Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (20 page)

‘Lieutenant Sharpe, sir.’ Sharpe’s words were almost a challenge, certainly bitter, but the General ignored them.

‘Sit down, sit down. Now, tell us about the breaches.’

Sharpe told them, not awed by the company, but he added little to Fletcher’s account. He had not been able to see clearly, the darkness was relieved only by a very occasional gun-flash from the city’s walls, and much of his account was based on the sounds he had heard as he lay on the glacis lip and listened, not just to the French working parties, but to the British grapeshot smashing through the weeds and rattling on the walls. Wellington let him finish. It had been a concise statement. The General’s eyes held Sharpe’s. ‘One question.’

‘Sir?’

‘Are the breaches practical?’ Wellington’s eyes were unreadable, cold like steel.

Sharpe’s gaze was as hard, as unyielding. ‘Yes.’

A murmur round the table. Wellington leaned back. Colonel Fletcher’s voice rose above the noise. ‘With respect, my Lord, I do not think it within Captain, Lieutenant Sharpe’s competency to pronounce on a breach.’

‘He’s been there.’

Fletcher muttered something about sending a heathen to kirk and not making him a Christian. The quill in his hand bent almost double under the pressure of his fingers, he let it go and the split nib spattered ink across the two bastions. He thumped the pen down. ‘It’s too soon.’

Wellington pushed himself away from the table, stood up. ‘One day, gentlemen, one day.’ He looked round the table. No one challenged him. It was too soon, he knew that, but perhaps any day would be too soon to take on this fortress. Perhaps, as the French claimed, it was impregnable. ‘Tomorrow, gentlemen, Sunday the fifth. We assault Badajoz.’

‘Sir!’ Sharpe spoke and the General, who had been expecting a protest from the Engineers, turned towards him. ‘Sharpe?’

‘One question, sir?’ Sharpe could hardly believe that he was talking, let alone in such challenging tones and in such a company, but he might not get this chance again.

‘Go on.’

‘The Hope, sir. I would like to lead the Hope.’

Wellington’s eyes were cold and glinting. ‘Why?’

What was he to say? That it was a test? The supreme test, perhaps, of a soldier? Or that he wanted his revenge on a system, a system represented by a pox-scarred clerk in Whitehall, that had made him superfluous, unwanted? He suddenly thought of Antonia, his daughter, of Teresa. He thought that he might never see Madrid, Paris, or know how the war would end, but the die was cast. He shrugged, looking for words, unsettled by the impenetrable eyes. ‘I don’t know, sir. I want it.’ He sounded to himself like a petulant child. He could sense the eyes of the senior officers on him, curious eyes, looking at his shabby uniform, his old, irregular sword, and he damned them to hell. Their pride was buttressed by money.

Wellington’s voice was softer. ‘You want your Company?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He felt a fool, a shabby fool in a glittering setting, and he knew that all of them could see his broken pride.

Wellington nodded towards Colonel Fletcher. ‘The Colonel will tell you, Sharpe, and pray God he is wrong, that on Monday morning we’ll be handing Captaincies out with the rations.’

Fletcher said nothing. The room was silent, embarrassed by Sharpe’s request. The Rifleman felt as if all his life, all that had been and all that might never be, was balanced on this silence.

Wellington smiled. ‘God knows, Sharpe, that I think you are a rogue. A useful rogue and, thankfully, a rogue who is on my side.’ He smiled again and Sharpe knew that the General was remembering the gory Indian bayonets reaching for him at Assaye, but that debt had long been paid. Wellington picked up his papers. ‘I don’t think I want you dead, Sharpe. The army would be, somehow, less interesting. Your request is denied.’ He left the room.

Sharpe stood there, quite still as the other officers filed out, and he thought how, in these past few miserable weeks, he had fixed all his hopes and ambitions on that one thing. His Captaincy, his Company, their jackets, rifles and trust; even, because he did not seriously believe he would be killed, the chance to reach the house with the two orange trees before the maniacal horde, before Hakeswill, and all had been fixed on the Hope, the Forlorn Hope. And it had been denied.

He should have felt disappointment, anger even, at the refusal, but he could not. Instead, flooding through him like pure water scouring a foul ditch, was relief; utter, blissful relief. He was ashamed of the feeling.

