He blew out the candle and went back into the night where the waves broke white at the city’s edge and the great sails boomed like guns in the wet dark. Father Salvador Montseny, killer, priest and patriot, had just ensured the salvation of Spain.
It had all begun so well.
In the moonlit darkness the River Guadiana lay beneath the South Essex’s light company like a misted streak of molten silver pouring slow and massive between black hills. Fort Joseph, named for Napoleon’s brother who was the French puppet on the throne of Spain, was on the hill closest to the company while Fort Josephine, named after the Emperor’s discarded wife, lay at the top of a long slope on the far bank. Fort Joseph was in Portugal, Josephine was in Spain, and between the two forts was a bridge.
Six light companies had been sent from Lisbon under the command of Brigadier General Sir Barnaby Moon. A coming man, Brigadier Moon, a young thruster, an officer destined for higher things, and this was his first independent command. If he got this right, if the bridge was broken, then Sir Barnaby could look to a future as shining as the river that slid between the darkened hills.
And it had all begun so well. The six companies had been ferried across the Tagus in a misted dawn, then had marched across southern Portugal which was supposedly French-held territory, but the partisans had assured the British that the French had withdrawn their few garrisons and so it proved. Now, just four days after leaving Lisbon, they had reached the river and the bridge. Dawn was close. The British troops were on the Guadiana’s western bank where Fort Joseph had been built on a hill beside the river, and in the last of the night’s darkness the ramparts of the fort were outlined by the glow of fires behind the firestep. The encroaching dawn was dimming that glow, but every now and then the silhouette of a man showed in one of the fort’s embrasures.
The French were awake. The six British light companies knew that because they had heard the bugles calling the reveilles, first in distant Fort Josephine, then in Joseph, but just because the French were awake did not mean they were alert. If you wake men every day in the chill darkness before dawn they soon learn to carry their dreams to the ramparts. They might look as though they are staring alertly into the dark, ready for a dawn attack, but in truth they are thinking of the women left in France, of the women still sleeping in the fort’s barrack rooms, of the women they wished were sleeping in the fort, of the women they could only dream about, of women. They were dozy.
And the forts had been undisturbed all winter. It was true there were guerrilleros in these hills, but they rarely came close to the forts which had cannon in their embrasures, and peasants armed with muskets quickly learn they are no match for emplaced artillery. The Spanish and Portuguese partisans either ambushed the forage parties of the French troops besieging Badajoz thirty miles to the north or else harried the forces of Marshal Victor who besieged Cadiz a hundred and fifty miles to the south.
There had once been five good stone bridges crossing the Guadiana between Badajoz and the sea, but they had all been blown up by the contending armies, and now there was only this one French pontoon bridge to provide a link between the Emperor’s siege forces. It was not used much. Travel in Portugal or Spain was dangerous for the French because the guerrilleros were merciless, but once every two or three weeks the pontoon bridge would creak under the weight of a battery of artillery, and every few days a despatch rider would cross the river escorted by a regiment of dragoons. Not many local folk used the bridge, for very few could afford the toll and fewer still wanted to risk the animosity of the twin garrisons which were, as a result, mostly left in peace. The war seemed far away, which was why the defenders manning the ramparts in the early morning were dreaming of women rather than looking for the enemy troops who had followed a goat track from the darkened heights into the blackness of the valley to the west of Fort Joseph.
Captain Richard Sharpe, commander of the South Essex light company, was not in the valley. He was with his company on a hill to the north of the fort. He had the easiest job of the morning, which was to create a diversion, and that meant none of his men should die and none should even be wounded. Sharpe was glad of that, but he was also aware that he had not been given the easy job as a reward, but because Moon disliked him. The brigadier had made that plain when the six light companies had reported to him in Lisbon. ‘My name’s Moon,’ the brigadier had said, ‘and you’ve got a reputation.’
Sharpe, taken aback by the offhand greeting, had looked surprised. ‘I do, sir?’
‘Don’t be modest with me, man,’ Moon had said, stabbing a finger at the South Essex badge which showed a chained eagle. Sharpe and his sergeant, Patrick Harper, had captured that eagle from the French at Talavera and such a feat, as Moon had said, gave a man a reputation. ‘I don’t want any damn heroics, Sharpe,’ the brigadier went on.
‘No, sir.’
‘Good plain soldiering wins wars,’ Moon had said. ‘Doing mundane things well is what counts.’ That was undoubtedly true, but it was odd coming from Sir Barnaby Moon whose reputation was anything but mundane. He was young, only just a year over thirty, and he had been in Portugal for little more than a year, yet he had already made a name for himself. He had led his battalion at Bussaco where, on the ridge where the French had climbed and died, he had rescued two of his skirmishers by galloping through his men’s ranks and killing the skirmishers’ captors with his sword. ‘No damned Frog will take my fusiliers!’ he had announced, leading the two men back, and his soldiers had cheered him and he had taken off his cocked hat and bowed to them from the saddle. He was also said to be a gambler and a ruthless hunter of women and, because he was as wealthy as he was handsome, he was reckoned a most successful hunter. London, it was said, was a safer city now that Sir Barnaby was in Portugal, though doubtless there were a score or more of Lisbon ladies who might give birth to babies who would grow up to have Sir Barnaby’s lean face, fair hair and startling blue eyes. He was, in brief, anything but a plain soldier, yet that was what he required of Sharpe and Sharpe was happy to oblige. ‘You need make no reputation with me, Sharpe,’ Sir Barnaby had said.
‘I’ll try hard not to, sir,’ Sharpe had said, for which he had received a foul look, and ever since Moon had virtually ignored Sharpe. Jack Bullen, who was Sharpe’s lieutenant, reckoned that the brigadier was jealous.
‘Don’t be daft, Jack,’ Sharpe had said when this was proposed.
‘In any drama, sir,’ Bullen had persevered, ‘there is only room for one hero. The stage is too small for two.’
‘You’re an expert on drama, Jack?’
‘I am an expert on everything except for the things you know about,’ Bullen had said, making Sharpe laugh. The truth, Sharpe reckoned, was that Moon simply shared most officers’ mistrust of men who had been promoted from the ranks. Sharpe had joined the army as a private, he had served as a sergeant and now he was a captain, and that irritated some men who saw Sharpe’s rise as an affront to the established order. Which, Sharpe