Sharpe's Fury

CHAPTER 9

IT WAS CHAOS. BLOODY chaos. It was infuriating. “It is,” Lord William Russell said calmly, “entirely to be expected.”

“God damn it!” Sir Thomas Graham exploded.

“In each and every particular,” Lord William said, sounding far wiser than his twenty-one years, “precisely what we expected.”

“And damn you too,” Sir Thomas said. His horse pricked back its ears at its master’s vehemence. “Bloody man!” Sir Thomas said, slapping his right boot with his whip. “Not you, Willie, him. Him! That bloody man!”

“What bloody man is that?” Major John Hope, Sir Thomas’s nephew and senior aide, asked solemnly.

Sir Thomas recognized the line from Macbeth, but was in too much of a temper to acknowledge it. Instead he put spurs to his horse, beckoned to his aides, and started toward the head of the column where General Lapeña had called yet another halt.

It should all have been so simple. So damned simple. Land at Tarifa and there meet the British troops sent from the Gibraltar garrison, and that had happened as planned, at which point the whole army was supposed to march north. Except they could not leave Tarifa because the Spanish had not arrived, and so Sir Thomas waited two days, two days of consuming rations that were supposed to be reserved for the march. And when Lapeña’s troops did arrive, their boats would not risk crossing the surf on the beach, so the Spanish troops had been forced to wade ashore. They landed soaking, shivering, and starving, in no condition to march, and so another day was wasted.

Yet still it should have been easy. There were just fifty miles to march, which, even with the guns and baggage, should not have taken more than four days. The road went northward, following a river beneath the Sierra de Fates. Then, once out of those hills, they should have crossed the plain by a good road that led to Medina Sidonia where the allied army would turn west to attack the French siege lines that were anchored on the town of Chiclana. That is what should have happened, but it did not. The Spaniards led the march and they were slow, painfully slow. Sir Thomas, riding at the head of the British troops, which formed the rearguard, noted the boots that had torn themselves to pieces and been discarded beside the road. Some weary Spaniards had fallen out of their ranks, joining the broken boots, and they just watched the red-coated and green-jacketed men march by. And maybe that would not have mattered if enough Spaniards, barefoot or not, had reached Medina Sidonia to chase out whatever garrison the French had placed in the town.

General Lapeña had seemed as eager as Sir Thomas when the march started. He understood the necessity of hurrying north and turning west before Marshal Victor could find a place to make a stand. The allied army was supposed to erupt like a storm on the unprotected rear of the French siege lines. Sir Thomas envisaged his men rampaging through the French camps, ravaging the artillery parks, exploding the magazines, and harrying the broken army out of its earthworks and onto the guns of the British line protecting the Isla de León. All it needed was speed, speed, speed, but then, on the second day, Lapeña had decided to rest his footsore troops and instead march through the next night. And even that might have served, except that the Spanish guides had become lost and the army wandered in a great circle under the hard brightness of the stars. “God damn it!” Sir Thomas had exclaimed. “Can’t they see the North Star?”

“There are marshes, Sir Thomas,” the Spanish liaison officer had pleaded.

“God damn it! Just follow the road!”

But the road had not been followed and the army wandered, then halted, and men sat in fields where some tried to sleep. The ground was damp and the night surprisingly cold, so very few managed any rest. The British lit short clay pipes and the officers’ servants walked their masters’ horses up and down while the guides argued until finally some gypsies, woken from their encampment in a grove of cork oaks, pointed the way to Medina Sedonia. The troops had marched for twelve hours and, by the time they bivouacked at midday, had covered only six miles, though at least the King’s German Legion cavalry, who served under Sir Thomas’s command, had managed to surprise a half battalion of foraging French infantry and had killed a dozen enemy and captured twice as many.

General Lapeña, in a fit of energy, had then proposed marching again that same afternoon, but the men were exhausted from a wasted night and the rations were still being distributed. So he had agreed with Sir Thomas to wait until the men were fed, and then he decided they should sleep before they marched at dawn, yet at dawn Lapeña himself was not ready. It seemed that a French officer, one of those captured by the German cavalry, had revealed that Marshal Victor had reinforced the garrison in Medina Sidonia so that now it numbered more than three thousand men. “We cannot go there,” Lapeña had declared. He was a lugubrious man, slightly stooped, with nervous eyes that were rarely still. “Three thousand men! We can beat them, but at what cost? Delay, Sir Thomas, delay. They will hold us up while Victor maneuvers around us!” His hands had made extravagant gestures describing an encirclement, and finished by crushing together. “We shall go to Vejer. Today!” He made the decision with a fine forcefulness. “From Vejer we can assail Chiclana from the south.”

And that was a viable plan. The captured French officer, a bespectacled captain called Brouard, drank too much of General Lapeña’s wine and cheerfully revealed that there was no garrison in Vejer. Sir Thomas knew that a road went north from the town, which meant the allied army could come at the French siege works from the south, rather than from the east, and though he was not happy with the decision, he recognized the sense in it.

So, by the time the orders had been changed, it was almost midday before they marched and now the army was in chaos. It was infuriating. It was incompetence.

Vejer was visible across the plain, a town of white houses atop a sudden hill on the northwestern horizon, yet the guides had begun by marching the army southeast. Sir Thomas had ridden to Lapeña and, at his most diplomatic, had indicated the town and suggested it would be better to head in that direction. After a long consultation, Lapeña had agreed, and so the army had reversed itself, and that took time because the Spanish vanguard had to march back along a road crowded with stalled troops. But at last they had been going in the right direction and now they had stopped again. Just stopped. No one moved. No messages came back down the column explaining the halt. The Spanish soldiers fell out and lit their paper rolls of damp tobacco.

“Bloody man!” Sir Thomas said again as he rode to find General Lapeña. When the halt occurred he had been at the rear of the column because he liked to ride up and down his troops. He could tell a lot about his men from the way they marched, and he was pleased with his small force. They knew they were being ill led, they knew they were in chaos, but their spirits were high. The Cauliflowers were last in the column, more formally known as the second battalion of the 47th Regiment of the line. Their red coats were faced with the white patches that gave them their nickname, though the Cauliflowers’ officers preferred to call the Lancashire men “Wolfe’s Own” to remember the day they had turned the French out of Canada. The Cauliflowers, a staunch battalion from the Cádiz garrison, were reinforced by two companies of the Sweeps, green-jacketed men from the third battalion of the 95th. Sir Thomas raised his hat to the officers, then again to the men of the two Portuguese battalions who had sailed from Cádiz. They grinned at him, and he doffed his hat again and again. He noted approvingly that the Portuguese cacadores, light infantry, were in fine spirits. One of their chaplains, a man in a mud-stained cassock with a musket and a crucifix slung about his neck, demanded to know when they could start killing Frenchmen. “Soon!” Sir Thomas promised, hoping that was true. “Very soon!”

Ahead of the Portuguese was the Gibraltar Flanker battalion. That was a makeshift unit, formed by the light companies and grenadier companies of three battalions from the Gibraltar garrison. Prime troops, all of them. Two companies from the 28th, a Gloucestershire regiment, two from the 82nd, which was from Lancashire, and the two flank companies of the 9th, Norfolk lads and known as the Holy Boys because their shako plates, decorated with a picture of Britannia, was taken by the Spanish as an image of the Virgin Mary. Wherever the Holy Boys marched in Spain, women would genuflect and make the sign of the cross. Beyond the Gibraltar Flankers were the Faughs, the 87th, and Sir Thomas touched his hat in response to Major Gough’s greeting. “It’s chaos, Hugh, chaos,” Sir Thomas admitted.

“We’ll make sense of it, Sir Thomas.”

“Aye, that we will, that we will.”

Ahead of the 87th was the second battalion of the 67th, men from Hampshire, newly come from England, and unblooded until the night they had assailed the fire rafts. A good regiment, Sir Thomas reckoned, as were the remaining eight companies of the 28th who waited in front of them. The 28th was another solid county regiment from the shires. They had come from the Gibraltar garrison and Sir Thomas was pleased to see them because he remembered the men of Gloucestershire from Corunna. They had fought hard that day and had died hard too, belying their nicknames, the Dandies or the Silver Tails. Their officers insisted on wearing extra long tails to their coats, and the coattails were lavishly embroidered with silver. The 28th preferred to be known as the Slashers in solemn memory of the day they had sliced off the ears of an irritating French lawyer in Canada. The Slasher’s lieutenant colonel was talking with Colonel Wheatley, who commanded all the troops on the road behind and Wheatley, seeing Sir Thomas ride by, called for his horse.

Major Duncan and his two batteries of artillery, five guns in each, waited on the road ahead of the Silver Tails. Duncan, resting against a limber, raised his eyebrows as Sir Thomas passed and was rewarded with a quick shrug. “We’ll untangle the mess!” Sir Thomas called, and again hoped he was right.

In front of the guns was his first brigade, and he knew how fortunate he was to have such a unit under his command. It was only two battalions, but each was strong. The rearmost was another composite battalion, this one made up of two companies of Coldstreamers, two more of riflemen, and three companies of the Third Foot Guards. Scotsmen! The only Scottish infantry under his command and Sir Thomas took his hat off to them. With Scotsmen, he reckoned, he could break down the gates of hell, and he had a lump in his throat as he passed the blue-faced redcoats. Sir Thomas was a sentimental man. He loved soldiers. He had once thought all men who wore the red coat were rogues and thieves, the scourings of the gutter, and since he had joined the army he had discovered he was right, but he had also learned to love them. He loved their patience, their ferocity, their endurance, and their bravery. If he should die prematurely, Sir Thomas often thought, and join his Mary in her Scottish heaven, then he wanted to die among these men as Sir John Moore, another Scotsman, had died at Corunna. Sir Thomas kept Moore’s red sash as a memento of that day, the weave stained dark with his hero’s blood. A soldier’s death, he thought, was a happy one, because a man, even in the throes of awful pain, would die in the best company in the world. He twisted in the saddle to look for his nephew. “When I die, John,” he said, “make sure you take my body back to join your Aunt Mary.”

“You won’t be dying, sir.”

“Bury me at Balgowan,” Sir Thomas said, and touched the wedding ring he still wore. “There’s money to pay for the costs of moving my corpse home. You’ll find there’s money enough.” He had to swallow as he rode past the Scotsmen to where the second battalion of the First Foot Guards led his column. The First Footguards! They were called the Coal Heavers because, years before, they had carried coal to warm their officers in a freezing London winter, and the Coal Heavers were as fine a battalion as any that marched the earth. All the Guardsmen were led by Brigadier General Dilkes who touched the tip of his cocked hat and joined Colonel Wheatley to follow Sir Thomas past the Spanish troops to where General Lapeña sat, disconsolate and helpless, in his saddle.

Lapeña looked heavily at Sir Thomas. He sighed as though he had expected the Scotsman’s arrival and thought it a nuisance. He gestured toward distant Vejer, which glowed white on its hill. “Inundación,” Lapeña said slowly and distinctly, then made circling gestures with his hand as if to suggest that all was hopeless. Nothing could be done. Failure had been decreed by fate. It was over.

“The road, Sir Thomas,” the liaison officer translated unnecessarily, “is flooded. The general regrets it, but it is so.” The Spanish general had expressed no such regrets, but the liaison officer thought it prudent to suggest as much. “It is sad, Sir Thomas. Sad.”

General Lapeña stared mournfully at Sir Thomas, something in his expression seeming to suggest it was all the Scotsman’s fault. “Inundación,” he said again, shrugging.

“The road,” Sir Thomas agreed in Spanish, “is indeed flooded.” The drowned stretch was where the road crossed a marsh bordering a lake and, though the road was built on a causeway, the heavy rains had raised the water level so that now the marsh, the causeway, and a quarter mile of the road were underwater. “It is flooded,” Sir Thomas said patiently, “but I dare say, señor, that we shall find it passable.” He did not wait for Lapeña’s response, but spurred his horse onto the causeway. The horse splashed, then waded as the water rose. It grew nervous, tossing its head and rolling its eyes white, but Sir Thomas kept firm control as he followed the line of withies stuck into the causeway’s verges. He curbed the horse halfway through the flood, by which time the water was over his stirrups, and shouted back to the eastern bank in a voice honed by hallooing across windy Scottish hunting fields. “We should keep going! You hear me? Press on!”

“The guns cannot make it,” Lapeña said, “and they cannot go around the flood.” He gestured sadly to the north where marshes stretched beyond the flood’s margin.

This was repeated to Sir Thomas when he trotted back. He nodded in acknowledgment, then shouted for Captain Vetch, the engineer officer who had burned the fire rafts and who had been posted with the advance guard to make just such assessments. “Make a reconnaissance, Captain,” Sir Thomas ordered, “and tell me if the guns can use the road.”

Captain Vetch rode his horse across the flooded stretch and came back with a confident report that the road was eminently passable, but General Lapeña insisted that the causeway might have been damaged by the water and that it must be properly surveyed and, if necessary, repaired before any cannons could be drawn across the lake. “Then at least send the infantry across,” Sir Thomas suggested, and after a while it was tentatively agreed that perhaps the infantry could risk the crossing.

“Bring your boys up,” Sir Thomas said to Brigadier General Dilkes and Colonel Wheatley. “I want both your brigades close to the bank. Don’t want them strung along the road.” There was no danger in having his brigades tailing away into the distance, but Sir Thomas hoped that under the eyes of the British and Portuguese troops the Spaniards would show some alacrity.

The two brigades closed onto the lake bank, leaving the guns on the highway, but the arrival of Sir Thomas’s men had no effect on the Spaniards. Their soldiers insisted on stripping off their boots and stockings before stepping cautiously onto the flooded road. Most of Lapeña’s officers had no horses, for few mounts had been shipped in the feluccas, and those unmounted officers demanded to be carried by their men. They all went painfully slowly, as if they feared the ground would give way beneath them and the waters engulf them. “God in his heaven,” Sir Thomas groused as he watched a small group of mounted Spanish officers who were halfway across and nervously probing the hidden road with long sticks. “John”—he turned to his nephew—“my compliments to Major Duncan. Tell him I want the guns here now and I want them across this damned lake by mid-afternoon.”

Major Hope rode to fetch the guns. Lord William Russell dismounted, took a telescope from his saddlebag, and rested it on his horse’s back as he searched the northern landscape. It was low country, edged on the horizon by bare hills on which white villages reflected the winter sun. The plain was dotted with strange evergreens that looked for all the world like a child’s drawing of what a tree should be. They were lofty trees with a black bare trunk and a dark puff of foliage spreading wide above. “I like those trees,” he said, still staring through his glass.

“Sciadopitys verticillata,” Sir Thomas said casually, then saw Lord William look at him with awe and astonishment. “My dear Mary took a fancy to them on our travels,” Sir Thomas explained, “and we tried planting a stand in Balgowan, but they didn’t take. You’d think pines would grow well in Perthshire, wouldn’t you? But these didn’t. Died the very first winter.” He sounded relaxed, but Lord William could see the general’s fingers drumming impatiently on his saddle pommel. Lord William looked back through the glass, edging the lens past a small village half hidden by the tracery of a winter olive grove, and then the glass stopped. He stared.

“We’re being watched, Sir Thomas,” he said.

“Aye, I should imagine so. Marshal Victor’s no fool. Dragoons, are they?”

“A troop of them.” Lord William twitched the long barrel to bring the lens into finer focus. “There’s not a lot of them. Maybe twenty.” He could see the horsemen’s green uniforms against the white walls of the houses. “They’re dragoons, sir, yes, and they’re in a village between two low hills. Three miles off.” A flash of light showed from a roof and Lord William guessed that a Frenchman was staring back through another telescope. “They’re just watching us, it seems.”

“Watching and reporting back,” Sir Thomas said gloomily. “They’ll have no orders to trouble us, Willie, just to keep a sharp eye on us, and I’ll wager your father’s dukedom to one of my gamekeeper’s cottages that Marshal Victor’s already marching.”

Lord William searched the hills on either side of the village, but no enemy showed on those low heights. “Should we tell Doña Manolito?” he asked.

Sir Thomas, for once, did not object to the mocking nickname. “Leave him in peace,” he said softly, glancing at the Spanish general. “If he knows there are green men stalking him he’ll like as not turn and run. You’ll not repeat that, Willie.”

“Soul of discretion, sir,” Lord William said, then collapsed the glass and put it back into his saddlebag. “But if Victor’s marching, sir—” he added, thinking about the implications, but leaving the question unfinished.

“He’ll bar our road!” Sir Thomas said, at last sounding cheerful, “and that means we have to fight. And we need to fight. If we just run away then those bastard lawyers in Cádiz will say the French can’t be beaten. They’ll sue for peace, then they’ll throw us out of Cádiz and invite the French in. We have to fight, Willie, and we have to show the Spaniards we can win. Look at those troops.” He pointed to where his redcoats and greenjackets waited. “Finest men in the world, Willie, finest in the world! So let’s force a battle, eh? Let’s do what we came to do!”

The Spanish infantry waiting to cross the causeway had to hurry off the road to let the two batteries of British guns pass. Those guns came in a rattling jangle of trace chains and a clatter of hooves. General Lapeña, seeing his men scatter, spurred to Sir Thomas and indignantly demanded to know why the ten cannons, with their limbers and caissons, had broken the order of march.

“You need them on the far bank,” Sir Thomas said encouragingly, “in case the French come while your brave men are crossing.” He waved the leading gun onto the causeway. “And go hard,” he told the officer commanding the gun. “Force those buggers to hurry!”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said as he grinned.

A company of riflemen were sent to escort the guns. They stripped off their cartridge boxes and waded onto the causeway where they lined the verges, their presence intended to calm the horse teams. The first battery, under Captain Shenley, made fine time. The water came above the guns’ axles, but four nine-pounder cannons and a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer, each weapon pulled by eight horses, made the crossing without mishap. The limbers had to be emptied so that the water would not ruin the twenty-powder charges they each carried. The charges were placed on one of the battery’s wagons that stood high enough to keep the charges dry and carried another hundred rounds of spare ammunition besides. “Now the second battery!” Sir Thomas ordered. He was in a fine mood now because Shenley’s battery, chains jingling and wheels throwing up cockscombs of spray, had harried the laggard Spaniards to the far bank. There was suddenly a sense of urgency.

Then the leading gun of the second battery slewed off the causeway. Sir Thomas did not see what happened. Later he learned that one of the horses had stumbled, the team veered left, the drivers had hauled them back, and the gun, swinging behind its limber, had skidded off the road, bounced across the verge, then slammed down into the flood, spilling the gunners off the limber and bringing the horses to a sudden, sodden halt.

General Lapeña turned his head very slowly to give Sir Thomas an accusing look.

The gunners whipped the horses, the horses pulled, and the gun would not move.

And across the plain, beyond the long stretch of marshes, a glint of sun reflected from metal.

Dragoons.

IT WAS over that night, all except for the fighting that would determine whether Cádiz would survive or fall. But the treacherous part ended when Lord Pumphrey came to the house Sharpe had rented in San Fernando. He came after dark, carrying the same bag he had taken to the cathedral crypt, and it seemed to Sharpe that His Lordship was even more nervous than when he had gone down the steps to where Father Montseny had waited in the dark. Pumphrey edged into the room and his eyes widened slightly when he saw Sharpe sitting by the hearth. “I thought you might be here,” he said. He forced a smile for Caterina, then looked around the room. It was small, sparsely furnished with a dark table and high-backed chairs. The walls were lime washed and hung with portraits of bishops and with an old crucifix. The light came from a small fire and from a flickering lantern hanging under one of the black beams that crossed the ceiling. “This isn’t the comfort you like, Caterina,” Pumphrey said lightly.

“It’s heaven compared to the home where I grew up.”

“There is that, of course,” Lord Pumphrey said. “I forget you grew up in a garrison town.” He gave a worried glance at Sharpe. “She tells me she can geld hogs, Sharpe.”

“You should see what she can do to men,” Sharpe said.

“But you’d be much more comfortable back in the city,” Pumphrey said to Caterina, ignoring Sharpe’s sour words. “You have nothing to fear now from Father Montseny.”

“I don’t?”

“He was injured when the scaffolding fell in the cathedral. I hear he won’t ever walk again, not ever.” Pumphrey looked again at Sharpe, waiting for a reaction. He got none so he smiled at Caterina, put the bag on the table, drew a handkerchief from his sleeve, dusted a chair, and sat. “So your reason for leaving the city, my dear, no longer applies. Cádiz is safe.”

