Sharpe's Escape (15 page)

"Number nine company!" Hooper bellowed. "Fire!"

"Number eight company!" The next was in line. "Fire!"

The outer companies were running, holding on to open cartridge boxes as they scrambled over the uneven turf. A man was hurled backwards, twitching from a bullet's strike. Lawford was riding up behind the swinging door, the colors following him. Musket balls hissed past him as the voltigeurs, closest to the battalion, shot at its officers. The light company, slightly downhill and on the flank of the battalion, began firing at the French, who suddenly saw that the South Essex would form an outflanking line that would soak them with dreaded British musketry, and the columns' officers began shouting at men to deploy into three ranks. The General on the white horse was shoving at men to hurry them into place and a ragged procession of French infantry, all of them remnants of the failed first attack, was coming up the hill to join the seven battalions that had breached the British line. The drummers were still beating their instruments and the Eagles had gained the heights.

"South Essex!" Lawford was standing in his stirrups. "Half-company fire from the center!"

The Portuguese who had broken in the face of the devastating French musketry were coming back to join the South Essex's line. Redcoats were also forming on that left flank. More battalions, brought from the peaceful southern end of the ridge, were hurrying towards the gap, but Lawford wanted to seal it himself. "Fire!" he shouted.

The South Essex had lost a score of men as they clumsily wheeled around on the summit's ridge, but they were in their ranks now and this was what they had been trained to do. To fire and reload. That was the essential skill. To tear off the ends of the thick cartridge paper, prime the gun, close the frizzen, upend the musket, pour the powder, put in the ball, ram the ball and paper, drop the ramrod into the barrel rings, bring the musket to the shoulder, pull the doghead to full cock, aim at the smoke, remember to aim low, wait for the order. "Fire!" The muskets smashed back into bruised shoulders and the men, without thinking, found a new cartridge, tore the end off with their blackened teeth, began again, and all the while the French balls came back and every now and then there would be a sickening thud as a ball found flesh, or a smack as it struck a musket stock, or a hollow pop as it punctured a shako. Then the musket was back up in the shoulder, the doghead was back, the command came, and the flint drove onto the strike plate, flying the frizzen open as the sparks flashed down and there would be a pause, less than the time it took for a sparrow's heart to beat, before the powder in the gun fired and the redcoat's cheek would be burning because of the scraps of fiery powder thrown up from the pan, and the brass stock would hammer back into his shoulder, and the corporals were bellowing behind, "Close up! Close up!" Which meant a man was dead or wounded.

All the while the sound of the musketry flared out from the center, an unending noise like breaking sticks, but louder, much louder, and the French muskets were banging away, but the men could not see those because the powder smoke was thicker than the fog that had wreathed the ridge at dawn. And every man was thirsty because when they bit open the cartridges they got scraps of saltpeter from the gunpowder in their mouths and the saltpeter dried a man's tongue and throat so that he had no spit at all. "Fire!" and the muskets flamed, making the cloud of powder smoke suddenly lurid with fire, and the hooves of the Colonel's horse thumped close behind the rearward rank as he tried to see across the smoke, and somewhere else, way behind the ranks, a band was playing "The Grenadiers' March," but no one was really aware of it, only of the need to pull a new cartridge out and tear off the tip and get the damn musket loaded and get the damn thing done.

They were thieves and murderers and fools and rapists and drunkards. Not one had joined for love of country, and certainly not for love of their King. They had joined because they had been drunk when the recruiting sergeant came to their village, or because a magistrate had offered them a choice between the gallows and the ranks, or because a girl was pregnant and wanted to marry them, or because a girl did not want to marry them, or because they were witless fools who believed the recruiter's outrageous lies or simply because the army gave them a pint of rum and three meals a day, and most had been hungry ever since. They were flogged on the orders of officers who were mostly gentlemen who would never be flogged. They were cursed as drunken halfwits, and they were hanged without trial if they stole so much as a chicken. At home, in Britain, if they left the barracks respectable people crossed the street to avoid them. Some taverns refused them service. They were paid pitifully, fined for every item they lost, and the few pennies they managed to keep they usually gambled away. They were feckless rogues, as violent as hounds and as coarse as swine, but they had two things.

