Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe’s Escape, Sharpe’s Fury, Sharpe’s Battle

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good man.’ A bugle sounded from half a mile north and Lawford twisted in his saddle to find Major Forrest. ‘We can stand down, Major. Half and half, though, I think.’

Half the men stayed in line, the others were released to make tea, to eat and relieve themselves, but none was permitted to go beyond the newly made road and so vanish from the battalion’s sight. If the French came then the men were expected to be in line within half a minute. Two of the light company wives sat by a fire honing bayonets with sharpening stones and cackling with laughter at a joke told by Rifleman Hagman. Sergeant Read, off duty for the moment, was on one knee, a hand on his musket, praying. Rifleman Harris, who claimed to believe in none of the gods, was making certain that his lucky rabbit’s foot was in his pouch, while Ensign Iliffe was trying to hide behind the Colonel’s tent where he was being sick. Sharpe called to him. ‘Mister Iliffe!’

‘Sir.’ Iliffe, strands of yellowish liquid straggling from his unshaven chin, came nervously to Sharpe, who drew his sword.

‘Take that, Mister Iliffe,’ Sharpe said, pretending not to notice that the Ensign had been vomiting. ‘Find the Portuguese cavalry smith and have an edge put on it. A proper edge. One I can shave with.’ He gave the boy two shillings, realizing that his earlier advice, that Iliffe should pay a shilling himself, had been impractical because Iliffe probably did not have a penny to spare. ‘Go on with you. Bring it back to me as soon as you can.’

Robert Knowles, stripped to his waist, was shaving outside Lawford’s tent. The skin of his chest and back was milk white while his face was as dark as old wood. ‘You should grow a moustache, Robert,’ Sharpe said.

‘What a ghastly notion,’ Knowles said, peering into the mirror that was propped against the water bowl. ‘I had an uncle with a moustache and he went bankrupt. How are you feeling?’

‘Horrible.’

Knowles paused, face half lathered, razor poised by his cheek, and stared at Sharpe. ‘You look horrible. You’re to go in, Richard, the Colonel’s expecting you.’

Sharpe thought of borrowing the razor, but his jaw was still tender where he had been kicked and he reckoned he could go a day without a shave, though at the end of it his chin would be black as powder. He ducked into the tent to find Lawford sitting at a trestle table covered with fine linen and expensive porcelain. ‘Boiled eggs,’ the Colonel greeted him warmly. ‘I do so relish a properly boiled egg. Sit yourself down, Sharpe. The bread’s not too hard. How are your wounds?’

‘Hardly notice them, sir,’ Sharpe lied.

‘Good man.’ The Colonel spooned some runny egg into his mouth, then gestured through the canvas towards the east. ‘Fog’s lifting. You think the French will come?’

‘Major Hogan seemed sure of it, sir.’

‘Then we shall do our duty,’ Lawford said, ‘and it will be good practice for the battalion, eh? Real targets! That’s coffee, very good coffee as well. Do help yourself.’

It seemed that Sharpe was to be Lawford’s only guest, for there were no plates or silverware for another man. He poured himself coffee, helped himself to an egg and a slice of bread, and ate in silence. He felt uncomfortable. He had known Lawford for over ten years, yet he could think of nothing to say. Some men, like Hogan or Major Forrest, were never short of conversation. Put them down among a group of strangers and they could chatter away like magpies, but Sharpe was always struck dumb except with those he knew really well. The Colonel did not seem to mind the silence. He ate steadily, reading a four-week-old copy of The Times. ‘Good Lord,’ he said at one point.

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘Tom Dyton’s dead. Poor old chap. Of an advanced age, it says here. He must have been seventy if he was a day!’

‘I didn’t know him, sir.’

‘Had land in Surrey. Fine old fellow, married a Calloway, which is always a sensible thing to do. Consols are holding steady, I see.’ He folded the paper and pushed it across the table. ‘Like to read it, Sharpe?’

‘I would, sir.’

‘All yours, then.’

Sharpe would not read it, but the paper would be useful anyway. He cracked the top off another egg and wondered what Consols were. He knew they had something to do with money, but just what he had no idea.

‘So you think the French will come?’ Lawford asked, forcing a heartiness into his voice and apparently unaware that he had voiced the identical question just minutes before.

Sharpe sensed a nervousness in the Colonel and wondered what caused it. ‘I think we have to assume they’ll come, sir.’

‘Quite so, quite so. Prepare for the worst, eh, and hope for the best? Very wise that, Sharpe.’ Lawford buttered a slice of bread. ‘So let’s assume there’s going to be a scrap, shall we? Wellington and Masséna playing King of the Castle, eh? But it shouldn’t be a difficult day, should it?’

Was Lawford nervous of a battle? It seemed unlikely, for the Colonel had been in enough actions to know what must be coming, but Sharpe attempted to reassure him anyway. ‘It never does to understimate the Crapauds, sir,’ he said carefully, ‘and they’ll keep coming whatever we chuck at them, but no, it shouldn’t be difficult. That hill will slow them and we’ll kill them.’

‘That’s rather what I thought, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, offering a dazzling smile. ‘The hill will slow them and then we’ll kill them. So, all in all, the fox is running, the scent’s high, we’re mounted on a damned fine horse and the going’s firm.’

‘We should win, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘if that’s what you mean. And if the Portuguese fight well.’

