Sharpe's Fury - 11 (32 page)

“Can I look, sir?” Harper asked.

Sharpe bit back a sour comment to the effect that this was not Harper’s fight, and instead yielded his place at Perkins’s shoulder. He turned and looked out to sea where the waves fretted about a small island crowned by the ancient ruins of a fort. A dozen fishing boats were just beyond the line of surf that ran toward the beach. The fishermen were watching the fight, and more spectators, attracted by the crackle of musketry, were riding from San Fernando. No doubt there would soon be curious folk arriving from Cádiz.

Sharpe took the telescope back from Harper. He collapsed it, his fingers running over the small brass plate let into the largest barrel that was sheathed in walnut.
IN GRATITUDE, AW, SEPTEMBER
23
RD,
1803, the plate said, and Sharpe remembered Henry Wellesley’s flippant line that the telescope, which was a fine instrument made by Matthew Berge of London, was not the generous gift Sharpe had always supposed it to be, but instead a spare glass that Lord Wellington had not wanted. Not that it mattered. 1803, he thought. That long ago! He tried to remember that day when Lord Wellington, Sir Arthur Wellesley back then, had been dazed and Sharpe had protected him. He thought he had killed five men in the fight, but he was not sure.

The Spanish engineers were laying the chesses over the last thirty feet of the pontoon bridge. Those planks, which formed the roadway, were kept on the Cádiz bank to stop any unauthorized crossing of the bridge, but evidently General Zayas now wanted the bridge open and Sharpe saw, with approval, that three Spanish battalions were being readied to cross the bridge. Zayas had evidently decided to attack the French from their rear. “We’ll be going soon,” he said to Harper.

“Perkins,” Harper growled, “join the others.”

“Can’t I look through the telescope, Sergeant?” Perkins pleaded.

“You’re not old enough. Move.”

It took a long time for the three battalions to cross. The bridge, constructed from longboats rather than pontoons, was narrow and it rocked alarmingly. By the time Sharpe and his men had joined Captain Galiana, there were almost a hundred curious onlookers arrived from San Fernando or Cádiz and some were trying to persuade the sentries to let them cross the bridge. Others climbed the dunes and trained telescopes on the distant French. “They’re stopping everyone crossing the bridge,” Galiana said nervously.

“They’re not going to let civilians across, are they?” Sharpe said. “But tell me something, what are you going to do on the other side?”

“Do?” Galiana said, and plainly did not know the answer. “Make myself useful,” he suggested. “It’s better than doing nothing, isn’t it?” The last Spanish battalion had crossed now and Galiana spurred forward. He dismounted well short of the bridge, preparing to lead his horse over the uncertain footing of the chesses, but before he reached the roadway a squad of Spanish soldiers pulled a makeshift barricade across the approach. A lieutenant held a warning hand toward Galiana.

“He’s with me,” Sharpe said before Galiana could speak. The lieutenant, a tall man with a burly, unshaven chin, looked at him pugnaciously. It was plain he did not understand English, but he was not going to back down. “I said he’s with me,” Sharpe said.

Galiana spoke in rapid Spanish, gesturing at Sharpe. “You have your orders?” he switched to English, looking at Sharpe.

Sharpe had no orders. Galiana spoke again, explaining that Sharpe was charged with delivering a message to Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Graham, and the orders were in English, which, of course, the lieutenant spoke? Galiana himself, the Spanish captain explained, was Sharpe’s liaison officer. By now Sharpe had produced his ration authorization, permitting him to draw beef, bread, and rum for five riflemen from the headquarters stores at San Fernando. He thrust the paper at the lieutenant who, faced with hostile riflemen and the emollient Galiana, decided to yield. He ordered the hurdles pulled aside.

“I did need you after all,” Galiana said. He held the reins very close to the mare’s head and continually patted her neck as she made her cautious way across the plank roadway. The bridge, much less robust than the one Sharpe had destroyed on the Guadiana, quivered underfoot and bowed upstream under the pressure of the flooding tide. Once safe on the far bank, Galiana mounted and led Sharpe southward past the sandy ramparts of the temporary fort made to protect the pontoons.

