Sharpe's Battle Part 42

The British gunners near Sharpe were making their own preparations. The guns' ready magazines held a mixture of roundshot and case shot. The roundshot were solid iron b.a.l.l.s that would plunge wickedly through advancing infantry, while the case shot was Britain's secret weapon: the one artillery projectile that no other nation had learned to make. It was a hollow iron ball filled with musket bullets that were packed about a small powder charge that was ignited by a fuse. When the powder exploded it shattered the outer casing and spread the musket b.a.l.l.s in a killing fan. If the case shot was properly employed it would explode just above and ahead of the advancing infantry and the secret to that horror lay in the missile's fusing. The fuses were wooden or reed tubes filled with powder and marked into lengths, each small division of the marked length representing half a second of burning time. The fuses were cut for the desired time, then pushed into the case shot and ignited by the firing of the gun itself, but a fuse that had been left too long would let the shot scream safely over the enemy's heads while one cut too short would explode prematurely. Gunner sergeants were cutting the fuses in different lengths, then laying the ammunition in piles that represented the different ranges. The first sh.e.l.ls had fuses over half an inch long that would delay the explosion until the shot had carried eleven hundred yards while the shortest fuses were tiny stubs measuring hardly more than a fifth of an inch that would ignite the charge at six hundred and fifty yards. Once the enemy infantry was inside that distance the gunners would switch to roundshot alone and after that, when the

French had closed to within three hundred and fifty yards, the guns would employ canister: tin cylinders crammed with musket b.a.l.l.s that spread apart at the very muzzle of the cannon as the thin tin was shredded by the gun's powder charge.

These guns would be firing down the slope and over the stream so that the

French infantry would be exposed to sh.e.l.l or shot for their whole approach.

That infantry was now forming its columns. Sharpe tried to count the eagles, but there were so many standards and so much movement among the enemy that it was hard to make an accurate a.s.sessment. "At least a dozen battalions," he said.

"So where are the others?" Harper asked.

"G.o.d knows," Sharpe said. During his reconnaissance with Hogan the night before he had estimated that the French were marching to Almeida with at least eighty infantry battalions, but he could only see a fraction of that host forming their attack columns at the edge of the far woods. "Twelve thousand men?" he guessed.

The last mist evaporated from the village just as the French opened fire. The opening salvo was ragged as the gun captains fired in turn so that they could observe the fall of their shot and so make adjustments to their guns' aim. The first shot fell short, then bounced up over the few houses and walled gardens on the far bank to plough into a tiled roof halfway up the village slope. The sound of the gun arrived after the crash of falling tiles and splintering beams. The second shot cracked into an apple tree on the stream's eastern bank and scattered a small shower of white blossom before it ricocheted into the water, but the next few rounds were all aimed straight and hammered into the village houses. The British gunners muttered grudging approval of the enemy gunners' expertise.

"I wonder what poor sods are holding the village," Harper said.

"Let's go and find out."

"I'm honestly not that curious, sir," Harper protested, but followed Sharpe along the plateau's crest. The high ground ended just above the village where the plateau bent at a right angle to run due west back into the hills. In the angle of the bend, directly above the village, were two rocky knolls on one of which was built the village church with its stork's ragged nest perched precariously on the bell tower. The church's graveyard occupied the east- facing slope between the church and the village, and riflemen were crouched behind the mounded graves and canted stones, just as they were crouched among the outcrops of the second rocky knoll. Between the two stone peaks, on a saddle of short springy turf where yellow ragweed grew and where the Almeida road reached the high ground after zigzagging up beside the graveyard, a knot of staff officers sat their horses and watched the French cannonade which had begun to cloud the distant view with a dirty bank of smoke that twitched each time a roundshot blasted through. The cannon b.a.l.l.s were cras.h.i.+ng remorselessly into the village, smas.h.i.+ng tile and thatch, splintering beams and toppling walls. The sound of the gunfire was a pounding that was palpable in the warm spring air, yet here, on the high ground above Fuentes de Onoro, it was almost as though the battle for the village was something happening far away.

Sharpe led Harper on a wide detour behind the group of staff officers.

"Nosey's there," he explained to Harper, "and I don't need him glaring at me."

"In his bad books, are we?"

"More than that, Pat. I'm facing a b.l.o.o.d.y court of inquiry." Sharpe had not been willing to confess the truth to Donaju, but Harper was a friend and so he told him the story, and the bitterness of his plight could not help but spill over. "What was I supposed to do, Pat? Let those raping b.a.s.t.a.r.ds live?"

"What will the court do to you?"

"Christ knows. At worst? Order a court martial and have me thrown out of the army. At best? Break me down to lieutenant. But that'll be the end of me.

They'll make me a storekeeper again, then put me in charge of b.l.o.o.d.y lists at some b.l.o.o.d.y depot where I can drink myself to death."

"But they have to prove you shot those b.u.g.g.e.rs! G.o.d save Ireland, but none of us will say a word. Jesus, I'd kill anyone who said different!"

"But there are others, Pat. Runciman and Sarsfield."

"They won't say a word, sir."

"May be too late anyway. General b.l.o.o.d.y Valverde knows, and that's all that matters. He's got his knife stuck into me and there's b.u.g.g.e.r all I can do about it."

"Could shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Harper said.

"You won't catch him alone," Sharpe said. He had dreamed of shooting Valverde, but doubted he would have the opportunity. "And Hogan says that b.l.o.o.d.y Loup might even send an official complaint!"

