All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4) (26 page)

Hanley shrugged and rode on.

W
illiams walked down the stairs to the lower cloister and shivered when he came into the cold night air. It was cloudy again, and he was glad of the burning torches that gave some light to the arcaded corridors around the little courtyard that led into the main one. Sergeant Rodriguez was waiting, smoking a cheroot, and the officer gestured for the man to finish when he moved to throw the cigar away. Williams was a few minutes early and there was no sense in wasting tobacco in a city where supplies were bound to grow short. He shook his head at the offer of taking a puff. Then the world exploded.

With savage violence the gate beside the chapel burst into fire, noise and flying debris, the big timber doors themselves shattered into fragments and all the heavy boxes and sacks piled to reinforce them were flung back and high into the air, scattering around the far end of the courtyard. One sentry was caught and his head smashed by a great smoking beam of timber.

Williams and Rodriguez were sheltered at the far corner of the high-walled compound, but even so felt the wash of the blast.

‘Get the men up!’ yelled Williams. The French had taken the Convent of Santa Cruz once already in the siege, but the fortress guns had pounded the place and forced them to withdraw. The scars of that barrage were all around them, and had left none of the roofs intact for its new garrison of the Avila Regiment and Williams’ company. ‘Put half in the windows of the upper cloister and guard the stairs. Then bring the rest to me down here.’ Rodriguez threw down his cheroot and dashed off, already shouting out the alarm, not that anyone could have missed the explosion.

It seemed the French were coming back.

Williams ran towards the chapel, drawing his sword. He wished he was carrying his musket, but he had only expected to do the rounds of his sentries and had not come fully armed.

There were shouts, and figures surged through the open gateway, bayonets long and glinting in the torchlight.

‘Sir!’ He looked back and saw a man in a white shirt without a tunic. It was Corporal Rose, and the NCO had the Spanish corporal and six recruits with him. There were shots and chaos at the far end of the courtyard. A crash, less violent this time, and suggesting axes, brought the other gate down, and more cheering Frenchmen were charging into the convent.

Williams ran to the men, and pointed back inside the smaller courtyard. They formed a line, sheltered from sight and ready to flank any mass of French coming through the low arched entrance. Williams heard Colonel Camarga shouting to the men of the Avila Regiment. There were more of them near the main courtyard and he would let them deal with that fight for the moment.

‘All loaded?’

The Spanish corporal nodded in confirmation. The young recruits looked nervous, but then a man would be a fool if he was not at a time like this.

‘Fix bayonets!’ No one dropped any of the long triangular blades and they slotted over the muzzles with satisfying clicks.

Williams heard running feet pounding on the flagstones towards them and gestured to the men to raise their muskets. The first through the entrance was an officer in a bicorne hat, his sword raised high and his long-tailed coat flapping behind him. Bunched behind him were half a dozen men carrying muskets and wearing shakos.

‘Fire!’ yelled Williams, for the Avila Regiment wore cocked hats and not shakos.

Eight muskets slammed back into the firers’ shoulders as the men pulled their triggers and fired at the French. There were screams and men were falling, one already writhing on the ground.

‘Charge!’ Williams dashed forward, his sword held in a lunge, and the little line followed him. More French spilled through the archway into the smaller courtyard. All had epaulettes on their jackets, and most had the big moustaches of veterans. The officer was down, his white breeches now stained dark with spreading blood. A tall slim man came at Williams, blocking his first thrust, and then swinging suddenly with the butt of his musket so that the Welshman had to jump back, yet still he felt the swish of the heavy brass-plated stock as it flicked past his chin. Beside him one of the recruits had stabbed a Frenchman in the throat, and the boy was twisting his bayonet to free it. Another of the recruits was down, crying out to his real mother and the Holy Mother as he tried so desperately to pull the enemy blade from his own belly.

