Harper pulled back the flint of his seven-barrelled gun. "Me, sir? I think Lord Spears was looking for you one day. He might have mentioned it." He grinned at Sharpe conspiratorialy. "Legless, I hear, sir."
"You hear wrong. It’s not true."
"No, sir. Course not, sir." Harper whistled tunelessly and stared up at the cloudless sky.
There was a stirring in the trench, groans as men got to their feet and fixed long bayonets onto muskets, and Sharpe realised that the cannonade had stopped. This was the moment of attack, yet it had none of the tension of the previous attack, when these same Battalions had been shredded by the French guns. Today it would be easy, instinct told them that, easy because the vicious heated shot from the great guns had turned the fortresses into hell for their garrisons. The Rifle Lieutenant drew his sabre, waved at his Forlorn Hope, and climbed the side of the trench. At the summit, with no fire coming from the enemy, he halted. He gestured his men down. "Stop! Stop!"
"What the devil?" A Lieutenant Colonel pushed his way down the trench. His neck was constricted by a tight, leather stock, and his face was red and glistening in the heat. "Go on, man!"
"They’re surrendering, sir! A white flag!"
"Good God!" The Colonel clambered up the trench side and stared at the San Cayetano, then at the San Vincente. "Good God!"
The British troops in the trench jeered at the French and shouted insults. "Fight, you buggers! Are you afraid?"
The Colonel bellowed at them. "Quiet! Quiet!"
Only the San Cayetano showed a white flag, the other forts were silent, no defenders apparent in their casements. Sharpe wondered if this were a trick, some convoluted plot by Leroux to gain his freedom, but he could not understand it if it was. Whether they were defeated by bayonets, or simply surrendered, the French garrisons would still be at the mercy of their captors and Sharpe would still be able to search their ranks for the tall, cold-eyed man with the long Kligenthal sword. The Company settled down in the trench. Rumours worked their way up and down the excavation, that the French merely wanted to send out their wounded, then that the enemy wanted time to negotiate their surrender. Some of the men slept, snoring gently, and the quiet of the afternoon, without the gunfire, seemed remarkably peaceful to Sharpe. He looked to his left and could see, over the roofs, the dark lattice of the mirador. There was a square black hole that showed where La Marquesa would be watching through her telescope. He wanted this afternoon done, the prisoners paraded, and Leroux safely chained at Headquarters. Then he could go back to the small doorway, climb the stone stairway, and have the last Salamantine night in the Palacio Casares.
A French-speaking officer took a speaking trumpet onto the trench parapet and shouted at the San Cayetano. Rough translations were passed in the trench. The French wanted to get orders from the fortress commander in the San Vincente, but Wellington was denying them the chance. The British would attack in five minutes and the garrison had a choice. Fight or surrender. As if to reinforce the message the eighteen pounders fired a last volley and Sharpe heard flames roar and crackle behind him as the San Vincente laught fire again. The San Cayetano officer shouted at the British, the French-speaking British officer shouted back, and then another messenger came down the trench and shouted up at the man with the speaking trumpet. The order was plainly heard in the trench. The enemy had wasted enough time in argument. They were to remove the white flag because the assault was now coming. The command was passed on in French, the Lieutenant Colonel drew his sword, turned to the packed trench, and shouted for them to go.
They cheered. Their bayonets were fixed, they wanted revenge, and the men hurled themselves up the side of the ravine, ignoring the Forlorn Hope that was now just part of the main attack, and Sharpe went with them. No guns fired from the French embrasures. The San Vincente, when Sharpe turned to look at it, was blazing fiercely. The gunners in the biggest French fort were fighting the flames, not serving the guns, and the assault was untroubled by canister. The white flag had gone from the San Cayetano, withdrawn into the shattered defences, and in its place was a rank of French infantrymen. The enemy were filthy, smeared by smoke and dust, and they levelled their muskets at the attack. They glanced at each other, not certain if they had surrendered or not, but the sight of the attackers, swarming in loose order over the rubble, decided them. They fired.
It was a small volley, hardly effective, and it only served to wound a handful of men and goad the others on. There was a ragged cheer, the first redcoats were in the ditch that was half filled with fallen masonry, and then they climbed the crude breach towards the fort.
