‘Yes, sir. Is that all, sir?’
‘It is, Chatsworth, and I thank you. Go now, and close the door silently.’
Nairn waited till the door was shut. He turned the bread on the fork. ‘You’re not a fool are you, Sharpe?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Thank God for that. It’s possible that the Prince of Wales does have a touch of his Father’s madness. He’s interfering in the army, and the Peer’s damned annoyed.’ Nairn paused, holding the bread dangerously close to the flames. Sharpe said nothing, but he knew that the Peer’s annoyance and the Prince of Wales’ interference had something to do with the sudden summons north. Nairn glanced at Sharpe from beneath the bushy eyebrows. ‘Have you heard of Congreve?’
‘The rocket man?’
‘That’s the one. Sir William Congreve who has the patronage of Prinny and is the begetter of a system of rocket artillery.’ Smoke came from the bread and Nairn snatched it towards him. ‘At a time, Sharpe, when we need cavalry, artillery, and infantry, what are we sent? Rockets! A troop of Rocket Cavalry! And all because Prinny, with a touch of his father’s madness, thinks they’ll win the war. Here.’ He held the toasting fork to Sharpe then proceeded to lavish butter on his blackened slice. ‘Tea?’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Sharpe should have poured. He filled two cups while Nairn dressed his toast with a massive chunk of ham liberally smeared with mustard. Nairn sipped the tea and sighed.
‘Chatsworth makes a cup of tea fit for heaven. He’ll make some woman a lovely wife one day.’ He watched Sharpe toast a slice of bread. ‘Rockets, Sharpe. We have in town one troop of Rocket Cavalry and we are ordered by the Horse Guards to give this rocket troop a fair and searching test.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t you like it blacker than that?’
‘No, sir.’ Sharpe liked his toast pale. He turned the bread.
‘I like it smoking like the bloody pit.’ Nairn paused while he ate a huge mouthful of ham. ‘What we have to do, Sharpe, is test these bloody rockets and when we find they don’t work we send them back to England and keep all their horses which we can put to good use. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good! Because you’ve got the job. You will take command of Captain Gilliland and his infernal machines and you will practice him as if he were in battle. That’s what your orders say. What I say, and what the Peer would say if he were here, is that you’ve got to test him so bloody hard that he slinks back to England with a grain of sense in his head.’
‘You want the rockets to fail, sir?’ Sharpe buttered his bread.
‘I don’t want them to fail, Sharpe. I’d be delighted if they worked, but they won’t. We had a few a couple of years back and they’re as flighty as a bitch in heat, but Prinny thinks he knows best. You are to test them, and you are also to practice Captain Gilliland in the manoeuvres of war. In plain words, Sharpe, you’ve to teach him how to co-operate with infantry on the grounds that infantry, if he were ever to go into battle, would have to protect him from the troops of the Proud Tyrant.’ Nairn wolfed another bite of ham. ‘Personally speaking,’ his voice was muffled, ‘I’d be delighted if Boney got him and his bloody rockets, but we’ve got to show willing.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe sipped his tea. There was something odd here, something still unsaid. Sharpe had heard of Congreve’s rocket system, indeed the army had been having rumours of the new secret artillery for five or six years, but why was Sharpe selected to test them? He was a Captain, and Nairn had spoken of him taking command of another Captain? It did not make sense.
Nairn had another piece of bread by the fire. ‘You’re wondering why you were chosen, is that right? Out of all the brave officers and gentlemen, we chose you, yes?’
‘I was wondering, sir. Yes.’
‘Because you’re a nuisance, Sharpe. Because you do not fit into the Peer’s well ordered scheme of things.’ Sharpe ate his toast and ham, saving himself the need to answer. Nairn seemed to have forgotten the toasting fork, that lay on the hearth, and instead had plucked another piece of paper from the table. ‘I told you, Sharpe, that Prinny has gone mad. Not only has he foisted the dreadful Gilliland on us with his dreadful Congreve rockets, but he has foisted this on us as well.’ ‘This’ was the piece of paper that Nairn dangled between finger and thumb as if contagious. ’Appalling! I suppose you’d better read it, though God only knows why I don’t just put it on the fire with that bloody man’s letter. Here.‘ He held the paper to Sharpe, then returned to his toast.