“What about my reasons for staying here?” Caterina asked.

Pumphrey’s eyes rested briefly on Sharpe. “Those reasons are your affair, my dear. But do come back to Cádiz.”

“Are you Henry’s procurer?” Sharpe asked scornfully.

“His Excellency,” Pumphrey said with assumed dignity, “is in some ways relieved that Señorita Blazquez is gone. He feels, I think, that an unfortunate chapter in his life is now over. It can be forgotten. No, I merely wish Caterina to return so I can enjoy her company. We are friends, are we not?” He appealed to Caterina.

“We’re friends, Pumps,” she said warmly.

“Then as a friend I have to tell you that the letters no longer have value.” He smiled at her. “They ceased to have value the moment Montseny was crippled. I only learned of that unfortunate outcome this morning. No one else, I assure you, will try to publish them.”

“So why did you bring the money, my lord?” Sharpe asked.

“Because I had withdrawn it before I heard the sad news about Father Montseny, and because it is safer with me than left in my house, and because His Excellency is willing to pay a smaller sum for the return of the letters.”

“A smaller sum,” Sharpe repeated tonelessly.

“Out of the kindness of his heart,” Lord Pumphrey said.

“How small?” Sharpe asked.

“One hundred guineas,” Pumphrey proposed. “It is really very generous of His Excellency.”

Sharpe stood and Lord Pumphrey’s hand twitched toward the pocket of his coat. Sharpe laughed. “You’ve brought a pistol! You really think you can fight me?” Lord Pumphrey’s hand went very still and Sharpe walked behind him. “His Excellency doesn’t know a damn bloody thing about these letters, my lord. You didn’t tell him. You want them for yourself.”

“Don’t be absurd, Sharpe.”

“Because they’d be valuable, wouldn’t they? A small lever to hold over the Wellesley family forever? What does Henry’s oldest brother do?”

“The Earl of Mornington,” Pumphrey said very stiffly, “is foreign secretary.”

“Of course he is,” Sharpe said, “and a useful man to have indebted to you. Is that why you want the letters, my lord? Or do you plan to sell them to His Excellency?”

“You have a fertile imagination, Captain Sharpe.”

“No. I’ve got Caterina, and Caterina has the letters, and you’ve got money. Money’s easy for you, my lord. What did you call it? Subventions to the guerrilleros and bribes for the deputies? But the gold is for Caterina now, which is a hell of a better cause than filling the purses of a pack of bloody lawyers. And there’s one other thing, my lord.”

“Yes?” Lord Pumphrey asked.

Sharpe laid a hand on Pumphrey’s shoulder, making His Lordship shiver. Sharpe bent down to whisper hoarsely in His Lordship’s ear. “If you don’t pay her, then I’ll do to you what you ordered done to Astrid.”

“Sharpe!”

“Throat cut,” Sharpe said. “It’s harder than gelding hogs, but just about as messy.” He drew a few inches of his sword, letting the blade scrape against the scabbard’s throat. He felt a quiver in Lord Pumphrey’s shoulder. “I ought to do it to you, my lord, for Astrid’s sake, but Caterina doesn’t want me to. So, are you paying her the money?”

Pumphrey stayed very still. “You won’t cut my throat,” he said with surprising calm.

“I won’t?”

“People know I’m here, Sharpe. I had to ask two provosts where you were billeted. You think they’ll forget me?”

“I take risks, my lord.”

“Which is why you are valuable, Sharpe, but you are not a fool. Kill one of His Majesty’s diplomats and you will die yourself. Besides, as you say, Caterina won’t let you kill me.”

Caterina said nothing. Instead she just shook her head slightly, though whether that was a denial of Lord Pumphrey’s confident assertion or a sign that she did not want him killed, Sharpe could not tell.

“Caterina wants money,” Sharpe said.

“A motive I entirely comprehend,” Pumphrey said, and pushed his bag into the center of the table. “You have the letters?”

Caterina gave the six letters to Sharpe, who showed them to His Lordship, then carried them to the fire.

“No!” Pumphrey said.

“Yes,” Sharpe said, and threw them on the burning driftwood. The letters flared up, sudden and bright, filling the room with a flickering glow that lit Lord Pumphrey’s pale face. “Why did you kill Astrid?” Sharpe asked.

“To preserve Britain’s secrets,” Pumphrey said harshly, “which is my job.” He stood abruptly, and there was a sudden air of authority in his frail figure. “You and I are alike, Captain Sharpe, we know that in war, as in life, there is only one rule. To win. I am sorry about Astrid.”

“No, you’re not,” Sharpe said.

Pumphrey paused. “You’re right. I’m not.” He smiled suddenly. “You play the game very well, Captain Sharpe, I congratulate you.” He blew a kiss to Caterina, then left without another word.

“I do like Pumps,” Caterina said when his lordship had gone, “so I’m glad you didn’t kill him.”

“I should have done.”

“No,” she said firmly. “He’s like you, a rogue, and rogues should be loyal to each other.” She was putting guineas into piles, playing with the coins, and the light from the lamp hanging from the beam reflected from the gold to shine yellow on her skin.

“You’ll go back to Cádiz now?” Sharpe asked.

She nodded. “Probably,” she said, and spun a coin.

“Find a man?”

“A rich man,” she said, watching the spinning coin. “What else can I do? But before I find him I would like to see a battle.”

“No!” Sharpe said. “It’s no place for a woman.”

“Maybe,” she shrugged, then smiled. “So how much do you want, Richard?”

“Whatever you want to give me.”

She pushed a generous pile across the table. “You are a fool, Captain Sharpe.”

“Probably. Yes.”

And somewhere to the south two armies were marching. And Sharpe reckoned there was a chance he might be able to join them, and gold would be no good to him there, but the memory of a woman was always a comfort. “Let’s take the money upstairs,” he suggested.

So they did.

ONE OF General Lapeña’s aides had seen the dragoons. He was watching them file out of the far olive grove toward the troops waiting at the causeway’s far end. General Lapeña borrowed a telescope and made an aide stand his horse beside him so he could rest the barrel on the aide’s shoulder. “Dragons,” he said balefully.

“Not many of them,” Sir Thomas said brusquely, “and a damned long way off. Good God, can’t they shift that gun?”

They could not. The cannon, a nine-pounder with a six-foot-long barrel, was stuck fast. Most of the gun was underwater so that only the tip of its left wheel and the top of the breech were visible. One horse was flailing as a gunner tried to keep its head above water. The riflemen posted to guard the causeway’s edges were holding the other horses, but the beasts were getting increasingly fearful and the panicking horse threatened to jar both gun and limber farther down the flooded embankment. “Detach the limber, man!” Sir Thomas roared and, when his injunction failed to have an immediate effect, he spurred his horse onto the causeway. “I want a dozen more fellows!” he shouted at the nearest infantry.

A squad of Portuguese infantrymen followed Sir Thomas who curbed his horse beside the stricken cannon. “What’s the problem?” he asked brusquely.

“There seems to be a culvert down here, sir,” a lieutenant said. He was clinging to the drowned wheel and plainly feared the whole heavy weapon would tip onto him. “The wheel’s caught in the culvert, sir,” the lieutenant added. A sergeant and three gunners were heaving at the gun, attempting to lift the trail-plate eye that attached the cannon to its limber, and every heave jarred the cannon slightly deeper, but at last they succeeded in raising the eye free of the pin so that the limber shot out onto the road in a flurry of splashing hooves. The gun stayed behind but lurched dangerously, and the lieutenant’s eyes widened in fear before the weapon settled, though now the breech was entirely submerged.

Sir Thomas unbuckled his sword belt and threw it with his scabbard and pouches to Lord William who had dutifully followed his master onto the causeway. Sir Thomas gave the aide his cocked hat too, so that the small wind stirred his white hair. Then he slid from the saddle, plunging up to his chest into the gray water. “Not nearly as cold as the River Tay,” he said. “Come on, boys.”

The water was now up to Sir Thomas’s armpits. He put his shoulder to the wheel while grinning riflemen and Portuguese privates joined him. Lord William wondered why Sir Thomas had allowed the gun to be released from its horse team, then understood that the general did not want the freed gun to leap ahead and crush a man under its wheel. Slow and steady would do this job.

“Put your backs into it!” the general shouted to the men around him. “Heave on it! Come on now!”

The gun moved. The breech reappeared, then the top of its right wheel showed above water. A rifleman lost his footing, slipped under, flailed his way back, and hauled on a wheel spoke. The gunners on the road had attached a strap to the trail and were pulling like men in a tug-of-war.

“Here she comes!” Sir Thomas shouted triumphantly, and the cannon lurched up the verge and rolled onto the causeway. “Hook her up!” Sir Thomas said. “And let’s get moving!” He wiped his hands on his drenched jacket as the trail-plate eye was reconnected. There was the crack of a whip and the gun was on its way again. A Portuguese sergeant, seeing that the general was having trouble mounting his horse because of the weight of his wet clothes, hurried to help and heaved Sir Thomas upward. “Obliged to you, obliged,” Sir Thomas said, giving the man a coin before settling himself in the saddle. “That’s the way to do it, Willie.”

“You’ll catch your death, sir,” Lord William said with genuine concern.

“Aye, well, if I do, Major Hope knows what to do with my corpse,” Sir Thomas said. He was wet through, but grinning broadly. “That water was cold, Willie! Damned cold! Make sure those infantrymen get a change of clothes.” He laughed suddenly. “When I was a lad, Willie, we chased a fox into the Tay. I was just a boy and the hounds were doing nothing except bark at the thing, so I drove my horse into the river and caught the beast with my bare hands. I thought I was a hero! My uncle gave me a whipping for that. Never do the hounds’ work, he told me, but sometimes you have to, sometimes you just have to.”

The dragoons had swerved northward, never coming within a mile of the troops crossing the causeway, and when the light cavalry of the King’s German Legion trotted toward them the dragoons galloped fast away. The rest of the Spanish infantry crossed, still going with painful slowness, so that it was dusk before Sir Thomas’s two brigades came across the causeway, and full dark before the army marched again. The road climbed steadily and undramatically toward the lights of Vejer that flickered and twinkled on the hilltop beneath the stars. The army marched north of the town, following a road that led to a midnight bivouac in a spread of olive groves where Sir Thomas at last rid himself of his damp clothes and crouched over a fire to get warm.

Foraging parties went out the next day, returning with a herd of skinny bullocks and a flock of pregnant ewes and fractious goats. Sir Thomas fretted, eager to be moving, and, for want of other activity, he rode with a squadron of German cavalry to find that the hills north and east were lively with enemy horsemen. A troop of Spanish cavalry cantered down a stream bank to join Sir Thomas’s men. Their commander was a captain who wore yellow breeches, a yellow waistcoat, and a blue jacket with red facings. He touched his hat to Sir Thomas. “They’re watching us,” he spoke in French, assuming that Sir Thomas could not speak Spanish.

“That’s their job,” Sir Thomas answered in Spanish. He had taken care to learn the language when he was first posted to Cádiz.

“Captain Sarasa.” The Spaniard named himself, then took a cigar from his saddlebag. One of his men struck a light with a tinderbox and Sarasa bent over the flame until the cigar was drawing properly. “I have orders,” he said, “not to engage the enemy.”

Sir Thomas heard the sullen tone and understood that Sarasa was frustrated. He wanted to take his men up to the crests of the low hills and match them against the French vedettes. “You have orders?” Sir Thomas inquired tonelessly.

“General Lapeña’s orders. We are to protect the forage parties, no more.”

“You would rather fight?”

“Is that not why we are here?” Sarasa asked truculently.

Sir Thomas liked Sarasa. He was a young man, probably not yet thirty, and he had a belligerence that encouraged Sir Thomas, who believed that the Spaniards would fight like devils if they were given a chance and, perhaps, some leadership. At Bailén, three years before, a Spanish force had outfought a whole French corps and forced a surrender. They had even taken an eagle so they could fight well enough and, if Captain Sarasa was an example, they wanted to fight, but for once Sir Thomas found himself agreeing with Lapeña. “What’s across the hill, Captain?” he asked.

Sarasa stared at the nearest crest where two vedettes were visible. A vedette was a sentry post of cavalrymen who were posted to watch an enemy. There were twelve men in the two vedettes while Sir Thomas, reinforced now by Sarasa’s swordsmen, had more than sixty. “We don’t know, Sir Thomas,” he admitted.

“There’s probably nothing across the hill,” Sir Thomas said, “and we could chase those fellows off, and if we did we’d see them on a farther hill and we’d think there’s no harm in chasing them off that, and so it would go on until we’re five miles north of here and the forage parties are dead.”

Sarasa drew on his cigar. “They offend me,” he said vehemently.

“They disgust me,” Sir Thomas said, “but we fight them where we choose or where we must, not always when we want.”

Sarasa gave a quick smile as if to say he had learned his lesson. He tapped ash from his cigar. “The rest of my regiment, Sir Thomas,” he said, “is ordered to reconnoiter the road to Conil.” He spoke very flatly.

“Conil?” Sir Thomas asked and Sarasa nodded. The Spaniard was still watching the distant dragoons, but he was very aware as Sir Thomas took a folded map from his saddlebag. It was a bad map, but it did show Gibraltar and Cádiz, and between them it marked Medina Sidonia and Vejer, the town which lay just to the south. Sir Thomas drew a finger westward from Vejer until he reached the Atlantic coast.

“Conil?” he asked again, tapping the map.

“Conil de la Frontera.” Sarasa confirmed the location by giving the town its full name. “Conil beside the sea,” he added in an angrier voice.

Beside the sea. Sir Thomas stared at the map. Conil was indeed on the shore. Ten miles north of it was a village called Barrosa, and from there a road led east to Chiclana, which was the base of the French siege lines, but Sir Thomas already knew that General Lapeña had no intention of using that road, because, just a couple of miles north of Barrosa was the Rio Sancti Petri where, supposedly, the Spanish garrison was making a pontoon bridge. Cross that bridge and the army would be back on the Isla de León, and another two hours’ marching would have Lapeña’s men back in Cádiz and safe from the French. “No,” Sir Thomas said angrily and his horse stirred nervously.

The road north from Vejer was the one to take. Break through the French cordon of vedettes and march hard. Victor would be defending Chiclana, of course, but by skirting east of the city the allied army could maneuver the French marshal out of his prepared position and force him to fight on ground of their own choosing. But instead the Spanish general was thinking of a stroll by the sea? He was thinking of retreating to Cádiz? Sir Thomas could hardly believe it, but he knew that an attack on Chiclana from Barrosa was untenable. It would be an advance over poor country tracks against an army in prepared positions and Lapeña would never contemplate such a risk. Doña Manolito just wanted to go home, but to get home he would march his army along a coastal road and all the French needed to do was advance on that road to trap the allies against the sea. “No!” Sir Thomas said again, then turned his horse toward the distant encampment. He spurred away, then abruptly curbed the stallion and turned back to Sarasa. “You’re not to engage, those are your orders?”

“Yes, Sir Thomas.”

“But of course, if those bastards threaten you, then your duty is to kill them, isn’t it?”

“Is it, Sir Thomas?”

“Assuredly yes! And I am sure you will do your duty, Captain, but don’t pursue them! Don’t abandon the foragers! No further than the skyline, you hear me?” Sir Thomas spurred on and reckoned that if one Frenchman of the vedette even raised a hand, then Sarasa would attack. So at least some enemy would die, even if Doña Manolito apparently wanted the rest to live forever. “Bloody man,” Sir Thomas growled to himself, “bloody, bloody man,” and rode to save the campaign.

“I SAW your friend last night,” Captain Galiana said to Sharpe.

“My friend?”

“Dancing at Bachica’s.”

“Oh, Caterina?” Sharpe said. Caterina had returned to Cádiz, traveling there in a hired carriage and with a valise filled with money.

“You didn’t tell me she was a widow,” Galiana said reprovingly. “You called her señorita!”

Sharpe gaped at Galiana. “A widow!”

“She was dressed in black, with a veil,” Galiana said. “She didn’t actually dance, of course, but she watched the dancing.” He and Sharpe were on a patch of shingle at the edge of the bay. The north wind brought the stench of the prison hulks moored off the salt flats. Two guard boats rowed slowly down the hulks.

“She didn’t dance?” Sharpe asked.

“She’s a widow. How could she? It is too soon. She told me her husband has only been dead for three months.” Galiana paused, evidently remembering Caterina riding on the beach where her dress and demeanor had been anything but bereaved. He decided to say nothing of that. “She was most gracious to me,” he said instead. “I like her.”

“She’s very likable,” Sharpe said.

“Your brigadier was also there,” Galiana said.

“Moon? He’s not my brigadier,” Sharpe said, “and I don’t suppose he was dancing either.”

“He was on crutches,” Galiana said, “and he gave me orders.”

“You! He can’t give you orders!” Sharpe spun a stone into the water, hoping it would skip across the small waves, but it sank instantly. “I hope you told him to go to hell and stay there.”

“These orders,” Galiana said, taking a piece of paper from his uniform pocket and handing it to Sharpe to whom, surprisingly, the orders were addressed. The paper was a dance card and the words had been carelessly scrawled in pencil. Captain Sharpe and the men under his command were to post themselves at the Rio Sancti Petri until further orders or until the forces presently under the command of Lieutenant General Graham were safely returned to the Isla de León. Sharpe read the scrawled note a second time. “I’m not sure Brigadier Moon can give me orders,” he said.

“He did, though,” Captain Galiana said, “and I, of course, will come with you.”

Sharpe returned the dance card. He said nothing, just skimmed another stone that managed one bounce before vanishing. Grazing, it was called. A good artilleryman knew how to skip cannon balls along the ground to increase their effective range. The balls grazed, kicking up dust, coming flat and hard and bloody.

“It is a precaution,” Galiana said, folding the card.

“Against what?”

Galiana selected a stone, threw it fast and low, and watched as it skipped a dozen times. “General Zayas is at the bridge across the Sancti Petri,” he said, “with four battalions. He has orders to stop anyone from the city crossing the river.”

“You told me,” Sharpe said, “but why stop you?”

“Because there are folk in the city,” Galiana explained, “who are anfrancesado. You know what that is?”

“They’re on the French side.”

Galiana nodded. “And some, alas, are officers in the garrison. General Zayas has orders to stop such men offering their services to the enemy.”

“Let the buggers go,” Sharpe said. “Have fewer mouths to feed.”

“But he won’t stop British troops.”

“You told me that, too, and I said I’d help you. So why the hell do you need orders from bloody Moon?”

“In my army, Captain,” Galiana said, “a man cannot just take it upon himself to do whatever he wants. He requires orders. You now have orders. So, you can take me over the river and I shall find our army.”

“And you?” Sharpe asked. “Do you have orders?”

“Me?” Galiana seemed surprised at the question, then paused because one of the great French mortars had fired from the forts on the Trocadero. The sound came flat and dull across the bay and Sharpe waited to see where the shell would fall, but he heard no explosion. The missile must have plunged into the sea. “I have no orders,” Galiana admitted.

“Then why are you going?”

“Because the French have to be beaten,” Galiana said with a sudden vehemence. “Spain must free herself! We must fight! But I am like your brigadier, like the widow—I cannot join the dance. General Lapeña hated my father and he detests me and he does not want me to distinguish myself, so I am left behind. But I will not be left behind. I will fight for Spain.” The grandiosity of his last words were touched by passion.

Sharpe watched the cloud of smoke left by the mortar’s firing drift and dissipate across the distant marshes. He tried to imagine himself saying he would fight for Britain in that same heartfelt tone, and could not. He fought because it was all he was good for, and because he was good at it, and because he had a duty to his men. Then he thought of those riflemen. They would be unhappy at being ordered away from the taverns of San Fernando, and so they should be. But they would follow orders. “I”—he began and immediately fell silent.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Sharpe said. He had been about to say that he could not order his riflemen into a battle that was none of their business. Sharpe would fight if he saw Vandal, but that was personal, but his riflemen had no ax to grind and their battalion was miles away, and it was all too complicated to explain to Galiana. Besides, it was unlikely that Sharpe would travel to the army with Galiana. He might take the Spaniard across the river, but unless the allied army was within sight Sharpe would have to bring his men back. The Spaniard could ride across country to find Lapeña, but Sharpe and his men would not have the luxury of horses. “Did you tell Moon all that?” he asked. “About you wanting to fight?”