"It isn't fair, sir," Harper complained.

"No, Pat, it isn't, but it hasn't happened yet, and Loup might walk into a cannon ball today. But not a word to anyone, Pat. I don't want half the b.l.o.o.d.y army discussing it."

"I'll keep quiet, sir," Harper promised, though he could not imagine the news not getting round the army, nor could he imagine how anyone would think justice might be served by sacrificing an officer for shooting two French b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. He followed Sharpe between two parked wagons and a brigade of seated infantry. Sharpe recognized the pale-green facings of the 24th, a Warwicks.h.i.+re regiment, while beyond them were the kilted and bonneted Highlanders of the

79th. The Highlanders' pipers were playing a wild tune to the tattoo of drums, trying to rival the deeper percussive blasts of the French cannonade. Sharpe guessed the two battalions formed the reserve poised to go down into Fuentes de Onoro's streets if the French looked like capturing the village. A third battalion was just joining the reserve brigade as Sharpe turned towards the sound of breaking tiles and cracking stone.

"Right, down here," Sharpe said. He had spotted a track that led beside the graveyard's southern wall. It was a precipitous track, probably made by goats, and the two men had to use their hands to steady themselves on the steep top portion of the slope, then they ran down the last few yards to the scanty cover of an alleyway where they were greeted by the sudden appearance of a nervous redcoat who came round the corner with levelled musket. "Hold your fire, lad!" Sharpe called. "Anyone who comes down here is probably on your side, and if they're not you're in trouble."

"Sorry, sir," the boy said, then ducked as a sc.r.a.p of tile whistled overhead.

"They're a bit lively, sir," he added.

"Time to worry, lad, is when they stop firing," Sharpe said, "because that means the infantry are on their way. Who's in charge here?"

"Don't know, sir. Unless it's Sergeant Patterson."

"I doubt it, lad, but thanks anyway." Sharpe ran from the alley's end, turned down a side street, dodged right into another street, jumped down a steep flight of stone stairs littered with broken tiles and so found himself in the main street which ran down the hill in a series of sharp twists. A roundshot hit the street's centre just as he ducked down beside a dungheap. The ball ploughed up a patch of stone and earth, then bounced to smash into a reed- thatched cattle byre as another roundshot splayed apart some roof beams across the street. Still more shots crashed home as the French gunners put in a sudden energetic spell. Sharpe and Harper took temporary cover in a doorway that bore the fading chalk marks from both armies' billeting officers; one mark read 5/4/60 meaning that five men of number four company of the 60th

Rifles had been billeted in the tiny cottage, while just above it was a legend saying that seven Frenchmen, the mark carried the enemy's strange cross-bar on the shank of the 7, of the Sand of the Line had once been posted to the house that now lacked its roof. Dust drifted like mist in what had been the front room where a torn sacking curtain fluttered forlornly at a window. The village's inhabitants and their belongings had been carried in army wagons to the nearby town of Frenada, but inevitably some of the villagers' possessions had been left behind. One doorway was barricaded with a child's cot while another had a pair of benches as a firestep. A mixture of riflemen and redcoats garrisoned the town and they were sheltering from the cannonade by crouching behind the thickest walls of the deserted houses. The stone walls could not stop every French roundshot and Sharpe had already pa.s.sed three dead men put out in the street and seen a half-dozen wounded men making their slow way back up towards the ridge. "What unit are you?" he called to a sergeant sheltering behind the cot across the street.

"Third Division Light Companies, sir!" the sergeant called back.

"And the First Division!" another voice chimed in. "Don't forget the First

Division!"

It seemed the army had collected the cream of two divisions, their skirmishers, and put them into Fuentes de Onoro. Skirmishers were the brightest men, the ones trained to fight independently, and this village was no place for men who could only stand in the battle line and fire volleys.

This was going to be a place of sharpshooting and street brawls, a place where men would be separated from their officers and forced to fight without orders.

"Who's in charge of you all?" Sharpe asked the sergeant.

"Colonel Williams of the 60th, sir. Down there, in the inn."

"Thanks!" Sharpe and Harper edged down the side of the street. A roundshot rumbled overhead to drive into a roof. A scream sounded, then was cut off. The inn was the very same tavern where Sharpe had first met El Castrador and where now, in the same garden with the half-severed vine, he found Colonel Williams and his small staff.

"It's Sharpe, isn't it? Come to help us?" Williams was a genial Welshman from the 60th Rifles. "Don't know you," he said to Harper.

"Sergeant Harper, sir."

"You look handy to have in a sc.r.a.p, Sergeant," Williams said. "d.a.m.ned noisy today, eh?" he added in mild complaint of the cannonade. He was standing on a bench that gave him a view over the garden wall and the roofs of the lower houses. "So what brings you here, Sharpe?"

"I'm just making sure we know where to deliver ammunition, sir."

Williams offered Sharpe an owlish gaze of surprise. "Got you fetching and carrying, have they? Seems a waste of time for a man of your talents, Sharpe.

And I don't think you'll find much custom here. My boys are all well supplied.

Eighty rounds a man, two thousand men, and as many cartridges again stacked up in the church. Sweet Jesus!" This last imprecation was caused by a round-shot that must have gone within two feet of the Colonel's head, forcing him to duck hard down. It crashed into a house, there was a tumble of falling stone and then, quite suddenly, silence.