Sharpe 12 - Sharpe's Battle (32 page)

France, and I think from there he was sent to Spain. The French couldn't use him against the English, at least not until the English had forgotten the events of '98, but Mallon must have been useful in Spain. I suspect he met the old Lady Kiely in Madrid. I hear she was a fierce old witch! Lived for the church and for Ireland, even though she saw too much of the one and had never seen the other. D'you think Mallon used her patronage as he spied on the

Spanish for Bonaparte? I suspect so, but then the French took over the Spanish throne and someone must have been wondering where Father Mallon could be more usefully employed, and I suspect Father Mallon pleaded with his French masters to be employed against the real enemy. After all, who among the British would remember Father Mallon from '98? His hair will be white by now, he'll be a changed man. Maybe he's put on weight like me." Hogan patted his belly and smiled.

Father Sarsfield frowned at the scapular. He seemed surprised that he was still holding the vestment and so he carefully stowed it in the haversack slung from his shoulder, then just as carefully brought out a small pistol.

“Father Mallon might be a changed man,” he said as he opened the frizzen to check that the gun was primed, “but I would like to think that if he was still alive he would be a patriot.”

“I imagine he is,” Hogan said, apparently unworried by the pistol. "A man like

Mallon? His loyalty won't change as much as his hair and belly."

Sarsfield frowned at Hogan. “And you're not a patriot, Major?”

“I like to think so.”

“Yet you fight for Britain.”

Hogan shrugged. The priest's pistol was loaded and primed, but for the moment it hung loose in Sarsfield's hand. Hogan had played a game with the priest, a game he had expected to win, but this proof of his victory was not giving the

Major any pleasure. Indeed, as the realization of his triumph sank in, Hogan's mood became ever bleaker. “I worry about allegiance,” Hogan said, "I surely do. I lie awake sometimes and wonder whether I'm right in thinking that what's best for Ireland is to be a part of Britain, but I do know one thing, Father, which is that I don't want to be ruled by Bonaparte. I think maybe I'm not so brave a man as Wolfe Tone, but nor did I ever agree with his ideas. You do,

Father, and I salute you for it, but that isn't why you're going to have to die. “ The reason you're going to have to die, Father, is not because you fight for Ireland, but because you fight for Napoleon. The distinction is fatal.”

Sarsfield smiled. “I shall have to die?” he asked in wry amusement. He cocked the pistol, then raised it towards Hogan's head.

The sound of the shot pounded across the orchard. The two gravediggers jumped in terror as smoke drifted out from the hedge where the killer had been concealed just twenty paces from where Hogan and Sarsfield had been standing.

The priest was now lying on the mound of excavated soil where his body jerked twice and then, with a sigh, lay still.

Sharpe stood up from behind the hedge and crossed to the grave to see that his bullet had gone plumb where he had aimed it, straight through the dead man's heart. He stared down at the, priest, noting how dark the blood looked on the soutane's cloth. A fly had already settled there. “I liked him,” he told

Hogan.

“It's allowed, Richard,” Hogan said. The Major was upset and pale, so pale that for a moment he looked as if he might be sick. “One of mankind's higher authorities enjoins us to love our enemies and He said nothing about them ceasing to be enemies just because we love them. Nor can I recall any specific injunction in Holy Scripture against shooting our enemies through the heart.”

Hogan paused and suddenly all his usual flippancy seemed to drain out of him.

“I liked him too,” he said simply.

“But he was going to shoot you,” Sharpe said. Hogan, talking privately with

Sharpe on their way to the burial, had warned the rifleman what might happen and Sharpe, disbelieving the prediction, had nevertheless watched it happen and then done his part.

“He deserved a better death,” Hogan said, then he pushed the corpse with his foot and thus toppled it into the grave. The priest's body landed awkwardly so that it seemed as if he was sitting on the shrouded head of Kiely's corpse.

