Chapter 25
‘God save Ireland!’ Patrick Harper’s favourite oath, saved only for the things that truly astonished him, was hardly sufficient to describe what he saw as he crossed the shallow crest where the grass was still scorched from the French guns that had made the slaughter on the bridge. He tried another. ‘God save England, too.’
Sharpe laughed. The sight, for a few seconds, had taken his mind from La Marquesa.
Angel stared open-mouthed. An army was running a race. Thousands and thousands of Frenchmen, all order gone, ran between the river and the city, streaming eastwards, abandoning muskets, packs, anything that would slow them.
From Sharpe’s right, cavalry approached, British cavalry who stared and laughed at the tide of panicked men. Their Major came towards Sharpe and grinned. ‘It’s cruel to charge them!’
Sharpe smiled. ‘Do you have a glass, Major?’
The cavalryman offered Sharpe a small spyglass. The Rifleman opened it, trained it, and saw what he thought he had seen with his naked eye. The road was blocked. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of wagons that were stuck in the fields east of Vitoria. He could see carriages there, their windows red from the setting sun. There was a woman there, and a treasure there. He closed the glass and gave it back to the cavalryman. ‘You see those wagons, Major?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a god-damned fortune there. The gold of a bloody empire.’
The cavalryman stared at Sharpe as if he was mad, then slowly smiled. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. It’s a king’s ransom.’
The cavalryman looked at Angel, ragged on his stolen horse, then at Harper, huge on his. ‘You think you can keep up with us?’
‘Think you can keep up with us?’ Sharpe smiled. In truth he needed these Hussars to help cut through the panicked mass of fugitives who still streamed between them and the city.
The Major grinned, brushed at his moustaches and turned to look at his men. ‘Troop!’
The trumpeter challenged the sky, the troopers drew their sabres and walked the horses forward. The men were in ranks of ten, knee to knee. The Major drew his sabre and looked at Sharpe. ‘This is going to be better than a strong scent on a fine day!’ He looked at his trumpeter and nodded.
The trumpet sounded the gallop. There was no other way to go through the flood of fugitives and the Hussars shouted, raised their sabres, and plunged into the fleeing army.
If Sharpe had not been so concerned for the fate of La Marquesa he would have remembered that ride for ever. The Hussars cut into the French retreat like men going into a dark river, and, just as in a river, the current took them downstream. The French, seeing their enemy coming, parted before the horses and only those who could not move fast enough were cut down by the curved blades.
They went like steeplechasers. They crossed a small stream, hooves shattering water silver in the air, scrambled up a field bank, jumped a stone wall, and the men whooped like maniacs and the French split before them. The hooves hurled mud higher than the guidon that was held aloft by the standard bearer.
There were guns everywhere, abandoned field guns with blackened muzzles, their wheels mired in the soft earth. The cavalry rode in the middle of their enemies and not a hand was lifted against them.
There were carts overturned, mules running free, wounded men crawling eastwards, and everywhere there were women. They called for their men, for their husbands or lovers, and their voices were forlorn and hopeless.
The Major, breaking free of the French rout, cut his men towards the wagons. Sharpe shouted at Harper and Angel, pulled left, and reined Carbine in. He had stopped by a dark blue carriage, its wheels sunk into soft turf, its varnished panels spattered with mud. He stared at the coat of arms that was painted on the carriage door. He knew it. He had seen it first on another carriage in Salamanca’s splendid square.
It was La Marquesa’s carriage, and it was empty.
The upholstery had been split open and the horses led away. One window was broken. He peered inside and saw no blood on the torn cushions of the seats. One silver trace chain was left in the mud.
He stared into the havoc of wagons and carriages. She could be anywhere in that chaos of shouting and theft, of musket shots and screams, or she could be gone.
Harper looked at the carriage and frowned, ‘Sir?’
‘Patrick?’
‘Would that be her Ladyship’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that why we’re here?’
‘Yes. I want to find her. God knows how.’
The Irishman stared at the baggage park. ‘You say there’s treasure here?’
‘A god-damned fortune.’
‘Seems a good place to start looking, sir.’
Sharpe urged his horse towards the wagons. He was looking for the great mane of golden hair amidst the chaos that had once been King Joseph’s baggage train. ‘Helene!’
