Sharpe's Battle Part 48

"Yet you fight for Britain."

Hogan shrugged. The priest's pistol was loaded and primed, but for the moment it hung loose in Sarsfield's hand. Hogan had played a game with the priest, a game he had expected to win, but this proof of his victory was not giving the

Major any pleasure. Indeed, as the realization of his triumph sank in, Hogan's mood became ever bleaker. "I worry about allegiance," Hogan said, "I surely do. I lie awake sometimes and wonder whether I'm right in thinking that what's best for Ireland is to be a part of Britain, but I do know one thing, Father, which is that I don't want to be ruled by Bonaparte. I think maybe I'm not so brave a man as Wolfe Tone, but nor did I ever agree with his ideas. You do,

Father, and I salute you for it, but that isn't why you're going to have to die. " The reason you're going to have to die, Father, is not because you fight for Ireland, but because you fight for Napoleon. The distinction is fatal."

Sarsfield smiled. "I shall have to die?" he asked in wry amus.e.m.e.nt. He c.o.c.ked the pistol, then raised it towards Hogan's head.

The sound of the shot pounded across the orchard. The two gravediggers jumped in terror as smoke drifted out from the hedge where the killer had been concealed just twenty paces from where Hogan and Sarsfield had been standing.

The priest was now lying on the mound of excavated soil where his body jerked twice and then, with a sigh, lay still.

Sharpe stood up from behind the hedge and crossed to the grave to see that his bullet had gone plumb where he had aimed it, straight through the dead man's heart. He stared down at the, priest, noting how dark the blood looked on the soutane's cloth. A fly had already settled there. "I liked him," he told

Hogan.

"It's allowed, Richard," Hogan said. The Major was upset and pale, so pale that for a moment he looked as if he might be sick. "One of mankind's higher authorities enjoins us to love our enemies and He said nothing about them ceasing to be enemies just because we love them. Nor can I recall any specific injunction in Holy Scripture against shooting our enemies through the heart."

Hogan paused and suddenly all his usual flippancy seemed to drain out of him.

"I liked him too," he said simply.

"But he was going to shoot you," Sharpe said. Hogan, talking privately with

Sharpe on their way to the burial, had warned the rifleman what might happen and Sharpe, disbelieving the prediction, had nevertheless watched it happen and then done his part.

"He deserved a better death," Hogan said, then he pushed the corpse with his foot and thus toppled it into the grave. The priest's body landed awkwardly so that it seemed as if he was sitting on the shrouded head of Kiely's corpse.

Hogan tossed the counterfeit newspaper after the body, then took a small round box from his pocket. "Shooting Sarsfield doesn't fetch you any favours,

Richard," Hogan said sternly as he prised the lid off the box. "Let's just say

I now forgive you for letting Juanita go. That damage has been contained. But you still might need to be sacrificed for the happiness of Spain."

"Yes, sir," Sharpe said resentfully.

Hogan caught the resentment in the rifleman's voice. "Of course life isn't fair, Richard. Ask him." He nodded down at the dead, white-haired priest then sprinkled the contents of his small box onto the corpse's faded and bloodied soutane.

"What's that?" Sharpe asked.

"Just soil, Richard, just soil. Nothing important." Hogan tossed the empty pillbox onto the two bodies, then summoned the grave-diggers. "He was a

Frenchman," he told them in Portuguese, certain that such an explanation would make them sympathize with the murder they had just witnessed. He gave each man a coin, then watched as the double grave was filled with earth.

Hogan walked back with Sharpe towards Fuentes de Onoro. "Where's Patrick?" the

Major asked.

"I told him to wait in Vilar Formoso."

"At an inn?"

"Aye. The one where I first met Runciman."

"Good. I need to get drunk, Richard." Hogan looked bleak, almost as if he might weep. "One less witness of your confession in San Isidro, Richard," he said.

"That's not why I did it, Major," Sharpe protested.

