and Portuguese soldiers drank, watched by the ever-present provosts. San Fernando had become a garrison town, home to the five thousand men sent to guard the isthmus of Cadiz. Sharpe asked one of the provosts where Sir Thomas’s quarters were and was pointed down a lane that led to the quays beside the creek. The creek made the isthmus into an island. Two large torches flamed outside the headquarters, illuminating a group of animated officers. Sir Thomas was one of them. He was standing on the doorstep and it was clear that Harper had been right: something was brewing and the general was busy. He was giving orders, but then he saw Sharpe and broke off. “Sharpe!” he shouted.
“Sir?”
“Good man! You want to come? Good man! Willie, look after him.” Sir Thomas said nothing more, but turned brusquely away and, accompanied by a half dozen officers, strode toward the creek.
Lord William Russell turned to Sharpe. “You’re coming!” Lord William said. “Good!”
“Coming where?” Sharpe asked.
“Frog-hunting, of course.”
“Do I need a horse?”
“Good God, no, not unless it can swim?”
“Can I stable it here?”
“Pearce!” Lord William shouted. “Pearce!”
“I’m here, Your Lordship, I’m here, ever present and correct, sir.” A bowlegged cavalry trooper who appeared old enough to be Lord William’s father appeared from the alley beside the headquarters. “Your Lordship’s forgotten Your Lordship’s saber.”
“Dear God, have I? So I have, thank you, Pearce.” Lord William took the proffered saber and slid it into its scabbard. “Look after Captain Sharpe’s gee-gee, will you, Pearce? There’s a good fellow. Sure you don’t want to come with us?”
“Have to get Your Lordship’s breakfast.”
“So you do, Pearce, so you do. Beefsteak, I hope?”
“Might I wish Your Lordship good hunting?” Pearce said, flicking a speck of dust from one of Lord William’s epaulettes.
“That’s uncommonly kind of you, Pearce, thank you. Come on, Sharpe, we can’t dillydally. We have a tide to catch!” Lord William set off after Sir Thomas at a half run. Sharpe and Harper, still bemused, followed him to a long wharf where, in the small moonlight, Sharpe could see files of redcoats clambering into boats. General Graham was dressed in black boots, black breeches, red coat, and a black cocked hat. He had a claymore at his belt and was talking to a naval officer, but stopped long enough to greet Sharpe again. “Good man! How’s your head?”
“I’ll live, sir.”
“That’s the spirit! And that’s our boat. In you get.”
The boat was a big, flat-bottomed lighter, manned by a score of sailors with long sweeps. It was a short jump down onto the wide aft deck. The boat’s hold was already occupied by grinning redcoats. “What the hell are we doing?” Harper asked.
“Damned if I know,” Sharpe said, “but I need to talk to the general and this looks like as good a chance as I’ll get.”
Four other lighters lay astern and all were slowly filling with redcoats. An engineer officer threw a coil of quick match down onto the rearmost barge. Then a file of his men carried kegs of powder to the hold. Lord William Russell jumped down beside Sharpe, while General Graham, almost alone on the quay now, walked above the lighters. “No smoking, boys!” the general called. “We can’t have the French seeing a light just because you need a pipe. No noise, either. And make damned sure your guns aren’t cocked. And enjoy yourselves, you hear me? Enjoy yourselves.” He repeated the injunctions to the men in each of the barges, then clambered down onto the foremost lighter. The spacious afterdeck had room for a dozen officers to stand or sit and still leave space for the sailor who wielded the long tiller. “Those rogues,” Sir Thomas said to Sharpe, gesturing at the redcoats crouched in the lighter’s hold, “are from the 87th. Is that who you are, boys? Damned Irish rebels?”
“We are, sir!” two or three men called back.
“And you’ll not find better soldiers this side of the gates of hell,” Sir Thomas said, loud enough for the Irishmen to hear. “You’re most welcome, Sharpe.”
“Welcome to what, sir?”
“You don’t know? Then why are you here?”
“Came to ask a favor of you, sir.”
Sir Thomas laughed. “And I thought you wanted to join us! Ah well, the favor must wait, Sharpe, it must wait. We have work to do.”
The lighters had cast off and were now being rowed down a channel through the marshes that edged the Isla de Leon. Ahead of Sharpe, north and east, the long, low black silhouette of the Trocadero Peninsula just showed in the night. Sparks of light betrayed where the French forts lay. Lord William told him there were three forts. The farthest away was the Matagorda, which lay closest to Cadiz, and it was the giant mortar in the Matagorda Fort that did most damage to the city. Just to its south was the Fort San Jose and, farther south still and closest to the Isla de Leon, was the Fort San Luis. “What we’re doing,” Lord William explained, “is rowing past San Luis to the river just beyond. The river mouth is a creek, and once we’re in that creek, Sharpe, we’ll be plumb between the San Luis and the San Jose. Enfiladed, you might say.”
“And what’s in the creek?”
“Five damned great fire rafts.” Sir Thomas Graham had heard Sharpe’s question and now answered it. “The bastards are just waiting for a brisk northerly wind to set them loose on our fleet. Can’t have that.” The fleet, mostly small coasters with a few larger merchantmen, was assembling to take Graham’s men and General Lapena’s Spanish army south. They would land on the coast, then march north to assault the siege lines from the rear. “We plan to burn the rafts tonight,” Sir Thomas went on. “It’ll be past midnight before we get there. Perhaps you’ll do the 87th the honor of joining them?”
“With pleasure, sir.”
“Major Gough! You’ve met Captain Sharpe?”
A shadowy officer appeared at Sir Thomas’s side. “I have not, sir,” Gough said, “but I remember you from Talavera, Sharpe.”
“Sharpe and his sergeant would beg the privilege of fighting with your boys tonight, Hugh,” Sir Thomas said.
“They’ll be most welcome, sir.” Gough spoke in a soft Irish accent.
“Warn your boys they have two stray riflemen, will you?” Sir Thomas said. “We don’t want your rogues shooting two men who captured a French eagle. So there you are, Sharpe. Major Gough is landing his lads on the south side of the creek. There are some guards there, but they’ll be easy enough to take care of. Then I imagine the French will send a relief party from the San Luis fort so it should all become fairly interesting.”
Sir Thomas’s plan was to land two lighters on the southern bank and two on the northern, and the men would disembark to drive off the French guards, then defend the creek against the expected counterattacks. Meanwhile the fifth lighter, which carried engineers, would row to the fire rafts that were just upstream of the twin French encampments, capture them, and set their explosives. “It should look like Guy Fawkes Night,” Sir Thomas said wolfishly.
Sharpe settled on the deck. Lord William Russell had brought cold sausage and a flask of wine. The sausage was chopped into slices and the flask handed around as the sailors heaved on the great sweeps and the lighter steadily butted its way through the small choppy waves. A Spaniard stood beside the steersman. “Our guide,” Sir Thomas explained. “A fisherman. A good fellow.”
“He doesn’t hate us, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“Hate us?”
“I keep being told how the Spanish hate us, sir.”
“He hates the French, like I do, Sharpe. If there is one constancy in this vale of tears, it is to always hate the damned French, always.” Sir Thomas spoke with a real vehemence. “I trust you hate the French, Sharpe?”
Sharpe paused. Hate? He was not sure he hated them. “I don’t like the bastards, sir,” he said.
