see which one, but Sharpe jerked the barrel up and the movement brought the eyes back. ‘Are you going to live for ever?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘Not “Lieutenant, sir”? Lost your tongue, Hakeswill?’
‘No, sir.’
Sharpe smiled. He was very close to the Sergeant and the rifle was pointed up beneath Hakeswill’s chin. ‘I think you’re going to die, Sergeant. Shall I tell you why?’
The blue, child-like eyes flicked left and right as if searching for help. Hakeswill expected to be attacked by night, in the shadows, but never in bright daylight among hundreds of potential witnesses. Yet no one was taking any notice! The rifle jerked, touching his sweated skin. ‘Sir!’
‘Look at me, Sergeant. I’m telling you a secret.’
Hakeswill looked at Sharpe, their eyes level. ‘Sir?’
The Riflemen watched and Sharpe spoke clearly for them. ‘I think, Sergeant, that no one can kill you. Except.’ He spoke slowly, as if to a child. ‘Except, Sergeant, someone whom you had tried to kill, and whom you failed to kill.’ The fear was obvious on the sweating face, the yellow paling. ‘Can you think of anyone like that, Sergeant?’
The face twitched, shook, and the rifle jerked up again into the chin. ‘No, sir!’
‘Good!’ The stubby foresight of the Baker was cold on Hakeswill’s skin. Sharpe dropped his voice so that only the Sergeant could hear him. ‘You’re a dead man, Obadiah. The magic’s gone.’ He suddenly shouted. ‘Bang!’
Hakeswill leaped back, startled, let out a pathetic yelp like a whipped child, and stumbled on to the grass. Sharpe laughed at him, pointed the gun and pulled the trigger on to an empty, unloaded pan. Hakeswill sprawled on the grass, his face murderous, but Sharpe turned away from him to his grinning Riflemen. ‘Shun!’
They snapped to attention. Sharpe spoke to them again, but this time his voice was crisp. ‘Remember, I’ve made you a promise. You’ll get your rifles back, your jackets back, and you’ll get me back!’ He did not know how he could do it, but he would. He turned back to the Sergeant and pointed at the seven-barrelled gun on Hakeswill’s shoulder. ‘Give me that!’
Hakeswill handed it over meekly, with its ammunition pouch, and Sharpe slung the gun on his own shoulder next to his rifle. He looked down at the Sergeant. ‘I’m coming back, Sergeant. Remember that.’ He scooped the jackets into an awkward bundle, put them under his arm, and limped away. He knew that Hakeswill would exact a revenge on the Riflemen, but he knew, too, that the Sergeant had been humiliated, shown to be vulnerable, and the Company, Sharpe’s Company, needed to know that much.
It was a small victory, a petty victory even, but it was a start on the long fight back, a fight that he knew must end in the breach at Badajoz.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
News came that the French, at last, were moving; not against Wellington at Badajoz, but towards the new Spanish garrison in Ciudad Rodrigo. The reports came from the Partisans and from the despatches they had captured, some still stained with the blood of enemy messengers, and told of disagreements among the French Generals, of delays in gathering their troops, and their difficulties in replacing the French siege artillery, all of which had been captured inside the northern fortress. The news spurred Wellington into greater speed; he wanted the siege of Badajoz done, and he could not be persuaded that the French chances of retaking Ciudad Rodrigo were remote. He did not trust the Spaniards in the town and wanted to march the army north to bolster his allies’ resolve. Speed! Speed! Speed! For the six days after Easter he pounded the message at his Generals and staff officers. Give me Badajoz! For the six days the new batteries built in the ruins of the Picurina Fort had fired incessantly at the breaches, at first with small effect until, almost unexpectedly, the loosened stone had cascaded into the ditch and was followed by a dust-spewing avalanche of rubble from the wall’s core. The sweating, powder-stained gun crews had cheered, while the infantry, guarding the batteries against another French sortie, stared at the incipient breaches and wondered what welcome the French were preparing for the assault.
By night the French tried to repair the damage. The Picurina guns sprayed the two breaches with grapeshot, but still, each morning, the broken edges of the stonework had been padded with thick bales of wool and so, each dawn, the gunners fired at the mattresses until, in an explosion of greasy fleeces, the padding fell away and the iron balls could start again on the wall proper; gouging at it, crumbling it, carving the double path into the city.
The dam still stood and the floodwaters still stretched south of the city, forcing any assault on the bastions to march obliquely against the walls instead of straight on. The northern batteries pounded at the dam’s fort while the infantry dug their trenches forward, trying to take their spades and muskets to the very edge of the small fort, but the trenching was thrown back. Every gun on Badajoz’s east wall, from the high kestrel-ridden castle, to the Trinidad bastion, opened up on the creeping trench till the workers were smashed and no one could live in the iron hail, and so the attempt was given up. The dam would stay, the approach would be oblique, and the engineers did not like it. ‘Time, I want time!’ Colonel Fletcher, wounded in the French foray, was out of bed. He pounded the map in front of him. ‘He wants a bloody miracle!’
‘I do.’ The General had entered the room unheard and Fletcher twisted round, grimacing because the wound still hurt.
‘My Lord! My apologies.’ The Scottish growl sounded far from apologetic.
Wellington gestured the apology away, nodded at the men waiting for him, and sat down. Major Hogan knew the General was just forty-three, yet he looked older. Perhaps they all looked older. The siege was wearing them down as it was wearing away the two bastions, and Hogan sighed because he knew that this meeting, on Saturday 4th April as he carefully noted at the top of his notebook page, would once more be a wrangle between the General and the Engineers. Wellington took out his own map, unrolled it, and weighted the corners with ink bottles. ‘Good morning, gentlemen. Expenditure?’
The gunner Colonel pulled paper towards him. ‘Yesterday, my Lord, one thousand one hundred and fourteen twenty-four-pounders, six hundred and three eighteen-pounders.’ He gave the figures in a flat monotone. ‘One gun burst, sir.’
‘Burst?’
The Colonel turned the paper over. ‘Twenty-four-pounder in Number Three, my Lord, high-shot half-way down the bore. We lost three men, six wounded.’
Wellington grunted. It was astonishing, Hogan always thought, how the General dominated a room by his presence. Perhaps it was the blue eyes that seemed so knowing, or the stillness of the face round the strong, hooked nose. Most of the officers in this room were older than the Viscount Wellington, yet all of them, with the possible exception of Fletcher, seemed in awe of him. The General wrote the figures on his small piece of paper, the pencil squeaking. He looked back to the gunner. ‘Powder?’
‘Plenty, sir. Eighty barrels arrived yesterday. We can keep firing for another month.’
‘We’ll bloody need to. Sorry, my Lord.’ Fletcher was hatching marks on his map.
A trace of a smile flicked the corners of Wellington’s
