was almost over. There were redcoats in the ditch, more on ladders, and even as Sharpe watched he saw the redcoats surge over the parapet and carry bayonets at the blue-uniformed Frenchmen. There was no need of his rifles. ‘Get out of sight of that damned gun,’ he shouted, and his men hurried off the crest. A second cannon fired from the fort across the river and a musket ball plucked at the hem of Sharpe’s greatcoat and another drove up a flurry of dew from the grass by his side, but then he was off the hilltop and hidden from the distant gunners.
No gun fired from Fort Joseph. The garrison had been taken utterly by surprise and there were redcoats in the centre of the fort now, and a panicked stream of Frenchmen was running from the eastern gate to cross the bridge to the safety of Fort Josephine on the river’s Spanish bank. The musket fire was slowing. Maybe a dozen Frenchmen had been captured, the rest were fleeing, and there seemed to be scores of them running towards the bridge. The redcoats, screaming their war cries in the dawn, carried bayonets that encouraged the panicked flight. The French tricolour was hauled down before the last of the attacking troops had even crossed the ditch and wall. It had all been that quick.
‘Our job’s done,’ Sharpe said. ‘Down to the fort.’
‘That was easy,’ Lieutenant Jack Bullen said happily.
‘Not over yet, Jack.’
‘The bridge, you mean?’
‘Got to be destroyed.’
‘The hard bit’s done, anyway.’
‘That’s true,’ Sharpe said. He liked young Jack Bullen, a bluff Essex boy who was uncomplaining and hard-working. The men liked Bullen too. He treated them fairly, with the confidence that came from privilege, but it was a privilege that was always tempered by cheerfulness. A good officer, Sharpe reckoned.
They filed down the hill, across the rocky valley, over a small stream that fell cold from the hills and so up the next hill to the fort where the ladders were still propped against the parapet. Every now and then a petulant gun fired from Fort Josephine, but the balls were wasted against the earth-filled wicker baskets that topped the parapet. ‘Ah, you’re here, Sharpe,’ Brigadier Moon greeted him. He was suddenly affable, his dislike of Sharpe washed away by the elation of victory.
‘Congratulations, sir.’
‘What? Oh, thank you. That’s generous of you.’ Moon did seem touched by Sharpe’s praise. ‘It went better than I dared hope. There’s tea on the boil over there. Let your lads have some.’
The French prisoners were sitting in the fort’s centre. A dozen horses had been found in the stables and they were now being saddled, presumably because Moon, who had marched from the Tagus, reckoned he had earned the privilege of riding back. A captured officer was standing beside the well, disconsolately watching the victorious British troops who were gleefully searching the French packs captured in the barracks. ‘Fresh bread!’ Major Gillespie, one of Moon’s aides, tossed Sharpe a loaf. ‘Still warm. The bastards live well, don’t they?’
‘I thought they were supposed to be starving?’
‘Not here they’re not. Land of milk and honey, this place.’
Moon climbed to the eastern firestep which faced the bridge and began looking into the ready magazines beside the guns. The artillerymen in Fort Josephine saw his red coat and opened fire. They were using canister and their shots rattled on the parapet and whistled overhead. Moon ignored the balls. ‘Sharpe!’ he called, then waited as the rifleman climbed to the rampart. ‘Time you earned your wages, Sharpe,’ he said. Sharpe said nothing, just watched as the brigadier peered into a magazine. ‘Round shot,’ Moon announced, ‘common shell and grapeshot.’
‘Not canister, sir?’
‘Grapeshot, definitely grapeshot. Naval stores, I suspect. Bastards haven’t got any ships left so they’ve sent their grapeshot here.’ He let the magazine lid drop and stared down at the bridge. ‘Common shell won’t break that brute, will it? There are a score of women down below. In the barracks. Have some of your fellows escort them over the bridge, will you? Deliver them to the French with my compliments. The rest of your men can help Sturridge. He’ll have to blow the far end.’
Lieutenant Sturridge was a Royal Engineer whose job was to destroy the bridge. He was a nervous young man who seemed terrified of Moon. ‘The far end?’ Sharpe asked, wanting to be sure he had heard correctly.
Moon looked exasperated. ‘If we break the bridge at this end, Sharpe,’ he explained with exaggerated patience as though he were speaking to a young and not very bright child, ‘the damn thing will float downstream, but will still be attached to the far bank. The French can then salvage the pontoons. Not much point in coming all this way and leaving the French with a serviceable pontoon bridge that they can rebuild, is there? But if we break it at the Spanish end the pontoons should end up on this bank and we can burn them.’ A barrel-load of canister or grapeshot hissed overhead and the brigadier threw Fort Josephine an irritated glance. ‘Get on with it,’ he said to Sharpe, ‘I want to be away by tomorrow’s dawn.’
A picquet from the 74th’s light company guarded the eighteen women. Six were officers’ wives and they stood apart from the rest, trying to look brave. ‘You’ll take them over,’ Sharpe told Jack Bullen.
‘I will, sir?’
‘You like women, don’t you?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘And you speak some of their horrible language, don’t you?’
‘Incredibly well, sir.’
‘So take the ladies over the bridge and up to that other fort.’
While Lieutenant Bullen persuaded the women that no harm would come to them and that they must gather their luggage and be ready to cross the river, Sharpe looked for Sturridge and found the engineer in the fort’s main magazine. ‘Powder,’ Sturridge greeted Sharpe. He had prised the lid from a barrel and now tasted the gunpowder. ‘Bloody awful powder.’ He spat it out with a grimace. ‘Bloody French powder. Nothing but bloody dust. Damp, too.’
‘Will it work?’
‘It should go bang,’ Sturridge said gloomily.
‘I’m taking you over the bridge,’ Sharpe told him.
‘There’s a handcart outside,’ Sturridge said, ‘and we’ll need it. Five barrels should be enough, even of this rubbish.’
‘You’ve got fuse?’
Sturridge unbuttoned his blue jacket and showed that he had several yards of slow match coiled around his waist. ‘You just thought I was portly, didn’t you? Why doesn’t he just blow the bridge at this end? Or in the middle?’
‘So the French can’t rebuild it.’
‘They couldn’t anyway. Takes a lot of skill to make one of those bridges. Doesn’t take much to undo one, but making a pontoon bridge isn’t a job for amateurs.’ Sturridge hammered the lid back onto the opened powder barrel. ‘The French aren’t going to like us being over there, are they?’
‘I wouldn’t think so.’
‘So is this where I die for England?’
