‘Yes, sir.’ Price shook his head in wonderment. Frederickson grinned, happy at last.
He dealt with questions at the end, dismissed them to their Companies, then pulled the rug off the window so he could stare westward at the darkness over Portugal. Teresa was down there somewhere, riding in the night.
‘Sir?’
He turned. Frederickson was leaning against the wall by the door.’Yes?’
‘How did you do it?’
‘Never mind. You just hold that tower for me.’
‘Consider it done.’ Frederickson grinned and went.
The tower. The key to the whole valley, the key to living through the next two days or else perpetual darkness. Sharpe looked at the paper ashes on the fire. He would hold the Gateway of God.
CHAPTER 19
The dawn of Saturday, December 26th 1812, was muddy, slow and inglorious.
The temperature rose in the night, the warmer air bringing rain that lashed on the cobbles of the yard, hissed in the fire and bracketed torches, and soaked the thorn bushes so that, as the light struggled through the clouds, they appeared black and shiny on the hillsides.
At first light the valley seemed empty. The rain had exhausted itself into a fine drizzle that hid the far hills of Portugal. Clouds touched the rocky peaks north and south, shrouded even the topmost stones of the watchtower. The Union flag on the Convent had been taken down in the night, and the two Colours on the gate-tower hung heavy and wet above the rain-darkened stone.
At half past seven, a few minutes after sunrise, a group of French officers appeared to the west of the village. One was a full General. He dismounted, then propped his telescope on the saddle of his horse, peered at the men on the Castle ramparts, then pushed his horse round so he could stare at the figures beneath the watchtower. He grunted. `How long?’
‘An hour and a half, sir.’
The rain had fed the small stream so that the water bubbled vigorously from the spring, fell white over stones and earth, and flooded small patches in the valley. Two curlews, their beaks long and curved like sabres, strutted by the stream and pecked in the cold water. They seemed to find nothing, for they flew eastwards in search of better feeding.
At eight o’clock the drizzle had stopped and a wind was pushing at the stiff folds of the Colours.
At eight fifteen the General reappeared, a roll of bread in one hand, and he was rewarded by movement at last, Riflemen were stamping the life from the remains of a fire beneath the watchtower, then they picked up their packs, their weapons, and filed westward into the thorns. The black, spiny bushes seemed to swallow them up, hiding them from sight, but then, ten minutes later, they appeared in front of the Castle. The General stamped his feet. ‘Thank God those bastards are going.’ No Frenchman liked the Riflemen, the ‘grasshoppers’, who killed at a distance and seemed invulnerable to the musket fire of French skirmishers.
At half past eight the Colours were lowered from the gate-tower and the sentries disappeared from the Castle ramparts. They came out of the Castle gate, misshapen by their greatcoats, haversacks, packs, and canteens, and a mounted officer paraded them in ranks, the Riflemen who had come from the watchtower fell in beside them, and the whole group was marched to the road, turned westwards, and over the lip of the pass. Before the mounted officer dropped out of sight he turned, faced the French, and saluted with his sword.
The General grinned. ‘So that’s that. How many were there?’
An aide-de-camp snapped a telescope shut. ‘Fifty redcoats, sir, twenty grasshoppers.’
Dubreton sipped his coffee. ‘So Major Sharpe lost.’
‘Let’s be grateful for that.’ The General cupped his hands about his own coffee. ‘They must have gone in the night, leaving that rearguard.’
Another aide-de-camp was staring at the deserted watch-tower hill. ‘Sir?’
‘Pierre?’
‘They left the guns.’
The General yawned. ‘They didn’t have time to get them out. Those artillerymen marched all the way here for nothing.’ He laughed. It had been Dubreton’s guess that the artillerymen he had seen in the Castle had been brought to fetch the guns back from the high valley. He had further guessed that Sharpe had arranged for him to see the men so that the French might think the British had properly served artillery batteries. Dubreton felt a moment of idle regret. It would have been interesting to fight against Richard Sharpe.