‘Major Sharpe!’ He sounded cheerful. He was leading an attack before the eyes of his lover. ‘The wall’s mined, sir!’
The peevishness was back in his face. He looked at Sharpe in annoyance, thinking, reining in his restless horse. ‘How do you know?’
‘No one’s defending it, sir.’
‘They’re deserters, Sharpe, not a damned army!’ Sharpe was walking alongside the prancing horse. ‘For God’s sake, sir! It’s mined!’
‘God damn you, Sharpe! Out of my way!’ Farthingdale let his horse have its head and it leaped ahead, and Sharpe stood there, impotent, while the two columns marched stolidly past. Two hundred and seventy men in each column, bayonets glittering by their faces, marching for the easy-looking wall that Sharpe knew had been left as a temptation for just such an attack as this. God damn it! He looked behind him. The grass had been trampled flat and pale by the two columns, littered by the small knots of bleeding and dead men where the cannon fire had struck. The guns fired again and Sharpe pushed through the column and headed back for his men. Pray God he was wrong.
Cross had pulled his Company aside to let the columns through and Sharpe could see the Colours held high and he knew that the Ensigns, not yet out of boyhood, would be proud of this moment. Kinney had not brought the band’s instruments with him, or else the musicians would be playing the attack forward until the fighting made them take up their secondary job, that of caring for the wounded. Farthingdale waved them on, cheered them on, and at last the Fusiliers were allowed to cheer themselves as they broke into a run for the last few yards. The cannon on the eastern wall was unmasked, fired, and the head of the further column was torn ragged by the flailing canister. One man crawled on the grass, his white trousers soaking red, his head shaking because he did not know what had happened.
‘On! On! On!’ Sir Augustus Farthingdale had stopped his horse, let the Colours go past him, and now he urged the columns onto the eastern wall. Smoke from the cannon drifted over the rubble.
Let me be wrong, Sharpe prayed. Let me be wrong.
The first men onto the rubble broke ranks. They spread out as each chose a path on the uneven stones. Their muskets were held ready for the killing thrust of the bayonet.
‘On! On!’ Farthingdale was up in his stirrups, sabre flailing the air, and Sharpe cursed the man for he knew that this display had been put on for Josefina. Musket bullets struck in the columns, making a flurry like a stone dropped into a water-current, the men reclosing about the disturbed patch. ‘On! On!’
They ran at the rubble, packing it, spreading up it, cheering as they breasted it and saw the courtyard in front of them, and again Sharpe prayed he was wrong, and then he saw that the first men were over the stones and he felt a flood of relief because they would not die in the flaming horror of an exploding mine on Christmas Day in the morning.
The jet of smoke seemed to leap from the base of the stones towards Farthingdale and his horse, leaping like a striking snake, and the horse reared, throwing Farthingdale backwards, and then the smoke was coming from every crevice of the stones and Sharpe shouted in helpless warning.
The broken wall heaved upwards, turned into flame and boiling dark smoke so that it was like premature night where the Fusiliers were hurled up and back by the packed powder beneath the stones. The explosion rumbled, then cracked into defiant thunder that rolled between the thorn-clad hills, and the wall heaved up, out, and the men who had not reached the broken barrier stopped in fear.
The gun on the wall fired again and then there was cheering from the Castle, from the hill by the watchtower, and Pot-au-Feu unleashed every musket onto the motionless columns. Flames licked among the smashed barrier beneath the smoke. Musket flashes showed where the enemy was hunting the survivors who had been first into the courtyard.