Hogan tossed the counterfeit newspaper after the body, then took a small round box from his pocket. "Shooting Sarsfield doesn't fetch you any favours,

Richard,“ Hogan said sternly as he prised the lid off the box. ”Let's just say

I now forgive you for letting Juanita go. That damage has been contained. But you still might need to be sacrificed for the happiness of Spain."

“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said resentfully.

Hogan caught the resentment in the rifleman's voice. “Of course life isn't fair, Richard. Ask him.” He nodded down at the dead, white-haired priest then sprinkled the contents of his small box onto the corpse's faded and bloodied soutane.

“What's that?” Sharpe asked.

“Just soil, Richard, just soil. Nothing important.” Hogan tossed the empty pillbox onto the two bodies, then summoned the grave-diggers. "He was a

Frenchman," he told them in Portuguese, certain that such an explanation would make them sympathize with the murder they had just witnessed. He gave each man a coin, then watched as the double grave was filled with earth.

Hogan walked back with Sharpe towards Fuentes de Onoro. “Where's Patrick?” the

Major asked.

“I told him to wait in Vilar Formoso.”

“At an inn?”

“Aye. The one where I first met Runciman.”

“Good. I need to get drunk, Richard.” Hogan looked bleak, almost as if he might weep. “One less witness of your confession in San Isidro, Richard,” he said.

“That's not why I did it, Major,” Sharpe protested.

“You did nothing, Richard, absolutely nothing.” Hogan spoke fiercely. “What happened in that orchard never happened. You saw nothing, heard nothing, did nothing. Father Sarsfield is alive, God knows where, and his disappearance will become a mystery that will never be explained. Or perhaps the truth is that Father Sarsfield never even existed, Richard, in which case you can't possibly have killed him, can you? So say no more about it, not a word.” He sniffed, then looked ahead at the blue evening sky which was unbruised by any gunsmoke. “The French have given us a day of peace, Richard, so we shall celebrate by getting bloody drunk. And tomorrow, God help us sinners both, we'll bloody fight.”

The sun sank behind layers of western cloud so that the sky seemed shot with glory. For a time the shadows of the British guns reached monstrously across the plain as they stretched towards the oaks and the French army and it was then, in the dying minutes of the full light, that Sharpe rested his telescope on the chill barrel of a nine-pounder gun and trained the glass across the low-lying land until he could see the enemy soldiers around their cooking fires. It was not the first time that day he had searched the enemy lines through the glass. All morning he had wandered restlessly between the ammunition park and the gun line where he had stared fixedly at the enemy and now, back from Vilar Formoso with a sour belly and a head thick with too much wine, he looked once again into Masséna's lines.

“They won't come now,” a gunner lieutenant said, thinking that the rifle

Captain feared a dusk assault. “Froggies don't like fighting at night.”

“No,” Sharpe agreed, “they won't come now,” but he kept his eye to the telescope as he inched it along the shadowed line of trees and fires and men.

And then, suddenly, he checked the glass.

For he had seen the grey uniforms. Loup was here after all and his brigade was a part of Masséna's army which had spent the whole day preparing for the attack that would surely come with the returning sun.

Sharpe watched his enemy, then straightened from the gun barrel and closed the glass. His head spun with the effects of the wine, but he was not so drunk that he did not feel a shudder of fear as he thought of what would come across those cannon-scarred fields when the sun next shone on Spain.

Tomorrow.

CHAPTER 9

The horsemen came out of the mist like creatures from nightmare. The Frenchmen rode big horses that galloped through the marshland to explode water with every stride, then the leading squadrons reached the higher ground about the village of Nave de Haver where the Spanish partisans had bivouacked and the sound of the French cavalry's hooves turned into a thunder that shook the earth itself. A trumpet urged the horsemen on. It was dawn and the sun was a silver disc low in the fogbank that veiled the eastern fields from which death was erupting.

