Sharpe's Eagle

CHAPTER 19

A spent musket ball whirred over Sharpe’s head; the sounds of the battle were fainter now that he was below the crest and the only light came from the eerie reflections of the deserted fires on the undersides of the battle-smoke that drifted from the plateau of the Medellin.

“Sharpe!” Berry was still babbling. He lay on his back and tried to wriggle his way uphill away from the tall, dark shape of the Rifleman. “Shouldn’t we go, Sharpe, the French? They’re on the hill!”

“I know. I’ve killed at least two of them.” Sharpe held his blade at Berry’s breast and stopped the wriggling. “I’m going back to kill a few more soon.”

The talk of killing silenced Berry. Sharpe could see the face staring up at him but it was too dark to read the expression. Sharpe had to imagine the wet lips, the fleshy face, the look of fear.

“What did you do to the girl, Berry?”

The Lieutenant remained silent. Sharpe could see the slim sword lying forgotten on the grass; there was no fight in the man, no will to resist, just a pathetic hope that Sharpe could be placated.

“What did you do, Berry?” Sharpe stepped closer and the blade flickered at Berry’s throat. Sharpe saw the face twist to and fro, heard the breath gulping in the Lieutenant’s throat.

“Nothing, Sharpe, I swear it. Nothing.”

Sharpe flicked his wrist so that the blade nicked Berry’s chin. It was razor sharp and he heard the gasp.

“Let me go. Please! Let me go.”

“What did you do?” Sharpe heard the distinctive sound of the rifles firing to his right. The rolling crackle of musketry was to the left, and he guessed that the French column had thrown its skirmishers out to the flanks to clear away the scattered groups that still offered resistance. He had not much time; he wanted to be with his men and to see what was happening on the hilltop, but first he wanted Berry to suffer as the girl had suffered, to fear as she had feared.

“Did Josefina plead with you?” The voice was like a night wind off the North Sea. “Did she ask you to let her go?”

Berry stayed silent. Sharpe twitched the blade again. “Did she?”

“Yes.” It was a mere whisper.

“Was she frightened?” He moved the point onto the flesh of Berry’s neck.

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“But you raped her just the same?”

Berry was too terrified to speak. He made incoherent noises, rolled his head, stared at the blade which ran up to the dim, avenging shape above him. Sharpe could smell the pungent smoke of the musketry on the hill. He had to be quick.

“Can you hear me, Berry?”

“Yes, Sharpe. I can hear you.” There was the faintest hint of hope in Berry’s voice. Sharpe dashed it.

“I’m going to kill you. I want you to know that so you are as frightened as she was. Do you understand?”

The man babbled again, pleaded, shook his head, dropped his arms and held his hands together as if in prayer to Sharpe. The Rifleman stared down. He remembered a strange phrase he had once heard at a Church Parade in far-off India. A Chaplain had appeared and stood in his white surplice on the parade ground and out of the meaningless mumbles a phrase had somehow lodged in Sharpe’s mind, a phrase from the prayer book that came back to him now as he wondered whether he really could kill a man for raping his woman. “Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog.” Sharpe had thought to let the man stand up, pick up his sword, and fight for his life. But he thought of the girl’s terror, let the picture of her blood on the sheets feed his anger once more, saw the babbling fleshy face beneath him and as if he were tired and simply wanted to rest, he leaned forward with both hands on the hilt of the sword.

The babbling almost became a scream, the body thrashed once, the blade went through skin and muscle and fat and into Berry’s throat, and the Lieutenant died. Sharpe stayed bent on the sword. It was murder, he knew that, a capital offence but somehow he did not feel guilty. What troubled him was the knowledge that he ought to be guilty yet he was not. He had avenged his darling on the dog. His hands were wet and he knew, as he tugged the blade free, that he had severed Berry’s jugular. He would look like someone from a slaughterhouse but he felt better and grinned in the darkness as he dropped to one knee and ran his hands swiftly across Berry’s pockets and pouches. Revenge, he decided, felt good and he pulled coins from the dead man’s tunic and thrust them into his own pockets. He walked away from the body towards the sound of the rifles, walked slowly uphill to where the flashes spat bullets towards the French, and sank down beside Harper. The Sergeant looked at him and then turned back to face the hilltop and pulled his trigger. Smoke puffed from the pan, belched from the barrel, and Sharpe saw a Voltigeur fall backwards into a fire. Harper grinned with satisfaction.

