To everyone’s surprise, most of the existing bridges and fords were not defended by the enemy. The officers could hardly believe their luck. Roger said: ‘Joseph is not Napoleon.’
The gunners, including Kit and Roger, moved the cannons across the river without meeting resistance and approached a village called Arinez, which was occupied by the enemy. They remained well out of range of musket fire, but soon the French artillery began to harry them from the village, which was up a slope. The British soldiers got behind the carriages and pushed the guns faster. Kit had to survey the ground and guide the guns to relatively level places where the recoil would not send them rolling back downhill. He was dangerously exposed but he was able to make himself do it.
It took five men to fire a cannon. Aiming was the job of the guncommander, usually a sergeant, equipped with a quadrant and a plumb line. The spongeman had the simple task of cleaning the inside of the brass barrel with a wet cloth on a long stick, to quench any left-behind embers and prevent premature ignition when the gun was reloaded. The loader then inserted the round into the barrel. The spongeman reversed his stick and used the dry end to ram the shot hard down the barrel, while the fourth soldier, the ventsman, blocked the touch hole with his thumb to prevent accidental detonation by a stray spark. When the charge was firmly in place, the ventsman pushed a sharpened stick through the touch hole to pierce the bag, then filled the vent with more gunpowder. Finally, when the commander was satisfied that the gun was well aimed, he would shout ‘Fire!’ and the fifth man would put the smouldering tip of his long slowmatch to the touch hole and the gun would fire.
The gun recoiled about six feet. Anyone foolish enough to get in the way was killed or maimed.
The crew immediately pulled and pushed the gun back into position and the process began all over again.
The team had to pause every ten or twelve shots to cool the gun with water. If it got too hot the gunpowder in the bag would explode as soon as it was pushed into the barrel, causing a misfire.
Kit had been told that an efficient team could fire about a hundred shots in a day-long battle.
Soon the guns were firing as fast as the crews could reload. They worked in a fog of dense smoke from the black powder used in the ammunition.
Kit went up and down behind the line of guns, troubleshooting. One crew managed to set fire to an insufficiently wetted sponge; another spilled water on the gunpowder; a third lost half its men to a French cannonball. Kit’s task was to get the guns firing again with minimum delay. He realized he was no longer frightened. This struck him as most peculiar, but he had no time to think about it.
The noise and the heat were overwhelming. Men cursed as they burned themselves by accidentally touching the gun barrels. All were deafened. Kit had noticed that long-serving artillery veterans became permanently deaf: now he knew why.
As soon as they had emptied an ammunition caisson it was sent back to the artillery park to be refilled. Meanwhile the crew used the second caisson.
It was hard to see what effect they were having, for the enemy positions were shrouded in smoke from their own guns. It was said that a cannonball aimed at a line of infantry would kill three men. If a red-hot shard from an exploding shell hit a box of gunpowder, it would kill many more.
The enemy fire was certainly hurting the British gunners. Men fell, often screaming. Guns and their carriages were wrecked. Female camp followers dragged away the wounded and the dead. In a distant corner of Kit’s mind, barely conscious, a terrible memory came alight: his father, crushed by Will Riddick’s cart, screaming every time they tried to move him. He could not quite thrust the picture out of his mind, but he was able to ignore it.
The allied infantry attacked Arinez from the far side and the British guns were ordered to cease fire, for fear of hitting their own people.
At last the French guns fell silent, and Kit guessed that meant the allies had won the battle for the village. He did not know how or why. Mostly he was astonished at the way he had lost himself in the job he had to do and had forgotten about the danger he was in. He had not been brave, he thought; just too busy to think about it.
The smoke had not completely cleared when the order came to move again. The horses and oxen were brought forward. As they were being put into harness, a group of officers rode by, their leader a tall, lean figure in a dusty general’s uniform. Someone said: ‘That’s Old Nosey!’
It must be Wellington, Kit thought. The man did, indeed, have a big nose, with a slight hook at the end.
‘Move on!’ Wellington shouted urgently.
A nearby colonel said: ‘In column or in line, sir?’
Wellington said impatiently: ‘Any how, but for God’s sake get moving!’ Then he rode on.
They moved the guns forward a mile; then, not far from a village that someone said was called Gomecha, they came up against a massive French battery. As they took position, more guns were brought to join them. Kit estimated there were at least seventy cannons on each side. There was so much smoke that the sergeants could not see their target, and had to aim by guesswork. Now the allied guns were grouped too close together, and French cannonballs found their targets despite the smoke.
A wagon bringing fresh supplies of ammunition crashed into a gun and damaged the carriage. Kit saw that the wheels and axle of the carriage were intact, and he was mending the shafts with wood when a shell landed on a neighbouring gun, striking the ammunition. Kit was knocked over by the blast, and the world went silent. He lay dazed, he did not know for how long, then struggled to his feet. His neck felt sore. He touched something sticky and his hand came away red with blood.
He resumed fixing the shafts. His hearing returned slowly.
The allied infantry advanced. The guns fired over their heads, hoping to disable the French guns, but despite their efforts Kit saw many infantrymen fall. Their surviving comrades just ran on, straight into the mouths of the enemy cannons. Yesterday Kit would have marvelled at their courage. Today he understood: they were past caring, as he was.
Then the French guns went quiet.
The allied artillery moved forward again, but this time they could not catch up with their own infantry. As the smoke cleared Kit sawthat the allied forces were spread across the width of the plain in a line that must have been two miles long. The line was advancing, and resistance seemed to be melting away. The gunners were told to halt and await fresh orders.
Kit suddenly realized he felt completely exhausted, and he lay on the ground. Stillness was the greatest luxury he had ever felt. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes against the sun.
After a while a voice said: ‘Oh my God, Kit, are you dead?’
It was Roger. Kit opened his eyes. ‘Not dead, not yet.’
He sprang to his feet and they hugged. They held the embrace for a few moments, then slapped each other on the back in a manly way, just for show.
