Vicente considered that argument, then nodded to acknowledge its force. ‘If you like,’ he said, ‘I will go down and ask to see the paper.’
‘There isn’t a piece of paper,’ Sharpe said, ‘and none of us are going off this hilltop.’
Vicente paused. ‘Is that an order, senhor?’
‘That is an order,’ Sharpe said. ‘We’re staying.’
‘Then we stay,’ Vicente said. He clapped Macedo on the shoulder and the two went back to their men so Vicente could tell them what had happened.
Harper sat beside Sharpe. ‘Are you sure now?’
‘Of course I’m not bloody sure, Pat,’ Sharpe said testily, ‘but I think he’s lying. He never even asked me how many casualties we had up here! If he was on our side he’d ask that, wouldn’t he?’
Harper shrugged as if he could not answer that question. ‘So what happens if we leave?’
‘They make us prisoners. March us off to bloody France.’
‘Or send us home?’
‘If the war is over, Pat, they’ll send us home, but if the war is over then someone else will tell us. A Portuguese official, someone. Not him, not Christopher. And if the fighting’s over, why give us just an hour? We’d have the rest of our lives to get off this hill, not one hour.’ Sharpe stared down the slope where the last of the French bodies was being removed by a squad of infantrymen who had climbed the path with a flag of truce and no weapons. Dulong had led them and he had thought to bring two spades so that Sharpe’s men could bury their corpses: the two Portuguese killed by the howitzer in the dawn attack and Rifleman Donnelly who had been lying on the hilltop under a pile of stones ever since Sharpe had beaten Dulong’s men off the summit.
Vicente had sent Sergeant Macedo and three men to dig his two graves and Sharpe had given the second spade to Williamson. ‘Digging the grave will be the end of your punishment,’ he had said. Ever since the confrontation in the wood Sharpe had been giving Williamson extra duties, keeping the man busy and trying to wear his spirit down, but Sharpe reckoned Williamson had been punished enough. ‘And leave your rifle here,’ Sharpe added. Williamson had snatched the spade, dropped his rifle with unnecessary force and, accompanied by Dodd and Harris, gone downhill to where there was enough soil above the rock to make an adequate grave. Harper and Slattery had carried the dead man down from the hilltop and rolled him into the hole and then Harper had said a prayer and Slattery had bowed his head and now Williamson, stripped to his shirtsleeves, was shovelling the soil back into the grave while Dodd and Harris watched the French carry their last casualties away.
Harper also watched the French. ‘What happens if they bring a mortar?’ he asked.
‘We’re buggered,’ Sharpe said, ‘but a lot can happen before a mortar gets here.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sharpe said irritably. He really did not know, any more than he knew what to do. Christopher had been very persuasive and it was only a streak of stubbornness in Sharpe that made him so certain the Colonel was lying. That and the look in Major Dulong’s eyes. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, Pat, maybe I’m wrong. Trouble is I like it here.’
Harper smiled. ‘You like it here?’
‘I like being away from the army. Captain Hogan’s all right, but the rest? I can’t stand the rest.’
‘Jack puddings,’ Harper said flatly, meaning officers.
‘I’m better on my own,’ Sharpe said, ‘and out here I’m on my own. So we’re staying.’
‘Aye,’ Harper said, ‘and I think you’re right.’
‘You do?’ Sharpe sounded surprised.
‘I do,’ Harper said, ‘mind you, my mother never reckoned I was any good at thinking.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘Go and clean your rifle, Pat.’
Cooper had boiled a can of water and some of the riflemen used it to swill out their weapons’ barrels. Every shot left a little layer of caked powder that would eventually build up and make the rifle unusable, but hot water dissolved the residue. Some riflemen preferred to piss down the barrel. Hagman used the boiling water, then scraped at his barrel with his ramrod. ‘You want me to clean yours, sir?’ he asked Sharpe.
‘It’ll wait, Dan,’ Sharpe said, then saw Sergeant Macedo and his men come back and he wondered where his own gravediggers were and so he went to the northernmost redoubt from where he could see Harris and Dodd stamping the earth down over Donnelly’s body while Williamson leaned on the spade. ‘Aren’t you finished?’ Sharpe shouted at them. ‘Hurry!’
‘Coming, sir!’ Harris called, and he and Dodd picked up their jackets and started up the hill. Williamson hefted the spade, looked as if he was about to follow and then, quite suddenly, turned and ran down the hill.
‘Jesus!’ Harper appeared beside Sharpe and raised his rifle.
Sharpe pushed it down. He was not trying to save Williamson’s life, but there was a truce on the hill and even a single rifle shot could be construed as breaking the truce and the howitzer could answer the shot while Dodd and Harris were still on the open slope.
‘The bastard!’ Hagman watched Williamson run recklessly down the hill as though he was trying to outrun the expected bullet. Sharpe felt a terrible sense of failure. He had not liked Williamson, but even so it was the officer who had failed when a man ran. The officer would not get punished, of course, and the man, if he were ever caught, would be shot, but Sharpe knew that this was his failure. It was a reproof to his command.
Harper saw the stricken look on Sharpe’s face and did not understand it. ‘We’re best off without the bastard, sir,’ he said.
Dodd and Harris looked dumbfounded and Harris even turned as if he wanted to chase Williamson until Sharpe called him back. ‘I should never have sent Williamson to do that job,’ he said bitterly.
‘Why not?’ Harper said. ‘You weren’t to know he’d run.’
‘I don’t like losing men,’ Sharpe said bitterly.
‘It’s not your fault!’ Harper protested.
‘Then whose is it?’ Sharpe asked angrily. Williamson had vanished into the French ranks, presumably to join Christopher, and the only small consolation was that he had not been able to take his rifle with him. But it was still failure, and Sharpe knew it. ‘Best get under cover,’ he told Harper. ‘Because they’ll start that damn gun again soon.’
The howitzer fired ten minutes before the hour was up, though as no one on the hilltop possessed a watch they did not realize it. The shell struck a boulder just below the lowest redoubt and ricocheted up into the sky where it exploded in a gout of grey smoke, flame and whistling shards of shattered casing. One scrap of hot iron buried itself in the stock of Dodd’s rifle, the rest rattled on rocks.
Sharpe, still reproaching himself for Williamson’s desertion, was watching the main road in the far valley. There was dust there and he could just make out horsemen riding from the north west, from the Oporto road. Was it a mortar coming? If it was, he thought, then he would have to think about making an escape. Maybe, if they went fast, they could break through the dragoon cordon to the west and get into the high ground where the rocky terrain would make things hard for horsemen, but it would likely prove a bloody passage for the first half-mile. Unless he could try it at night? But if that was a mortar approaching then it would be in action long before nightfall. He stared at the distant road, cursing the shortcomings of Christopher’s telescope, and persuaded himself that he could see no kind of vehicle, whether gun carriage or mortar wagon, among the horsemen, but they were very far off and he could not be certain.
‘Mister Sharpe, sir?’ It was Dan Hagman. ‘Can I have a go at the bastards?’
Sharpe