Sharpe’s Gold: The Destruction of Almeida, August 1810

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CHAPTER FIVE

El Católico, the Catholic, led the horsemen from the cover of the hills, and Sharpe found him in the telescope. Kearsey barked out a description, but even without it Sharpe would have recognized the tall man as the leader. ‘Grey cloak, grey boots, long rapier, black horse.’

Kearsey was thumping his fist on the rock, willing the Partisans on, closer and closer to the wheeling French. Sharpe scanned the guerrilla line, looking for the blue and silver of a Prince of Wales Dragoon, but he could see no sign of Captain Hardy. He remembered Kearsey saying that El Católico’s fiancée, Teresa, fought like a man, but he could see no woman in the charging line, just men screaming defiance as the first horses met and the swords chopped down on the outnumbered French.

In the village the trumpets split the quiet; men scrambled on to nervous mounts, sabres hissed from scabbards, but El Católico was no fool. He was not going to fight a regiment and lose. Sharpe saw him waving at his men, turning them back, and the Rifleman searched with the telescope in the obscuring dust for clues to what was happening. The French had been hard-punished. Outnumbered two to one, they had fallen back, taking casualties, and the Spanish charge had given them no time to form a disciplined line. Sharpe saw prisoners, dragged by the arms, going back with the horsemen who had been disciplined, presumably by El Católico, to make the one killing charge and then get out of danger’s way. Sharpe admired the action. The French had been baited, had fallen for the lure, and then been savagely hurt in one quick charge. It was hardly two minutes since the Spanish had appeared and already, hidden by dust, they were returning to the hills and taking with them more prisoners whose fate would be worse than that of the two men who had drawn the Hussars from the safety of the village walls. One man alone stayed in the valley.

El Católico stood his horse and watched the Hussars stretching out from the village. Closer to him were the survivors of the Spanish charge and they now spurred their horses to attack the lone Partisan. El Católico seemed unconcerned. He urged his horse into a canter, away from the safety of the hills, circled in the uncut barley and looked over his shoulder as the French came close. A dozen men were chasing him, leaning over their horses’ manes, sabres stretched out, and it was certain that the tall Partisan leader must be taken until, at the last moment, his horse sidestepped, the thin rapier flashed, one Frenchman was down and the big, black horse with its grey rider was in full gallop to the north and the Hussars were milling in uncertainty where their leader lay dead. Sharpe whistled softly.

Kearsey smiled. ‘He’s the finest swordsman on the border. Probably in Spain. I’ve seen him take on four Frenchmen and he never stopped saying the prayer for their death.’

Sharpe stared into the valley. A hundred horsemen had ridden out to rescue the two prisoners and now two dozen of the Hussars were dead or captured. The Partisans had lost none; the speed of their charge and withdrawal had ensured that, and their leader, staying till the end, had slapped French pride in the face. The black horse was cantering to the hills, its strength obvious, and the French would never catch El Católico.

Kearsey slid down from the skyline. ‘That’s how it’s done.’

Sharpe nodded. ‘Impressive. Except for one thing.’

The fierce eyebrow shot up. ‘What?’

‘What are the French doing in the village?’

Kearsey shrugged. ‘Clearing out a hornets’ nest.’ He waved southwards. ‘Remember their main road is down there. All the supplies for the siege of Almeida go through this area, and when they invade Portugal proper, then everything will come through here. They don’t want Partisans in their rear. They’re clearing them out, or trying to.’

The answer made sense to Sharpe, but he was worried. ‘And the gold, sir?’

‘It’s hidden.’

‘And Hardy?’

Kearsey was annoyed by the questions. ‘He’ll be somewhere, Sharpe; I don’t know. At least El Católico’s here, so we’re not friendless!’ He gave his bark of a laugh and then pulled at his moustache. ‘I think it would be sensible to let him know we’ve arrived.’ He slid down the inner side of the gully. ‘Keep your men here, Sharpe. I’ll ride to El Católico.’

Knowles looked worried. ‘Isn’t that dangerous, sir?’

Kearsey gave the Lieutenant a pitying look. ‘I was not planning to go through the village, Lieutenant.’ He gestured towards the north. ‘I’ll go round the back. I’ll see you again tonight sometime, probably late. Don’t light any fires!’ He strode away, small legs urgent, and Harper waited till he was out of earshot.

‘What did he think we were going to do? Borrow a light from the French?’ He looked at Sharpe and raised his eyebrows. ‘Bloody muddle, sir.’

