and gained a lodgement among the lower stones of the graveyard and one more attack would surely have driven the eagles clear across the ridge's crest and into the soft belly of the enemy beyond. And now, out of sight of that enemy, three whole divisions of French infantry were waiting to attack, and in the van of that attack Massйna planned to put the elite of his attacking regiments, the massed companies of grenadiers with their plumed bearskins and fearful reputation. The cream of France would march against a raddled army of half-broken men.
'Well, Ducos?' Massйna challenged the Major for his verdict.
'I must congratulate Your Majesty,' Ducos said.
'Which means, I suppose, that you approve of my humble plan?' Massйna asked sarcastically.
'All France will approve, Your Majesty, when it brings victory.'
'Bugger the victory,' Massйna said, 'so long as it brings me Wellington's whores. I'm tired of my present bunch. Half of them are poxed, the other half are pregnant and the fat one bawls her eyes out every time you strip the bitch for duty.'
'Wellington has no whores,' Ducos said icily. 'He controls his passions.'
The one-eyed Massйna burst into laughter. 'Controls his passions! God on his cross, Ducos, but you'd make smiling a crime. Controls his passions, does he? Then he's a fool, and a defeated fool at that.' The Marshal wheeled his horse away from the Major and snapped his fingers at a nearby aide. 'Let the eagles go, Jean, let them go!'
The drums called for the muster and three divisions stirred themselves for action. Men drained coffee dregs, stowed knives and tin plates in haversacks, checked their cartridge pouches and plucked their muskets from the pyramid stacks. It was two hours after a Sunday dawn and time to close the battle's jaws as all along the Marshal's line, from south in the plain to north where the village smoked under its numbing cannonade, the French smelt victory.
'Pon my soul, Sharpe, but it's unfair. Unfair! You and me both to stand trial?' Colonel Runciman had been unable to resist the lure of witnessing the day's high drama and so he had come to the plateau, though he had taken care not to step too close to the ridge's crest which was occasionally churned by a high French roundshot. A pyre of smoke marked where the village endured its bombardment while further south, way down on the plain, a second smudge of musket smoke betrayed where the French flank attack was driving across the low ground.
'Waste of time complaining about unfairness, General,' Sharpe said. 'Only the wealthy can afford to preach about fairness. The rest of us take what we can and try hard not to miss what we can't take.'
'Even so, Sharpe, it's unfair!' Runciman said reprovingly. The Colonel looked pale and unhappy. 'It's the disgrace, you see. A man goes home to England and expects to be decently treated, but instead I'll be vilified.' He ducked as a French roundshot rumbled far overhead. 'I had hopes, Sharpe! I had hopes!'
'The Golden Fleece, General? Order of the Bath?'
'Not just those, Sharpe, but of marriage. There are, you understand, ladies of fortune in Hampshire. I've no ambition to bи a bachelor all my life, Sharpe. My dear mother, God rest her, always claimed I'd make a good husband so long as the lady was possessed of a middling fortune. Not a great fortune, one must not be unrealistic, but a sufficiency to keep our good selves in modest comfort. A pair of coaches, decent stables, cooks that know their business, smallish game park, a dairy, you know the sort of place.'
'Makes me homesick, General,' Sharpe said.
The sarcasm sailed airily over Runciman's head. 'But now, Sharpe, can you imagine any woman of decent family allying herself with a vilified name?' He thought about it for a moment, then gave a slow despairing shake of the head. 'Good God! I might have to marry a Methodist!'
'It hasn't happened yet, General,' Sharpe said, 'and a lot could change today.'
Runciman looked alarmed. 'You mean I could be killed?'
'Or you could make a name for bravery, sir,' Sharpe said. 'Nosey always forgives a man for good conduct.'