“I told him I wanted to join General Lapeña’s army and that if I traveled with British troops then Zayas would not stop me.”

“And he just wrote the orders?”

“He was reluctant to,” Galiana admitted, “but he wanted something from me, so he agreed to my request.”

“He wanted something from you,” Sharpe said, then smiled as he realized just what that something must have been. “So you introduced him to the widow?”

“Exactly.”

“And he’s a rich man,” Sharpe said, “very rich.” He skimmed another stone and thought that Caterina would skin the brigadier alive.

SIR THOMAS Graham discovered General Lapeña in an uncharacteristically cheerful mood. The Spanish commander had taken a farmhouse for his headquarters and, because the winter’s day was sunny and because the house sheltered the yard from the north wind, Lapeña was taking lunch at a table outside. He shared the table with three of his aides and with the French captain who had been captured on the way to Vejer. The five men had been served dishes of bread and beans, cheese and dark ham, and had a stone jug of red wine. “Sir Thomas!” Lapeña seemed pleased to see him. “You will join us, perhaps?” He spoke in French. He knew Sir Thomas could speak Spanish, but he preferred to use French. It was, after all, the language with which European gentlemen communicated.

“Conil!” Sir Thomas was so angry that he did not bother to show courtesy. He slid from his saddle and tossed the reins to an orderly. “You want to march to Conil?” he said accusingly.

“Ah, Conil!” Lapeña clicked his fingers at a servant and indicated that he wanted another chair brought from the farmhouse. “I had a sergeant from Conil,” he said. “He used to talk of the sardine catch. Such bounty!”

“Why Conil? You’re hungry for sardines?”

Lapeña looked sadly at Sir Thomas. “You have not met Captain Brouard? He has, of course, given us his parole.” The captain, wearing his French blue and with a sword at his side, was a thin, tall man with an intelligent face. He had watery eyes, half hidden behind thick spectacles. He stood on being introduced and offered Sir Thomas a bow.

Sir Thomas ignored him. “What is the purpose,” he asked, resting his hands on the table so that he leaned toward Lapeña, “in marching on Conil?”

“Ah, the chicken!” Lapeña smiled as a woman brought a roasted chicken from the farmhouse and placed it on the table. “Garay, you will carve?”

“Allow me the honor, Excellency,” Brouard offered.

“The honor is all ours, Captain,” Lapeña said, and ceremoniously handed the Frenchman the carving knife and a long fork.

“We hired ships,” Sir Thomas growled, ignoring the chair that had been placed next to Lapeña’s place at the table, “and we waited for the fleet to assemble. We waited for the wind to be in our favor. We sailed south. We landed at Tarifa because that gave us the ability to reach the rear of the French positions. Now we march to Conil? For God’s sake, why did we bother with the fleet at all? Why didn’t we just cross the Rio Sancti Petri and march straight to Conil? It would have taken a short day and we wouldn’t have needed a single ship!”

Lapeña’s aides stared resentfully at Sir Thomas. Brouard pretended to ignore the conversation, concentrating instead on carving the fowl, which he did with an admirable dexterity. He had jointed the carcass and now cut perfect slice after perfect slice.

“Things change,” Lapeña said vaguely.

“What has changed?” Sir Thomas demanded.

Lapeña sighed. He hooked a finger at an aide who at last understood that his master wished to see a map. Dishes were put aside as the map was unfolded onto the table and Sir Thomas noted that the map was a good deal better than the ones the Spanish had supplied to him.

“We are here,” Lapeña said, placing a bean just north of Vejer, “and the enemy are here,” he put another bean on Chiclana, “and we have three roads by which we may approach the enemy. The first, and longest, is to the east, through Medina Sidonia.” Another bean served to mark the town. “But we know the French have a garrison there. Is that not right, monsieur?” he appealed to Brouard.

“A formidable garrison,” Brouard said, separating the drumstick from the carcass with a surgeon’s skill.

“So we shall find ourselves between Marshal Victor’s army here”—Lapeña touched the bean marking Chiclana—“and the garrison here.” He indicated Medina Sidonia. “We can avoid the garrison, Sir Thomas, by taking the second road. That goes north from here and will approach Chiclana from the south. It is a bad road. It is not direct. It climbs into these hills”—his forefinger tapped some hatch marks—“and the French will have picquets there. Is that not so, monsieur?”

“Many picquets,” Brouard said, easing out the wishbone. “You should inform your chef, mon général, that if he removes the wishbone before cooking the bird, the carving will be made easier.”

“How good to know that,” Lapeña said, then looked back to Sir Thomas. “The picquets will apprise Marshal Victor of our approach so he will be ready for us. He will confront us with numbers superior to our own. In all conscience, Sir Thomas, I cannot use that road, not if we are to gain the victory we both pray for. But fortunately there is a third road, a road that goes along the sea. Here”—Lapeña paused, putting a fourth bean on the shoreline—“is a place called…” He hesitated, unsure what place the bean marked and finding no help from the map.

“Barrosa,” an aide said.

“Barrosa! It is called Barrosa. From there, Sir Thomas, there are tracks across the heath to Chiclana.”

“And the French will know we’re using them,” Sir Thomas said, “and they’ll be ready for us.”

“True!” Lapeña seemed pleased that Sir Thomas had understood such an elementary point. “But here, Sir Thomas”—his finger moved to the mouth of the Sancti Petri—“is General Zayas with a whole corps of men. If we march to…” He paused again.

“Barrosa,” the aide said.

“Barrosa,” Lapeña said energetically, “then we can combine with General Zayas. Together we shall outnumber the French! At Chiclana they have, what? Two divisions?” He put the question to Brouard.

“Three divisions,” the Frenchman confirmed, “the last I heard.”

“Three!” Lapeña sounded alarmed, then waved a hand as if dismissing the news. “Two? Three? What does it matter? We shall assail them from the flank!” Lapeña said. “We shall come at them from the west, we shall destroy them, and we shall gain a great victory. Forgive my enthusiasm, Captain,” he added to Brouard.

“You trust him?” Sir Thomas asked Lapeña, jerking his head at the Frenchman.

“He is a gentleman!”

“So was Pontius Pilate,” Sir Thomas said. He thrust a big finger down onto the shoreline. “Use that road,” he said, “and you place our army between the French and the sea. Marshal Victor is not going to wait at Chiclana. He’s going to come for us. You want to see your men drowning in the surf?”

“So what do you suggest?” Lapeña asked icily.

“March to Medina Sidonia,” Sir Thomas said, “and either crush the garrison”—he paused to eat the bean denoting that town—“or let them rot behind their walls. Attack the siege lines. Force Victor to march to us instead of us marching to him.”

Lapeña looked wonderingly at Sir Thomas. “I admire you,” he said after a pause, “I truly do. Your avidity, Sir Thomas, is an inspiration to us all.” His aides nodded solemn agreement, and even Captain Brouard gave a polite inclination of his head. “But permit me to explain myself,” Lapeña went on. “The French army, you will agree, is here.” He had taken a handful of the beans and now arrayed them in crescent about the Bay of Cádiz, running from Chiclana in the south, around the siege lines, and finishing at the three great forts on the Trocadero marshes. “If we attack from here”—Lapeña tapped the road from Medina Sidonia—“then we assault the center of their lines. We shall doubtless make good progress, but the enemy will converge on us from both flanks. We shall run the risk of encirclement.” He held up a hand to stop Sir Thomas’s imminent protest.

“If we come from here,” Lapeña continued, this time indicating the southern road from Vejer, “we shall, of course, strike at Chiclana, but there will be nothing, Sir Thomas, absolutely nothing, to stop the French marching onto our right flank.” He scooped the beans into a small pile to show how the French might overwhelm his attack. “But from the east, from—” He hesitated.

“Barrosa, señor.”

“From Barrosa,” Lapeña went on, “we strike their flank. We hit them hard!” He smacked a fist into a palm to show the force with which he envisaged making the attack. “They will still try to march against us, of course, but now their men must get through the town! They will find that hard, and we shall be destroying Victor’s forces while his reinforcements still thread the streets. There! Do I convince you?” He smiled, but Sir Thomas said nothing. It was not that the Scotsman had nothing to say, but he was struggling to say it with even a hint of courtesy. “Besides,” Lapeña went on, “I command here, and it is my belief that the victory we both desire is best achieved by marching along the coast. We were not to know that when we embarked on the fleet, but it is the duty of a commander to be flexible, is it not?” He did not wait for a response, but instead tapped the empty chair. “Join us for some chicken, Sir Thomas. Lent starts on Wednesday, and then there’ll be no more chicken till Easter, eh? And Captain Brouard has carved the fowl superbly.”

“Bugger the fowl,” Sir Thomas said in English and turned to his horse.

Lapeña watched the Scotsman ride away. He shook his head but said nothing. Captain Brouard, meanwhile, reached over and crushed the bean at Barrosa with his thumb, then smeared the pulp down the shore so that it looked reddish against the map. Blood in the surf. “How very clumsy of me,” Brouard lamented. “I simply meant to remove it.”

Lapeña was unworried by the small mess. “It is a pity,” he said, “that God in his wisdom decreed that the English should be our allies. They are”—he paused—“so very uncomfortable.”

“They are blunt creatures,” Captain Brouard sympathized. “They lack the subtlety of the French and the Spanish races. Allow me to give Your Excellency some chicken? Does Your Excellency prefer breast?”

“You are right!” General Lapeña was delighted with the Frenchman’s insight. “No subtlety, Captain, no finesse, no”—he paused, seeking the word—“no grace. The breast. How very kind of you. I am obliged.”

And he was also determined. He would take the road that offered the shortest route home to Cádiz. He would march to Conil.

THERE WAS another argument in the afternoon. Lapeña wanted to march that night and Sir Thomas protested that they were close to the enemy now, and that the men should come to any encounter with the enemy fresh, not exhausted from a night groping through unfamiliar country. “Then we march this evening”—Lapeña generously yielded the point—“and bivouac at midnight. In the dawn, Sir Thomas, we shall be rested. We shall be ready.”

Yet midnight passed, as did the rest of the night, and at dawn they were still marching. The column had become lost again. The troops had stopped, rested, been woken, had marched, stopped again, countermarched, turned around, rested for a few uncomfortable minutes, been woken, and then retraced their footsteps. The men were laden with packs, haversacks, cartridge boxes, and weapons and, when they stopped, they dared not unbuckle their equipment for fear they would be hurried on at any moment. None rested properly so that by dawn they were exhausted. Sir Thomas spurred past his men, his horse kicking up small gouts of sandy soil as he looked for General Lapeña. The column had stopped again. The redcoats were sitting by the track and they looked resentfully at the general as though it were his fault that they had been given no rest.

General Lapeña and his aides were on a small wooded rise where a dozen civilians were arguing. The Spanish general nodded a distant greeting to Sir Thomas. “They are not sure of the way,” Lapeña said, indicating the civilians.

“Who are they?”

“Our guides, of course.”

“And they don’t know the way?”

“They do,” Lapeña said, “but they know different ways.” Lapeña smiled and shrugged as if to suggest such things were inevitable.

“Where’s the sea?” Sir Thomas demanded. The guides looked solemnly at Sir Thomas and then all pointed westward and agreed that the sea lay that way. “Which would make sense,” Sir Thomas said caustically, nodding toward the east where the sky was suffused with new light, “because the sun has a habit of rising in the east and the sea lies to the west, which means our route to Barrosa lies that way.” He pointed north.

Lapeña looked offended. “At night, Sir Thomas, there is no sun to guide us.”

“That’s what happens when you march at night!” Sir Thomas snarled. “You get lost.”

The march began again, now following tracks across an undulating heath dotted with pinewoods. The sea came into sight soon after the sun rose. The track led north above a long sandy beach where the surf broke and seethed before sliding back to meet the next crashing wave. Far out to sea a ship bore southward, only her topsails visible above the horizon. Sir Thomas, riding on the inland flank of his leading brigade, climbed a sandy hill and saw three watchtowers punctuating the coast ahead, relics of the days when Moorish pirates sailed from the Straits of Gibraltar to murder, rob, and enslave. “The nearest, Sir Thomas, is the tower at Puerco,” his liaison officer told him. “Beyond that is the tower of Barrosa, and the furthest is at Bermeja.”

“Where’s Conil?”

“Oh, we skirted Conil in the night,” the liaison officer said. “It is behind us now.”

Sir Thomas glanced at his tired troops who marched with heads down, silent. He looked north again and saw, beyond the tower at Bermeja, the long isthmus leading to Cádiz that was a white blur on the horizon. “We’ve wasted our time, haven’t we?” he said.

“Oh no, Sir Thomas. I am sure General Lapeña means to attack.”

“He’s marching for home,” Sir Thomas said wearily, “and you know it.” He leaned forward on his saddle pommel and suddenly felt every one of his sixty-three years. He knew Lapeña was hurrying for home now. Doña Manolito had no intention of turning east to attack the French; he just wanted to be in Cádiz where, doubtless, he would boast of having marched across Andalusia in defiance of Marshal Victor.

“Sir Thomas!” Lord William Russell spurred his horse toward the general. “There, sir.”

Lord William was pointing north and east. He gave Sir Thomas a telescope and the general extended the tubes and, using Lord William’s shoulder as a slightly unsteady rest, saw the enemy. Not dragoons this time, but infantry. A mass of infantry half hidden by trees.

“Those are the forces masking Chiclana,” the liaison officer declared confidently.

“Or the forces marching to intercept us?” Sir Thomas suggested.

“We know they have troops at Chiclana,” the liaison officer said.

Sir Thomas could not see whether the distant troops were marching or not. He collapsed the glass. “You will go to General Lapeña,” he told the liaison officer, “and give him my compliments, and tell him there is French infantry on our right flank.” The liaison officer turned his horse, but Sir Thomas checked him. The Scotsman was looking ahead and could see a hill just inland of Barrosa, a hill with a ruin on its summit and a place that would offer a position of strength. It was the obvious place to post men if the French were planning an attack. Make Victor’s forces fight uphill, make them die on the slope, and, when they were beaten, march on Chiclana. “Tell the general,” he told the liaison officer, “that we are ready to turn and attack on his orders. Go!”

The liaison officer spurred away. Sir Thomas looked again at the hill above Barrosa and reckoned that the brief and so far disastrous campaign could yet be saved. But then, from far ahead, came the crackle of gunfire. The sound rose and fell in the wind, sometimes almost drowned by the crash of the endless waves, but it was unmistakable, the thorn-burning snap and splintering noise of musket volleys. Sir Thomas stood in his stirrups and stared. He was waiting for the thick smoke of the powder to reveal where the fighting took place, and at last he saw it. It was smearing the beach beyond the third watchtower, but still short of the pontoon bridge that led back to the city. Which meant that the French had already cut them off and were now barring the road to Cádiz and, worse, much worse, were almost certainly advancing from the inland flank. Marshal Victor had the allied force exactly where he wanted it: between his army and the sea. He had them at his mercy.

CHAPTER 10

IT’S NOT OUR FIGHT, sir,” Harper said.

“I know.”

Sharpe’s admission checked the big Irishman who had not expected such ready agreement. “We should be in Lisbon,” he persisted.

“Aye, we should, and we will be, but there are no boats going to Lisbon, and there won’t be, not till this lot’s over.” Sharpe nodded across the Sancti Petri. It was an hour or so after dawn and a mile down the beach beyond the river were blue uniforms. Not the light blue uniforms of the Spanish, but the darker blue of the French. The enemy had come from the inland heath and their sudden appearance had caused General Zayas’s troops to form in battalions that now waited on the northern side of the river. The strange thing was that the French had not come to attack the makeshift fort built on the far side of the pontoon bridge, but were facing south, away from the fort. A cannon in the fort had tried a shot at the French troops, but the ball had plowed into the sand well short and the one failed shot had persuaded the fort’s commander to save his ammunition.

“I mean, sir,” Harper went on, “just because Mister Galiana wants to fight—”

“I know what you mean.” Sharpe interrupted him harshly.

“Then, sir, just what the hell are we doing here?”

Sharpe did not doubt Harper’s bravery; only a fool could do that. It was not cowardice that was provoking the big Irishman’s protest, but a sense of grievance. The one explanation for the French having their backs to the river was that allied forces were farther south, and that implied that General Lapeña’s army, far from marching inland to attack the French siege works from the east, had chosen to advance along the coast instead. So now that army faced what, to Sharpe, looked like four or five battalions of French infantry. And that was Lapeña’s fight. If the fifteen thousand men under Doña Manolito’s command could not crush the smaller force on the beach, then there was nothing Sharpe and five riflemen could do to help. For Sharpe to risk those five lives was irresponsible; that was what Harper was saying, and Sharpe agreed with him. “I’ll tell you what we’re doing here,” Sharpe said. “We’re here because I owe Captain Galiana a favor. We all owe him a favor. If it wasn’t for Galiana we’d all be in a Cádiz jail. So in return we see him across the river, and once we’ve done that, we’re finished.”

“Across the river? That’s all, sir?”

“That’s all. We march him over, tell any Spanish bugger who interferes to jump in the river, and we’re finished.”

“So why do we have to see him over?”

“Because he asked. Because he thinks they’ll stop him if he’s not with us. Because that’s the favor he asked us.”

Harper looked suspicious. “So if we see him across, sir, we can go back to the town?”

“You’re missing the tavern?” Sharpe asked. His men had been bivouacking at the beach’s end for two days now: two days of constant grumbling at the Spanish rations that Galiana had arranged and two days of missing the comforts of San Fernando. Sharpe sympathized, but was secretly pleased that they were uncomfortable. Idle soldiers got into mischief and drunken soldiers into trouble. It was better to have them grumbling. “So once we’ve got him safe across,” Sharpe said, “you can go back with the lads. I’ll write you orders. And you can have a bottle of that vino tinto waiting for me.”

Harper, given what he wanted, looked troubled. “Waiting for you?” he asked flatly.

“I won’t be long. It should all be over by nightfall. So go on, tell the lads they can go back as soon as we’ve got Captain Galiana over the bridge.”

Harper did not move. “So what will you be doing, sir?”

“Officially,” Sharpe said, ignoring the question, “we’re all ordered to stay here till Brigadier bloody Moon tells us otherwise, but I don’t think he’ll mind if you go back. He won’t know, will he?”

“But why will you be staying, sir?” Harper insisted.

Sharpe touched the edge of the bandage showing under his shako. The pain in his head had gone and he suspected it was safe to take the bandage off, but his skull still felt tender so he had left it on and religiously soaked it with vinegar each day. “The 8th of the line, Pat,” he said, “that’s why.”

Harper looked down the shoreline to where the French stood silent. “They’re there?”

“I don’t know where the buggers are. What I do know is that they were sent north and they couldn’t get north because we blew up their damned bridge, so the odds are they came back here. And if they are here, Pat, then I want to say hello to Colonel Vandal. With this.” He hefted the rifle.

“So you’re—”

“So I’m just going to wander along the beach,” Sharpe interrupted.

“I’m going to look for him. If I see him I’ll have a shot at him, that’s all. Nothing more, Pat, nothing more. I mean it’s not our fight, is it?”

“No, sir, it isn’t.”

“So that’s all I’m doing, and if I can’t find the bugger, then I’ll come back. Just have that bottle of wine ready for me.” Sharpe clapped Harper on the shoulder, then walked to where Captain Galiana was sitting on a horse. “What’s happening, Captain?”

Galiana had a small telescope and was staring southward. “I don’t understand it,” he said.

“Understand what?”

“There are Spanish troops there. Beyond the French.”

“General Lapeña’s men?”

“Why are they here?” Galiana asked. “They should be marching on Chiclana!”

Sharpe gazed over the river and down the long beach. The French stood in three ranks, their officers on horseback, their eagles glinting in the early sun. Then, quite suddenly, those eagles, instead of being outlined against the sky, were wreathed in smoke. Sharpe saw the musket smoke blossom thick and silent until, a few seconds later, the sound crackled past him.

Then, after that first massive volley, the world went silent except for the call of the gulls and the seethe of the waves. “Why are they here?” Galiana asked again, and then the muskets fired a second time, more of them now, and the morning was filled with the sound of battle.