‘Yes.’

But it was not too bad, Sharpe decided. The French could not stay forever; the Partisans would be back in the village, and then there was only the small problem of persuading El Católico to let the British ‘escort’ the gold towards Lisbon. He turned back towards the valley, watched as the Hussars walked their horses disconsolately towards the village, one of them bearing the bloody horror that had been one of the naked prisoners, then raised his eyes and looked at the hermitage. It was a pity it was the far side of the valley, beyond the village, or else he would have been tempted to search the place that night, Kearsey or no Kearsey. The idea refused to go away and he lay there, the sun hot on his back, and thought of a dozen reasons why he should not make the attempt, and one huge, overriding reason why he should.

The valley settled in peace. The sun burned down on the grass, turning it a paler brown, and still, on the northern horizon, the great cloud bank loomed. There would be rain in a couple of days, Sharpe thought, and then he went back to the route he had planned in his head, down the slope to the road that led to the ford at San Anton, proceed to the big rock that would be a natural marker and then follow the edge of the barley field as far as the stunted fruit trees. Beyond the trees was another barley field that would give good cover and from there it was just fifty yards of open ground to the cemetery and the hermitage. And if the hermitage were locked? He dismissed the idea. A dozen men in the Company had once earned a living by opening up locks they had no right to be near; a lock was no problem, but then there was the task of finding the gold. Kearsey had said it was in the Moreno vault, which should be easy enough to find, and he let his imagination play with the idea of finding the gold in the middle of the night, just two hundred yards from a French regiment, and bringing it safely back to the gully by daybreak. Harper lay beside him, thinking the same thoughts.

‘They won’t move out the village, sir. Not at night.’

‘No.’

‘Be a bit difficult finding our way.’

Sharpe pointed to the route he had planned. ‘Hagman will lead.’

Harper nodded. Daniel Hagman had an uncanny ability to find his way in the darkness. Sharpe often wondered how the old poacher had ever been caught, but he supposed that one night the Cheshireman had drunk too much. It was the usual story. Harper had one more objection. ‘And the Major, sir?’ Sharpe said nothing and Harper nodded. ‘As you say, sir. A pox on the bloody Major.’ The Irish Sergeant grinned. ‘We can do it.’

Sharpe lay in the westering sun, looking at the valley, following the course he had planned until he agreed. It could be done. A pox on Kearsey. He imagined the vault as having a vast stone lid; he saw it, in his mind, being heaved back, to reveal a heap of gold coins that would save the army, defeat the French, and he wondered again why the money was needed. He would have to take all the Company, post a string of guards to face the village, preferably Riflemen, and the gold would have to go in their packs. What if there was more than they could carry? Then they must carry what they could. He wondered about a diversion, a small group of Riflemen in the southern end of the valley to distract the French, but he rejected the idea. Keep it simple. Night attacks could go disastrously wrong and the smallest complication could turn a well-thought plan into a horrid mess that cost lives. He felt the excitement grow. They could do it!

At first the trumpet was so faint that it hardly penetrated Sharpe’s consciousness. Rather it was Harper’s sudden alertness that stirred him, dragged his mind from the gold beneath the Moreno vault, and made him curse as he looked at the road disappearing to the north-east. ‘What was that?’

Harper stared at the empty valley. ‘Cavalry.’

‘North?’

The Sergeant nodded. ‘Nearer to us than the Partisans were, sir. Something’s happening up there.’

They waited, in silence, and watched the valley. Knowles climbed up beside them. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Don’t know.’ Sharpe’s instinct, so dormant this morning, was suddenly screaming at him. He turned and called to the sentry on the far side of the gully. ‘See anything?’

‘No, sir.’

‘There!’

Harper was pointing to the road. Kearsey was in sight, cantering the roan towards the village and looking over his shoulder, and then the Major turned off the road, began covering the rough ground towards the slopes where the Partisans had disappeared in a hidden entry to one of the twisted valleys that spilled into the main valley.

‘What the devil?’

Sharpe’s question was answered as soon as he had spoken. Behind Kearsey was a regiment, rank upon rank of horsemen in blue and yellow, each one wearing a strange, square yellow hat, but that was not their oddest feature. Instead of swords the enemy were carrying lances, long, steel-tipped weapons with their red and white pennants, and as the Major turned off the road the lancers kicked in their heels, dropped their points and the race was on. Knowles shook his head. ‘What are they?’

