Sharpe met Hogan that Sunday night. The Major was busy. Colonel Fletcher’s wound was keeping the Chief Engineer in his tent and Hogan had taken much of his work. The Irishman was gloomy. ‘We’ll be defeated by the rain, Richard.’ Sharpe said nothing. The spirit of the army was crushed by the water; they wanted to strike back, to hear their own guns firing at the French, but the guns, like the army, were bogged down. Hogan stared into the wet, pelting night. ‘If only it would stop.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘Then we give up. We’ve lost.’
Outside, in the cold night, the rain smashed down, dripped heavily from the lip of Hogan’s tent, and the slow drops seemed to Sharpe to be the drumbeats of defeat. Unthinkable defeat.
CHAPTER 17
On Tuesday afternoon it stopped raining.
There were suddenly scraps of blue sky between the tattered clouds and, like some beast saved from imminent drowning, the army heaved itself out of the mud and attacked the trenches with renewed energy.
They hauled the guns over the hill that night. The ground was still an almost impenetrable sludge, but they hauled on ropes, thrust wicker beneath reluctant wheels, and with an enthusiasm endowed by the break in the weather, the troops took the vast twenty-four-pounders to the newly-dug batteries.
In the morning, in a miraculously clear dawn, there was a cheer from the British camp. The first shot had been fired and they were hitting back! Twenty-eight siege guns were in place, protected by gabions, and the Engineers directed the artillery officers so that the iron balls hammered at the base of the Trinidad bastion. The French guns tried to destroy the siege guns and the valley above the grey, placid floodwaters of the Rivillas was shrouded with smoke that swirled as the cannon balls pierced through the mist.
At the end of the first day, when an evening breeze drifted the smoke southwards, a hole was visible in the masonry of the bastion. It was not much of a hole, more of a chipped dent, surrounded by smaller shot scars. Sharpe stared at the damage through Major Forrest’s telescope and gave a humorless laugh. ‘Another three months, sir, and they might notice us. ‘
Forrest said nothing. He was afraid of Sharpe’s mood, of the depression that had come with idleness. The Rifleman had hardly any duties. Windham seemed to have abandoned the wives’ parade, the mules were in pasture, and Sharpe’s time hung heavily. Forrest had spoken to Windham, but the Colonel had shaken his head. ‘We’re all bored, Forrest. The assault will cure all.’ Then the Colonel had taken his fox hounds south for a day’s hunting, and with him half the Battalion’s officers. Forrest had tried, unsuccessfully, to cheer Sharpe up. He looked now at Sharpe’s morose profile. ‘How’s Sergeant Harper?”
‘Private Harper’s getting better, sir. Another three or four days and he’ll be on duty.’
Forrest sighed. ‘I can’t get used to calling him “Private”. It doesn’t seem right.’ Then he blushed. ‘Oh dear. I suppose I’ve put my foot in it.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘No, sir. I’m getting used to being a Lieutenant.’ It was not true, but Forrest needed reassurance. ‘Are you comfortable, sir?’
‘Very. It’s a splendid view.’ They were watching the valley and the city, waiting for the attack that would be made just after dark. Half the army were on the hilltop, in the trench or the new, half finished batteries, and the French must have known that something was about to happen. It was not difficult to guess what was intended. The British guns were more than half a mile from the Trinidad bastion, too far to be truly effective, and the Engineers needed to cut that range in half. That meant building a second parallel, with new batteries, right on the edge of the floodwaters, just where the French had built the Picurina Fort. Tonight the fort would be attacked. Sharpe had desperately hoped that the Fourth Division, his own, would be chosen, but instead the Third and Light would go forward in the darkness and Sharpe was merely a spectator. Forrest looked down the slope. ‘It shouldn’t be difficult.’