Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (19 page)

Hakeswill cackled. ‘You bloody fairies! You’re not bloody soldiers. Stand still!’

The twelve Riflemen stood still. Each would have gladly killed the Sergeant, but not here, not in the supply dump that was open to the gaze of the whole camp. The murder would have to be done at night, in secret, but somehow Hakeswill seemed always to be awake, or alert to the smallest sound. Perhaps he was right, he could not be killed.

Hakeswill walked slowly down the rank. Each man was stripped to his shirt, the green jackets lying on the ground in front of them. He stopped by Hagman, the old poacher, and pushed at the jacket with his foot. ‘What’s this, then?’ His toe was pointing at the black stripe sewn on the sleeve.

‘Senior Rifleman’s badge, Sergeant.’

‘Senior Rifleman’s badge, Sergeant.’ Hakeswill imitated Hagman. The yellow face twitched. ‘Bloody decrepit, you are!’ He pushed the sleeve into the mud. ‘Senior bloody Rifleman! From now on you’re a bloody soldier.’ He cackled, letting his foetid breath wash over Hagman’s face. The Rifleman did not move or react; to do so was to invite punishment. Hakeswill twitched and moved on. He was feeling pleased with himself. The Riflemen had annoyed him because they seemed to him to form an élite group, a close-knit group, and he had wanted to smash them. He had suggested to Rymer as they straggled back from the dam that the rifles were a hindrance; he had hinted that Rymer could begin to establish his ascendency over Sharpe’s old Company by disbanding the Riflemen, and it had worked. ‘You! About turn! You poxed Irish pig! Turn!’ His spittle sprayed Harper.

Harper paused for a fraction of a second, and saw an officer watching. He had no wish to end his days in front of a firing squad. He turned round.

Hakeswill drew his bayonet. ‘How’s your back, Private?’

‘Fine, Sergeant.’

‘Fine, fine.’ Hakeswill mimicked the Donegal accent. ‘That’s good, Private.’ He put the flat of the bayonet high on Harper’s back and drew the blade downwards, over the unhealed cuts, over the scabs, and blood welled out to stain the shirt. ‘You’ve got a dirty shirt, Private, a dirty, Irish shirt.’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Harper kept the pain out of his voice. He had promised he would kill this man, and he would.

‘Wash it!’ Hakeswill sheathed his bayonet. ‘About turn!’

The twelve Riflemen watched the Sergeant. He was mad, there was no doubt about that. In the past few days he had taken to a new habit, of sitting by himself, taking off his hat, and talking into it. He talked to his shako as if it was a friend. He told it his plans and his hopes, how he would find Teresa, and his eyes would flick up to the Company to catch them looking at him as they listened. Then he would cackle. ‘I’m going to have her.’ His eyes would go back to the shako’s greasy interior. ‘I’m going to have the pretty lady, oh yes, Obadiah’s going to have her!’

Hakeswill stalked in front of the twelve. ‘You’re going to wear red coats, now, not bloody green. You’re going to carry muskets, not those toys!’ He gestured at the twelve rifles that were stacked by the unlocked arms chest. He laughed. ‘You’re going to be real soldiers, like Sergeant Hakeswill, your friend, me.’ He cackled. ‘You hate me, don’t you?’ The face twitched involuntarily. ‘I like that. Because I hate you!’ He took his hat off, looked inside, and his voice became whining, obsequious. ‘I hate them, I really do.’ He looked up, his voice going back to normal. ‘You think I’m mad?’ He laughed. ‘Not so I don’t know.’ He saw their eyes flicker to the left and turned. The bastard Sharpe was approaching. Limping. Hakeswill put his hat on and saluted. ‘Lieutenant, sir.’

Sharpe returned the salute. ‘Sergeant.’ His voice was civil. ‘Stand the men at ease.’

‘But, sir, Lieutenant, sir…’

‘At ease, Sergeant.’

Hakeswill twitched. He could not fight Sharpe through the formal hierarchy, only in the dark lanes of his hatred. ‘Sir!’ He turned to the Riflemen. ‘Detail! Stand at ease!’

