Price shrugged. ‘But you might have told us when we got back.’
‘I thought the surprise might cheer you up.’
‘Jesus.’ Price sounded disgusted. ‘I was worried!’
‘I’m sorry, Harry.’
The Convent was boiling smoke now, flames licking where they found fuel, and men stumbled, blackened and burned, from the wreckage. Most of the building still stood, but the wheels of all but two of the guns were broken, the ammunition was gone, and the Convent was no longer a threat to the Castle.
Patrick Harper was in the courtyard, grinning, demanding breakfast for a big man, while the Fusiliers and Riflemen cheered because their day had begun with another victory.
In the Convent daylight filtered through the smoke and dust, past broken stone and burning beams, and the light touched a polished piece of granite that had not seen daylight in eight hundred years.
Sunday, the 27th of December, 1812, had begun.
CHAPTER 27
The French still had guns and now the gunners were fired by anger and the south of the village was wreathed in ragged smoke while the canister rattled like metal rain on the Castle walls. There were howitzers firing too, and even though they could no longer fire from the flank and thus keep firing until the infantry were at the very brink of the courtyard, they could lob their shells from the protection of the village and make the Castle a place of seething iron.
One hour, two, and the guns still fired, and the canister killed sentries and the cobbles were scorched by the exploding shells where the snow had turned to black slush.
There was no truce this time. The gunner Colonel was dead, crushed by a falling howitzer barrel, and it was still dangerous to go into the Convent’s upper part because of the howitzer shells that still exploded and added fresh smoke to the funeral pyre of more than a hundred men. The French General swore his revenge, and ordered the guns to start it. The gunners fought for their dead Colonel.
Two guns doused the watchtower hill in canister, the musket balls flaying through the thorns, jerking snow from the branches, snapping twigs and spines down onto the Riflemen who crouched in their pits. Rabbits know where to dig, and a rabbit hole was a rifle pit that was well started, and Frederickson urged the gunners on. ‘Fire, you bastards! We’re ready for you!’ He was too. He expected them to come from the east or the north and his strength was ready for them, strength that would push the attack towards the cleared space on the northern slope of the hill down which he planned to roll his barrels of powder, fuses protected from the snow with sewn leather sheaths, and with the barrels would go the four inch round shells left for the Spanish gun. ‘Come on, you bastards!’ His men grinned, listening to Sweet William’s battle cry. He had kept most of the Fusiliers on the reverse slope of the hill, away from the artillery fire, and he would only use them if the French turned his line of hidden Riflemen.
Most of the guns worked on the Castle. They broke open the stable roof, started fire in its rafters and in Gilliland’s empty carts that blazed high and melted the slush for yards around. The French dislodged the single gun on the Castle’s eastern wall, lifting it in an explosion and sliding it in a tumble of stone, snow, brass and timber down to the rubble. One shell penetrated the inner courtyard, bouncing ofT the walls of the keep, and its blast killed six horses outright and the Fusiliers forced their way through the screaming, panicked beasts, sliding on a mixture of blood and slush and horse urine to finish off the wounded beasts. And still the guns fired.
The Castle filled with the smoke of the explosions, shook with the crash of shot, and the twelve-pounders mixed roundshot with the canister and some of the balls hit ancient, loosened stone and a Rifleman screamed because a slab fell on his legs.
On the snow in front of the eastern wall the howitzer shells that fell short made star-shaped patterns in the snow, stars black and violent, craters of heat in the whiteness, and one shell landed on the gatehouse turret where a Rifleman, old in war, tan to it with the butt of his rifle raised. The fuse smoked crazily as the shell span, the Rifleman paused a second, then struck one glancing blow on the iron ball. The fuse was jerked out clean as a blade, and the shell was harmless. The man grinned at his frightened companions. ‘Always come out if you hit ’em right.’