Chapter 28
The news had come from Salamanca, where so much news came from because the Rev. Dr Patrick Curtis had been Professor of Astronomy and Natural History at the University of Salamanca. Strictly speaking Don Patricio Cortes, as the Spanish called him, was still Professor, and still Rector of the Irish College, but he had been in temporary residence in Lisbon ever since the French had discovered that the seventy-two year old Irish priest was interested in things other than God, the stars, and the natural history of Spain. Don Patricio Cortes was also Britain's chief spy in Europe.
The news reached Dr Curtis in Lisbon two evenings before Christmas. He was hearing confessions in a small church, helping out the local priest, and one of the penitents had nothing to confess and gave news through the grille instead. Hurriedly Dr Curtis left his booth, smiling apologetically at the parishioners, and after hastily crossing himself he undid the papers that had been sent to him across the border. The messenger, a trader in horses who sold to the French so he could travel unimpeded, shrugged. 'I'm sorry it's late, Father. I couldn't find you.'
'You did well, my son. Come with me.'
But time was desperately short. Curtis went to Wellington's quarters and there he fetched Major Hogan from dinner, and the small Irish Major, who was also in charge of what Wellington liked to call his 'intelligence', rewarded the messenger with gold and then hurried the captured French despatch to the General.
'God damn.' The General's cold eyes looked at Hogan. 'Any doubt?'
'None, sir. It's the Emperor's code.'
'God damn.' Wellington gave the smallest apologetic shrug towards the elderly priest, then blasphemed again. 'God damn.'
There was time to send word to Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, to roust Nairn out of Frenada and have the Light Division moving, but that was not what worried the Peer. He was worried by the French diversionary attack that would come from the hills and descend on the valley of the Douro. God damn! This spring Wellington planned a campaign the like of which had never been seen in the Peninsula. Instead of attacking along the great roads of invasion, the roads that led eastward from Ciudad Rodrigo and from Badajoz, he was taking troops where the French thought they could not go. He would lead them north-east from the hills of Northern Portugal, lead them on a great circuit to cut the French supply road and force battle on a perplexed and outflanked enemy. To do it he would need pontoons, the great clumsy boats that carried roadways across rivers, because his invasion route was crossed by rivers. And the pontoons were being built at the River Douro and the French force was planning to descend on that area, an area that would normally be of small importance except this winter. God damn and damn again. 'Apologies, Curtis.’
’Don't mention it, my Lord.'
Messengers went north that night, messengers who changed horses every dozen miles or so, messengers who rode to warn the British that the French were coming, and Wellington followed them himself, going first to Ciudad Rodrigo because he feared to lose that great gateway into Spain. With any luck, he thought, Nairn could hold the French at Barca de Alva.
Major General Nairn looked once at the order, thought for a moment, then disobeyed. The Peer had forgotten, or else had not connected the name Adrados with the Gateway of God, that the British already had a force that could block the French. A pitifully small force, a single Battalion with a raggle-taggle collection of Riflemen and Rockets, but if it could hold the pass just twelve hours then Nairn could reinforce it. His cold magically disappeared.
And now he was late. The snow had held him up and he feared he was too late. He had met Teresa coming from the pass and he had listened to her message, charmed her, and then taken her along with his troops who struggled against the snow. Next came Sir Augustus Farthingdale, icy and angry, who insisted that there were complaints, serious complaints, that he wished to make against Major Richard Sharpe, but Nairn politely declined to listen, then rudely insisted, and finally ordered Sir Augustus and Lady Farthingdale on their way. On the evening of December 26th the wind brought more snow and the grumble of guns.
They marched before dawn and Nairn heard a mighty explosion in the hills, and the light showed a great pall of smoke that blew towards him, yet still the guns sounded. March to the guns, always to the guns, and he sent his best troops ahead with orders to climb fast and Teresa went with a Spanish Battalion of light troops that could climb the hills beside the pass and come down on the French flank. She would guide them, and they struggled through the cold, the snow, listening always to the guns that told them the battle still lived, that their help was needed, and then the guns stopped.