General Zayas had formed his three battalions in a line across the beach where they were now marching slowly forward. The right-hand files were having their boots sporadically washed by the incoming surf. Sergeants bellowed at men to keep their dressing. The Spanish colors were bright against the pale sky. From far off came the report of a cannon, a deeper sound than musketry, a pounding in the air. It died away, but over the constant snap of the nearer muskets Sharpe thought he could hear other muskets firing, but much farther off. “You can go back now,” he told Harper.

“Let’s just see what these lads do first,” Harper said, nodding at the three Spanish battalions.

The lads needed to do nothing except appear. General Villatte, seeing that his men were about to be assailed from the rear, ordered them to withdraw east across the Almanza Creek. They carried their wounded away. The Spaniards, seeing them go, gave a cheer of victory, then wheeled up the dunes to harry the retreating French who were now outnumbered almost two to one. Galiana, standing in his stirrups, was exultant. Surely the combined Spanish forces, joining from north and south, could now pursue the French across the creek and drive them far back along the tracks to Chiclana, but just then artillery opened fire from the Almanza’s far bank. A battery of twelve-pounders had been placed on the firm ground to the east and their first salvo was of common shell that exploded in gouts of sand and smoke. The Spanish advance checked as men took cover behind dunes. The guns fired a second time and round shot slashed through files slow to find shelter. The last of the French infantry had waded the creek now and were making a new line to face the Spaniards across the incoming tide. The guns went silent as their smoke drifted across the slowly rising water. The French were content to wait now. Their force that had blocked the allied army’s retreat had been thrust aside, but their guns could still hurl shell and round shot at any force marching toward the bridge. They brought up a second battery and waited for the rout to begin from the south while the Spanish battalions, content to have cleared the enemy off the beach, settled among the dunes.

Galiana, disappointed that the pursuit had not been pressed across the Almanza, had ridden to a group of Spanish officers and now came back to Sharpe. “General Graham is to the south,” he said, “with orders to bring the rear guard here.”

Sharpe could see a mist of musket smoke drifting away from a hill two or more miles southward. “He’s not coming yet,” he said, “so I might go and meet him. You can go back now, Pat.”

Harper thought about it. “So what are you doing, sir?”

“I’m just taking a walk on the beach.”

Harper looked at the other riflemen. “Does anyone here want to take a walk on a beach with me and Mister Sharpe? Or do they want to go back and talk their way past that nasty lieutenant on the bridge?”

The riflemen said nothing until another cannon sounded far to the south. Then Harris frowned. “What’s happening down there?” he asked.

“Nothing to do with us,” Sharpe said.

Harris could be a barrack room lawyer at times, and he was about to protest that the fight was none of their business. Then he caught Harper’s eye and decided to say nothing. “We’re just taking a walk on the beach,” Harper said, “and it’s a nice day for a walk.” He saw Sharpe’s quizzical look. “I was thinking of the Faughs, sir. They’re up there, they are, all those poor wee boys from Dublin, and I thought they might like to see a proper Irishman.”

“But we’re not going to fight?” Harris demanded.

“What do you think you are, Harris? A bloody soldier?” Harper asked caustically. He took care not to catch Sharpe’s eye. “Of course we’re not going to fight. You heard Mister Sharpe. We’re going for a walk on the beach, that’s all we’re bloody doing.”

So they did. They went for a walk on the beach.

S
IR
T
HOMAS,
certain that his rear was well protected by the brigade posted on the Cerro del Puerco, was encouraging his troops along the road that led through the long pinewood edging the beach. “Not far, boys!” Sir Thomas called as he rode down the line. “We’ve not far to go! Cheer up now!” He glanced to his right every few seconds, half expecting the appearance of a cavalryman bringing news of an enemy advance. Whittingham had undertaken to post vedettes on the inland edge of the wood, but none of those men appeared and Sir Thomas supposed the French were content to let the allied army retreat ignominiously into Cádiz. The firing ahead had stopped. A French force had evidently blocked the beach, but had now been chased away, while the firing from the south had also died. Sir Thomas reckoned that had been mere bickering, probably a cavalry patrol coming too close to the big Spanish brigade on the summit of the Cerro del Puerco.

He paused to watch the redcoats march past and he noted how the tired men straightened their backs when they saw him. “Not far, boys,” he told them. He thought how much he loved these men. “God bless you, boys,” he called, “and it’s not far now.” Not far to what, he wondered sourly. These bone-weary soldiers had been marching all night, laden with packs and haversacks and weapons and rations, and it was all for nothing, all for a scuttling retreat back to the Isla de León.

