Sharpe's Fury - 11 (35 page)

The French were becoming more organized, but they would never fire as fast as the redcoats. The redcoats were professionals, while most of the French were conscripts. They had been summoned to their depots and given training, but were not permitted to practice with real gunpowder. For every three bullets the British fired in battle, the French fired two, so the rules of mathematics favored the redcoats again, but the French still outnumbered the British, and as their line spread, the gods of mathematics tipped the balance back toward the men in the blue coats. More and more of the emperor’s soldiers brought muskets to bear, and more and more redcoats were carried back to the pinewood. On the left of the British line, where no artillery helped, the Silver Tails were being hit hard. Sergeants commanded companies now. They were opposed two to one, for Leval had sent one of his supporting battalions to add their fire and that new unit came into line and struck hard with fresh muskets. The fight now was like two boxers toeing the line and striking again and again, and every bare-knuckle blow started blood, and neither man moved, and it was a contest to see which could sustain the greatest pain.

“You, sir, you!” A voice snapped behind Sharpe and he turned, alarmed, to see a colonel on horseback, but the colonel was not looking at Sharpe. He was glaring at Captain Galiana. “Where the devil are your men? Do you speak English? For Christ’s sake, someone ask where his men are.”

“I have no men,” Galiana admitted hastily in English.

“For God’s sake, why doesn’t General Lapeña send us men?”

“I shall find him, señor,” Galiana said and, with something useful to do, turned his horse toward the woods.

“Tell him I want them on my left,” the colonel roared after him, “on my left!” The colonel was Wheatley, commanding the brigade, and he rode back to where the 28th, the Dandies, the Silver Tails, the Slashers, were being turned into dead and dying men. That suffering battalion was closest to the Spanish troops at Bermeja, but Bermeja was over a mile from the fighting. Lapeña had nine thousand men there. They sat on the sand, muskets stacked, and ate the last of their rations. A thousand of the Spaniards watched the French across the Almanza Creek, but those French were not moving. Any battle beside the Rio Sancti Petri had long died and the herons, encouraged by the silence between the armies, had come back to hunt among the reeds.

Sharpe had taken out his telescope. His riflemen were still firing at the French gunners, but only one of the enemy cannon was still undamaged. That was the howitzer, and Duncan had shredded its crew with a finely judged burst of shrapnel. “Take these nearest bastards,” Sharpe told his men, indicating the French line, and he now watched that line through the glass. The view was of smoke and blue coats. He lowered the telescope. He sensed that the battle had reached a pause. It was not that the killing had stopped, nor that the muskets had ceased firing, but that neither side was making a move to change the situation. They were thinking, waiting, killing while they waited, and it seemed to Sharpe that the French, despite being outfought by the musket fire of the redcoats, had gained the advantage. They had more men, so could afford to lose the musket duel, and their right and center were edging forward. It did not look like a deliberate move, but rather the result of pressure from the men in the rear ranks who were thrusting the French line toward the sea. The French left was stalled, for they were being flayed by Duncan’s guns that had already knocked the French artillery out of the fight, but the French right and center were unaffected by the guns. They had already stepped over the line of dead men that was all that was left of their original front ranks and they were getting bolder. Their fire, inefficient though it was by redcoat standards, was taking its toll. With the widening of the French line and the commitment of one of their two reserve battalions, the laws of mathematics had tipped back to favor the French. They had taken the worst the British could give them, they had survived, and now they edged forward toward their weakened enemy.

Sharpe went back a few paces and looked behind the British line. No Spanish troops were in sight and he knew there were no British reserves. If the men on the heath could not do the job, then the French must win and the army would be turned into a rabble. He went back to his men who were now firing at the nearest French infantry. An eagle showed above them, and near the eagle was a group of horsemen. Sharpe leveled the glass again and, just before the musket smoke obscured the standard, he saw him.

Colonel Vandal. He was waving his hat, encouraging his men to advance. Sharpe could see the white pom-pom on the hat, could see the narrow black moustache, and he felt a surge of utter fury. “Pat!” he shouted.

“Sir?” Harper was alarmed by the tone of Sharpe’s voice.