A box of fine porcelain was spilt ahead of him, the plates smashed into a thousand gilded shards. A woman, blood streaming from her scalp, hurled a second dinner service out of its packing cases, looking for gold.
A French soldier lay dying, his throat half cut by a Spaniard who ripped with his knife at the man’s pockets.
He found a watch, a stolen masterpiece made by Breguet in Paris. He put it to his ear, heard no tick, and furiously smashed the crystal with the hilt of his knife.
‘Helene!’
Sharpe’s horse trampled on leather-bound books, books that had been made before the printing press had been invented, books made by patient men over months of work, with exquisitely painted capitals that were now ground into the mire.
A tapestry that had been made in Flanders when Queen Elizabeth was a child was torn by two women to make blankets. Another woman, wine bottle in hand, danced between the wagons with the gilded coat of a Royal Chamberlain on her shoulders. She wore nothing else. A French soldier, drunk on brandy, plucked the coat from her and tore at the gilt braid. The naked woman hit him with her bottle and snatched the coat back.
‘Helene!’
Silver Spanish dollars, each worth five English shillings, were strewn like pebbles between the wagons. No one wanted silver when there was so much gold.
‘Helene!’
Two men bent, twisted, and hacked apart a golden candelabra, one of a set of four that had been given to King Phillip II by Queen Mary of England when she had married the Spanish King.
‘Helene!’
Two Frenchwomen, abandoning their army and their children for the sake of a box of jewels, prised the stones from a reliquary that contained the shin-bone of John the Baptist. The jewels were glass, replacements for the real stones that had been stolen three centuries before. They dropped the shin-bone into the mud where it was snapped up by a dog.
One man shot another to get a wooden box that the victim had been dragging away. The murderer took it beneath a wagon, reloaded his musket, and blew the lock off. It contained horseshoes and nails.
‘Helene!’
It was hopeless. The wagons seethed with people. He could see nothing. Sharpe swore. A four year old child, abandoned by its mother, was trampled by a rush of men towards an untouched wagon. The child cried, unheard and unseen, its ribs broken.
‘Helene!’
A Frenchman ran at Sharpe, musket held like a club, and tried to knock the Rifleman from his horse. Sharpe snarled, chopped down with the sword, knocked the musket aside, and chopped again. The man screamed, the sword cut into his neck, shearing his ear off, and then Harper’s gun butt slammed into the other side of his head. The man fell, golden francs spilling from his pockets, and in an instant he was set on by a score of people who slashed with knives and scrambled in the mud for gold.
There were acres of wagons! Hundreds of them. Many as the plunderers were, there were still scores of untouched wagons.
‘Helene!’
He galloped down between a row of wagons, turned into the next row and gal
loped back. Silver dollars were beneath Carbine’s hooves. A woman tossed and unrolled a bolt of silk, scarlet in the failing sunlight, silk that arched and fell into the mud.
A man threw crates of silver cutlery off a wagon, spilling them into the mud, searching for gold.
‘Helene!’
A woman staggered towards Sharpe, blood flowing in a dozen rivulets down her head and matting her hair. She had found her box of gold, but a man had taken it from her. She cried, not from the pain, but from loss. She picked up some silver forks and thrust them into her dress.
‘Helene!’
A man, trousers at his knees, was on top of a woman by an overturned coach. Sharpe hit him with the flat of the sword, trying to see the woman’s face. She had none. It was just blood from a cut throat. The man tried to scramble away, but Sharpe sliced the sword in a backswing and cut the man’s throat as he’had cut his victim’s.
A pretty girl, incongruously dressed in tight French cavalry uniform, danced on top of a wagon and whirled a rope of pearls. A British cavalryman laughed with her, protecting her, and then bent to scoop more pearls from a box. A horde of people, seeing the treasure, scrambled like rats up to the wagon’s top.
‘Helene!’
Sharpe put his heels back, shouting at the plunderers to clear the way. A drunk, a bottle of priceless wine in each hand, staggered in Carbine’s path and the horse threw the man down. Sharpe held his balance, urged the horse on, and never noticed the painting that the hooves trampled. Van Dyck had worked long on the canvas which was pulled out of the mud by a man who needed a tarpaulin to cover a mule-load of plunder.
