Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (11 page)

Sharpe thought back. ‘Thirty yards? Fifty in some places.’

‘Aye.’ Hogan pointed back to Badajoz. ‘A hundred yards, at least, and more in some places. And that ditch is a bastard, Richard, a real bastard. It’ll take a minute to cross it, at least, and they have all the flank fire they’ll ever need, and more. That wall, Richard, is big. Big! You could put Ciudad Rodrigo’s wall in that ditch and you wouldn’t even see it. Don’t you understand? It is a killer.’ He said the words distinctly, trying to convince Sharpe. Hogan sighed. ‘Jesus! We can starve them out. We can hope they die laughing, we can hope they get the plague, but I tell you, Richard, I don’t know if we can get through a breach.’

Sharpe stared at the great fortress in the slanting, hissing rain. ‘We’ll have to.’

‘And do you know how? By throwing so many poor bastards into the fight that the French simply can’t kill them all. It’s the only way and I don’t like it.’

Sharpe turned back. ‘The poor bastards will still need a Forlorn Hope.’

‘And there has to be a bloody fool to lead it, I suppose, and you’re proving a fool! For God’s sake, Richard, why do you want the Hope?’

Sharpe’s anger flared. ‘Because it’s better than this humiliation! I’m a soldier, not a bloody clerk! I fetch bloody forage, count bloody shovels, and take punishment drills. It’s yes, sir, no, sir, can I dig your latrine, sir, and it’s not bloody soldiering!’

Hogan glared at him. ‘It is bloody soldiering! What the hell else do you think soldiering is?’ The two men were facing each other across the mud. ‘Do you think we can win a war without forage? Or without shovels? Or, God help us, without latrines? That is soldiering! Just because you’ve been allowed to swan about like a bloody pirate for years doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take your turn at the real work.’

‘Listen, sir.’ Sharpe was close to shouting. ‘When they tell us to climb those bloody walls, you’ll be glad there are some bloody pirates in the ditch and not just bloody clerks!’

‘And what will you do when there are no more wars to fight?’

‘Start another bloody one.’ Sharpe began to laugh. ‘Sir.’

‘If you survive this one.’ Hogan shook his head, his anger dying as quickly as it had flared. ‘Good God, man! Your woman’s inside. And your child.’

‘I know.’ Sharpe shrugged. ‘But I want the Hope.’

‘You’ll die.’

‘Ask Wellington for me.’

The Irishman frowned. ‘You’re just hurting in your pride, that’s all. In two months, it will be a bad dream, I promise.’

‘Maybe. I still want the Hope.’

‘You’re a stubborn, bloody fool.’

Sharpe laughed again. ‘I know. Colonel Windham says I need humility.’

‘He’s right. It’s a wonder any of us like you at all, but we do.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll talk to the General for you, but I’m making no promises.’ He gathered the reins into his hand. ‘Would you give me a leg up? If it’s not beneath your dignity.’

Sharpe grinned, heaved the Major on to his horse. ‘You’ll ask him for me?’

‘I said I’d talk to him, didn’t I? It’s not his decision, you know that. It belongs to the General of the attacking Division.’

‘But they listen to Wellington.’

‘Aye, that’s true.’ Hogan pulled on the reins, and then checked himself. ‘You know what tomorrow is?’

‘No.’

‘Tuesday, March the seventeenth.’

‘So?’ Sharpe shrugged.

Hogan laughed. ‘You’re a heathen; an unrepentant, doomed heathen, so you are. St Patrick’s Day. Ireland’s day. Give Sergeant Harper a bottle of rum for being a good Catholic.’

Sharpe grinned. ‘I will.’

Hogan watched the South Essex break up step as they marched over the bridge, followed by Sharpe and his raggle-taggle of women, children, servants, and mules. Hogan was saddened. He counted the tall Rifleman as a friend. Perhaps Sharpe was arrogant, but Hogan, along with all the engineering in his head, kept more than a little of Shakespeare.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility
. But this was not peace, this was a horrid campaign and tomorrow, St Patrick’s Day, the army would start digging towards Badajoz. Hogan knew that stillness and humility would not capture the fortress. Time might, but Wellington would not give them time. The General was worried that the French field armies, bigger than the British, might march to the rescue. Badajoz must be taken swiftly, paid for in blood, and the assault would come soon, too soon, perhaps even before Lent was over. Hogan did not relish the prospect. The wall could be closed up with the English dead.