Hogan came back into the room and smiled up at him. ‘There. You’ve asked, you got the right answer.’

‘No.’ Sharpe’s face was stubborn. ‘There’s still time, sir, still time.’ He did not know what he meant, or why he said it, except that on the morrow, in the first darkness of evening, he would somehow face that test. And win.

Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill was feeling contented. He sat by himself, church parade done, and stared into the depths of his shako. He spoke to his hat. ‘Tonight, it is, tonight. I’ll be a good boy, I won’t let you down.’ He cackled, showing his few rotting teeth, and looked round the Company. They were watching him, he knew, but would take care not to catch his eye. He looked back into the greasy depths of the hat. ‘Scared, they are, of me. Oh yes. Scared of me. Be more scared tonight. A lot of them will die tonight.’ He cackled again and raised his eyes fast so that he might catch a man staring at him. They were all studiously avoiding his eyes. ‘You’ll die tonight! Like little bloody pigs under the pole-axe!’

He would not die. He knew it, despite what Sharpe had said. He looked back into the shako. ‘Bloody Sharpe! He’s scared of me. He ran away! He can’t kill me. No one can kill me!’ He almost shouted the last words. They were true. He had been touched by death and he had survived. He reached up and scratched the livid, red scar. He had hung for an hour on the gallows, a scrap of a boy, and no one had pulled his feet so that his neck would snap. He did not remember much of the experience; the crowds, the other prisoners who had joked with him, but he would always be grateful to the sadistic bastard who had hung them the slow way, without a drop, so that the crowd would have a spectacle to watch. They had cheered every spasmodic jerk and useless struggle until the executioner’s assistants, grinning like actors who are pleasing their audience, came to hold the dangling ankles. They had looked at the crowd, asking their permission to pull, and teased the prisoners. They had not bothered with the twelve-year-old Obadiah Hakeswill. He was cunning then as now and had hung still, even as the pain drifted him in and out of consciousness, so the crowd thought he was already dead. He had not known why he clung so tenaciously to life; it would have been faster and far less painful to be ankle-tugged to death, but then the rain had come. The clouds had split apart in a downpour that cleared the streets in minutes and no one could be bothered with the last small body. His uncle, furtive and frightened, had cut him down and hurried the limp body into an alleyway. He had slapped Obadiah’s face. ‘Listen, you bastard! Can you hear me?’

Obadiah must have said something, or moaned, because he remembered his uncle’s face, peering close. ‘You’re alive. Understand? Little bastard! I don’t know why I bothered, except your mother wanted me to. Can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’ His face was twitching and he could not stop it.

‘You’re to bugger off, understand? Bugger off. You can’t go home, they’ll get you again, you hear me?’

He had heard, and understood, and buggered off, and never saw his family again. Not that he missed them much. He had found the army, like so many hopeless men, and it had served him well. And he could not die; he had known it since he was alone in the alleyway, had tested it in battle, and he knew that he had cheated death.

He unsheathed his bayonet and wondered, for a second, whether to give it to one of the Privates to sharpen. He would like to humiliate the big Irish bastard, but on the other hand he always liked to do the job himself when there was killing ahead. The assault would happen today; everyone knew it, though no announcement had been made, and there would be killing enough for everyone. He looked into the hat. ‘You’ll excuse me a moment? I’ll talk again soon.’

He put the shako down and picked up his stone. It blurred in his hand, honing the bayonet’s leading edge, but he did not look at the work. He stared instead at the Company, recognizing their fear and feeding from it. Hakeswill was content. He had broken the bastards until they fetched his food, washed his clothes, and changed the straw in his shelter. Two of them he had beaten into pulp, but now they were like puppy dogs, eager to please. He had won his major battles. Sharpe was out of the way, and Harper was broken down into a Private, a red-coated Private. The Captain was afraid of Hakeswill, so was Price and so were the Sergeants. Life could be, Hakeswill knew, a lot worse. He put a thumb on the blade, knew the edge could be sharper, and the stone started again on long, whispering strokes.