The Frenchman facing Williams stamped forward and lunged skilfully, forcing him back again, and he could tell that the man knew what he was doing. In such a fight the man with the longer reach of bayonet and musket would most likely win. He waited for the next thrust, but instead of going back he threw himself forward, grabbing the Frenchman’s bayonet with his left hand and using all his weight to push it down and aside. His right punched at the man’s chin with the hilt of his sword, and although the blow lacked real weight, Williams was a big man, and the shock and surprise were enough to unbalance his opponent. Feeling himself falling, he swung his weight to the right and gave a vicious backhanded slash with his sword, the slight curve in the blade rolling as its wicked edge sliced through the man’s collar and neck. Coughing, the Frenchman fell and Williams fell with him, vulnerable to any new attack, but for the moment the enemy had vanished.

Williams pushed himself up. The felled recruit was sobbing as he tried to hold in his own entrails. Another’s left arm was bloody and useless, but there were two Frenchmen dead on the ground and four groaning from wounds, and for the moment the attackers had pulled back. He looked into the main courtyard; there was still fighting, but there were far more figures wearing shakos. A Spanish voice was yelling orders to fall back to the cloister.

‘Come on,’ said Williams. The corporal had propped the badly wounded boy up against the wall. They helped the other man to come with them and hurried back. Williams could see men in the windows overlooking him and that showed that Rodriguez had been active. The sergeant himself with Dobson beside him was just coming down the stairs.

‘Back!’ Williams shouted. ‘We’ll take everyone to the upper cloister and make sure we can hold that if nothing else.’ The building was big, and he doubted their thirty or so could hold both floors.

‘Sir!’ Murphy shouted from an upstairs window. ‘The colonel, sir!’ He pointed. There was one other stairway leading to the higher floor and he guessed that Camarga and his men were going there.

‘Tell him we have this one!’ Williams shouted back.

They hurried upstairs. Williams was last and all the pounding must have been too much for one of the old boards forming the stairs, for it snapped and gave way beneath his foot. He stumbled against Dobson ahead of him, and both men had to put out hands to the wall to stop themselves falling.

‘You’re putting on weight, Pug!’

‘The sauce of the man,’ muttered Williams automatically.

‘Sir!’

Williams noticed Dobson staring down at the steps.

‘You’re a genius,’ he said as he understood. ‘Use your bayonet!’ He turned to call behind him. ‘Sergeant Rodriguez. Get the men to prise out the boards from the steps between every third one.’

The Spaniard looked puzzled, but only for a moment, as Dobson, grunting, ripped up the old wooden steps. With care, a man would still be able to climb the stairs, but it would be dangerous to run and harder still to rush up them with a group of men.

The sky glowed red.

‘The chapel!’ shouted someone from further up. ‘The chapel is on fire.’

There was another explosion, not so violent this time and somehow duller, but suggestive of greater power. The flash came from the side facing the French, and Williams guessed that they were blowing a big chunk of wall down so that it would be easy to get into the convent in the future.

Shouts echoed across from the far side of the building. One or two of Williams’ men in the furthest windows fired. He ran along to see what was happening.

‘They’ve made a rush at the colonel,’ Murphy said, and then raised his musket to aim. A shot came back, whipping between them to flatten against the wall behind.

‘Our turn next.’ Williams dashed back to where the stairs opened out into the wide corridor. Dobson and Rodriguez appeared, carrying piles of the broken steps.

‘We can throw ’em if the powder runs out,’ said the veteran, dropping the timber and unslinging his musket.

The Spanish corporal shouted out the alarm and then the order to fire. Muskets banged, although one recruit’s hammer slammed down and failed to spark.

The corporal cuffed the young soldier and screamed at him to put in a new flint. Williams went over and stared through the window, but did not go too far forward as shots were coming back from the courtyard.

‘Ten, maybe twenty have got into the colonnades,’ said the Spanish corporal as he reloaded his own musket. Once they were into the pillared corridors around the cloister, it was impossible to see anyone.

Williams returned to the stairs.

‘Reckon we made ’em think,’ Dobson said. ‘They came in shouting and screaming and then they stopped short! Won’t be long, though.’ The veteran, like Williams, had a healthy respect for the ingenuity and boldness of the French.

