He was not in love with her. He might be jealous of her, he might seek her company, but he did not love her. He had said so, on that morning when he thought he went to death at El Matarife’s hand, but he knew it was not true. He wanted her. He flickered about her as a moth flew about a bright flame, but to love someone was to know them, and he did not know her. He wondered if anyone knew her.
She had said she loved him, but he knew she did not. She had wanted him to break his honour for her, and she had thought the word love would make him do it. He knew she would use him and discard him, but nevertheless he now walked, sword in hand, towards the waiting muskets and he did it for her.
The sword felt heavy in his hand. He wondered why every new battle was harder than the last. Luck had to stop somewhere, he supposed, and why not here where the French had already broken one attack and waited for the next? He thought, as he shouted the column forward, that he lived on borrowed time. He wondered, if he died, whether Helene would hear that he had lived a few more days for her, and that he had died in the stupid, vain, selfish hope of seeing her again.
His boots swished in the meadow grass. Bees were busy at the clover. He saw a snail with a black and white shell that had been crushed by an infantryman’s boot. The grass was littered with cartridges, spent musket balls, discarded ramrods, and fallen shakos.
He looked up at the village. The Light Company was provoking the musket fire, keeping the acrid smoke thick. Behind him the column marched in good, tight order. He took a deep breath. `Talion! Double!’
The bullets plucked the air about him. He heard a scream behind him, a curse, and he was running fast now, the village close, and, through the smoke, he could at last see the alley’s mouth. It was blocked with a cart, with furniture, and flames stabbed from the barricade and he shouted for the firing party to break to one side.
He heard their volley. He saw a Frenchman go backwards from the barricade’s top and then there were only a few yards to go, more bullets flamed from the village, but instead of a thin line attacking it was a column thick enough to soak up the French fire. Sharpe gathered himself for the jump. He would not wait to pull the barricade down. `Jump!’
The air was filled with the hammering of muskets. Sharpe jumped onto the cart, swept down with his sword at a stabbing bayonet, while about him the British were clawing up the barricade, dragging the furniture down, trying to scramble over the heaped timber and screaming at the enemy. A musket fired beside his ear, deafening him, a bayonet tore at his sleeve as more men pushed behind, forcing him over, and he fell, flailing with the sword, rolling down the French side of the barricade as the enemy bayonets reached for him.
He twisted sideways and suddenly men of the South Essex were jumping over him, driving the French back, and he scrambled up, went on, and shouted at the men to watch the rooftops. No one heard him. They were mad with the battle-lust of fear, wanting to kill before they were killed, and it was that spirit that had driven them over the barricade and which drove them now into the tight, small streets of Gamarra Mayor.
A door opened in a house, a man stabbed with a bayonet and Sharpe lunged, twisted, and he could feel the warm blood on his hand as his sword found the enemy’s neck. He dragged the blade clear of the falling body. `Kill the bastards!’ The alley was thick with men, pushing, shouting, swearing, stabbing, screaming. Men were trampled when they were wounded. The front rank clawed at the enemy. The close alley walls seemed to magnify every shout and shot.
There was a volley of muskets from the alley’s far end and a French counter-attack, readied against just such a breakthrough, came towards them.