The French had no fight in them. The infantrymen threw down their muskets before the attackers reached them. They were ignored, shoved aside, and the troops poured into the convent’s interior. The building still smoked, showing where the fires had been, and now it filled with cheering British, intent on loot, and Sharpe stopped at the glacis lip ahd looked behind him. Sergeant McGovern’s squad were there, where they should be, and Sharpe cupped his hands. "Stop anyone leaving! Understand!"
"Yes, sir!"
Sharpe grinned at Harper. "Let’s go hunting." He drew his sword, wondering if this would be the last time he ever used this sword, and jumped into the ditch. The climb onto the defences was easy, thanks to the collapse of the convent wall into the ditch, and Sharpe ran up the stones, hoping against hope that Leroux would be in this first building. He could be in any of the three. The French had not been able to leave the forts, thanks to the ring of Light Companies, but there had been no way of stopping them moving between the buildings in the dark of night.
"God save Ireland!" Harper paused at the top. The San Cayetano resembled a charnel house whose corpses had been crushed and burned. The unwounded prisoners were gathering in the central courtyard, but they left on the ramparts, on firesteps, beside guns, a grisly remnant of the garrison. The eagerness of the attackers for revenge was checked by the horror. The redcoats were kneeling by the wounded, giving them water, and every soldier could imagine what life had been like, these last few burning hours, under the close bombardment of the guns. One man was close to the breach, on a stretcher where Sharpe presumed he had been laid so he could be taken swiftly to the hospital, and the screaming, horrid figure seemed to sum up the garrison’s suffering. He was an artillery officer and the plain, blue uniform reminded Sharpe of the man he had killed at Badajoz. This man would not live long. His face was half masked in blood, a shapeless mass where one eye had been, and his belly appeared to have been torn open by a splinter of wood or shattering iron that had left his guts, blue-sheened between thick blood, open to the sky and flies. He heaved, he screamed, he shouted for help, and even the men who were used to suffering and sudden death found the agony unbearable and gave the horrid wound a wide berth. Between screams the man panted, moaned, and cried. Two French infantrymen, unwounded, squatted fearfully beside the officer. One held his hand. The other tried to contain the terrible blue-red wound that had smeared the uniform with blood where it had not been scorched with fire. Sharpe looked at the artillery officer. "Be quicker to shoot him."
"And a dozen others, sir." Harper nodded at other men, some almost as badly wounded, some burned beyond a human face any more, and Sharpe climbed back to the breach top and shouted at McGovern. "The wounded will come out! Let them up!"
Carts were already waiting at the trench head, beside the main battery, to take the French to the hospital. Sharpe checked them out, one by one, and then looked at the prisoners in the courtyard. Leroux was not there. Somehow Sharpe was not surprised. He expected Leroux to be in the main fort, the San Vincente, and he hurried as he began to search the San Cayetano for he knew that the assault on the other forts must begin soon. He raced up stairs inside the convent, throwing doors open onto empty rooms, coughing when he had to dash down a smoke filled corridor to explore rooms threatened by flame, but the fort was deserted. The French were prisoners, downstairs, and the only men in the upper rooms were British soldie
rs rifling the possessions of their erstwhile enemies. Even those men Sharpe looked at carefully for it was not beyond a possibility that Leroux would have disguised himself in British uniform, but Leroux was not there.
A shout came from below and Sharpe ran to the last room he had not searched. It was empty as the others, except for a telescope, mounted like La Marquesa’s on a tripod, that a small Welsh soldier was struggling to lift. "Leave it!"
The man looked offended. "Sorry, sir."
Sharpe could see the tripod marks on the wooden floor and he carefully aligned the telescope again on the old marks. He guessed that perhaps it had been used for receiving telegraph messages, when the French army had been close to the city, but he could not be sure. He peered through the glass, saw open sky, and tilted the tube downwards. The glass pointed through a tiny window. Anyone using it from the tripod marks could see scarce a thing through that tiny space. A patch of sky and then, the glass steadied, and Sharpe saw the dark square, and saw the circle of light that he knew was the brass-bound lens of La Marquesa’s glass. He grinned. Someone had tried to watch La Marquesa on her mirador and he could not blame them, for it must have been hell to be pinned in this tiny fort and an officer had set up the glass, far enough back so that it would not reflect any betraying light, and he must have prayed and hoped for a glimpse of that perfect beauty to relieve the perfect hell that sliced apart a man’s intestines. He stayed for a moment, hoping he would see her, but there was no sign of her. He remembered the shout from below and gestured at the glass. "You can have it, soldier."
