‘Sir! Sir!’ Sharpe looked left. Harry Price was running towards him. ‘Mr Sharpe!’ ‘Harry.’ Sharpe grinned.
Lieutenant Price, formality forgotten, thumped Sharpe on the back. He had been Sharpe’s Lieutenant in the Light Company. ‘Christ! I thought the buggers had hanged you!’
‘This army can’t do anything right, Harry.’ It was the twentieth time he had said it.
Price was beaming. ‘What in hell’s name happened?’
‘Long story.’
‘Here.’ Price thrust a bottle of brandy at Sharpe. ‘Found it in their headquarters.’
Sharpe smiled. ‘Later, Harry. There might be more to do.’
‘God, I hope not! I want to live to be thirty.’ Price tipped the bottle to his mouth. ‘I suppose you’re the commanding officer now?’
‘You suppose right.’ Leroy’s body had been brought into the village. His death had at least been quick. Leroy would have known nothing. The other consolation was that he had left no family, no letters that needed to be written or widow to console.
The guns still fired at the bridge. Sharpe frowned. ‘Why in hell haven’t we got guns?’
‘I heard they got lost,’ Price grinned. ‘This bloody army never does anything right. Jesus! It’s good to see you, sir!’
And, oddly to Sharpe, it seemed the whole Battalion thought the same. The officers wanted to shake his hand, the men wanted to look at him as if to prove to themselves that he still lived, and he grinned shyly at their pleasure. Angel, who had come into the village with Sharpe’s horse, basked in the reflected glory. Dozens of bottles were thrust at Sharpe, dozens of times he claimed that the army couldn’t hang a curtain if they tried. He knew he was smiling idiotically, but he could not help it. He shook Harry Price off by ordering him to set up picquets at the village’s northern edge and took refuge from embarrassment in his temporary headquarters.
Where someone else found him.
‘Sir?’
The doorway was shadowed by a huge man who was festooned with weapons. Sharpe felt the smile coming again. ‘Patrick?’
‘Christ!’ The Sergeant ducked under the lintel. There were tears in his eyes. ‘I knew you’d be back.’
‘Couldn’t let you bastards fight a war without me.’
‘No!’ Harper grinned.
There was an odd silence, which both men broke together. Sharpe waved at the Irishman. ‘Go on?’
‘No, sir. You?’
‘Just that it’s good to be back.’
‘Aye.’ Harper stared at him. ‘What happened?’
‘Long story, Patrick.’
‘It would be.’
There was silence again. Sharpe felt an immense relief that the Sergeant was alive and well. He knew he should say something to that effect, but it would be too embarrassing. Instead he waved at the window-ledge. ‘Paddock made some tea.’
‘Grand!’
‘Is Isabella well?’
‘She’s just grand, sir.’ Harper tipped the cup up and drained it. ‘Mr Leroy gave us permission to get married.’
‘That’s wonderful!’
‘Aye, well.’ Harper shrugged. ‘There’s a wee one on the way, sir. I think Mr Leroy thought it would be best.’
‘Probably.’.
Harper smiled. ‘I had a bet with Mr d’Alembord that you’d be back, sir.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘You’ll need money if you’re going to marry, Patrick.’
‘Aye, that’s true. Nothing like a woman for spending a man’s money, eh?’
‘So when’s the wedding?’
‘Soon as I can find a priest. She’s got herself a dress, so she has. It’s got frills.’ He said it gloomily.
‘You’ll let me know?’
‘Of course!’ Harper was embarrassed. ‘You know what women are like, sir.’
‘I’ve seen one or two, Patrick.’
‘Aye well. They like marrying, so they do.’ He shrugged.
‘Especially when they’re pregnant, yes?’
Harper laughed. There was silence again. The huge Sergeant put the cup down. ‘It is grand to see you, sir.’
‘You won your bet, eh?’
‘Only a bloody pound.’
‘You had that much faith in me, eh?’
They laughed again.
A horse’s hooves were loud outside. A voice shouted. ‘South Essex!’
‘In here!’ Sharpe shouted back, glad suddenly of the distraction from the emotion he felt.
A staff officer dismounted and ducked under the lintel. ‘Colonel Leroy?’ He straightened up.
It was Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones, in his hand a folded order for the Battalion. He stared at Sharpe, his mouth dropped open, and, his head slowly shaking and his eyes widening, he fell backwards in a dead faint. His scabbard chains clinked as he slumped on the floor. Sharpe nodded at the prostrate body. That’s the bugger who defended me.’
Harper laughed, then cocked his head. ‘Listen!’
The French guns had stopped. The bridge must have fallen, and suddenly Sharpe knew what he wanted to do. ‘Angel!’
‘Senor?’
‘Horses! Patrick?’
‘Sir?’
‘Grab that fool’s horse.’ He pointed at Trumper-Jones. ‘We’re going hunting!’
‘For what?’ Harper was already moving.
‘Wedding presents and a woman!’ Sharpe followed Harper into the street, looked around, and spotted a Captain of the South Essex. ‘Mr Mahoney!’
‘Sir?’
‘You’ll find orders in that house! Obey them! I’ll be back!’ He gave the mystified Mahoney the letter for Hogan, swung onto Carbine’s saddle, and rode towards the bridge.
To the north of Gamarra Mayor, at a village called Durana, Spanish troops cut the Great Road. The defenders at Durana had been the Spanish regiments loyal to France.
Countrymen fought countrymen, the bitterest clash, and Wellington’s Spaniards, faithful to Spain, won the bridge at five o’clock. The Great Road to France was cut.
The Spanish troops had climbed barricades of the dead. They had fought till their musket barrels were almost red hot, till they had savaged the defenders and won a great victory. They had blocked the Great Road.
The French could still have broken through. They could have screened themselves to the west and thrown their great columns at the tired, — blood-soaked Spaniards, but in the confusion of a smoke filled plain no one knew how few men had broken through in the rear. And all the time, minute by minute, the British Battalions were coming from the west while the great guns, massed wheel to wheel by Wellington, tore huge gaps in the French lines.
The French broke.
King Joseph’s army, that had started the day with a confidence not seen by a French army in Spain for six years, collapsed.
It happened desperately fast, and it happened in pieces. One Brigade would fight, standing fast and firing at their enemies, while another would crumble and run at the first British volley. The French guns fell silent one by one, were limbered up and taken back towards the city. Generals lost touch with their troops, they shouted for information, shouted for men to stand, but the French line was being shredded by the regular, staccato volleys of the British Battalions while overhead the British shells cracked apart in smoke and shrapnel and the French troops edged backwards and then came the rumour that the Great Road was cut and that the enemy came from the north. In truth the French guns still held the British at Gamarra Mayor and the Spaniards further north were too tired and too few to attack south, but the rumour finally broke the French army. It ran.
It was early evening, the time when the trout were rising to feed in the river that flowed beneath the now unguarded bridge at Gamarra Mayor. The French who had guarded the bridge so well had seen their comrades run. They joined the flight.
The men who watched from the western hills or from the Puebla Heights were given a view of magnificence, a view granted to few men, an eagle’s view of victory.