"You did nothing, Richard, absolutely nothing." Hogan spoke fiercely. "What happened in that orchard never happened. You saw nothing, heard nothing, did nothing. Father Sarsfield is alive, G.o.d knows where, and his disappearance will become a mystery that will never be explained. Or perhaps the truth is that Father Sarsfield never even existed, Richard, in which case you can't possibly have killed him, can you? So say no more about it, not a word." He sniffed, then looked ahead at the blue evening sky which was unbruised by any gunsmoke. "The French have given us a day of peace, Richard, so we shall celebrate by getting b.l.o.o.d.y drunk. And tomorrow, G.o.d help us sinners both, we'll b.l.o.o.d.y fight."

The sun sank behind layers of western cloud so that the sky seemed shot with glory. For a time the shadows of the British guns reached monstrously across the plain as they stretched towards the oaks and the French army and it was then, in the dying minutes of the full light, that Sharpe rested his telescope on the chill barrel of a nine-pounder gun and trained the gla.s.s across the low-lying land until he could see the enemy soldiers around their cooking fires. It was not the first time that day he had searched the enemy lines through the gla.s.s. All morning he had wandered restlessly between the ammunition park and the gun line where he had stared fixedly at the enemy and now, back from Vilar Formoso with a sour belly and a head thick with too much wine, he looked once again into Ma.s.sena's lines.

"They won't come now," a gunner lieutenant said, thinking that the rifle

Captain feared a dusk a.s.sault. "Froggies don't like fighting at night."

"No," Sharpe agreed, "they won't come now," but he kept his eye to the telescope as he inched it along the shadowed line of trees and fires and men.

And then, suddenly, he checked the gla.s.s.

For he had seen the grey uniforms. Loup was here after all and his brigade was a part of Ma.s.sena's army which had spent the whole day preparing for the attack that would surely come with the returning sun.

Sharpe watched his enemy, then straightened from the gun barrel and closed the gla.s.s. His head spun with the effects of the wine, but he was not so drunk that he did not feel a shudder of fear as he thought of what would come across those cannon-scarred fields when the sun next shone on Spain.

Tomorrow.

CHAPTER 9.

The hors.e.m.e.n came out of the mist like creatures from nightmare. The Frenchmen rode big horses that galloped through the marshland to explode water with every stride, then the leading squadrons reached the higher ground about the village of Nave de Haver where the Spanish partisans had bivouacked and the sound of the French cavalry's hooves turned into a thunder that shook the earth itself. A trumpet urged the hors.e.m.e.n on. It was dawn and the sun was a silver disc low in the fogbank that veiled the eastern fields from which death was erupting.

The Spanish sentinels fired one hasty volley, then retreated before the overwhelming enemy numbers. Some of the partisans were asleep after standing guard through the night, and they woke only to stumble out from their requisitioned houses and be cut down with slas.h.i.+ng blades and dipping lance heads. The partisan brigade had been placed in Nave de Haver to watch the allies' southern flank and no one had expected them to face a full French attack, but now the heavy cavalry was streaming in through the alleys and cras.h.i.+ng their big horses through the gardens and orchards beside the huddle of houses that lay so far to the south of Fuentes de Onoro. The partisan commander shouted at his men to withdraw, but the French were slas.h.i.+ng at defenders as they frantically tried to reach their frightened horses. Some men refused to retreat, but ran at the enemy with all the pa.s.sionate hatred of the guerrillero. Blood spilt on the streets and splashed on the house walls. One street was blocked when a Spaniard shot a dragoon's horse and the beast fell thras.h.i.+ng to the cobbles. The Spaniard bayoneted the rider, then was hurled backwards as a second horse, unable to stop its charge, tripped and stumbled over the bleeding corpses. A knot of Spaniards fell on the second horse and its rider. Knives and swords hacked down, then more partisans scrambled over the dying, b.l.o.o.d.y beasts to fire a volley at the milling riders trapped by the carnage. More Frenchmen fell from their saddles, then a troop of lancers entered the street behind the Spanish defenders and the lance heads dropped to the level of a man's waist as the horses were spurred forward. The Spaniards, trapped between dragoons and lancers, tried to fight back, but now it was the turn of the French to be the killers. A few partisans escaped through the houses, but only to find the streets beyond the back doors were also filled with blood-crazed hors.e.m.e.n in glittering uniforms being urged to the slaughter by the frantic, joyous notes of the trumpeters.

