at the pain in his ribs, closed his eyes and listened. He could hear men stirring on the slope above him, the clang of a kettle, the crackle of small fires being revived. A horse thumped the ground with its foot and somewhere a baby cried. None of those sounds concerned him. He was listening for something from below, but all was quiet. ‘They won’t come till dawn,’ he said, knowing that the French needed some light to find the track up the hill.
‘And you think they will come, sir?’ Read asked apprehensively.
‘That’s what their deserters say. How’s your priming?’
‘In this fog? I don’t trust it,’ Read said, then frowned at Sharpe. ‘You hurt yourself, sir?’
‘I fell down some steps,’ Sharpe said. ‘Wasn’t watching out. You’d best blow the guns out at reveille,’ he went on, ‘and I’ll warn the battalion.’ The six men of the picquet had stood guard on the rocky promontory through the darkness with loaded muskets and rifles. By now the damp air would have penetrated the priming in the lock pans and the odds were that the sparks would not light the powder. So, when the army was woken by bugle calls, the picquets would put a fresh pinch of dry powder in their pans and fire the musket to clear out the old charge and, if folk were not warned, they might think the shots meant the French had climbed through the fog. ‘Keep your eyes open till then,’ he said.
‘We’re being relieved at reveille?’ Read asked anxiously.
‘You can get a couple of hours’ sleep after stand-to,’ Sharpe said. ‘But sharpen your bayonets before you put your heads down.’
‘You think…’ Ensign Iliffe started the question, but did not finish it.
‘I don’t know what to expect,’ Sharpe answered him anyway, ‘but you don’t face battle with a blunt blade, Mister Iliffe. Show me your sabre.’
Iliffe, as befitted an officer in a skirmishing company, wore a light cavalry sabre. It was an old one, bought cheap back home, with a tarnished hilt and a worn leather grip. The Ensign gave the weapon to Sharpe who ran a thumb down its curved fore blade, then down the sharpened upper edge of the back blade. ‘Half a mile back,’ he told Iliffe, ‘there’s a regiment of Portuguese dragoons, so when it’s light go back there, find their smith, and give him a shilling to put an edge on that blade. You couldn’t skin a cat with that sabre.’ He gave the blade back, then half drew his own.
Sharpe, perversely, did not carry the light cavalry sabre. Instead he wore a heavy cavalry sword, a long and straight-bladed weapon that was ill-balanced and too heavy, but a brutal instrument in a strong man’s hands. It seemed sharp enough when he felt the fore blade, but he would still have a keener edge ground onto the sword. Money well spent, he reckoned.
He went back up to the ridge top and scrounged another mug of tea just a moment before the first bugle sounded. It was muffled, far off, for it came from the valley beneath, from the invisible French, but within a moment scores of bugles and trumpets were blasting the ridge with their clamour. ‘Stand to! Stand to!’ Major Leroy shouted. He saw Sharpe through the mist. ‘Morning, Sharpe! Damned cold one, eh? What happened to summer?’
‘I’ve told the picquets to empty their guns, sir.’
‘I won’t be alarmed,’ Leroy said, then brightened. ‘Is that tea, Sharpe?’
‘I thought Americans didn’t drink tea, sir.’
‘The loyal Americans do, Sharpe.’ Leroy, the son of parents who had fled the rebel victory in the Thirteen Colonies, stole Sharpe’s mug. ‘The rebellious sort feed their tea to the codfish.’ He drank and looked disgusted. ‘Don’t you use sugar?’
‘Never.’
Leroy took a sip and grimaced. ‘It tastes like warm horse piss,’ he said, but drained the mug nonetheless. ‘Good morning, lads! Time to shine! Fall in!’
Sergeant Harper had led the new picquet towards the rocks on the small spur where Sergeant Read ordered his men to shoot their guns out into the foggy void. Leroy called that the sound should be ignored. Lieutenant Slingsby, despite having been drunk the night before, now looked as fresh and smart as though he were mounting guard on Windsor Castle. He came from his tent, plucked his red coat straight, adjusted the angle of his sabre scabbard, then marched after the picquet. ‘You should have waited for me, Sergeant!’ he called to Harper.
‘I told him to go,’ Sharpe said.
Slingsby swivelled round, his bulging eyes showing surprise at seeing Sharpe. ‘Morning, Sharpe!’ The Lieutenant sounded indecently cheerful. ‘My word, but that’s a rare black eye! You should have put a beefsteak on it last night. Beefsteak!’ Slingsby, finding that advice funny, snorted with laughter. ‘How are you feeling? Better, I trust?’
‘Dead,’ Sharpe said, and turned back to the ridge top where the battalion was forming into line. They would stay there through the dull moments of dawn, through the dangerous time when the enemy might make a surprise attack. Sharpe, standing ahead of the light company, looked down the line and felt an unexpected surge of affection for the battalion. It was nearly six hundred men strong, most from the small villages of southern Essex, but a good few from London and a lot from Ireland, and they were mostly thieves, drunks, murderers and fools, but they had been hammered into soldiers. They knew each other’s weaknesses, liked each other’s jokes, and reckoned no battalion in God’s world was half as good as theirs.
They might not be as wild as the Connaught Rangers, who were now moving up to take post to the left of the South Essex, and they were certainly not as fashionable as the Guards battalions further north, but they were dependable, stubborn, proud and confident. A ripple of laughter went through number four company and Sharpe knew, even without hearing its cause, that Horace Pearce had just made a jest and he knew his men would want the joke passed down. ‘Silence in the ranks!’ he called and wished he had kept silent because of the pain.
A Portuguese unit was formed to the battalion’s right and beyond them was a battery of Portuguese six-pounders. Useless guns, Sharpe thought, but he had seen enough nine-pounders on the ridge to know that the cannons could do some slaughter this day. He reckoned the mist was clearing, for he could see the small six-pounders more clearly with every passing minute, and when he turned north and stared at the tops of the trees beyond the monastery’s far wall he saw the whiteness thinning and shredding.
They waited the best part of an hour, but no French came. The mist drained from the ridge top, but still filled the valley like a great white river. Colonel Lawford, mounted on Lightning, rode down the battalion’s front, touching his hat in answer to the companies’ salutes. ‘We shall do well today,’ he told each company, ‘and add lustre to our reputation. Do your duty, and let the Frenchmen know they’ve met better men!’ He repeated this encouragement to the light company at the left of the line, ignored the man who asked what lustre was, then smiled down at Sharpe. ‘Come and have breakfast with me, will you, Sharpe?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good man.’ A bugle sounded from half a mile north and Lawford twisted in his saddle to find Major Forrest. ‘We can stand down, Major. Half and half, though, I think.’
Half the men stayed in line, the others were released to make tea, to eat and relieve themselves, but none was permitted to go beyond the newly made road and so vanish from the battalion’s sight. If the French came then the men were expected to be in line within half a minute. Two of the light company wives sat by a fire honing bayonets with sharpening stones and cackling with laughter at a joke told by
