Geoghegan splinted the leg with the sticks and the net. “He can’t walk on it, not for a while, but we’ll make him crutches, we will, and he’ll be dancing like a pony soon enough.”
The rifles sounded and Sharpe turned and ran down the hill to where his greenjackets were kneeling on the turf. They were about a hundred and fifty yards from the river and sixty feet above it, and the French were crouching in the water. They had been trying to haul the big barges off the shingle, but the bullets had ended that effort and now the men were using the pontoon hulls as protection. An officer ran into the shallow water, probably shouting at the men to get to their feet and try again, and Sharpe aimed at the officer, pulled the trigger, and the rifle banged into his shoulder as an errant spark from the flint stung his right eye. When the smoke cleared he saw the panicked officer running back to the bank, holding his scabbarded sword clear of the water in one hand and clutching his hat in the other. Slattery fired a second time and a splinter smacked up from one of the pontoons. Then Harper’s next shot threw a man into the river and there was a swirl of blood in which the man thrashed as he drifted away. Harris fired and most of the French waded away from the pontoons to take shelter behind some boulders on the bank.
“Just keep them there,” Sharpe said. “As soon as they try to shift those barges, kill them.”
He climbed back up the hill. The brigadier was propped against a rock now. “What’s happening?” he asked.
“Frogs are trying to salvage the barges, sir. We’re stopping them.”
The boom of the French guns in Fort Josephine echoed down the river valley. “Why are they firing?” the brigadier asked irritably.
“My guess, sir,” Sharpe said, “is that some of our boys are trying to use a pontoon as a boat to look for us. And the frogs are shooting at them.”
“Bloody hell,” Moon said. He closed his eyes and grimaced. “You wouldn’t, I suppose, have any brandy?”
“No, sir, sorry, sir.” Sharpe would have bet a penny against the crown jewels that at least one of his men had brandy or rum in their canteen, but he would be damned before he took it away from them for the brigadier. “I’ve got water, sir,” he said, offering his canteen.
“Damn your water.”
Sharpe reckoned he could trust his riflemen to behave sensibly until they managed to recross the river, but the six fugitives from the 88th were another matter. The 88th were the Connaught Rangers and some men reckoned them the most fearsome regiment in the whole army, but they also had a reputation for wild indiscipline. The six rangers were led by a toothless sergeant and Sharpe, knowing that if the sergeant was on his side then the other men would probably cause no trouble, crossed to him. “What’s your name, Sergeant?” Sharpe asked him.
“Noolan, sir.”
“I want you to watch over there,” Sharpe said, pointing north to the crest of the hill above the bluff. “I’m expecting a battalion of bloody frogs to come over that hill, and when they do, sing out.”
“I’ll sing right enough, sir,” Noolan promised, “sing like a choir, I will.”
“If they do come,” Sharpe said, “we’ll have to go south. I know the 88th is good, but I don’t think there’s quite enough of you to fight off a whole French battalion.”
Sergeant Noolan looked at his five men, considered Sharpe’s statement, then nodded gravely. “Not quite enough of us, sir, you’re right. And what are you thinking of doing, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“What I’m hoping,” Sharpe said, “is that the frogs will get tired of us and bugger off. Then we can try to float one of those pontoons and get across the river. Tell your men that, Sergeant. I want to get them home, and the best way home is to be patient.”
A sudden rattle of rifle fire drew Sharpe back to Harper’s position. The French were making another attempt to free the pontoons, and this time they had made a rope by linking their musket slings together and three men were bravely fastening the line to one of the samsom posts. One man had been hit and was limping back to the shore. Sharpe began reloading his rifle, but before he had rammed the leather-wrapped ball down the barrel, the remaining Frenchmen sprinted back to their shelter, taking the line with them. Sharpe saw the rope come dripping from the river as men hauled on it. The line straightened and tightened and he guessed that nearly all the French were tugging on it, but he could do nothing about it for they were hidden by the big boulder. The line quivered and Sharpe thought he saw the pontoons shift slightly, or perhaps that was his imagination, and then the rope snapped and Sharpe’s riflemen jeered loudly.