“Found the bastard,” Sharpe said. He took the rifle from his shoulder. He had not fired it yet, but he cocked it now.

And the French sensed victory. It would be a hard-won triumph, but their drummers found new energy and the line lurched forward again. “
Vive l’empereur!
”

A
T LEAST
thirty officers had ridden south from San Fernando. They had stayed on the Isla de León when Sir Thomas’s forces had sailed, and this Tuesday morning they had been woken by the sound of gunfire. Because they were off duty, they had saddled their horses and ridden south to discover what happened beyond the Rio Sancti Petri.

They went south along the Isla de León’s long Atlantic beach, where they joined a crowd of curious horsemen from Cádiz who also rode to witness the fighting. There were even carriages being whipped along the sand. It was not every day that a battle was fought close to a city. The sound of gunfire rattling windows in Cádiz had prompted scores of spectators to head south along the isthmus.

The surly lieutenant guarding the pontoon bridge did his best to prevent those spectators from crossing the river, but he was effectively outgunned when a curricle was whipped along the track. Its driver was a British officer, his passenger a woman, and the officer threatened to use his whip on the lieutenant if the barricade was not removed. It was not so much the threat of the whip as the officer’s lavish display of silver lace that persuaded the lieutenant to yield. He watched sourly as the curricle crossed the precarious bridge. He hoped a wheel would slip off the cresses and tip the passengers into the river, but the two horses were in expert hands and the light vehicle crossed safely and accelerated along the far beach. The other carriages were too big to cross, but the crowd of horsemen followed the curricle and spurred after it.

What they saw when they passed the makeshift Spanish fort guarding the pontoon bridge was a beach filled with resting Spanish soldiers. Cavalry horses were picketed while their riders rested with hats over their faces. Some played cards and cigar smoke drifted in the breeze. Far ahead was the hill above Barrosa and that was wreathed with a different smoke, and more smoke rose in a dirty plume above a pinewood to the east, but on the beach beside the river all was calm.

It was calm in Bermeja where General Lapeña took a lunch of cold ham with his staff. He watched in surprise as the curricle dashed past, its two wheels throwing up great sprays of sand from the track leading past the village church and the watchtower. “A British officer,” he observed, “going the wrong way!”

There was polite laughter. Some of the general’s staff, though, were embarrassed that they did nothing while the British fought, and that sentiment was felt most strongly by General Zayas, whose men had forced Villatte’s division off the beach. Zayas had requested permission to take his troops farther south and join the fighting, a request that was strengthened when Captain Galiana arrived on a sweat-whitened horse with Colonel Wheatley’s plea for help. Lapeña had curtly refused the request. “Our allies,” he declared grandly, “are merely fighting a rearguard action. If they had followed orders, of course, no fighting would have been necessary, but now we must remain here to make certain they have a position to which they can retreat in safety.” He had stared belligerently at Galiana. “And what business do you have here?” he had demanded angrily. “Are you not posted to the city garrison?” Galiana, whose nervousness at approaching Lapeña had made his request harsh, even peremptory, had not even deigned to answer. He just gave the general a look of utter scorn, then turned his tired horse and spurred back toward the pinewood. “His father was an insolent fool,” Lapeña said harshly, “and the son’s the same. He needs lessons in discipline. He should be posted to South America, somewhere where there’s yellow fever.”

No one spoke for a moment. Lapeña’s chaplain poured wine, but General Zayas blocked his own glass by holding a hand over the rim. “At least let me attack across the creek.” He pressed Lapeña.

“What are your orders, General?”

“I’m asking for orders,” Zayas insisted.

“Your orders,” Lapeña said, “are to guard the bridge, and that is your duty that you will do best by remaining in your present position.”

So the Spanish troops stayed near the Rio Sancti Petri while the curricle sped southward. Its driver was Brigadier Moon who had hired the carriage from the posthouse stables just outside the city. He would have preferred to ride a horse, but his broken leg made that exquisitely painful. The curricle was only slightly more comfortable. Its springs were hard and, even though he had his broken leg propped on the dashboard that stopped most of the sand from the horses’ hooves flying into his face, the mending bone still hurt. He saw a track slanting away from the beach into the pinewoods and he took it, hoping that the road would provide better footing for his horses. It did, and he bowled along smartly in the shade of the trees. His fiancée clung to the curricle’s side and to the brigadier’s arm. She called herself the Marquesa de San Augustin, the widowed Marquesa. “I won’t take you where the bullets fly, my dear,” Moon said.

