Author: Bernard Cornwell
Category: Historical
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“Did you kill anyone?” Harper wanted to know.
“No, Sergeant.”
“Not earned your bloody shilling today then, have you? Right! Pendleton! Williamson! Dodd! Sims!” Harper organized a group to go back down the hill and bring up the discarded packs and food. Sharpe had another two men strip the dead and wounded of their weapons and ammunition.
Vicente had garrisoned the southern side of the fort and the sight of his men was enough to deter the French from trying a second assault. The Portuguese lieutenant now came back to join Sharpe beside the watchtower where the wind shrieked on the broken stone. The rain was slackening, but the stronger wind gusts still drove drops hard against the ruined walls. “What do we do about the village?” Vicente wanted to know.
“There’s nothing we can do.”
“There are women down there! Children!”
“I know.”
“We can’t just leave them.”
“What do you want us to do?” Sharpe asked. “Go down there? Rescue them? And while we’re there, what happens up here? Those bastards take the hill.” He pointed at the French voltigeurs who were still halfway up the hill, uncertain whether to keep climbing or to give up the attempt. “And when you get down there,” Sharpe went on, “what are you going to find? Dragoons. Hundreds of bloody dragoons. And when the last of your men are dead you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you tried to save the village.” He saw the stubbornness on Vicente’s face. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“We have to try,” Vicente insisted.
“You want to take some men on patrol? Then do it, but the rest of us stay up here. This place is our one chance of staying alive.”
Vicente shivered. “You will not keep going south?”
“We get off this hill,” Sharpe said, “and we’re going to have dragoons giving us haircuts with their bloody swords. We’re trapped, Lieutenant, we’re trapped.”
“You will let me take a patrol down to the village?”
“Three men,” Sharpe said. He was reluctant to let even three men go with Vicente, but he could see that the Portuguese lieutenant was desperate to know what was happening to his countrymen. “Stay in cover, Lieutenant,” Sharpe advised. “Stay in the trees. Go very carefully!”
Vicente was back three hours later. There were simply too many dragoons and blue-jacketed infantry around Vila Real de Zedes and he had got nowhere near the village. “But I heard screams,” he said.
“Aye,” Sharpe said, “you would have done.”
Beneath him, beyond the Quinta, the remnants of the village church burned out in the dark damp night. It was the only light he could see. There were no stars, no candles, no lamps, just the sullen red glow of the burning church.
And tomorrow, Sharpe knew, the French would come for him again.
IN THE morning the French officers had breakfast on the terrace of the tavern beneath a vine trellis. The village had proved to be full of food and there was newly baked bread, ham, eggs and coffee for breakfast. The rain had gone to leave a damp feel in the wind, but there were shadows in the fields and the promise of warm sunlight in the air. The smoke of the burned-out church drifted northwards, taking with it the stench of roasted flesh.
Maria, the red-headed girl, served Colonel Christopher his coffee. The Colonel was picking his teeth with a sliver of ivory, but he took it from his mouth to thank her. “Obrigado, Maria,” he said in a pleasant tone. Maria shuddered, but nodded a hasty acknowledgment as she backed away.
“She’s replaced your servant?” Brigadier Vuillard asked.
“The wretched fellow’s missing,” Christopher said. “Runaway. Gone.”
“A fair exchange,” Vuillard said, watching Maria. “That one’s much prettier.”
“She was pretty,” Christopher allowed. Maria’s face was badly bruised now and the bruises had swollen to spoil her beauty. “And she’ll be pretty again,” he went on.
“You hit her hard,” Vuillard said with a hint of reproach.
Christopher sipped his coffee. “The English have a saying, Brigadier. A spaniel, a woman and a walnut tree, the more they’re beaten the better they be.”
“A walnut tree?”
“They say if the trunk is well thrashed it increases the yield of nuts; I have no idea if it’s true, but I do know that a woman has to be broken like a dog or a horse.”
“Broken,” Vuillard repeated the word. He was rather in awe of Christopher’s sang-froid.
“The stupid girl resisted me,” Christopher explained, “she put up a fight, so I taught her who is master. Every woman needs to be taught that.”