Sharpe looked at the Riflemen, his Riflemen, the men he had led from Corunna, and he saw the misery in their faces. They were being stripped of their pride along with their green jackets. Now they must take one more shock. He hated making speeches, he felt tongue-tied, inadequate. ‘I’ve just come from the Colonel’s tent and, well, I shall be leaving the Battalion. Today.’ He saw the expressions change into something approaching despair. ‘I wanted to be the one to tell you. Sergeant!’

Hakeswill, elated at the news, stepped forward, but saw that Sharpe was talking to Harper. Hakeswill stopped. He could sense a danger in the air, but he could not pin it down.

‘Sir?’ Harper’s voice was tense.

‘Pick up the green jackets. Bring them here.’ Sharpe was talking calmly, almost casually, the only man who seemed unaware of the tension.

‘Lieutenant, sir!’

Sharpe turned. ‘Sergeant Hakeswill?’

‘My orders are to take the jackets, sir.’

‘Where, Sergeant?’

Hakeswill cackled. ‘To the gunners, Lieutenant, sir. To be used as swabs.’

‘I’ll save you the trouble, Sergeant.’ Sharpe’s voice was almost friendly. He turned away and waited till Harper brought the jackets. ‘Put them there.’ He pointed at the ground next to him.

Harper bent down. He remembered Hakeswill’s crazy words, spoken into his shako, and Harper was sure what they meant, and now he tried to warn Sharpe. ‘He’s after Teresa, sir. He knows where she is.’ He muttered it, sure that Sharpe had heard the news, but the officer’s face stayed calm and relaxed. Harper wondered if he had spoken too softly. ‘Sir?’

‘I heard you, Sergeant, and thank you. Rejoin the rank.’ Sharpe still did not react, instead he smiled at the twelve men. ‘We’ve been together for seven years, some of us, and I don’t think this will be the finish of that.’ Hope flickered into their faces. ‘But if it is, then I want to thank you. You’re good soldiers, good Riflemen, the best.’ Now their faces showed some pleasure, but he did not look at them, nor at Hakeswill, but crossed to the arms chest and picked a rifle at random. He held it up. ‘I’m sorry you’re losing these. I make you one promise. You’ll get them back, as you’ll get back your jackets.’

They smiled openly, Hakeswill cackled and then saw Sharpe’s face. Sharpe was staring, in horror, at the lock of the rifle. He looked up at Hakeswill. ‘Sergeant?’

‘Lieutenant, sir?’

‘Whose rifle is this?’

‘Rifle, sir? Don’t know, sir.’ He twitched. He could feel a threat somewhere.

‘It’s loaded, Sergeant.’

‘Loaded, sir? Can’t be, sir.’

‘You checked?’

Hakeswill hesitated. His power was preserved through meticulous attention to military detail, but in his eagerness to strip off the green jackets, he had not inspected the rifles. His mind sorted through the problem and he smiled. ‘Not yet, Lieutenant, sir. But they’re not in the chest yet, sir, Lieutenant, are they? I’ll inspect them in a minute.’ He twitched furiously, the blue eyes blinking as he tried, vainly, to control his face.

Sharpe smiled, still courteous. ‘I’ll save you the trouble, Sergeant.’ He laid the first rifle down, carefully, and then picked up the others, one by one, and pointed each at Hakeswill’s vast belly. He cocked each flint, pulled each trigger, and Hakeswill’s face twitched each time. Sharpe’s eyes did not leave the Sergeant’s face, not even when he stooped to pick up another rifle, and he watched the spasm and saw the relief each time as the spark died in an empty pan. The Riflemen, humiliated by the Sergeant, grinned at the fear they saw in Hakeswill, but they were still nervous of him. He was the man who could not be killed and Sharpe knew that their nervousness had to be dispelled. He put the last rifle in the chest and, as carefully as he had put it down, picked up the first. Hakeswill stared as Sharpe pulled back the flint, past the half cock, back till the sear clicked into place. The Sergeant licked his lips, twitched, and flicked his eyes up to Sharpe’s face then back to the muzzle that was pointing at his belly.