A seeming silence in the hills. The guns rested.
The French were in the courtyard. They were cheering, running, swarming over the stones of the eastern wall and there was no enemy.
The French officers had their swords drawn. They looked at ramparts and turrets for targets for their men, but the Castle seemed empty and silent, and then a shout from a Frenchman and they could see the Fusiliers crammed in the archway behind their low barricade of stone. 'Charge!'
'Fire!' The Fusilier volley drove an avenue of musket fire into the courtyard.
'Fire!' The second rank pushed past the first.
'Fire!' The third was at the front, two more behind it, while the ranks that had fired reloaded and came up behind.
'Fire!' The archway was safe.
'Doors!' French officers led their men to the doorways into the gatehouse and north-western turret, but the doors had been blocked solid with stone, as had the steps to the northern ramparts, and still the French infantry piled into the courtyard and believed they had victory.
'Now!' Sharpe snarled at the bugler. 'Now!'
Dubreton had foreseen this. He had known that the courtyard would be a deathtrap, a cul de sac, unless the men could fight their way into the keep.
French officers shouted at their men. 'Fire! Fire at the archway!'
And then the bugle sounded. The notes climbed the full octave once, twice, three times. 'Open fire'.
The sticks had been taken from the remaining rockets much to Gilliland's disgust and now the Rocket Troop put fire to the fuses, waited to see the fire catch, and then tossed the stickless cylinders out of arrow-slits, through gaps in the stones, over ramparts, and down to the courtyard crammed with French.
The cylinders tumbled, smoke intricate behind them, and then they coughed and roared into life and without the sticks they could not fly but hurled themselves in aimless frantic patterns in the yard. 'Come on! Throw!'
More came, more rockets, shells beginning to explode in their heads, and still more came, their tails flaying the French with fire, the rockets whipping erratically about the stones, breaking ankles, lodging in bodies, exploding, burning, and Sharpe yelled at the men to throw more. Some snaked their way to the stables where they added to the fire and pumped smoke at the disorganized French, while most carved gaps in the crowded ranks and exploded their iron fragments in circles of death, while the solid-tipped rockets hurled their weight against feet and legs and wounded bodies and the French shouted in alarm, in confusion, and still more came.
'Downstairs!' Sharpe led Harper and the bugler down to where the Fusiliers waited for this moment. Two hundred of them waited with their Colours and Sharpe pushed the bugler forward. 'Sound the cease-fire!' He looked at the Fusiliers, those who were not guarding the archway. 'Fix bayonets!'
The bugle was sounding its message to the Rocket Troop again and again, but Sharpe did not hear it. He heard only the scraping and clicking as the seventeen-inch blades were slotted onto muskets and he drew his own sword, the metal bright in the archway's gloom, and he waited until he was sure no more rockets were being thrown. 'We go to the rubble! No further!' He would clear the yard, kill the enemy, for in this hour of defeat he could still claw and maim this French force and hope to weaken it so that it could not perform whatever duty it had been sent to do.
'Charge!'
This was the way to end it
! Sword in hand and charging, and even though the battle was lost he could still make these French regret the day they had come to the Gateway of God. He could put fear in them for their next battle, he would make them remember this place with sourness. 'Get them!' The sword twisted in his hand as it glanced off bone, but the man was down, and then he heard the bellow of the seven-barrelled gun, and Sharpe had a glimpse of the Fusiliers, teeth bared over white crossbelts on red uniforms, blades reaching ahead, and the yard was full of smoke and stinking rocket carcasses and the French were running from the line of men who had erupted into the gloom and Sharpe saw an officer trying to rally them and he lunged at the man, felt the Frenchman's sword scrape the length of his blade, and then he was onto the man, beating down with the blade, and he could see the rubble ahead. 'On!'
He tugged the sword free, looked for another enemy, but the French had gone back, the courtyard was his, and he screamed at Brooker to line the Fusiliers on the rubble. He saw the two Colours, ragged and blackened, proud over the line and he stood in front of them, sword red in his hand, and there was a mad impulse to charge on into the valley as if his two hundred Fusiliers could sweep the French clear out of the hills.
