Sharpe was in command. In command. A month ago he had led twenty-eight men, tonight he had near eight hundred with Gilliland's men. Some men took responsibility whether it was offered or not.
He walked back into the room when Sir Augustus and Josefina had left and he was greeted by a babble of voices. Most of the officers were confused, awed by the turn in their fortunes, fearing that Sharpe had drawn them all a very short straw, and they clamoured for detail, for explanation, and Sharpe cut through the noise.
'Quiet!'
He took the papers from the clerk's desk, the orders for withdrawal, and he tossed them onto the fire. They watched, some seeing their hopes burning in the fire.
'Our task, gentlemen, is to hold this pass for at least forty-eight hours. This is how it will be done.' He brooked no questions, no discussion, not even when he ordered a bemused Lieutenant Price to have Patrick Harper capture as many live birds as he could.
'Yes, sir.' Price shook his head in wonderment. Frederickson grinned, happy at last.
He dealt with questions at the end, dismissed them to their Companies, then pulled the rug off the window so he could stare westward at the darkness over Portugal. Teresa was down there somewhere, riding in the night.
'Sir?'
He turned. Frederickson was leaning against the wall by the door.'Yes?'
'How did you do it?'
'Never mind. You just hold that tower for me.'
'Consider it done.' Frederickson grinned and went.
The tower. The key to the whole valley, the key to living through the next two days or else perpetual darkness. Sharpe looked at the paper ashes on the fire. He would hold the Gateway of God.
Chapter 19
The dawn of Saturday, December 26th 1812, was muddy, slow and inglorious.
The temperature rose in the night, the warmer air bringing rain that lashed on the cobbles of the yard, hissed in the fire and bracketed torches, and soaked the thorn bushes so that, as the light struggled through the clouds, they appeared black and shiny on the hillsides.
At first light the valley seemed empty. The rain had exhausted itself into a fine drizzle that hid the far hills of Portugal. Clouds touched the rocky peaks north and south, shrouded even the topmost stones of the watchtower. The Union flag on the Convent had been taken down in the night, and the two Colours on the gate-tower hung heavy and wet above the rain-darkened stone.
At half past seven, a few minutes after sunrise, a group of French officers appeared to the west of the village. One was a full General. He dismounted, then propped his telescope on the saddle of his horse, peered at the men on the Castle ramparts, then pushed his horse round so he could stare at the figures beneath the watchtower. He grunted. ‘How long?’
'An hour and a half, sir.'
The rain had fed the small stream so that the water bubbled vigorously from the spring, fell white over stones and earth, and flooded small patches in the valley. Two curlews, their beaks long and curved like sabres, strutted by the stream and pecked in the cold water. They seemed to find nothing, for they flew eastwards in search of better feeding.
At eight o'clock the drizzle had stopped and a wind was pushing at the stiff folds of the Colours.
At eight fifteen the General reappeared, a roll of bread in one hand, and he was rewarded by movement at last, Riflemen were stamping the life from the remains of a fire beneath the watchtower, then they picked up their packs, their weapons, and filed westward into the thorns. The black, spiny bushes seemed to swallow them up, hiding them from sight, but then, ten minutes later, they appeared in front of the Castle. The General stamped his feet. 'Thank God those bastards are going.' No Frenchman liked the Riflemen, the 'grasshoppers', who killed at a distance and seemed invulnerable to the musket fire of French skirmishers.
At half past eight the Colours were lowered from the gate-tower and the sentries disappeared from the Castle ramparts. They came out of the Castle gate, misshapen by their greatcoats, haversacks, packs, and canteens, and a mounted officer paraded them in ranks, the Riflemen who had come from the watchtower fell in beside them, and the whole group was marched to the road, turned westwards, and over the lip of the pass. Before the mounted officer dropped out of sight he turned, faced the French, and saluted with his sword.
The General grinned. 'So that's that. How many were there?'
An aide-de-camp snapped a telescope shut. 'Fifty redcoats, sir, twenty grasshoppers.'
Dubreton sipped his coffee. 'So Major Sharpe lost.'
'Let's be grateful for that.' The General cupped his hands about his own coffee. 'They must have gone in the night, leaving that rearguard.'