The Spanish sentinels fired one hasty volley, then retreated before the overwhelming enemy numbers. Some of the partisans were asleep after standing guard through the night, and they woke only to stumble out from their requisitioned houses and be cut down with slashing blades and dipping lance heads. The partisan brigade had been placed in Nave de Haver to watch the allies' southern flank and no one had expected them to face a full French attack, but now the heavy cavalry was streaming in through the alleys and crashing their big horses through the gardens and orchards beside the huddle of houses that lay so far to the south of Fuentes de Onoro. The partisan commander shouted at his men to withdraw, but the French were slashing at defenders as they frantically tried to reach their frightened horses. Some men refused to retreat, but ran at the enemy with all the passionate hatred of the guerrillero. Blood spilt on the streets and splashed on the house walls. One street was blocked when a Spaniard shot a dragoon's horse and the beast fell thrashing to the cobbles. The Spaniard bayoneted the rider, then was hurled backwards as a second horse, unable to stop its charge, tripped and stumbled over the bleeding corpses. A knot of Spaniards fell on the second horse and its rider. Knives and swords hacked down, then more partisans scrambled over the dying, bloody beasts to fire a volley at the milling riders trapped by the carnage. More Frenchmen fell from their saddles, then a troop of lancers entered the street behind the Spanish defenders and the lance heads dropped to the level of a man's waist as the horses were spurred forward. The Spaniards, trapped between dragoons and lancers, tried to fight back, but now it was the turn of the French to be the killers. A few partisans escaped through the houses, but only to find the streets beyond the back doors were also filled with blood-crazed horsemen in glittering uniforms being urged to the slaughter by the frantic, joyous notes of the trumpeters.

Most of Nave de Haver's Spanish defenders fled into the mists west of the village where they were pursued by cuirassiers in high black-plumed helmets and shining steel breastplates. The big swords hacked down like meat axes; one such blow could cripple a horse or crush a man's skull. To the north and south of the cuirassiers, troops of lightly mounted chasseurs à cheval raced like steeplechasers to cut off the Spaniards. They whooped hunting calls. The chasseurs carried light, curved sabres that slashed wicked wounds across their enemies' heads and shoulders. Unhorsed Spaniards reeled in agony across the meadows and were ridden down by horsemen practising their sword cuts or lance thrusts. Dismounted dragoons hunted through the houses and cattle sheds of

Nave de Haver, finding the survivors one by one and shooting them with carbines or pistols. One group of Spaniards took refuge in the church, but the copper-helmeted dragoons forced their way in through the priest's door at the back of the sacristy and fell on the defenders with swords. It was Sunday morning and the priest had hoped to say a Mass for the Spanish troops, but now he died with his congregation as the French ransacked the small, blood-soaked church for its plate and candlesticks.

A French work party dragged the corpses out of the village's main street so that the advancing artillery could pass through. It took half an hour's work before the guns could crash and rattle between the blood-splashed houses. The first guns were the light and mobile cannon of the horse artillery; six- pounder guns dragged by horses ridden by gunners resplendent in gold and blue uniforms. Larger cannons were coming behind, but the horse artillery would lead the attack on the next village upstream where the British Seventh

Division had taken its position. Infantry columns followed the horse artillery, battalion after battalion marching beneath their gilded eagles. The mist was burning off to show a village smoking with abandoned cooking fires and reeking of blood where the victorious dragoons were remounting their horses to join the pursuit. Some of the infantry tried to march through the village, but staff officers forced them to go around Nave de Haver's southern flank so that none of the battalions would be slowed by plundering. The first aides galloped back to Masséna's headquarters to say that Nave de Haver had fallen and that the village of Poco Velha, less than two miles upstream, was already under artillery fire. A second division of infantry marched to support the men who were already turning the allies' southern flank and were now marching due north towards the road that led from Fuentes de Onoro to the fords across the River Coa.

Opposite Fuentes de Onoro itself the French main gun batteries opened fire.

