spread out more. He had waited all morning for an officer to come with black hair and a scar on his left cheek, but there had been no sign of Sharpe. Yet Harper refused to give up hope. He stubbornly insisted that Sharpe was alive, that he would come today, that Sharpe would never let the South Essex fight without being present. If Sharpe had to> come out of the grave, he would come.
Captain d’Alembord listened to the thunder of guns to his right. British guns were on the plain now, firing from the Arinez Hill at the second French line. D’Alembord, who was at his first great battle, thought the sound was more terrible than any he had ever heard. He knew that soon the six French guns across the river would open fire. It seemed to Peter d’Alembord, as he marched ever closer to the silent, barricaded village, that each of the French guns was pointing directly at him. He glanced at Harper, taking comfort from the apparent stolidity of the huge Irishman.
Then the guns disappeared in smoke.
Lieutenant Colonel Leroy saw a pencil line go up and down in the sky and knew that a roundshot was coming towards him. He kept his horse going straight, held his breath, and watched with relief as the ball thumped into the grass ahead of the Battalion, bounced overhead and rolled behind them.
The shots came over the village and plunged onto the meadow that the British Battalions crossed. The first volley did no damage, except for the ball that had bounced over Leroy’s head. It bounced again, once more, and rolled towards the South Essex’s bandsmen who waited at the rear for the wounded. A drummer boy, seeing the ball roll slow as a cricket ball that might not make the boundary, ran to check it with his foot.
‘Stop!’ A Sergeant shouted at the boy, but he was too late. The drummer put his foot in the ball’s path, it seemed to roll so innocuously, so slowly, and, as the boy grinned, it took his foot off in blood and pain.
‘You stupid bastard!’ The Sergeant slapped him and hauled him upright. ‘You stupid god-damned bastard! How many god-damn times have you been told?’ The other drummer boys watched silently as their comrade was carried sobbing back to the surgeons. The drummer’s foot, still in the boot that he had polished in honour of the battle, lay in the grass.
The guns fired again and this time a ball plucked through the South Essex’s number six Company, throwing two men sideways and down, spattering blood onto the wheat and poppies. The line stolidly closed up.
The Light Company had opened fire. The rifles cracked. The French cannon smashed back again, and once again the lines had to close and once again the meadow behind the attackers was littered with bodies and blood.
Leroy lit a cheroot with his tinder box. The men were doing well. They were not flinching from the artillery, they marched silently and in good order, but still he feared the village. It was too well barricaded, too thickly loopholed, and he knew that the muskets of Gamarra Mayor’s defenders could do far more damage than the six field guns on the far side of the river. Not a French musket had sounded yet. They waited for the British to get close. Leroy had begged for permission to attack in column/ but the Brigadier had refused. ‘We always attack in line, man! Don’t be a fool!’ The Brigadier, knowing Leroy to be an American, wondered if he was touched in the head. Attack in column, indeed!
Leroy put his tinder box away and spurred past the Colours. ‘Captain d’Alembord?’
‘Sir?’
‘Form on us!’
The South Essex was now protected from the field guns by the houses in the village. Still the French did not fire. The Light Company scrambled to their place on the left of the Battalion. They marched forward.
Leroy frowned. He knew what would happen when the defenders fired. He feared it. The South Essex was still under strength, and the next few moments could destroy his command. He muttered at the enemy under his breath, begging them to fire too soon, begging them to give his men a chance.
But the French waited. They waited till every shot could count, and when the fire order was given Leroy almost flinched from the sound and from the destruction.
The heavy musket bullets tore at the British line, jerking and twisting men, chopping them down, spinning them, and then new men took over at the loopholes and more bullets came tearing into the red-jacketed attack and it seemed to Leroy that the air was filled with the noise of muskets and bullets as he shouted into the wind of fire to keep his men going forward.
‘Forward,’ the officers shouted, but they could not go forward. The musketry from the village had jarred the South Essex backwards. Men fired their muskets in reply and wasted the bullets against the stone walls and barricades. The Colours fell, the Ensigns shot by French marksmen.
‘Forward! Come on!’ Leroy spurred ahead of the line. ‘Forward!’ His horse reared, screaming, was struck by another bullet, and Leroy cursed as his right boot would not leave the stirrup. His cigar fell, he flailed for balance, then his right foot was free and he slid clumsily over the rump of his falling, dying horse. He climbed to his feet, drew his sword, and shouted the men on.
The meadow was laced with smoke. Men crawled backwards, blood staining their tracks. Men cried for God or their mothers. Officers’ horses, wounded, died in the wheat or stampeded towards the rear. Some men, seeing a chance to escape the carnage, helped the wounded towards the bandsmen and the surgeons. Other men reloaded and aimed at the loopholes, and still the French fired at them and still the enemy bullets twitched the thickening musket smoke and made the meadow a place of death and screams and wounded.
‘Forward!’ Leroy shouted. He wondered when new Battalions would be sent up to help his men, and he felt a rage that a Battalion under his command might need help. ‘Forward!’
The Colours were lifted up by new men. They went into the fire, and the King’s Colour fell again, was lifted again, and it twitched like a live thing as the bullets plucked at it.
The smoke was spoiling the French aim. From the village they could see a mist that surrounded their positions and, at the far side of the mist, the dim shapes of men who came forward, were — thrown back, and still the French fired, thickening flie mist, sending their bullets to pluck at the British line that had wrapped itself about the village but could not break in.
The Regimental Colour fell; this time a Sergeant picked it up, but the movement in the mist attracted a dozen French marksmen and the Sergeant was hurled back and the flag was down again.
‘Forward!’ Leroy ran, sword in hand, and he heard the shot plucking at the grass and thrumming in the air, and he heard the cheer behind and knew the companies were coming with him, and the wall ahead of him flickered with flame, someone screamed behind him, and suddenly Leroy was at the village, safe between two loopholes in a barn wall, and more men joined him, crouching beneath loopholes, feverishly reloading their muskets.
Leroy grinned at them. ‘We’ve got to go for a barricade.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He wondered again, for the hundredth hundredth time, why these men, reckoned by their country to be the dregs of society, fought so well, so willingly, so bravely.
Leroy recongised a Lieutenant from Three Company. ‘Where’s Captain Butler?’
‘Dead, sir.’
A French musket sounded deafening beside Leroy. He ignored it. They were safe here, hard against the wall, though he glanced up to make sure that no Frenchmen were on the barn roof. To his right he could see a farm wagon on its side. If enough men could drag it out of the way then he could lead a party into the alley. He organized a firing party, their job to fire over the barricade while other men pulled at it. Then, with fixed bayonets, the rest of the Company would follow Leroy into the alley. He grinned at them. ‘Are you ready, lads?’
‘Yes, sir.’
They looked nervously at him. The battle, for them, had become ten yards of murderous wall, nothing more.
Lieutenant Colonel Leroy, who had no intention of being defeated in his first battle as Battalion Commander, wiped his hand on his breeches and regripped his sword. ‘First man in gets a guinea!’ He listened to their cheer, knew they were ready, and straightened up. ‘Come on!’
He ran to the barricade. Behind him the men came, cheering, but a single bullet, planted in Leroy’s brain, finished the attack before it began. The Company, demoralised by his death, huddled back against the wall and wondered if they dared run back through the smoke before the victorious French, sallying from the village, slaughtered them with bayonets. Gamarra Mayor was being held. Ten yards from the alley, his scarred face spattered with blood, Thomas Leroy lay dead. His watch, ticking in his pocket, gave the time as ten past one.