Another aide-de-camp was staring at the deserted watch-tower hill. 'Sir?'
'Pierre?'
'They left the guns.'
The General yawned. 'They didn't have time to get them out. Those artillerymen marched all the way here for nothing.' He laughed. It had been Dubreton's guess that the artillerymen he had seen in the Castle had been brought to fetch the guns back from the high valley. He had further guessed that Sharpe had arranged for him to see the men so that the French might think the British had properly served artillery batteries. Dubreton felt a moment of idle regret. It would have been interesting to fight against Richard Sharpe.
The General flung the dregs of his coffee onto the roadway and looked at Dubreton. 'He broke Ducos' glasses?'
'Yes, sir.'
The General laughed, the sound uncannily like the whinnying of a horse, so much so that the horse's ears flicked back in interest at the sound. The General shook his head. 'We'll catch them up before mid-day. Make sure this Sharpe doesn't fall into friend Ducos' hands. Alexandre.'
‘Yes, sir.'
'What's the time, Pierre?'
'Twenty to nine, sir.'
'What's twenty minutes in a war? Let's begin, gentlemen!' The General, a small man, clapped Dubreton's back. 'Well done, Alexandre! It would have taken us all of a day to force this pass if they'd stayed.'
'Thank you, sir.' Again Dubreton felt a moment's regret that the enemy had folded so easily, yet he knew the regret was misplaced. This operation in midwinter was horribly dependent on timing. The French would take the Gateway of God, garrison it, then send most of their force down towards Vila Nova on the north bank of the Douro. Their presence would reinforce the careful rumours that Ducos had spread, rumours that talked of an invasion of North Portugal, the Tras os Montes, the Land beyond the Mountains, and when the British reacted, as they must, by bringing their forces north, then the real operation would unwind from Salamanca. Divisions of the Army of Portugal, reinforced by men from the Army of the Centre and even one division from the Army of the South would cross the Coa, stripped of its defenders from the British Light Division, and they would capture Frenada, possibly Almeida, and hoped even to surprise the Spanish garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo. Within a week the northern road from Portugal would again be in French hands, the war of the British set back at least a year, and Dubreton had lain awake in the night, his wife sleeping peacefully, and feared that Sharpe would stay in the Gateway of God. In the small hours he had got up, dressed silently, and joined the picquet line west of Adrados. A Sergeant had greeted him then nodded towards the Castle. 'Hear that, sir?' Carts rumbling in the night. 'Bastards are going, sir.’
’Let's hope so, Sergeant.'
Now, as daylight filled the valley, a grey light, damp and depressing, Dubreton felt a moment's regret for Sharpe. He had liked the Rifleman, recognizing in him a fellow soldier, and he knew that Sharpe wanted to make his stand in the high valley. It would have been a hopeless fight, but worthy of a soldier, and as he thought so the suspicion formed in his brain. Dubreton smiled. Of course! Suppose Sharpe wanted them to think that the British had left? He took out his own glass, borrowed the shoulder of a soldier, and searched the dark arrow slits of the Castle.
Nothing. He shifted the lens to the right, his hand slipping so that for a second he could only see the freshly turned earth
of the graves in front of the east wall, and then the glass was under control and he looked at the gate-tower. Still nothing. The gate seemed unblocked. He tilted the telescope up and looked at the long dark slits above the arch and there was movement! He grinned, the sentry could sense the Colonel's excitement, and then the moment had passed. A jackdaw only, flying from the empty building, the birds taking over what was normally their own domain. He closed the glass. The sentry looked at him. 'Anyone there, sir?'
'No. It's empty.'
In the rectangular room above the gateway Sharpe cursed. The Fusilier shook his head. 'I'm sorry, sir. Bloody thing got out.'
'Well don't play with the bloody baskets!'
'No, sir.'
It had taken Harper and Daniel Hagman over two hours to snare the five birds from the rocks above the Convent. Sharpe had wanted to keep them until the French were much closer, when the enemy could clearly see the birds leaving the arrow slits and draw the obvious conclusion that the building was once again deserted. Now this fool of a Fusilier had prised apart the lips of the rush basket to look at the bird, and it had exploded up at him, flying desperately about the chamber before seeing daylight and rocketing out into the valley. One wasted bird! Sharpe had only one other, the remaining three were with one of Cross's Lieutenants in the Keep.
