Sharpe's Eagle Page 4
Lennox shook his head. “No, Mr Gibbons, we are not. I’ll leave Knowles and Denny with Lieutenant Sharpe while he works his miracles.” Gibbons touched his hat and spurred his horse away. Lennox watched him go. “Can’t do any wrong, that one. Apple of the Colonel’s bloodshot eye.” He turned and waved at the company. “I’ll leave you Lieutenant Knowles and Ensign Denny, they’re both good lads but they’ve learned wrong from Simmerson. You’ve got a sprinkling of old soldiers, that’ll help, and good luck to you, Sharpe, you’ll need it!” He grunted as he heaved himself into the saddle. “Welcome to the madhouse, Sharpe!”
Sharpe was left with the company, its junior officers, and the ranks of dumb faces that stared at him as though fearful of some new torment devised by their Colonel. He walked to the front of the company, watching the red faces that bulged over the constricting stocks and glistened with sweat in the relentless heat, and faced them. His own jacket was unbuttoned, shirt open, and he wore no hat. To the men of the South Essex he was like a visitor from another continent. “You’re in a war now. When you meet the French a lot of you are going to die. Most of you.” They were appalled by his words. „I’ll tell you why.“
He pointed over the eastern horizon. “The French are over there, waiting for you.” Some of the men looked that way, as though they expected to see Bonaparte himself coming through the olive trees on the outskirts of Castelo Branco. “They’ve got muskets and they can all fire three or four shots a minute. Aimed at you. And they’re going to kill you because you’re so damned slow. If you don’t kill them first then they will kill you, it is as simple as that. You.” He pointed to a man in the front rank. “Bring me your musket!”
At least he had their attention and some of them would understand the simple fact that the side which pumped out the most bullets stood the best chance of winning. He took the man’s musket, a handful of ammunition, and discarded his rifle. He held the musket over his head and went right back to the beginnings.
“Look at it! One India Pattern musket. Fifty-five and a quarter inches long with a thirty-nine-inch barrel. It fires a ball three-quarters of an inch wide, nearly as wide as your thumb, and it kills Frenchmen!” There was a nervous laugh but they were listening. “But you won’t kill any Frenchmen with it. You’re too slow! In the time it takes you to fire two shots, the enemy will probably manage three. And, believe me, the French are slow. So, this afternoon, you will learn to fire three shots in a minute. In time you’ll fire four shots every minute and if you’re really good you should manage five!”
The company watched as he loaded the musket. It had been years since he had fired a smooth-bore musket, but compared to the Baker Rifle it was ridiculously easy. There were no grooves in the barrel to grip the bullet and no need to force the ramrod with brute force or even hammer it down. A musket was fast to load, which was why most of the army used it instead of the slower, but much more accurate, rifle. He checked the flint, it was new and well seated in its jaws, so he primed and cocked the gun. “Lieutenant Knowles?”
A young Lieutenant snapped to attention. “Sir!”
“Do you have a watch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can it time one minute?”
Knowles dragged out a huge gold hunter and snapped open the lid. “Yes, sir.”
“When I fire you will keep an eye on that watch and tell me when one minute has passed. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned away from the company and pointed the musket down the field towards a stone wall. Oh God, he prayed, let it not misfire, and pulled the trigger. The swan neck with its gripped flint snapped forward, the powder in the pan flashed, and a fraction later the main charge exploded and he felt the heavy kick as the lead ball was punched out of the barrel in a gout of thick, white smoke.
Now it was all instinct: the never-forgotten motions.
Right hand away from the trigger, let the gun fall in the left hand and as the butt hits the ground the right hand already has the next cartridge. Bite off the bullet. Pour the powder down the barrel but remember to keep a pinch for the priming. Spit in the ball. Ramrod out, up, and down the barrel. A quick push and then it’s out again, the gun is up, the cock back, priming in the pan, and fire into the lingering smoke of the first shot.
