Sharpe’s Fury: The Battle of Barrosa, March 1811

Moon hesitated, but then recalled that his future career, with all its dazzling rewards, depended on the bridge’s destruction. ‘Blow the bridge,’ he said harshly.

‘Back!’ Sharpe turned and shouted at his men. ‘Get back! Mister Sturridge! Light the fuse!’

‘Bloody hell!’ The brigadier suddenly realized he was on the wrong side of a bridge that was crowded with men, and that in about half a minute the French planned to open fire and so he turned his horse and spurred it back along the roadway. The riflemen and redcoats were running and Sharpe followed them, walking backwards, keeping his eye on the French, the rifle in his hands. He reckoned he was safe enough. The French company was a long musket shot away and so far they had made no attempt to close the range, but then Sharpe saw Vandal turn and wave to the fort.

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe echoed the brigadier, and then the world shook to the sound of six guns emptying their barrels of grapeshot. Dark smoke whipped the sky, the balls screamed around Sharpe, slapping onto the bridge and slashing into men and churning the river into foam. Sharpe heard a scream behind him, then saw the French company running towards the bridge. There was an odd silence after the guns fired. No muskets had been used yet. The river settled from the strike of the grapeshot and Sharpe heard another scream and snatched a look behind to see Moon’s stallion rearing, blood seething from its neck, and then the brigadier fell into a knot of men.

Sturridge was dead. Sharpe found him some twenty paces beyond the powder barrels. The engineer, struck in the head by a piece of grapeshot, was lying beside the slow match that had not been lit and now the French were almost at the bridge and Sharpe snatched up Sturridge’s tinderbox and ran towards the powder barrels. He shortened the slow match by tearing it apart just a couple of paces from the charge, then struck the flint on the steel. The spark flew and died. He struck again, and this time a scrap of dried linen caught the spark and he blew on it gently and the tinder flared up and he put the flame to the fuse and saw the powder begin to spark and fizz. The first Frenchmen were obstructed by the women’s abandoned luggage, but they kicked it aside and ran onto the bridge where they knelt and aimed their muskets. Sharpe watched the fuse. It was burning so damn slowly! He heard rifles fire, their sound crisper than muskets, and a Frenchman slowly toppled with a look of indignation on his face and a bright stab of blood on his white crossbelt, then the French pulled their triggers and the balls flew close around him. The damned fuse was slower than slow! The French were just yards away, then Sharpe heard more rifles firing, heard a French officer screaming at his men, and Sharpe tore the fuse again, much closer to the powder barrels, and he used the burning end to light the new stub. That new stub was just inches from the barrel and he blew on it to make sure it burned fiercely, then turned and ran towards the western bank.

Moon was wounded, but a pair of men from the 88th had picked the brigadier off the roadway and were carrying him. ‘Come on, sir!’ Harper shouted. Sharpe could hear the Frenchmen’s boots on the roadway, then Harper levelled the seven-barrel gun. It was a naval weapon, one that had never really worked well. It was supposed to be carried in the fighting tops where its seven bunched barrels could launch a small volley of half-inch balls at marksmen in the enemy rigging, but the recoil of the volley gun was so violent that few men were strong enough to wield it. Patrick Harper was strong enough. ‘Down, sir!’ he shouted, and Sharpe dropped flat as the sergeant pulled the trigger. The noise deafened Sharpe, and the leading rank of Frenchmen was blown apart by the seven balls, but one sergeant survived and he ran to where the fizzing fuse sparked and smoked at the barrel’s top. Sharpe was still sprawled on the roadway, but he wrenched the rifle clear of his body. He had no time to aim, just point the muzzle and pull the trigger and he saw, through the sudden powder smoke, the French sergeant’s face turn to a blossom of blood and red mist, and the sergeant was hurled backwards, the fuse still smoked, then the world exploded.

