No infantry could stand against Britain’s best, and the Battalion was shredding the column with musketry that rolled up and down the Battalion’s line, the ramrods flashing in unison, the platoons firing in sequence, an irresistible hammering of close range musket fire that poured into the tight French ranks. The enemy wavered. Each volley decimated the column’s leading ranks. Their commander tried to deploy into line but he was too late. The men at the back of the column would not go forward into that hail of lead that rippled methodically and murderously from the British muskets. Groups of blue-coated French began to melt into the dark; a mounted British officer saw it and raised his sword, the red ranks cheered and went forward with levelled bayonets and, as suddenly as it had begun, the battle was done. The French went backwards, stepping over the dead, retreating ever faster from the reaching blades. The enemy had done well. A single column had so nearly captured the hill, even without another two columns that had never arrived, but now the French Colonel had to go back, had to take his men from the musket fire that overwhelmed them. As they drew level with the skirmish line some of Sharpe’s Riflemen lifted their weapons, but Sharpe shouted to let them go. There would be killing enough tomorrow.
Sharpe crouched by a fire and wiped the blade free of the sticky blood with a dead Frenchman’s jacket. It was the time for collecting the dead and counting the living. He wanted Gibbons to worry about Berry, to feel fear in the night, and he felt the elation again of the killing stroke. From the town came the bells of midnight, and he thought briefly of the girl lying in the candlelight and he wondered if she thought of him. Harper squatted beside him, his face black with powder smoke, and held out a bottle of spirits.
“Get some sleep, sir. You need it.” Harper grinned briefly. “We have a promise to keep tomorrow.”
Sharpe lifted the bottle towards the Sergeant as if in a toast. “A promise and a half, Sergeant. A promise and a half.”
CHAPTER 20
It was a short, bad night. After the repulse of the French the army rescued the wounded and, in the thin firelight, searched and piled the dead that could be found. Battalions that had thought themselves safe in an imaginary second line now posted sentries, and the brief night was broken by frequent rattles of musketry as the nervous picquets imagined fresh enemy columns in the dark. The bugles sounded at two in the morning, the fires were restored to life, and hungry men shivered round the flames and listened to the distant French bugles rousing the enemy. At half past three, when a silvery grey light touched the flanks of the Medellin, Berry’s body was found and carried to the fire, where Simmerson and his officers sipped scalding tea. Gibbons, appalled at the great wound disfiguring his friend’s throat, looked at Sharpe with pale and suspicious eyes. Sharpe looked back and smiled, saw the suspicion, and then Gibbons turned abruptly away and shouted for his servant to clear up the blankets. Simmerson flicked a glance round the officers. “He died a brave death, gentlemen, a brave death.”
They all muttered the right words, more concerned with hunger and what was to come than with the death of a fat Lieutenant, and watched bleakly as the body was stripped of its valuables before being piled with the scores of dead that would be buried before the sun rose high and made them offensive. No-one thought it odd that Berry’s body had been found so far from the other dead. The events of the night had been muddled; there were stories that the Germans below the Medellin had fought a running skirmish with another column and groups of French fugitives had become lost in the darkness and wandered in the British lines, and the shivering officers assumed Berry had met such a group.
By four o’clock the army was in position. Hill’s Brigades were on the Medellin and the Brigade Majors lined the Battalions back from the hill crest so that they would be invisible to the French gunners. The South Essex were on the flank of the hill overlooking the Germans and the Guards who would defend the flat plain between the Medellin and the Pajar. Sharpe stared at the town, half hidden in mist, and wondered what was happening to Josefina. He was impatient for the battle to start, to take his Light Company away from Simmerson and up to the skirmish line that would form in the mist-shrouded Portina valley. He was surprised that Simmerson had said nothing to the Battalion. Instead the Colonel sat on his grey horse and stared moodily at the myriad smoke trails from the French camp that rose and mingled in front of the rising sun. He ignored Sharpe; he always did, as though the Rifleman was a small nuisance that would be brushed from his life when his letter was received in London. Gibbons sat beside Simmerson and it suddenly occurred to Sharpe that the two men were frightened. In front of them the solitary colour drooped from its staff, beaded with morning moisture, a lonely reminder of the Battalion’s disgrace. Simmerson did not know war, and he was staring at the mist along the Portina, wondering what would emerge from the whiteness to challenge his Battalion. It was not just Sharpe’s future that depended on this battle. If the Battalion did badly then it would stay a Battalion of Detachments and dwindle away under the onslaught of disease and death until it would simply disappear from the army list; the Battalion that never was. Simmerson would survive. He would sail home to his I country estate, take his seat in Parliament, become an armchair expert on the war, but wherever soldiers met, the names of Simmerson and the South Essex would be scorned. Sharpe grinned to himself; ironically, on this day, Simmerson needed the Riflemen far more than Sharpe needed the Colonel. At last the signal came and the Light Companies went forward, spreading themselves into a thin screen of skirmishers to become the first men to meet the attack. As he walked down the slope towards the mist Sharpe stared at the Cascajal Hill that was topped with French guns, almost wheel to wheel, the barrels pointing at the Medellin. Somewhere behind the guns the French Battalions would be parading into the huge columns that would be thrown at the British line; behind them there would be cavalry waiting to pour through the opening: more than fifty thousand Frenchmen preparing to punish the British for their temerity in sending Wellesley’s small army into their Empire. The Light Company walked into the mist, into the private world where skirmisher would fight Voltigeur, and Sharpe thrust away the thoughts of defeat.
