Sharpe's Battle Part 45

"Never mind," Sharpe said. He felt the loom of disgrace and the bite of regret. He was a captain on sufferance and he supposed he would never now make major. "b.u.g.g.e.r them all, Pat," he said and wearily stood. "Let's find something to drink."

Down in the village a dying redcoat had found Harper's rag doll jammed into the niche of the wall and had shoved it into his mouth to stop himself crying out in his pain. Now he died and his blood welled and spilt from his gullet so that the small, damaged doll fell in a welter of red. The French had pulled back beyond the stream where they took cover behind the garden walls to open fire on the Highlanders and the Warwicks who hunted down the last groups of trapped French survivors in the village. A disconsolate line of French prisoners straggled up the slope under a mixed guard of riflemen and

Highlanders. Colonel Williams had been wounded in the counterattack and was now carried by his riflemen to the church which had been turned into a hospital. The stork's nest on the bell tower was still an untidy tangle of twigs, but the adult birds had been driven out by the noise and smoke of the battle to leave their nestlings to starve. The sound of musketry crackled across the stream for a while, then died away as both sides took stock of the first attack.

But not, both sides knew, the last.

CHAPTER 8.

The French did not attack again. They stayed on the stream's eastern bank, while behind them, at the distant line of oaks that straddled the straight white road, the rest of their army slowly deployed so that by nightfall the whole of Ma.s.sena's force was encamped and the smoke of their fires mingled to make a grey wash that darkened to a h.e.l.lish black as the sun sank behind the

British ridge. The fighting in the village had stopped, but the artillery kept up a desultory battle till nightfall. The British had the best of it. Their guns were emplaced just back from the plateau's crest so that all the French could aim for was the skyline itself and most of their shots were fired too high and rumbled impotently over the British infantry concealed by the crest.

Shots fired too low merely thumped into the ridge's slope which was too steep for the roundshot to bounce up to their targets. The British gunners, on the other hand, had a clear view of the enemy batteries and one by one their long- fused case shot either silenced the French artillery or persuaded the gunners to drag their cannon back into the cover of the trees.

The last gun fired as the sun set. The flat echo of the sound crashed and faded across the shadowed plain while the smoke from the gun's barrel curled and drifted in the wind. Small fires flickered in the village ruins, the flames glimmering luridly on broken walls and snapped beams. The streets were crammed with dead men and pitiful with the wounded who cried through the night for help. Behind the church, where the luckier casualties had been safely evacuated, wives searched for husbands, brothers for brothers and friends for friends. Burial parties looked for patches of soil on the rocky slopes while officers auctioned the possessions of their dead mess-fellows and wondered how long it would be before their own belongings were similarly knocked down for puny prices. Up on the plateau the soldiers stewed newly slaughtered beef in their Flanders cauldrons and sang sentimental songs of greenwoods and girls.

The armies slept with their weapons loaded and ready. Picquets watched the dark as the big guns cooled. Rats scampered through the fallen stones of

Fuentes de Onoro and gnawed at dead men. Few of the living slept well. The

British footguards had been infected with Methodism and some of the guardsmen gathered for a midnight prayer meeting until a Coldstreamer officer growled at them to give G.o.d and himself a b.l.o.o.d.y rest. Other men prowled in the dark to seek the dead and wounded for plunder. Now and then an injured man would call out in protest and a bayonet would glint quickly in the starlight and a wash of blood ebb into the soil as the newly dead man's uniform was searched for coins.

Major Tarrant had at last heard about Sharpe's impending ordeal by court of inquiry. He could hardly have avoided learning of it for a succession of officers came to the ammunition park to give Sharpe their condolences and to complain that an army which persecuted a man for killing the enemy must be an army led by idiots and administered by fools. Tarrant did not understand

Wellington's decision either. "Surely the two men deserved to die? I agree they hardly endured the proper processes of the law, but even so, can anyone doubt their guilt?" Captain Donaju, who was sharing Tarrant's late supper with

Sharpe, nodded agreement.