Sharpe looked upriver. When the bridge had broken there had been seven or eight pontoons left on the British side and he was sure someone had thought to use one as a rescue craft, but no such boat appeared and by now he suspected the French cannons had either holed those pontoons or else driven the work parties away from the shore. That suggested rescue was a remote hope, leaving him with the need to salvage one of the six stranded barges.
“Does this remind you of anything?” Harper asked him.
“I was trying not to think about it,” Sharpe said.
“What were those other rivers called?”
“The Douro and the Tagus.”
“And there were no bloody boats on those either, sir,” Harper said cheerfully.
“We found boats in the end,” Sharpe said. Two years ago his company had been trapped on the wrong side of the Douro. Then, a year later, he and Harper had been stranded on the Tagus. But both times they had found their way back to the army, and he would again now, but he wished the damned French would leave. Instead the troops hidden beneath him sent a messenger back to Fort Josephine. The man scrambled up the hill and all the riflemen turned to aim at him, hauling back the flints of their weapons, but the man kept looking back, dodging and ducking, and his fear was palpable and somehow funny so that none of them pulled their triggers.
“He was too far away,” Harper said. Hagman might have dropped the man, but in truth all the riflemen had felt sorry for the Frenchman who had shown bravery in risking the rifle fire.
“He’s gone to fetch help,” Sharpe said.
Nothing happened then for a long time. Sharpe lay on his back watching a hawk slide in the high sky. Sometimes a Frenchman would peer round the rocks below, see the riflemen were still there, and duck back. After an hour or so a man waved at them, then stepped cautiously out from the boulder and mimed unbuttoning his breeches. “Bugger wants a pee, sir,” Harris said.
“Let him,” Sharpe said and they raised the rifles so the barrels pointed at the sky. A succession of Frenchmen went to stand by the river and all politely waved their thanks when they were done. Harper waved back. Sharpe went from man to man and found they had nothing but three pieces of biscuit between them. He made one of Sergeant Noolan’s men soften the biscuit with water and divide it equally, but it was a miserable dinner.
“We can’t go without food, Sharpe,” Moon complained. The brigadier had watched the division of the biscuits with a glittering eye and Sharpe had been certain he was planning to claim a larger share for himself, so Sharpe had loudly announced that every man got exactly the same portion. Moon was now in a filthier mood than usual. “How do you propose feeding us?” he demanded.
“We may have to go hungry till morning, sir.”
“Good God incarnate,” Moon muttered.
“Sir!” Sergeant Noolan called and Sharpe turned to see that two companies of the French had appeared by the bluff. They were in skirmish order to make themselves a more difficult target for the rifles.
“Pat!” Sharpe called down the slope. “We’re pulling back! Up you come!”
They went south, carrying the brigadier again, struggling over the steep slopes to keep the river in sight. The French pursued for an hour, then seemed content merely to have driven the fugitives away from the stranded pontoons.
“Now what?” Moon demanded.
“We wait here, sir,” Sharpe said. They were on a hilltop,
sheltered by rocks and with a fine view in every direction. The river ran empty to the west while, off to the east, Sharpe could see a road winding through the hills.
“How long do we wait?” Moon asked snidely.
“Till nightfall, sir. Then I’ll go and see if the pontoons are still there.”
“Of course they won’t be,” Moon said, implying that Sharpe was a fool to believe otherwise, “but I suppose you’d better look.”
Sharpe need not have bothered because, in the dusk, he saw the smoke rising above the river and when dark fell there was a glow across the side of the hill. He went north, taking Sergeant Noolan and two men of the 88th, and they saw that the French had failed to free the pontoons, so instead had ensured they were useless. The barges were burning. “That is a pity,” Sharpe said.
“The brigadier will not be happy, sir,” Sergeant Noolan said cheerfully.
“No, he won’t,” Sharpe agreed.
