“Will it work?”
Hogan grinned happily. “It should! It’ll be one hell of a bang, I promise you that.”
“How much longer?”
,I’ll be finished in a couple of hours. Perhaps sooner.” Hogan heaved himself out of the hole and stood beside Sharpe. “Let’s get the powder up here.” He turned towards the convent, cupped his hands to his mouth, and froze. The Spanish had arrived, their trumpeters in front, their colours flying, the blue-coated infantry straggling behind. “Glory be,” Hogan said. “Now I can sleep safe at nights.”
The Regimienta marched to the convent, past the South Essex who were being drilled in the field, and kept on marching. Sharpe waited for the orders which would halt the Spaniards, but they were never given. Instead the trumpeters paced their horses onto the bridge, the colours followed, then the gloriously uniformed officers and finally the infantry itself.
“What the hell do they think they’re doing?” Hogan stepped to the side of the bridge.
The Regimienta picked its way past the broken section and past the hole Hogan had dug. The Engineer waved his arms at them. “I’m going to blow it up! Bang! Bang!” They ignored him. Hogan tried it in Spanish but the tide of men flowed on past. Even the priest and the three white-dressed ladies walked their mounts carefully round Hogan’s hole and on to the south bank, where Captain Lennox had hastily moved the Light Company out of their path. The Regimienta was followed by an apoplectic Simmerson trying to find out what the hell was happening. Hogan shook his head wearily. “If it had been just you and I, Sharpe, we’d be on our way home by now.” He waved to his men to bring the kegs of powder out to the hole. “I’m tempted to blow it up with that lot on the wrong side.”
“They’re our allies, remember.”
Hogan wiped his forehead. “So’s Simmerson.” He climbed back into the excavation. Til be glad when this lot’s over.”
The kegs of powder arrived, and Sharpe left Hogan to pack the gunpowder deep in the base of the arches. He walked back to the south bank where his riflemen waited and watched as the Santa Maria paraded in a long line across the road that led to the distant skyline. Lennox grinned down from his horse.
“What do you think of this, Sharpe?” He waved at the Spaniards, who resolutely faced an empty skyline.
“What are they doing?”
“They told the Colonel that it was their duty to cross the bridge! It’s something to do with Spanish pride. We got here first so they have to go further.” He touched his hat to Simmerson, who was re-crossing the bridge. “You know what he’s thinking of doing?”
“What? Simmerson?” Sharpe looked after the retreating Colonel, who had pointedly ignored him.
“Aye. He’s thinking of bringing the whole Battalion over.”
“He’s what?”
“If they cross, we cross.” Lennox laughed. “Mad, that’s what he is.”
There were shouts from Sharpe’s Riflemen and he followed their pointing arms to look at the horizon. “Do you see anything?”
Lennox stared up the track. “Not a thing.”
A flash of light. “There!” Sharpe climbed onto the parapet and dug into his pack for his only possession of value, a telescope made by Matthew Berge of London. He had no idea of its real worth but he suspected it had cost at least thirty guineas. There was a brass plate curved and inset into the walnut tube, and engraved on the plate was an inscription. “In gratitude. AW. September 23rd, 1803.” He recalled the piercing blue eyes looking at him when the telescope had been presented. “Remember, Mr Sharpe, an officer’s eyes are more valuable than his sword!”
He snapped the tube open and slide the brass shutters that protected the lens apart. The image danced in the glass, he held his breath to steady his arms, and panned the tube sideways. There! Damn the tube! It would not stay still.
,Tendleton!”
The young Rifleman came running to the bridge and, on Sharpes’ instructions, jumped onto the parapet and crouched so that Sharpe could rest the telescope on his shoulder. The skyline leapt towards him, he moved the glass gently to the right. Nothing but grass and stunted bushes. The heat shimmered the air above the gentle slope as the telescope moved past the innocent horizon.