“Even a wife?”
“Especially a wife,” Christopher said, “though the process might be slower. You don’t break a good mare quickly, but take your time. But this one”—he jerked his head toward Maria—“this one needed a damned fast whipping. I don’t mind if she resents me, but one doesn’t want a wife to be soured by resentment.”
Maria was not the only one with a bruised face. Major Dulong had a black mark across the bridge of his nose and a scowl just as dark. He had reached the watchtower before the British and Portuguese troops, but with a smaller group of men and then he had been surprised by the ferocity with which the enemy had attacked him. “Let me go back, mon Général,” he pleaded with Vuillard.
“Of course, Dulong, of course.” Vuillard did not blame the voltigeur officer for the night’s only failure. It seemed that the British and Portuguese troops, whom everyone had expected to find in the Quinta’s stables, had decided to go south and thus had been halfway to the watchtower when the attack began. But Major Dulong was not accustomed to failure and the repulse on the hilltop had hurt his pride. “Of course you can go back,” the Brigadier reassured him, “but not straightaway. I think we shall let les belles filles have their wicked way with them first, yes?”
“Les belles filles?” Christopher asked, wondering why on earth Vuillard would send girls up to the watchtower.
“The Emperor’s name for his cannon,” Vuillard explained. “Les belles filles. There’s a battery at Valengo and they must have a brace of howitzers. I’m sure the gunners will be pleased to lend us their toys, aren’t you? A day of target practice and those idiots on the hill will be as broken as your redhead.” The Brigadier watched as the girls brought out the food. “I shall look at their target after we’ve eaten. Perhaps you will do me the honor of lending me your telescope?”
“Of course,” Christopher pushed the glass across the table. “But take care of it, my dear Vuillard. It’s rather precious to me.”
Vuillard examined the brass plate and knew just enough English to decipher its meaning. “Who is this AW?”
“Sir Arthur Wellesley, of course.”
“And why would he be grateful to you?”
“You couldn’t possibly expect a gentleman to answer a question like that, my dear Vuillard. It would be boasting. Suffice it to say that I did not merely black his boots.” Christopher smiled modestly, then helped himself to eggs and bread.
Two hundred dragoons rode the short journey back to Valengo. They escorted an officer who carried a request for a pair of howitzers, and the officer and the dragoons returned that same morning.
With one howitzer only. But that, Vuillard was certain, would be enough. The riflemen were doomed.
Chapter 6
WHAT YOU REALLY WANTED,” Lieutenant Pelletieu said, “was a mortar.”
“A mortar?” Brigadier General Vuillard was astonished at the Lieutenant’s self-confidence. “You are telling me what I want?”
“What you want,” Pelletieu said confidently, “is a mortar. It’s a question of elevation, sir.”
“It is a question, Lieutenant”—Vuillard put a deal of stress on Pelletieu’s lowly rank—“of pouring death, shit, horror and damnation on those impudent bastards on that goddamned hilltop.” He pointed to the watchtower. He was standing at the edge of the wood where he had invited Lieutenant Pelletieu to unl
imber his howitzer and start slaughtering. “Don’t talk to me of elevation! Talk to me of killing.”
“Killing is our business, sir,” the Lieutenant said, quite unmoved by the Brigadier’s anger, “but I do have to get closer to the impudent bastards.” He was a very young man, so young that Vuillard wondered whether Pelletieu had even begun to shave. He was also thin as a whip, so thin that his white breeches, white waistcoat and dark-blue cutaway coat hung on him like discarded garments draped on a scarecrow. A long skinny neck jutted from the stiff blue collar, and his long nose supported a pair of thick-lensed spectacles that gave him the unfortunate appearance of a half-starved fish, but he was a remarkably self-possessed fish who now turned to his sergeant. “Two pounds at twelve degrees, don’t you think? But only if we can get to within three hundred and fifty toise?”
“Toise?” The Brigadier knew gunners used the old unit of measurement, but it meant nothing to him. “Why the hell don’t you speak French, man?”
“Three hundred and fifty toise? Call that…” Pelletieu paused and frowned as he did the mathematics.
