Sharpe's Escape

by Bernard Cornwell

  "South Essex! Back! Back!" A shell struck the hill not five paces away, bounced up and exploded in jets of hissing smoke. Two scraps of casing spun past his face so close that he felt the momentary warmth and the slap of the hot air. French cannon were at the foot of the slope, just visible in the thinning fog, and they were firing at the men who had pursued the broken column, but who now had checked their reckless downhill run to watch the new columns advance. "South Essex!" Sharpe roared, and the anger in his voice was harsh, and at last men turned to trudge uphill. Slingsby, his saber drawn, was watching the columns, but, hearing Sharpe, he suddenly snapped at men to turn around and go back to the ridge top. Harper was one of them and, seeing Sharpe, the big man angled across the slope. His seven-barreled gun was slung on his back and in his hand was his rifle with its twenty-three-inch sword bayonet reddened to its brass handle. The rest of the light company, at last aware that more columns were attacking, hurried after Harper.

  Sharpe waited to make sure that every redcoat and rifleman had turned back. French shells and round shot were banging onto the hill, but using artillery against such scattered targets was a waste of powder. One cannonball, spent after its bouncing impact, rolled down the hill to make Harper skip aside, then he grinned at Sharpe. "Gave it to them proper, sir."

  "You should have stayed up top."

  "It's a hell of a climb," Harper said, surprised to see how far down the hill he had gone. He fell in beside Sharpe and the two climbed together. "Mister Slingsby, sir," the Irishman said, then fell silent.

  "Mister Slingsby what?"

  "He said you weren't well, sir, and he was taking command."

  "Then he's a lying bastard," Sharpe said, careless that he ought not to say such a thing of another officer.

  "Is he now?" Harper said tonelessly.

  "The Colonel told me to step aside. He wants Mister Slingsby to have a chance."

  "He had that right enough," Harper said.

  "I should have been there," Sharpe said.

  "And so you should," Harper said, "but the lads are all alive. Except Dodd."

  "Matthew? Is he dead?"

  "Dead or alive, I don't know," Harper said, "but I couldn't see him anywhere. I was keeping an eye on the boys, but I can't find Matthew. Maybe he went back up the hill."

  "I didn't see him," Sharpe said. They both turned and counted heads and saw the light company were all present except for Corporal Dodd. "We'll look for him as we climb," Sharpe said, meaning they would look for his body.

  Lieutenant Slingsby, red-faced and saber drawn, hurried over to Sharpe. "Did you bring orders, Sharpe?" he demanded.

  "The orders are to get back to the top of the hill as quick as you can," Sharpe said.

  "Quick, men!" Slingsby called, then turned back to Sharpe. "Our fellows did well!"

  "Did they?"

  "Outflanked the voltigeurs, Sharpe. Outflanked them, by God! We turned their flank."

  "Did you?"

  "Pity you didn't see us." Slingsby was excited, proud of himself. "We slipped past them, drove in their wing, then hurt them."

  Sharpe thought the light company had been led to one side where it had been about as much use as a ettle with a hole in it, and had then been ignominiously chased away, but he kept silent. Harper unclipped his sword bayonet, cleaned the blade on the jacket of a French corpse, then quickly ran his hands over the man's pockets and pouches.

  He ran to catch up with Sharpe and offered a half sausage. "I know you like Crapaud sausage, sir."

  Sharpe put it into his pouch, saving it for dinner. A bullet whispered past him, almost spent, and he looked up to see puffs of smoke from the rocky knoll. "Pity the voltigeurs took that," he said.

  "No trouble to us," Slingsby said dismissively. "Turned their flank, by God, turned their damn flank and then punished them!"

  Harper glanced at Sharpe, looked as though he would start laughing, and managed to keep a straight face. The big British and Portuguese guns were hammering at the second big column, the one that had arrived just after the first had been defeated. That column was fighting at the top of the ridge and the two fresh columns, both smaller than the first pair, were climbing behind. Another bullet from the voltigeurs in their rocky nest whipped past Sharpe and he angled away from them.

  "You still have my horse, Sharpe?" Slingsby demanded.