And again and again and again and memories of standing in the line with sweating, mad-eyed comrades and going through the motions as if in a nightmare. Ignoring the billows of smoke, the screams, edging left and right to fill up the gaps left by the dead, just loading and firing, loading and firing, letting the flames spit out into the fog of powder smoke, the lead balls to smash into the unseen enemy and hope they are falling back. Then the command to cease fire and you stop. Your face is black and stinging from the explosions of the powder in the pan just inches from your right cheek, your eyes smarting from the smoke and the powder grains, and the cloud drifts away leaving the dead and wounded in front and you lean on the musket and pray that the next time the gun would not hang-fire, snap a flint, or simply refuse to fire at all.
He pulled the trigger for the fifth time, the ball hammered away down the field, and the musket was down and the powder in the barrel before Knowles called ‘Time’s up!“
The men cheered, laughed and clapped because an officer had broken the rules and showed them he could do it. Harper was grinning broadly. He at least knew how difficult it was to make five shots in a minute, and Sharpe knew that the Sergeant had noticed how he had cunningly loaded the first shot before the timed minute began. Sharpe stopped the noise. “That is how you will use a musket. Fast! Now you’re going to do it.”
There was silence. Sharpe felt the devilment in him; had not Simmerson told him to use his own method? “Take off your stocks!” For a moment no-one moved. The men stared at him. “Come on! Hurry! Take your stocks off!”
Knowles, Denny, and the Sergeants watched, puzzled, as the men gripped their muskets between their knees and used both hands to wrench apart the stiff leather collars.
“Sergeants! Collect the stocks. Bring them here.”
The Battalion had been brutalised too much. There was no way he could teach them to be fast-shooting soldiers unless he offered them an opportunity to take their revenge on the system that had condemned them to a flogger’s Battalion. The Sergeants came to him, their faces dubious, their arms piled high with the hated stocks.
„Put them down here.“ Sharpe made them heap the seventy-odd stocks about forty paces in front of the company. He pointed to the glistening heap. ”That is your target! Each of you will be given just three rounds. Just three. And you will have one minute in which to fire them! Those who succeed, twice in a row, will drop out and have a lazy afternoon. The rest will go on trying and go on trying until they do succeed.“
He let the two officers organise the drill. The men were grinning broadly, and there was a buzz of conversation in the ranks that he did not try to check. The Sergeants looked at him as though he were committing treason but none dared cross the tall, dark Rifleman with the long sword. When all was ready Sharpe gave the word and the bullets began smashing their way into the pile of leather. The men forgot their old drill and concentrated on shooting their hatred into the leather collars that had given them sore necks and which represented Simmerson and all his tyranny. At the end of the first two sessions only twenty men had succeeded, nearly all of them old soldiers who had re-enlisted in the new Battalion, but an hour and three-quarters later, as the sun reddened behind him, the last man fired his last shot into the fragments of stiff leather that littered the grass.
Sharpe lined the whole company in two ranks and watched, satisfied, as they shot three volleys to Harper’s commands. He looked through the white smoke that lingered in the still air towards the eastern horizon. Over there, in the Estremadura, the French were waiting, their Eagles gathering for the battle that had to come, while behind him, in the lane that led from the town, Sir Henry
Sirnrnerson was in sight coming to claim h
is victory and his victims for the triangle.
“For what we are about to receive,” Harper said softly.
“Quiet! Make them load. We’ll give the man a demonstration.” Sharpe watched Simmerson’s eyes as the slow dawning of his men’s unbuttoned collars and the significance of the leather shreds on the grass occurred in his brain. Sharpe watched the Colonel take a deep breath. “Now!”
„Fire!“ Harper’s command unleashed a full volley that echoed like thunder in the valley. If Simmerson shouted then his words were lost in the noise, and the Colonel could only watch as his men worked their muskets like veterans to the orders of a Sergeant of the Rifles, even bigger than Sharpe, whose broad, confident face was of the kind that had always infuriated Sir Henry, provoking his most savage sentences from the uncushioned magistrates’ bench in Chelmsford.
The last volley rattled onto the stone wall, and Forrest tucked his watch back into a pocket. “Two seconds under a minute, Sir Henry, and four shots.”
