So many wounded, so many dead. Sharpe had tried to count from the gatehouse turret, but the bodies were too dense on the valley floor, and he wrote on a piece of paper merely that they had destroyed more than a Battalion of the enemy. Most were wounded, overcrowding the French surgeons’ rooms, carried back by the light ambulances or on slow stretchers through the falling snow.
North-east of the village, caught in a tangle of thorns, some Lancers found a rocket that had exhausted itself and which had not exploded. They took it back to Adrados, but not before one of them saw riders on the hillcrests, saw a stab of musket flame, and when they handed over the weapon to Major Ducos they gave him news of a fresh enemy in the hills. Partisans.
Ducos bent low over the rocket in the inn, peering at its construction, prising the metal tube away from the head so he could see where the fuse had somehow worked itself free. He straightened up, his eyes losing their focus, and wondered how much of the stick had been burned away. It should be possible, he thought, to cram more powder into the cylinder, put a new stick onto it, and test fire the weapon. He began taking measurements of the rocket head, jotting the figures on paper in his cramped handwriting, while above him the wounded screamed as doctors peeled charred cloth from burned skin.
In the Castle courtyard the Fusiliers boiled water, then poured the water into their musket barrels to clear the fouled deposits of powder. They filled their ammunition pouches, watched the snow settle, and hoped the French had had enough.
In the Castle dungeons Obadiah Hakeswill rubbed his wrists where the ropes had been, grinned at the other prisoners, and promised them escape. In the dim light, far from the straw torches that lit the steps where the guards were, he pulled himself along the back wall, through the ordure and the cold puddles, till he was in the darkest corner. There he stood up, his nakedness pale against the dark stones, and his head twitched as he pulled at a stone high on the wall. He moved slowly, quietly, not wanting to attract attention. He had remembered the one thing that everyone else seemed to have forgotten.
On the watchtower hill Frederickson wrote on a piece of the sketching paper, then gave it to the French officer. ‘My father’s address, though God knows if I’ll be living near him.’
Pierre had a formal calling card, on the back of which he put his own address. ‘After the war, perhaps?’
‘You think it will end?’
Pierre shrugged. ‘Aren’t we all tired of it?’
Frederickson was not, but it seemed hardly polite to say so. ‘After the war, then?’ He looked at the captured German Lancer whose spear had been decorated with a dirty white cloth. The Lancer was not happy, hating to carry the makeshift flag, and Frederickson switched to German. ‘If you don’t carry it your own people will shoot you.’ He looked back to Pierre, changed back into the French language. ‘You’ll observe all the usual nonsense? Wait to be exchanged, no fighting against us until then?’
‘I will observe all the usual nonsense.’ Pierre smiled. ‘And no telling what you’ve seen up here?’
‘Of course not. Though I can’t speak for him.’ Pierre glanced at the Lancer.
‘He hasn’t seen the rockets in the tower. He can’t tell anything.’ Frederickson grinned cheerfully through the lie, knowing that Sergeant Rossner had described in graphic detail the non-existent rockets stacked on the hilltop to the young Lancer. ‘I’m sorry to see you go, Pierre.’
‘It’s good of you to let me. Good luck! Come and see us after the war!’
Frederickson watched them go. He looked at one of his Sergeants. ‘A thoroughly nice man, that.’
‘So it seems, sir.’
‘Sensible, too. Much prefers Salamanca’s old Cathedral to the new.’
‘Really, sir?’ The Sergeant had not noticed one Cathedral in Salamanca, let alone two.
Frederickson turned to see Lieutenant Wise coming up through the thorns. ‘Well done, Lieutenant! Any casualties?’
‘Corporal Baker lost a finger, sir.’
‘Left or right hand?’