The worm of fire had eaten into Sturridge’s charge and the powder blew. The sky filled with noise, turned dark. Flame, smoke and timbers erupted into the air, though the chief effect of the exploding powder was to drive the pontoon down into the river. The roadway buckled under the strain, planks snapping free. The French were thrown back, some dead, some burned, some stunned, and then the shattered pontoon reared violently up from the water and its anchor chains snapped from the recoil. The bridge jerked downstream, throwing Harper off his feet. He and Sharpe clung to the planks. The bridge was juddering now, the river foaming and pushing at the broken gap as scraps of burning timber flamed on the roadway. Sharpe had been half dazed by the explosion and now found it hard to stand, but he staggered towards the British held shore and then the pontoon anchor chains began to snap, one after the other, and the more that parted, the more pressure was put on the remaining chains. The French cannon fired again and the air was filled with screaming grapeshot and one of the men carrying Brigadier Moon jerked forward with blood staining the back of his red coat. The man vomited blood and the brigadier bellowed in agony as he was dropped. The bridge began to shake like a bough in the wind and Sharpe had to fall to his knees and hold onto a plank to stop being thrown into the water. Musket balls were coming from the French company, but the range was too long for accuracy. The brigadier’s wounded horse was in the river, blood swirling as it struggled against the inevitable drowning.

A shell struck the bridge’s far end. Sharpe decided the French gunners were trying to hold the British fugitives on the breaking bridge where they could be flayed by grapeshot. The French infantry had retreated to the eastern bank from where they fired musket volleys. Smoke was filling the valley. Water splashed across the pontoon where Sharpe and Harper clung, then it shook again and the roadway splintered and Sharpe feared the remnants of the bridge would overturn. A bullet slammed into a plank by his side. Another shell exploded at the bridge’s far end, leaving a puff of dirty smoke that drifted upstream where white birds flew in panic.

Then suddenly the bridge quivered and went still. The central portion of six pontoons had broken free and was drifting down the river. There was a tug as a last anchor chain snapped, then the six pontoons were circling and floating as a barrel-load of grapeshot churned the water just behind them. Sharpe could kneel now. He loaded the rifle, aimed at the French infantry, and fired. Harper slung his empty volley gun and shot with his rifle instead. Rifleman Slattery and Rifleman Harris came to join them and sent two more bullets, both aimed at the French officers on horseback, but when the rifle smoke cleared the officers were still mounted. The pontoons were travelling fast in the current, accompanied by broken and charred timbers. Brigadier Moon was lying on his back, trying to prop himself up on his elbows. ‘What happened?’

‘We’re floating free, sir,’ Sharpe said. There were six men of the 88th on the makeshift raft and five of Sharpe’s riflemen from the South Essex. The rest of his company had either escaped the bridge before it broke or else were in the river. So now, with Sharpe and the brigadier, there were thirteen men floating downstream and over a hundred Frenchmen running down the bank, keeping level with them. Sharpe hoped that thirteen was not unlucky.

‘See if you can paddle to the western bank,’ Moon ordered. Some British officers, using captured horses, were on that bank and were trying to catch up with the raft.

Sharpe had the men use their rifle and musket butts as paddles, but the pontoons were monstrously heavy and their efforts were futile. The raft drifted on southwards. A last shell plunged harmlessly into the river, its fuse extinguished instantly by the water. ‘Paddle, for God’s sake!’ Moon snapped.

‘They’re doing their best, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘Broken leg, sir?’

‘Calf bone,’ Moon said, wincing, ‘heard it snap when the horse fell.’

‘We’ll straighten it up in a minute, sir,’ Sharpe said soothingly.

‘You’ll do no such bloody thing, man! You’ll get me to a doctor.’

Sharpe was not certain how he was going to get Moon anywhere except straight down the river which was curving now about a great rock bluff on the Spanish bank. That bluff, at least, would check the French pursuit. He used his rifle as a paddle, but the raft defiantly took its own path. Once past the bluff the river widened, swung back to the west and the current slowed a little.

