Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe’s Company, Sharpe’s Sword, Sharpe’s Enemy

Fletcher shrugged. He knew it could take weeks for the squat howitzers to reduce enough of Badajoz to smoking rubble, to burn the food supplies and thus force a surrender. ‘A month, my Lord?’

‘Two, more like, perhaps three. And let me advert you, Colonel, to the notion, imperfectly understood though it may be within the walls, that the Spanish are our allies. If we indiscriminately bomb them with shells it is possible, you will grant me, that our allies will be displeased.’

Fletcher nodded. ‘They’ll not be too happy, my Lord, if your men rape everything that moves and steal everything that doesn’t.’

‘We will trust to our soldiers’ good sense.’ The words were cynically said. ‘And now, Colonel, perhaps you can tell us about the breaches. Are they practical?’

‘No, sir, they are not.’ Fletcher’s Scottish accent was stronger again. ‘I can tell you a good deal, sir, most of it new.’ He turned the map round so that the General was looking at the two bastions from the point of view of an attacker. The Santa Maria was to the left, Trinidad to the right. Fletcher had marked the breaches. The Trinidad had lost half of its face, a gap nearly a hundred feet wide and the Engineer had pencilled in his estimate of the height reduction. Twenty-five feet. The flank of the Santa Maria facing the Trinidad was equally badly hit. ‘The breaches, as you can see, my Lord, are now about twenty-five feet high. That’s a hell of a climb! That’s higher, if you’ll forgive me for pointing it out, than the unbreached wall at Ciudad Rodrigo!’ He leaned back as if he had made a scoring hit.

Wellington nodded. ‘We are all aware, Colonel, that Badajoz is appreciably bigger than Ciudad Rodrigo. Pray continue.’

‘My Lord.’ Fletcher leaned forward again. ‘Let me advert you to this.’ He grinned as he used one of Wellington’s favourite expressions. His broad finger settled on the ditch to the front of the Santa Maria. ‘They’ve blocked the ditch here, and here.’ The finger moved to the right of the Trinidad breach. ‘They’re boxing us in.’ His voice was serious now. He could twist the General’s tail from time to time, but only dared do it because he was a good Engineer, trusted by Wellington, and he saw it as his job to give his true point of view and not be a lickspittle. The finger tapped the ditch. ‘It seems they’ve put carts in the ditch, upturned carts, and lengths of timber. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that they plan to fire those obstacles. You can see what will happen, gentlemen. Our troops will be in the ditch, trying to climb a bloody great ramp, and there’ll be no escape from the grapeshot. They can’t go left and right into the darkness to regroup. They’ll be trapped, lit up, like rats in a bloody barrel.’

Wellington listened to the impassioned outburst. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Aye, my Lord, and there’s more.’

‘Go on.’

The finger stayed to the right of the Trinidad breach. ‘The French have dug another ditch here, in the bottom of the ditch, and flooded it. We’ll be jumping into water, deep water, and it looks as if they’re extending it. Round here.’ The finger traced a line back in front of both breaches.

Wellington’s eyes were on the map. ‘So the longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes?’

Fletcher sighed, but conceded the point. ‘Aye, there’s that.’

Wellington raised his eyes to the Engineer. ‘What do we gain by time?’

‘I can lower the breaches.’

‘By how much?’

‘Ten feet.’

‘How long?’

‘A week.’

Wellington paused, then. ‘You mean two weeks.’

‘Aye, my Lord, perhaps.’

‘We do not have two weeks. We do not have one week. We must take the city. It must be soon.’ There was silence in the room. Outside the windows the guns hammered over the floodwaters. Wellington looked back to the map, reached over the table, and put a long finger on the huge space between the bastions. ‘There’s a ravelin there?’