A HUNDRED or so paces upstream of the pontoon bridge a small tidal creek branched south from the Rio Sancti Petri. The creek was called the Almanza and it was a place of reeds, grass, water, and marsh where herons hunted. The creek headed inland, thus dictating that an army coming north along the coast would find itself on a narrowing strip of land and beach that ended at the Rio Sancti Petri. The Almanza Creek was a mile long at low tide and twice that distance at high, and its presence made the narrowing funnel of sand into a trap if another army could get behind the first and drive it north toward the river. The trap would become even more lethal if another force could ford the creek and so block any retreat across the pontoon bridge.

The Almanza Creek was not much of a barrier, except at its mouth it could be waded almost anywhere along its length and, at nine o’clock the morning of March 5, 1811, the tide had only just begun to flood and so the French infantry could cross it easily. They splashed through the marshes, slid down the muddy bank, and waded the creek’s sandy bed before climbing to the dunes and beach beyond. Yet, though the creek was no obstacle to men or to horses, it was impassable to artillery. The cannons weighed too much. A French twelve-pounder, the most common gun in the emperor’s arsenal, weighed a ton and a half, and to get a cannon, its limber, its caisson and crew across the marsh would require engineers. When Marshall Victor ordered General Villatte’s division to ford the Almanza there was no time to summon engineers, let alone for those engineers to build a makeshift road across the creek, so the force Villatte led to block the retreat of Lapeña’s army was infantry alone.

Marshal Victor was no fool. He had made his reputation at Marengo and at Friedland, and since coming to Spain he had beaten two Spanish armies at Espinosa and at Medellin. It was true he had taken a bloody nose from Lord Wellington at Talavera, but le beau soleil, the beautiful sun as his men called him, regarded that reverse as a whim of fickle fortune. “A soldier who has never been defeated,” he liked to say, “has learned nothing.”

“And what did you learn from Lord Wellington?” General Ruffin, a giant of a man who led one of Victor’s divisions, had asked.

“Never to lose again, François!” Victor had said, then laughed. Claude Victor was a friendly soul, outgoing and genial. His soldiers loved him. He had been a soldier in the ranks himself once. True, he had been an artilleryman, which was hardly the same as an infantryman, but he knew the ranks, he loved them, and he expected them to fight hard just as he led them hard. He was, all French soldiers said, a brave and a good man. Le beau soleil. And he was no fool. He knew that Villatte’s infantry, unsupported by close artillery, could not stand against the approaching Spaniards, but they could delay Lapeña. They could hold Lapeña’s forces on the narrowing beach while Victor’s other two divisions, those of Leval and Ruffin, worked around their rear, and then the trap would be sprung. The allied army would be driven into the narrowing funnel that ended at the Rio Sancti Petri and, though Villatte’s men would doubtless have to give way in front of the increasing pressure, the other two divisions would come from behind like avenging angels. Only a few Spaniards and Britons could hope to cross the pontoon bridge; the rest would be herded and slaughtered until, inevitably, the survivors surrendered. And it would be simple! The allied army, apparently oblivious of the fate that waited for it, was still in line of march, stretching for three miles along the straggling coast road. The marshal had watched their progress from Tarifa with growing astonishment; he had watched them haver and change course and stop and start and change direction again, and he came to understand that he was opposing enemy generals who did not know their business. It would all be so easy.

Now Villatte was across the creek and in place. He was the anvil. And the two sledgehammers, Leval and Ruffin, were ready to attack. Marshal Victor, from the summit of a hill on the inland heath, gave a last survey of his chosen battlefield and liked what he saw. On his right, closest to Cádiz, was the Almanza Creek, which he could cross with infantry but not with artillery, so he would let Villatte fight his battle there with musketry alone. In the center, south of the creek, was a stretch of heathland ending in a thick pinewood that hid his view of the sea. The enemy column, his scouts reported, was mostly strung along the track that ran inside that wood, so Marshal Victor would send General Leval’s division to attack the pinewood and break through to the beach beyond. Such an attack would be threatened on its left flank by a hill that also hid the sea. It was not much of a hill—Victor guessed it rose no more than two hundred feet above the surrounding heath—but it was steep enough and it was crowned by a ruined chapel and a stand of wind-bent trees. The hill, astonishingly, was empty of troops, though Victor did not believe his enemies would be so foolish as to leave it unguarded. Occupied or not, the hill must be taken and the pinewood captured. Then Victor’s two divisions could turn north up the shore and drive the remnants of the allied army to destruction in the narrowing space between the sea and the creek. “It will be a rabbit hunt!” Victor promised his aides. “A rabbit hunt! So hurry! Hurry! I want my bunnies in the pot by lunchtime!”

SIR THOMAS had his eyes fixed on the hill crowned by a ruin. He galloped along the rough track that curled around the seaward side of the hill and discovered a Spanish brigade marching there. The brigade contained five battalions of troops and a battery of artillery, all of whom were under Sir Thomas’s command because they followed the baggage and Lapeña had agreed that every unit behind the baggage would fall under Sir Thomas’s authority. He ordered the Spaniards, both infantry and artillery, to the top of the hill. “You will hold there,” he instructed their commander. The brigade was the nearest troops to the hill, an accident of where they happened to be when Sir Thomas decided to garrison the height, but the Scotsman was nervous of entrusting the army’s rear to an unknown Spanish brigade. He turned his horse, its hooves kicking up sand, and found the battalion of flank companies from the Gibraltar garrison. “Major Browne!”

“At your service, Sir Thomas!” Browne swept off his hat. He was a burly man, red-faced, and eternally cheerful.

“Your fellows are stout, Browne?”

“Every man jack a hero, Sir Thomas.”

Sir Thomas twisted in his saddle. He was on the coast road where it passed through a miserable village called Barroso. There was a watchtower there, built long ago to guard against enemies from the sea, and he had sent an aide to climb the tower, but it gave a poor view inland. Pinewoods edged the coast here and they hid everything to the east, but common sense told Sir Thomas that the French must attack the hill, which was the highest point on the coast. “The devils are out there somewhere,” Sir Thomas said, pointing east, “and our lord and master tells me they’re not coming here, but I don’t believe it, Major. And I don’t want the devils on that hill. You see those Spaniards?” He nodded toward the five battalions toiling up the slope. “Reinforce them, Browne, and hold the hill.”

“It’ll be held,” Browne said cheerfully, “and you, Sir Thomas?”

“We’re ordered north.” Sir Thomas pointed to the next watchtower on the coast. “I’m told there’s a village called Bermeja under that tower. We concentrate there. But don’t leave the hill, Browne, till we’re all there.” Sir Thomas sounded sour. Lapeña was scuttling away and Sir Thomas did not doubt that his two brigades would be required to fight a rearguard action at Bermeja. He would rather have fought here, where the hill gave his troops an advantage, but the liaison officer had brought Doña Manolito’s orders and they were specific. The allied army was to retreat to Cádiz. There was no more talk of striking inland to attack Chiclana; now it was just an ignominious retreat. The whole campaign was a waste! Sir Thomas was angry at that, but he could not disobey a direct order, so he would hold the hill to protect the army’s rear while it marched north to Bermeja. He sent aides to tell General Dilkes and Colonel Wheatley to continue north along the track concealed in the pinewoods. Sir Thomas followed, spurring out of the village into the trees, while Major Browne took his Gibraltar Flankers to the top of the hill that was called the Cerro del Puerco, though neither Browne nor any of his men knew that.

The summit of the Cerro del Puerco was a wide shallow dome. On its seaward side was a ruined chapel and a stand of windswept trees. Browne discovered the five Spanish battalions lined just in front of the ruins. He was tempted to march past the Spaniards and take post on the right of their line, but he suspected their officers would protest if he took that place of honor, so he contented himself by putting his small battalion on the left of the line where the major dismounted and paced in front of his men. He had the grenadier and light companies from the 9th, 28th, and 82nd regiments, elite men from Lancashire, Silver Tails from Gloucestershire, and Holy Boys from Norfolk. The grenadier companies were the heavyweight infantry, big and hard men, selected for their height and fighting abilities, while the light companies were the skirmishers. It was an artificial battalion, put together for just this campaign, but Browne was confident of its abilities. He glanced at the Spaniards and saw that the battery of Spanish guns had deployed at the line’s center.

The British and Spanish line, arrayed on the seaward crest of the Cerro del Puerco, was hidden from anyone inland; that meant the battalions could not see if any French troops approached from the east. Nor, of course, could they be bombarded by enemy cannon if the French did assault the hill, so Browne was content to let his Flankers stay where they were. But he wanted to see if anything threatened the hill and so he gestured to his adjutant and the two men picked their way across the coarse grass. “How are your boils, Blakeney?” Browne asked.

“Recovering, sir.”

“Nasty things, boils. Especially bum boils. Saddles don’t help them, I find.”

“They’re not too painful, sir.”

“Have the surgeon lance them,” Browne suggested, “and you’ll be a new man. Good God.”

The two men had reached the eastern crest and the great heath, undulating toward Chiclana, was visible beneath them. The major’s last two words had been prompted by the sight of distant infantry. He could see the bastards half hidden by distant trees and hillocks, but where the blue-coated devils were going he could not work out. More immediately he could see three squadrons of French dragoons, green-coated devils, who were riding toward the hill. “You think those Frenchmen want to play with us, Blakeney?”

“They seem to be coming this way, sir.”

“Then we must make them welcome,” Browne said, and did a smart about-face and paced back toward the ruined chapel. In front of him now was a battery of five cannon and four thousand Spanish and British muskets. More than enough, he reckoned, to hold the hill.

A flurry of hooves to the south gave him a moment’s alarm. Then he saw that allied cavalry had come to the hilltop. There were three squadrons of Spanish dragoons and two of the King’s German Legion hussars, all under the command of General Whittingham, an Englishman in Spanish service. Whittingham rode to Browne who was still dismounted. “Time to go, Major,” Whittingham said curtly.

“Go?” Browne thought he had misheard. “I’m ordered to hold this hill! And there are two hundred and fifty Crapaud dragoons down there,” Browne said, pointing northeast.

“Seen them,” Whittingham said. His face was deep-lined, shadowed by his cocked hat, beneath which he smoked a thin cigar that he kept tapping even though there was no ash to fall from its tip. “Time to withdraw,” he said.

“I’m ordered to hold the hill,” Browne insisted, “until Sir Thomas has reached the next village. And he hasn’t.”

“They’re gone!” Whittingham pointed to the beach where the last of the baggage train was plodding well north of the Cerro del Puerco.

“We hold the hill!” Browne insisted. “Damn it, those are my orders!”

A cannon, not fifty paces off to Browne’s right, suddenly fired, and Whittingham’s horse skittered sideways and tossed its head frantically. Whittingham calmed the beast and moved it back to Browne’s side. He dragged on his cigar and watched the dragoons who had appeared on the eastern skyline, or at least the helmeted heads of the leading squadron had shown over the crest and the Spanish artillerymen had greeted them with a round shot that screamed off into the eastern sky. A trumpeter sounded a call from the French ranks, but the man was so surprised or else so nervous that the fine notes cracked and he had to begin again. The trumpet did not prompt any extraordinary activity from the dragoons who, evidently surprised to see such a large force waiting for them, stayed just beneath the eastern crest. Two of the Spanish battalions put their skirmishers forward and those light infantrymen started a sporadic musket fire. “Range is much too long,” Browne said scathingly, then frowned up at Whittingham. “Why don’t you charge the buggers?” he asked. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” Whittingham had five squadrons while the French had only three.

“Stand here, Browne, and you’ll be cut off,” Whittingham said, tapping the cigar. “Cut off, that’s what you’ll be. Our orders are clear. Wait till the army’s gone past, then follow.”

“My orders are clear,” Browne insisted. “I hold the hill!”

More Spanish skirmishers were sent forward. The apparent inactivity of the dragoons was encouraging the light companies. The French horsemen, Browne thought, must surely withdraw for they must realize they had no hope of chasing a whole brigade off a hilltop, especially when that brigade was reinforced by its own artillery and cavalry. Then some of the enemy horsemen cantered northward and drew carbines from their saddle holsters. “Buggers want to make a fight of it,” Browne said. “By God, I don’t mind! Your horse is pissing on my boots.”

“Sorry,” Whittingham said, kicking the horse a pace forward. He watched the Spanish light companies. Their musket fire was doing no evident damage. “Got orders to retreat,” he said obstinately, “as soon as the army’s passed the hill and that’s what they’ve done, they’ve passed the hill.” He sucked on the cigar.

“See that? The buggers want to skirmish,” Browne said. He was looking past Whittingham to where at least thirty of the helmeted Frenchmen had dismounted and were advancing in a skirmish line to oppose the Spaniards. “Don’t see that much, do you?” Browne asked, sounding as carefree as a man noticing some phenomenon on a country walk. “I know dragoons are supposed to be mounted infantry, but they mostly stay in the saddle, don’t you find?”

“No such thing as mounted infantry, not these days,” Whittingham said, ignoring the fact that the dragoons were disproving his point. “It doesn’t work. Neither fish nor fowl. You can’t stay here, Browne,” he went on. He tapped again and at last some cigar ash dropped onto his boot. “Our orders are to follow the army north, not stand around here.”

The Spanish gun that had fired was now reloaded with canister and its team trained the weapon around to face the dismounted dragoons who were advancing in skirmish order across the hilltop. The artillerymen dared not fire yet because their own skirmishers were in the way. The sound of the muskets was desultory. Browne could see two of the Spanish skirmishers laughing. “What they should do,” he said, “is close on the bastards, hurt them, and provoke a charge. Then we could kill the whole damned lot.”

The dismounted dragoons opened fire. It was only a smattering of musket balls that flicked across the hilltop and none of them did any damage, but their effect was extraordinary. Suddenly the five Spanish battalions were loud with orders. The light companies were called back, the gun teams were hurried forward, and, to Major Browne’s utter astonishment, the guns and the five battalions simply fled. If he had been kind he might have called it a precipitate retreat, but he was in no mood to be kind. They ran. They went as fast as they could, tumbling down the seaward slope, skirting the hovels of Barrosa and heading north. “Good God,” he said, “good God!” The enemy dragoons looked as astonished as Major Browne at the effect of their puny volley, but then the dismounted men ran back to their horses.

“Form square!” Major Browne shouted, knowing that a single battalion in a line of two ranks would make a tempting target for three squadrons of dragoons. The long, heavy, straight-bladed swords would already be whispering out of their scabbards. “Form square!”

“You mustn’t stay here, Browne!” Whittingham shouted after the major. His cavalry had followed the Spaniards and the general now spurred after them.

“Got my orders! Got my orders! Form square, boys!” The Gibraltar Flankers formed square. They were a small battalion, numbering just over five hundred muskets, but in square they were safe enough from the dragoons. “Pull up your breeches lads,” Browne shouted, “and fix bayonets!”

The dragoons, all mounted again, came over the crest. Their swords were drawn. Their guidons, small triangular flags, were embroidered with a golden N for Napoleon. Their helmets were polished. “Fine looking beggars, aren’t they, Blakeney?” Browne said as he hauled himself back into his saddle. General Whittingham had disappeared, Browne did not see where, and it seemed the Flankers were alone on the Cerro del Puerco. The front rank of the square knelt. The dragoons had formed three lines. They were watching the square, knowing its first volley would cut down their leading rank, but wondering whether they could break the redcoats apart anyway. “They want to die, boys,” Browne shouted, “so we shall oblige them. It is our God-given duty.”

Then, from behind the ruined chapel, came a single squadron of King’s German Legion hussars. They rode in two ranks, wore gray overalls, blue coats, and polished helmets, and carried sabers. They rode tight, boot to boot, and as they passed the corner of Browne’s square the front rank spurred into the gallop. They were outnumbered by the dragoons, but they charged home and Browne heard the clangor of saber against sword. The dragoons, who had not started their advance, were pushed back. A horse fell, a dragoon spurred out of the fight with a face cut to the skull, and a hussar rode back toward the square with a sword piercing his belly. He fell from his saddle fifty yards from Browne’s front rank and his horse immediately turned back to the fight that was a confusion of men, horses, and dust. The hussars, having hurled the first line of dragoons back, turned away and the French came after them, but then the trumpet threw the second line of Germans against the French and the dragoons were pounded back a second time. The first troop re-formed, the riderless horse taking its place in the rank. A sergeant and two men of the Holy Boys had fetched the wounded hussar into the square. The man was plainly dying. He stared up at Browne, muttering in German. “Pull the damned sword out!” Browne snapped to the battalion’s surgeon.

“It will kill him, sir.”

“What if it stays in?”

“He’ll die.”

“Then pray for the poor bugger’s soul, man!” Browne said.

The hussars had come back now. The dragoons had retreated, leaving six bodies on the hill. They might have outnumbered the single squadron of Germans, but so long as the Germans stayed near the redcoated infantry, the dragoons were vulnerable to volley fire and so their commander took them down the hill’s slope to wait for reinforcements.

Browne waited. He could hear musketry far to the north. It was volley fire, but it was someone else’s fight so he ignored the sound. He was commanded to hold the hill and he was a stubborn man, so he stayed under the pale sky in which the wind brought the smell of the sea. The leader of the hussar squadron, a captain, politely requested to enter the square and touched the brim of his helmet to Browne. “The dragoons, I think, will not bother you now,” he said.

“Obliged to you, Captain, obliged I’m sure.”

“I am Captain Dettmer,” the captain said.

“Sorry about this fellow,” Browne said as he nodded at the dying hussar.

Dettmer stared at the hussar. “I know his mother,” he said sadly, then looked back to Browne. “There is infantry coming to the hill,” he went on. “I saw it when we were fighting.”

“Infantry?”

“Too many,” Dettmer said.

“Let’s look,” Browne said, and he ordered two files to leave the square, then led Captain Dettmer through the gap. The two men trotted to the hill’s eastern edge and Browne stared down at approaching disaster. “Dear God,” he said, “that’s not pretty.”

When he had last looked the heath was a wilderness of sand, grass, pines, and thickets. He had seen infantry in the distance, but now the whole heath was covered in blue. The whole wide world was a mass of blue coats and white crossbelts. He could see battalion after battalion of Frenchmen, their eagles shining in the morning sun as their army advanced on the sea. “Dear God,” Browne said again.

Because only half the French army was marching on the pinewood that hid them from the sea. The other half was coming for Browne and his five hundred and thirty-six muskets.

Coming straight for him. Thousands.

SHARPE CLIMBED the tallest sand dune in sight and leveled his telescope across the Rio Sancti Petri. He could see the backs of the Frenchmen on the beach and the musket smoke dark around their heads, but the image wavered because the glass was unsteady. “Perkins!”

“Sir?”

“Bring your shoulder here. Be useful.”

Perkins served as a telescope rest. Sharpe stooped to the eyepiece. Even with the telescope held steady it was hard to tell what was happening because the French were in a line of three ranks and their powder smoke concealed everything beyond them. They were firing continually. He could not see all the French line, for dunes hid their left flank, but he was watching at least a thousand men. He could see two eagles and suspected there were at least two more battalions hidden by the dunes.

“They’re slow, sir.” Harper had come to stand behind him.

“They’re slow,” Sharpe agreed. The French were firing as battalions, which meant that the slowest men dictated the rate of fire. He guessed they were not even managing three shots a minute, but that seemed sufficient because the French were taking very few casualties. He edged the telescope very slowly along their line and saw that only six bodies had been dragged behind the ranks to where the officers rode up and down. He could hear, but not see, the Spanish muskets and once or twice, as the smoke thinned, he had a glimpse of the Spanish in their lighter blue, and he reckoned their line was a good three hundred paces from the French. Might as well spit at that distance. “They’re not close enough,” Sharpe muttered.

“Can I look, sir?” Harper asked.

Sharpe bit back a sour comment to the effect that this was not Harper’s fight, and instead yielded his place at Perkins’s shoulder. He turned and looked out to sea where the waves fretted about a small island crowned by the ancient ruins of a fort. A dozen fishing boats were just beyond the line of surf that ran toward the beach. The fishermen were watching the fight, and more spectators, attracted by the crackle of musketry, were riding from San Fernando. No doubt there would soon be curious folk arriving from Cádiz.

