“So she’s safe?”
Hogan looked at Sharpe’s red-rimmed eyes, at the deep shadows on the face, and nodded. “She’s safe, Richard.” Hogan said no more. Sharpe’s face scared him; a grim face, he thought, like the face of a desperate adventurer who would risk everything on the single fall of a pair of dice. The two men began walking beside the stream, between the bodies, and Hogan thought of the Prince of Wales Dragoon, a Captain with a broken arm, who had called at the house early in the morning. Josefina had been surprised to see him, but pleased, and told Hogan that she had met the cavalry officer in the town the day before. The Dragoon had taken over Hogan’s vigil but this, the Engineer thought, was no time to tell Sharpe about Captain Claud Hardy. Hogan had liked the man, had taken immediately to Hardy’s laughing description of how he had fallen from his horse, and the Irishman could see how relieved Josefina was to have someone sitting beside her who told her jokes, talked blithely of balls and banquets, hunting and horses, but who shrewdly understood whatever horrors still lurked in her memories of the night before. Hardy was good for Josefina, Hogan knew, but this was not the time to tell that to Sharpe.
“Richard?”
“Yes?”
“Have you done anything about…?” Hogan broke off.
“Gibbons and Berry?”
“Yes.” Hogan stepped aside and led his horse away from a Frenchman dragging a naked corpse over the grass. Sharpe waited until the man had gone.
“Why?”
Hogan shrugged. “I was thinking.” He spoke hesitantly. “I was hoping that after a night to think about it you would be careful. It could destroy your career. A duel, a fight. Be careful.” Hogan was virtually pleading. Sharpe stopped and turned to him.
“I promise you one thing. I will do nothing to Lieutenant Berry.”
Hogan thought for a moment. Sharpe’s face was unreadable but finally the Irishman nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s a good thing. But you’re still determined about Gibbons?”
Sharpe smiled. “Lieutenant Gibbons will soon join Lieutenant Berry.” He turned away and began walking up the slope. Hogan ran after him.
“You mean?”
“Yes. Berry’s dead. Tell Josefina that, will you?”
Hogan felt an immense sadness, not for Berry, who had probably deserved whatever Sharpe had done to him, but for Sharpe, who saw all of life as one immense battle and had equipped himself to fight it with an unparalleled ferocity. “Be careful, Richard.”
“I will. I promise.”
“When will we see you?” Hogan dreaded that Sharpe would walk into Josefina’s room and find Hardy there.
“I don’t know.” Sharpe indicated the waiting French army. “There’s a hell of a fight still to come and I suspect we’ll all have to stay on the field till one side goes home. Maybe tonight. Probably tomorrow. I don’t know.”
Bugles split the valley, calling the troops back to their positions, and Hogan gathered his reins in his hand. The two men watched as British and French soldiers shook hands and slapped each other’s backs before the killing restarted. Hogan heaved himself into the saddle. “I’ll tell her about Berry, Richard. Be careful, we don’t want to lose you.” He put spurs to his horse and cantered beside the stream, back towards Talavera.
Sharpe walked up the slope of the Medellin with his men as they counted the spoils they had collected from the dead. He himself had found nothing but as he walked up the hill he knew that there would be richer pickings on the field before the sun fell; there was an Eagle to be plucked.
The morning crept on. The two armies faced each other, the cavalry chafing that there were no broken infantry to slaughter, the artillery piling their ammunition to break the infantry, while the infantry sat on the grass and made up their ammunition and cleaned the locks of their muskets. No-one seemed to be in a hurry. The first attack had been repulsed, and now the French were doubly determined to break the small British army in front of them. Through his telescope Sharpe watched the blue Battalions moving sluggishly into place, Regiment after Regiment, Brigade after Brigade, until between the Pajar and the Cascajal he could see more than thirty Eagles gathering for the attack. Forrest joined him and smiled nervously as he took the proffered telescope.
“Are they getting ready, Sharpe?”
Forrest scanned the French line. It was obvious what was about to happen. On the Cascajal the gunners were levering the pieces round so that they could fire at the troops to the right of the South Essex, at the Legion and at the Guards. Opposite those Regiments was gathering a vast horde of enemy Battalions. The French had failed to take the Medellin, by night or day, so now they were planning a hammer blow of such weight that no troops in the world could withstand the fury and intensity of their attack. Behind the French infantry Sharpe could see impatient cavalry waiting to pour through the gap and slaughter the defeated British. The day was gathering its strength, pausing before the carnage, readying itself for the emphatic demonstration of French superiority that would destroy Britain’s army, swat it contemptuously aside, and to that end, at one o’clock, the French guns opened fire again.
CHAPTER 22
Sir Henry Simmerson had hardly moved all morning. He. had watched the repulse of the first attack but, apart from the Light Company, the South Essex had not been needed; now, Sir Henry knew, things would be very different. The eastern side of the Portina was filled with French troops, Battalion after Battalion, preparing to come forward in the inevitable columns, and Sir Henry had silently inspected them with his telescope. Fifteen thousand men were about to launch themselves against the centre of the British position and, beyond them, another fifteen thousand were already beginning to approach the Pajar and the network of obstacles that sheltered the Spanish. To Sir Henry’s right the four Battalions of the King’s German Legion, the Coldstream and the Third Guards waited for the attack but Sir Henry knew that the battle was lost. No troops, not even the vaunted Legion and the Guards, could stand up to the overwhelming numbers that waited for the signal to begin their massive approach.
Sir Henry grunted and shifted in his saddle. He had been right all along. It had been madness to let Wellesley have an army, it was madness to fight in this God-forsaken, heathen country when the British should more properly be fighting behind the walls of Flemish towns. He looked again at the French. Any fool could see what was about to happen: that the huge columns would punch through the thin British line like an angry bull going through a matchwood fence. Talavera would be cut off, the Spanish hunted like rats through the streets, but the troops on the Medellin, like his own Battalion, were in a worse position. At least the troops near Talavera stood a chance of reaching the bridge and beginning the long retreat to ignominy, but for the South Essex and for the other Battalions the only fate was to be cut off and the inevitable surrender.
“We will not surrender.”
Lieutenant Gibbons edged his horse closer to his uncle. It had not occurred to him that they might surrender, but he had long known that the easiest way to stay in Sir Henry’s favour was to offer agreement. “Quite right, sir.”
Simmerson pushed his telescope shut. “It will be a disaster, Christian, a disaster. The army is about to be destroyed.”
His nephew agreed and Simmerson reflected, for the thousandth time, what a waste of talent it was that Gibbons was only a Lieutenant. He had never heard anything but military sense from his nephew, the boy understood all his problems, agreed with his solutions, and if Sir Henry had found it temporarily impossible to give his nephew a deserved Captaincy, then at least he could keep him away from that damned Sharpe and use him as a trusted adviser and confidant. A new Battalion appeared in the French line, almost opposite the South Essex, and Simmerson opened the telescope and looked at them.