Sharpe walked slowly towards Hakeswill. ‘You can’t be killed, is that right?’ Hakeswill nodded, tried to smile, but the huge muzzle was coming towards him. Sharpe walked slowly. ‘They tried to hang you, and you lived, is that right?’ Hakeswill nodded again, his mouth a rictus. Sharpe was limping from the bullet wound in his thigh. ‘Are you going to live for ever, Sergeant?’ One of the Riflemen sniggered and Hakeswill darted a look to see which one, but Sharpe jerked the barrel up and the movement brought the eyes back. ‘Are you going to live for ever?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘Not “Lieutenant, sir”? Lost your tongue, Hakeswill?’

‘No, sir.’

Sharpe smiled. He was very close to the Sergeant and the rifle was pointed up beneath Hakeswill’s chin. ‘I think you’re going to die, Sergeant. Shall I tell you why?’

The blue, child-like eyes flicked left and right as if searching for help. Hakeswill expected to be attacked by night, in the shadows, but never in bright daylight among hundreds of potential witnesses. Yet no one was taking any notice! The rifle jerked, touching his sweated skin. ‘Sir!’

‘Look at me, Sergeant. I’m telling you a secret.’

Hakeswill looked at Sharpe, their eyes level. ‘Sir?’

The Riflemen watched and Sharpe spoke clearly for them. ‘I think, Sergeant, that no one can kill you. Except.’ He spoke slowly, as if to a child. ‘Except, Sergeant, someone whom you had tried to kill, and whom you failed to kill.’ The fear was obvious on the sweating face, the yellow paling. ‘Can you think of anyone like that, Sergeant?’

The face twitched, shook, and the rifle jerked up again into the chin. ‘No, sir!’

‘Good!’ The stubby foresight of the Baker was cold on Hakeswill’s skin. Sharpe dropped his voice so that only the Sergeant could hear him. ‘You’re a dead man, Obadiah. The magic’s gone.’ He suddenly shouted. ‘Bang!’

Hakeswill leaped back, startled, let out a pathetic yelp like a whipped child, and stumbled on to the grass. Sharpe laughed at him, pointed the gun and pulled the trigger on to an empty, unloaded pan. Hakeswill sprawled on the grass, his face murderous, but Sharpe turned away from him to his grinning Riflemen. ‘Shun!’

They snapped to attention. Sharpe spoke to them again, but this time his voice was crisp. ‘Remember, I’ve made you a promise. You’ll get your rifles back, your jackets back, and you’ll get me back!’ He did not know how he could do it, but he would. He turned back to the Sergeant and pointed at the seven-barrelled gun on Hakeswill’s shoulder. ‘Give me that!’

Hakeswill handed it over meekly, with its ammunition pouch, and Sharpe slung the gun on his own shoulder next to his rifle. He looked down at the Sergeant. ‘I’m coming back, Sergeant. Remember that.’ He scooped the jackets into an awkward bundle, put them under his arm, and limped away. He knew that Hakeswill would exact a revenge on the Riflemen, but he knew, too, that the Sergeant had been humiliated, shown to be vulnerable, and the Company, Sharpe’s Company, needed to know that much.

It was a small victory, a petty victory even, but it was a start on the long fight back, a fight that he knew must end in the breach at Badajoz.

News came that the French, at last, were moving; not against Wellington at Badajoz, but towards the new Spanish garrison in Ciudad Rodrigo. The reports came from the Partisans and from the despatches they had captured, some still stained with the blood of enemy messengers, and told of disagreements among the French Generals, of delays in gathering their troops, and their difficulties in replacing the French siege artillery, all of which had been captured inside the northern fortress. The news spurred Wellington into greater speed; he wanted the siege of Badajoz done, and he could not be persuaded that the French chances of retaking Ciudad Rodrigo were remote. He did not trust the Spaniards in the town and wanted to march the army north to bolster his allies’ resolve. Speed! Speed! Speed! For the six days after Easter he pounded the message at his Generals and staff officers. Give me Badajoz! For the six days the new batteries built in the ruins of the Picurina Fort had fired incessantly at the breaches, at first with small effect until, almost unexpectedly, the loosened stone had cascaded into the ditch and was followed by a dust-spewing avalanche of rubble from the wall’s core. The sweating, powder-stained gun crews had cheered, while the infantry, guarding the batteries against another French sortie, stared at the incipient breaches and wondered what welcome the French were preparing for the assault.