‘Polish lancers.’

Sharpe’s voice was grim. The Poles had a reputation in Europe: nasty fighters, effective fighters. These were the first he had encountered in his career. He remembered the moustachioed Indian face behind the long pole, the twisting, the way the man had played with him, and the final thrust that had pinned Sergeant Sharpe to a tree and held him there till the Tippoo Sultan’s men had come and pulled the needlesharp blade from his side. He still carried the scar. Bloody lancers.

‘They won’t get him, sir.’ Knowles sounded very sure.

‘Why not?’

‘The Major explained to me, sir. Marlborough’s fed on corn and most cavalry horses are grass-fed. A grass-fed horse can’t catch a corn-fed horse.’

Sharpe raised his eyebrows. ‘Has anyone told the horses?’

The lancers were catching up, slowly and surely, but Sharpe suspected Kearsey was saving the big horse’s strength. He watched the Poles and wondered how many regiments of cavalry the French had thrown up into the hills to wipe out the guerrilla bands. He wondered how long they would stay.

Sharpe had snapped his glass open, found Kearsey, and saw the Major look over his shoulder and urge Marlborough to go faster. The big roan responded, widening the gap from the nearest lancers, and Knowles clapped his hands. ‘Go on, sir!’

‘They must have caught him crossing the road, sir,’ Harper said.

Marlborough was taking the Major out of trouble, stretching the lead, galloping easily. Kearsey had not even bothered to unsheath his sabre and Sharpe was just relaxing when suddenly the big horse reared up, twisted sideways, and Kearsey fell.

‘What the –’

‘Bloody nightjar!’ Harper had seen a bird fly up, startled, right beneath the horse’s nose. Sharpe wondered, irrelevantly, how the Irishman could possibly have identified the bird at such a distance. He focused the glass again. Kearsey was on his feet, Marlborough was unhurt, and the little man was reaching up desperately to put his foot in the stirrup. The trumpet sounded again, the sound delayed by the distance, but Sharpe had already seen the lancers spurring their horses, reaching out with their nine-foot weapons, and he gritted his teeth as Kearsey seemed to take an age in swinging himself into the saddle.

‘Where’s El Católico?’ Knowles asked.

‘Miles away.’ Harper sounded gloomy.

The horse went forward again, Kearsey’s heels raking back, but the lancers were desperately close. The Major turned the roan downslope towards the village, letting his speed build up before turning back, but his horse seemed winded or frightened. The roan’s head tossed nervously, Kearsey urged it, and at the moment when Sharpe knew the lancers must catch him the Major realized it as well. He circled back, sword drawn, and Knowles groaned.

‘He might do it yet.’ Harper spoke gently, as if to a nervous recruit on the battlefield.

Four lancers were closest to the Major. He spurred towards them, singled one out, and Sharpe saw the sabre, point downwards, high in Kearsey’s hand. Marlborough had calmed, and as the lancers thundered in, Kearsey touched the spurs, the horse leaped forward, and the Major had turned the right-hand lance to one side, swivelled his wrist with the speed of a trained swordsman, and one Pole lay beheaded on the ground.

‘Beautiful!’ Sharpe was grinning. Once a man got past the razor tip of a lance he was safe.

Kearsey was through, crouching on Marlborough’s neck, urging the horse on towards the hills, but the first squadron of lancers were close behind their fellows, at full gallop, and the effort was useless. A dust cloud engulfed the Englishman, the silver points disappeared in the storm, and Kearsey was trapped with only his sword to save him. A man reeled out of the fight holding his stomach, and Sharpe knew the sabre had laid open the horseman’s guts. The dust billowed like cannon smoke. The lance points were forced upwards in the press and once – Sharpe was not sure – he thought he saw the slashing light of the lifted sabre. It was magnificent, quite hopeless, one man against a regiment, and Sharpe watched the commotion subside, the dust drift towards the nightjar’s treacherous nest, and the lance points sink to rest. It was over.

‘Poor bastard.’ Harper had not been looking forward to company prayers, but he had never wanted lancers to take away the unpleasant prospect.

‘He’s alive!’ Knowles was pointing. ‘Look!’