He ran down the stairs, joining Harper who had searched the rooms again, and the shout proved to be the discovery of the French magazine. The building smouldered and, beneath their feet, the powder barrels waited that could blow them into fine scraps. A British officer had organised a chain of men and the barrels were heaved up, passed through the courtyard, to be piled in the ditch. Sharpe pushed past the chain, ignoring their protests, but Leroux was not in the cellar.
The other two forts had still not surrendered, yet the British walked quite openly and unconcerned in the space outside the San Cayetano. No French guns fired, no canister riddled the air. Sergeant Huckfield had brought his squad to join McGovern’s, and the two Sergeants saluted as Sharpe came out of the breach. McGovern shook his head dourly. "No sign of him, sir?"
"No." Sharpe sheathed his sword. Lieutenant Price was waiting in the trench, ready to go to the San Vincente, and Sharpe thought of the long afternoon ahead. He wanted to get back to La Marquesa, he wanted this chore done, and he began to resent the long search in the heat. He looked at Huckfield. "Take your men to La Merced. Wait for me there." He did not expect Leroux to be in the smallest fort, but it had to be covered. He switched to McGovern. "Let four of your men stay here, just in case he’s hiding. The rest to the big one."
"Sir. I’d be happier with six."
"Six it is." He thought what might happen if Leroux had found a hiding place in the smoking ruins. "And you stay, too, Mac."
"Sir." McGovern nodded gravely.
God, but it was hot. Sharpe took off his shako and wiped his face. His jacket was undone, swinging free. He clambered down the ravine side, staring up at the San Vincente, and as he watched he saw the Portuguese troops begin their climb towards the big, blazing fortress. Let the bastards surrender quickly, he thought, and he hurried, the sweat soaking the new, fine linen shirt that La Marquesa had given him. He would have to bathe in the Palacio, he thought, and he remembered the unbelievable luxury of the huge tub, filled by a relay of servants, and the strange sensation of being immersed in hot water. He smiled at the memory and Patrick Harper wondered what his Captain was thinking.
The Portuguese were not resisted. The small figures j jumped into the ditch, clambered through the cannon emplacements, and no muskets fired. The French had had enough. Sharpe looked at his squads. "Come on!"
The air was stifling. Close to the big fort, it was even hotter, fuelled by the fires that blazed unchecked in the building. Some Frenchmen, ignored by the Portuguese, were already leaping from the defences and Price led his squad to cut off their flight. Sharpe hurried up the crude glacis, the heat burning at him, and then he led Harper’s squad into the big defences to find the same picture they had seen before. The wounded needed attention, the living surrendered, the dead stank in the collapsed stones and timber. The Portuguese were already pulling the powder barrels from the cellars, rolling the kegs to safety, while others herded prisoners and looted French packs. There was no sign of Leroux. Three huge Frenchmen were pulled out of the ranks and Sharpe stared at them, trying to fit their faces to his mental image, but none was Leroux. One had a hare lip, and he could not imagine the Imperial Guard Colonel faking that disfigurement, one was too old, and the third seemed some kind of simpleton who grinned with feeble good-will at the Rifle Officer. It was not Leroux. Sharpe looked at the burning buildings, then at Harper. "We’ll have to search."
They searched. They looked in every room that could be entered and tried to look even in those where no human could stay alive. Once Sharpe teetered on the brink of a broken floor, staring hopelessly into a roaring fire that swept upwards, white hot, and he heard the fall of great timbers and knew that no man could live in that. He put a hand on his ammunition pouch and the leather was almost too hot to touch and he went back, suddenly fearing that the rifle ammunition would explode, and he felt the first stirrings of doubt, of frustration. He was soaked with sweat, begrimed, and still the sun burned down on the furnace building, the prisoners milled outside and Sharpe cursed Leroux.