He had promised he would talk to Wellington, and so he would, but not as Sharpe had hoped. Hogan would do a friend’s duty. He would ask the General, if it were possible, that Sharpe’s request should be refused. He would save Sharpe’s life. It was, after all, the very least he could do for a friend.

If a man could have found a new-fangled hot air balloon and flown it over Badajoz, he would have looked down at a city shaped like the quarter segment of a cogged wheel. The castle, ancient stone on rock, was the giant axle boss. The north and east walls were spokes, leaving the axle at right angles to each other, while the south and west walls joined in a long, rough curve that was studded with seven huge cogs.

It was impossible to attack from the north. The city was built on the bank of the River Guadiana, wider at Badajoz than the Thames at Westminster, and the only approach lay across the long, ancient stone bridge. Every yard of the bridge was covered by the guns mounted on the city’s north wall while, across the river, the bridge entrance was guarded by three outlying forts. The largest, San Cristobal, could house more than two regiments. The French were sure that there could be no attack from the north.

The east wall, the other spoke, was more vulnerable. At its northern end was the castle, high and huge, a fortress that had dominated the landscape for centuries, but south of the castle, the city wall was on lower ground and faced towards a hill. The French knew the danger and, just where the castle hill dropped steeply to the lower city, they had dammed the Rivillas stream. Now the vulnerable east wall was protected by a sheet of flood water, as wide as the river to the north, and running far to the south of the city. As Hogan had said to Sharpe; only the navy could attack across the new lake, unless the dam could be blown up and the lake drained.

Which left the huge curve of the south and west walls, a curve nearly a mile long that had no convenient river or stream to offer protection. Instead there were the cogs on the wheel’s rim, the seven vast bastions that jutted out from the city wall, each bastion the size of a small castle. San Vincente was the most northerly, built beside the river at the angle of the north and west walls, and from the San Vincente the bastions ran south and west till they met the flooded Rivillas. San Jose, Santiago, San Juan, San Roque, Santa Maria, and so to the Trinidad. The saints, the mother of Christ, and the Holy Trinity, each with more than a score of guns, to protect a city.

The bastions were not the only protection to the great curve of walls. First came the glacis, the earth slope that deflected the round shot and bounced it high over the defences, and then the huge ditch. The drop from the glacis to the ditch bottom was nowhere less than twenty feet and, once in the ditch, the real problems began. The bastions would flank any attack, pouring in their plunging fire, and there were ravelins in the great dry moat. The ravelins were like great, triangular, fake walls that split an attack and, in darkness, could deceive men into thinking they had reached the real wall. Any man who climbed a ravelin would be swept off by carefully aimed cannon. From the ditch the walls rose fifty feet and on their wide parapets they mounted guns every five yards.

Badajoz was no mediaeval fortress hastily converted for modern warfare. It had once been the pride of Spain, a brilliantly engineered, massively built death trap, that was now garrisoned by the finest French troops in the Peninsula. Twice the British had failed to take the city and there seemed no reason, a year later, to suppose that a third attempt would meet with success.

The fortress had just one weakness. To the south-east, opposite the Trinidad bastion and across the flood waters, rose the shallow San Miguel hill. From its low, flat top a besieger could fire down on to the south-east corner of the city, and that was the single weakness. The French knew it, and had guarded against it. Two forts had been built to the south and east. One, the Picurina, had been built across the new lake on the lower slopes of the San Miguel hill. The second fort, the huge Pardaleras, was to the south and guarded the approach to any breach that might be carved by the guns on the hill. It was not much of a weakness, but all the British had to work on and so, on St Patrick’s Day, they marched to the rear of the San Miguel hill. They knew, and the French knew, that the effort would be against the south-east corner of the city, against the Santa Maria and Trinidad bastions, and the fact that the selfsame plan had failed twice before did not matter. From the top of the hill, where curious men gathered to look at the city, the breach made in the last siege could be clearly seen between the two bastions. It had been repaired, in lighter coloured stone, and the new masonry seemed to mock the coming British efforts.

Sharpe stood next to Patrick Harper and stared at the walls. ‘Jesus, they’re big!’ The Sergeant said nothing. Sharpe pulled the bottle from inside his greatcoat and held it out. ‘Here. A present for St Patrick’s Day.’

