„I shall fillet them,” Sergeant Deron said doggedly, „fry them with parsley and serve the fillets with a red wine sauce. Then for an entree I have lamb. Very good lamb.”
„Good! I do like lamb,” Soult said. „You can make a caper sauce?”
„A caper sauce!” Deron looked disgusted. „The vinegar will drown the lamb,” he said indignantly, „and it is good lamb, tender and fat.”
„A very delicate caper sauce, perhaps?” Soult suggested.
The guns rose to a sudden fury, shaking the windows and rattling the crystal peardrops of the two chandeliers above the long table, but both the Marshal and the cook ignored the sound. „What I will do,” Deron said in a voice which suggested that there could be no discussion, „is bake the lamb with some goose fat.”
„Good, good,” Soult said.
„And garnish it with onions, ham and a few cepes.”
A harassed-looking officer, sweating and red-faced from the day’s heat, came into the room. „Sir!”
„A moment,” Soult said, frowning, then looked back to Deron. „Onions, ham and some cepes?” he repeated. „And perhaps we might add some lardons, Sergeant? Lardons go so well with lamb.”
„I shall garnish it with a little chopped ham,” Deron said stoically, „some small onions and a few cepes.”
Soult surrendered. „I know it will taste superb, quite superb. And Deron, thank you for this breakfast. Thank you.”
„It would have been better eaten when it was cooked,” Deron said, then sniffed and went from the room.
Soult beamed at the cook’s retreating back, then scowled at the newcomer who had interrupted him. „You’re Captain Brossard, are you not? You wish some breakfast?” The Marshal indicated with a butter knife that Brossard should take the seat at the end of the table. „How’s General Foy?”
Brossard was an aide to Foy and he had no time for breakfast nor indeed to offer a report on General Foy’s health. He had brought news and, for a second, he was too full of it to speak properly, but then he controlled himself and pointed eastward. „The British, sir, they’re in the seminary.”
Soult stared at him for a heartbeat, not quite believing what he heard. „They are what?” he asked.
„British, sir, in the seminary.”
„But Quesnel assured me there were no boats!” Soult protested. Quesnel was the city’s French governor.
„None on their bank, sir.” All the boats in the city had been pulled from the water and piled on the quays where they were available for the French to use, but would be of no use to anyone coming from the south. „But they’re nevertheless crossing,” Brossard said. „They’re already on the hill.”
Soult felt his heart miss a beat. The seminary was on a hill that dominated the road to Amarante, and that road was his lifeline back to the depots in Spain and also the connection between the garrison in Oporto and General Loison’s men on the Tamega. If the British cut that road then they could pick off the French army piece by piece and Soult’s reputation would be destroyed along with his men. The Marshal stood, knocking over his chair in his anger. „Tell General Foy to push them back into the river!” he roared. „Now! Go! Push them into the river!”
The men hurried from the room, leaving Kate and Christopher alone, and Kate saw the look of utter panic on her husband’s face and felt a fierce joy because of it. The windows rattled, the chandeliers shivered and the British were coming.
„Well, well, well! We have Rifles among our congregation! We are blessed indeed. I didn’t know any of the 95th were attached to the 1st Brigade.” The speaker was a burly, rubicund man with a balding head and an affable face. If it were not for his uniform he would have looked like a friendly farmer and Sharpe could imagine him in an English market town, leaning on a hurdle, prodding plump sheep and waiting for a livestock auction to begin. „You are most welcome,” he told Sharpe.
„That’s Daddy Hill,” Harris told Pendleton.
„Now, now, young man,” General Hill boomed, „you shouldn’t use an officer’s nickname within his earshot. Liable to get you punished!”
„Sorry, sir.” Harris had not meant to speak so loudly.
„But you’re a rifleman so you’re forgiven. And a very scruffy rifleman too, I must say! What is the army coming to when we don’t dress for battle, eh?” He beamed at Harris, then fished in his pocket and brought out a handful of almonds. „Something to occupy your tongue, young man.”
„Thank you, sir.”
There were now two generals on the seminary roof. General Hill, commander of the 1st Brigade, whose forces were crossing the river and whose kindly nature had earned him the nickname of „Daddy,” had joined Sir Edward Paget just in time to see three French battalions come from the city’s eastern suburbs and form into two columns that would assault the seminary hill. The three battalions were in the valley, being pushed and harried into their ranks by sergeants and corporals. One column would come straight up at the seminary’s facade while the other was forming near the Amarante road to assault the northern flank. But the French were also aware that British reinforcements were constantly arriving at the seminary and so they had sent a battery of guns to the river bank with orders to sink the three barges. The columns waited for the gunners to open fire, probably hoping that once the barges were sunk the gunners would turn their weapons onto the seminary.
And Sharpe, who had been wondering why Sir Arthur Wellesley had not put guns at the convent across the river, saw that he had worried about nothing, for no sooner did the French batteries appear than a dozen British guns, which had been parked out of sight at the back of the convent terrace, were wheeled forward. „That’s the medicine for Frenchmen!” General Hill exclaimed when the great row of guns appeared.
The first to fire was a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer, the British equivalent of the cannon that had bombarded Sharpe on the watchtower hill. It was loaded with a spherical case shot, a weapon that only Britain deployed, which had been invented by Lieutenant Colonel Shrapnel and the manner of its working was kept a closely guarded secret. The shell, which was packed with musket balls about a central charge of powder, was designed to shower those balls and the scraps of its casing down onto enemy troops, yet to work properly it had to explode well short of its target so that the shot’s forward momentum carried the lethal missiles on to the enemy, and that precision demanded that the gunners cut their fuses with exquisite skill. The howitzer’s gunner had that skill. The howitzer boomed and rocked back on its trail, the shell arced over the river, leaving the telltale wisp of fuse smoke in its wake, then exploded twenty yards short and twenty feet above the leading French gun just as it was being unlimbered. The explosion tore the air red and white, the bullets and shattered casing screamed down and every horse in the French team was eviscerated, and every man in the French gun crew, all fourteen of them, was either killed or wounded, while the gun itself was thrown off its carriage.
„Oh dear,” Hill said, forgetting the bloodthirsty welcome with which he had greeted the sight of the British batteries. „Those poor fellows,” he said, „dear me.”
The cheers of the British soldiers in the seminary were drowned by the huge bellow of the other British guns opening fire. From their eyrie on the southern bank they dominated the French position and their spherical case, common shells and round shot swept the French guns with dreadful effect. The French gunners abandoned their pieces, left their horses squealing and dying, and fled, and then the British guns racked their elevating screws or loosened the howitzer quoins and started to pour shot and shell into the massed ranks of the nearest French column. They raked it from the flank, pouring round shot through close-packed files, exploding case shot over their heads and killing with a terrible ease.