“I can count, Forrest.” Four shots? Simmerson was impressed because secretly he had despaired of teaching his men to fire fast instead of fumbling nervously. But a whole company’s stocks? At two and threepence apiece? And on a day when his nephew had come in smelling like a stable hand? “God damn your eyes, Sharpe!”
“Yes, sir.”
The acrid powder smoke made Sir Henry’s horse twitch its head, and the Colonel reached forward to quiet it. Sharpe watched the gesture and knew that he had made a fool of the Colonel in front of his own men, and he knew, too, that it had been a mistake. Sharpe had won a small victory but in doing so he had made an enemy who had both power and influence. The Colonel edged his horse closer to Sharpe and his voice was surprisingly quiet. “This is my Battalion, Mr Sharpe. My Battalion. Remember that!” He looked for a moment as if his anger would erupt, but he controlled it and shouted at Forrest to follow him instead. Sharpe turned away. Harper was grinning at him, the men looked pleased, and only Sharpe felt a foreboding of menace like an unseen but encircling enemy. He shook it off. There were muskets to clean, rations to issue, and, beyond the border hills, enemies enough for anyone.
Chapter 4
Patrick Harper marched with a long easy stride, happy to feel the road beneath his feet, happy they had at last crossed the unmarked frontier and were going somewhere, anywhere. They had left in the small, dark hours so that the bulk of the march would be done before the sun was at its hottest, and he looked forward to an afternoon of inactivity and hoped that the bivouac Major Forrest had ridden ahead to find would be near a stream where he could drift a line down the water with one of his maggots impaled on the hook. The South Essex were somewhere behind them; Sharpe had started the day’s march at the Rifle Regiment’s fast pace, three steps walking, three running, and Harper was glad that they were free of the suspicious atmosphere of the Battalion. He grinned as he remembered the stocks. There was a sobering rumour that the Colonel had ordered Sharpe to pay for every one of the seventy-nine ruined collars, and that, to Harper’s mind, was a terrible price to pay. He had not asked Sharpe the truth of the rumour; if he had he would have been told to mind his own business, though, for Patrick Harper, Sharpe was his business. The Lieutenant might be moody, irritable, and liable to snap at the Sergeant as a means of venting frustration, but Harper, if pressed, would have described Sharpe as a friend. It was not a word that a Sergeant could use of an officer, but Harper could have thought of no other. Sharpe was the best soldier the Irishman had seen on a battlefield, with a countryman’s eye for ground and a hunter’s instinct for using it, but Sharpe looked for advice to only one man in a battle, Sergeant Harper. It was an easy relationship, of trust and respect, and Patrick Harper saw his business as keeping Richard Sharpe alive and amused.
He enjoyed being a soldier, even in the army of the nation that had taken his family’s land and trampled on their religion. He had been reared on the tales of the great Irish heroes, he could recite by heart the story of Cuchulain single-handedly defeating the forces of Connaught, and who did the English have to put beside the great hero? But Ireland was Ireland and hunger drove men to strange places. If Harper had followed his heart he would be fighting against the English, not for them, but like so many of his countrymen he had found a refuge from poverty and persecution in the ranks of the enemy. He never forgot home. He carried in his head a picture of Donegal, a county of twisted rock and thin soil, of mountains, lakes, wide bogs and the small holdings where families scratched a thin living. And what families! Harper was the fourth of his mother’s eleven children who survived infancy and she always said that she never knew how she had come to bear such ‘a big wee one’. “To feed Patrick is like feeding three of the others’ she would say, and he would more often than not go hungry. Then came the day when he left to seek his own fortune. He had walked from the Blue Stack mountains to the walled streets of Derry and there got drunk, and found himself enlisted. Now, eight years later and twenty-four years old, he was a Sergeant. They would never believe that in Tangaveane!