The French pursuers were left behind and the British were finding the going hard on the Portuguese bank. The French cannon were still firing, but they could no longer see the raft so they had to be shooting at the British forces on that western bank. Sharpe tried to steer with a length of scorched, broken plank, not because he thought it would do any good, but to prevent Moon complaining. The makeshift rudder had no effect. The raft stubbornly stayed close to the Spanish bank. Sharpe thought about Bullen and felt a pulse of pure anger at the way in which the lieutenant had been taken prisoner. ‘I’m going to kill that bastard,’ he said aloud.

‘You’re going to do what?’ Moon demanded.

‘I’m going to kill that bastard Frenchman, sir. Colonel Vandal.’

‘You’re going to get me to the other bank, Sharpe, that’s what you’re going to do, and you’re going to do it quickly.’

At which point, with a shudder and a lurch, the pontoons ran aground.

The crypt lay beneath the cathedral. It was a labyrinth hacked from the rock on which Cadiz defied the sea, and in deeper holes beneath the crypt’s flagged floor the dead bishops of Cadiz waited for the resurrection.

Two flights of stone steps descended to the crypt, emerging into a large chapel that was a round chamber twice the height of a man and thirty paces wide. If a man stood in the chamber’s centre and clapped his hands once the noise would sound fifteen times. It was a crypt of echoes.

Five caverns opened from the chapel. One led to a smaller round chapel at the furthest end of the labyrinth, while the other four flanked the big chamber. The four were deep and dark, and they were connected to each other by a hidden passageway that circled the whole crypt. None of the caverns was decorated. The cathedral above might glitter with candlelight and shine with marble and have painted saints and monstrances of silver and candlesticks of gold, but the crypt was plain stone. Only the altars had colour. In the smaller chapel a Virgin gazed sadly down the long passage to where, across the wider chamber, her son hung on a silver cross in never-ending pain.

It was deep night. The cathedral was empty. The last priest had folded his scapular and gone home. The women who haunted the altars had been ushered out, the floor had been swept and the doors locked. Candles still burned, and the red light of the eternal presence glowed under the scaffolding which ringed the crossing where the transept met the nave. The cathedral was unfinished. The sanctuary with its high altar had yet to be built, the dome was half made and the bell towers not even started.

Father Montseny had a key to one of the eastern doors. The key scraped in the lock and the hinges squealed when he pushed the door open. He came with six men. Two of them stayed close to the unlocked cathedral door. They stood in shadow, hidden, both with loaded muskets and orders to use them only if things became desperate. ‘This is a night for knives,’ Montseny told the men.

‘In the cathedral?’ one of the men asked nervously.

‘I will give you absolution for any sins,’ Montseny said, ‘and the men who must die here are heretics. They are Protestants, English. God will be gladdened by their deaths.’

He took the remaining four men to the crypt and, once in the main chamber, he placed candles on the floor and lit them. The light flickered on the shallow-domed ceiling. He put two men in one of the chambers to the east while he, with the remaining pair, waited in the darkness of the chamber opposite. ‘No noise, now!’ he warned them. ‘We wait.’

The English came early as Father Montseny had supposed they would. He heard the distant squeal of the hinges as they pushed open the unlocked door. He heard their footsteps coming down the cathedral’s long nave and he knew that the two men he had left by the door would have bolted it now and would be following the English towards the crypt.

Three men appeared on the western steps. They came slowly, cautiously. One of them, the tallest, had a bag. That man peered into the big round chamber and saw no one. ‘Hello!’ he shouted.

Father Montseny tossed a packet into the chamber. It was a thick packet, tied with string. ‘What you will do,’ he said in the English he had learned as a prisoner, ‘is bring the money, put it beside the letters, take the letters and go.’

The man looked at the black archways leading from the big candlelit chamber. He was trying to decide where Montseny’s voice had come from. ‘You think I’m a fool?’ he asked. ‘I must see the letters first.’ He was a big man, red-faced, with a bulbous nose and thick black eyebrows.