  "Not here," Sharpe said, and Harper made a choking sound which he turned into a cough.

  "You said something, Sergeant Harper?" Slingsby demanded crisply.

  "Smoke in my throat, sir," Harper said. "It catches something dreadful, sir. I was always a sickly child, sir, on account of the peat smoke in our cottage. My mother made me sleep outside, God rest her soul, until the wolves came for me."

  "Wolves?" Slingsby sounded cautious.

  "Three of them, sir, big as you'd like, with slobbery great tongues the color of your coat, sir, and I had to sleep inside after that, and I just coughed my way through the nights. It was all that smoke, see?"

  "Your parents should have built a chimney," Slingsby said disapprovingly.

  "Now why didn't we think of that?" Harper enquired innocently and Sharpe laughed aloud, earning a vicious look from the Lieutenant.

  The rest of the light company was close now and Ensign Iliffe was among them. Sharpe saw the boy's saber was red at the tip. Sharpe nodded at it. "Well done, Mister Iliffe."

  "He just came at me, sir." The boy had suddenly found his voice. "A big man!"

  "He was a sergeant," Harris explained, "and he was going to stick Mister Iliffe, sir."

  "He was!" Iliffe was excited.

  "But Mister Iliffe stepped past him neat as a squirrel, sir, and gave him steel in the belly. It was a good stroke, Mister Iliffe," Harris said, and the Ensign just blushed.

  Sharpe tried to recall the first time he had been in a fight, steel against steel, but the trouble was he had been brought up in London and almost born to that kind of savagery. But for Mister Iliffe, son of an impoverished Essex gentleman, there had to be a shock in realizing that some great brute of a Frenchman was trying to kill him and Sharpe, remembering how sick the boy had been, reckoned he had done very well. He grinned at Iliffe. "Only the one Crapaud, Mister Iliffe?"

  "Only one, sir."

  "And you an officer, eh? You're supposed to kill two a day!"

  The men laughed. Iliffe just looked pleased with himself.

  "Enough chatter!" Slingsby took command of the company. "Hurry up!" The South Essex colors had moved south along the ridge top, evidently going towards the fight with the second leading column, and the light company slanted that way. The French shells had stopped their futile harassment of the slope and were instead firing at the ridge top now, their fuses leaving small pencil traces in the sky above the light company. The sound of the second column was loud now, a cacophony of drums, war cries and the stutter of the skirmishers' muskets.

  Sharpe went with the light company to the ridge top where he reluctantly let Slingsby take them again while he looked for Lawford. The fog, which had cleared almost to the valley bottom, was thickening again now, a great billow of it hiding the two smaller columns and rolling southwards to where, by the rough track that climbed the ridge, the second French column was advancing. That second column, larger than the first, had climbed more slowly, and had been given an easier time than their defeated comrades for they had been able to follow the track that twisted its way up the ridge's slope, and the track gave them a guide in the fog so that when they erupted into the sunlight they had managed to keep their ranks. Eight thousand men, driven by one hundred and sixty-three drummers, closed on the crest and there, under the flail of fire, they stopped.

  The first battalion of the 74th Highlanders had been waiting and beside them was a whole brigade of Portuguese and on their right flank were two batteries of nine-pounders. The guns struck first, flaying the column with round shot and canister, making the heather slick with blood, and then the Highlanders opened fire. The range was ver
y long, more suited for riflemen than redcoats, but the bullets slapped home and then the Portuguese opened fire and the column, like a bull confused by an unexpected attack by terriers, stalled Columns were again meeting lines and, though the column outnumbered the line, the line would always outshoot the column. Only the men at the front of the column and a handful along the edge could use their muskets, but every man in the British and Portuguese line could fire his weapon and the column was being driven in, turned red, hammered, yet it did not retreat. The voltigeurs, who had chased away the Scottish and Portuguese skirmishers, retreated to the column's front rank which now tried to return the musket fire. French officers shouted at the men to march, the drummers persisted with the pas de charge, but the front ranks would not press up into the relentless pelting of the musket balls. Instead, feebly, they returned the fire, but the men in the column's front rank were dying every second, and then more Portuguese cannons came to the right flank of the 74th. The guns slewed around, their horses were taken back out of musket range, and the gunners rammed canister over round shot. The new guns crashed back and the leading left corner of the column began to resemble the devil's butcher's shop. It was a sodden tangle of broken bodies, blood and screaming men. And still the guns recoiled, jetting a spew of smoke with every discharge, their barrels depressed to fire down into the crowded mass of Frenchmen. Every round shot had to be wedged in the barrel with a circle of rope to stop the ball trickling down the barrel, and the rope loops burned in the air like crazed fireballs as they spun in mad whorls. More allied troops were coming to the fight, marching along the newly made road from the southern end of the long ridge. That southern end was quiet, apparently under no threat from the French, and the arriving men formed south of the guns and added their own musket fire.