They had pride.

And they had the precious ability to fire platoon volleys. They could fire those half-company volleys faster than any other army in the world. Stand in front of these redcoats and the balls came thick as hail. It was death to be in their way and seven French battalions were now in death's forecourt and the South Essex was tearing them to ribbons. One battalion against seven, but the French had never properly deployed into line and now the outside men tried to get back into the column's protection and so the French formation became tighter and the balls struck it relentlessly, and more men, Portuguese and British, had extended the South Essex line, and then the 88th, the Connaught Rangers, came from the north and the Frenchmen who had gained the ridge were being assailed on two sides by enemies who knew how to fire their muskets. Who had practiced musketry until they could do it blindfolded, drunk or mad. They were the red-coated killers and they were good.

"Can you see anything, Richard?" Lawford shouted over the sound of the volleys.

"They won't hold, sir." Thanks to a vagary of the wind, a small gust that had moved the sluggish smoke a few yards, he had a better view than the Colonel.

"Bayonet?"

"Not yet." Sharpe could see the French were being hit brutally. The South Essex alone was shooting close to fifteen hundred musket balls every minute and they were now one of four or five battalions who had closed on the two French columns. Smoke thickened above the ridge, ringing the Frenchmen who stubbornly stayed on the summit. As ever, Sharpe was astonished by the amount of punishment a column could endure. It seemed to shudder under the blows, yet it did not retreat, it just shrank as the outer ranks and files died, and die they did under the terrible flail of the British and Portuguese musketry.

A big man, dressed in a shabby black coat, with a stub of dead cigar between yellowed teeth and a grubby tasseled nightcap on his head, rode up behind the South Essex. He was followed by a half-dozen aides, the only sign that the big, disheveled man in civilian dress might be someone of importance. He watched the French die, watched the South Essex platoon fire, took the cigar from between his teeth, looked at it morosely and spat out a shred of tobacco. "You must have Welshmen in your bloody battalion, Lawford," he growled.

Lawford, surprised by the man's voice, turned and threw a hasty salute. "Sir!"

"Well, man? Do you have bloody Welshmen?"

"I'm sure we have some, sir."

"They're good!" the man in the nightcap said. He gestured at the ranks with his dead cigar. "Too good to be English, Lawford. Maybe there's a Welsh settlement in Essex?"

"I'm sure there is, sir."

"You're sure of nothing of the bloody sort," the big man said. His name was Sir Thomas Picton and he was the General commanding this portion of the ridge. "I saw what you did, Lawford," he went on, "and I thought you'd lost your bloody mind! About turn and right wheel, eh? In the middle of a bloody battle? Gone soft in the head, I thought, but you did well, man, bloody well. Proud of you. You must have Welsh blood. Do you have any fresh cigars, Lawford?"

"No, sir."

"Not much bloody use, are you?" Picton nodded curtly and rode off, followed by his aides who were as well uniformed as their master was ill clothed. Lawford preened, looked back to the French and saw they were crumbling.

Major Leroy had listened to the General, now he rode to Sharpe. "We've pleased Picton," he said, drawing his pistol, "pleased him so much that he reckons Lawford must have Welsh blood." Sharpe laughed. Leroy aimed the pistol and fired into the remnants of the nearest French column. "When I was a youngster, Sharpe," Leroy said, "I used to shoot raccoons."

Sharpe saw a musket fail to fire in four company. Shattered flint, he suspected, and he pulled a spare one from his pocket and shouted the man's name. "Catch it!" he bellowed, and tossed the flint over the rear rank before looking at Leroy. "What's a raccoon?"

"A useless damn animal, Sharpe, that God put on earth to improve a boy's marksmanship. Why don't the bastards move?"

"They will."

"Then they might take your company with them," Leroy said, and jerked his head towards the slope as if advising Sharpe to go and see for himself.

