Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ of smoke heralded a shell. This one fell fractionally short and the jagged-edged iron scraps rattled against the low stone walls that Sharpe’s men had built. Pendleton poked his head above the redoubt. ‘Why don’t they use round shot, sir?’ he asked.

      ‘Howitzers don’t have round shot,’ Sharpe said, ‘and it’s hard to fire a proper gun uphill.’ He was brusque for he was wondering about those stones. Why put them there? Had he imagined them? But when he looked through the glass he could still see them.

      Then he saw the gunners walk away from the howitzer. A score of infantrymen had appeared, but they were merely a guard for the gun which was otherwise abandoned. ‘They’re having their supper,’ Harper suggested. He had brought water for the men in the forward positions and now sat beside Sharpe. For a moment he looked embarrassed, then grinned. ‘That was a brave thing you did, sir.’

      ‘You’d have done the bloody same.’

      ‘I bloody wouldn’t,’ Harper said vehemently. ‘I’d have been out of that bloody door like a scalded cat if my legs had bloody worked.’ He saw the deserted gun. ‘So it’s over for the day?’ he asked.

      ‘No,’ Sharpe said, because he suddenly understood why the stones were there.

      And knew what he could do about it.

      Brigadier Vuillard, ensconced in the Quinta, poured himself a glass of Savages’ finest white port. His blue uniform jacket was unhooked and he had eased a button of his breeches to make space for the fine shoulder of mutton that he had shared with Christopher, a dozen officers and three women. The women were French, though certainly not wives, and one of them, whose golden hair glinted in the candlelight, had been seated next to Lieutenant Pelletieu who seemed unable to take his bespectacled eyes from a cleavage that was deep, soft, shadowed and streaked where sweat had made rivulets through the white powder on her skin. Her very presence had struck Pelletieu almost dumb, so that all the confidence he had shown on first meeting Vuillard had fled.

      The Brigadier, amused by the woman’s effect on the artillery officer, leaned forward to accept a candle from Major Dulong that he used to light a cigar. It was a warm night, the windows were open and a big pale moth fluttered about the candelabra at the table’s centre. ‘Is it true,’ Vuillard asked Christopher between the puffs that were needed to get the cigar properly alight, ‘that in England the women are expected to leave the supper table before the cigars are lit?’

      ‘Respectable women, yes.’ Christopher took the toothpick from his mouth to answer.

      ‘Even respectable women, I would have thought, make attractive companions to a good smoke and a glass of port.’ Vuillard, content that the cigar was drawing properly, leaned back and glanced down the table. ‘I have an idea,’ he said genially, ‘that I know precisely who is going to answer the next question. What time is first light tomorrow?’

      There was a pause as the officers glanced at each other, then Pelletieu blushed. ‘Sunrise, sir,’ he said, ‘will be at twenty minutes past four, but it will be light enough to see at ten minutes to four.’

      ‘So clever,’ the blonde, who was called Annette, whispered to him.

      ‘And the moon state?’ Vuillard asked.

      Pelletieu blushed an even deeper red. ‘No moon to speak of, sir. The last full moon was on the thirtieth of April and the next will be …’ His voice faded away as he became aware that the others about the table were amused by his erudition.

      ‘Do go on, Lieutenant,’ Vuillard said.

      ‘On the twenty-ninth of this month, sir, so it’s a waxing moon in its first quarter, sir, and very slight. No illumination in it. Not now.’

      ‘I like a dark night,’ Annette whispered to him.

      ‘You’re a veritable walking encyclopaedist, Lieutenant,’ Vuillard said, ‘so tell me what damage your shells did today?’

      ‘Very little, sir, I’m afraid.’ Pelletieu, almost overwhelmed by Annette’s perfume, looked as though he was about to faint. ‘That summit is prodigiously protected by boulders, sir. If they kept their heads down, sir, then they should have survived mostly intact, though I’m sure we killed one or two.’

      ‘Only one or two?’

      Pelletieu looked abashed. ‘We needed a mortar, sir.’

      Vuillard smiled. ‘When a man lacks instruments, Lieutenant, he uses what he has to hand. Isn’t that right, Annette?’ He smiled, then took a fat watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped open the lid. ‘How many rounds of shell do you have left?’

      ‘Thirty-eight, sir.’

      ‘Don’t use them all at once,’ Vuillard said, then raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. ‘Don’t you have work to do, Lieutenant?’ he asked. The work was to fire the howitzer through the night so that the ragged forces on the hilltop would get no sleep, then an hour before first light the gunfire would stop and Vuillard reckoned the enemy would all be asleep when his infantry attacked.

      Pelletieu scraped his chair back. ‘Of course, sir, and thank you, sir.’

      ‘Thank you?’

      ‘For the supper, sir.’

      Vuillard made a gracious gesture of acceptance. ‘I’m just sorry, Lieutenant, that you can’t stay for the entertainment. I’m sure Mademoiselle Annette would have liked to hear about your charges, your rammer and your sponge.’

      ‘She would, sir?’ Pelletieu asked, surprised.

      ‘Go, Lieutenant,’ Vuillard said, ‘just go.’ The Lieutenant fled, pursued by the sound of laughter, and the Brigadier shook his head. ‘God knows where we find them,’ he said. ‘We must pluck them from their cradles, wipe the mother’s milk from their lips and send them to war. Still, young Pelletieu knows his business.’ He dangled the watch on its chain for a second, then thrust it into a pocket. ‘First light at ten minutes to four, Major,’ he spoke to Dulong.

      ‘We’ll be ready,’ Dulong said. He looked sour, the failure of the previous night’s attack still galling him. The bruise on his face was dark.

      ‘Ready and rested, I hope?’ Vuillard said.

      ‘We’ll be ready,’ Dulong said again.

      Vuillard nodded, but kept his watchful eyes on the infantry Major. ‘Amarante is taken,’ he said, ‘which means some of Loison’s men can return to Oporto. With luck, Major, that means we shall have enough force to march south on Lisbon.’

      ‘I hope so, sir,’ Dulong answered, uncertain where the conversation was going.

      ‘But General Heudelet’s division is still clearing the road to Vigo,’ Vuillard went on, ‘Foy’s infantry is scouring the mountains of partisans, so our forces will still be stretched, Major, stretched. Even if we get Delaborde’s brigades back from General Loison and even with Lorges’s dragoons, we shall be stretched if we want to march on Lisbon.’

      ‘I’m sure we’ll succeed all the same,’ Dulong said loyally.

      ‘But we need every man we can muster, Major, every man. And I do not want to detach valuable infantry to guard prisoners.’

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