It had been a night of frantic business, a load falling from Sharpe's shoulders when, at five o'clock, Sir Augustus Farthingdale and Josefina had ridden westward down the pass with four lightly wounded Fusiliers mounted on Gilliland's troop horses as escort. An hour later Sharpe had sent the women and children westward, herded on their way by Cross's Riflemen who had pushed them a mile down the pass and then left them to their own devices. Nearly four hundred prisoners remained in the Castle dungeons, guarded by the other lightly wounded Fusiliers. The wounded had been brought by wagon from the Convent to the Castle, carried up to the big room that looked westward and would be furthest from the French cannon-fire. The surgeon, a tall, grim man, had laid his probes, saws and knives on a table carried up from the kitchens.
Three Companies of Fusiliers were now at the watch-tower, reinforcing Frederickson's seventy-nine Riflemen.
Sharpe had ensured that the best Captains were at the tower, men who could fight on the isolated hill and not look for orders that might never arrive. The weakest Captains, two of them, he had put in the Convent, and with them was Harry . Price with Sharpe's old Company and eight of Cross's Riflemen. A hundred and seven men held the Convent, not counting officers, exactly half the number of Riflemen and Fusiliers who now crouched on the reverse slope of the watchtower hill. Sharpe had given the Convent one advantage. Patrick Harper was there, and Sharpe had put weak Captains into the building to make it easier for the Irish Sergeant to run the defence. Frederickson held Sharpe's right, Harper his left, and in the centre, the Castle. Sharpe had forty of Cross's Riflemen with two hundred and thirty-five Fusiliers. The Rocket Troop had gone south, hidden over the crest, the men nervous on their saddles with the strange lances in their hands.
'Sir?' An Ensign in the stairway that went up towards the gate-tower top called down to Sharpe.
'Yes?'
'One man riding to the watchtower, sir.'
Sharpe swore quietly. He had tried so hard to convince the enemy that the positions were deserted. Harper had led a group of Riflemen away from the watchtower, waited by the gatehouse as one Company of Fusiliers had conspicuously lowered the Colours and formed up outside the Castle, and then all of them had dropped beneath the lip of the pass before turning right and entering the Convent through the hole hacked for Pot-au-Feu's gun. The officer, one of the Fusilier's brighter men, had ridden south and scrambled his horse up steep slopes to join Gilliland's nervous men.
'And sir?'
'Yes?'
'One Battalion coming towards us. On the road, sir.'
That was better. It was all Sharpe could hope for, one single Battalion to check that the buildings were clear, one single Battalion that he could chop into pieces before breakfast. He climbed the stairs and the Ensign made way for him. He kept well back from the arrow slit and watched the Frenchmen come west on the road. They marched casually, muskets slung, and some still held bread in their hands from their breakfasts.
A French Captain, released by his Colonel's orders, rode ahead of the Battalion. He stared up at the Castle keep and saw a bird fly from one of the gaping holes in its stonework. A second bird appeared, big and black, and perched on the ramparts to preen itself. He grinned because the buildings were empty.
Sharpe was back in the chamber that had held the winding gear for the portcullis. He saw the Captain come easily up the road, saw the man's face look up at the arrow slit and it seemed certain that the man must see him, but the Captain's eyes went on up to the rampart. 'Now.'
The Fusilier, crouched beneath the left hand arrow slit, opened the second basket and the jackdaw cawed in anger, flapped furiously towards the light and squeezed itself through the stones and up into the air. The horse, only feet beneath, shied, and Sharpe heard the Captain soothe it.
The Captain stroked the horse's neck, patted it. 'You're frightened of a bird, eh?' He chuckled, went on patting it, and then the horse-shoes echoed loud on the stones of the tunnel that sloped up into the courtyard. He chuckled again because someone had chalked big letters on the stone of the tunnel. 'Bonjour.’
The men in the chamber held their breath.
The Captain rode into the courtyard and saw where the rain had smudged and faded the bloodstains. The remains of a fire smoked lazily to his right in front of what appeared to be a long, low stable block. His horse was uneasy, tossing its head and moving sideways in short, quick steps. He patted it again.