Noolan spoke to his men in Gaelic, presumably sharing his thoughts of the brigadier’s unhappiness. “Don’t they speak English?” Sharpe asked.
“Fergal doesn’t,” Noolan said, nodding at one of the men, “and Padraig will if you shout at him, sir, but if you don’t shout he won’t have a word of it.”
“Tell them I’m glad you’re with us,” Sharpe said.
“You are?” Noolan sounded surprised.
“We were next to you on the ridge at Bussaco,” Sharpe said.
Noolan grinned in the dark. “That was a fight, eh? They kept coming and we kept killing them.”
“And now, Sergeant,” Sharpe went on, “it seems that you and I are stuck with each other for a few days.”
“So it does, sir,” Noolan agreed.
“So you need to know my rules.”
“You have rules, do you, sir?” Noolan asked cautiously.
“You don’t steal from civilians unless you’re starving, you don’t get drunk without my permission, and you fight like the devil himself was at your back.”
Noolan thought about it. “What happens if we break the rules?” he asked.
“You don’t, Sergeant,” Sharpe said bleakly, “you just don’t.”
They went back to make the brigadier unhappy.
SOMETIME IN the night the brigadier sent Harris to wake Sharpe who was half awake anyway because he was cold. Sharpe had given his greatcoat to the brigadier who, being coatless, had demanded that one of the men yield him a covering. “Is there trouble?” Sharpe asked Harris.
“Don’t know, sir. His Excellency just wants you, sir.”
“I’ve been thinking, Sharpe,” the brigadier announced when Sharpe arrived.
“Yes, sir?”
“I don’t like those men speaking Irish. You’ll tell them to use English. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and paused. The brigadier had woken him to tell him that? “I’ll tell them, sir, but some of them don’t speak English, sir.”
“Then they can bloody well learn,” the brigadier snapped. He was sleepless through pain and now wanted to spread his misery. “You can’t trust them, Sharpe. They brew mischief.”
Sharpe paused, wondering how to put sense into Moon’s head, but before he could speak Rifleman Harris intervened. “You’ll forgive me, sir?” Harris said respectfully.
“Are you talking to me, rifleman?” the brigadier asked in astonishment.
“Begging your pardon, sir, I am. If I might, sir, with respect?”
“Go on, man.”
“It’s just, sir, as Mister Sharpe says, sir, that they don’t speak English, being benighted papists, sir, and they were only discussing whether it might be possible to build a boat or a raft, sir, and they do that best in their own language, sir, because they have the words, if you follow me, sir.”
The brigadier, thoroughly buttered by Harris, thought about it. “You speak their wretched language?” he asked.
“I do, sir,” Harris said, “and French, sir, and Portuguese and Spanish, sir, and some Latin.”
“Good God incarnate,” the brigadier said, after staring at Harris for a few heartbeats, “but you are English?”
“Oh yes, sir. And proud of it.”
“Quite right. Then I can depend on you to tell me if the teagues brew trouble?”
“The teagues, sir? Oh, the Irish! Yes, sir, of course, sir, a pleasure, sir,” Harris said enthusiastically.
Just before dawn there came the sound of explosions from upriver. Sharpe stared north but could see nothing. At first light he could see thick smoke above the river valley, but he had no way of knowing what had caused that smoke, so he sent Noolan and two of his men to discover what had happened. “Stay on the hilltops,” he told the 88th’s sergeant, “and keep a lookout for Crapaud patrols.”
“That was a damn fool decision,” the brigadier said when the three rangers had gone.
“It was, sir?”
“You’ll not see those men again, will you?”
“I think we will, sir,” Sharpe said mildly.
“Damn it, man, I know the teagues. My first commission was with the 18th. I managed to escape to the fusiliers when I became a captain.” Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the brigadier had purchased out of the Irish 18th to the more congenial fusiliers of his home county.
“I think you’ll see Sergeant Noolan soon, sir,” Sharpe said stubbornly, “and while we’re waiting I’m going south. I’ll be looking for food, sir.”