Private Clayton looked sideways at Hakeswill, laughed, and said something to his companion. Hakeswill saw the laugh, but pretended not to notice. He would take care of young Clayton, but after the siege, when he had time to think the problem through. Clayton had a pretty wife, the prettiest in the Battalion, and Hakeswill had his eye on Sally. She would have to wait until he had done with Teresa.

The thought of Sharpe’s woman made him scowl. He was not certain why he wanted her so much, but he did. She had become an obsession that disturbed his sleep. He would take the bitch and kill her afterwards. It was not because she had fought him, and won; others had done that. He remembered the woman in Dublin who had stuck a gutting-knife in his belly. She had got away and he had felt no resentment, but Teresa was different. Perhaps it was because she had shown no fear, and Hakeswill liked to see fear. He could remember the ones he had killed, the ones he had not needed to kill, right back to that prig of a vicar’s daughter who had stripped for him as he held the adder close by her neck. Dorcas, that was her name, and her father had trumped up a sheep stealing charge that had nearly killed him. Hakeswill smiled to himself. He had burned down the vicar’s tithe barn on his first night after the hanging. He thought again of Teresa, and the edge of his bayonet became sharper, and he knew that he wanted her very much. Not just for revenge, not just because she was Sharpe’s woman, though that was important, but because he wanted her. She was so beautiful, so utterly beautiful, and he would take her, kill her, and the bastard Sharpe would lose her. The anticipation brought on his involuntary twitch.

He changed hands so that the bayonet was in his right hand and, wedging the stone between his knees, he spat on it and began on the point. It would be needle sharp when he had finished, so sharp that it would slide sweetly into a man’s guts as if there was no skin to puncture on the way. Or a woman’s! He cackled aloud at the thought, alarming the Company, and he thought of Teresa. Sharpe would know who had done it, but there was nothing he could do about it! Hakeswill could not be killed! He looked up at the Company. They wanted to kill him, he knew, but so had the men of a dozen other companies and all had tried. He could remember the musket balls going past him in battle, fired from behind, and once he had seen a man taking deliberate aim. He stroked the bayonet, remembering his revenge, and then thought of the night ahead.

He had planned his assault carefully. The South Essex, with the rest of the Fourth Division, would be attacking the breached face of the Trinidad bastion, but Hakeswill would take care in the ditch. He would hang back, let others do the fighting, so that he was fresh when the cheers came from the top of the breach. Then, when the chaos started, he would cross the wall and go up into the dark streets that led to the Cathedral. He only needed two minutes’ lead, which was all he was likely to get, but he knew, as he tested the perfectly prepared blade in his hands, that he would succeed. He always did succeed. He had been touched by death, released, and he felt in his soul that he had been inspired to succeed ever since. He looked up. ‘Clayton!’

The Company froze and stared at Clayton. The young Private grinned, as if he was not worried. ‘Sergeant?’

‘Oil, get me oil.’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

Hakeswill cackled as the boy walked away. He would save him for after Badajoz, after the killing, for the time when he would have to pick up the other problems that he had deferred. There was the oilskin bundle that was buried beneath a boundary stone two miles down the Seville Road. Hakeswill had visited the spot last night, heaved the stone off the field embankment, and rummaged through the stolen goods. It was all safe and he had left most of it there because there would be no point in trying to sell anything in the next few days. Badajoz would be stuffed with loot, prices would drop to rock-bottom. It could all wait. He had taken only Sharpe’s telescope, with its distinctive brass plate, which he planned to leave beside Teresa’s body. He picked up his hat, stared down into the interior. ‘Then he’ll be blamed, won’t he? Or else that bastard Irishman!’

‘Sergeant?’

The eyes rolled up. ‘Private Clayton?’

‘The oil, Sergeant.’

‘Don’t bloody stand there!’ Hakeswill held up his bayonet. ‘Oil it. And be careful! Don’t spoil the edge.’ He let Clayton walk away and then looked down into the hat. ‘Nasty little boy! Perhaps he’ll die tonight, and that will make things easier for us.’

