‘Good. Sunrise, someone?’
‘Twenty-one minutes past seven.’ Ducos was always exact about these things.
‘These long nights! Still, we knew of them when we started.’ The General sipped muddy coffee, looked back to the gunner. ‘Howitzers, Louis. I don’t want a man to be able to move in that courtyard tomorrow.’
The Colonel grinned. ‘Sir. I can put two more in there.’
‘Do it.’ The General smiled at Dubreton. ‘Merci, Alex-andre.’ He took the offered cigar, rolled it between finger and thumb, and accepted a light. ‘When can we open fire?’
The gunner shrugged. ‘When you want, sir.’
‘Seven? And we put two more batteries on the southern edge of the village to fire straight across the breach, yes?’ The Colonel nodded. The General smiled. ‘Canister, Louis. That will stop their damned rockets. I don’t want a man living if they leave the shelter of the walls.’
‘They won’t, sir.’
‘But your gunners will be in range of those damned Riflemen on the hill.’ The General spoke slowly, thinking aloud. ‘I think we must keep them busy. Do you believe this report they have rockets?’ He had turned to Dubreton.
‘No, sir. I can’t see how they could fire them through the thorns.’
‘Nor me. So. We’ll send a Battalion up the hill, eh? They can keep the Riflemen busy.’
‘Just one, sir?’
The fire crackled in the hearth, sparks spitting onto the boots that dried before the flames, and the plans were meticulously made. A battalion, reinforced by Voltigeurs, would assault the watchtower while two twelve-pounders, instead of going into the Convent, would soak the thorns with canister to kill the hidden Greenjackets. The howitzers in the Convent would make the Castle courtyard into a place of shell-born death, while guns south of the village would rake the rubble and earthworks so no rockets could be carried to their launchers. And the infantry would attack again in mid-raorning, an infantry that would be protected by the guns, that would take their bayonets to a shattered, demoralized garrison. Then the French could march on to the bridge at Barca de Alva, to victory. The General raised a glass of brandy. ‘To victory in the Emperor’s name.’
They murmured the toast, drank it, and only Dubreton muttered a doubt. ‘They gave the Convent up pretty easily.’
‘They had few men there, Alexandre.’
‘True.’
‘And my guns had softened them.’ The Colonel of Artillery smiled.
‘True.’
The General raised his glass again. ‘And tomorrow we win.’
‘True.’
The breeze drifted the snow into piles inside the Castle courtyard. The flakes hissed in the fire, melted on the backs of the Rocket Troop horses who were huddled inside the keep’s courtyard, settled wet and cold on the greatcoats of the men who stared into the night and feared a screaming attack from the darkness. Rags were wrapped round the locks of muskets and rifles, rags to stop the wetness reaching the powder in the pans. Fires had been lit in the Convent and the flames showed where French soldiers struggled at the old gateway, heaving and hammering stones into a crude ramp up which the guns could be pushed. Occasionally a rifle shot cracked in the valley and its bullet would chip stone by the French or throw a man down, cursing and wounded, but then the French protected the place with an empty ammunition caisson, and the Riflemen saved their ammunition. Other Riflemen, from Frederickson’s Company, patrolled into the valley. Their orders were to keep the French awake, to fire at lights, shadows, to wear on the night-time nerves of the enemy, while on the hill the Fusiliers cursed and swore and wondered what kind of maniac would order to them to search by night for rabbit holes. Rabbit holes!
Men slept uneasily, their uniforms half dried by the fires, their muskets always within reach. Some woke in the darkness, wondering for an instant where they were, and when they remembered the chill fear would come back. They were in a bad place.
Major Richard Sharpe seemed distracted. He was polite, attentive to every detail, secretive about tomorrow’s plans. He stayed on the gatehouse turret till midnight, till the snow stopped falling, and then he had joined his Company for a thin meal of boiled dried beef. Daniel Hagman had assured Sharpe that Harper would survive, but there had been little conviction in the old poacher’s voice and Sharpe had just smiled at him. ‘I know, Dan. I know.’ There had been little conviction in Sharpe’s voice as well.