  The column shuddered under the onslaught of the merciless guns and then began to edge northwards. The French officers could see there was an empty space on the ridge beyond the Portuguese brigade and they shouted at their men to go right. A voltigeur officer sent a company ahead to occupy the skyline as, behind them, the cumbersome mass edged its way towards the opening, leaving a right-angled line of bodies, the remnants of their left flank and front lines, thick on the rocky slope.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lawford saw the column approaching and, more urgently, the voltigeurs running to claim the open ground. "Mister Slingsby!" Lawford called. "You will deploy the light company! Send those miscreants back where they belong. Battalion! Battalion will move to the right!" Lawford was marching the South Essex into the open space, going to seal it off, and Slingsby had the job of throwing back the enemy skirmishers. Sharpe, back on Slingsby's horse which had been rescued by Major Forrest, rode behind the color party and counted the Eagles in the shuffling column. He could see fifteen. The noise of splintering dominated the air, the sound of muskets like dry thorns burning, and the incessant crackling was echoing from the distant side of the valley. The powder smoke drifted above the fog which had crept back up the slope almost to the ridge's top. Every now and then the great white vaporous mass twitched as a French round shot or shell punched through. The hillside was dotted with bodies, all blue-coated. A man crawled downhill, trailing a broken leg. A dog ran to and fro, barking, trying to rouse its dead master. A French officer, sword discarded, held his hands to his face as blood oozed between his fingers. The cannons hammered and bucked, and then came the distinctive crack of the rifles as Sharpe's company went into action. He hated just watching them, but he also admired them. They were good. They had taken the enemy voltigeurs by surprise and the riflemen had already put down two officers and now the muskets took up the fight.

  Slingsby, holding his saber scabbard clear of the rough ground, strutted up and down behind them. He was doubtless snapping his orders and Sharpe felt a surge of hatred for the man. The bastard was going to take his job and all because he had married Lawford's sister-in-law. The hatred was like bile and Sharpe instinctively reached for his rifle, took it from his shoulder and pulled the flint to half cock. He used his thumb to push the strike plate forward and the frizzen leaped away on its spring. He felt in the pan, making certain the priming was still there after his tumble from the horse. He confirmed the powder was there, gritty under his dirty thumb and, staring all the while at Slingsby, he pulled the frizzen back into place and then cocked the gun fully. He raised it to his shoulder. The horse stirred and he growled at it to be still.

  He aimed at Slingsby's back. At the small of his back. At the place where two brass buttons were sewn above the red jacket's vent. Sharpe wanted to pull the trigger. Who would know? The Lieutenant was a hundred paces away, a reasonable shot for a rifle. Sharpe imagined Slingsby arching his back as his spine was shot through, shuddering as he fell, the clang of his scabbard chains as he struck the ground and the quiver of life fighting to stay in a dying body. The strutting little bastard, Sharpe thought, and he tightened his finger on the rifle's trigger. No one was watching him, they were all staring at the column which edged ever closer, or if some men were watching him then they must assume he was aiming at a voltigeur. It would not be Sharpe's first murder and he doubted it would be his last, and then a sudden spasm of hatred coursed through him, a spasm so fierce that he shivered and, almost involuntarily, pulled the trigger all the way back. The rifle banged into his shoulder, startling his horse, which twitched away to one side.