The paper was thick and creamy. A seal was big and red on its wide left margin. Sharpe twisted it towards the windows so he could read the words. The top two lines were printed in decorative copperplate script.
‘George the Third by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith &c. To Our’. The next words were hand written on ruled lines. ‘Trusty and Well-beloved Richard Sharpe, Esq.’ The printing resumed. ‘Greeting: We do by these Presents, Constitute and Appoint you to be’. Sharpe looked up at Nairn.
The Major General was grumbling as he scooped butter from the dish. ‘Waste of time, Sharpe! Throw it on the fire! Man’s mad!’
Sharpe grinned. He tried to control the elation that was growing in him, elation and sheer disbelief, he almost dared not read the next words.
‘Major in Our Army now in Portugal and Spain’.
Dear God! Dear, sweet God! A Major! The paper shook in his hands. He leaned back for an instant, letting his head touch the chair behind him, a Major! Nineteen years he had been in this army. He had joined days before his sixteenth birthday and he had marched across India in the ranks, musket and bayonet in his hands, and now he was a Major! Dear God! He had fought so hard for his Captaincy, thinking it would never come, and now, suddenly, out of the blue, from nowhere, this! Major Richard Sharpe!
Nairn smiled at him. ‘It’s only army rank, Sharpe.’
A Brevet Major, then, but still a Major. Regimental rank was a man’s real rank, and if the commission had said ‘a Major in our South Essex Regiment’, then it would have been Regimental rank. Army rank meant that he was a Major as long as he served outside of his own Regiment, paid as a Major, though if he were to retire now his pay would be computed by his Regimental rank and not his new Majority. But who cared? He was a Major!
Nairn looked at the tanned, hard face. He knew he was seeing someone remarkable, someone who had risen this far, this quickly, and Nairn wondered what drove a man like Sharpe. Sitting by the fire, the Commission in his hand, he seemed a quiet, contained man, yet Nairn knew of this soldier. Few people in the army did not know of Sharpe. The Peer called him the best leader of a Light Company in the army and perhaps, Nairn wondered, that was why Wellington had been angered by the Prince of Wales’ interference. Sharpe was a good Captain, but would he be a good Major? Nairn shrugged to himself. This Sharpe, this man who still insisted on wearing the green uniform of the 95th Rifles, had not let the army down yet, and making him into a Major was hardly likely to still the ferocity of his fighting power.
Sharpe read through the Commission to the bottom. He would well discipline both inferior officers and soldiers, he would observe and follow such orders as were given him. Dear God! A Major!
‘Given at Our Court at Carlton House the Fourteenth day of November 1812 in the Fifty-Third Year of Our Reign.’ The words ‘By His Majesty’s Command’ had been crossed out. In their place the Commission read; ’By the Command of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, in the Name and on the Behalf of His Majesty‘.
Nairn smiled at him. ‘Prinny heard about Badajoz, then about Garcia Hernandez, and he insisted. It’s against the rules, of course, absolutely against the rules. The damned man has no business promoting you. Throw it on the fire!’
‘Would you take it hard if I disobeyed that order, sir?’
‘Congratulations, Sharpe! You’re beginning as you mean to go on.’ The last words were hurried as a sneeze gathered in his nose and Nairn grabbed his ha
ndkerchief and trumpeted into it. He shook his head, bullied and blew his nose, and smiled again. ‘My real congratulations.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Don’t thank me, Major. Thank all of us by making sure that little Gilliland’s rockets go fizz-plop. D’you know the beggar’s got over a hundred and fifty horses for his toys? A hundred and fifty! We need those horses, Sharpe, but we can’t bloody touch them as long as Prinny thinks we’re going to knock Boney bum over tip with them. Prove him wrong, Sharpe! He’ll listen to you.‘
Sharpe smiled. ‘So that’s why I was chosen?’
‘Good! You’re not a fool. Of course that’s why you were chosen, and as a punishment, of course.’
‘Punishment?’
‘For being promoted before your time. If you’d have had the grace to wait for one of your own Majors to die in the South Essex you’d have landed Regimental rank. It’ll come, Sharpe, it’ll come. If 1813 is anything like this year we’ll all be Field Marshals by next Christmas.’ He pulled the dressing gown tight round his chest. ‘If we live to see next Christmas, which I doubt.’ Nairn stood up. ‘Off you go, Sharpe! You’ll find Gilliland playing fireworks on the Guarda road. Here’s your orders. He knows you’re coming, poor lamb. Pack him back to Prinny, Sharpe, but keep the bloody horses!’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe stood up, took the proffered orders, and felt the elation again. A Major!