‘Ready, lads!’ Williams called in Spanish, and grinned at the half-dozen recruits waiting to load for Rodriguez, Dobson and Rose. It was better to let experienced men do the shooting itself.

The men at the windows were still firing, and then one was pitched backwards by a ball that smashed his teeth and lower jaw. The boy moaned and spat out gobs of frothy blood and fragments of tooth.

‘
Vive l’empereur!
’ A voice thundered up the staircase and a man athletically bounded forward, leaping from one step to the next with rapid precision. He was a long-limbed, tall officer in the blue coat and breeches of a light infantry regiment, his shako topped with a green and red plume, with a pistol in one hand and a curved sabre in the other. Behind came a file of men, and they came slowly, looking for the next stair, but that was the only sign of hesitation.

‘
En avant!
’ The officer shouted again, his voice deep, and unlike so many of Napoleon’s men he was clean shaven. Jumping forward, he almost missed his footing, but managed to recover and somehow keep going. The men behind were moving more quickly, risking leaps from one stair to the next.

‘Present!’ shouted Williams.

The officer was more than halfway up, and the man could see the danger and yet kept coming, for he saw too that victory was close. He launched into another stride and levelled his pistol at the same time.

‘Fire!’ Williams shouted. The sound of the shots merged as the three NCOs fired, sending flame and more smoke rolling down the stairs.

The French officer’s body juddered as he was hit three times in the chest, but it was too dark to see his blood clearly against his blue tunic. He seemed to fold, all grace and balance gone, and then the body was tumbled backwards as new muskets were passed forward. Rodriguez was cursing because the Frenchman had fired his pistol and the ball had scratched his head and ripped off the top of his ear. He snarled when Williams gestured for him to go back.

‘Present!’ Williams shouted once again. There were clicks as the three men drew back their hammers.

The attack had stalled, one man missing his footing as the officer’s corpse rolled back down into him.

‘Fire!’ More smoke and noise echoing in the narrow staircase, and now one of the soldiers was down. He fell beside the officer, both bodies partly hanging through the gaps between the steps.

New muskets came forward. The noise had slackened from the far side of the cloister and there were no noises from inside, which suggested the men of the Avila Regiment were holding their own. The chapel was burning brighter now, with the flickering red light casting strange shadows along the corridors. Another building flared, and Williams guessed it was the one used as a storeroom. Neither were connected to the cloister and so there should not be any danger of the flames spreading, and as long as they controlled the windows it would be hard for the French to bring in combustible material in sufficient quantity to start a dangerous fire in this big stone building.

Williams took a walk along the corridor behind the men firing through the windows, telling them that they were doing well and the French were losing. He was back at the staircase only moments before another French officer, silent this time and giving no warning, sprang up the steps, taking advantage of the footing offered by the bodies left from the earlier attack. In the silence it seemed almost unreal.

This captain was short and barrel-chested, with a thick red-brown moustache and gold earrings. He wore the round fur hat favoured by the elite skirmishers of some light infantry regiments. If less nimble, he was no less heroic than his predecessor, and the light infantrymen followed him as willingly. Williams could only marvel at their sheer pluck; as thoughts raced through his head and he imagined the mingled fear and excitement of the Frenchmen as they attacked.

Rodriguez reacted first, aiming and firing a little quickly, so the ball went low and slammed into the French captain’s thigh just above his right knee. The man stopped, and as Williams was about to yell the order, Dobson fired into the smoke of the Spaniard’s musket and the officer dropped, obviously hit badly. With Rose aiming his firelock squarely at them, the light infantrymen dragged their officer back, prompting agonising cries as he bumped down over the broken steps and corpses.

There were no more attacks. Shots came at the windows, and one recruit lost an eye not from a musket ball, but from the big shard of stone it flung off the side of the window arch. The chapel and storeroom burned, but as dawn approached the French withdrew to their lines. The Convent of Santa Cruz was still in Spanish hands. The outside wall was irreparably breached, everything apart from the main cloister was now a burned-out shell, and the cloister itself had been left badly scarred by the Spanish guns days before, but the garrison held on.