Captain Plummer was recognized and his body was carried to the embassy. There was a makeshift chapel inside and a hurried funeral service was read and the captain was then buried in the sands of the isthmus that connected Cádiz to the Isla de León. The next day Montseny wrote to the British ambassador, claiming that Plummer had tried to keep the gold and take the letters, and his regrettable death had thus been inevitable, but that the British could still have the letters back, only now they would cost a great deal more. He did not sign the letter, but enclosed one bloodstained guinea. It was an investment, he thought, that would bring back a fortune, and the fortune would pay for Father Montseny’s dreams: dreams of Spain, glorious again and free of foreigners. The English would pay for their own defeat.
CHAPTER 2
N OW WHAT?” BRIGADIER MOON demanded.
“We’re stuck, sir.”
“Good God incarnate, man, can’t you do anything right?”
Sharpe said nothing. Instead he and Harper stripped off their cartridge boxes and jumped overboard to find themselves in four feet of water. They heaved on the pontoon, but it was like trying to push the Rock of Gibraltar. It was immovable and they were stranded fifty or sixty feet from the eastern bank on which the French pursued them, and over a hundred and fifty yards from the British-held bank. Sharpe ordered the other soldiers to get in the river and push, but it did no good. The big pontoons had grounded hard on a shingle bank and evidently intended to stay there.
“If we can cut one of the buggers free, sir,” Harper suggested. It was a good suggestion. If one of the pontoons could be loosed from the others then they would have a boat light enough to be forced off the shingle, but the big barges were connected by ropes and by stout timber beams that had carried the plank roadway.
“It’ll take us half a day to do it,” Sharpe said, “and I don’t think the Crapauds will be happy.”
“What the devil are you doing, Sharpe?” Moon demanded from the raft.
“Going ashore, sir,” Sharpe decided, “all of us.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Because, sir,” Sharpe said, forcing himself to stay patient, “the French will be here in half an hour and if we’re in the river, sir, they’ll either shoot us down like dogs or else take us prisoner.”
“So your intentions?”
“Go up that hill, sir, hide there, and wait for the enemy to leave. And when they’ve gone, sir, we’ll cut one of the pontoons free.” Though how he would do that with no tools he was not sure, but he would have to try.
Moon plainly wanted to suggest another course of action, but none came to his mind so he submitted to being carried ashore by Sergeant Harper. The rest of the men followed, carrying their weapons and cartridge boxes over their heads. Once ashore they made a makeshift stretcher from a pair of muskets threaded through the sleeves of two red coats, then Harris and Slattery carried the brigadier up the steep hill. Sharpe, before leaving the riverbank, collected a few short sticks and a scrappy piece of fishing net, all of which had been washed onto the rocks, then he followed the others up to the first crest and saw, looking to his left, that the French had climbed to the top of the bluff. They were nearly half a mile away, which did not stop one of them loosing off his musket. The ball must have fallen into the intervening valley and the report, when it came, was muffled.
“This is far enough,” Moon announced. The jolting of the crude stretcher was giving him agony and he looked pale.
“To the top,” Sharpe said, nodding to where rocks crowned the bare hill.
“For God’s sake, man,” Moon began.
“French are coming, sir,” Sharpe interrupted the brigadier. “If you want, sir, I can leave you for them, sir? They must have a surgeon in the fort.”
Moon looked tempted for a few seconds, but understood that high-ranking prisoners were rarely exchanged. It was possible that a French brigadier might be captured soon and after prolonged negotiations would be exchanged for Moon, but it would take weeks if not months, and all the while his career would be stalled and other men promoted over him. “Up the hill if you must,” he said grudgingly, “but what are your plans after that?”
“Wait for the French to go, sir, detach a pontoon, cross the river, get you home.”
“And why the devil are you carrying firewood?”
The brigadier discovered why at the top of the hill. Private Geoghegan, one of the men from the 88th, claimed his mother had been a bonesetter and said he had often helped her as a child. “What you do, sir,” he explained, “is pull the bone.”
“Pull it?” Sharpe asked.
“Give it a good swift tug, sir, and he’ll like as not squeal like a piglet, and I straightens it then and we bind it up. Would the gentleman be a Protestant, would he, sir?”
“I should think so.”
“Then we don’t need the holy water, sir, and we’ll do without the two prayers as well, but he’ll be straight enough when we’re done.”
The brigadier protested. Why not wait till they were across the river, he wanted to know, and blanched when Sharpe said that could be two days. “Soonest done, soonest mended, sir,” Private Geoghegan said, “and if we don’t mend it soon, sir, it’ll set crooked as can be. And I’ll have to cut your trouser off, sir, sorry, sir.”
“You’ll not damned well cut them!” Moon protested hotly. “They’re Willoughby’s best! There isn’t a finer tailor in London.”
“Then you’ll have to take them off yourself, sir, you will,” Geoghegan said. He looked as wild as any of the Connaught men, but had a soft, sympathetic voice and a confidence that somewhat allayed the brigadier’s apprehensions, yet even so it took twenty minutes to persuade Moon that he should allow his leg to be straightened. It was the thought that he would have to spend the rest of his life with a crooked limb that really convinced him. He saw himself limping into salons, unable to dance, awkward in the saddle, and his vanity at last overcame his fear. Sharpe, meanwhile, watched the French. Forty men had worked their way over the bluff and now they were walking toward the stranded pontoons.
“Buggers are going to salvage them,” Harper said.
“Take the riflemen halfway down the hill,” Sharpe said, “and stop them.”
Harper left, taking Slattery, Harris, Hagman, and Perkins with him. They were the only men from Sharpe’s company stranded on the pontoons, but it was a consolation that they were all good riflemen. There was no better soldier than Sergeant Patrick Harper, the huge Ulsterman who hated the British rule of his homeland, but still fought like a hero. Slattery was from County Wicklow and was quiet, soft-spoken, and capable. Harris had been a schoolmaster once and was clever, well-read, and too fond of gin, which was why he was now a soldier, but he was amusing and loyal. Dan Hagman was the oldest, well over forty, and he had been a poacher in Cheshire before the law caught him and condemned him to the army’s ranks. There was no better marksman in any rifle company. Perkins was the youngest, young enough to be Hagman’s grandson, and he had been a street urchin in London as Sharpe had once been, but he was learning to be a good soldier. He was learning that discipline tied to savagery was unbeatable. They were all good men and Sharpe was glad to have them, and just then the brigadier gave a yelp that he managed to stifle, though he could not contain a long moan. Geoghegan had eased off the brigadier’s boots, which must have hurt like hell, and somehow managed to take down Moon’s trousers, and now he placed two of Sharpe’s sticks alongside the broken calf and wrapped one of the brigadier’s trouser legs about the limb so that it gripped the sticks. He tightened the pressure by winding the trouser leg as though he wrung water from the material. He tightened it until the brigadier gave a hiss of protest. Then Geoghegan grinned at Sharpe. “Would you help me, sir? Just take the general’s ankle, will you, sir? And when I tell you, sir, give it a good smart pull.”