Sharpe took the telescope back from Harper. He collapsed it, his fingers running over the small brass plate let into the largest barrel that was sheathed in walnut. IN GRATITUDE, AW, SEPTEMBER 23RD, 1803, the plate said, and Sharpe remembered Henry Wellesley’s flippant line that the telescope, which was a fine instrument made by Matthew Berge of London, was not the generous gift Sharpe had always supposed it to be, but instead a spare glass that Lord Wellington had not wanted. Not that it mattered. 1803, he thought. That long ago! He tried to remember that day when Lord Wellington, Sir Arthur Wellesley back then, had been dazed and Sharpe had protected him. He thought he had killed five men in the fight, but he was not sure.

The Spanish engineers were laying the chesses over the last thirty feet of the pontoon bridge. Those planks, which formed the roadway, were kept on the Cádiz bank to stop any unauthorized crossing of the bridge, but evidently General Zayas now wanted the bridge open and Sharpe saw, with approval, that three Spanish battalions were being readied to cross the bridge. Zayas had evidently decided to attack the French from their rear. “We’ll be going soon,” he said to Harper.

“Perkins,” Harper growled, “join the others.”

“Can’t I look through the telescope, Sergeant?” Perkins pleaded.

“You’re not old enough. Move.”

It took a long time for the three battalions to cross. The bridge, constructed from longboats rather than pontoons, was narrow and it rocked alarmingly. By the time Sharpe and his men had joined Captain Galiana, there were almost a hundred curious onlookers arrived from San Fernando or Cádiz and some were trying to persuade the sentries to let them cross the bridge. Others climbed the dunes and trained telescopes on the distant French. “They’re stopping everyone crossing the bridge,” Galiana said nervously.

“They’re not going to let civilians across, are they?” Sharpe said. “But tell me something, what are you going to do on the other side?”

“Do?” Galiana said, and plainly did not know the answer. “Make myself useful,” he suggested. “It’s better than doing nothing, isn’t it?” The last Spanish battalion had crossed now and Galiana spurred forward. He dismounted well short of the bridge, preparing to lead his horse over the uncertain footing of the chesses, but before he reached the roadway a squad of Spanish soldiers pulled a makeshift barricade across the approach. A lieutenant held a warning hand toward Galiana.

“He’s with me,” Sharpe said before Galiana could speak. The lieutenant, a tall man with a burly, unshaven chin, looked at him pugnaciously. It was plain he did not understand English, but he was not going to back down. “I said he’s with me,” Sharpe said.

Galiana spoke in rapid Spanish, gesturing at Sharpe. “You have your orders?” he switched to English, looking at Sharpe.

Sharpe had no orders. Galiana spoke again, explaining that Sharpe was charged with delivering a message to Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Graham, and the orders were in English, which, of course, the lieutenant spoke? Galiana himself, the Spanish captain explained, was Sharpe’s liaison officer. By now Sharpe had produced his ration authorization, permitting him to draw beef, bread, and rum for five riflemen from the headquarters stores at San Fernando. He thrust the paper at the lieutenant who, faced with hostile riflemen and the emollient Galiana, decided to yield. He ordered the hurdles pulled aside.

“I did need you after all,” Galiana said. He held the reins very close to the mare’s head and continually patted her neck as she made her cautious way across the plank roadway. The bridge, much less robust than the one Sharpe had destroyed on the Guadiana, quivered underfoot and bowed upstream under the pressure of the flooding tide. Once safe on the far bank, Galiana mounted and led Sharpe southward past the sandy ramparts of the temporary fort made to protect the pontoons.

General Zayas had formed his three battalions in a line across the beach where they were now marching slowly forward. The right-hand files were having their boots sporadically washed by the incoming surf. Sergeants bellowed at men to keep their dressing. The Spanish colors were bright against the pale sky. From far off came the report of a cannon, a deeper sound than musketry, a pounding in the air. It died away, but over the constant snap of the nearer muskets Sharpe thought he could hear other muskets firing, but much farther off. “You can go back now,” he told Harper.

“Let’s just see what these lads do first,” Harper said, nodding at the three Spanish battalions.

The lads needed to do nothing except appear. General Villatte, seeing that his men were about to be assailed from the rear, ordered them to withdraw east across the Almanza Creek. They carried their wounded away. The Spaniards, seeing them go, gave a cheer of victory, then wheeled up the dunes to harry the retreating French who were now outnumbered almost two to one. Galiana, standing in his stirrups, was exultant. Surely the combined Spanish forces, joining from north and south, could now pursue the French across the creek and drive them far back along the tracks to Chiclana, but just then artillery opened fire from the Almanza’s far bank. A battery of twelve-pounders had been placed on the firm ground to the east and their first salvo was of common shell that exploded in gouts of sand and smoke. The Spanish advance checked as men took cover behind dunes. The guns fired a second time and round shot slashed through files slow to find shelter. The last of the French infantry had waded the creek now and were making a new line to face the Spaniards across the incoming tide. The guns went silent as their smoke drifted across the slowly rising water. The French were content to wait now. Their force that had blocked the allied army’s retreat had been thrust aside, but their guns could still hurl shell and round shot at any force marching toward the bridge. They brought up a second battery and waited for the rout to begin from the south while the Spanish battalions, content to have cleared the enemy off the beach, settled among the dunes.

Galiana, disappointed that the pursuit had not been pressed across the Almanza, had ridden to a group of Spanish officers and now came back to Sharpe. “General Graham is to the south,” he said, “with orders to bring the rear guard here.”

Sharpe could see a mist of musket smoke drifting away from a hill two or more miles southward. “He’s not coming yet,” he said, “so I might go and meet him. You can go back now, Pat.”

Harper thought about it. “So what are you doing, sir?”

“I’m just taking a walk on the beach.”

Harper looked at the other riflemen. “Does anyone here want to take a walk on a beach with me and Mister Sharpe? Or do they want to go back and talk their way past that nasty lieutenant on the bridge?”

The riflemen said nothing until another cannon sounded far to the south. Then Harris frowned. “What’s happening down there?” he asked.

“Nothing to do with us,” Sharpe said.

Harris could be a barrack room lawyer at times, and he was about to protest that the fight was none of their business. Then he caught Harper’s eye and decided to say nothing. “We’re just taking a walk on the beach,” Harper said, “and it’s a nice day for a walk.” He saw Sharpe’s quizzical look. “I was thinking of the Faughs, sir. They’re up there, they are, all those poor wee boys from Dublin, and I thought they might like to see a proper Irishman.”

“But we’re not going to fight?” Harris demanded.

“What do you think you are, Harris? A bloody soldier?” Harper asked caustically. He took care not to catch Sharpe’s eye. “Of course we’re not going to fight. You heard Mister Sharpe. We’re going for a walk on the beach, that’s all we’re bloody doing.”

So they did. They went for a walk on the beach.

SIR THOMAS, certain that his rear was well protected by the brigade posted on the Cerro del Puerco, was encouraging his troops along the road that led through the long pinewood edging the beach. “Not far, boys!” Sir Thomas called as he rode down the line. “We’ve not far to go! Cheer up now!” He glanced to his right every few seconds, half expecting the appearance of a cavalryman bringing news of an enemy advance. Whittingham had undertaken to post vedettes on the inland edge of the wood, but none of those men appeared and Sir Thomas supposed the French were content to let the allied army retreat ignominiously into Cádiz. The firing ahead had stopped. A French force had evidently blocked the beach, but had now been chased away, while the firing from the south had also died. Sir Thomas reckoned that had been mere bickering, probably a cavalry patrol coming too close to the big Spanish brigade on the summit of the Cerro del Puerco.

He paused to watch the redcoats march past and he noted how the tired men straightened their backs when they saw him. “Not far, boys,” he told them. He thought how much he loved these men. “God bless you, boys,” he called, “and it’s not far now.” Not far to what, he wondered sourly. These bone-weary soldiers had been marching all night, laden with packs and haversacks and weapons and rations, and it was all for nothing, all for a scuttling retreat back to the Isla de León.

There was a flurry of shouts to the north. A man called a challenge and Sir Thomas stared down the track, but saw nothing and heard no shots. A moment later a mounted officer of the Silver Tails came pounding back down the track with two horsemen close behind. They were civilians armed with muskets, sabers, pistols, and knives. Partisans, Sir Thomas thought, two of the men who made life such hell for the French armies occupying Spain. “They want to talk to you, sir,” the Silver Tail officer said.

The two partisans spoke at once. They spoke fast, excitedly, and Sir Thomas calmed them. “My Spanish is slow,” he told them, “so speak to me slowly.”

“The French,” one of them said and pointed eastward.

“Where have you come from?” Sir Thomas asked. One of the men explained that they had been part of a larger group that had shadowed the French for the last three days. Six men had ridden from Medina Sidonia and these two were the only ones left alive because some dragoons had caught them soon after dawn. The two had been chased toward the sea and they had just ridden across the heath. “Which is full of Frenchmen,” the second man said earnestly.

“Coming this way,” the first man added.

“How many French?” Sir Thomas asked.

“All of them,” the two men said together.

“Then let us look,” Sir Thomas said, and he led the two men and his aides inland through the pines. He had to duck under the branches. The wood was wide and deep, thick and shadowed. Pine needles overlay the sandy soil, muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves.

The wood ended abruptly, giving way to the undulating heath that stretched away under the morning sun. And there, filling the wide world, were white crossbelts against blue coats.

“Señor?” one of the partisans said, gesturing at the French as though he had produced them himself.

“Dear God,” Sir Thomas said softly. Then he said nothing more for a while, but just stared at the approaching enemy. The two partisans thought the general was too shocked to speak. He was, after all, watching disaster approach.

But Sir Thomas was thinking. He was noticing that the French marched with muskets slung. They could not see enemy troops to their front and so, instead of marching into battle, they were marching to battle. There was a difference. Men marching to battle might have loaded muskets, but the muskets would not be cocked. Their artillery was unde-ployed, and it took time for the French to deploy guns because the cannons’ heavy barrels had to be lifted from the travel position to the firing position. In short, Sir Thomas thought, these Frenchmen were not ready for a fight. They were expecting a fight, but not yet. Doubtless they believed they must first pass the pinewood, and only then would they expect the killing to begin.

“We should follow General Lapeña,” the liaison officer said nervously.

Sir Thomas ignored the man. He was thinking still, his fingers tapping the saddle pommel. If he continued north, then the French would cut off the brigade on the hill above Barrosa. They would wheel right and attack up the beach, and Sir Thomas would be forced to try a makeshift defense with his left flank open to attack. No, he thought, better to fight the bastards here. It would not be an easy fight, it would be a damned scramble, but better that than continuing north and turning the sea’s edge red with his blood.

“My lord”—he was uncharacteristically formal as he glanced at Lord William Russell—“my compliments to Colonel Wheatley, and he is to bring his brigade here and face down these fellows. Tell him to send his skirmishers as fast as he can! I want the enemy engaged by the light bobs while the rest of his brigade comes up. Guns are to come here. Right here,” he stabbed a hand at the ground on which his horse stood. “Hurry now, no time to lose!” He beckoned to another aide, a young captain in the blue-faced red coat of the First Foot Guards. “James, compliments to General Dilkes, and I want his brigade here,” he gestured to the right. “He’s to take position between the guns and the hill. Order him to send his skirmishers first! Quick now! Quick as he can!”

The two aides vanished into the trees. Sir Thomas lingered a moment, watching the approaching French who were now less than half a mile off. He was taking a vast gamble. He wanted to hit them while they were unprepared, but he knew it would take time to bring his battalions through the thick trees, which is why he had asked for the light companies to come first. They could make a skirmish line on the heath, they could begin to kill the French, and Sir Thomas could only hope that the skirmishers would hold the French long enough for the rest of the battalions to arrive and begin their deadly volley fire. He looked at the liaison officer. “Be so good,” he said, “as to ride to General Lapeña and tell him the French are moving on the pinewood and that it is my intention to engage them and would be honored”—he was choosing his words carefully—“if the general could lead men onto the right flank of the enemy.”

The Spaniard rode away and Sir Thomas looked back east. The French were coming in two huge columns. He planned to face the northern column with Wheatley’s brigade, while General Dilkes and his guardsmen would confront the column closest to the Cerro del Puerco. And that made him think of the Spaniards on the hill. The French would surely send their southern column to take that hill and they must not be allowed to do so, or else they could sweep down from its summit to attack the right flank of his hasty defense. He turned south, leading his remaining aides toward the Cerro del Puerco.

That hill, he thought as he rode back into the pines, was his one advantage. There were Spanish cannons on the summit, and those guns could fire down on the French. The hill was a fortress protecting his vulnerable right flank, and if the French could be held on the plain then the brigade on the hill could be used to make an attack on the enemy’s flank. Thank God, he was thinking as he rode out of the trees, that the hill was his.

Except it was not. The Cerro del Puerco had been abandoned and, even as Sir Thomas had ridden south, the first French battalions were climbing the hill’s eastern slopes. The enemy now held the Cerro del Puerco and the only allied troops in sight were the five hundred men of the Gibraltar Flankers. Instead of holding the high ground, they were forming into a column of march at the hill’s foot. “Browne! Browne!” Sir Thomas shouted as he cantered toward the column. “Why are you here? Why?”

“Because I’ve got half the French army climbing the damned hill, Sir Thomas.”

“Where are the Spaniards?”

“They ran.”

Sir Thomas stared at Browne for a heartbeat. “Well, it’s a bad business, Browne,” he said, “but you must instantly turn around again and attack.”

Major Browne’s eyes widened. “You want me to attack half their army?” he asked incredulously. “I saw six battalions and a battery of artillery coming! I’ve got only five hundred thirty-six muskets.” Browne, deserted by the Spaniards, had watched the mass of infantry and cannon approaching the hill, and had decided that retreat was better than suicide. There were no other British troops within sight, he had no promises of reinforcement, and so he had led his Gibraltar Flankers north, off the hill. Now he was being told to go back, and he took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for the ordeal. “If we must,” he said, stoically accepting his fate, “then we will.”

“You must,” Sir Thomas said, “because I need the hill. I’m sorry, Browne, I need it. But General Dilkes is coming. I’ll bring him up to you myself.”

Browne turned to his adjutant. “Major Blakeney! Skirmish order! Back up the hill! Drive the devils away!”

“Sir Thomas?” an aide interrupted, then pointed to the hill’s summit, where the first French battalions were already appearing. Blue coats were showing at the skyline, a great array of blue coats ready to come down the slope and scour their way along the pinewood.

Sir Thomas gazed at the French. “Light bobs won’t stop them, Browne,” he said. “You’ll have to give them volley fire.”

“Close order!” Browne shouted at his men who had started to deploy into skirmish order.

“They have a battery of cannon up there, Sir Thomas,” the aide said quietly.

Sir Thomas ignored the news. It did not matter if the French had all the emperor’s artillery on the hilltop, they still had to be attacked. They had to be thrown off the hill, and that meant the only available troops must climb the slope and make an assault that would hold the French in place until General Dilkes’s guardsmen came to assist them. “God be with you, Browne,” Sir Thomas said too quietly for the major to hear. Sir Thomas knew he was sending Browne’s men to their deaths, but they had to die to give the Guards time to arrive. He sent an aide to summon Dilkes’s men. “He’s to ignore my last order,” Sir Thomas said, “and to bring his men here with the utmost speed. The utmost speed! Go!”

Sir Thomas had done what he could. The coastline between the villages of Barrosa and Bermeja was two miles of confusion into which two French attacks were developing, one against the pinewood while the other had already captured the crucial hill. Sir Thomas, knowing that the enemy was on the brink of victory, must gamble everything on his men’s ability to fight. Both his brigades would be outnumbered, and one must attack uphill. If either failed, the whole army would be lost.

Behind him, in the open heath beyond the pinewood, the first rifles and muskets fired.

And Browne marched his men back up the hill.

CHAPTER 11

SHARPE AND HIS RIFLEMEN, still accompanied by Captain Galiana, walked through the Spanish army that mostly seemed to be resting on the beach. Galiana dismounted when they reached the village of Bermeja and led his horse through the hovels. General Lapeña and his aides were there, sheltering from the sun under a framework on which fishing nets hung to dry. There was a watchtower in the village, and its summit was crowded with Spanish officers staring south with telescopes. The sound of musketry came from that direction, but it was very muffled, and no one in the Spanish army seemed particularly interested. Galiana remounted when they left the village. “Was that General Lapeña?” Sharpe asked.

“It was,” Galiana said sourly. He had walked the horse to avoid being noticed by the general.

“Why doesn’t he like you?” Sharpe asked.

“Because of my father.”

“What did your father do?”

“He was in the army, like me. He challenged Lapeña to a duel.”

“And?”

“Lapeña wouldn’t fight. He is a coward.”

“What was the argument about?”

“My mother,” Galiana said curtly.

South of Bermeja the beach was empty except for some fishing boats drawn up on the sand. The boats were painted blue, yellow, and red and had large black eyes on their bows. The musketry was still muffled, but Sharpe could see smoke rising beyond the pine trees that ran thick behind the dunes. They walked in silence until, perhaps half a mile beyond the village, Perkins claimed to have seen a whale.

“What you saw,” Slattery said, “was your bloody rum ration. You saw it and drank it.”

“I saw it, I did sir!” He appealed to Sharpe, but Sharpe did not care what Perkins had or had not seen and ignored him.

“I saw a whale once,” Hagman put in. “It were dead. Stinking.”

Perkins was gazing out to sea again, hoping to see whatever it was he had taken to be a whale. “Maybe,” Harris suggested, “it was backed like a weasel?” They all stared at him.

“He’s being clever again,” Harper said loftily. “Just ignore him.”

“It’s Shakespeare, Sergeant.”

“I don’t care if it’s the Archangel bloody Gabriel, you’re just showing off.”

“There was a Sergeant Shakespeare in the 48th,” Slattery said, “and a proper bastard he was. He choked to death on a walnut.”

“You can’t die from a walnut!” Perkins said.

“He did. His face turned blue. Good thing too. He was a bastard.”

“God save Ireland,” Harper said. His words were not prompted by Sergeant Shakespeare’s demise, but by a cavalcade storming down the beach toward them. The baggage mules, which had been retreating down the beach rather than on the track in the pinewood, had bolted.

“Stand still!” Sharpe said. They stood in a tight group as the mules split to pass on either side. Captain Galiana shouted at passing muleteers, demanding to know what had happened, but the men kept going.

“I didn’t know you were in the 48th, Fergus,” Hagman said.

“Three years, Dan. Then they went to Gibraltar, only I was sick so I stayed at the barracks. Almost died, I did.”

Harris snatched at a passing mule that evaded his grip. “So how did you join the Rifles?” he asked.

“I was Captain Murray’s servant,” Slattery said, “and when he joined the Rifles, he took me with him.”

“What’s an Irishman doing in the 48th?” Harris wanted to know. “They’re from Northamptonshire.”

“They recruited in Wicklow,” Slattery said.

Captain Galiana had succeeded in stopping a muleteer and got from the fugitive a confused tale of an overwhelming French attack. “He says the enemy has taken that hill,” Galiana said, pointing to the Cerro del Puerco.

Sharpe took out his telescope and, again using Perkins as a rest, he stared at the hilltop. He could see a French battery at the crest and at least four blue-coated battalions. “They’re up there,” he confirmed. He turned the glass toward the village between the hill and the sea and saw Spanish cavalry there. There were also Spanish infantry, two or three thousand of them, but they had marched a small way north and were now resting among the dunes at the top of the beach. Neither the cavalry nor the infantry seemed concerned by the French possession of the hill and the sound of the fighting did not come from its slopes, but from beyond the pinewood on Sharpe’s left.

Sharpe offered the glass to Galiana who shook his head. “I have my own,” he said, “so what are they doing?”

“Who? The French?”

“Why don’t they attack down the hill?”

“What are those Spanish troops doing?” Sharpe asked.

“Nothing.”

“Which means they’re not needed. Which probably means there’s a lot of men waiting for the Crapauds to come down the hill, and meanwhile the fighting’s over there”—he nodded toward the pinewood—“so that’s where I’m going.” The panicked mass of mules had gone by. The muleteers were still hurrying north, scooping up the loaves of hard bread jolted out of the animals’ panniers. Sharpe picked one up and broke it in half.

“Are we looking for the 8th, sir?” Harper asked him as they walked toward the pines.