Harper watched the twitching, malevolent face and wondered what was inside the shako. The whole Company wondered, but no one dared ask. It was Harper’s opinion that there was nothing inside, that the whole performance was a contrived demonstration of madness to unsettle the Company. The Irishman sharpened his own bayonet, the unfamiliar musket bayonet that lacked the rifle blade’s handle, and he made his own plans for the night. There were still no orders, but the army, with its strange, collective instinct, knew that the assault was planned and if, as seemed likely, the South Essex were ordered into the breach, Harper intended staying close to Hakeswill. If a chance came to kill the Sergeant, he would, or else he would try to make sure that Hakeswill did not slip alone into the city. Harper had decided not to volunteer for the Hope, not unless Hakeswill volunteered, and he thought that unlikely. Harper’s job was to protect Teresa, as it was Sharpe’s, the whole Company’s, even Captain Robert Knowles’s, who had visited his old Light Company and listened seriously as Harper told of Hakeswill’s threat. Knowles had grinned, reassured Harper, but still the Irishman feared the consequences of the chaos in a breach. He leaned back and listened to the guns.

The gunners, with the same instinctive knowledge that the assault was imminent, served their guns with extra effort as if each stone shard chipped from the breaches would save an infantryman’s life. The smoke from the twelve batteries hung like a sea-fog above the still waters of the flooded stream, smoke so thick that the city could hardly be seen, and more smoke was pumped relentlessly from the huge guns. The cannon were like bucking monsters that hissed and steamed between each shot as the blackened gunners sponged and rammed, then heaved the beasts back on to target. The gunners could not see the breaches, but the wooden recoil platforms were marked with deep cuts and the officers and Sergeants lined the gun trails on the cuts, checked the elevation screw. With a flick of the glowing match the gun would bellow again, leap back, and a heavy iron ball would vanish in the fog with a sudden whorl of smoke that was followed by the grinding crash of impact.

Perhaps it was the tempo of the guns that made the men so certain that the assault was this Sunday night, or else the sight of newly made siege ladders in the Engineers’ park. Two of the attacks, the one on the castle, and the one by the river, at the San Vincente bastion, would carry ladders to try a surprise escalade. It could not work, of course, the walls were too high. The battle would be lost or won in the breaches.

‘Company!’ Hakeswill’s voice grated at them. ‘On your feet! Hup, hup, hup!’

They scrambled to their feet, pulling jackets straight, and Major Collett was there with Captain Rymer. The Major waved the men down again. ‘You can sit.’

This had to be the announcement, Harper thought, and he watched as Collett drew out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. There was a buzz of excitement in the Company, a shout for silence from Hakeswill, and Collett waited for quiet. He looked at them belligerently. The assault, he said, would be soon, but they knew that, and they waited for orders. The Major paused and looked down at the piece of paper. ‘This order has come, and I will read it to you. You will listen. “I advert the army’s attention to the events pursuant of the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo.”’ Collett read in a flat, hard voice. He could not pronounce Ciudad with the soft ‘C’, so instead pronounced it ‘Quidad’. ‘“The inhabitants of that town, citizens of Britain’s ally, Spain, were offered every kind of insult and injury. There will be no repetition of that behaviour in Badajoz. Any attacks on civilian property will be swiftly and condignly punished by death, the apprehended perpetrators being hung at the place of their crime.”’ He folded the paper. ‘You understand? Keep your thieving hands to yourself and your breeches buttoned. That’s all.’ He glared at them, turned on his heel, and marched away to the next company. The Light Company looked at each other, shrugged, and laughed at the message. Who would do the hanging? The provosts would not be far to the front in any fighting, it would be pitch dark in the streets, and a soldier deserved some loot for fighting through a breach. They were the ones who would do the fighting, and the dying, and who did not need a drop of drink after that? Not that they intended any harm to any civilians. The Spanish, most of whom in Badajoz were on the enemy’s side, could choose for themselves how they welcomed the victors. They could leave their doors open and the drink on the table, or they could choose to be unfriendly, in which case? They grinned and went back to sharpening the seventeen-inch blades.

A few moments later a second rumour arrived, as strong as the first which had announced the assault, and this rumour, flashing through the camp, brought relief and frustration. Everything was postponed. They had all been given another twenty-four hours to live.

‘Where are we going?’ someone shouted.

They laughed, forgetting Hakeswill’s baleful presence. ‘Badajoz!’

Tomorrow.