The weather had gone suddenly cold, had it not? The French Captain agreed it had, but he also would have agreed if the Englishman had remarked how warm it was. The Captain was shaking. He was covered in blood, none of it his own, but all from wounds inflicted by canister on men who had climbed near him. He saw his men lying dead, saw others dying, saw them looking up from the ground and trying to call for help he could not give. He remembered the bayonets coming at him and the joy of the killing plain on the faces of the men who held them. 'It was a storm,' he said, not knowing what he said.
'Not now the heat's broken, I think,' the Lieutenant said, misunderstanding his captive's words. The bandsmen of the 43rd and 52nd were collecting the wounded, almost all of them French, and carrying them up to the mill where those that survived would be put on carts and taken to the monastery where the surgeons waited. 'We were hoping for a game of cricket if tomorrow stays fine,' the Lieutenant said. 'Have you had the privilege of watching cricket, monsieur?'
'Cricket?' The Captain gaped at the redcoat.
'The Light Division officers hope to play the rest of the army,' the Lieutenant said, 'unless war or the weather intervenes.'
'I have never seen cricket,' the Frenchman said.
'When you get to heaven, monsieur,' the Lieutenant said gravely, 'and I pray that will be many happy years hence, you will find that your days are spent in playing cricket.'
Just to the south there was more sudden firing. It sounded like British volleys, for they were regular and fast, but it was four Portuguese battalions that guarded the ridge to the right of the Light Division. The smaller French column, meant to reinforce the success of the two that had climbed through Sula, had swung away from the village and found itself split from the main attack by a deep, wooded ravine, and so the men climbed on their own, going through a grove of pines, and when they emerged onto the open hillside above they saw nothing but Portuguese troops ahead. No redcoats. The column outnumbered the Portuguese. They also knew their enemy for they had beaten the Portuguese before and did not fear the men in brown and blue as they feared the British muskets. This would be a simple victory, a hammer blow against a despised enemy, but then the Portuguese opened fire and the volleys rippled like clockwork and the musket balls were fired low and the guns were reloaded swiftly and the column, like those to the north, found itself assailed from three sides and suddenly the despised enemy was driving the French ignominiously downhill. And so the last French column ran, defeated by men fighting for their homeland, and then the whole ridge was empty of the Emperor's men except for the dead and the wounded and the captured. A drummer boy cried as he lay in the vines. He was eleven years old and had a bullet in his lung. His father, a sergeant, was lying dead twenty paces away where a bird pecked at his eyes. Now that the guns had stopped the black feathered birds were coming to the ridge and its feast of flesh.
Smoke drifted off the hill. Guns cooled. Men passed round water bottles.
The French were back in the valley. 'There is a road around the north of the ridge,' an aide reminded Marshal Massena, who said nothing. He just stared at what was left of his attacks on the hill. Beaten, all of them. Beaten to nothing. Defeated. And the enemy, hidden once more behind the ridge's crest, waited for him to try again.
'You remember Miss Savage?' Vicente asked Sharpe. They were sitting at the end of the knoll, staring down at the beaten French.
'Kate? Of course I remember Kate,' Sharpe said. 'I often wondered what happened to her.'
'She married me,' Vicente said, and looked absurdly pleased with himself.
'Good God,' Sharpe said, then decided that probably sounded like a rude response. 'Well done!'
'I shaved off my mustache,' Vicente said, 'as you suggested. And she said yes.'
'Never did understand mustaches,' Sharpe said, 'must be like kissing a blacking brush.'
'And we have a child,' Vicente went on, 'a girl.'
'Quick work, Jorge!'
'We are very happy,' Vicente said solemnly.
'Good for you,' Sharpe said, and meant it. Kate Savage had run away from her home in Oporto, and Sharpe, with Vicente's help, had rescued her. That had been eighteen months before and Sharpe had often wondered what had happened to the English girl who had inherited her father's vineyards and port lodge.
'Kate is still in Porto, of course,' Vicente said.
'With her mother?'
'She went back to England,' Vicente said, 'just after I joined my new regiment in Coimbra.'
'Why there?'
'It is where I grew up,' Vicente said, 'and my parents still live there. I went to the university of Coimbra, so really it is home. But from now on I shall live in Porto. When the war is over.'
'Be a lawyer again?'
'I hope so.' Vicente made the sign of the cross. 'I know what you think of the law, Richard, but it is the one barrier between man and bestiality.'
'Didn't do much to stop the French.'
'War is above the law, which is why it is so bad. War lets loose all the things which the law restrains.'
'Like me,' Sharpe said.
'You are not such a bad man,' Vicente said with a smile.
Sharpe looked down into the valley. The French had at last withdrawn to where they had been the previous evening, only now they were throwing up earthworks beyond the stream where infantry dug trenches and used the spoil to make bulwarks. 'Those buggers think we're coming down to finish them off,' he said.
'Will we?'
'Christ, no! We've got the high ground. No point in giving it up.'
'So what do we do?'
'Wait for orders, Jorge, wait for orders. And I reckon mine are coming now.' Sharpe nodded towards Major Forrest who was riding his horse along the spine of the spur.
Forrest stopped by the rocks and looked down at the French dead, sounding tired.
'Major Forrest,' Sharpe said, 'let me introduce you to Captain Vicente. I fought with him at Oporto.'
'Honored,' Forrest said, 'honored.' His red sleeve was dark with blood from the musket ball that had struck him. He hesitated, trying to think of something complimentary to say to Vicente, but nothing occurred to him, so he looked back to Sharpe. 'The Colonel wants the company now, Sharpe,' he said.
'On your feet, lads!' Sharpe stood himself and shook Vicente's hand. 'Keep a look out for us, Jorge,' he said, 'we might need your help again. And give my regards to Kate.'
Sharpe walked the company back across ground scorched by musket and rifle fire. The ridge was quiet now, no guns firing, just the wind sighing on the grass. Forrest rode beside Sharpe, but said nothing until they reached the battalion's lines. The South Essex were in ranks, but sitting and sprawling on the grass, and Forrest gestured to the left-hand end of the line as if to order the light company to take their place.
'Lieutenant Slingsby will command them for the moment,' Forrest said.
'He'll do what?' Sharpe asked, shocked.
'For the moment,' Forrest said placatingly, 'because right now the Colonel wants you, Sharpe, and I daresay he isn't pleased.'
That was an understatement. The Honorable William Lawford was in a temper, though, being a man of exquisite politeness, the anger only showed as a slight tightening of the lips and a distinctly unfriendly glance as Sharpe arrived at his tent. Lawford ducked out into the sunlight and nodded at Forrest. 'You'll stay, Major,' he said, and waited as Forrest dismounted and gave his reins to Lawford's servant, who led the horse away. 'Knowles!' Lawford summoned the Adjutant from the tent. Knowles gave Sharpe a sympathetic look, which only made Lawford angrier. 'You had best stay, Knowles,' he said, 'but keep other folk away. I don't want what is said here bruited about the battalion.'
Knowles put on his hat and stood a few yards away. Forrest hovered to one side as Lawford looked at Sharpe. 'Perhaps, Captain,' he spoke icily, 'you can explain yourself?'
'Explain myself, sir?'
'Ensign Iliffe is dead.'
'I regret it, sir.'