“I am, but I don’t suppose I’ll find them,” Sharpe said. It was one thing to declare an ambition to find Colonel Vandal, but in the chaos he doubted he would be successful. He did not even know if the French 8th were here, and if they were they might be anywhere. He knew some Frenchmen were behind the creek where they threatened the army’s route to Cádiz. There were plenty more on the distant hill, and plainly others were beyond the pinewood. That was where the guns sounded so Sharpe would go that way. He walked to the top of the beach, scrambled up a sandy bluff, then plunged into the shade of the pines. Galiana, who seemed to have no plan except to stay with Sharpe, dismounted again because the pine branches hung so low.

“You don’t have to come, Pat,” Sharpe said.

“I know that, sir.”

“I mean we’ve got no business here,” Sharpe said.

“There’s Colonel Vandal, sir.”

“If we find him,” Sharpe said dubiously. “Truth is, Pat, I’m here because I like Sir Thomas.”

“Everyone speaks well of him, sir.”

“And this is our job, Pat,” Sharpe said more harshly. “There’s fighting and we’re soldiers.”

“So we do have business here?”

“Of course we bloody do.”

Harper walked in silence for a few paces. “So you never were going to let us go back, were you?”

“Would you have gone?”

“I’m here, sir,” Harper said as if that answered Sharpe. The musketry from their front was heavier. Till now it had sounded like skirmish fire, the thorn-splintering snap of light infantry firing independently, but the heavier noise of volley fire was punching through the trees now. Behind it Sharpe could hear the fine flurry of trumpets and the rhythm of drums, but he did not recognize the tune, so knew it must be a French band playing. Then a series of louder crashes announced that cannons were firing. Balls whipped through the trees, bringing down needles and twigs. The French were firing canister and the air smelled of resin and powder smoke.

They came to a track rutted by the wheels of gun carriages. A few mules were picketed to the trees, guarded by three redcoats with yellow facings. “Are you the Hampshires?” Sharpe asked.

“Yes, sir,” a man said.

“What’s happening?”

“Don’t know, sir. We were just told to guard the mules.”

Sharpe pushed on. The cannons were firing constantly, the volley fire was crashing rhythmically, but the two sides had not come to close quarters because the skirmishers were still deployed. Sharpe could tell that by the sound. Musket and canister balls flicked through the trees, twitching the branches like a sudden wind. “Buggers are firing high,” Harper said.

“They always do, thank God,” Sharpe said. The sound of battle became louder as they neared the edge of the wood. A Portuguese rifleman, his brown uniform black with blood, lay dead by a pine trunk. He had evidently crawled there, leaving a trail of blood on the needles. There was a crucifix in his left hand, the rifle still in his right. A redcoat lay five paces beyond, shuddering and choking, a bullet hole dark on his jacket’s yellow facing.

Then Sharpe was out of the trees.

And found slaughter.

MAJOR BROWNE climbed the hill on foot, leaving his horse tied to a pine trunk. The major sang as he climbed. He had a fine voice, much prized in the performances that whiled away the time in the Gibraltar garrison. “Come cheer up, my lads!” he sang. “’Tis to glory we steer, to add something more to this wonderful year; to honor we call you, not press you like slaves, for who are so free as the sons of the waves?” It was a naval song, much sung by the ships’ crews ashore in Gibraltar, and he knew it was not quite appropriate for this attack up the Cerro del Puerco’s northern slope, but the major liked “Heart of Oak.” “Let me hear you!” he shouted, and the six companies of his makeshift battalion sang the chorus. “Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men,” they sang raggedly. “We always are ready; steady, boys, steady! We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.”

In the brief silence after the chorus, the major distinctly heard the clicking sound of dogheads being pulled back at the hill’s summit. He could see four battalions of French infantry up there and suspected there were others, but the four he could see were cocking their muskets, readying to kill. A cannon was being manhandled forward so that its barrel could point down the hill. A band was playing on the hill’s summit. It played a jaunty song, music to kill by, and Browne found himself tapping his fingers on his sword hilt to the rhythm of the French tune. “Filthy French noise, lads,” he shouted, “take no note of it!” Not long now, he thought, not long at all, wishing he had his own band to play a proper British tune. He had no musicians, so instead he boomed out the last verse of “Heart of Oak.” “We’ll still make them fear, and we’ll still make them flee, and drub them on shore as we’ve drubbed them at sea. Then cheer up, my lads! And with one heart let’s sing, our soldiers, our sailors, our leaders, our king!”

The French opened fire.

The crest of the hill vanished in a great gray-white rill of choking powder smoke, and in the center, where the battery was deployed, the smoke was thicker still, a sudden explosion of churning darkness, streaked through with flame in the midst of which the canisters shredded apart and the balls whipped down the hill and it looked to Browne, following close on his men’s heels, that almost half of them were down. He saw a mist of blood over their heads, heard the first gasps, and knew the screaming would start soon. Then the file-closers, sergeants, and corporals were shouting at the men to close on the center. “Close up! Close up!”

“Up, boys, up!” Browne shouted. “Give them a drubbing!” He had started with 536 muskets. Now he had a little over 300. The French had at least a thousand more and Browne, stepping over a thrashing body, saw the enemy ramrods flicker in the thinning smoke. It was a miracle, he thought, that he was alive. A sergeant reeled past him, his lower jaw shot away and his tongue hanging in a dripping beard of blood. “Up, boys,” Browne called, “up to victory!” Another cannon fired and three men were snatched back, slamming into the ranks behind and smearing the grass with thick gouts of blood. “To glory we steer!” Browne shouted, and the French muskets started firing again and a boy near him was clutching his belly, eyes wide, blood oozing between his fingers. “On!” Browne shouted. “On!” A ball snatched at his cocked hat, turning it. He had his sword drawn. The French were firing their muskets as soon as they were reloaded, not waiting for the orders to fire in volleys, and the smoke pumped out on the hilltop. Browne could hear the balls striking home in flesh, rapping on musket butts, and he knew that he had done his duty and he could do no more. His surviving men were taking shelter in the slightest dips of the slope or behind thickets, and they were firing back now, serving as a skirmish line, and that was all they could be. Half his men were gone—they were stretched on the hill or limping back down, or bleeding to death, or weeping in agony—and still the musket balls buzzed and whistled and slashed into the broken ranks.

Major Browne walked up and down behind the line. It was not much of a line. Ranks and files were gone, blown to ragged ruin by the artillery or blasted by the musket balls, but the living had not retreated. They were shooting back. Loading and firing, making small clouds of smoke that hid them from the enemy. Their mouths were sour from the saltpeter of the gunpowder and their cheeks burned by sparks from the locks. Wounded men struggled up to join the line where they loaded and fired. “Well done, my boys!” Browne shouted. “Well done!” He expected to die. He was sad about that, but his duty was to stay on his feet, to walk the line, to shout encouragement, and to wait for the canister or musket ball that must end his life. “Come cheer up, my lads!” he sang. “’Tis to glory we steer, to add something more to this wonderful year; to honor we call you, not press you like slaves, for who are so free as the sons of the waves?” A corporal fell back, brains spilling from his forehead. The man must have been dead, but his mouth still moved compulsively until Browne leaned down and pushed the chin gently up.

Blakeney, his adjutant, was still alive and, like Browne, miraculously unwounded. “Our brave allies,” Blakeney said, touching Browne’s elbow and gesturing back down the hill. Browne turned and saw that the Spanish brigade that had fled from the hill was resting not a quarter mile away, sitting in the dunes. He turned away. They would either come or not, and he suspected they would not. “Should I fetch them?” Blakeney asked, shouting over the noise of the guns.

“You think they’ll come?”

“No, sir.”

“And I can’t order them,” Browne said. “I don’t have the rank. And the bastards can see we need help and they ain’t moving. So let the buggers be.” He walked on. “You’re holding them, boys!” he shouted. “You’re holding them!”

And that was true. The French had broken Browne’s attack. They had shattered the red ranks, they had ripped the Gibraltar Flankers apart, but the French were not advancing down the slope to where Browne’s survivors would have made easy meat for their bayonets. They fired instead, tearing more bullets into the broken battalion while the redcoats, the men from Lancashire and the Holy Boys from Norfolk and the Silver Tails from Gloucestershire, shot back. Major Browne watched them die. A boy from the Silver Tails reeled back with his left shoulder torn away by the razor-edged remnants of the canister’s casing so that his arm hung by sinews and broken ribs poked white through the red mess of his shattered chest. He collapsed and began to gasp for his mother. Browne knelt and held the boy’s hand. He wanted to stanch the wound, but it was too big, so the major, not knowing how else to comfort the dying soldier, sang to him.

And at the foot of the hill, where the pine tree wood straggled to its end, General Dilkes’s brigade formed in two ranks. There was the second battalion of the First Foot Guards, three companies of the second battalion of the 3rd Foot Guards, two companies of riflemen, and half of the 67th Foot, which had somehow got tangled with Dilkes’s men and, rather than try to rejoin the rest of their battalion, had stayed to fight with the guardsmen and sweeps. General Dilkes drew his sword and twisted its tasseled pendant about his wrist. His orders were to take the hill. He looked up and saw the slope crawling with wounded men from Browne’s command. He also saw that his men were frighteningly outnumbered and he doubted that the French could be driven from the summit, but he had his orders. Sir Thomas Graham, who had given those orders, was close behind the bright colors of the 3rd Foot Guards, the Scotsmen, and now looked anxiously at Dilkes as if suspecting that he was delaying the order to attack. “Take them forward!” Dilkes said grimly.

“Brigade will advance!” the brigade major bellowed. A drummer boy gave a tap, then a roll, took a deep breath, and began beating the time. “By the center!” the brigade major shouted. “March!”

They climbed.

GENERAL LEVAL, while his colleague, General Ruffin, attacked the hill, advanced toward the pinewood. He had six battalions that, between them, had four thousand men who marched on a wide front. Leval kept two battalions behind the four who advanced in columns of divisions. French battalions had only six companies, and a column of divisions was two companies broad and three deep. Their drummers beat them on.

Colonel Wheatley had two thousand men to fight the four thousand and he began in disarray. His units had been in march order when the order to turn right and prepare to fight arrived, and there had been confusion among the pines. Two companies of Coldstream Guards were marching among Wheatley’s men, but there was no time to send them south to join Dilkes’s units, where they belonged, so they marched to battle under Wheatley. Half of the 67th from Hampshire was missing. Those five companies had found themselves under Dilkes’s command, while the remaining five companies were in their rightful place with Wheatley. It was, in short, chaos, and the thickness of the pines meant that battalion officers were unable to see their men, but the company officers and sergeants did their job and took the redcoats east through the trees.

The first to emerge from the pines were four hundred riflemen and three hundred Portuguese skirmishers who came at the run. Many of their officers were on horseback and the French, astonished to see an enemy come from the wood, thought cavalry was about to attack. That impression was strengthened when ten gun teams, totaling eighty horses, burst from the trees on the left of the French front. They followed a track that led to Chiclana, but once out of the trees they slewed hard right to throw up sand and dust. The nearest two French battalions, seeing only horses in the dust, formed square to repel cavalry.

The gunners jumped off the limbers, lifted the cannon trails, and aimed the barrels as the horses were taken back to the cover of the pines. “Use shell!” Major Duncan shouted. Shells were brought from limbers, and officers cut the fuses. They cut them short because the French were close. The French were also in sudden confusion. Two battalions had formed square, ready-to-receive, nonexistent cavalry, and the rest were hesitating when the British guns opened fire. Shells screamed across the three hundred yards of heath, each leaving its small wavering trail of fuse smoke, and Duncan, sitting his horse well to the side of the batteries so that their muzzle smoke did not hide his view, saw the blue-uniformed men knocked violently aside by the shells, then the explosions in the hearts of the squares. “Good! Good!” he shouted, and just then the skirmish line of riflemen and cacadores opened fire, their rifles and muskets crackling, and the French seemed to recoil from the fusillade. The front ranks of the columns returned the fire, but the skirmishers were scattered across the whole French front and were small targets for clumsy muskets, while the French were in close order and the rifles could hardly miss. The twin batteries on the right of the British line fired again. Then Duncan saw French horse teams being whipped across the heath. He counted six guns. “Load round shot!” he called. “Traverse right!” Men levered the cannon trails with handspikes to change their aim. “Hit their guns!” Duncan ordered.

The French were recovering now. The two battalions in square had realized their mistake and were deploying back into columns. Aides were galloping among the battalions, ordering them to march on, to fire, to break the thin skirmish line with concentrated volleys of musket fire. The drums began again, beating the pas de charge and pausing to let the men shout “Vive l’empereur!” The first effort was feeble, but officers and sergeants bellowed at the men to shout louder, and the next time the war cry was firm and defiant. “Vive l’empereur!”

“Tirez!” an officer shouted, and the front ranks of the 8th of the line poured a volley at the Portuguese skirmishers on their front. “Marchez! En avant!” Now was the time to accept the casualties and crush the skirmishers. The British cannon had switched their fire to the French battery, so no more shells slammed into the ranks. “Vive l’empereur!” The eight ranks behind the leading men of each column stepped over the dead and dying. “Tirez!” Another blast of musketry. Four thousand men were marching toward seven hundred. The French battery fired canister across the front of the columns and the grass bowed violently as though it were being swept by a sudden gust of wind. Portuguese cacadores and British riflemen were scooped up, bloodied and thrown down. The skirmish line was retreating now. The French muskets were too close and the six enemy cannon enfiladed them. There was a brief respite as the French gunners, about to be masked by the advancing columns, seized the drag ropes and, despite the round shot slamming about them, dragged their guns a hundred paces forward. They fired again and more skirmishers were turned to bloody rags. The French scented victory and the four leading battalions hurried. Their fire was ragged because it was hard to load while marching, and some men fixed bayonets instead. The British skirmishers ran back, almost to the wood’s edge. Duncan’s two left hand guns, seeing the danger, slewed around and blasted canister across the face of the nearest French battalion. Men in its leading ranks went down in a bloody haze as though a giant reaper’s hook had savaged them.

Then, suddenly, the wood’s edge was thick with men. The Silver Tails were on the left of Wheatley’s line and next to them were the two orphaned companies of Coldstreamers. Gough’s Irish were on the right of the Guards, then the remaining half of the 67th, and last, next to the guns, two companies of the Cauliflowers, the 47th.

“Halt!” The shouts echoed along the tree line.

“Wait!” a sergeant bellowed. Some men had raised their muskets.

“Wait for the order!”

“Form on your right! On your right!”

It was a confusion of voices, of officers shouting from their horses, of sergeants reordering ranks tumbled by the chaotic rush through the trees. “Look at that, boys! Look at that! Joy in the morning!” Major Hugh Gough, mounted on a bay gelding from County Meath, rode behind his battalion of the 87th. “We’ve got target practice, my lovelies,” he shouted. “Wait a while, though, wait a while.”

The newly arrived battalions recovered their dressing. “Take them forward! Take them forward!” Wheatley’s aides shouted, and the two-deep line paced onto the heath toward the dead and dying skirmishers. A French round shot skimmed through the 67th, cutting one man almost in half, spraying twelve others with the dead man’s blood, and taking the arm of a man in the rear rank. “Close up! Close up!”

“Halt! Present!”

“Vive l’empereur!”

“Fire!”

The inexorable rules of mathematics now imposed themselves on the fight. The French outnumbered the British by two to one, yet the leading four French battalions were in columns of divisions, which meant that each battalion was arrayed in nine ranks and had, on average, about seventy-two men in a rank. Four battalions with leading ranks of seventy-two men made a frontage of fewer than three hundred muskets. True, the men in the second rank could fire over their comrades’ shoulders, but even so, Leval’s four thousand men could only use six hundred muskets against the British line in which every man could fire, and Wheatley’s line was now fourteen hundred men strong. The skirmishers, who had done their job of delaying the French advance, ran to the flanks. Then Wheatley’s line fired.

The musket balls smacked into the heads of the French units. The redcoats were hidden by smoke behind which they reloaded. “Fire by platoons!” officers called, so now the rolling volleys would begin, half a company firing at once, then the next half, so that the bullets never stopped.

“Fire low!” an officer shouted.

Canister slashed through the smoke. A man reeled away, an eye gone, his face a mask of blood, but there was much more blood in the French battalions where the bullets were turning the front ranks into charnel rows.

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said. He had emerged from the wood at the right-hand side of the British line. Ahead of him, to his right, were Duncan’s guns, each one bucking back three or more paces with every shot. Beside the guns were the remnants of the Portuguese skirmishers, still firing, and to his left was the redcoat line. Sharpe joined the brown-coated Portuguese. They looked haggard. Their faces were powder stained and eyes white. They were a new battalion and had never been in battle before, but they had done their job and now the redcoats were firing volleys, yet the Portuguese had suffered horribly and Sharpe could see too many brown-coated bodies lying in front of the French battalions. He could also see greenjackets there, all on the left of the British line.

The French battalions were spreading their fronts. They were not doing it well. Each man tried to find a place to fire his musket, or else tried to find shelter behind braver colleagues, and sergeants were pushing them out in any order. Canister howled around Sharpe and he instinctively looked behind to make sure none of his men was hit. They were all safe, but a crouching Portuguese skirmisher close to Sharpe tipped onto his back with his throat torn open. “Didn’t know you were with us!” a voice called, and Sharpe turned to see Major Duncan on horseback.

“I’m here,” Sharpe said.

“Can your rifles discourage gunners?”

The six French cannon were to the front. Two were already out of action, struck by Duncan’s round shot, but the others were flailing the left of the British line with their hated canister. The problem of shooting at cannon was the vast cloud of filthy smoke that lingered after every shot, and the problem was made worse by the distance. It was long range, even for a rifle, but Sharpe pulled his men forward to the Portuguese and told them to fire at the French artillerymen. “It’s a safe job, Pat,” he told Harper, “not really fighting at all.”

“Always a pleasure to murder a gunner, sir,” Harper said. “Isn’t that right, Harris?”

Harris, who had been most vocal about not joining any fight, cocked his rifle. “Always a pleasure, Sergeant.”

“Then make yourself happy. Kill a bloody gunner.”

Sharpe stared toward the French infantry, but could see little because the smoke of the muskets drifted across their front. He could see two eagles through the smoke, and beside them the small flags mounted on the halberds carried by the men charged with protecting the eagles. He could hear the drummer boys still beating the pas de charge even though the French advance had stopped. The real noise was of musketry, the pounding cough of volley fire, the relentless noise, and if he listened hard he could hear the balls striking on muskets and thumping into flesh. He could also hear the cries of the wounded and the screams of officers’ horses put down by the balls. And he was amazed, as he always was, by the courage of the French. They were being struck hard, yet they stayed. They stayed behind a straggling heap of dead men, they edged aside to let the wounded crawl behind, they reloaded and fired, and all the time the volleys kept coming. Sharpe could see no order among the enemy. The columns had long broken into a thick line that spread wider as men found space to use their muskets, but even so the makeshift line was still thicker and shorter than the British line. Only the British and Portuguese fought in two ranks. The French were supposed to fight in three ranks when deployed in line, but this line was clumped together, six or seven men deep in some places.

A third French gun was struck. A round shot shattered a wheel and the gun tipped down as the gunners jumped out of the way. “Good shooting!” Duncan shouted. “An extra ration of rum for that crew!” He had no idea which of his guns had done the damage so he would give them all rum when the fighting was done. A gust of wind blew the smoke away from the French battery and Duncan saw a gunner rolling up a new wheel. Hagman, kneeling among the Portuguese, saw another gunner bring his linstock toward the closest French cannon, a howitzer. Hagman fired and the gunner vanished behind the short barrel.

The British had no music to inspire them. There had been no space on the ships to bring instruments, but the bandsmen had come, armed with muskets, and now those men did their usual battle job of rescuing the wounded, taking them back to the trees, where the surgeons worked. The rest of the redcoats fought on. They did what they were trained to do, and what they did was fire a musket. Load and fire, load and fire. Take out a cartridge, bite off the top, prime the lock with a pinch of powder from the bitten end of the cartridge, close the frizzen to keep the pinch in place, drop the musket butt to the ground, pour the rest of the powder down the hot barrel, thrust the paper on top as wadding, ram it down, and inside the paper was the ball. Bring the musket up, pull back the cock, remember to aim low because the brute of a gun kicked like a mule, wait for the order, pull the trigger. “Misfire!” a man shouted, meaning his lock had sparked, but the charge in the barrel had not caught the fire. A corporal snatched the musket away from him, gave him a dead man’s gun, then laid the misfired musket on the grass behind. Other men had to pause to change flints, but the volleys never stopped.