It was unthinkable that Wellesley could lose, that the army might be shattered and sent reeling back to the sea, that Sharpe’s problems, Simmerson’s problems, the fate of the South Essex, all. would become drowned in the disastrous flood of defeat. Harper ran up to him and nodded cheerfully as he pulled the muzzle stopper from his rifle.
“The weather’s hot for us, sir.”
Sharpe grimaced. “It will clear in an hour or so.” The mist hid everything beyond a hundred paces and took away the advantage of the long range rifles. Sharpe saw the stream ahead.
“Far enough. See if Mr Denny is all right.”
Harper went off to the right to where Denny should be joining up with the German skirmishers. Sharpe walked upstream where he suspected the attack would be and found Knowles at the end of the line. Beyond in the mist he could see the redcoats of the 66th and some Riflemen from the Royal Americans.
“Lieutenant?”
“Sir?” Knowles was nervously alert, half dreading, half enjoying his first day of real battle. Sharpe grinned cheerfully at him.
“Any problems?”
“No, sir. Will it be long?” Knowles glanced constantly at the empty far bank of the Portina as though he expected to see the whole French army suddenly materialise.
“You’ll hear the guns first.” Sharpe stamped his feet against the cold. “What’s the time?”
Knowles took out his watch, inscribed from his father, and opened the case. “Nearly five, sir.” He went on looking at the ornate watch face with its filigree hand. “Sir?” He sounded embarrassed.
“Yes?”
“If I die, sir, would you have this?” He held the watch out.
Sharpe pushed the watch back. He wanted to laugh but he shook his head gravely. “You’re not going to die. Who’d take over if I went?”
Knowles looked at him fearfully and Sharpe nodded. “Think about it, Lieutenant. Promotion can be rapid in battle.” He grinned, attempting to dispel Knowles’ gloom. “Who knows? If it’s a good enough day we may all end up Generals.”
A gun banged on the Cascajal. Knowles’ eyes widened as he heard, for the first time, the rumbling thunder of iron shot in the air. Unseen by the skirmishers the eight-pound ball struck the crest of the Medellin, bounced over the troops in a spray of dirt and stones, and rolled harmlessly to rest four hundred yards down the plateau. The sound of the shot echoed flady from the hills, was muffled by the mist, and died into silence. A hundred thousand men heard it, some crossed themselves, some prayed, and some just thought fitfully of the storm that was about to break across the Portina. Knowles waited for another gun but there was silence.
“What was that, sir?”
“A signal to the other French batteries. They’ll be reloading the gun.” Sharpe imagined the sponge hissing as it was thrust into the gun, the steam rising from the vent, and then the new charge and shot being rammed home. “About now, I’d think.”
The silence was over. From now Sharpe would tell the story of the battle by the sounds and he listened as the iron shot from seventy or eighty French guns screamed and thundered in the air. He could hear the crash of the guns, imagined them throwing their massive weights back onto the trails, bucking in the air and slamming back onto the wheels as the rammer was dipped in water and the men prepared the next shot. Behind was a different noise, the muted sound of the roundshot gouging the Medellin, the thud of iron on earth. He turned back to Knowles. “This is my unlucky day.”
Knowles turned a worried face on him. The Captain was supposed to be ‘lucky’. Sharpe and the company depended on the superstition. “Why, sir?”
Sharpe grinned. “They’re firing to our left.” He was shouting over the sound of the massed cannons. “They’ll attack there. I thought I might be the proud owner of a watch otherwise!” He slapped a relieved Knowles on the shoulder and pointed across the stream. “Expect them in about twenty minutes, over to the left a bit. I’ll be back!”
He walked down the line of men, checking flints, making the old jokes and looking for Harper. He felt desperately tired, not just the tiredness of disturbed and little sleep, but the weariness of problems that seemed to have no end. Berry’s death was like a half forgotten dream and solved nothing except half a promise, and he had little idea how to solve the other half or the promise about the Eagle. The promises were like barriers he had erected in his own life, and honour demanded that they be overcome but his sense told him the task was impossible. He waved at Harper, and as the Sergeant walked towards him the noise of the battle changed. There was a whining quality to the roar of the shot overhead, and Harper looked up into the mist.
“Shells?”
Sharpe nodded as the first one exploded on the Medellin. The sound rose in intensity, the crash of the shells echoing the thunder of the guns, and added to the din was the sharper sound of the long British six-pounders firing back. Harper jerked a thumb at the unseen Medellin. “That’s a rare hammering, sir.”
Sharpe listened. “The bands are still playing.”
„I’d rather be down here.“
Distantly, through the incessant crashes that merged into one long rumble, Sharpe could hear the sound of Regimental bands. As long as the bandsmen were playing then the British Battalions were not suffering overmuch from the French bombardment. If Wellesley had not pulled the British line behind the crest the French gunners would be slaughtering the Battalions file by file and the bandsmen would be doing their other job of picking up the wounded and taking them to the rear. Sharpe knew Harper, like himself, was thinking of the promise to Lennox, of the Eagle. He stared across the stream at the empty grass, listened to the cannonade as though it were someone else’s battle, and turned to the Sergeant.
“There will be other days, you know. Other battles.”
Harper smiled slowly, crouched, and flicked a pebble into the clear water. “We’ll see what happens, sir.” He stayed still, listening, then pointed ahead. “Hear that?”
It was the noise Sharpe had been waiting for, faint but unmistakable, the sound he had not heard since Vimeiro, the sound of the French attack. The enemy columns were not in sight, would not be visible for minutes, but through the mist he could hear the serried drummers beating the hypnotic rhythm of the charge. Boom-boom, boom-boom, boomaboom, boomaboom, boom-boom.