"Pon my soul, Sharpe, but it's unfair. Unfair! You and me both to stand trial?" Colonel Runciman had been unable to resist the lure of witnessing the day's high drama and so he had come to the plateau, though he had taken care not to step too close to the ridge's crest which was occasionally churned by a high French roundshot. A pyre of smoke marked where the village endured its bombardment while further south, way down on the plain, a second smudge of musket smoke betrayed where the French flank attack was driving across the low ground.
"Waste of time complaining about unfairness, General," Sharpe said. "Only the wealthy can afford to preach about fairness. The rest of us take what we can and try hard not to miss what we can't take."
"Even so, Sharpe, it's unfair!" Runciman said reprovingly. The Colonel looked pale and unhappy. "It's the disgrace, you see. A man goes home to England and expects to be decently treated, but instead I'll be vilified." He ducked as a French roundshot rumbled far overhead. "I had hopes, Sharpe! I had hopes!"
"The Golden Fleece, General? Order of the Bath?"
"Not just those, Sharpe, but of marriage. There are, you understand, ladies of fortune in Hampshire. I've no ambition to bи a bachelor all my life, Sharpe. My dear mother, God rest her, always claimed I'd make a good husband so long as the lady was possessed of a middling fortune. Not a great fortune, one must not be unrealistic, but a sufficiency to keep our good selves in modest comfort. A pair of coaches, decent stables, cooks that know their business, smallish game park, a dairy, you know the sort of place."
"Makes me homesick, General," Sharpe said.
The sarcasm sailed airily over Runciman's head. "But now, Sharpe, can you imagine any woman of decent family allying herself with a vilified name?" He thought about it for a moment, then gave a slow despairing shake of the head. "Good God! I might have to marry a Methodist!"
"It hasn't happened yet, General," Sharpe said, "and a lot could change today."
Runciman looked alarmed. "You mean I could be killed?"
"Or you could make a name for bravery, sir," Sharpe said. "Nosey always forgives a man for good conduct."
"Oh, good Lord, no! Dear me, no. Pon my soul, Sharpe, no. I ain't the type. Never was. I went into soldiering because my dear father couldn't find a place for me anywhere else! He purchased me into the army, you understand, because he said it was as good a billet as I could ever expect from society, but I'm not the fighting sort. Never was, Sharpe." Runciman listened to the terrible noise of the cannonade pounding Fuentes de Onoro, a noise made worse by the splintering sound of voltigeur muskets firing over the stream. "I'm not proud of it, Sharpe, but I don't think I could endure that kind of thing. Don't think I could at all."
"Can't blame you, sir," Sharpe said, then turned as Sergeant Harper shouted for his attention. "You'll forgive me, General?"
"Off you go, Sharpe, off you go."
"Trade, sir," Harper said, jerking his head towards Major Tarrant who was gesticulating at a wagon driver.
Tarrant turned as Sharpe came near. "The Light Division is ordered south, Sharpe, but its ammunition reserve is stuck to the north. We're to replace it. Would you mind if your rifles accompanied it?"
Sharpe did mind. He instinctively wanted to stay where the battle would be fiercest and that was in Fuentes de Onoro, but he could not say as much to Tarrant. "No, sir."
"In case they get bogged down, d'you see, and have to spend the rest of the day fighting off Frenchmen, so the General wants them to have a plenitude of ammunition. Rifle and musket cartridges, mixed. Artillery are looking after themselves. One wagon should do it, but it needs an escort, Sharpe. French cavalry are lively down there."
"Can we help?" Captain Donaju had overheard Tarrant's hurried explanation of Sharpe's errand.
"Might need you later, Captain," Tarrant said. "I have a feeling today's likely to be lively all round. Never seen the Frogs so uppity. Have you, Sharpe?"
"They've got their tails up today, Major," Sharpe agreed. He looked up at the wagon driver. "Are you ready?"
The driver nodded. His wagon was an English four-wheeled farm vehicle with high splayed sides to which were harnessed three Cleveland Bays in single file. "Had four beasts once," the driver remarked as Sharpe climbed up beside him, "but a Frenchie shell got Bess, so now I'm down to three." The driver had woven red and blue woollen braiding into the horses' manes and had decorated his wagon's flanks with discarded cap-plates and thrown horseshoes that he had nailed to the planking. "You know where we're going?" he asked Sharpe as Harper ordered the riflemen to climb onto the boxes of ammunition stacked on the wagon's bed.
"After them." Sharpe pointed to his right where the plateau offered a gentler slope down to the southern lowlands and where the Light Division was marching south beneath its banners. It was Sharpe's old division, made up of riflemen and light infantry, and it regarded itself as the army's elite division. Now it was marching to save the Seventh Division from annihilation.
A mile away, across the Dos Casas stream and close to the ruined barn that served as his headquarters, Marshal Andrй Massйna saw the fresh British troops leaving the plateau's protection to march south towards the beleaguered redcoats and Portuguese. "The fool," he said to himself, then louder in a gleeful voice, "the fool!"
"Your Majesty?" an aide inquired.
"The first rule of war, Jean," the Marshal said, "is never to reinforce failure. And what is our whore-free Englishman doing? He's sending more troops to be massacred by our cavalry!" The Marshal put the telescope back to his eye. He could see guns and cavalry going south with the new troops. "Or maybe he's withdrawing?" he mused aloud. "Maybe he's making sure he can get back to Portugal. Where's Loup's brigade?"
"Just north of here, Your Majesty," the aide answered.
"With his whore, no doubt?" Massena asked sourly. Juanita de Elia's flamboyant presence with the Loup Brigade had drawn the attention and jealousy of every Frenchman in the army.
"Indeed, Your Majesty."
Massena snapped the telescope shut. He disliked Loup. He recognized his ambitions and knew that Loup would trample over any man to gain those ambitions. Loup wanted to be a marshal like Massena, he had even lost an eye like Massena, and now he wanted those grand titles with which the Emperor rewarded the brave and the lucky. But Massena would not help Loup secure those ambitions. A man remained a marshal by suppressing his rivals, not encouraging them, so this day Brigadier Loup would be given a menial task. "Warn Brigadier Loup," Massena told the aide, "that he's to untangle himself from his Spanish whore and be ready to escort the wagons through Fuentes de Onoro when our soldiers have opened the road. Tell him Wellington's shifting his position to the south and the road to Almeida should be open by midday, and that his brigade's job will be to escort the supplies into Almeida while the rest of us finish off the enemy." Massena smiled. Today was a day for Frenchmen to win glory, a day to capture a haul of enemy colours and to soak a river bank with the blood of Englishmen, but Loup, Massena had decided, would share no part of it. Loup would be a common baggage guard while Massena and the eagles made all Europe shudder with fear.
The Seventh Division retreated towards a slight ridge of ground above the Dos Casas stream. They were retreating north, but facing south as they tried to block the advance of the massive French force that had been sent around the army's flank. In the distance they could see the two enemy infantry divisions re-forming their ranks in front of Poco Velha, but the immediate danger came from the enormous number of French cavalry that waited just outside the effective range of the Seventh Division's muskets. The equation facing the nine allied battalions was simple enough. They could form squares and know that even the bravest cavalry would be slaughtered if they tried to charge the mass of compacted muskets and bayonets, but infantry in square was cruelly vulnerable to artillery and musket fire; the moment the Seventh Division contracted into squares the French would batter the allied ranks with gunfire until the Portuguese and redcoats were shredded bloody and the cavalry could ride unchallenged over the crazed survivors.