Bells suddenly clanged from the church, jangling the still air, frightening birds into hurried flight. Nairn flinched at the sound and crossed to the window. ‘Get rid of Gilliland, then we can all have a quiet Christmas!’ Nairn rubbed his hands together. ‘Except for those bloody bells, Major, there’s nothing, thank the Good Lord, that is disturbing His Majesty’s Army in Portugal and Spain.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’ God! The ‘Major’ sounded good in his ears.
The bells rang on, marking the feastday, while, fifty miles north and east, the first English soldiers, red coats untidy, filed into the quiet village of Adrados.
Chapter 2
The rumour reached Frenada soon enough, yet in its passing through the Portuguese countryside the story twisted and curled in the same manner that Congreve’s rockets tangled their smoke trails above the shallow valley where Sharpe tested them.
Sergeant Patrick Harper was the first man of Sharpe’s Company to hear the story. He heard it from his woman, Isabella, who had heard it from the pulpit of Frenada’s Church. Indignation in the town flared, an indignation that Harper shared. English troops, not just English, but Protestants to boot, had gone to a remote village which they had looted, killed, raped, and defiled on a holy day.
Patrick Harper told Sharpe. They were sitting with Lieutenant Price and the Company’s two other Sergeants in the winter sunlight of the valley. Sharpe heard his Sergeant out, then shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Swear to God, sir. The priest talked of it, so he did, right there in the church!’
‘You heard it?’
‘Isabella heard it!’ Harper’s eyes, beneath the sandy-brown eyebrows, were belligerent. His indignation had thickened the Ulster accent. ‘Your man is hardly going to lie in his own pulpit! What’s the point of that?’
Sharpe shook his head. He had fought with Harper on a dozen battlefields, he would count the Sergeant as a friend, yet he was not used to this bitterness. Harper had the calm confidence of a strong man. He had an unconquerable humour that saw him through battlefields, bivouacs, and the malevolent fate that had forced him, an Irishman, into England’s army. Yet Donegal was never far from Harper’s mind and there was something in this rumour that had touched the patriotic nerve that smarted whenever Harper thought of how England had treated Ireland. Protestants raping and killing Catholics, a holy place defiled, the ingredients were seething in Harper’s head. Sharpe grinned. ‘Do you really believe, Sergeant, that some of our lads went to a village and killed a Spanish garrison and raped all the women? Truly! Does that sound right to you?’
Harper shrugged, thought reluctantly. ‘I give you it’s the first time, I give you that. But it happened!’
‘For God’s sake why would they do it?’
‘Because they’re Protestant, sir! Go a hundred miles just to kill a Catholic, so they will. It’s in the blood!’
Sergeant Huckfield, a Protestant from the English shires, spat a blade of grass from his lips. ‘Harps! And what about your bloody lot? The Inquisition? You never heard of the Inquisition in your country? Christ! You talk about killing! We learned it all from bloody Rome!’
‘Enough!’ Sharpe had endured this argument too often and certainly did not want it aired when Harper was filled with anger. He saw the huge Irishman about to utter again and he stopped it before tempers flared. ‘I said enough!’ He twisted round to see if Gilliland’s troop had finished their seemingly interminable preparations and vented his anger on their slowness.
Lieutenant Price was lying full length, his shako tipped over his eyes, and he smiled as he listened to Sharpe’s swearing. When it was done he pushed his shako back. ‘It’s because we’re working on a Sunday. Breaking the Lord’s Day. Nothing good ever came out of working on the Sabbath, that’s what my Father says.’
‘It’s also the 13th.’ Sergeant McGovern’s voice was gloomy.
‘We are working on Sunday,’ Sharpe said with forced patience, ‘because that way we will get this job done by Christmas and you can rejoin Battalion. Then you can eat the geese that Major Forrest has kindly purchased and get drunk on Major Leroy’s rum. If you’d prefer not to, then we’ll go back to Frenada now. Any questions?’
Price made his voice into that of a small lisping boy. ‘What are you buying me for Christmas, Major?’
