‘Yes, sir.’
And cheer up, you bastard, Sharpe wanted to add. ‘Carry on, Captain Brooker.’
The minutes passed. Artillerymen brushed snow from the touch-holes of guns that would soon be too hot for the snow that lay an inch deep on the brass barrels, each barrel more than seven feet long between the five foot high wheels. Each gun caisson had dropped forty-eight roundshot, the trail boxes on the guns themselves contained another nine each, and the gunners would be happy to fire all those shots to bring the eastern face of the Convent crashing to the ground to let in the Battalion of attacking infantry. This Battalion had been at the rear of the Column, virtually untouched by the rockets, and they would attack in the very last light. Then the guns would move in under the cover of darkness, embrasures would be hacked in the south wall, and these twelve-pounder monsters would take on the Castle itself. Let the gunners show how it ought to be done.
By five minutes to four the valley seemed deserted. The Fusiliers were behind stone walls, the Riflemen on the hill were in the shallow scoops they had fashioned beneath the thorns, the French were masked by the village.
Sharpe climbed the gatehouse turret, stamped his feet on the cold snow, talked with the Riflemen whose post this was. ‘Must be nearly time.’
Serge bags were thrust down barrels, then the roundshot that was strapped to the wooden shoe which would burn off in flight. Spikes were thrust into touch-holes to pierce the powder bags, then the priming tube thrust home, the slant of the touch-hole making the quills slant forward so that they would be expelled in that direction. The Colonel looked at his watch. Two minutes to four. ‘A pox on those bastards. Fire!’
Eight guns slammed back, eight trails gouging the clean snow, and the crews were instantly to work, straightening the guns with handspikes and ropes, other men sponging out the hissing barrel, others ready with the next charge.
The first shots bounced a hundred yards short of the convent, rose, and slammed into the wall. As the barrels grew hotter that first bounce would creep towards the Convent till there was no bounce at all. ‘Fire!’
The guns were hidden from the gatehouse, but the long muzzle flames spread red flashes on the snow and Sharpe watched each volley bloom rose-red on the whiteness. They were good. The shots came faster, the rhythm creeping up to the swinging team-work of well trained artillerymen where each man knew his job, and each man took pride in doing it well, and the rose-red flashed, the balls smashed at the Convent, and the wall, which had not been built for defence, cracked and crumbled.
‘Fire!’
The smoke drifted towards the convent, drifted slowly with the falling snow, and now the flakes hissed as they hit the hot barrels, and again the guns bucked back, wheels bouncing, and again the teams dragged them round, rammed them, primed them, fired them, and the gates of the Convent had already gone.
‘Fire!’
And each volley seemed to tinge the drifting cloud with red so that the sky was grey-black, the valley white, and the northern edge a place of redness. ‘Fire!’
The noise echoed from the hills, jarred snow from the eaves of the village houses, tinkled the glasses in the inn’s kitchen.
‘Fire!’
A length of wall collapsed, dust looking like smoke, and the next roundshot smashed through an interior wall, breaking plaster and old stone, and the guns smashed back again, their crews hot and sweating despite the cold, and the gunner Colonel grinned in pleasure for his men.
‘Fire!’
The upper cloister was open to the valley now, the closed Convent torn apart by the close range gunnery, and the first acrid smoke of the early volleys was drifting between broken pillars and fallen carvings.
‘Fire!’
The hornbeam was struck on the trunk, it seemed to fly in the air, roots tearing up tiles and snow, and the buttons and ribbons that had decorated it were thrown to the ground with the falling tree.
‘Fire!’
The cat that had walked so delicately on the Christmas morning tiles now hissed, claws outstretched, in the cellar. The fur on its back was upright. The building seemed to shake around it.
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