That was the last card, the last surprise, the final twisting of the French tail. There was nothing left now but muskets, rifles, and bayonets. He would have to retreat before the next attack, and a small part of him said it would be sensible to go now, go while the French were not pressing behind, while he could still extricate Frederickson from the hill, but Sharpe would not retreat until he could see the enemy's face. He would not.
He could hear firing to his left and he wondered if the French were attacking through the gate. ‘Watch the gate, Mr Brooker!'
'Sir!'
Where were the bastards? Why did they not come? This was the moment of their victory, the moment when Sharpe could not fight them, and then he wondered whether the guns would start again and the canister would spray the Fusiliers red and ragged off the stones, but still he stared into the smoke of the rockets and wondered why the enemy did not come.
The smoke drifted slowly, cleared thin, and he saw why the guns did not fire.
The Battalion that had attacked the watchtower hill was in full retreat, streaming across the valley. Sharpe grinned. Sweet William had blooded them.
Sweet William was mad with anger. 'You bastards! You bastards!' He shook his fist at men in sky-blue uniforms, men who had swept from behind the Castle and charged with bayonets at the Battalion which had been coming for Frederickson. 'You bastards!' The Spaniards had cheated him of a fight.
'Sir!' Harper was pointing left. 'Sir!' His voice was triumphant.
Riflemen. Scores of Riflemen! Greenjackets! How the hell had they got here, Sharpe wondered? And he felt the weight of defeat lift from him and he stared, almost unbelieving, at the French running from the Convent, at the skirmish line that was on his flank, and then he looked right and saw the Spanish uniforms on the hill. They had won!
'Fusiliers! Forward!'
And Hakeswill struck.
Chapter29
Only a fraction of the gold that Sharpe and Dubreton had fetched so laboriously to the Gateway of God had been found. Handfuls had been taken off the prisoners, lost forever into the pouches of French and British soldiers, but the bulk of it still lay in the Castle. It was hidden for gold was a useful thing to hide, a cache that could be retrieved at leisure when the enemy had gone, and Hakeswill had hidden it well. It was in the dungeon, behind the gore-splashed wall where he had tortured and murdered the men and women who had displeased him. Now he needed the gold.
He did not take all of it. Enough to last him a few weeks and enough to get him out of the Castle, and when he judged by the sound of the battle that the Castle keep was short of defenders, he acted.
He threw one coin. It clinked heavily, rolled down two steps, and shuddered to a halt. A sentry, nervous because of the battle sounds, stared disbelieving at the gold.
Another coin came from the darkness, caught the light of the straw torch, and bounced on the stone of the bottom step.
The sentry grinned, went down to the cellar floor, and a comrade, jealous of his luck, called out a sour warning to be careful, but then a shower of gold glittered in the light, fell in rich harvest on the stairs, and the sentries whooped for their luck and shouted at each other for someone else to watch the prisoners while they scooped the coins into their pouches.
More gold came. Gold that was more than a Fusilier could earn in five years service, gold flickering from the darkness, gold that rang heavy on the stones and Hakeswill watched the sentries go down on hands and knees to make themselves rich. 'Now!’
One sentry managed to scramble back, to pull a trigger and send a deserter backwards over the barricade with a bullet in his brain, but then he too was caught by the half naked men, men who stank in his nostrils, who beat him with fists and then stamped the life from him with the butt of his own musket.
'Stop!' Hakeswill crouched halfway up the steps, next to the bloody body of the one man who had fought back. 'Wait, lads, wait.'
He carried his bag of gold in his hand, crept up the stairs, and saw the passageway beyond the door empty. Packs and greatcoats were piled in the passage and, better still, muskets piled against a wall. The muskets had been put there by Sharpe for the final desperate defence of the Castle, muskets captured from Pot-au-Feu's men and now returned to them.
