“That’s true.
“How’s your head, sir?” Daniel Hagman asked.
“Still there, Dan.”
“Is it hurting?”
“It hurts,” Sharpe admitted.
“Vinegar and brown paper, sir,” Hagman said earnestly. “It always works.”
“I had an uncle that was knocked on the head,” Harper said. The Ulsterman had an endless supply of relatives who had suffered various misfortunes. “He was butted by a nanny goat, so he was, and you could have filled Lough Crockatrillen with his blood! Jesus, it was everywhere. My auntie thought he was dead!”
Sharpe, like the Riflemen and Rangers, waited. “So was he?” he asked after a while.
“Good God, no! He was milking the cows again that night, but the poor goat was never the same. So what do we do in Cadiz, sir?”
Sharpe shrugged. “We’ll get a boat to Lisbon. There must be dozens of boats going to Lisbon.” He turned as two reports rumbled across the water, but there was nothing to see. The far flashes had already faded and the mortar shells gave no light when they landed. Intermittent lamplight glimmered across the city’s white walls, but otherwise the shoreline was dark. Black water lapped against the frigate’s flanks and the sails shivered in the small wind.
By dawn the wind had freshened and the Thornside stood southwest toward the entrance to the Bay of Cadiz. The city was closer now and Sharpe could see the massive gray ramparts above which the houses glowed white, their walls studded with squat watchtowers and church belfries through which smoke drifted. Lights flashed from the towers and at first Sharpe was puzzled by the glints. Then he realized that they were the sun reflecting from the telescopes that watched the Thornside’s approach. A pilot boat cut across the frigate’s course, her captain waving his arms to show he had a pilot who was available to come aboard the frigate, but Pullifer had run this treacherous approach often enough to need no guide. Gulls wheeled about the frigate’s masts and sails as she slid past the heave and wash of broken water that marked the Diamante Rock and then the bay opened before her bows. The Thornside turned due south, heading into the bay and watched by a crowd on the city ramparts. It was evident now that the smoke above the city was not just from cooking fires, but mostly from a merchantman that burned in the harbor. It was the Santa Catalina, her hull crammed with tobacco and sugar. A French mortar shell had plunged between her foremast and mainmast, pierced a hatch cover, and exploded a few feet below the deck. The crew had rigged a pump and poured water onto the fire. It seemed they must have mastered the blaze, but somewhere an ember had lodged deep among the bales and it grew sullenly. The hidden fire spread secretly, its smoke disguised by the steam from the pump’s water. Then, just aft of the mainmast, the deck burst into new flames, sudden and bright, and the blaze caught the tarred rigging so that the whole intricate web of halliards, masts, and sheets was outlined in fire. Smoke boiled across the city’s skyline above which the white gulls keened and the dark smoke drifted.
The Thornside ran within a quarter mile of the burning merchantman. The rest of Cadiz harbor, placid under a gentle wind, seemed unconcerned with the burning ship. A whole fleet of British warships was moored to the south, and Pullifer ordered a salute fired to the admiral. The French mortars were firing at the Thornside now, but the massive shells fell harmlessly on either side, each throwing up a fountain of spray. There were three French forts on the marshy mainland, all with mortars just capable of reaching the waterfront of Cadiz that sat on its isthmus like a clenched fist protecting the bay. Lieutenant Theobald, the Thornside’s second lieutenant, was busy with a sextant, though instead of holding it vertically, as a man would when shooting the sun or trying to snare a star in the instrument’s mirrors, he was using it horizontally. He lowered the sextant and frowned. His lips moved as he made some half-articulated calculations, then he crossed to where Sharpe and Harper leaned on the midships rail. “From the burning ship to the fort,” Theobald announced, “is a distance of three thousand six hundred and forty yards.”
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said, impressed. If the lieutenant was right, then the mortar’s shell had traveled more than two miles.
“I won’t vouch for the forty yards,” Theobald said.
Another mortar fired from the Trocadero Peninsula. The shell vanished in the low clouds as the smoke of the mortar hung above the fort, which was a low, dark mass on the marsh-fringed headland. Then a white splash showed very close to the city’s shore. “Even farther!” Theobald said in astonishment. “Must be close to three thousand seven hundred yards!” That was a thousand yards farther than any British mortar could reach. “The shells are huge too! Couple of feet across!”
Sharpe wondered about that. “Biggest French mortar I’ve ever seen,” he said, “is a twelve-inch.”
“Which is big enough, God knows,” Harper put in.
“They had these specially cast in Seville,” Theobald said, “or so prisoners tell us. Big bastards, anyway. They must use twenty pounds of powder to throw a ball that far. Thank God they’re not accurate.”
“Tell that to those poor bastards,” Sharpe said, nodding to where the Santa Catalina’s crew were climbing into a longboat.
“A lucky shot,” Theobald said. “How’s your skull today?”
“Hurts.”
“Nothing a woman’s touch won’t heal,” Theobald said.
A mortar shell landed off the Thornside’s port quarter, splashing the deck with water and leaving the faintest gray trail from its smoking fuse lingering in the small wind. The next shot was a good hundred yards away, and the one after that even farther, and then the guns stopped firing as it became obvious that the frigate had sailed out of range.
Thornside anchored well south of the city, close to the other British warships and the host of small merchantmen. Brigadier Moon stumped toward Sharpe on crutches that the ship’s carpenter had made. “You’ll stay on board for the moment, Sharpe.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Officially British troops aren’t permitted into the city so if we can’t find a ship leaving today or tomorrow, I’ll arrange quarters for you on the Isla de Leon.” He gestured toward the low land south of the anchorage. “In the meantime I’m going to pay my respects at the embassy.”
“The embassy, sir?”
Moon gave Sharpe a look of exasperation. “You are looking,” he said, “at what is left of sovereign Spain. The French have the rest of the bloody country except for a handful of fortresses, so our embassy is now here in Cadiz instead of in Madrid or Seville. I’ll send you orders.”
Those orders arrived just after midday, sending Sharpe and his men to the Isla de Leon where they were to wait until a northbound transport left the harbor. The longboat carrying them ashore threaded the anchored fleet, most of which were merchantmen. “Rumor says they’re taking an army south,” the midshipman commanding the longboat told Sharpe.
“South?”
“They want to land somewhere down the coast,” the midshipman said, “march on the French, and attack the siege lines. Bloody hell, they smell!” He pointed to four great prison hulks that stank like open sewers. The hulks had once been warships, but now they were mastless and their open gunports were protected by iron bars through which men watched the small boat pass. “Prison hulks, sir,” the midshipman said, “full of frogs.”
“I remember that one,” the bosun put in, nodding at the nearest hulk. “She were at Trafalgar. We beat her to splinters. There was blood pouring down her side. Never seen the like.”
“The dons were on the wrong side of that one,” the midshipman said.
“They’re on our side now,” Sharpe said.
“We hope they are, sir. We do hope that. Here you are, sir, safe and sound, and I hope your eggshell mends.”
The Isla de Leon was home to five thousand British and Portuguese soldiers who helped defend Cadiz from the French besiegers. Desultory cannon fire sounded from the siege lines that were some miles eastward. The small town of San Fernando was on the island and Sharpe reported there to a harassed major who seemed bemused that a handful of vagrants from the 88th and the South Essex had landed in his lap. “Your fellows can find space in the tent lines,” the major said, “but you’ll be billeted in San Fernando, of course, with the other officers. Dear God, what’s free?” He looked through the billeting lists.