Harper’s broad face beamed with pleasure. ‘You’re a grand man, sir, for an Englishman. Would you be ordering me to save you half for St George’s Day?’

Sharpe stamped his feet against the cold. ‘I think I’ll take that half now.’

‘I thought you might.’ Harper was glad to see Sharpe, of whom he had seen little in the past month, but there was also an embarrassment in the meeting. The Irishman knew Sharpe needed reassurance that the Light Company missed him, and Harper thought him a fool for needing the words to be said. Of course they missed him. The Light Company were no different to the rest of the army. They were failures, almost to a man, whose failings had led them to courtrooms and jails. They were thieves, drunks, debtors, and murderers, the men Britain wanted out of sight and mind. It was easier to empty a town jail to a recruiting party than go through the tedious business of trial, sentence and punishment.

Not all were criminals. Some had been gulled by the Recruiting Sergeants, offered an escape from village tedium and narrow horizons. Some had failed in love and joined the army in despair, swearing they would rather die in battle than see their sweetheart married to another man. Many were drunkards who were terrified of a lonely shivering death in a winter ditch and joined an army that offered them clothes, boots, and a third of a pint of rum each day. Some, a few, a very few, joined for patriotism. Some, like Harper, joined because there was nothing but hunger at home and the army offered food and an escape. They were, almost to a man, the failings and leavings of society and to them all the army was one big Forlorn Hope.

Yet they were the best infantry in the world. They had not always been and, without the right leaders, would not be so again. Harper instinctively knew that this army that faced Badajoz was a superb instrument, better than anything the great Napoleon could muster, and Harper knew why. Because there were just enough officers like Sharpe who trusted the failures. It started at the top, of course, with Wellington himself, and went right through the ranks to the junior officers and Sergeants, and the trick of it was very simple. Take a man who has failed at everything, give him a final chance, show him trust, lead him to one success, and there is a sudden confidence that will lead to the next success. Soon they will believe they are unbeatable, and become unbeatable, but the trick was still to have officers like Sharpe who kept on offering trust. Of course the Light Company missed him! He had expected great things of them and trusted them to win. Perhaps the new man would one day learn the trick, but until he did, if ever, the men would miss Sharpe. Hell, thought Harper, they even like him. And the fool did not realize it. Harper shook his head to himself and offered the bottle to Sharpe. ‘Here’s to Ireland, sir, and death to Hakeswill.’

‘I’ll drink to that. How is the bastard?’

‘I’ll kill him one day.’

Sharpe gave a humourless laugh. ‘You won’t. I will.’

‘How the hell is he still alive?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘He says he can’t be killed.’ It was cold on the hill and Sharpe hunched his shoulders beneath the greatcoat. ‘And he never turns his back. Watch yours.’

‘I’m growing eyes in my bum with that bastard around.’

‘What does Captain Rymer think of him?’

Harper paused, took the bottle from Sharpe, drank, and passed it back. ‘God knows. I think he’s scared of him, but so are most.’ He shrugged. ‘The Captain’s not a bad fellow, but he’s not exactly confident.’ The Sergeant was feeling awkward. He did not like to sound critical of one officer in front of another. ‘He’s young.’

‘None of us are old. How’s that new Ensign?’

‘Matthews? He’s fine, sir. Sticks to Lieutenant Price like a kid brother.’

‘And Mr Price?’

Harper laughed. ‘He keeps us cheerful, sir. Drunk as a cross-eyed stoat, but he’ll survive.’

It began raining, small, spitting drops that stung their faces. Behind them, on the Seville road, the bugles called the battalions to the evening lines. Sharpe turned up his collar. ‘We’d better be getting back.’ He stared at the small, blue-uniformed figures on the city parapets, three-quarters of a mile away. ‘Those sods will be warm tonight.’ He suddenly thought of Teresa and Antonia inside the walls and looked at the big, square, battlemented Cathedral tower. It was odd to think they were so close to her. The rain became heavier and he turned away, back towards the sprawling, makeshift British camp.

‘Sir?’

‘Yes?’

The Sergeant seemed embarrassed. ‘Major Hogan stopped by the other day.’

‘So?’

‘He was telling us about Miss Teresa, sir.’

Sharpe frowned. ‘What about her?’