“Six hundred and eighty meters,” his Sergeant, as thin, pale and young as Pelletieu, broke in.
“Six hundred and eighty-two,” Pelletieu said cheerfully.
“Three fifty toise?” the Sergeant mused aloud. “Two-pound charge? Twelve degrees? I think that will serve, sir.”
“Only just though,” Pelletieu said, then turned back to the Brigadier. “The target’s high, sir,” he explained.
“I know it’s high,” Vuillard said in a dangerous tone, “it is what we call a hill.”
“And everyone believes howitzers can work miracles on elevated targets,” Pelletieu went on, disregarding Vuillard’s sarcasm, “but they’re not really designed to be angled at much more than twelve degrees from the horizontal. Now a mortar, of course, can achieve a much higher angle, but I suspect the nearest mortar is at Oporto.”
“I just want the bastards dead!” Vuillard growled, then turned back as a memory occurred to him. “And why not a three-pound charge? The gunners were using three-pound charges at Austerlitz.” He was tempted to add “before you were born,” but restrained himself.
“Three pounds!” Pelletieu audibly sucked in his breath while his sergeant rolled his eyes at the Brigadier’s display of ignorance. “She’s a Nantes barrel, sir,” Pelletieu added in gnomic explanation as he patted the howitzer. “She was made in the dark ages, sir, before the revolution, and she was horribly cast. Her partner blew up three weeks ago, sir, and killed two of the crew. There was an air bubble in the metal, just horrible casting. She’s not safe beyond two pounds, sir, just not safe.”
Howitzers were usually deployed in pairs, but the explosion three weeks before had left Pelletieu’s the sole howitzer in his battery. It was a strange-looking weapon that resembled a toy gun incongruously perched on a full-scale carriage. The barrel, just twenty-eight inches long, was mounted between wheels that were the height of a man, but the small weapon was capable of doing what other field guns could not achieve: it could fire in a high arc. Field guns were rarely elevated more than a degree or two and their round shot flew in a flat trajectory, but the howitzer tossed its shells up high so that they plunged down onto the enemy. The guns were designed to fire over defensive walls, or above the heads of friendly infantry, and because a lobbed missile came to a swift stop when it landed, the howitzers did not fire solid round shot. An ordinary field gun, firing solid shot, could depend on the missile to bounce and keep on bouncing, and even after the fourth or fifth graze, as the gunners called each bounce, the round shot could still maim or kill, but a round shot tossed into the air was likely to bury itself in the turf and do no subsequent damage. So the howitzers fired shells that were fused to explode when the missile landed.
“Forty-nine times two, sir, seeing as how we have the caisson for the other howitzer as well,” Pelletieu said when Vuillard asked him how many shells his gun possessed. “Ninety-eight shells, sir, and twenty-two canister. Twice the usual rations!”
“Forget the canister,” Vuillard ordered. Canister, which spread from a gun’s barrel like duck shot, was for use against troops in the open, not for infantry concealed amongst rocks. “Drop the shells on the bastards and we’ll send for more ammunition if you need it. Which you won’t,” he added malevolently, “because you’re going to kill the bastards, aren’t you?”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Pelletieu said happily, “and with respect, sir, we won’t make widows by standing here talking. I’d best find a place to deploy her, sir. Sergeant! Shovels!”
“Shovels?” Vuillard asked.
“We have to level the ground, sir,” Pelletieu said, “because God didn’t think of gunners when He made the world. He made too many lumps and not enough smooth spots. But we’re very good at improving His handiwork, sir.” He led his men toward the hill in search of a place that could be leveled.
Colonel Christopher had been inspecting the howitzer, but now nodded at Pelletieu’s receding back. “Sending schoolboys to fight our wars?”
“He seems to know his business,” Vuillard admitted grudgingly. “Did your servant turn up?”
“Bloody man’s gone missing. Had to shave myself!”
“Shave yourself, eh?” Vuillard observed with amusement. “Life is hard, Colonel, life is sometimes so very hard.”
And soon, he thought, it would be murderous for the fugitives on the hill.
