followed him, but Harper was beside him and the French turned and saw them coming. It was the turn of the French to use spades. A huge man swung at them, forced them back, parried Harper’s thrust and Sharpe flailed his sword at the brute, cutting through the spade-handle, and still the Frenchman came at them. Harper bayoneted him, and still he came on, and Sharpe cut at the back of the man’s neck until he finally collapsed. ‘Come on!’
There was a stinging pain in his back, he whipped round and the French officer, white-faced, was going back from the sword lunge. ‘You bastard!’ Sharpe went forward, blade level, and the Frenchman came at him. The blades rattled, Sharpe twisted his wrist so that the heavy sword went from the Frenchman’s left to his right, under his guard, and Sharpe stamped his right foot forward, ignored his opponent’s blade and caught him in the ribs. The French officer tried to back away, slipped on blood and mud but Sharpe kept on going forward, feeling the steel scrape on ribs. His men swept past him with their bayonets held out, their captured bayonets, and Sharpe watched them drive the enemy back.
Bugles called the French back to the city and, within seconds, the hillside was a mass of retreating enemy carrying their wounded and bundles of captured shovels and picks. They were heading straight for the city as if frightened of cavalry pursuit and Sharpe watched as men waded into the floodwater rather than go the long way round by the dam. For ten, twenty yards it was fine, the water came up to their thighs and then, with horrid suddenness, the bottom dropped away. French officers shouted at their men, ordered them away from the water, shepherded them to the Rivillas dam. The sortie was over.
The French cannon opened fire, the roundshot ploughing into mud-soaked red, and the British leaped for the damaged trench. Harper looked at Sharpe’s drawn and gory sword. ‘Like old times, sir.’
Sharpe looked round his small group. All his Riflemen were there, grinning at him, and a good number of the rest of the Light Company. He grinned at them, then picked up a piece of wet sacking and wiped the sword blade. ‘You’d better get back to the Company.’
‘Rather stay here, sir.’ Sharpe could not see who had spoken. He looked at Harper.
‘Take them back, Sergeant.’
‘Sir.’ Harper grinned at him. ‘And thank you, sir.’
‘For nothing.’ He was left alone. Small groups wandered the area of fighting and picked up the wounded and stacked the dead. There were a lot of bodies, more, he guessed, than had been in the breach at Ciudad Rodrigo. A spade brought down on a man’s head is a vicious instrument and the British troops had been frustrated and ready for a fight, for a savage brawl in the mud. A dead Frenchman was curled at Sharpe’s feet and the Rifleman crouched and ran his hands through the corpse’s pockets and pouches. There was nothing worth taking. A letter folded into quarters which smeared as soon as Sharpe pulled it into the rain, a copper coin, and a loose musket ball that may have been the dead man’s talisman. Round the neck, thick with blood, was a cheap metal crucifix. He had tried to grow a moustache, to look like a veteran, but the hairs were wispy and thin. He was hardly more than a boy. One of his boot soles had come loose, was hanging free and vibrating fitfully as the rain struck it. Had that killed him? Had the sole come loose in the fight and, as his comrades ran, had he limped, or stumbled, and had a British bayonet sliced into his neck? The ink washed off the letter, ran into the mud, but Sharpe could see the last word on the page that was written larger than the rest. ‘Maman.’
He looked at the city, now fringed again with the long flames as the guns hammered the threnody that would not cease till the siege was over. Teresa was there. He looked at the Cathedral tower, squat and arched with bell windows, and thought how close the bell must sound to her. The Cathedral only seemed to have the one bell, a harsh bell whose note died almost as soon as it was struck on the hour and its quarters. He wondered, quite suddenly, if she ever sang to the child? And what was mother in Spanish? Maman? Like the French?
‘Sir! Sir!’ It was Ensign Matthews, blinking through the rain. ‘Sir? Is that you, sir? Captain Sharpe?’
‘It’s me.’ Sharpe did not correct the Captain to Lieutenant.
‘You’d better come, sir.’
‘What is it?’
‘The officers’ baggage, sir. It’s been rifled.’
‘Rifled?’ He was scrambling out of the trench.
‘The Colonel’s lost some silver, sir. Everyone’s lost something, sir.’
Sharpe swore. He had been in charge of the baggage and, instead of guarding it, he had been brawling in the mud. He swore again and began to run.
CHAPTER 14
‘God damn it!’ C
olonel Windham paced up and down in the tiny sheepfold. He was carrying a riding crop and he cut with it in his fury, slashing at the pile of baggage. When he bent his head to look at the rifled baggage, water cascaded from his bicorne hat. ‘God damn it!’
‘When did it happen?’ Sharpe asked Major Forrest.
‘We don’t know.’ Forrest smiled nervously at the Rifleman.
Windham swivelled. ‘Happen? When? This God-damned afternoon, Sharpe, when you were supposed to be in God-damned command!’ There were another dozen officers crowded back against the walls of the sheepfold and they looked to Sharpe with accusing faces. They were all wary of the Colonel’s anger.
‘Do we know it was this afternoon?’ Sharpe insisted.
Windham looked as if he would like to whip Sharpe with his riding crop. Instead he swore again, and turned away. It was not the officers’ day-to-day baggage that had been burgled, but their valuables which had been stored in leather mule-bags. None of the baggage, as far as Sharpe knew, had been touched for three days. It contained the kind of things that a man would only unpack if he were in comfortable quarters for a long period; silverware, crystal, the luxuries that reminded them of home comforts. Windham growled at Major Collett. ‘What’s missing?’
It was not a long list. Forrest had lost a money draft, but it had been found screwed up and thrown away in the mud. Whoever had slit the bags had not known what to do with the paper. There was a pair of snuffboxes gone, a gold chain that Sharpe suspected had been looted from Ciudad Rodrigo; certainly the officer who reported that loss had been voluble about his poverty before the siege and remarkably silent afterwards. There was a set of gold scabbard furniture, too valuable to wear in battle, a pair of silver spurs and a pair of jewelled ear-rings that an embarrassed Lieutenant claimed was a present for his mother. Major Collett had lost a shaving mirror with a silver lid and a watch that he said was worth a small fortune. Most important of all was the Colonel’s loss; the silver-filigree-framed portrait of his wife, the chinless, stern Jessica. The Colonel, rumour had it, was particularly fond of his wife; she had brought him a small fortune and the hunting rights for half of Leicestershire, and Colonel Windham was furious at the loss. Sharpe remembered the portrait sitting on the low table in Elvas.