It was true. Sharpe rested the glass on the rock rim of the gully and saw the Major riding between two of his captors. There was blood on his thigh, a lot, and Sharpe saw Kearsey trying to stem the flow with his two fists where a lance point had gouged into his right leg. It was a good capture for the Poles. An exploring officer whom they could keep for a few months before exchanging for a Frenchman of equal rank. They could well have recognized him. The exploring officers often rode in sight of their enemy, their uniforms distinct, relying on their fast horses to carry them from trouble, and it was possible that the French would decide not to exchange Kearsey for months; perhaps, Sharpe thought with a sinking feeling, till the British had been driven from Portugal.

The depressing thought made him stare at the hermitage, half hidden by trees, the unlikely place where Wellington’s hopes were pinned. Without Kearsey it was even more important that the Company should try to find the gold that night, but then those hopes, too, were dashed. Half the lancers rode with their prisoner to the village, but the other half, in a curving column, trotted towards the graveyard and its hermitage. Sharpe cursed beneath his breath. There was no hope now of finding the gold that night. The only chance left was to wait until the French had gone, till they had stopped using the village and the hermitage as their base for the campaign against the Partisans in the hills. And when the French did go, El Católico would come, and Sharpe had no doubt that the tall, grey-cloaked Spaniard would use every effort to stop the British from taking the gold. Only one man stood a chance of persuading the Partisan leader, and that man was a prisoner, wounded, in the hands of the lancers. He slid back from the skyline, turned and stared at the Company.

Harper slid down beside him. ‘What do we do, sir?’

‘Do? We fight.’ Sharpe gripped the hilt of the sword. ‘We’ve been spectators long enough. We get the Major out, tonight.’

Knowles heard him, turned an astonished face on them. ‘Get him out, sir? There’s two regiments there!’

‘So? That’s only eight hundred men. There are fifty-three of us.’

‘And a dozen Irish.’ Harper grinned at the Lieutenant.

Knowles scrambled down the slope, looking at them with a disbelieving stare. ‘With respect, sir. You’re mad.’ He began to laugh. ‘Are you serious?’

Sharpe nodded. There was no other choice. Fifty-three men must take on eight hundred, or else the war was lost. He grinned at Knowles. ‘Stop worrying! It’ll be simple!’

And how the hell, he thought, do we do it?

CHAPTER SIX

Sharpe mocked himself. So simple. Just release the Major when two of the finest regiments in the French army were expecting a night attack. The wise course, he thought, was to go home. The French probably had the gold by now, the war was lost, and a sensible man would shoulder his rifle and think about making a living at home. Instead, like a gambler who had lost all but a handful of coins, he was staking everything on one last throw, a throw against odds of sixteen to one.

Which was not, he told himself as the Company filed down a goat track in the darkness, quite true. He had lain on the gully’s rim as the sun westered and watched the French preparations. They were thorough, but in their defence was their weakness, and Sharpe had felt the excitement well up inside, the incipient knowledge of success. The French expected an attack by Partisans, by small groups of silent men who would carry knives, or else who would fire muskets from the darkness, and they had prepared themselves for that ordeal. The village did not help them. The houses either side of the narrow street were jostled by low, ragged outbuildings; the whole making a maze of alleyways and dark corners where a silent assassin held the advantage. The French had no outlying sentries. To put a small group of men out in the fields was to write their death sentence, and the French, accustomed to this kind of fighting, had drawn themselves into makeshift fortresses. Most of the cavalry were in Cesar Moreno’s house with its ample stabling and high, encircling wall. The other fortress, the only other building with a wall high and strong enough, was the hermitage with its cemetery. Both buildings would be crowded, but both safe from the silent knives, and to make them safer the French had embarked on a crusade of systematic destruction. The cottages nearest the Moreno house had been flattened, the ringing of the big hammers on their stone walls carrying up into the gully, and every tree, every door, every stick of furniture, had been cut and splintered and piled into heaps that could be lit so an attacking Partisan would be denied the gift of darkness. The French held the advantage, but only against Partisans. In their wildest dreams they would not imagine the sudden appearance of British infantry, crossbelts vivid in the defensive firelight, muskets flaming disciplined death. Or so Sharpe hoped.

He had one other advantage, slight but important. Kearsey had obviously given his parole, his gentleman’s promise, to his captors that he would not attempt to escape, and Sharpe had seen the small Major limping round the village. Each time, Kearsey had gone back to Moreno’s house, and finally, as the light faded, Sharpe had seen the Major sitting on a balcony, on one of the few pieces of furniture left, so at least the rescuers knew where their goal lay. All that remained was to break into the house and for that speed was vital.