Price panted in the heat. "I haven’t seen him, sir."
Sharpe pointed at a separate group. "Who are they?"
"Wounded, sir."
He looked at the wounded. He even made one man take off a dirty bandage from his head, and wished he had not. The man was terribly burned and he was not Leroux. Sharpe looked at the scene on the glacis. "How many prisoners?"
"Four hundred here, sir. At least."
"Search them again!" They marched up the ranks, stopping at each man, and the French prisoners looked at them dully. Some were tall, and those were pushed out of the ranks into a separate group, but it was hopeless. Some had no teeth, others were the wrong age, some were similar but not Leroux.
"Patrick!"
"Sir?"
"Find that officer who spoke French. Ask him to see me."
The officer came and gladly helped. He asked prisoners if they knew of the tall Colonel Leroux or else of Captain Delmas, and most shrugged, but one or two volunteered help and said they remembered a Captain Delmas who had fought so well at Austerlitz, and one remembered a Leroux who had been in the town guard at Pau, and the sun smashed down, bounced off the broken stones, and the sweat trickled into Sharpe’s eyes, stinging them, and it was as if Leroux had vanished from the face of the earth.
"Sir?" Harper pointed across the ravine. "The little one’s surrendered."
They crossed the ravine again and, now that the third fort had surrendered, the wounded who had been taken from the San Cayetano and the San Vincente were allowed up the trench. Sharpe wondered how many had died as they waited in the burning sun. The artillery officer whose guts had been laid open by a flying splinter still lived, his face with the bloody mess where there had been an eye rocked back and forth, and Sharpe saw Harper touch his crucifix as the Sergeant watched the stretcher being carried towards the waiting carts. There but for the grace of God, thought Sharpe, and then they climbed up the ravine and headed towards La Merced.
Leroux was not there. Leroux was in none of the forts and Sharpe and Harper walked the wide, burning wasteland again to the San Vincente and once again they searched the prisoners on the glacis. Leroux was not there. Pray as Sharpe might, he could not make one face fit the French Colonel. He looked at the French-speaking officer in frustration. "Someone must know!"
The Lieutenant Colonel was impatient. He wanted the prisoners moved, to release his men from guardi
ng them in the afternoon heat, but Sharpe stubbornly went down the ranks again. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, searched the faces, but he knew it was no good. He nodded reluctantly to the Colonel. "I’m through, sir."
He was not through. He searched the burning convent again, went down into the coolness of the huge cellar that had been the magazine, but there were no signs of the fugitive. It was Harper who finally admitted what Sharpe did not want to admit. "He’s not here, sir."
"No." But he would not give up. If Leroux had escaped, and for the life of him he could not see how, then La Marquesa was in danger. It might take the Frenchman days, or weeks, or just hours before he made his move and Sharpe thought of her body in that man’s hands and he hacked with his sword at an open cupboard as if it might conceal a false compartment. He let the rage subside. "Search the dead." It was quite possible that Leroux was among the dead, but Sharpe suspected the tall, clever Colonel would not have exposed himself to the artillery fire. Yet Sharpe must search the corpses.
The dead stank. Some had been dead for two days, unburied in the heat, and Sharpe raked the bodies off the pile and, the nearer the bottom he reached, the more he knew that Leroux was not here. He went out again, onto the glacis, and stared at the other two forts. La Merced was empty, its garrison marching away into captivity, and only McGovern with his small picquet stood guard on the San Cayetano.. Sharpe looked at Harper’s squad. They were tired, worn out, and he gestured at them to sit down. He took off his jacket and gave it to Lieutenant Price. "I’m going for one more look at the San Cayetano."
"Yes, sir." Price was coated with sweat-streaked dust.
Harper came with Sharpe, but no one else, and for the fourth time they climbed the ravine and the two tall Riflemen walked slowly towards the first fort to fall. Sergeant McGovern had seen nothing. His men had searched the building again, but he swore it was empty, and Sharpe nodded. "Go back to Lieutenant Price, Mac. Send a man to bring Sergeant Huckfield back."