By night the French tried to repair the damage. The Picurina guns sprayed the two breaches with grapeshot, but still, each morning, the broken edges of the stonework had been padded with thick bales of wool and so, each dawn, the gunners fired at the mattresses until, in an explosion of greasy fleeces, the padding fell away and the iron balls could start again on the wall proper; gouging at it, crumbling it, carving the double path into the city.

The dam still stood and the floodwaters still stretched south of the city, forcing any assault on the bastions to march obliquely against the walls instead of straight on. The northern batteries pounded at the dam’s fort while the infantry dug their trenches forward, trying to take their spades and muskets to the very edge of the small fort, but the trenching was thrown back. Every gun on Badajoz’s east wall, from the high kestrel-ridden castle, to the Trinidad bastion, opened up on the creeping trench till the workers were smashed and no one could live in the iron hail, and so the attempt was given up. The dam would stay, the approach would be oblique, and the engineers did not like it. ‘Time, I want time!’ Colonel Fletcher, wounded in the French foray, was out of bed. He pounded the map in front of him. ‘He wants a bloody miracle!’

‘I do.’ The General had entered the room unheard and Fletcher twisted round, grimacing because the wound still hurt.

‘My Lord! My apologies.’ The Scottish growl sounded far from apologetic.

Wellington gestured the apology away, nodded at the men waiting for him, and sat down. Major Hogan knew the General was just forty-three, yet he looked older. Perhaps they all looked older. The siege was wearing them down as it was wearing away the two bastions, and Hogan sighed because he knew that this meeting, on Saturday 4th April as he carefully noted at the top of his notebook page, would once more be a wrangle between the General and the Engineers. Wellington took out his own map, unrolled it, and weighted the corners with ink bottles. ‘Good morning, gentlemen. Expenditure?’

The gunner Colonel pulled paper towards him. ‘Yesterday, my Lord, one thousand one hundred and fourteen twenty-four-pounders, six hundred and three eighteen-pounders.’ He gave the figures in a flat monotone. ‘One gun burst, sir.’

‘Burst?’

The Colonel turned the paper over. ‘Twenty-four-pounder in Number Three, my Lord, high-shot half-way down the bore. We lost three men, six wounded.’

Wellington grunted. It was astonishing, Hogan always thought, how the General dominated a room by his presence. Perhaps it was the blue eyes that seemed so knowing, or the stillness of the face round the strong, hooked nose. Most of the officers in this room were older than the Viscount Wellington, yet all of them, with the possible exception of Fletcher, seemed in awe of him. The General wrote the figures on his small piece of paper, the pencil squeaking. He looked back to the gunner. ‘Powder?’

‘Plenty, sir. Eighty barrels arrived yesterday. We can keep firing for another month.’

‘We’ll bloody need to. Sorry, my Lord.’ Fletcher was hatching marks on his map.

A trace of a smile flicked the corners of Wellington’s mouth. ‘Colonel?’

‘My Lord?’ Fletcher affected surprise. He looked up from the map, but kept his pen poised as though he was being interrupted.

‘I can see you’re not prepared for the meeting.’ Wellington gave a small nod to the Scotsman and turned to Hogan. ‘Major? Any reports?’

Hogan turned his notebook back two pages. ‘Two deserters, my Lord, both Germans, both from the Hesse-Darmstadt Regiment. They confirm that the Germans are garrisoning the castle.’ Hogan raised his eyebrows. ‘They say morale is high, my Lord.’

‘Then why desert?’