“He’s been annoying me, that one, so he has. Been jumping around like a regular little Napoleon.”

Sharpe stared at the hilltop. It was like the paintings of hell he had seen in Portuguese and Spanish churches. Smoke rolled redly in weird patches across the hilltop, thickly where the column was pushing deeper through the fires that marked the British lines, and thinly where small groups fought the skirmishers who tried to clear the hilltop. Hundreds of small fires lit the battle, muskets pumped smoke and flame into the night, the whole accompanied by the shouts of the French and the cries of the wounded. The French skirmishers had suffered badly from the Riflemen. Harper had lined them in the shadows on the hill’s edge and they picked off the blue figures who ran through the fires long before the French were close enough to use their muskets with any accuracy. Sharpe pulled his own rifle forward and reached down for a cartridge.

“Any problems?”

Harper shook his head and grinned. “Target practice.”

“The rest of the company?”

The Sergeant jerked his head backwards. “Most of them are down below with Mr. Knowles, sir. I told him they weren’t needed here.”

For an instant Sharpe wondered whether anyone had seen him murder Berry but he dismissed the thought. He trusted his instinct, an instinct that warned him of the enemy and on this night every man had been his enemy until Berry had died. No-one had seen him. Harper grunted as he rammed another bullet into his rifle.

“What happened, sir?”

Sharpe grinned wolfishly and said nothing. He was reliving the instant of Berry’s death, feeling the satisfaction, the relief of the pain of Josefina’s ordeal. Who had said revenge was stale and unprofitable? They were wrong. He primed the rifle, cocked it, and slid it forward but no Voltigeurs were in sight. The battle had passed off to the left, where it flashed and thundered in the darkness.

“Sir?”

He turned and looked at the Sergeant. He told him, flatly and simply, what had happened and watched the broad Irish face turn bleak with anger.

“How is she?”

Sharpe shook his head. “She lost a lot of blood. They beat her.”

The Sergeant searched the ground in front of him, sifting through the firelight and the humped shadows, the far musket flashes that could be French or English. When he spoke his voice was soft. “And the two of them? What will you do?”

“Lieutenant Berry died in tonight’s battle.”

Harper turned and looked at his Captain, at the blade which lay red beside him, and smiled slowly. “The other one?”

“Tomorrow.”

Harper nodded and turned back to the batde. The French had been held, judging by the position of the musket flashes, as if in pushing ever deeper into the lines they had marched into a thickening opposition they at last could not break. Sharpe searched the darkness to his right. The French must have sent more troops, but there was no sign of them. The ground in front was bare of movement. He turned round.

“Lieutenant Knowles!”

“Sir!” The voice came from the darkness but was followed by Knowles’ anxious face coming up the slope. “Sir? You’re all right, sir?”

“Like a dog with a bone, Lieutenant.” Knowles could not understand Sharpe’s seeming content. Rumours had run through the company since Harper and the Riflemen had returned without the Captain. “Tell the men to fix bayonets and come up here. It’s time we joined in.”

Knowles grinned. “Yes, sir.”

“How many men do we have?”

“Twenty, sir, not counting the Rifles.”

“Good! To work then.”

Sharpe stood up and walked onto the hilltop. He waved the Riflemen forward and waited for Knowles and his group to climb into the light. Sharpe waved left and right with the sword.

“Skirmish order! Then slowly forward. We’re not trying to take on the column but let’s flush out their skirmishers.”

The bayonets gleamed red in the firelight, the line walked steadily forward, but the enemy skirmishers had disappeared. Sharpe took them to a hundred yards from the enemy column and waved the men down. There was nothing they could do except watch a demonstration of British infantry at its best. The French had ploughed their way almost to the end of the hill but had been checked by a Battalion that Sharpe guessed must have marched from the foot of the hill and now stretched itself ahead of the French like an impassable barrier. The Battalion was in line and firing in controlled platoon volleys. It was superb. 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.”