AT DAWN, a wet dawn with clouds scudding away southeast and a wind still gusting about the ragged summit, Dodd had spotted the fugitives halfway down the hill’s northern slope. They were crouching in the rocks, evidently hiding from the French picquets who lined the edge of the wood. There were seven, all men. Six had been survivors from Manuel Lopes’s band and the seventh was Luis, Christopher’s servant.
“It is the Colonel,” he had told Sharpe.
“What is?”
“Colonel Christopher. He is down there. He brought them here, he told them you were here!”
Sharpe stared down toward the village where a black smear showed where the church had stood. “He’s a bastard,” he said quietly, but he was not surprised. Not now. He only blamed himself for being so slow to see that Christopher was a traitor. He questioned Luis further and the servant told him about the journey south to meet General Cradock, about the dinner party in Oporto where a French general had been the guest of honor, and how Christopher sometimes wore an enemy uniform, but Luis honestly admitted he did not know what webs the Colonel spun. He did know that Christopher possessed Sharpe’s good telescope and Luis had managed to steal the Colonel’s old telescope, which he presented to Sharpe with a triumphant flourish. “I am sorry it is not your own, senhor, but the Colonel keeps that one in his tail pocket. I fight for you now,” Luis said proudly.
“Have you ever fought?” Sharpe asked.
“A man can learn,” Luis said, “and there is no one better than a barber for slitting throats. I used to think about that when I shaved my customers. How easy it would be to cut. I never did, of course,” he added hastily in case Sharpe thought he was a murderer.
“I think I’ll go on shaving myself,” Sharpe said with a smile.
So Vicente gave Luis one of the captured French muskets and a cartridge box of ammunition and the barber joined the other soldiers among the redoubts that barricaded the hilltop. Lopes’s men were sworn in as loyal Portuguese soldiers and when one said he would rather take his chances on escape and join the partisan groups to the north Sergeant Macedo used his fists to force the oath on him. “He’s a good lad, that Sergeant,” Harper said approvingly.
The damp lifted. The sodden flanks of the hill steamed in the morning sun, but that haze vanished as the morning became hotter. There were dragoons all about the hog-backed hill now. They patrolled the valleys on either side, had another strong picquet to the south and dismounted men watching from the wood’s edge. Sharpe, seeing the dragoons tighten their noose, knew that i
f he and his men tried to escape they would become meat for the horsemen. Harper, his broad face glistening with sweat, gazed down at the cavalry. “There’s something I’ve noticed, sir,” he said, “ever since we joined up with you in Spain.”
“What’s that?”
“That we’re always outnumbered and surrounded.”
Sharpe had been listening, not to Harper, but to the day itself. “Notice anything?” he asked.
“That we’re surrounded and outnumbered, sir?”
“No.” Sharpe paused to listen again, then frowned. “Wind’s in the east, isn’t it?”
“More or less.”
“No sound of gunfire, Pat.”
Harper listened. “Good God and you’re right, sir.”
Vicente had noticed the same thing and came to the watchtower where Sharpe had set up his command post. “There’s no noise from Amarante,” the Portuguese Lieutenant said unhappily.
“So they’ve finished fighting there,” Harper commented.
Vicente made the sign of the cross which was admission enough that he suspected the Portuguese army that had been holding the bridge over the Tamega had been defeated.
“We don’t know what’s happening,” Sharpe said, trying to cheer Vicente up, but in truth that admission was almost as depressing as the thought that Amarante had fallen. So long as the distant thunder of the guns had sounded from the east then so long had they known there were still forces fighting the French, had known that the war itself was continuing and that there was hope that one day they could rejoin some friendly forces, but the morning’s silence was ominous. And if the Portuguese were gone from Amarante, then what of the British in Coimbra and Lisbon? Were they boarding ships in the broad mouth of the Tagus, ready to be convoyed home? Sir John Moore’s army had been chased out of Spain, so was the smaller British force in Lisbon now scuttling away? Sharpe felt a sudden and horrid fear that he was the last British officer in northern Portugal and the last morsel to be devoured by an insatiable enemy. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he lied, seeing the same fear of being stranded on his companions’ faces. “Sir Arthur Wellesley’s coming.”