‘A brother of one, my Lord, is with the KGL.’

‘Ah. You’re sending them there?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The King’s German Legion would welcome the recruits.

‘Anything else?’ Wellington liked to keep the morning conferences brisk.

Hogan nodded. ‘They confirm, sir, that the French are devoid of roundshot, but claim plenty of canister and grape. We already knew that.’ He hurried on, forestalling a complaint of repetition from the General. ‘They also say the city is terrified of a massacre.’

‘Then they should plead for a surrender.’

‘The city, my Lord, is partly pro-French.’ It was true. Spanish civilians had been seen on the walls, firing muskets at the trenches sapping forward towards the fort at the dam. ‘They are hoping for our defeat.’

‘But.’ Wellington’s voice was scornful. ‘They hope to avoid reprisals if we win. Is that right?’

Hogan shrugged. ‘Yes, sir.’ It was, the Irishman thought, a vain hope. If Wellington had his way, and he would, the assault would be soon and the way into the city hard. If they did win through the breach, and Hogan acknowledged the possibility that they might not, then the troops would lose all vestiges of discipline. It had always been so. Soldiers who were forced to fight through the terror of a narrow breach claimed the right to possess the fortress and all within it. The Irish remembered Drogheda and Wexford, the towns sacked by Cromwell and his English troops, and the stories were still told of the victors’ atrocities. Stories of women and children herded into a church that was fired, the English celebrating while the Irish burned, and Hogan thought of Teresa and her child, Sharpe’s child. His thoughts snapped back to the meeting as Wellington dictated a fast order to an aide-de-camp. The order forbade any looting inside the city, but it was given, Hogan thought, without much conviction. Fletcher listened to the order and then, once again, pounded the map with his fist.

‘Bomb them.’

‘Ah! Colonel Fletcher is with us.’ Wellington turned to him.

Fletcher smiled. ‘I say bomb them, my Lord. Smoke them out! They’ll give up.’

‘And how long, pray, before they give up?’

Fletcher shrugged. He knew it could take weeks for the squat howitzers to reduce enough of Badajoz to smoking rubble, to burn the food supplies and thus force a surrender. ‘A month, my Lord?’

‘Two, more like, perhaps three. And let me advert you, Colonel, to the notion, imperfectly understood though it may be within the walls, that the Spanish are our allies. If we indiscriminately bomb them with shells it is possible, you will grant me, that our allies will be displeased.’

Fletcher nodded. ‘They’ll not be too happy, my Lord, if your men rape everything that moves and steal everything that doesn’t.’

‘We will trust to our soldiers’ good sense.’ The words were cynically said. ‘And now, Colonel, perhaps you can tell us about the breaches. Are they practical?’

‘No, sir, they are not.’ Fletcher’s Scottish accent was stronger again. ‘I can tell you a good deal, sir, most of it new.’ He turned the map round so that the General was looking at the two bastions from the point of view of an attacker. The Santa Maria was to the left, Trinidad to the right. Fletcher had marked the breaches. The Trinidad had lost half of its face, a gap nearly a hundred feet wide and the Engineer had pencilled in his estimate of the height reduction. Twenty-five feet. The flank of the Santa Maria facing the Trinidad was equally badly hit. ‘The breaches, as you can see, my Lord, are now about twenty-five feet high. That’s a hell of a climb! That’s higher, if you’ll forgive me for pointing it out, than the unbreached wall at Ciudad Rodrigo!’ He leaned back as if he had made a scoring hit.

Wellington nodded. ‘We are all aware, Colonel, that Badajoz is appreciably bigger than Ciudad Rodrigo. Pray continue.’