"It's not about two men dying, sir," Sharpe said, "but about b.l.o.o.d.y politics.

I've given the Spanish reason to distrust us, sir."

"No Spaniards died!" Tarrant protested.

"Aye, sir, but too many good Portuguese did, so General Valverde's claiming that we can't be trusted with other nations' soldiers."

"This is too bad!" Tarrant said angrily. "So what happens to you now?"

Sharpe shrugged. "There's a court of inquiry, I'm blamed, which means a court martial. The worst they can do to me, sir, is take away my commission."

Captain Donaju frowned. "Suppose I speak to General Valverde?"

Sharpe shook his head. "And ruin your career, too? Thank you, but no. What this is really about," he explained, "is who should become Generalisimo of

Spain. We reckon it should be Nosey, but Valverde doesn't agree."

"Doubtless because he wants the job himself!" Tarrant said scornfully. "It is too bad, Sharpe, too bad." The Scotsman frowned down at the dish of liver and kidney that Gog and Magog had cooked for his supper. Traditionally the officers received the offal of newly slaughtered cattle, a privilege Tarrant would happily have foregone. He tossed a peculiarly nauseating piece of kidney to one of the many dogs that had attached themselves to the army, then shook his head. "Is there any chance at all that you might avoid this ridiculous court of inquiry?" he asked Sharpe.

Sharpe thought of Hogan's sarcastic remark that Sharpe's only hope lay in a

French victory that would obliterate all memories of what had happened at San

Isidro. That seemed a dubious solution, yet there was another hope, a very slender hope, but one Sharpe had been thinking about all day.

"Go on," Tarrant said, sensing that the rifleman was hesitant about offering an answer.

Sharpe grimaced. "Nosey's been known to pardon men for good behaviour. There was a fellow in the 83rd who was caught red-handed stealing money from a poor- box in Guarda and he was condemned to be hanged for it, but his company fought so well at Talavera that Nosey let him go."

Donaju gestured with his knife towards the village that was beyond the eastern skyline. "Is that why you fought down there all day?" he asked.

Sharpe shook his head. "We just happened to find ourselves down there," he said dismissively.

"But you took an eagle, Sharpe!" Tarrant protested. "What more gallantry do you need to display?"

"A lot, sir." Sharpe winced as his sore shoulder gave a stab of pain. "I'm not rich, sir, so I can't buy a captaincy, let alone a majority, so I have to survive by merit. And a soldier's only as good as his last battle, sir, and my last battle was San Isidro. I have to wipe that out."

Donaju frowned. "It was my only battle," he said softly and to no one but himself.

Tarrant scorned Sharpe's pessimism. "Are you saying, Sharpe, that you have to perform some ridiculous act of heroism to survive?"

"Yes, sir. Exactly that, sir. So if you've got some horrid errand tomorrow then I want it."

"Good G.o.d, man." Tarrant was appalled. "Good G.o.d! Send you to your death? I can't do that!"

Sharpe smiled. "What were you doing seventeen years ago, sir?"

Tarrant thought for a second or two. "Ninety-four? Let's see now... " He counted off on his fingers for another few seconds. "I was still at school.

Construing Horace in a gloomy schoolroom beneath the walls of Stirling Castle and being beaten every time I made an error."

"I was fighting the French, sir," Sharpe said. "And I've been fighting one b.u.g.g.e.r or another ever since, so don't you worry about me."

"Even so, Sharpe, even so." Tarrant frowned and shook his head. "Do you like kidney?"

"Love it, sir."

"It's all yours." Tarrant handed his plate to Sharpe. "Get your strength up,

Sharpe, it seems you might need it." He twisted around to look at the red flame glow that lit the night above the fires of the French encampments.

"Unless they don't attack," he said wistfully.

"The b.u.g.g.e.rs aren't going away, sir, until we drive them away," Sharpe said.

"Today was just a skirmish. The real battle hasn't started yet, so the

c.r.a.pauds will be back, sir, they'll be back."