“You disappoint me,” she said. She wore a black hat from which a thin veil hung over her face.

“Battle’s no place for a woman. Certainly no place for a beautiful woman.”

She smiled. “I would like to see a battle.”

“And so you shall, so you shall, but from a safe distance. I may limp up and lend a hand”—Moon slapped the crutches propped beside him—“but you’re to stay with the curricle. Stay safe.”

“I am safe with you,” the Marquesa said. After marriage, the brigadier had told her, she would be Lady Moon. “
La Doña Luna,
” she said, squeezing his elbow, “will always be safe with you.” The brigadier responded to her affectionate gesture with a guffaw of laughter. “What is that for?” La Marquesa asked, offended.

“I was thinking of Henry Wellesley’s face when I introduced you last night!” the brigadier said. “He looked like a full moon!”

“He seemed very nice,” the Marquesa said.

“Jealous, he was! I could tell! I didn’t know he liked women. I thought that was why his wife bolted, but it was plain as a pikestaff that he liked you. Maybe I’ve got the fellow wrong?”

“He was most polite.”

“He’s a bloody ambassador, he bloody well ought to be polite. That’s what he’s for.” The brigadier went silent. He had seen a track branching east through the wood and the turn was tight, but he could drive horses like a coachman and he took the bend in masterly fashion. The noise of battle was loud now, and not far ahead, so he gently pulled the reins to slow the horses. There were wounded men on either side of the track. “Don’t look, my dear,” he said. There was a man without trousers, writhing, his crotch a mass of blood. “Shouldn’t have brought you,” he said curtly.

“I want to know your world,” she said, squeezing his elbow.

“Then you must forgive me its horrors,” he said gallantly, and then pulled the reins again because he had emerged from the trees and the line of redcoats under their bullet-torn colors was only a hundred paces ahead. The ground between the curricle and the redcoats was a mess of dead men, injured men, discarded weapons, and scorched grass. “Far enough,” the brigadier said.

The French had replaced the wheel of one twelve-pounder and now hauled the cannon back to its original position, but the battery commander knew he could not stay because the enemy guns had targeted him. He had been forced to abandon his one howitzer at the forward position, but he would not lose his last gun that was loaded with shell. He ordered the gun commander to fire the shell at the redcoats, then to retire smartly. The linstock touched the priming tube, the flame flashed to the breech, and the gun fired to leave a cloud of obscuring smoke behind which the battery commander could drag his last weapon to a safer position.

The shell crashed into the ranks of the 67th, where it disemboweled a corporal, took the left hand off a private, then fell to earth twenty paces behind the Hampshire men. The fuse smoked crazily as the shell spun on toward the pine trees. Moon saw it coming and urged the horses to their right, away from the missile. He put the reins into his right hand, which already held the whip, and placed his left arm around the Marquesa, sheltering her. Just then the shell exploded. Pieces of casing whipped over their heads, and one scrap drove bloodily into the belly of the nearside horse that took off as though the devil himself was under its hooves. The offside horse caught the panic and they both bolted. The brigadier hauled on the reins, but the noise and the pain and the stink of smoke were too much for the horses that ran obliquely right, white-eyed and desperate. They saw a gap in the British line and took it in a frantic gallop. The light curricle bounced alarmingly so that both the brigadier and the marquesa had to hold on for dear life. They shot through the gap. Ahead were smoke and bodies and open air beyond the smoke. The brigadier hauled again, using all his strength; the offside wheel struck a corpse and the curricle tipped. They were notorious vehicles for accidents; the Marquesa was spilled onto the ground and the brigadier followed, screaming abruptly as his splinted leg was struck by the curricle’s rear rail. His crutches flew as the horses bolted on to disappear in the heath with the curricle breaking apart behind them. Moon and the woman he hoped would become the Doña Luna were left on the ground close beside the abandoned howitzer on the flank of the French column.