‘My Lord.’ Fletcher leaned forward again. ‘Let me advert you to this.’ He grinned as he used one of Wellington’s favourite expressions. His broad finger settled on the ditch to the front of the Santa Maria. ‘They’ve blocked the ditch here, and here.’ The finger moved to the right of the Trinidad breach. ‘They’re boxing us in.’ His voice was serious now. He could twist the General’s tail from time to time, but only dared do it because he was a good Engineer, trusted by Wellington, and he saw it as his job to give his true point of view and not be a lickspittle. The finger tapped the ditch. ‘It seems they’ve put carts in the ditch, upturned carts, and lengths of timber. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that they plan to fire those obstacles. You can see what will happen, gentlemen. Our troops will be in the ditch, trying to climb a bloody great ramp, and there’ll be no escape from the grapeshot. They can’t go left and right into the darkness to regroup. They’ll be trapped, lit up, like rats in a bloody barrel.’

Wellington listened to the impassioned outburst. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Aye, my Lord, and there’s more.’

‘Go on.’

The finger stayed to the right of the Trinidad breach. ‘The French have dug another ditch here, in the bottom of the ditch, and flooded it. We’ll be jumping into water, deep water, and it looks as if they’re extending it. Round here.’ The finger traced a line back in front of both breaches.

Wellington’s eyes were on the map. ‘So the longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes?’

Fletcher sighed, but conceded the point. ‘Aye, there’s that.’

Wellington raised his eyes to the Engineer. ‘What do we gain by time?’

‘I can lower the breaches.’

‘By how much?’

‘Ten feet.’

‘How long?’

‘A week.’

Wellington paused, then. ‘You mean two weeks.’

‘Aye, my Lord, perhaps.’

‘We do not have two weeks. We do not have one week. We must take the city. It must be soon.’ There was silence in the room. Outside the windows the guns hammered over the floodwaters. Wellington looked back to the map, reached over the table, and put a long finger on the huge space between the bastions. ‘There’s a ravelin there?’

‘Aye, my Lord, and still being built.’ The ravelin was sketched on the map; a masonry wedge, diamond shaped, that would break up an attack. If the French had been given time to finish it, before the siege guns had started firing, it would have been like a new bastion, built in the ditch, outflanking all attacks. As it was it formed a vast, flat-topped obstacle, surrounded by the ditch, smack between the two breaches.

Wellington looked up to Fletcher. ‘You seem very sure of this new information?’

‘Aye, my Lord, I am. We had a laddie on the glacis last night. He did a good job.’ The praise was grudging.

‘Who?’

Fletcher jerked his head towards Hogan. ‘One of Major Hogan’s lads, sir.’

‘Who, Major?’

Hogan stopped fidgeting with his snuffbox. ‘Richard Sharpe, sir, you’ll remember him?’

Wellington leaned back in his chair. ‘Good Lord. Sharpe?’ He smiled. ‘What’s he doing with you? I thought he had a company?’

‘He did, my Lord. His gazette was refused.’

Wellington’s face scowled. ‘By God! They do not let me make a man Corporal in this damned army! So Sharpe was on the glacis last night?’

Hogan nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Outside, sir. I thought you might want to speak to him.’

‘Good Lord, yes.’ Wellington’s tone was dry. ‘He’s the only man in the army who’s been to the top of the glacis. Fetch him in!’

There were Generals of Division, of Brigade, gunners, Engineers and staff officers and they all turned to stare at the tall, green-jacketed man. They had all heard of him, even the Generals newly arrived from England, because this was the man who had captured a French Eagle and who looked as if he could do it again. He looked battered and hard, like the weapons that festooned him, and his limp and scars spoke of a soldier who fought grimly. Wellington smiled at him and looked round the table. ‘Captain Sharpe has shared all my battles, gentlemen. Isn’t that right, Sharpe? From Seringapatam to today?’

‘Since Boxtel, sir.’

‘Good God. I was a Lieutenant-Colonel.’

‘And I a Private, sir.’ The aides-de-camp, the young aristocrats that Wellington liked as his messengers, stared curiously at the scarred face. Not many men fought out of the ranks. Hogan watched the General. He was being genial to Sharpe, not because the Rifleman had once saved his life, but because he suspected that in Sharpe he had found an ally against the Engineers’ caution. Hogan sighed inwardly. Wellington knew this man. The General looked round the room. ‘A chair for Captain Sharpe?’