“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 g
un 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!”