‘Ah yes, the Portuguese. Hadn’t thought of them, but they seem fine fellows. Do have that last egg.’

‘I’m full, sir.’

‘You’re sure? Very kind. I never say no to a well-boiled egg. My father, God rest him, always believed he would be met at the gates of heaven by an angel carrying two decently boiled eggs on a silver salver. I do hope it turned out that way for him.’ Sharpe decided there was nothing to say to that so stayed silent as the Colonel sliced off the egg’s top, sprinkled it with salt and dug in his spoon. ‘The thing is, Sharpe,’ Lawford went on, but hesitantly now, ‘if the going is firm and we don’t need to be over-anxious, then I’d like to spread some experience through the battalion. Know what I mean?’

‘The French do that, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘Do they?’ Lawford seemed surprised.

‘Every time they fight us, sir, they shovel experience all over us.’

‘Ah, I see your drift!’ Lawford ate some egg, then dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘I mean real experience, Sharpe, the kind that will serve the regiment well.

Fellows don’t learn their duties by watching, do they? But by doing. Don’t you agree?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘So I’ve decided, Sharpe,’ Lawford was not looking at Sharpe any more, but concentrating on his egg, ‘that Cornelius ought to command the light company today. He’s not taking it over, don’t think that for a moment, but I do want him to stretch his wings. Want to see how he does, eh? And if it ain’t going to be a tricky business, then today will blood him gently.’ He spooned more egg into his mouth and dared to give Sharpe a quizzical look. Sharpe said nothing. He was furious, humiliated and helpless. He wanted to protest, but to what end? Lawford had plainly made up his mind and to fight the decision would only make the Colonel dig in his heels. ‘And you, Sharpe,’ Lawford smiled now he felt the worst was over, ‘I think you probably need a rest. That tumble you took did some damage, eh? You look battered. So let Cornelius show us his stuff, eh? And you can use his horse and serve as my eyes. Advise me.’

‘My advice, sir,’ Sharpe could not help saying, ‘is to let your best man command the light company.’

‘And if I do that,’ Lawford said, ‘I’ll never know what potential Cornelius has. No, Sharpe, let him have his canter, eh? You’ve already proved yourself.’ Lawford stared at Sharpe, wanting his approval of the suggestion, but again Sharpe said nothing. He felt as though the bottom had dropped from his world.

And just then a gun fired from the valley.

The shell screamed through the fog, burst into sunlight above the ridge where, showing as a black ball against a clear sky, it arched over the troops to fall close beside the newly made road which linked the British and Portuguese troops along the ridge. It exploded after its first bounce, doing no harm, but a scrap of shell casing, almost spent, rapped against Lawford’s tent, making the taut grey canvas shudder. ‘Time to go, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, throwing down his egg-stained napkin.

Because the French were coming.

Thirty-three French battalions formed into four columns were launched across the stream and up the far slope that was thickly obscured by fog. This was only the first attack. The second attack was still assembling, their twenty-two battalions forming into two more great columns which would advance either side of the better road that led towards the northern end of the ridge while a third, smaller column would follow behind them to exploit their success. Together the two attacks made a hammer and an anvil. The first assault, the heaviest, would follow the lesser road up to the lowest part of the ridge, capture its wide summit, then turn north to drive in the defenders desperately fending off the second blow. Marshal Masséna, waiting close to the troops who would deliver that second thunderous strike, imagined the English and Portuguese troops reduced to panic; he saw them fleeing from the ridge, throwing down packs and weapons, discarding anything that would slow them, and then he would release his cavalry to sweep across the ridge’s northern end and slaughter the fugitives. He drummed his fingers against his saddle’s pommel in time to the fog-muffled rhythm of the drums that sounded to the south. Those drums were driving the first attack up the slope. ‘What’s the time?’ he asked an aide.

‘A quarter to six, sir.’

‘The fog’s lifting, don’t you think?’ Masséna stared into the vapour with his one eye. The Emperor had taken the other in a shooting accident while they were hunting, and, ever since, Masséna had worn a patch.

‘Perhaps a little, sir,’ the aide said doubtfully.

Tonight, Masséna thought, he would sleep in the monastery said to be on the ridge’s far slope. He would send a troop of dragoons to escort Henriette from Tondela from where he had been so abruptly summoned the previous night, and he smiled as he recalled her white arms reaching playfully for him as he dressed. He had slept an hour or two with the army, and risen early to find a cold, foggy dawn, but the fog, he reckoned, was France’s friend. It would let the troops get most of the way up the slope before the British and Portuguese could see them, and once the Eagles were close to the summit the business should not take long. Victory by midday, he thought, and he imagined the bells ringing out in Paris to announce the triumph of the Eagles. He wondered what new honours would come to him. He was already the Prince of Essling, but by tonight, he thought, he might have earned a dozen other royal titles. The Emperor could be generous in such things, and the Emperor expected great things of Masséna. The rest of Europe was at peace, cowed into submission by the armies of France, and so Napoleon had sent reinforcements into Spain, had formed this new Army of Portugal that had been entrusted to Masséna, and the Emperor expected Lisbon to be captured before the leaves fell. Victory, Masséna thought, victory by midday, and then the enemy’s remnants would be pursued all the way to Lisbon.

‘You’re sure there’s a monastery across the ridge?’ he enquired of one of his Portuguese aides, a man who fought for the French because he believed they represented reason, liberty, modernity and rationality.

‘There is, sir.’