‘Aye, my Lord, and still being built.’ The ravelin was sketched on the map; a masonry wedge, diamond shaped, that would break up an attack. If the French had been given time to finish it, before the siege guns had started firing, it would have been like a new bastion, built in the ditch, outflanking all attacks. As it was it formed a vast, flat-topped obstacle, surrounded by the ditch, smack between the two breaches.

Wellington looked up to Fletcher. ‘You seem very sure of this new information?’

‘Aye, my Lord, I am. We had a laddie on the glacis last night. He did a good job.’ The praise was grudging.

‘Who?’

Fletcher jerked his head towards Hogan. ‘One of Major Hogan’s lads, sir.’

‘Who, Major?’

Hogan stopped fidgeting with his snuffbox. ‘Richard Sharpe, sir, you’ll remember him?’

Wellington leaned back in his chair. ‘Good Lord. Sharpe?’ He smiled. ‘What’s he doing with you? I thought he had a company?’

‘He did, my Lord. His gazette was refused.’

Wellington’s face scowled. ‘By God! They do not let me make a man Corporal in this damned army! So Sharpe was on the glacis last night?’

Hogan nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Outside, sir. I thought you might want to speak to him.’

‘Good Lord, yes.’ Wellington’s tone was dry. ‘He’s the only man in the army who’s been to the top of the glacis. Fetch him in!’

There were Generals of Division, of Brigade, gunners, Engineers and staff officers and they all turned to stare at the tall, green-jacketed man. They had all heard of him, even the Generals newly arrived from England, because this was the man who had captured a French Eagle and who looked as if he could do it again. He looked battered and hard, like the weapons that festooned him, and his limp and scars spoke of a soldier who fought grimly. Wellington smiled at him and looked round the table. ‘Captain Sharpe has shared all my battles, gentlemen. Isn’t that right, Sharpe? From Seringapatam to today?’

‘Since Boxtel, sir.’

‘Good God. I was a Lieutenant-Colonel.’

‘And I a Private, sir.’ The aides-de-camp, the young aristocrats that Wellington liked as his messengers, stared curiously at the scarred face. Not many men fought out of the ranks. Hogan watched the General. He was being genial to Sharpe, not because the Rifleman had once saved his life, but because he suspected that in Sharpe he had found an ally against the Engineers’ caution. Hogan sighed inwardly. Wellington knew this man. The General looked round the room. ‘A chair for Captain Sharpe?’

‘Lieutenant Sharpe, sir.’ Sharpe’s words were almost a challenge, certainly bitter, but the General ignored them.

‘Sit down, sit down. Now, tell us about the breaches.’

Sharpe told them, not awed by the company, but he added little to Fletcher’s account. He had not been able to see clearly, the darkness was relieved only by a very occasional gun-flash from the city’s walls, and much of his account was based on the sounds he had heard as he lay on the glacis lip and listened, not just to the French working parties, but to the British grapeshot smashing through the weeds and rattling on the walls. Wellington let him finish. It had been a concise statement. The General’s eyes held Sharpe’s. ‘One question.’

‘Sir?’

‘Are the breaches practical?’ Wellington’s eyes were unreadable, cold like steel.

Sharpe’s gaze was as hard, as unyielding. ‘Yes.’

A murmur round the table. Wellington leaned back. Colonel Fletcher’s voice rose above the noise. ‘With respect, my Lord, I do not think it within Captain, Lieutenant Sharpe’s competency to pronounce on a breach.’

‘He’s been there.’

Fletcher muttered something about sending a heathen to kirk and not making him a Christian. The quill in his hand bent almost double under the pressure of his fingers, he let it go and the split nib spattered ink across the two bastions. He thumped the pen down. ‘It’s too soon.’

Wellington pushed himself away from the table, stood up. ‘One day, gentlemen, one day.’ He looked round the table. No one challenged him. It was too soon, he knew that, but perhaps any day would be too soon to take on this fortress. Perhaps, as the French claimed, it was impregnable. ‘Tomorrow, gentlemen, Sunday the fifth. We assault Badajoz.’