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!”

AT 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.

Which lurched forward and shouted, “Vive l’empereur!”

CHAPTER 12

SIR THOMAS GRAHAM BLAMED himself. If he had put three British battalions on the summit of the Cerro del Puerca, then it would never have fallen to the French. Now it had, and he had to trust Colonel Wheatley to hold the long line of the pinewood while Dilkes’s men corrected Sir Thomas’s mistake. If they failed, and if the French division came down the hill and swept northward, then they would be in Wheatley’s rear and a massacre would follow. The French had to be driven off the hill.

General Ruffin had four battalions at the crest of the hill and held two specialist battalions of grenadiers in reserve. Those men no longer carried grenades; instead they were among the biggest men in the infantry and renowned for their fighting savagery. Marshal Victor, who knew as well as Sir Thomas Graham that the hill was the key to victory, had ridden to join Ruffin; from the summit, beside the ruined chapel, Victor could see Leval’s division edging forward toward the pinewood. Good. He would let them fight on their own and bring Ruffin’s men down to help them. The beach was mostly empty. A brigade of Spanish infantry was resting not far from the village, but for some reason, they were taking no part in the fight while the rest of the Spanish army was a long way to the north and, as far as the marshal could see through his telescope, not bothering to stir themselves.

Ruffin’s front line of four battalions numbered just over two thousand men. Like the Frenchmen on the heath they were in columns of divisions while beneath them on the hill were hundreds of bodies, the remnants of Major Browne’s battalion. Beyond those corpses were redcoats who had evidently come to retake the Cerro del Puerco. “Fifteen hundred Goddamns?” Victor estimated the newcomers.

“I reckon so, yes,” Ruffin said. He was a huge man, well over six feet tall.

“I do believe those are the English guards,” Victor said. He was gazing at Dilkes’s brigade through his telescope and could clearly see the blue regimental color of the First Foot Guards. “They’re sacrificing their best,” the marshal added cheerfully, “so let’s oblige them. We’ll sweep the bastards away!”

The bastards had begun to climb the hill. There were fourteen hundred of them, mostly guardsmen, but with half of the 67th on the right and, beyond the Hampshire men and closest to the sea, two companies of riflemen. They came slowly. Some had marched at the double for more than a mile to reach the hill’s foot and, after a sleepless night on the move, were tired. They did not follow Major Browne’s route to the top, but climbed closer to the beach where the hill was much steeper and the French cannons could not depress sufficiently to fire at them, at least not while they were on the lower slope. They came in a line, but this part of the hill was broken by trees and rough ground, and the line quickly lost its formation so that the British appeared to come in a formless straggle stretched about the hill’s northwestern quadrant.

Marshal Victor accepted a drink of wine from an aide’s canteen. “Let them get almost to the top,” he suggested to Ruffin, “because the cannon can shred them there. Give them a gift of canister, a volley of musketry, then advance on them.”

Ruffin nodded. It was exactly what he had planned to do. The hill was steep and the British would be breathless by the time they had climbed three-quarters of its flank, and that was when he would hit them with cannons and muskets. He would blast holes in their ranks, then release the four battalions of infantry down the hill with bayonets. The British would be swept away, and their fugitives would be in chaos by the time they reached the hill’s foot, and then the infantry and dragoons could hunt them down the beach and through the pinewood. The grenadiers, he thought, could then be sent to assault the southern flank of the other British brigade.

The redcoats clambered upward. Sergeants made efforts to keep the line straight, but it was hopeless on such broken ground. French voltigeurs, the skirmishers, had come a small way down the hill and were firing at the attackers. “Don’t return their fire!” Sir Thomas shouted. “Save your lead! We’ll give them a volley when we reach the top! Hold your fire!” A voltigeur’s bullet snatched Sir Thomas’s hat clean off without touching his white hair. He kicked his horse on. “Brave boys!” he shouted. “Up we go!” He was riding among the rearmost men of the Third Foot Guards, his beloved Scotsmen. “This is our land, boys. Let’s clear the rascals away!”

Major Browne’s men, those who survived, were still on the hill and still firing upward. “Here come the Guards, boys!” Browne shouted. “Now I’ll insure all your lives for half a dollar!” He had lost two-thirds of his officers and over half his men, but he shouted at the survivors to close up and join the flank of the First Foot Guards.

“They’re fools,” Marshal Victor said, more in puzzlement than in scorn. Fifteen hundred men hoped to take a two-hundred-foot hill garrisoned by artillery and by close to three thousand infantry? Well, their foolishness was his opportunity. “Give them your volley as soon as the artillery has fired,” he told Ruffin. “Then run them down the slope with bayonets.” He spurred across to the battery. “Wait till they’re at half-pistol shot,” he told the battery commander. At that range none of the guns could miss. It would be slaughter. “What are you loaded with?”

“Canister.”

“Good man,” Victor said. He was gazing at the lavish regimental colors of the First Foot Guards, and he was imagining those two flags being paraded through Paris. The emperor would be pleased! To have the flags of the king of England’s own guards! The emperor, he thought, would probably use the flags as tablecloths, or perhaps as sheets on which to bounce his new Austrian bride, and that thought made him laugh out loud.

The voltigeurs were scrambling uphill now because the British line was getting closer. Very nearly there, Victor thought. He would let them come almost to the top of the hill because that would bring the line right into the face of his six guns. He took a last glance north at Leval’s men and saw they were pressing closer to the pinewood. In half an hour, he thought, this small British army would have collapsed. It would take at least another hour to re-form the troops, then they would assault the Spanish at the beach’s end. How many flags would they send to Paris? A dozen? Twenty? Maybe enough to furnish all the emperor’s beds.

“Now, sir?” The battery commander asked.

“Wait, wait,” Victor said, and, knowing victory was his, turned and waved at the two grenadier battalions that he had held in reserve. “Forward!” he shouted to their general, Rousseau. This was no time to keep troops in reserve. Now was the moment to throw all his men, all three thousand of them, at fewer than half their number. He plucked an aide’s elbow. “Tell the bandmaster I want to hear the ‘Marseillaise’!” He grinned. The Emperor had banned the ‘Marseillaise,’ disliking its revolutionary sentiments, but Victor knew the song had retained its popularity and would inspire his soldiers to the slaughter of their enemies. He sang a line to himself, “Le jour de gloire est arrivé,” then laughed aloud. The battery commander looked up at him with surprise. “Now,” Victor said, “now!”

“Tirez!”

The guns fired, obliterating the view of the beach, of the sea, and of the distant white city in a bellying cloud of smoke.

“Now!” General Ruffin called to his battalion commanders.

Muskets hammered back into French shoulders. More smoke filled the sky.

“Fix bayonets!” the marshal shouted, and waved his white-plumed hat toward the cannon smoke. “And forward, mes braves! Forward!”

The band played, the drummers beat, and the French went to finish their job. The day of glory had arrived.

COLONEL VANDAL was some way north of Sharpe. The colonel was in the center of his battalion, which formed the left flank of the French line, and Sharpe, out by Duncan’s guns, was at the right flank of the British line, which still overlapped the thicker, larger French formation. “This way,” he shouted to his riflemen and ran behind the two companies of the 47th who were now down to one large company, and then behind the half battalion of the 67th until he was opposite Vandal.

“It’s grim work!” Colonel Wheatley had again ridden up behind Sharpe. This time he was talking to Major Gough, who commanded the 87th that was now on Sharpe’s left. “And no damned dons to help us,” Wheatley went on. “How are your fellows, Gough?”

“My men are staunch, sir,” Gough said, “but I need more of them. Need more men.” He had to shout over the din of the volleys. The 87th had lost four officers and over a hundred men. The wounded were in the pines, and more were joining them as the French musket balls slammed home. The file-closers were shouting at men to close on the center and so the 87th shrank. They still fired back, but their muskets were being fouled with powder residue and every cartridge was harder to load.

“There are no more men,” Wheatley said, “unless the Spanish come.” He glanced along the enemy line. The problem was simple enough. The French had too many men and so they could replace their casualties while he could not. He could outfight them man to man, but the French advantage in numbers was starting to matter. He could wait in hope that Lapeña would send reinforcements, but if none came then he must inevitably be whittled down, a process that would go faster and faster as his line shrank.

“Sir!” an aide shouted, and Wheatley looked to see that the Spanish officer who had ridden to summon reinforcements was returning.

Galiana curbed his horse by Wheatley and, for a heartbeat, looked too upset to talk. Then he blurted out his news. “General Lapeña refuses to move,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Wheatley stared at the Spaniard. “Good God,” he said in a surprisingly mild tone, then looked back to Gough. “I think, Gough,” he said, “that we have to give them steel.”

Gough looked at the throng of Frenchmen through the smoke. The 87th’s colors just above the colonel’s head were twitching as the bullets struck them. “Steel?” he asked.

“We have to do something, Gough. Can’t just stand here and die.”

Sharpe had lost sight of Vandal. There was too much smoke. He saw a Frenchman stoop to the body of a fallen Portuguese skirmisher and rummage through the dead man’s pockets. Sharpe knelt, aimed, and fired. When the rifle smoke cleared he saw the Frenchman on all fours, head down. He reloaded. He was tempted to ram the ball down naked rather than wrapping it in its greased leather patch. He thought the French might charge at any moment and the thing to do now was to kill them fast, to pour fire at them, and a naked ball in a rifle was quick to load. At this distance the inaccuracy did not matter. But if he saw Vandal again he wanted to be sure of his shot and so he took a leather patch, wrapped the ball, and rammed it down the rifled barrel. “Look for their officers,” he told his men.

A pistol sounded beside Sharpe and he looked to see that Captain Galiana had dismounted and was now reloading the small weapon. “Fire!” the lieutenant commanding the closest company of the 87th shouted and the muskets blasted out smoke. A man fell back from the front rank, a hole black in his forehead.

“Leave him be!” a sergeant shouted. “He’s a dead ’un! Reload!”

“Fix bayonets!” the shout came from just behind the 87th and was repeated down the line, getting fainter as the order traveled north. “Fix bayonets!”

“God save Ireland,” Harper said. “This is desperate.”

“Not much choice,” Sharpe said. The French were winning by sheer numbers. They were pressing forward, and Colonel Wheatley could either retreat or attack. To retreat was to lose, but to attack was at least to test the French.

“Swords, sir?” Slattery asked.

“Fix swords,” Sharpe said. It was no time to worry about whether this was his fight or not. The battle trembled. Another French volley slammed into the red ranks. Then two gouts of canister slashed away the blue-coated men who had fired the shots. An Irish boy was screaming horribly, rolling in front of the ranks with bloody hands clutching his groin. A sergeant silenced him with a merciful blow of a musket butt to the skull.

“Forward now! Forward!” a brigade major bellowed.

“The 87th will advance!” Gough shouted. “Faugh a ballagh!”

“Faugh a ballagh!” the surviving men of the 87th responded, and went forward.

“Steady, boys!” Gough shouted. “Steady!”

But the 87th did not want to be steady. A quarter of their number was either dead or wounded, and they had a seething anger against the men who had punished them in the last hour, and so they went eagerly. The sooner they were at the enemy, the sooner that enemy would die, and Gough could not hold them. They began to run, and as they ran they sounded a high-pitched scream, terrifying in itself, and their seventeen-inch bayonets were bright in the sun, which was almost at its winter zenith.

“Forward!” The men to Sharpe’s right were keeping pace with the 87th. Duncan’s gunners handspiked their cannon around to rake the flank of the French line.

“And kill! And kill!” Ensign Keogh was shouting at the top of his voice. He carried his slim sword in one hand and gripped his cocked hat in the other.

“Faugh a ballagh!” Gough bellowed.

French muskets roared horribly close and men were torn backward, blood spraying their neighbors, but the charge could not be stopped now. All along the line the redcoats were going forward with bayonets because to stay still was to die and to retreat was to lose. They numbered fewer than a thousand now, and they were attacking three times their number. “Get into them! Get into them!” an officer of the Cauliflowers shouted. “Kill them, kill them!”

The front rank of the French tried to step back, but the ranks behind thrust them on, and the redcoats struck. Bayonets rammed forward. Muskets fired at less than a yard’s range. A sergeant of the 87th was chanting as though he were training men at the barracks. “Lunge! Recover! Stance! Lunge! Recover! Stance! Not in his ribs, you bloody fool! In his belly! Lunge! Recover! Stance! In the belly, boys, in the belly! Lunge!”

An Irishman’s bayonet was trapped in the ribs of a Frenchman. It would not come out and in desperation he pulled his trigger and was surprised that the weapon was loaded. The blast of gas and ball jerked the bayonet free. “In the belly!” the sergeant shouted, for a bayonet was far less likely to be trapped in an enemy’s stomach than in his ribs. Those officers still mounted were firing pistols over their men’s shakos. Men lunged, recovered, lunged again, and some were so battle-maddened that they did not care how they fought and just clubbed with their musket butts. “Rip it out, boy!” the sergeant shouted. “Don’t just prick the bastard! Do some damage! Lunge! Recover!”

They were the despised of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. They were the drunks and the thieves, the scourings of gutters and jails. They wore the red coat because no one else wanted them, or because they were so desperate that they had no choice. They were the scum of Britain, but they could fight. They had always fought, but in the army they were taught how to fight with discipline. They discovered sergeants and officers who valued them. They punished them too, of course, and swore at them, and cursed them, and whipped their backs bloody and cursed them again, but valued them. They even loved them, and officers worth five thousand pounds a year were fighting alongside them now. The redcoats were doing what they did best, what they were paid a shilling a day less stoppages to do: they were killing.

The French advance was stopped. There was no edging forward now. Their front ranks were dying and the ranks behind were trying to escape the wild men with bloody faces, men who were screaming like fiends. “Faugh a ballagh! Faugh a ballagh!” Gough kicked his horse through his men and hacked down with his sword at a French sergeant. The color party was behind him, the ensigns carrying the two flags and the sergeants armed with nine-foot-long spontoons, razor-pointed pikes that were meant to protect the colors, though now the sergeants were on the offensive, savaging the French with the long narrow blades. Sergeant Patrick Masterson was one of the pikemen and he was almost as big as Harper. He thrust the spontoon into French faces, one after the other, driving them down where bayonets could kill them. He lunged a path through the first French rank, had the blade parried by a bayonet, withdrew it, lunged again, but at the last second dropped the spontoon’s head so that it punched through cloth and skin and muscle into an enemy belly. The thrust was so hard that the blade sank to the crosspiece, which stopped an enemy’s corpse, trapping itself on the shaft. He kicked the dying Frenchman off the blade and thrust again and redcoats cut their way into the gap he made. Some Frenchmen lay unwounded, their hands over their heads, just praying that the screaming fiends would spare them. Ensign Keogh sliced his sword at a mustachioed Frenchman, opening a slashing wound from one cheek to the other and almost hitting a redcoat beside him as the wild swing hissed backward. Keogh’s hat was gone. He was shouting the 87th’s war cry, “Faugh a ballagh!” Clear the way, and the blades were carving the way through the tight-packed French ranks.

All along the line it was the same. Bayonets against conscripts, savagery against sudden, bowel-loosening terror. The fight had been poised, it had even tilted toward the French as their greater numbers told, but Wheatley had made the move and the laws of mathematics had been taken over by the crueler laws of hard-training and harder men. The redcoats were going forward, slowly forward because they were fighting against a press of enemy and were stumbling on the bodies they had put on the blood-slicked grass, but they were still going forward.

Then a curricle appeared at the tree’s edge, and Sharpe saw Vandal again.

ON THE Cerro del Puerco the French advanced to take their victory. The four battalions that had lined the hill’s summit came first, with the two grenadier battalions hurrying to join their left flank. The only worry of the general of the grenadiers, Rousseau, was that his men would arrive too late to share in the victory.

The British were still on the slope and their line was still ragged. They had been hit hard by the canister, though the French guns could no longer fire because the blue-coated infantry had advanced to mask the guns’ red-coated targets. But Victor knew the guns would not be needed. The emperor’s bayonets would seal this victory. The drummers beat the pas de charge and the eagles were lifted high as three thousand Frenchmen spilled over the northern crest of the hill and gave a cheer as they charged to victory.

They faced the British foot guards, half a battalion of men from Hampshire, two companies of riflemen, and the remnants of the flank companies who had marched to battle from Gibraltar. Those red- and green-coated men, outnumbered two to one, had marched all night and were downhill from the enemy.

“Present!” Sir Thomas Graham roared. He had miraculously survived the blast of canister that had snatched three Scotsmen from the ranks immediately in front of him. Lord William Russell had brought him back his battered hat and Sir Thomas now held it aloft, then brought it sharply down to point at the two unbroken columns that came charging from the hill with bayonets fixed. “Fire!”

Twelve hundred muskets and two hundred rifles fired. The range was mostly less than sixty paces, though it was a good deal more at the flanks, and the balls drove into the three hundred men in the leading rank of the French columns and stopped them. It was as though an avenging angel had struck the head of the French columns with a giant sword. Their front ranks were bloody and broken, and even men in the second ranks were down. The carnage was enough to halt the charge as men in the third and fourth ranks stumbled and fell on the dead and dying men in front of them. The redcoats could not see what their volley had done because the smoke of their own muskets shrouded them. They expected the two columns to burst through that smoke with bayonets and so they did what they were trained to do: they reloaded. Ramrods scraped in barrels. The proper order of files and ranks had been broken by the climb and though some officers shouted at companies to fire as platoons, most men just fired for their lives. They did not wait for an officer or a sergeant to time the rolling volleys; they just reloaded, brought up the musket, pulled the trigger, and then reloaded again.

The drill books insisted on at least ten actions to charge a musket. It began with Handle Cartridge First Movement and ended with the command to fire. In some battalions the drill sergeants managed to find as many as seventeen different actions, all of which had to be learned and mastered and practiced. Some men, a few, came to the training with an understanding of firearms. They were mostly country boys who knew how to charge a fowling piece, but it all had to be unlearned. It might take a recruit a whole minute, even longer, to load a musket, but by the time they donned the red coat and were sent to fight for their king, they could do it in fifteen or twenty seconds. This was, above all other things, the necessary skill. The guards on the hill could look superb and there was no infantry unit that looked more splendid when taking post outside St. James’s Palace or Carlton House, but if a man could not bite a cartridge, prime the lock, load the gun, ram it, and fire within twenty seconds, then he was not a soldier. There were nearly a thousand guardsmen still living on the hill, and they fired for their lives. They put shot after shot into the cloud of smoke and Sir Thomas Graham, mounted just behind them, could tell that they were hurting the French, not just hurting them but killing them.

The French had come in column again. They always came in column. This one was three hundred men wide and nine ranks deep, and that meant most of the French could not use their muskets while every redcoat and every greenjacket could fire his weapon. The balls converged on the French, they drove inward, and in front of the guards and in front of the men from Hampshire there were small flames in the grass where the wadding had started fires.

Sir Thomas held his breath. This was a moment, he knew, when orders would do nothing, when even to encourage the men would be a waste of breath. They knew what they were doing and they were doing it so well that he was even tempted to think he might snatch a victory from what had seemed like certain defeat. But then the crash of a well-orchestrated volley made him ride toward the right of his line and he saw the unbroken ranks of the French grenadiers coming downhill through the smoke of their opening volley. He saw the Scottish guards turning to take on this new enemy, and the riflemen, who were in more extended order around the seaward flank of the hill, drew closer together to pour their fire at the French reinforcements.

Sir Thomas still said nothing. He held his hat in his hand and he watched the grenadiers come down the slope. He saw how each man in the French ranks had a short saber as well as a musket. These were the enemy’s elite, the men chosen to do the hardest work, and they were coming fresh to the fight, but again they came in a column, and the right of his own line, without any orders from Sir Thomas or anyone else, had half turned toward them to give them the benefit of their training. The half battalion of the 67th was right in front of the grenadiers who, unlike the first four battalions, were not checked by the first shots to hit them, but kept coming.

