‘Pleasure, Mister Sharpe.’ The wardrobe teetered dangerously on the balustrade. ‘Not yet,’ Sharpe said, then held the rocket’s shortened fuse to the flame. The paper caught light. He waited two heartbeats, then tossed it towards the crowded Frenchmen at the back of the vestibule, and at the same moment O’Farrell heaved and the wardrobe slammed down with another almighty crash. ‘Now, lads!’ Sharpe said, and started down the stairs, his rifle slung on his shoulder.
Panicked shouts sounded at the back of the hallway as the rocket began searing its crazy way among the Frenchmen’s legs. Some muskets fired at the men following Sharpe down the stairs, but most of the Frenchmen had been scared by the splintering crash of the wardrobe and now by the fizzing mad rocket that spewed its flame tail until it lodged in the heap of broken furniture and exploded just as Sharpe reached the door. He pulled back the two bolts as Pat Bee hauled the corpse to one side.
‘Fast, lads,’ Sharpe said, and drew his sword. ‘Fire at them as we run! Now come on!’
The oak wreath had been sewn back onto his old faded jacket and he remembered the Duke saying it had been given for insanity rather than bravery, and now he was doing something equally insane. Lanier had over five hundred men on the forecourt, and Sharpe was attacking them with just thirty, but as he erupted from the portico he saw that the company immediately in front of him was still reloading their muskets. So maybe there was a god who looked after lunatics.
Pat Bee was shouting in a high voice, though Sharpe could not make out any words. Pat Harper was beside Sharpe, the volley gun held at his waist. Sharpe had his sword drawn, his loaded rifle banging against his hip as he ran. ‘Kill them!’ he shouted, and Pat Harper pulled the volley gun’s trigger and the balls hit the two-deep French line like a blast of canister. Bee’s musket hammered. The French were turning, some falling as more shots hit them, then Sharpe backswung the sword at an officer who just stood with mouth open in surprise. A man with his ramrod halfway down a barrel stopped to unsheathe his bayonet and Sharpe rammed the sword at him, twisted the blade, and was past him. There was a strip of flower bed at the vineyard’s edge and Sharpe leaped it and started running down one of the alleys between the vines. ‘South Essex!’ he bellowed as he ran. ‘On your feet!’ He kept running. Shots came at him from the left, the balls making a flickering noise as they whipped through the vines. None hit him and he was still shouting. ‘South Essex! On your feet! Stand! Fix swords!’
He saw them standing and saw too that they were a long way down the shallow slope, but at least they were on their feet and forming into companies, though the files were too far apart because of the vines. Another French volley gouted smoke and balls that snatched some of the men back from the crude line. ‘To me!’ Sharpe bellowed. ‘South Essex! To me!’
A voice shouted from behind the ragged line, though Sharpe could neither identify who had shouted nor make out the words, but he suspected it was Morris ordering them to stay where they were because he saw men look around uncertainly, saw them hesitate. ‘To me, now! Move your bloody selves!’
He turned left and forced his way across the vines, tearing and trampling the plants from their chestnut stakes. ‘Captain Jefferson!’
The Light Company, having broken through the French battalion, had stopped where Sharpe had turned to his left. ‘Fire at the bastards!’ Harper shouted, unslinging his rifle. The shout reminded Sharpe that he had a loaded rifle and he slid it from his shoulder, pointed it up the slope, and pulled the trigger. ‘Captain Jefferson!’ he bellowed again, and suddenly Jefferson was in front of him. The French had started their platoon volleys again, and the balls shredded the vines or whipped overhead. ‘What the hell is happening?’ Sharpe snarled.
‘Those volleys are happening, sir,’ Jefferson said.
‘So? We can fire just as fast, if not faster. Beat the buggers down.’
‘The cannon didn’t help,’ Jefferson muttered. ‘My company took a full load of canister.’
‘I told you to attack fast. If you stand around and give the buggers targets they’ll fillet us. Get up there and kill them!’
‘The Major thought that was a bad idea, sir.’
‘Morris said that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well bugger Morris, I’m in charge now.’ He slung the rifle on his shoulder and drew the sword again. ‘South Essex!’ he shouted. ‘We’re going to kill those bastards. We’ll do it fast! Follow me! Now!’
The old anger had come back to him, the same anger that had driven him through Flanders, India, Portugal and Spain. For a time he had thought the anger was gone, calmed by Normandy and Lucille, by having a place he could call home, but it was still there. It was a fighting anger which went back to the streets of East London, to the callous brutes who had run the foundling home, who had called him a common bastard, unwanted, a guttersnipe. Well the unwanted guttersnipe would show the bastards who could fight harder, and at the top of the vineyard was a man who reckoned he was Sharpe’s equal as a soldier, if not his better, and Sharpe would bloody well show him that a decent county regiment from England led by a guttersnipe could hammer the Emperor’s precious devils into bloody ruin. ‘Come on!’ he bellowed and began to run. He did not look around to see if the battalion was following him, he did not need to, he could hear they were behind him, trampling up the slope, some shouting incoherently, and he could see Harper leading the Light Company to his left.
The madness was on him, the madness that had driven him at Talavera to snatch an Eagle, or at Badajoz, where he had crossed the ditch of death and climbed the breach in a welter of blood and rage. A hundred paces to go, and a small part of his mind knew that the nearer he went to the French line the greater the risk of death, and he had a sudden vision of Lucille, so kind, so beautiful, so loving and so much a hater of the war that had killed her husband. And Sharpe had a son too, and that thought almost checked him, almost made him stop, but he kept running. ‘If I die,’ he told Jefferson, who had kept pace with him, ‘tell Lucille she’s the best woman ever.’