„They won’t stand, Ned,” Hill called back. „They won’t stand.”
Hill was right. The first Frenchmen were already backing down the hill because of the futility of shooting at stone walls. Sir Edward, exultant at this easy victory, went to the parapet to look at the retreating enemy and he stood there, gold braid catching the smoke-dimmed sun, watching the enemy column disintegrate and run away, but a few stubborn Frenchmen still fired and suddenly Sir Edward gasped, clapped a hand to his elbow and Sharpe saw that the sleeve of the General’s elegant red coat was torn and that a jagged piece of white bone was showing through the ripped wool and bloody mangled flesh.
„Jesus!” Paget swore. He was in terrible pain. The ball had shattered his elbow and seared up through his biceps. He was half bent over with the agony and very pale.
„Take him down to the doctors,” Hill ordered. „You’ll be all right, Ned.”
Paget forced himself to stand straight. An aide had taken off a neckcloth and was trying to bind his General’s wound, but Paget shook him off. „The command is yours,” he said to Hill through clenched teeth.
„So it is,” Hill acknowledged.
„Keep firing!” Sharpe shouted at his men. It did not matter that the rifle barrels were almost too hot to touch, what mattered was to drive the remaining French back down the hill or, better still, to kill them. Another rush of feet announced that more reinforcements had arrived at the seminary for the French had yet to find any way of stopping the traffic across the river. The British artillery, kings of this battlefield, were hammering any French gunner who dared show his face. Every few moments a brave French crew would run to the abandoned guns on the quay in hope of putting a round shot into one of the barges, but every time they were struck by spherical case and even by canister, for the new British battery, down at the water’s edge, was close enough to use the deadly ammunition across the river. The musket balls flared from the cannons’ mouths like duck shot, killing six or seven men at a time, and after a while the French gunners abandoned their efforts and just hid in the houses at the back of the quay.
And then, quite suddenly, there were no Frenchmen firing on the northern slope. The grass was horrid with dead men and wounded men and with fallen muskets and with little flickering fires where the musket wadding had set light to the grass, but the survivors had fled to the Amarante road in the valley. The single tree looked as though it had been attacked by locusts. A drum trundled down the hill, making a rattling noise. Sharpe saw a French flag through the smoke, but could not see whether the staff was topped by an eagle. „Stop firing!” Hill called.
„Clean your barrels!” Sharpe shouted. „Check your flints!” For the French would be back. Of that he was certain. They would be back.
CHAPTER 9
More men came to the seminary. A score of Portuguese civilians arrived with hunting guns and bags of ammunition, escorted by a plump priest who was cheered by the redcoats when he arrived in the garden with a bell-mouthed blunderbuss like those carried by stage-coach drivers to repel highwaymen. The Buffs had relit the fires in the kitchens and now fetched great metal cauldrons of tea or hot water to the roof. The tea cleaned out the soldiers’ throats and the hot water swilled out their muskets and rifles. Ten boxes of spare ammunition were also carried up and Harper filled his shako with the cartridges, which were not as fine as those supplied for the rifles, but would do in a pinch. „And this is what you call a pinch, sir, eh?” he asked, distributing the cartridges along the parapet where the rifles and ramrods leaned. The French were thickening in the low ground to the north. If they had any sense, Sharpe thought, the enemy would bring mortars to that low ground, but so far none had appeared. Perhaps all the mortars were to the west of the city, guarding against the Royal Navy, and too far away to be fetched quickly.
Extra loopholes were battered through the garden’s northern wall. Two of the Northamptonshires had manhandled a great pair of rain butts to the wall and propped the door of the garden shed across the barrels’ tops to make a fire step from which they could shoot over the wall’s coping.
Harris brought Sharpe a mug of tea, then looked left and right before producing a leg of cold chicken from his cartridge box. „Thought you might like this as well, sir.”
„Where did you get it?”
„Found it, sir,” Harris said vaguely, „and I got one for you too, Sarge.” Harris gave a leg to Harper, then produced a breast for himself, brushed some loose powder from it and bit into it hungrily.
Sharpe discovered he was famished and the chicken tasted delicious. „Where did it come from?” he insisted.
„I think they were General Paget’s dinner, sir,” Harris confessed, „but he’s probably lost his appetite.”
„I should think he has,” Sharpe said, „and a pity to let good chicken waste, eh?” He turned as a drumbeat sounded and saw the French were forming their ranks again, but this time only on the northern side of the seminary. „To your places!” he called, chucking the chicken bone far out into the garden. A few of the French were now carrying ladders, presumably plundered from the houses that were being battered by the British guns. „When they come,” he called, „aim for the men with the ladders.” Even without the rifle fire he doubted the French could get close enough to place the ladders against the garden wall, but it did no harm to make certain. Most of his riflemen had used the lull in the fight to load their newly cleaned barrels with leather-wrapped balls and prime powder which meant their first shots ought to be lethally accurate. After that, as the French pressed closer and the noise rose and the smoke thickened, they would use cartridges, leave the leather patches in their butt traps and so sacrifice accuracy for speed. Sharpe now loaded his own rifle, using a patch, but no sooner had he returned the ramrod to its slots than General Hill was beside him.
„I’ve never fired a rifle,” Hill said.
„Very like a musket, sir,” Sharpe said, embarrassed at being singled out by a general.
„May I?” Hill reached for the weapon and Sharpe yielded it. „It’s rather beautiful,” Hill said wistfully, caressing the Baker’s flank, „not nearly as cumbersome as a musket.”
„It’s a lovely thing,” Sharpe said fervently.
Hill aimed the gun down the hill, seemed about to cock and fire, then suddenly handed it back to Sharpe. „I’d dearly like to try it,” he said, „but if I missed my aim then the whole army would know about it, eh? And I’d never live that down.” He spoke loudly and Sharpe understood he had been an unwitting participant in a little piece of theater. Hill had not really been interested in the rifle, but rather in taking the men’s minds away from the threat beneath them. In the process he had subtly flattered them by suggesting they could do something he could not, and he had left them grinning. Sharpe thought about what he had just seen. He admired it, but he also admired Sir Arthur Wellesley who would never have resorted to such a display. Sir Arthur would ignore the men and the men, in turn, would fight like demons to gain his grudging approval.
Sharpe had never wasted much time worrying why some men were born to be officers and others not. He had jumped the gap, but that did not make the system any less unfair. Yet to complain of the world’s unfairness was the same as grumbling that the sun was hot or that the wind sometimes changed its direction. Unfairness existed, it always had and it always would, and the miracle, to Sharpe’s eyes, was that some men like Hill and Wellesley, though they had become wealthy and privileged through unfair advantages, were nevertheless superb at what they did. Not all generals were good, many were downright bad, but Sharpe had usually been lucky and found himself commanded by men who knew their business. Sharpe did not care that Sir Arthur Wellesley was the son of an aristocrat and had purchased his way up the ladder of promotion and was as cold as a lawyer’s sense of charity. The long-nosed bugger knew how to win and that was what mattered.