And this, Sir Thomas knew, was how a column should fight. It was a battering ram, and though the head of the column must suffer horribly, the momentum of its mass should take it through an enemy to bloody victory. On battlefield after battlefield across a suffering Europe the emperor’s columns had taken their punishment and marched on to win. And this column, all of them elite troops, was coming downhill and getting ever closer. If it broke through the thin line of red and green, it would turn to its right and murder Sir Thomas’s men with sabers and musket butts. And still it came. Sir Thomas rode behind the 67th, ready to slash with his sword and die with his men if the grenadiers succeeded. Then an officer shouted the command to fire.

Smoke billowed in front of Sir Thomas. Then more smoke. The 67th was firing platoon volleys now, and the Sweeps were up on their right, not bothering to wrap their bullets with leather because at this range they could not miss, and so their fire was almost as quick as the redcoats beside them. On Sir Thomas’s left were his Scotsmen, and he knew they would not break. The noise of the musketry was like a great fire of dry wood. The air stank of rotten eggs. Somewhere a seagull cried, and far behind Sir Thomas the cannons crashed on the heath, but he could not spare a glance for what happened behind him. It was here and now that the battle would be decided. He suddenly realized he was holding his breath and he let it out, glanced at Lord William, and saw His Lordship staring wide-eyed and motionless into the musket smoke. “You can breathe, Willie.”

“Dear Lord,” Lord William said, letting out his breath. “You know there’s a Spanish brigade behind us?” he asked Sir Thomas.

Sir Thomas turned and saw the Spanish troops on the beach. They made no move to reinforce him and even if he ordered them up the hill he knew they would arrive too late to be of any help. This fight could not last that long and so he shook his head. “Damn them, Willie,” he said. “Just damn them.”

Lord William Russell held a pistol, ready to shoot the first grenadier to come through the smoke, but the grenadiers had been stopped by the rifle and musket fire. Their front ranks were dead and the men behind were now trying to reload and fire back, but once a column stopped moving it became a giant target, and Sir Thomas’s men were firing into its heart. Even though the grenadiers were elite troops, they could not fire as fast as the redcoats.

General Dilkes, his horse bleeding in the rump and shoulder, came to Sir Thomas’s side. He said nothing, just stared, then glanced up the hill to where Marshal Victor sat on his horse with his white-plumed hat held low. Marshal Victor was watching three thousand men held by musket fire. He said nothing. It was up to his men now.

On the left of the British line, beyond the First Foot Guards, Major Browne fought his remnant of flankers. Fewer than half the men who had climbed the hill were still able to fire a musket, but they poured their volleys at the nearest French column and, in their eagerness, went higher up the hill to assail the column’s flank.

“Don’t you love the rogues?” Sir Thomas shouted at General Dilkes, and Dilkes was so surprised by the question that he gave a bark of laughter. “Time to give them the bayonet,” Sir Thomas said.

Dilkes nodded. He was watching the redcoats fire their murderous volleys and he reckoned he had just watched his men perform a miracle.

“They’ll run, I vouch,” Sir Thomas said, and hoped he was right.

“Fix bayonets!” Dilkes found his voice.

“On to them, boys!” Sir Thomas waved his hat and galloped back behind the line. “On to them! Push them off my hill! Off my hill!”

And the redcoats, like hounds released, went uphill with bayonets. Marshal Victor, at the crest, heard the screams as the blades began their work. “For God’s sake, fight!” he said to no one in particular, but his six battalions were recoiling. Panic had infected their ranks. The rearmost men, those least in danger, were edging back and the foremost ranks were being savaged by redcoats. The band, well behind the line and still playing the forbidden “Marseillaise,” sensed the disaster coming and the music faltered. The bandmaster tried to rally his musicians, but the loudest noise now was the hoarse war cries of the British. Instead of playing, the band broke and ran. The infantry followed. “The guns,” Victor said to an aide, “get the guns off the hill.” It was one thing to lose a fight, but another to have the emperor’s beloved guns captured, so the gunners brought up their teams and dragged four of the cannons eastward, off the hill. Two could not be saved because the redcoats were too close, so those guns were lost. Marshal Victor and his aides followed the four guns, and the remnants of his six battalions ran for their lives, ran across the hilltop and down its eastern face, and behind them the redcoats and greenjackets came with bayonets and victory.

General Rousseau, who had led the grenadiers, and General Ruffin, who had commanded the beaten division, were both wounded and left behind. Sir Thomas was told of their capture, but he said nothing; he just rode to the hill’s inland crest from where he could see his beaten enemy running. He remembered that long-ago moment in Toulouse when the soldiers of France had insulted his dead wife and had spat in his face when he protested. Back then Sir Thomas had sympathized with the French. He had thought that their ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality were beacons for Britain. He had loved France.

But that had been nineteen years ago. Nineteen years in which Sir Thomas had never forgotten the mockery given by the French to his dead wife, so now he stood in his stirrups and cupped his hands. “Remember me!” he shouted. He shouted in English, but that did not matter because the French were running too fast and were too far away to hear him. “Remember me!” he shouted again, then touched his wedding ring.

And south of him, beyond the pinewood, a cannon fired.

Sir Thomas turned and put spurs to his tired horse, because the battle was not yet won.

“OH, BLOODY hell,” Sharpe said. The curricle had bounced past him, wheels spinning as they left the ground, and it had dashed across the corner of the French column, then capsized twenty paces from the column’s edge. The woman, black-veiled, was evidently uninjured for she was trying to help the brigadier to his feet, but a dozen Frenchmen from the column’s rear ranks had seen the accident and also seen a profit there. A man festooned with lace could also be festooned with money, and so they darted from the column so that they could rifle the fallen man’s pockets. Sharpe drew his sword and ran.

“We’ve got work, boys. Come on,” Harper said.

The riflemen had been moving toward the column’s flank. There was a foul battle going on between redcoats and Frenchmen, a battle of bayonet and musket butts, but Sharpe had seen Colonel Vandal on his horse. Vandal was in the press of Frenchmen, close to his regiment’s eagle, and he was beating with his saber, not at redcoats, but at his own men. He was shouting at them to fight, to kill, and his passion was holding the men so that the French left flank alone was not retreating, but fighting stubbornly against the Irishmen who attacked from their front. Sharpe thought that by going to the column’s side he might have a clear shot for his rifle, but now he had to rescue Brigadier Moon who was trying to protect the veiled woman. Moon hauled her down beside him and tried to find his pistol, but in his tumble from the curricle the weapon had fallen from his tail pocket. He drew his new saber, a cheap thing purchased in Cádiz, and found the blade was broken, and just then the widowed Marquesa screamed because the French were coming with bayonets.

Then a green-jacketed man came from Moon’s left. The man carried a heavy cavalry sword, a weapon as brutal as it was clumsy, and his first stroke took a Frenchman in the throat. The blood sprayed higher than the eagle on its pole. The man’s head flopped back as his body kept running. Sharpe turned, impaled a second man in the belly with the sword, twisted it fast to stop the flesh gripping the blade, then put his right boot on the man’s belly to give him the leverage to rip the sword free. A bayonet went through his coat, but Captain Galiana was there and his slim sword pierced the Frenchman’s side.

Brigadier Moon, his hand clutching the Marquesa’s hand, just watched. Sharpe had killed one man and put another on the ground in the time it would take to swat a fly. Now two other Frenchmen came at Sharpe, and Moon expected the rifleman to step away from their frenzied attack, but instead he went to meet them and beat a bayonet aside with his sword before driving the blade up into the man’s face. A boot into the crotch crumpled the man. The second lunged with his bayonet, and Moon thought Sharpe must be killed, but the rifleman had sidestepped the lunge with sudden speed and now turned on his attacker. Moon saw the ferocity on the rifleman’s face and felt an unexpected pang of pity for the Frenchman who faced him. “Bastard,” Sharpe snarled, and the sword lunged, hard and fast, and the Frenchman dropped his musket and clung to the blade impaling his belly. Sharpe ripped it out just as Perkins arrived to bayonet the man. Harper was beside Sharpe now and pulled the trigger of the volley gun, with the sound of a cannon firing. Two Frenchmen went backward, blood thick on their white crossbelts. The others had taken enough and were running back to the column.

“Sharpe!” Moon called.

Sharpe ignored the brigadier. He sheathed his sword and took the rifle from his shoulder. He knelt and aimed at Vandal. “You bastard,” he said and pulled the trigger. The rifle’s muzzle was lost in smoke, and when the smoke cleared Vandal was still alive, still on his horse, and still using the flat of his saber to drive his men onto Gough’s Irish. Sharpe swore. “Dan,” he called to Hagman, “shoot that bastard!”

“Sharpe,” the brigadier called again, “the gun!”

Sharpe turned. He saw, without much surprise, that the veiled woman was Caterina and he wondered what kind of bloody fool the brigadier was to bring a woman into this carnage. Then he looked at the abandoned French howitzer and saw that a priming tube was still sticking out of the vent. That meant the short-barreled cannon was loaded. He looked on the scorched grass for the linstock, but could not see it. The half battalion of the 67th, the two companies of the Cauliflowers, and the survivors of the Portuguese cacadores were advancing beyond the gun, going to fight Leval’s last reserve battalion that was hurrying toward the left flank of the beleaguered 8th. The cannon, Sharpe thought, might be more useful if it was aimed at that reserve battalion, but then he remembered poor Jack Bullen. “Sergeant! I want this bloody gun round!”

Harper, Galiana, Sharpe, and Harris lifted the trail and turned the howitzer so it pointed at the 8th of the line. “Here, Sharpe!” The brigadier tossed him a tinderbox.

“Out of the way!” Sharpe shouted to his other riflemen. Then he struck a light and blew the charred linen in the box so that it burst into flame. He took all the linen out of the box, scorching his fingers, and leaned over the gun’s wheel to drop the burning mass onto the priming tube. He heard the powder fizz and ducked away.

The howitzer crashed back, its wheels leaping off the ground as it recoiled. It was a six-inch howitzer and it had been loaded with canister. The balls tore into the French flank with the force of a battalion volley. The cannon had been too close to spread the missiles wide, but where they struck they gouged a bleeding hole in the packed ranks and Sharpe, running aside, saw that Vandal had disappeared. Sharpe drew his sword again, then waited, wanting another sight of the colonel. Behind him the men of the 67th and the 47th and the 20th Portuguese started their volleys against the reserve battalion. Duncan’s guns flayed it with shell and shrapnel. Somewhere a man howled like a dog.

Colonel Vandal was on the ground. His horse was dying, screaming as its head thrashed the sandy soil. Vandal himself was dazed, but he did not think he was wounded. He managed to stand, only to see that the redcoats were closing on his eagle. “Kill them!” he shouted, and the shout was a parched croak. A huge sergeant with a pike was slashing at the French sergeants protecting the standard. “Kill them!” Vandal shouted again, and just then a young and skinny redcoat officer leaped at the color and cut with his sword at Sous-Lieutenant Guillemain who had the honor of holding the emperor’s eagle. Vandal thrust his saber at the thin officer and felt the blade’s tip jar on the man’s ribs. The redcoat ignored the thrust and, with his free hand, grabbed the eagle’s pole and tried to pull it from Guillemain’s grasp. Two French sergeants killed the man, piercing him with their long-bladed halberds, cursing him, and Vandal saw the life fade from the redcoat’s eyes before he had even hit the ground. Then one of the French sergeants recoiled, his left eye nothing but a pit of jellied blood, and a huge voice shouted at the Frenchmen. “Faugh a ballagh!”

Sergeant Masterson had seen Ensign Keogh killed and now Masterson was angry. He had put down one of the killers with the spontoon’s blade, and he slashed at the second, striking the man with the edge of the spear point. He brought it back and rammed the pike at Guillemain’s throat. The lieutenant began gurgling, blood bubbling at his gullet, and Vandal reached for the eagle, but Masterson ripped the spontoon sideways so that Guillemain’s dying body fell across the colonel. Then Masterson tore the eagle out of the Frenchman’s grasp. Captain Lecroix shouted in incoherent rage and slashed his sword at Masterson, but a redcoat thrust his bayonet into Lecroix’s ribs and another hit him on the skull with a musket. The last thing Lecroix saw in this world was the huge Irish sergeant flailing the precious standard. He was using the eagle to beat at the men trying to take it from him, and then a new rush of redcoats came on either side of Masterson and their bayonets went to work. “Lunge!” a sergeant was shouting in a high, cracked voice. “Recover! Stance! Lunge!”

A surge of Frenchmen tried to recover their eagle, but the Irish bayonets were in front of it now. “Lunge! Recover!” the sergeant was shouting, while behind him Masterson was bellowing incoherently and waving the eagle above his head. “Lunge! Recover! Do your work properly!”

Two men seized Vandal by his shoulders and pulled him away from the blood-spattered Irishmen. The colonel was not badly wounded. A bayonet had cut into his thigh, but he felt unable to walk, to speak, even to think. The eagle! It had a laurel wreath about its neck, a wreath of gilded bronze presented by the city of Paris to those regiments that had distinguished themselves at Austerlitz, and now some prancing fool was waving the eagle in the air! Vandal felt a surge of fury. He would not lose it! If he had to die in the attempt, he would take back the emperor’s eagle. He screamed at the two men to drop him. He scrambled to his feet. “Pour l’empereur!” he shouted, and he ran toward Masterson, thinking to cut through the men barring his way. But suddenly there were more enemy to his left and he turned, parried a sword cut, lunged to kill the man, and saw, to his surprise, that it was a Spanish officer who, in turn, parried Vandal’s lunge and riposted fast. More Frenchmen came to help their colonel. “Get the eagle!” he screamed at them, and he slashed at the Spaniard, hoping to drive the man away so he could join the attack on the redcoat who had his eagle. The slash ripped through coat and yellow sash to score a bloody wound on the Spaniard’s belly, but just then the Spanish officer was thrust aside and a tall green-jacketed man beat down Vandal’s saber with a huge blade, then simply reached out and gripped the collar of the colonel’s coat. The green-jacketed man hauled Vandal out of the melee, tripped him, then kicked the colonel in the side of the head. Rifles fired, then a rush of Irishmen drove the last few Frenchmen back. Vandal tried to roll away from his attacker, but he was kicked again. When he looked up the big sword was at his throat.

“Remember me?” Captain Sharpe asked.

Vandal swung the saber, but Sharpe parried it with derisory ease. “Where’s my lieutenant?” he asked.

Vandal still held the saber. He readied himself to sweep it up at the rifleman, but then Sharpe pressed the point of the heavy cavalry sword into the colonel’s throat. “I yield,” Vandal said.

The pressure relaxed. “Give me your saber,” Sharpe said.

“I give my parole,” Vandal said, “and under the rules of war I may keep my saber.” The colonel knew his battle was finished. His men had gone and the Irish were harrying them farther east with bayonets. All along the line the French were running, and all along the line bloodied men were pursuing the enemy, though they did not pursue far. They had marched all night and fought all morning and they were bone tired. They followed the beaten enemy until it was certain that the broken army would not stop to re-form and then they sank down and marveled that they were still alive. “I give my parole,” Vandal said again.

“I said give me the saber,” Sharpe snarled.

“He can keep his weapon,” Galiana said. “He’s given his parole.”

Brigadier Moon watched and flinched as Sharpe kicked the Frenchman again, then stabbed down with the heavy cavalry sword to cut the man’s wrist. Vandal let go of the saber’s snakeskin grip and Sharpe bent and picked up the fallen blade. He looked at the steel, expecting to see a French name engraved there, but instead it said Bennett.

“You stole this, you bugger,” Sharpe said.

“I gave you my parole!” Vandal protested.

“Then stand up,” Sharpe said.

Vandal, his sight blurred because of his tears that were caused not by physical pain but by the loss of the eagle, stood. “My saber,” he demanded, blinking.

Sharpe threw the saber to Brigadier Moon, then hit Vandal. He knew he should not, but he was consumed by fury and so he hit him clean between the eyes. Vandal fell again, his hands clutching his face, and Sharpe bent over him. “Don’t you remember, Colonel?” he asked. “War is war and there are no rules. That’s what you told me. So where’s my lieutenant?”

Vandal recognized Sharpe then. He saw the bandage showing under the ragged shako and remembered the man who had blown the bridge, the man he thought he had killed. “Your lieutenant,” he said shakily, “is in Seville, where he is being treated with honor. You hear that? With honor, as you must treat me.”

“Get up,” Sharpe said. The colonel stood, then flinched as Sharpe dragged him around by tugging on one of his gilded epaulettes. Then Sharpe pointed. “Look, Colonel,” he said, “there’s your bloody honor.”

Sergeant Patrick Masterson, with a smile as broad as all Dublin, was parading the captured eagle. “By Jesus, boys,” he was shouting, “I’ve got their cuckoo!”

And Sharpe laughed.

HMS THORNSIDE cleared the Diamante rock off Cádiz and headed west into the Atlantic. Soon she would alter course for the mouth of the Tagus and for Lisbon. On shore a one-legged admiral watched her recede and tasted the bile in his throat. All Cádiz was praising the British now, the British who had taken an eagle and humiliated the French. No hope now of a new Regency in Spain, or of a sensible peace with the emperor, because the war fever had come to Cádiz and its hero was Sir Thomas Graham. The admiral turned away and stumped toward his home.

Sharpe watched the shore fade. He stood beside Harper. “I’m sorry, Pat.”

“I know you are, sir.”

“He was a friend.”

“And that he was,” Harper said. Rifleman Slattery had died. Sharpe had not seen it happen, but while he and Galiana had run into the disintegrating column to find Vandal, a last errant musket shot had pierced Slattery’s throat and he had bled to death on Caterina’s skirts.

“It wasn’t our fight,” Sharpe said. “You were right.”

“It was a rare fight, though,” Harper said, “and you got your man.”

Colonel Vandal had complained to Sir Thomas Graham. He protested that Captain Sharpe had wounded him after his surrender, that Captain Sharpe had insulted him and assaulted him, and that Captain Sharpe had stolen his saber. Lord William Russell had told Sharpe of the complaint and shaken his head. “I have to tell you it’s serious, Sharpe. You can’t upset a colonel, even a French one! Think what they’ll do to our officers if they learn what we do to theirs?”

“I didn’t do it,” Sharpe had lied stubbornly.

“Of course you didn’t, my dear fellow, but Vandal’s made his complaint and I fear Sir Thomas insists there must be a court of inquiry.”

But the inquiry had never taken place. Brigadier Sir Barnaby Moon had written his own report of the incident, saying that he had been within twenty paces of the colonel’s capture, that he had seen every action taken by Captain Richard Sharpe, and that Sharpe had behaved as a gentleman and an officer. Sir Thomas, on receiving Moon’s report, had apologized to Sharpe in person. “We had to take the complaint seriously, Sharpe,” Sir Thomas said, “but if that wretched Frenchman had known there was a brigadier watching, he’d never have made up such a pack of lies. And, of course, Moon dislikes you—he’s made that very clear—so he’s hardly likely to exonerate you if there was even the smallest chance of making trouble for you. So you can forget it, Sharpe, and I have to say I’m glad. I didn’t want to think you were capable of doing what Vandal claimed.”

“Of course I’m not, sir.”

“But Brigadier Moon, eh?” Sir Thomas had asked, laughing. “Moon and the widow! Is she a widow? A proper one, I mean, not just Henry’s leavings?”

“Not that I know of, sir, no.”

“Well, she’s a wife now,” Sir Thomas said, amused. “Let us all hope he never discovers who she really is!”

“She’s a lovely lady, sir.”

Sir Thomas had looked at him with some surprise. “Sharpe,” he had said, “we should all be as generous as you. What a kind thing to say.” Sir Thomas had thanked him effusively then, and Henry Wellesley had thanked him again that evening, an evening during which Lord Pumphrey found he had business away from the embassy.

Even Sir Barnaby Moon had thanked Sharpe, not just for the return of the precious saber, but for saving his life. “And for Lady Moon’s life, Sharpe.”

“That was an honor, sir.”

“Her ladyship insists I must give your men some proper reward, Sharpe,” Moon had said, and pressed coins into Sharpe’s hand, “but I do it gladly on my own behalf as well. You’re a brave man, Sharpe.”

“And you’re a lucky one, sir. Her ladyship is beautiful.”

“Thank you, Sharpe,” the brigadier had said, “thank you.” His leg had been broken again in the fall from the curricle so he was staying a few more days in Cádiz, but Sharpe and his men were free to leave the city. And so they sailed to Portugal, to Lisbon, to the army, to the South Essex, and to the Light Company. They were sailing home.