Sharpe rode to the flank of the line and saw that Slingsby had taken the company down the slope and to the north from where, in skirmish line, they were shooting uphill at the French left flank while a handful of his men were shooting downhill to prevent a scatter of hesitant Frenchmen from reinforcing the column. Did Slingsby want to be a hero? Did he think that the company could cut off the French column by itself? In a moment, Sharpe knew, the French would break and close to six thousand men would spill over the crest and rush down the hill to escape the slaughter and they would sweep the light company away like so much chaff. That moment came even closer when he heard the crack of a cannon from the far side of the fight. It was canister, the tin can that splintered apart at the cannon's mouth and spread its charge of musket balls like a blast from the devil's shotgun. Sharpe did not have a moment, he had seconds, and so he kicked the horse down the hill. "Back to the line!" he shouted at his men. "Back! Fast!"

Slingsby gave him an indignant look. "We're holding them," he protested, "can't go back now!"

Sharpe dropped from the horse and gave its reins to Slingsby. "Back to battalion, Slingsby, that's an order! Now!"

"But…"

"Do it!" Sharpe bellowed like a sergeant.

Slingsby reluctantly mounted and Sharpe shouted at his men. "Form on the battalion!"

And just then the French broke.

They had lasted longer than any general could ask. They had gained the hilltop and for a splendid moment it seemed as if victory had to be theirs, but they had not received the massive reinforcement they needed and the British and Portuguese battalions had reformed, outflanked them and then doused them with rolling volleys. No army in the world could have stood against those volleys, but the French had endured them until bravery alone would not suffice and their only impulse left was to survive and Sharpe saw the blue uniforms come like a breaking wave across the skyline. He and his men ran. Slingsby was well clear, kicking his horse up towards James Hooper's company, and the men who had been on the left of the skirmish line were safe enough, but most of the skirmishers could not escape the rush.

"Form on me!" Sharpe bellowed. "Rally square!"

It was a desperate maneuver, one that broken infantry used in their dying moments against rampaging cavalry, but it served. Thirty or forty men ran to Sharpe, faced outwards and fixed bayonets. "Edge south lads," Sharpe said calmly, "away from them."

Harper had unslung his volley gun. The tide of Frenchmen parted to avoid the clump of redcoats and riflemen, streaming to either side, but Sharpe kept the men moving, a yard at a time, trying to escape the torrent. One Frenchman did not see Sharpe's men and ran onto Perkins's sword bayonet and stayed there until the boy pulled the trigger to blow the man off the long blade with a gout of blood. "Go slow," Sharpe said quietly, "go slow," and just then the General on the white horse, his sword drawn and gold braid bright, came straight at the rally square and he seemed astonished to find an enemy in front of him and he instinctively lowered his sword to make the straight-armed lunge and Harper pulled his trigger, as did four or five other men, and the horse's head and the man behind vanished in a cockade of blood. Both went down, the horse sliding down the hill, hooves flailing, and Sharpe bellowed at his men to hurry leftwards and so just avoided the dying beast. The rider, a bullet hole in his forehead, slid to a halt at the men's feet. "He's a bloody general, sir," Perkins said in amazement.

"Just keep calm," Sharpe said, "edge left." They were out of the stream of Frenchmen now that was running desperately downhill, leaping over corpses, intent on nothing except escaping the musket balls. The British and Portuguese battalions were following them, not in pursuit, but to make a line on the crest from where they harried the fugitives, and some balls whistled over Sharpe's head. "Break now!" he told his men and they ran away from the square and up towards the battalion.

"That was close," Harper said.

"You were in the wrong bloody place."

"It wasn't healthy," Harper said, then looked to see if any man had been left behind. "Perkins! What the hell is that you've got?"

"It's a French general, Sergeant," Perkins said. He had dragged the corpse all the way up the hill and now knelt by the body and began searching the pockets.

"Leave that body alone!" It was Slingsby, back again, on foot now, striding towards the company. "Form on number nine company, look sharp now! I told you to leave that alone!" he snapped at Perkins who had ignored the order. "Take that man's name, Sergeant!" he ordered Huckfield.

"Perkins!" Sharpe said. "Search that body properly. Lieutenant!"

Slingsby looked wide-eyed at Sharpe. "Sir?"

"Come with me." Sharpe stalked off to the left, well out of earshot of the company, then turned on Slingsby and all his pent-up rage exploded.

"Listen, you goddamn bastard, you bloody well nearly lost the company there. Lost them! Every damned man of them! And they know it. So shut your damned mouth until you've learned how to fight."