One of the General's aides-de camp, a man curious about the buildings of Spain, had ridden through the thorns to the watchtower. The thorns were thick here, the path tortuous and marked by small knots of old, faded wool left from the summer when sheep grazed these high pastures. He tied his horse to the bough of a thorn, cursing quietly as a spine scratched his hand, and then he took from his saddlebag a sketch pad and pencil. These towers, he knew, had been built against the Moors and this one was in fine condition. He strolled towards it, saw the gun in its earthen pit and saw, too, the nail that had been driven into the touch-hole. It was odd, he thought, that the British had not snipped the nail off flush with the breech, but they had left in a hurry. The gun was old, anyway, of a calibre not used by the French, so it was not much of a trophy.
He turned and watched the single Battalion march towards Castle and Convent, saw the Captain ride beneath the archway, and he looked right to where the other two Battalions were forming up in the village street. These were the new garrison of the Gateway of God, the men who would ensure that the troops who would march to Vila Nova would have a safe haven behind them for their withdrawal, and then he looked at the arched doorway to the tower. A small gasp of surprise came from his mouth. The door was round arched and decorated with a zig-zag pattern, distinctively French, and he took it as a good omen that some French knight or mason had supervised the building of this watch-tower in a strange land. His pencil sketched the arch, skilful strokes shading the Norman decoration, and thirty yards away Sweet William watched him. The eye-patch and teeth were in his pocket.
The General was on horseback now, pulling his sword into place, preparing for the day's march. 'What's Pierre doing?'
'Sketching, sir.'
'My God!' His voice was amused. 'Is there a building he hasn't sketched?'
'He says he's going to write a book, sir,' said another aide-de-camp.
The General gave his strange laugh. The Battalion was turning to the left, approaching the Castle. The General pushed his canteen of wine into place, checked that the small leather case on his saddle pommel had the day's supply of paper and pencil for scribbled messages, then grinned at the aide-de-camp. 'I once knew a man who wrote a book.' He scratched his chin. 'His breath smelt.'
The ai
de-de-camp laughed dutifully.
And the bugle sounded from the gatehouse.
Chapter 20
Frederickson did not move. He had hoped that at least a Company of French Infantry would be sent to the watch-tower, but there was only this single man, sketch pad in hand, whose slim, good-looking face, was turned worriedly towards the Castle.
The bugle sounded again, the notes unmistakably ordering 'Incline to the right', but this morning it told the carefully positioned British troops which of the three prepared plans was to be followed. The call was a repeated sequence of two notes that reminded Frederickson of a hunting-field call. The fox hunts would be out in England at this hour.
The aide-de-camp with his sketching pad started towards his horse, then stopped. No one threatened him. He frowned and, with his usual meticulous care, took a watch from his pocket, snapped open the lid that was engraved with a message from his father, and noted the time on the corner of the pad. Four minutes to nine. He looked quickly round the hilltop, seeing the second gun in its fresh pit facing south, but still seeing no enemy. Then he saw the redcoats in the Castle and he stood, aghast, and watched the musket smoke smear the morning.
The Captain whose horse was nervous had ridden to the great gate into the keep. The archway was blocked with stones, waist high, and he could see the empty inner courtyard beyond. His horse was still frightened by something, and that was strange, but he rubbed the neck, spoke fondly to it, and turned towards the stable-block. He could hear the boots of the leading Companies coming towards the Castle.
The Colonel of the Battalion waved grumpily to another Captain who wheeled his troops right, onto the Convent road, and then the Colonel looked back to the gatehouse. A fine building once, he thought.
The Captain put spurs to his horse and trotted back towards the Castle gate. He could at least confirm the abandonment of the Castle, and he grinned as he stroked his horse's neck, and then the horse shied again for the gatehouse was suddenly swarming with men. An officer, a Riflernan, had appeared from the gate leading to the northern ramparts, and a lad was beside him, bugle to his mouth, and the notes jerked into the valley. More men poured from a small door in the gatehouse, Riflemen, who ran into the tunnel and knelt with their weapons aimed. They seemed to ignore him, as did the other green-jacketed men who ran past the officer to the northern wall, and then there was a shout, a cheer, and a rush of feet behind him.