‘You may examine them, Captain,’ Montseny said. He knew the man was called Plummer and that he had been a captain in the British army, and now he was a functionary in the British embassy. Plummer’s job was to make certain the embassy’s servants did not steal, that the gratings on the windows were secure and that the shutters were locked at night. Plummer was, in Montseny’s opinion, a nonentity, a failed soldier, a man who now came anxiously into the ring of candles and squatted by the package. The string was tough and knotted tight and Plummer could not undo it. He felt in his pocket, presumably looking for a knife.

‘Show me the gold,’ Montseny ordered.

Plummer scowled at the peremptory tone, but obliged by opening the bag he had placed beside the package. It was a cloth bag which he unlaced, then brought out a handful of golden guineas. ‘Three hundred,’ he said, ‘as we agreed.’ His voice echoed back and forth, confusing him.

‘Now,’ Montseny said, and his men appeared from the dark with levelled muskets. The two men Plummer had left on the steps staggered forward as Montseny’s last two men came down the stairs behind them.

‘What the hell are you …’ Plummer began, then saw the priest was carrying a pistol. ‘You’re a priest?’

‘I thought we should all examine the merchandise,’ Montseny said, ignoring the question. He had the three men surrounded now. ‘You will lie flat while I count the coins.’

‘The devil I will,’ Plummer said.

‘On the floor,’ Montseny spoke in Spanish, and his men, all of whom had served in the Spanish navy and had muscles hardened by years of gruelling work, easily subdued the three and put them face down on the crypt floor. Montseny picked up the string-bound package and put it in his pocket, then pushed the gold aside with his foot. ‘Kill them,’ he said.

The two men accompanying Plummer were Spaniards themselves, embassy servants, and they protested when they heard Montseny’s order. Plummer resisted, heaving up from the floor, but Montseny killed him easily, sliding a knife up into his ribs and letting Plummer heave against the blade as it sought his heart. The other two died just as quickly. It was done with remarkably little noise.

Montseny gave his men five golden guineas apiece, a generous reward. ‘The English,’ he explained to them, ‘secretly plan to keep Cadiz for themselves. They call themselves our allies, but they will betray Spain. Tonight you have fought for your king, for your country and for the holy church. The admiral will be pleased with you, and God will reward you.’ He searched the bodies, found a few coins and a bone-handled knife. Plummer had a pistol under his cloak, but it was a crude, heavy weapon and Montseny let one of the sailors keep it.

The three corpses were dragged up the steps, down the nave and then carried to the nearby sea wall. There Father Montseny said a prayer for their souls and his men heaved the dead over the stony edge. The bodies smacked down into the rocks where the Atlantic sucked and broke white. Father Montseny locked the cathedral and went home.

Next day the blood was found in the crypt and on the stairs and in the nave, and at first no one could explain it until some of the women who prayed in the cathedral every day declared that it must be the blood of Saint Servando, one of Cadiz’s patron saints whose body had once lain in the city, but had been taken to Seville, which was now occupied by the French. The blood, the women insisted, was proof that the saint had miraculously spurned the French-held city and returned home, and the discovery of three bodies being buffeted by the waves on the rocks below the sea wall would not dissuade them. It was a miracle, they said, and the rumour of the miracle spread.

Captain Plummer was recognized and his body was carried to the embassy. There was a makeshift chapel inside and a hurried funeral service was read and the captain was then buried in the sands of the isthmus that connected Cadiz to the Isla de León. Next day Montseny wrote to the British ambassador, claiming that Plummer had tried to keep the gold and take the letters, and his regrettable death had thus been inevitable, but that the British could still have the letters back, only now they would cost a great deal more. He did not sign the letter, but enclosed one bloodstained guinea. It was an investment, he thought, that would bring back a fortune, and the fortune would pay for Father Montseny’s dreams. A dream of Spain, glorious again and free of foreigners. The English would pay for their own defeat.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Now what?’ Brigadier Moon demanded.

‘We’re stuck, sir.’