Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe’s Company, Sharpe’s Sword, Sharpe’s Enemy. Bernard Cornwell
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new Ensign. What was his name? He could not remember, and the boy was dead, and for nothing!
Harper pulled him downstream into the cover of the trees, dragging Matthews’ body in his other hand. Sharpe staggered, the pain shooting up his leg, and he felt tears in his eyes. It was failure, miserable and complete, and the boy was dead who should not have died, and all because Sharpe had tried to prove he was more than a messenger boy or baggage minder. Sharpe felt as if there was some malevolent fate that had decided to destroy him, his pride, his life, all his hopes; and, in mockery, to make the failure more complete, the fates had shown him something worth living for. Teresa would have heard the explosion, would even now be rocking his child into a restless sleep, but Sharpe, stumbling through the night, felt that he would never see the child. Never. Badajoz would kill him, as it had killed the boy, as it was killing all he had worked and fought for in nineteen years of soldiering.
‘You stupid bastards!’ Hakeswill appeared in the darkness, his voice like the croaking of the thousands of frogs that lived upstream. He sneered at them, punched at Harper. ‘You pig-brained Irish bastard! Move!’ He thrust at them with the squat barrels of the huge gun and Harper, still helping Sharpe, smelt the burnt powder from the seven barrels. The gun had been fired and Harper had a vague memory, no more than an impression, of bullets coming from the ravine that had struck Sharpe down. Harper turned to look for Hakeswill, but the Sergeant had gone into the night and Sharpe, his leg bleeding and hurt, slipped and the Irishman had to hold him and pull him up the slope.
His words were drowned by a sudden clamour of bells. Each bell in Badajoz, from every church, hammered into the darkness and for a second Harper thought they were celebrating the failure of the night’s fight. Then he remembered. Midnight had turned and now it was Sunday, Easter Sunday, and the bells rejoiced for the greatest of all miracles. Harper listened to the cacophony and promised himself a most unChristian promise. He would perform his own miracle. He would kill the man who had tried to kill Sharpe. If it was the last thing he would do on this earth, he would kill the man who could not die. Dead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Hold still!’ the doctor muttered, not so much to Sharpe who was rigid, but because he always said the words when operating. He twiddled the probe in his fingers, looking at it, then wiped it on his apron before pushing it delicately into the wound in Sharpe’s thigh. ‘You’ve been wounded a fair bit, Mr Sharpe.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe hissed the words. His leg felt as if a serpent with red hot fangs was tearing at him.
The doctor grunted, pushed down. ‘Ah! Splendid! Splendid!’ Blood welled from the bullet wound. ‘I have it.’ He pushed, feeling the bullet grate beneath the probe’s tip.
‘Jesus!’
‘A very present help in trouble.’ The doctor said the words automatically. He straightened up, leaving the probe in the wound. ‘You’re a lucky man, Mr Sharpe.’
‘Lucky, sir?’ His leg was on fire, streaking pain from ankle to groin.
‘Lucky.’ The doctor picked up a glass of claret that his orderly kept always full. He stared at the probe. ‘To leave or not to leave, that is the question.’ He glanced at Sharpe. ‘You’re a healthy bastard, yes?’
‘Yes, sir.’ It came out as a groan.
The doctor sniffed. His cold had not improved since Harper’s flogging. ‘It could stay in there, Mr Sharpe, but I think not. You’re lucky. It’s not deep. The ball must have lost most of its force.’ He looked behind him and selected a long, thin pair of pincers. He inspected the ridged tips, spotted a piece of dirt, and spat on the instrument, wiping it dry on his sleeve. ‘Right! Hold still, think of England!’ He pushed the forceps into the wound, following the track of the probe, and Sharpe hissed imprecations at him which the doctor ignored. He felt for the bullet, brought out the probe, pushed down again with the forceps, and then tightened his grip. ‘Splendid! A moment more!’ He twisted, Sharpe’s leg exploded with agony, and the doctor pulled out the forceps and dropped them, the bullet in their jaws, on the table behind him. ‘Splendid! Nelson should have known me. Right. Tie him up, Harvey.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The orderly let go of Sharpe’s ankles and rooted around under the table looking for a clean bandage.
The doctor took the bullet, still in the forceps, and shook the blood from it in a pail of discoloured water. ‘Ah!’ He held the bullet up. ‘A pistol bullet! No wonder it didn’t penetrate. The range must have been too great. Do you want it?’
Sharpe nodded and held out his hand. It was no musket bullet. The grey ball was just half an inch across and Sharpe remembered the fore-shortened yellow flame. The seven-barrelled gun used half-inch bullets. ‘Doctor?’
‘Sharpe?’
‘The other wound. Is the bullet still in?’
‘No.’ The doctor was wiping his hands on his apron, already stiff with blood. It was the mark of seniority in his profession. ‘Straight through, Sharpe, all it did was break the skin. Here.’ He held out a tumbler of brandy.
Sharpe drank it and leaned back on the table while the orderly washed and bandaged his leg. He felt no particular anger that Hakeswill had tried to kill him, merely a curiosity and a thankfulness that he had survived. He was certainly not shocked. Had he been holding the volley gun, and had he seen Hakeswill, he would have pulled the trigger and sent the Sergeant spinning to the devil, and all without a second thought. He looked at the doctor. ‘What’s the time, sir?’
‘Dawn, Sharpe, dawn. An Easter dawn, when all men should rejoice.’ He sneezed violently. ‘You should take things gently.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He swung his legs off the table and pulled on the cavalry overalls. There was a neat hole in the leather reinforcements of the right inner thigh where the bullet had entered. The doctor looked at the hole and laughed.
‘Three inches higher and you’d have been the last of your line.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Very droll. He tested his weight and found his leg could take it. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘For nothing, Sharpe, except my small skill and humble duty. Half a bottle of rum and you’ll be skipping like a lamb. A credit to the Medical Board and the Apothecary General whose obedient servant I am.’ He pulled open the flap of his tent. ‘Come and see me if you ever need a limb removed.’
‘I shall see no one else, sir.’
The troops had stood down from the morning alert, had piled arms, and were finishing meagre breakfasts. The guns were hard at work, firing now at the Santa Maria bastion as well as the Trinidad, and Sharpe imagined the smoke lying over the lake. Damn the powder! The amount of powder needed had been grossly underestimated otherwise Sharpe, Harper and the Riflemen would be heroes this morning. As it was they were pariahs. Trouble was brewing, Sharpe could smell it. The night’s failure needed scapegoats.
Bells clamoured from the city. Easter. Sharpe limped towards his shelter and, to his right, saw a group of Portuguese or Spanish women, followers of the army, picking small, white flowers from a ditch bank. Spring was softening the landscape. Soon it would open the roads and the rivers to the French armies and Sharpe wondered if it was his imagination or were the guns today firing at a faster tempo? Pounding at a city that the British must take if they were to carry the war into the heart of Spain. The guns of Badajoz could be heard by the troops far to the north, at Alcantara and Caceres, and east at Merida, where British outposts stared down the empty roads waiting for a French relief army and listened to the growl of the distant thunder. The guns. They dominated the Easter service, wrenching the thoughts of the people in the cathedral away from the celebrations. The High Altar was resplendent in a white and gold facing, the Virgin draped in gorgeous, bejewelled robes, but the sound of the guns started dust from the high, gold-painted cornice that circled the Cathedral’s interior, sifted it down