It was hard now to think of the English as enemies. Familiarity had bred too many friendships. The army was one place where strong men could do well, and Patrick Harper liked the responsibility he had earned and enjoyed the respect of other tough men, like Sharpe. He remembered the stories of his countrymen who had fought the redcoats in the hills and fields of Ireland, and sometimes he wondered what his future would be if he were to go back and live in Donegal again. That problem of loyalty was too difficult, and he kept it in the back of his mind, hidden away with the vestiges of his religion. Perhaps the war would go on for ever, or perhaps St Patrick would return and convert the English to the true faith? Who could tell? But for the moment he was content to be a soldier and took his pleasure where it could be found. Yesterday he had seen a peregrine falcon, high over the road, and Patrick Harper’s soul had soared to meet it. He knew every bird in Ulster, loved them, and as he walked he searched the land and sky for new birds because the Sergeant never tired of watching them. In the hills north of Oporto he had caught a quick glimpse of a strange magpie with a long blue tail, unlike anything he had seen before, and he wanted to see another. The expectation and the waiting were part of his content and his pleasure.
A hare started up in a field next to the road. A voice shouted „Mine,“ and they all paused while the man knelt, took quick aim, and fired. He missed and Riflemen jeered as the hare twisted and disappeared in the rocks. Daniel Hagman did not miss often, he had learned to shoot from his poacher father, and all the Riflemen were secretly proud of the Cheshire-man’s ability with the rifle. As he reloaded he shook his head sorrowfully. ”Sorry, sir. Getting too old.“
Sharpe laughed. Hagman was forty but he could still out-shoot the rest of the company. The hare had been running at two hundred yards, and it would have been a miracle if it had ended up in the evening’s cooking pots.
“We’ll take a rest,” Sharpe said. “Ten minutes.” He set two men as sentries. The French were miles away, there were British cavalry ahead of them on the road, but soldiers stayed alive by taking precautions and this was strange country, so Sharpe kept a watch and the men marched with loaded weapons. He took off his pack and pouches, glad to be rid of the eighty pounds of weight, and sat beside Harper, who was leaning back and staring into the clear sky. “A hot day for a march, Sergeant.”
“It will be, sir, so it will. But better than that damned cold last winter.”
Sharpe grinned. “You managed to keep warm enough.”
“We did what we could, sir, we did what we could. You remember the Holy Father in the Friary?” Sharpe nodded but there was no way to stop Patrick Harper once he was launched into a good story. “He told us there was no drink in the place! No drink, and we were as cold as the sea in winter! It was a terrible thing to hear a man of God lie so.”
“You taught him a lesson,“ Sarge Pendleton, the baby of the company, just seventeen and a thief from the streets of Bristol, grinned over t
he road at the Irishman. Harper nodded. ”We did, lad. You remember? No priest runs out of drink and we found it. My God, a barrel big enough to drown an army’s thirst and it did us that night. And we tipped the Holy Father head first into the wine to teach him that lying is a mortal sin.“ He laughed at the memory. ”I could do with a drop right now.“ He looked innocently round the men resting on the verges. ”Would anyone have a drop?“
There was silence. Sharpe leaned back and hid his smile. He knew what Harper was doing and he could guess what would happen next. The Rifles were one of the few Regiments that could pick and choose its recruits, rejecting all but the best, but even so it suffered from the besetting sin of the whole army: drunkenness. Sharpe guessed there were at least half a dozen bottles of wine within a few paces, and Harper was going to find them. He heard the Sergeant get to his feet. “Right! Inspection.”
“Sergeant!” That was Gataker, too fly for his own good. “You inspected the water bottles this morning! You know we haven’t got any.”
“I know you haven’t any in your water bottles but that’s not the same thing, is it?” There was still no response! „Lay your ammunition out! Now!“
There were groans. Both the Portuguese and the Spanish would gladly sell wine to a man in exchange for a handful of cartridges made with the British gunpowder, the finest in the world, and it was a fair bet that if any man had less than his eighty rounds then Harper would find a bottle hid deep in that man’s pack. Sharpe heard the sound of rummaging and scuffling. He opened his eyes to see seven bottles had magically appeared. Harper stood over them triumphantly. “We share these out tonight. Well done, lads, I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” He turned to Sharpe. “Do you want a cartridge count, sir?”
“No, we’ll get on.” He knew the men could be trusted not to sell more than a handful of cartridges. He looked at the huge Irishman. “How many cartridges would you have, Sergeant.”