The cannon had been dragged to the tree line and roughly embrasured with felled trunks to give their crews some protection from the British guns on the ridge. The French fired common shell, iron balls filled with a fused powder charge that cracked apart in a burst of smoke to shatter the casing on the plateau's skyline, while short-barrelled howitzers lobbed shells into the broken streets of Fuentes de Onoro to fill the village with the stench of burned powder and the rattle of exploded iron. During the night a battery of mixed four- and six-pounder guns had been moved into the gardens and houses on the stream's eastern bank and those guns opened up with roundshot that cracked fiercely on the defenders' walls. The voltigeurs in the gardens fired at

British loopholes and cheered whenever a roundshot brought down a length of wall or collapsed a broken roof onto a room of crouching redcoats. A shell set light to some collapsed thatch and the flames crackled up to spread thick smoke across the upper village where riflemen sheltered behind the cemetery's gravestones. French shells drove into the burial ground, overturning headstones and grubbing up the earth around the graves so that it looked as though a herd of monstrous pigs had been truffling the soil to reach the buried dead.

The British guns returned a sporadic fire. They were holding the bulk of their ammunition for the moment when the French columns were launched across the plain towards the village, though every now and then a case shot exploded at the tree line to make the French gunners duck and curse. One by one the aim of the French guns was shifted from the ridge onto the burning village where the spreading smoke gave evidence of the damage being done. Behind the ridge the redcoat battalions listened to the cannonade and prayed they would not be asked to go down into the maelstrom of fire and smoke. Some chaplains raised their voice over the sound of the cannon as they read Morning Prayer to the waiting battalions. There was a comfort in the old words, though some sergeants barked at the men to mind their damned manners when they tittered at the line in the day's epistle which enjoined the congregation to abstain from fleshly lusts. Then they prayed for the King's Majesty, for the royal family, for the clergy, and only then did some chaplains add a prayer that God would preserve the lives of His soldiers on this Sabbath day on the border of Spain.

Where, three miles south of Fuentes de Onoro, the cuirassiers and chasseurs and lancers and dragoons were met by a force of British dragoons and German hussars. The horsemen clashed in a sudden and bloody mêlée. The allied horse were outnumbered, but they were properly formed and fighting against an enemy force strung out by the excitement of the pursuit. The French faltered, then retreated, but on either flank of the allied squadrons other French horsemen raced ahead to where two battalions of infantry, one British and one

Portuguese, waited behind the walls and hedges of Poco Velha. The British and

German cavalry, fearing that they would be surrounded, hurried out of danger's way as the excited French horse ignored them and charged at the village's defenders instead.

“Fire!” a caçador colonel shouted and ragged smoke whiplashed from the garden walls. Horses screamed and fell, while men were plucked backwards from saddles as the musket and rifle balls cracked straight through the cuirassiers' steel breastplates. There was a frantic trumpet call and the charging French horse checked, turned and rode back to re-form, leaving behind a tideline of struggling horses and bleeding men. More French horsemen were arriving to join the attack; imperial guardsmen mounted on big horses and carrying carbines and swords, while beyond the cavalry the leading foot artillery unlimbered in the meadows and opened fire to add their heavier missiles to the six-pounder guns of the horse artillery. The first twelve-pounder cannon balls fell short, but the next rounds crashed into Poco Velha's defenders and tore great gaps in their protective walls. The French cavalry had drawn to one side to re-form its ranks and to open a path for the infantry who now appeared behind the guns. The infantry battalions formed themselves into two attack columns that would move like human avalanches at the thin line of Poco Velha's defenders.

The French drummer boys tightened their drumskins, while beyond Poco Velha the remaining seven battalions of the British Seventh Division waited for the attack that the drums would inspire. Horse artillery guarded the infantry's flanks, but the French were bringing still more horses and still more guns against the isolated defenders. The British and German cavalry, which had been driven away westwards, now trotted in a wide circle to rejoin the beleaguered

Seventh Division.