  The ball spun across the heads of number four company, missed Lieutenant Slingsby's left arm by an inch, struck a rock on the edge of the hillside and ricocheted up to hit a voltigeur beneath the chin. The man had managed to get very near to Slingsby and had just stood to shoot his musket at close range and Sharpe's bullet lifted him off the ground so that the dead man looked as if he was being propelled backwards by a jet of blood, then the Frenchman collapsed in a crash of musket, bayonet and body.

  "Good God, Richard! That was fine shooting!" Major Leroy had been watching. "That fellow was stalking Slingsby! I've been watching him."

  "So was I, sir," Sharpe lied.

  "Bloody fine shooting! And from horseback! Did you see that, Colonel?" "Leroy?"

  "Sharpe just saved Slingsby's life. Damnedest piece of shooting I've ever seen!"

  Sharpe slung the unloaded rifle. He was suddenly ashamed of himself. Slingsby might be an irritant, he might be a cocky man, but he had never set out to harm Sharpe. It was not Slingsby's fault that his laugh, his presence and his very appearance galled Sharpe to the quick, and a new misery descended on Sharpe, the misery of knowing he had let himself down, and even Lawford's energetic and undeserved congratulations did nothing to lift his spirits. He turned away from the battalion, staring blankly at the back area where two men were holding a wounded grenadier on the table outside the surgeon's tent. Blood sprang from the saw that was being whipped to and fro across the man's thigh bone. A few yards away a wounded man and two of the battalion's wives, all with French muskets, were guarding a dozen prisoners. A toddler played with a French bayonet. Monks were leading a dozen mules loaded with barrels of water that they were distributing to the allied troops. A Portuguese battalion, followed by five companies of redcoats, marched north on the new road, evidently going to reinforce the northern end of the ridge. A mounted galloper, carrying a message from one general to another, pounded along the new road, leaving a plume of dust in his wake. The toddler swore at the horseman who had scared him by riding too close and the women laughed. The monks dropped a water barrel behind the South Essex, then went on towards the Portuguese brigade.

  "They're too far away to charge!" Lawford called to Sharpe.

  Sharpe turned and saw that the column had stalled again. The ground they had wanted to take had been occupied by the South Essex and now the vast mass of men was content to spread slowly outwards to form a thick line and then trade musket shots with the troops on top of the hill. The attack had been stopped and not all the drumming in the world was going to start it back into motion. "We need a pair of guns here," Sharpe said and he looked to his le
ft to see whether any batteries were nearby and he saw that the South Essex, in moving to block the column's advance, had left a great gap on the hilltop between themselves and the Connaught Rangers, and that the gap was being rapidly filled by a cloud of voltigeurs. Those voltigeurs had come from the rocky knoll and, seeing the ridge ahead deserted, they had advanced to occupy the abandoned ground. Then the fog shuddered, was swept aside by a gust of wind, and Sharpe saw it was not just voltigeurs who were filling the gap in the British line, but that the last two French columns had climbed to the same place. They had been shielded by the fog so the Portuguese and British gunners had spared them and now, hurrying, they were scrambling the last few yards to the ridge's empty crest. Their Eagles reflected the sun, victory was just yards away and there was nothing in front of the French but bare grass and vacancy. And Sharpe was seeing disaster.

  Chapter 4

  Strangely, on the morning that the guns began to fire and make the windows, glasses and chandeliers vibrate throughout Coimbra, Ferragus announced that his brother's household, which had readied itself to go south to Lisbon, was to stay in Coimbra after all. He made the announcement in his brother's study, a gloomy room lined with unread books, where the family and the servants had gathered on Ferragus's summons.

  Beatriz Ferreira, who was scared of her brother-in-law, crossed herself. "Why are we staying?" she asked.

  "You hear that?" Ferragus gestured towards the sound of the guns that was like an unending muted thunder. "Our army and the English troops are giving battle. My brother says that if there is a battle then the enemy will be stopped. Well, there is a battle, so if my brother is right then the French will not come."

  "God and the saints be thanked," Beatriz Ferreira said, and the servants murmured agreement.

  "But suppose they do come?" It was Sarah who asked.