Sharpe's Company

by Bernard Cornwell

  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 round shot, 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-decamp. 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 penciled 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 favorite 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 umber. 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?’

  ‘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.

  Chapter 21

  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!’