Most of Nave de Haver's Spanish defenders fled into the mists west of the village where they were pursued by cuira.s.siers in high black-plumed helmets and s.h.i.+ning steel breastplates. The big swords hacked down like meat axes; one such blow could cripple a horse or crush a man's skull. To the north and south of the cuira.s.siers, troops of lightly mounted cha.s.seurs a cheval raced like steeplechasers to cut off the Spaniards. They whooped hunting calls. The cha.s.seurs carried light, curved sabres that slashed wicked wounds across their enemies' heads and shoulders. Unhorsed Spaniards reeled in agony across the meadows and were ridden down by hors.e.m.e.n practising their sword cuts or lance thrusts. Dismounted dragoons hunted through the houses and cattle sheds of

Nave de Haver, finding the survivors one by one and shooting them with carbines or pistols. One group of Spaniards took refuge in the church, but the copper-helmeted dragoons forced their way in through the priest's door at the back of the sacristy and fell on the defenders with swords. It was Sunday morning and the priest had hoped to say a Ma.s.s for the Spanish troops, but now he died with his congregation as the French ransacked the small, blood-soaked church for its plate and candlesticks.

A French work party dragged the corpses out of the village's main street so that the advancing artillery could pa.s.s through. It took half an hour's work before the guns could crash and rattle between the blood-splashed houses. The first guns were the light and mobile cannon of the horse artillery; six- pounder guns dragged by horses ridden by gunners resplendent in gold and blue uniforms. Larger cannons were coming behind, but the horse artillery would lead the attack on the next village upstream where the British Seventh

Division had taken its position. Infantry columns followed the horse artillery, battalion after battalion marching beneath their gilded eagles. The mist was burning off to show a village smoking with abandoned cooking fires and reeking of blood where the victorious dragoons were remounting their horses to join the pursuit. Some of the infantry tried to march through the village, but staff officers forced them to go around Nave de Haver's southern flank so that none of the battalions would be slowed by plundering. The first aides galloped back to Ma.s.sena's headquarters to say that Nave de Haver had fallen and that the village of Poco Velha, less than two miles upstream, was already under artillery fire. A second division of infantry marched to support the men who were already turning the allies' southern flank and were now marching due north towards the road that led from Fuentes de Onoro to the fords across the River Coa.

Opposite Fuentes de Onoro itself the French main gun batteries opened fire.

The cannon had been dragged to the tree line and roughly embrasured with felled trunks to give their crews some protection from the British guns on the ridge. The French fired common sh.e.l.l, iron b.a.l.l.s filled with a fused powder charge that cracked apart in a burst of smoke to shatter the casing on the plateau's skyline, while short-barrelled howitzers lobbed sh.e.l.ls into the broken streets of Fuentes de Onoro to fill the village with the stench of burned powder and the rattle of exploded iron. During the night a battery of mixed four- and six-pounder guns had been moved into the gardens and houses on the stream's eastern bank and those guns opened up with roundshot that cracked fiercely on the defenders' walls. The voltigeurs in the gardens fired at

British loopholes and cheered whenever a roundshot brought down a length of wall or collapsed a broken roof onto a room of crouching redcoats. A sh.e.l.l set light to some collapsed thatch and the flames crackled up to spread thick smoke across the upper village where riflemen sheltered behind the cemetery's gravestones. French sh.e.l.ls drove into the burial ground, overturning headstones and grubbing up the earth around the graves so that it looked as though a herd of monstrous pigs had been truffling the soil to reach the buried dead.