Hakeswill moved fast. He went left and peered into the inner courtyard and swore silently when he saw the picquet that guarded the southern exit. He went the other way, plucking a greatcoat as he went, and he saw that the courtyard was oddly empty except of French dead and strange, smoking cylinders that lay on the cobbles. He went back to the cellar steps. 'Coats up here, lads, and muskets. Get one each, then follow me.' He would go through the courtyard, across the wall, then break right into the thorns. He prepared himself, steeled himself for the rush, planned the route he would take south. He grinned at his fellow deserters, waited for a twitching of his head to stop. 'They can't kill me, lads. Nor you, while you're with me.'
He looked at the daylight in the Castle yard, at the smoking cylinders, at the dead, and he thought only of life. Of his new chance for life. He cackled to himself, and pushed lank hair from his eyes. Obadiah Hakeswill could not be killed. 'Come on!'
They ran, naked feet slipping on the slick cobbles, but desperation forcing them on. They faced nothing but a firing squad if they were marched westward, and it was better to run into the savage southern hills in this winter than to face the line of muskets in some Portuguese field. They scrambled over the rubble, some hauling themselves by gripping the fallen Spanish gun, and then Hakeswill was in the open, turning right, and a Spanish soldier saw him, was scared of the huge, yellow-faced man who seemed naked beneath his unbuttoned coat, and the Spaniard jerked his unloaded musket into his shoulder.
The movement saved his life. Hakeswill saw only the threat of the bullet, saw the sky-blue uniforms in the thorns behind the man, and he broke left again, into the open valley and led his ragged, dirty band into the clear, clean air of Adrados' fields. 'Run!'
They were like rats that had run from a fire only to find themselves ringed by fire. To the left were Fusiliers and Riflemen, to the right the Spaniards who still came through the thorns, and ahead were the French. Already the Spanish were cutting off the deserters, shouting at them to surrender, and even though the Spaniards did not know this was an enemy, they knew that this filthy, villainous crew were not friends.
Hakeswill ran into the open valley, his breath harsh in his ears, his feet numbed by the snow, and he glanced left and saw he had far outrun the Fusiliers, and he thought he saw Sharpe, but that was no concern for this moment, and then he saw the Riflemen beyond Sharpe and he feared their weapons so he cut right, sprinting in desperation, the gold in his greatcoat pocket, the musket heavy in his hand. The French! There was nowhere else to go, nowhere! He would offer his services to the Fre
nch, desert properly, and though it was not much of a choice it was better than being cut down like a dog in this snowfield. He ran for the nearest Battalion of French infantry, a Battalion that retreated towards the village, and then he heard the hooves behind him.
The hooves had been muffled by the snow and he realized, desperately, that the horseman was close. He turned, toothless mouth aghast with the horror, and he saw the lifted weapon that threatened to crush his skull with a heavy brass hilt and he fumbled with his musket, brought it round as he fell away from the downward stroke, and pulled the trigger.
He laughed maniacally. Death, his master, had not deserted him, and this he had prayed for too! Not this way, perhaps, but he laughed as he saw the bullet lift the rider from the horse, a bullet that went through the lower throat, travelling upwards, and death was as swift as death can be. The body was lifted upwards, the horse swerved away, and the body fell, spread-eagled, thumping onto the snow and the rifle, unloaded, that had threatened his life with its brass-bound butt, fell into the coldness.
Hakeswill paused. It was a moment of sweet victory, a moment to be remembered in the days to come, and he gibbered his victory call at the low clouds and his half-naked body jigged with the joy of it! He had lived! Death was still favouring him! And then he turned and ran for the French ranks. 'Don't shoot! Don't shoot!'
Hakeswill would live yet! He staggered into the French Battalion, gasping with pained lungs, and he grinned as his head twitched. He had escaped.
Chapter 30
Sharpe had watched Hakeswill break into the open field, had sworn, but then a voice had hailed him from behind and he turned to see Major General Nairn beaming at him from a horse. 'Sharpe! My dear Sharpe!'
'Sir!'
Nairn groaned as he slid from the horse. 'Major Sharpe! You've had a full-scale war while my back is turned!'