took the toothpick from his mouth to answer.
‘Even respectable women, I would have thought, make attractive companions to a good smoke and a glass of port.’ Vuillard, content that the cigar was drawing properly, leaned back and glanced down the table. ‘I have an idea,’ he said genially, ‘that I know precisely who is going to answer the next question. What time is first light tomorrow?’
There was a pause as the officers glanced at each other, then Pelletieu blushed. ‘Sunrise, sir,’ he said, ‘will be at twenty minutes past four, but it will be light enough to see at ten minutes to four.’
‘So clever,’ the blonde, who was called Annette, whispered to him.
‘And the moon state?’ Vuillard asked.
Pelletieu blushed an even deeper red. ‘No moon to speak of, sir. The last full moon was on the thirtieth of April and the next will be …’ His voice faded away as he became aware that the others about the table were amused by his erudition.
‘Do go on, Lieutenant,’ Vuillard said.
‘On the twenty-ninth of this month, sir, so it’s a waxing moon in its first quarter, sir, and very slight. No illumination in it. Not now.’
‘I like a dark night,’ Annette whispered to him.
‘You’re a veritable walking encyclopaedist, Lieutenant,’ Vuillard said, ‘so tell me what damage your shells did today?’
‘Very little, sir, I’m afraid.’ Pelletieu, almost overwhelmed by Annette’s perfume, looked as though he was about to faint. ‘That summit is prodigiously protected by boulders, sir. If they kept their heads down, sir, then they should have survived mostly intact, though I’m sure we killed one or two.’
‘Only one or two?’
Pelletieu looked abashed. ‘We needed a mortar, sir.’
Vuillard smiled. ‘When a man lacks instruments, Lieutenant, he uses what he has to hand. Isn’t that right, Annette?’ He smiled, then took a fat watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped open the lid. ‘How many rounds of shell do you have left?’
‘Thirty-eight, sir.’
‘Don’t use them all at once,’ Vuillard said, then raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. ‘Don’t you have work to do, Lieutenant?’ he asked. The work was to fire the howitzer through the night so that the ragged forces on the hilltop would get no sleep, then an hour before first light the gunfire would stop and Vuillard reckoned the enemy would all be asleep when his infantry attacked.
Pelletieu scraped his chair back. ‘Of course, sir, and thank you, sir.’
‘Thank you?’
‘For the supper, sir.’
Vuillard made a gracious gesture of acceptance. ‘I’m just sorry, Lieutenant, that you can’t stay for the entertainment. I’m sure Mademoiselle Annette would have liked to hear about your charges, your rammer and your sponge.’
‘She would, sir?’ Pelletieu asked, surprised.
‘Go, Lieutenant,’ Vuillard said, ‘just go.’ The Lieutenant fled, pursued by the sound of laughter, and the Brigadier shook his head. ‘God knows where we find them,’ he said. ‘We must pluck them from their cradles, wipe the mother’s milk from their lips and send them to war. Still, young Pelletieu knows his business.’ He dangled the watch on its chain for a second, then thrust it into a pocket. ‘First light at ten minutes to four, Major,’ he spoke to Dulong.
‘We’ll be ready,’ Dulong said. He looked sour, the failure of the previous night’s attack still galling him. The bruise on his face was dark.
‘Ready and rested, I hope?’ Vuillard said.
‘We’ll be ready,’ Dulong said again.
Vuillard nodded, but kept his watchful eyes on the infantry Major. ‘Amarante is taken,’ he said, ‘which means some of Loison’s men can return to Oporto. With luck, Major, that means we shall have enough force to march south on Lisbon.’
‘I hope so, sir,’ Dulong answered, uncertain where the conversation was going.
‘But General Heudelet’s division is still clearing the road to Vigo,’ Vuillard went on, ‘Foy’s infantry is scouring the mountains of partisans, so our forces will still be stretched, Major, stretched. Even if we get Delaborde’s brigades back from General Loison and even with Lorges’s dragoons, we shall be stretched if we want to march on Lisbon.’
‘I’m sure we’ll succeed all the same,’ Dulong said loyally.
‘But we need every man we can muster, Major, every man. And I do not want to detach valuable infantry to guard prisoners.’
There was silence round the table. Dulong gave a small smile as he understood the implications of the Brigadier’s words, but he said nothing.
‘Do I make myself clear, Major?’ Vuillard asked in a harder tone.
‘You do, sir,’ Dulong said.
‘Bayonets fixed then,’ Vuillard said, tapping ash from his cigar, ‘and use them, Major, use them well.’
Dulong looked up, his grim face unreadable. ‘No prisoners, sir.’ He did not inflect the words as a question.
‘That sounds like a very good idea,’ Vuillard said, smiling. ‘Now go and get some sleep.’
Major Dulong left and Vuillard poured more port. ‘War is cruel,’ he said sententiously, ‘but cruelty is sometimes necessary. The rest of you’ – he looked at the officers on both sides of the table – ‘can ready yourselves for the march back to Oporto. We should have this business finished by eight tomorrow morning, so shall we set a march time of ten o’clock?’
For by then the watchtower on the hill would have fallen. The howitzer would keep Sharpe’s men awake by firing through the night and in the dawn, as the tired men fought off sleep and a wolf-grey light seeped across the world’s rim, Dulong’s well-trained infantry would go in for the kill.
At dawn.
Sharpe had watched till the very last seep of twilight had gone from the hill, until there was nothing but bleak darkness, and only then, with Pendleton, Tongue and Harris as his companions, he edged past the outer stone wall and felt his way down the path. Harper had wanted to come, had even been upset at not being allowed to accompany Sharpe, but Harper would need to command the riflemen if Sharpe did not come back. Sharpe would have liked to take Hagman, but the old man was still not fully mended and so he had gone with Pendleton who was young, agile and cunning, and with Tongue and Harris who were both good shots and both intelligent. Each of them carried two rifles, but Sharpe had left his big cavalry sword with Harper for he knew that the heavy metal scabbard was likely to knock on stones and so betray his position.
It was hard, slow work going down the hill. There was a thin suggestion of a moon, but stray clouds continually covered it and even when it showed clearly it had no power to light their path and so they felt their way down, saying nothing, groping ahead for each step and thereby making more noise than Sharpe liked, but the night was full of noises: insects, the sigh of the wind across the hill’s flank and the distant cry of a vixen. Hagman would have coped better, Sharpe thought, for he moved through the dark with the grace of a poacher, while all four of the riflemen going down the hill’s long slope were from towns. Pendleton, Sharpe knew, was from Bristol where he had joined the army rather than face transportation for being a pickpocket. Tongue, like Sharpe, came from London, but Sharpe could not remember where Harris had grown up and, when they stopped to catch their breath and search the darkness for any hint of light, Sharpe asked him.
‘Lichfield, sir,’ Harris whispered, ‘where Samuel Johnson came from.’
‘Johnson?’ Sharpe could not quite place the name. ‘Is he in the first battalion?’
‘Very much so, sir,’