The Sergeants laughed and Sharpe saw that Gilliland, at last, was ready. He stood up, brushing earth and grass from the French cavalry overalls he wore beneath his Rifleman’s jacket. ‘Time to go. Come on.’
For four days now he had practised and rehearsed with Gilliland’s rockets. He knew, or thought he knew, what he would have to say about them. They did not work. They were entertaining, even spectacular, but hopelessly inaccurate.
They were not new in war. Gilliland, who had a passion for the weapon, had told Sharpe they were first used in China hundreds of years before, and Sharpe himself had seen rockets used by Indian armies. He had hoped that these British rockets, the product of science and engineering, might prove to be better than those which had decorated the sky at Seringapatam.
Congreve’s rockets looked just like the fireworks that celebrated Royal days in London, except these were much bigger. Gilliland’s smallest rocket was fully eleven feet long, two feet of which was the cylinder containing the powder propulsion and tipped with a roundshot or shell, the rest made up of the rocket’s stout stick. The largest rocket, according to Gilliland, was twenty-eight feet long, its head taller than a man, and its load more than fifty pounds of explosive. If such a rocket could be persuaded to go even vaguely near its target it would be a fearful weapon.
For two hours again, beneath a cloudless sky in which the December sun was surprisingly warm, Sharpe exercised Gilliland’s men. It was probably, he thought, a waste of all their time for Sharpe doubted if Gilliland would ever need to liaise with infantry in battle, yet there was something about this new weapon that fascinated Sharpe.
Perhaps, he thought as he cleared his thin skirmish line for the fourth time from the front of the battery, it was the mathematics of the rockets. A battery of artillery had six guns, yet it needed a hundred and seventy-two men and a hundred and sixty-four horses to move it and serve it. In battle the battery could deliver twelve shots a minute.
Gilliland had the same number of men and horses, yet at full fire he could deliver ninety missiles in the same minute. He could sustain that rate of fire for a quarter of an hour, firing his full complement of one thousand and four hundred rockets, and no artillery battery could hope to rival that power.
There was anot
her difference, an uncomfortable fact. Ten of the twelve cannon-fired shots would hit their target at five hundred yards. Even at three hundred yards Gilliland was lucky if one rocket in fifty was even close.
For the last time that day Sharpe cleared his skirmish line. Price waved from the far side of the valley. ‘Clear, sir!’
Sharpe looked at Gilliland and shouted. ‘Fire!’
Sharpe’s men grinned in anticipation. This time only twelve small rockets would be fired. Each lay in an openended trough so that it would skim the ground when it was ignited. The artillerymen touched the fire to the fuses, smoke curled into the quiet air, and then, almost together, the twelve missiles exploded into movement. Great trails of smoke and sparks slammed backwards, the grass behind the troughs was scorched by fire, and the rockets were moving, faster and faster, rising slightly above the winter-pale field, filling the valley with their tangled roar, screaming above the pasture as Sharpe’s men whooped with joy.
One struck the ground, cartwheeled, its stick broke and the loose head smashed down into the earth spraying flame and dark smoke into the valley. Another veered right, collided with a second, and both dived into the grass. Two seemed to be going perfectly, searing above the field, while the rest wandered and made intricate patterns in smoke above the grass.
All except one. One rocket thrust itself in a perfect curve, higher and higher, pushing up so that it was hidden by the smoke that was pumped out and seemed to stack itself beneath its fiery tail. Sharpe watched it, squinting into the brightness of the sky, and he thought he saw the stick flicker in the smoke, turning, then he saw flame again. The rocket had flipped over and was plunging earthward, accelerating before the rush of fire, screaming down at the men who had fired it.
‘Run!’ Sharpe yelled at the artillerymen.
Harper, his indignation at the massacre temporarily forgotten, was laughing.
‘Run, you idiots!’
Horses bolted, men panicked, and the sound grew louder, a thunderbolt from the December sky, and Gilliland’s shrill voice was shrieking confusion at his men. The artillerymen dived to the earth, hands over their heads, and the noise grew and suddenly crashed into nothing as the solid six-pound shot of the twelve pound rocket buried itself in the soil. The stick quivered above it. For a second the rocket propellant still flamed hungrily at the cylinder’s base, then it died and there were only flickering blue flames licking at the stick.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy Page 59