'Oh, good Lord, no! Dear me, no. Pon my soul, Sharpe, no. I ain't the type. Never was. I went into soldiering because my dear father couldn't find a place for me anywhere else! He purchased me into the army, you understand, because he said it was as good a billet as I could ever expect from society, but I'm not the fighting sort. Never was, Sharpe.' Runciman listened to the terrible noise of the cannonade pounding Fuentes de Onoro, a noise made worse by the splintering sound
'Can't blame you, sir,' Sharpe said, then turned as Sergeant Harper shouted for his attention. 'You'll forgive me, General?'
'Off you go, Sharpe, off you go.'
'Trade, sir,' Harper said, jerking his head towards Major Tarrant who was gesticulating at a wagon driver.
Tarrant turned as Sharpe came near. 'The Light Division is ordered south, Sharpe, but its ammunition reserve is stuck to the north. We're to replace it. Would you mind if your rifles accompanied it?'
Sharpe did mind. He instinctively wanted to stay where the battle would be fiercest and that was in Fuentes de Onoro, but he could not say as much to Tarrant. 'No, sir.'
'In case they get bogged down, d'you see, and have to spend the rest of the day fighting off Frenchmen, so the General wants them to have a plenitude of ammunition. Rifle and musket cartridges, mixed. Artillery are looking after themselves. One wagon should do it, but it needs an escort, Sharpe. French cavalry are lively down there.'
'Can we help?' Captain Donaju had overheard Tarrant's hurried explanation of Sharpe's errand.
'Might need you later, Captain,' Tarrant said. 'I have a feeling today's likely to be lively all round. Never seen the Frogs so uppity. Have you, Sharpe?'
'They've got their tails up today, Major,' Sharpe agreed. He looked up at the wagon driver. 'Are you ready?'
The driver nodded. His wagon was an English four-wheeled farm vehicle with high splayed sides to which were harnessed three Cleveland Bays in single file. 'Had four beasts once,' the driver remarked as Sharpe climbed up beside him, 'but a Frenchie shell got Bess, so now I'm down to three.' The driver had woven red and blue woollen braiding into the horses' manes and had decorated his wagon's flanks with discarded cap-plates and thrown horseshoes that he had nailed to the planking. 'You know where we're going?' he asked Sharpe as Harper ordered the riflemen to climb onto the boxes of ammunition stacked on the wagon's bed.
'After them.' Sharpe pointed to his right where the plateau offered a gentler slope down to the southern lowlands and where the Light Division was marching south beneath its banners. It was Sharpe's old division, made up of riflemen and light infantry, and it regarded itself as the army's elite division. Now it was marching to save the Seventh Division from annihilation.
A mile away, across the Dos Casas stream and close to the ruined barn that served as his headquarters, Marshal Andrй Massйna saw the fresh British troops leaving the plateau's protection to march south towards the beleaguered redcoats and Portuguese. 'The fool,' he said to himself, then louder in a gleeful voice, 'the fool!'
'Your Majesty?' an aide inquired.
'The first rule of war, Jean,' the Marshal said, 'is never to reinforce failure. And what is our whore-free Englishman doing? He's sending more troops to be massacred by our cavalry!' The Marshal put the telescope back to his eye. He could see guns and cavalry going south with the new troops. 'Or maybe he's withdrawing?' he mused aloud. 'Maybe he's making sure he can get back to Portugal. Where's Loup's brigade?'
'Just north of here, Your Majesty,' the aide answered.
'With his whore, no doubt?' Massena asked sourly. Juanita de Elia's flamboyant presence with the Loup Brigade had drawn the attention and jealousy of every Frenchman in the army.
'Indeed, Your Majesty.'
Massena snapped the telescope shut. He disliked Loup. He recognized his ambitions and knew that Loup would trample over any man to gain those ambitions. Loup wanted to be a marshal like Massena, he had even lost an eye like Massena, and now he wanted those grand titles with which the Emperor rewarded the brave and the lucky. But Massena would not help Loup secure those ambitions. A man remained a marshal by suppressing his