There was a flurry of shouts to the north. A man called a challenge and Sir Thomas stared down the track, but saw nothing and heard no shots. A moment later a mounted officer of the Silver Tails came pounding back down the track with two horsemen close behind. They were civilians armed with muskets, sabers, pistols, and knives. Partisans, Sir Thomas thought, two of the men who made life such hell for the French armies occupying Spain. “They want to talk to you, sir,” the Silver Tail officer said.

The two partisans spoke at once. They spoke fast, excitedly, and Sir Thomas calmed them. “My Spanish is slow,” he told them, “so speak to me slowly.”

“The French,” one of them said and pointed eastward.

“Where have you come from?” Sir Thomas asked. One of the men explained that they had been part of a larger group that had shadowed the French for the last three days. Six men had ridden from Medina Sidonia and these two were the only ones left alive because some dragoons had caught them soon after dawn. The two had been chased toward the sea and they had just ridden across the heath. “Which is full of Frenchmen,” the second man said earnestly.

“Coming this way,” the first man added.

“How many French?” Sir Thomas asked.

“All of them,” the two men said together.

“Then let us look,” Sir Thomas said, and he led the two men and his aides inland through the pines. He had to duck under the branches. The wood was wide and deep, thick and shadowed. Pine needles overlay the sandy soil, muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves.

The wood ended abruptly, giving way to the undulating heath that stretched away under the morning sun. And there, filling the wide world, were white crossbelts against blue coats.

“Señor?” one of the partisans said, gesturing at the French as though he had produced them himself.

“Dear God,” Sir Thomas said softly. Then he said nothing more for a while, but just stared at the approaching enemy. The two partisans thought the general was too shocked to speak. He was, after all, watching disaster approach.

But Sir Thomas was thinking. He was noticing that the French marched with muskets slung. They could not see enemy troops to their front and so, instead of marching into battle, they were marching to battle. There was a difference. Men marching to battle might have loaded muskets, but the muskets would not be cocked. Their artillery was unde-ployed, and it took time for the French to deploy guns because the cannons’ heavy barrels had to be lifted from the travel position to the firing position. In short, Sir Thomas thought, these Frenchmen were not ready for a fight. They were expecting a fight, but not yet. Doubtless they believed they must first pass the pinewood, and only then would they expect the killing to begin.

“We should follow General Lapeña,” the liaison officer said nervously.

Sir Thomas ignored the man. He was thinking still, his fingers tapping the saddle pommel. If he continued north, then the French would cut off the brigade on the hill above Barrosa. They would wheel right and attack up the beach, and Sir Thomas would be forced to try a makeshift defense with his left flank open to attack. No, he thought, better to fight the bastards here. It would not be an easy fight, it would be a damned scramble, but better that than continuing north and turning the sea’s edge red with his blood.

“My lord”—he was uncharacteristically formal as he glanced at Lord William Russell—“my compliments to Colonel Wheatley, and he is to bring his brigade here and face down these fellows. Tell him to send his skirmishers as fast as he can! I want the enemy engaged by the light bobs while the rest of his brigade comes up. Guns are to come here. Right here,” he stabbed a hand at the ground on which his horse stood. “Hurry now, no time to lose!” He beckoned to another aide, a young captain in the blue-faced red coat of the First Foot Guards. “James, compliments to General Dilkes, and I want his brigade here,” he gestured to the right. “He’s to take position between the guns and the hill. Order him to send his skirmishers first! Quick now! Quick as he can!”

The two aides vanished into the trees. Sir Thomas lingered a moment, watching the approaching French who were now less than half a mile off. He was taking a vast gamble. He wanted to hit them while they were unprepared, but he knew it would take time to bring his battalions through the thick trees, which is why he had asked for the light companies to come first. They could make a skirmish line on the heath, they could begin to kill the French, and Sir Thomas could only hope that the skirmishers would hold the French long enough for the rest of the battalions to arrive and begin their deadly volley fire. He looked at the liaison officer. “Be so good,” he said, “as to ride to General Lapeña and tell him the French are moving on the pinewood and that it is my intention to engage them and would be honored”—he was choosing his words carefully—“if the general could lead men onto the right flank of the enemy.”