Sharpe took Harris and the two of them walked the high ground above the river. “How much Gaelic do you speak, Harris?” Sharpe asked.
“About three words, sir,” Harris said, “and none of them repeatable in high company.” Sharpe laughed. “So what do we do, sir?” Harris went on.
“Cross the bloody river,” Sharpe said.
“How, sir?”
“Don’t know.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Keep going south, I suppose,” Sharpe said. He tried to remember the maps he had seen of southern Spain and had an idea that the Guadiana joined the sea well to the west of Cádiz. There was no point in trying to reach Cádiz by road, for that great port was under French siege, but once at the river’s mouth he could find a ship to carry them north to Lisbon. The only ships off the coast were allied vessels, and he reckoned that the Royal Navy patrolled the shore. It would take time, he knew, but once they reached the sea they would be as good as home. “But if we have to walk to the sea,” he added, “I’d rather do it on the far bank.”
“Because it’s Portugal?”
“Because it’s Portugal,” Sharpe said, “and they’re friendlier than the Spanish, and because there are more frogs on this side.”
Sharpe’s hopes of crossing the river rose after a couple of miles when they came to a place where the hill dropped to a wide basin where the Guadiana broadened so that it looked like a lake. A smaller river flowed from the east, and in the basin where the two rivers joined, there was a small town of white houses. Two bell towers broke the tiled roofs. “There has to be a ferry there,” Harris said, “or fishing boats.”
“Unless the frogs burned everything.”
“Then we float over on a table,” Harris said, “and at least we’ll find food down there, sir, and His Lordship will like that.”
“You mean Brigadier Moon will like that,” Sharpe said in mild reproof.
“And he’ll like that place too, won’t he?” Harris said, pointing to a large house with stables that stood just to the north of the small town. The house was of two stories, was painted white, and had a dozen windows on each floor, while at its eastern end was an ancient castle tower, now in ruins. Smoke drifted from the house’s chimneys.
Sharpe took out his telescope and examined the house. The windows were shuttered and the only signs of life were some men repairing a terrace wall in one of the many vineyards that covered the nearby slopes and another man bending over a furrow in a kitchen garden that lay beside the Guadiana. He edged the glass sideways and saw what looked
like a boathouse on the riverbank. Sharpe gave the telescope to Harris. “I’d rather go to the town,” he said.
“Why’s that, sir?” Harris asked, staring at the house through Sharpe’s glass.
“Because that house hasn’t been plundered, has it? Kitchen garden all nice and tidy. What does that suggest?”
“The owner has shaken hands with the French?”
“Like as not.”
Harris thought about that. “If they’re friends with the Crapauds, sir, then perhaps there’s a boat in that shed by the river?”
“Perhaps,” Sharpe said dubiously. A door in the courtyard by the old castle ruin opened and he saw someone emerge into the sunlight. He nudged Harris, pointed, and the rifleman swung the telescope.
“Just a frow hanging out the washing,” Harris said.
“We can get our shirts laundered,” Sharpe said. “Come on, let’s fetch the brigadier.”
They walked back across the high hills to find Moon in a triumphant mood because Sergeant Noolan and his men had failed to return.
“I told you, Sharpe!” Moon said. “You can’t trust them. That sergeant looked decidedly shifty.”
“How’s your leg, sir?”
“Bloody painful. Can’t be helped, eh? So you say there’s a decent-sized town?”
“Large village anyway, sir. Two churches.”
“Let’s hope they have a doctor who knows his business. He can look at this damned leg, and the sooner the better. Let’s get on the march, Sharpe. We’re wasting time.”
But just then Sergeant Noolan reappeared to the north and the brigadier had no choice but to wait as the three men from the 88th rejoined. Noolan, his long face more lugubrious than ever, brought grim news. “They blew up the fort, sir,” he told Sharpe.
“Talk to me, man, talk to me!” Moon insisted. “I command here.”
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