Sharpe’s Escape: The Bussaco Campaign, 1810. Bernard Cornwell
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doubted that Ensign Iliffe, an officer newly come from England, had seen a thing, while Sharpe himself had noticed the men and their horses fifteen minutes earlier and he had been wondering ever since what the strangers were doing on the hilltop, for officially the telegraph station had been abandoned. Normally it was manned by a handful of soldiers who guarded the naval Midshipman who operated the black bags which were hoisted up and down the tall mast to send messages from one end of Portugal to the other. But the French had already cut the chain further north and the British had retreated away from these hills, and somehow this one station had not been destroyed. There was no point in leaving it intact for the Frogs to use, and so Sharpe’s company had been detached from the battalion and given the simple job of burning the telegraph. ‘Could it be a Frenchman?’ Slingsby asked, referring to the blue uniform. He sounded eager, as if he wanted to charge uphill. He was three inches over five feet, with an air of perpetual alertness.
‘Doesn’t matter if it is a bloody Crapaud,’ Sharpe said sourly, ‘there’s more of us than there are of them. I’ll send Mister Iliffe up there to shoot him.’ Iliffe looked alarmed. He was seventeen and looked fourteen, a rawboned youngster whose father had purchased him a commission because he did not know what else to do with the boy. ‘Show me your canteen,’ Sharpe ordered Iliffe.
Iliffe looked scared now. ‘It’s empty, sir,’ he confessed, and cringed as though he expected Sharpe to punish him.
‘You know what I told the men with empty canteens?’ Sharpe asked. ‘That they were idiots. But you’re not, because you’re an officer, and there aren’t any idiot officers.’
‘Quite correct, sir,’ Slingsby put in, then snorted. He always snorted when he laughed and Sharpe suppressed an urge to cut the bastard’s throat.
‘Hoard your water,’ Sharpe said, thrusting the canteen back at Iliffe. ‘Sergeant Harper! March on!’
It took another half-hour to reach the hilltop. The barn-like building was evidently a shrine, for a chipped statue of the Virgin Mary was mounted in a niche above its door. The telegraph tower had been built against the shrine’s eastern gable which helped support the lattice of thick timbers that carried the platform on which the Midshipman had worked his arcane skill. The tower was deserted now, its tethered signal ropes banging against the tarred mast in the brisk wind that blew around the summit. The black-painted bladders had been taken away, but the ropes used to hoist and lower them were still in place and from one of them hung a square of white cloth and Sharpe wondered if the strangers on the hilltop had raised the makeshift flag as a signal.
Those strangers, a dozen civilians, were standing beside the shrine’s door and with them was a Portuguese infantry officer, his blue coat faded to a colour very close to the French blue. It was the officer who strode forward to meet Sharpe. ‘I am Major Ferreira,’ he said in good English, ‘and you are?’
‘Captain Sharpe.’
‘And Captain Slingsby.’ Lieutenant Slingsby had insisted on accompanying Sharpe to meet the Portuguese officer, just as he insisted on using his brevet rank even though he had no right to do so any longer.
‘I command here,’ Sharpe said laconically.
‘And your purpose, Captain?’ Ferreira demanded. He was a tall man, lean and dark, with a carefully trimmed moustache. He had the manners and bearing of privilege, but Sharpe detected an uneasiness in the Portuguese Major that Ferreira attempted to cover with a brusque manner that tempted Sharpe to insolence. He fought the temptation and told the truth instead.
‘We’re ordered to burn the telegraph.’
Ferreira glanced at Sharpe’s men who were straggling onto the hill’s summit. He seemed taken aback by Sharpe’s words, but then smiled unconvincingly. ‘I shall do it for you, Captain. It will be my pleasure.’
‘I carry out my own orders, sir,’ Sharpe said.
Ferreira scented the insolence and gave Sharpe a quizzical look. For a second Sharpe thought the Portuguese Major intended to offer him a reprimand, but instead Ferreira nodded curtly. ‘If you insist,’ he said, ‘but do it quickly.’
‘Quickly, sir!’ Slingsby intervened enthusiastically. ‘No point in waiting!’ He turned on Harper. ‘Sergeant Harper! The combustibles, if you please. Quick, man, quick!’
Harper glanced at Sharpe for approval of the Lieutenant’s orders, but Sharpe betrayed nothing, and so the big Irishman shouted at the dozen men who were burdened with cavalry forage nets that were stuffed full of straw. Another six men carried jars of turpentine, and now the straw was heaped about the four legs of the telegraph station and then soaked with the turpentine. Ferreira watched them work for a while, then went back to join the civilians who appeared worried by the arrival of British soldiers. ‘It’s all ready, sir,’ Harper called to Sharpe, ‘shall I light her up?’
Slingsby did not even give Sharpe time to answer. ‘Let’s not dilly-dally, Sergeant!’ he said briskly. ‘Fire it up!’
‘Wait,’ Sharpe snarled, making Slingsby blink at the harshness of his tone. Officers were expected to treat each other courteously in front of the men, but Sharpe had snapped angrily and the look he gave Slingsby made the Lieutenant step backwards in surprise. Slingsby frowned, but said nothing as Sharpe climbed the ladder to the mast’s platform that stood fifteen feet above the hilltop. Three pock marks in the boards showed where the Midshipman had placed his tripod so he could stare at the neighbouring telegraph stations and read their messages. The station to the north had already been destroyed, but looking south Sharpe could just see the next tower somewhere beyond the River Criz and still behind British lines. It would not be behind the lines for long, he thought. Marshal Masséna’s army was flooding into central Portugal and the British would be retreating to their newly built defensive lines at Torres Vedras. The plan was to retreat to the new fortifications, let the French come, then either kill their futile attacks or watch them starve.
And to help them starve, the British and Portuguese were leaving them nothing. Every barn, every larder, every storehouse was being emptied. Crops were being burned in their fields, windmills were being destroyed and wells made foul with carcasses. The inhabitants of every town and village in central Portugal were being evicted, taking their livestock with them, ordered to go either behind the Lines of Torres Vedras or else up into the high hills where the French would be reluctant to follow. The intention was that the enemy would find a scorched land, bare of everything, even of telegraph ropes.
Sharpe untied one of the signal ropes and pulled down the white flag that turned out to be a big handkerchief of fine linen, neatly hemmed with the initials PAF embroidered in blue into one corner. Ferreira? Sharpe looked down on the Portuguese Major who was watching him. ‘Yours, Major?’ Sharpe asked.
‘No,’ Ferreira called back.
‘Mine then,’ Sharpe said, and pocketed the handkerchief. He saw the anger on Ferreira’s face and was amused by it. ‘You might want to move those horses,’ he nodded at the beasts picketed beside the shrine, ‘before we burn the tower.’
‘Thank you, Captain,’ Ferreira said icily.
‘Fire it now, Sharpe?’ Slingsby demanded from the ground.
‘Not till I’m off the bloody platform,’ Sharpe growled. He looked round one last time and saw a small mist of grey-white powder smoke far off to the southeast. He pulled out his telescope, the precious glass that had been given him by Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Lord Wellington, and he rested it on the balustrade and then knelt and stared towards the smoke. He could see little, but he reckoned he was watching the British rearguard in action. French cavalry must have pressed too close and a battalion was firing volleys, backed up by the cannons of the Royal Horse Artillery. He could just hear the soft thump of the far-off guns. He swept the glass north, the lens travelling over a hard country of hills, rocks and barren pasture, and there was nothing there, nothing at all, until suddenly he saw a hint of a different green and he jerked the glass back, settled it and saw them.
Cavalry. French cavalry. Dragoons in