‘Only, sir, that she’d asked you to look out for her. In the city. In case the lads go a bit wild.’

‘So?’

‘Well, the men are keen to help, so they are.’

‘You mean they don’t think I can manage?’

Harper was tempted to tell Sharpe not to be so foolish, but decided it might be one step too many over the subtle boundaries of rank and friendship. He sighed. ‘No, sir. Just that they’re keen to help. They’re fond of her, sir, so they are.’ And of you, he might have added.

Sharpe shook his head ungratefully. Teresa and Antonia were his problem, not the Company’s, and he did not want a horde of grinning men to witness his emotion at first seeing his child. ‘Tell them no.’

Harper shrugged. ‘They may try and help anyway.’

‘They’ll have a problem finding her in the city.’

The Sergeant grinned. ‘It won’t be difficult. We’ll be trying the house with two orange trees, just behind the Cathedral.’

‘Go to hell, Sergeant.’

‘Follow you anywhere, sir.’

A few hours later the army seemed in hell, or a watery version of hell. The skies opened. Thunder cracked like the rumbling of field guns over wooden boards in the storm clouds. Lightning slashed, piercing and blue, to an earth soaked by great, slanting volleys of rain. Human noise was drowned by the seething water, a constant, crashing downpour in a darkness splintered by jagged, thundering light. Eighteen hundred men were on the hilltop, digging the first parallel; a trench six hundred yards long that would protect the besiegers and from which they would excavate the first gun batteries. The workers were soaked to the skin, shivering, made weary by the sheer weight of water, and sometimes peering through the deluge at the dark citadel starkly revealed in the lightning strikes.

The wind billowed the rain in huge, scything loops; suspended it, and then smashed it down even harder. It plucked greatcoats into fantastic, batlike shapes and drove the water in unstoppable rivulets that filled up the trench, seeped over the men’s boots, and sank their spirits down into the cold, sodden earth that yielded each spadeful with such reluctance.

All night they dug, and all night it rained, and in the cold morning it still rained and the French gunners came out of their warm shelters to see the scar of fresh earth curving over the shallow hill. The gunners opened fire, smashing solid shot across the wide ditch, over the glacis, over the floodwaters, and into the wet earth of the trench parapet. The work stopped. The first parallel was too shallow to give shelter and all day the rain weakened the trench and the guns hammered it. The excavation filled with sopping mud that would all have to be scooped out in the night.

They dug all night. It still rained, a rain like the rain before Noah’s flood. Uniforms doubled their weight with water, boots were sucked off in the glutinous slime, and shoulders were chafed raw and bleeding with the effort of sinking the trench. On this night the French gunners kept up a harassing and sporadic fire that turned some parts of the mud scarlet until the unending rain diluted the blood, but slowly, infinitely slowly, the spades hacked deeper and the parapet went higher.

The creeping dawn showed a trench deep enough to be worked by daylight. The exhausted battalions filed back through the zigzag trench that led to safety at the rear of the hill, and new battalions took their place. The South Essex, their packs and weapons discarded, went down the crooked way to the mud, the gunfire, and the spades.

Sharpe was left behind. Two dozen men were with him, the baggage guard, and they made crude shelters out of the piled packs and crouched, muskets between their knees, and stared at a wet, grey, dripping landscape. Sharpe could hear the French guns, muffled by rain and distance, and he hated the thought of not seeing what he could hear. He left an old Sergeant in charge of the guard and walked the trench to the hillside.

Badajoz was a dark rock in a sea of water and mud. The walls were fringed with cannon smoke that was lanced through by the leaping flames of each shot. The French gunners were concentrating their fire to Sharpe’s left where the first two British batteries were being dug. A whole battalion was working on the gun-pits. The roundshot smacked into the parapets, destroyed the earth-filled wicker gabions, and sometimes smashed a bloody path through the men. The French even tried their howitzers whose short, squat barrels spat shells high into the air, so that the tiny smoke trail of the burning fuse disappeared into the low clouds before dropping on to the wet hillside. Most of the shells simply fell and lay silent, their fuses extinguished by mud or rain, but a few exploded in black smoke and jagged iron fragments. They did no damage; the range was too great, and after a time the French stopped the shell-fire and saved the howitzers for the digging of the second parallel, lower down the hill and much closer to the walls.