French skirmishers ran ahead of the attacking column. They splashed through a streamlet, passed the artillery gun line and ran out to where the dead horses and dying men marked the limit of the cavalry's first attack. There the skirmishers split into their pairs to open fire. British and Portuguese skirmishers met them and the crackle of muskets and rifles carried across the marshy fields to where Wellington stared anxiously southwards. Beneath him the village of Fuentes de Onoro was a smoking shambles being pounded by a continuous cannonade, but his gaze was always to the south where he had sent his Seventh Division beyond the protective range of the British cannon on the plateau.

Wellington had made a mistake, and he knew it. His army was split in two and the enemy was threatening to overwhelm the smaller of the two parts. Gallopers brought him news of a broken Spanish force, then of ever mounting numbers of

French infantry crossing the stream at Nave de Haver to join the attack on the

Seventh Division's nine battalions. At least two French divisions had gone south for that attack, and each of those divisions was stronger than the newly formed and still under-strength Seventh Division which was not only under attack by infantry, but also seemed assailed by every French horseman in

Spain.

French infantry officers urged the columns forward and the drummers responded by beating the pas de charge with a frantic energy. The French attack had rolled over Nave de Haver, had brushed aside the allied cavalry and now it had to keep up the momentum if it was to annihilate Wellington's right wing. Then the victorious attack could lance at the rear of Wellington's main force while the rest of the French army hammered through his battered defences at Fuentes de Onoro.

The voltigeurs pushed back the outnumbered allied skirmishers who ran back to join a main defence line being shredded and torn by French canister. Wounded men crawled back into Poco Velha's small streets where they tried to find a patch of shelter from the terrible storm of canister. French cavalrymen were waiting on the village's flanks, waiting with blade and lance to pounce on the broken fugitives who must soon stream back from the columns' attack.

“Vive l'Empereur!” the attackers shouted. The mist had gone now, replaced by a clear sunlight that flickered off thousands of French bayonets. The sun was shining into the defenders' eyes, a great blinding blaze out of which loomed the huge dark shapes of the French columns trampling the fields to the sounds of drums and cheering and the thunder of marching feet. The voltigeurs began firing at the main British and Portuguese line. The sergeants shouted at the files to close up, then looked nervously at the enemy cavalry waiting to charge from the flanks.

The British and Portuguese battalions shrank towards their centres as the dead and wounded left the files. “Fire!” the British Colonel ordered and his men began the rolling volleys that rippled smoke up and down the line as the companies fired in turn. The Portuguese battalion took up the volleys so that the whole eastern face of the village flashed flame. Men in the leading ranks of the French columns went down and the columns divided so that the files could walk round the wounded and dead, then the ranks closed up again as the cheering Frenchmen came stolidly on. The Portuguese and British volleys became ragged as the officers let men fire as soon as they were loaded. Smoke rolled thick to hide the village. A French galloper gun unlimbered on the village's northern flank and slashed a roundshot into the caçadores' ranks. The drummers paused in the pas de charge and the columns let out their great war cry, “Vive l'Empereur!” and then the drums began again, beating even faster as the columns crashed through the fragile vegetable gardens on the outskirts of the village. Another roundshot seared in from the north, slathering a gable end with blood.

“Withdraw! Withdraw!” The two battalions had no hope of holding the village and so, almost overrun by the enemy, the redcoats and Portuguese ran back through the village. It was a poor place with a tiny church no bigger than a dissenting chapel. The grenadier companies of both battalions formed ranks beside the church. Ramrods scraped in barrels. The French were in the village now, their columns breaking apart as the infantry found their own paths through the alleyways and gardens. The cavalry was closing on the village's flanks, looking for broken ranks to charge and decimate. The leading French attackers came into sight of the church and a Portuguese officer gave the order to fire and the two companies hurled a volley that choked the narrow street with dead and wounded Frenchmen. “Back! Back!” the Portuguese officer shouted. “Watch your flanks!”