‘Helene!’
A box of Legion d’Honneur medals was tossed to the crowd. The Spaniards, laughing, attached the medals to hang beneath their horses’ tails. Angel caught one and laughed at the trophy.
A British cavalryman ripped a tarpaulin from a wagon to find pictures beneath. They had been cut from their frames. He pulled a Rubens from the top of the pile to see if it concealed gold. It did not, and he rode on, looking for better plunder.
A golden clock, made in Augsburg three hundred years before, that showed the houses of the zodiac, the phases of the moon, as well as the time, was hacked apart by men with bayonets for the sake of its golden case. One of them, piercing his palm with the clock’s dragon hand, smashed at it with the butt of his musket. The brass and iron clockwork, that had been cared for over centuries, was scattered in the mud. Its jewelled astrolabe was carried off by a British sergeant.
‘Helene!’
They searched row after row of wagons until Sharpe felt the hopelessness rise in him. He reined in and looked at Harper. ‘It’s no good.’
The Irishman shrugged. He looked eastwards into the valley of the Pamplona Road
that was thick with fugitives. ‘She’d have been foolish to stay around here, sir.’ That had been his private opinion ever since they began this frantic, useless galloping amongst the stranded wagons. He wondered just what had happened to Sharpe in the last weeks. Somehow he was not surprised that the golden-haired woman was involved; Sharpe always had been a fool for women.
Sharpe swore. He wiped his sword on his leg and sheathed it. A bare-footed British infantry Captain walked past. He carried his boots carefully, both boots filled to the top with gold twenty franc pieces. Three of his men cheerfully guarded him.
Another woman dressed in French cavalry uniform called to Sharpe for protection. Sharpe ignored her. He was staring about him, watching the plunderers tear at wagons. He tried to see La Marquesa’s golden hair. A British infantryman, one of the many who now swarmed into the baggage, grabbed the woman’s hand. She clung to him and went happily enough with her new guardian.
Harper edged his horse close to the nearest wagon. If Major Sharpe wanted to look for a woman, Harper might as well look for a marriage settlement. The wagon had words stencilled on its backboard. Domaine Exterieur de S.M. L’Empereur. He wondered what they meant, then drew his knife, slashed the tarpaulin, and started working at the first box.
Sharpe watched the British infantry come like children into this wonderland of treasure. He thought of La Marquesa’s wagons and wondered if they too were being stripped and if she was trying to protect them from the muskets and bayonets. He stood in his stirrups. God damn it! Her carriage was here, she must be close by; and then he supposed that she must have fled eastwards and abandoned her wealth. Or perhaps Ducos had taken her. He swore again. He wished he would meet Ducos in this chaos for one brief moment, a moment long enough to use the heavy sword.
‘God in his Irish heaven! Jesus! Mary, Mother of God, would you be looking at this. God save Ireland!’
Sharpe turned. Harper held up a diamond necklace. The Irishman looked at Sharpe with pure delight. ‘Open your haversack, sir.’
‘Patrick?’
‘For Christ’s sake, open your haversack!’ Sharpe frowned. He was thinking of La Marquesa. ‘Mr Sharpe, sir!’
‘What?’ He snapped the word, still trying to see the golden mane of hair in the failing light.
‘Give us your bloody haversack!’ Harper shouted it as if he was addressing a particularly stupid recruit. ‘Give it to me!’ Sharpe obeyed, hardly knowing what he was doing. Harper called to Angel to help him. They tethered their horses to the wagon and stood on the load to lever open the locked chests. Harper was emptying the first-chest of small leather boxes, each lined with white silk. He tossed the leather boxes away, keeping the jewels that they contained. He worked fast, knowing as a soldier to take swift advantage of good luck. He opened leather box after leather box, taking out necklaces, tiaras, bracelets, earrings, drops, brooches, scabbard furniture, enamelled decorations studded with stones, enough pieces for Sharpe’s haversack, his own, and Angel’s pockets. He buckled Sharpe’s haversack and tossed it to his officer. ‘A welcome home present, sir.’
Sharpe slung the haversack on his shoulder. ‘Where the hell is she?’
‘Jesus knows.’ Harper wrenched open another box and swore. The box had velvet napkins folded carefully between tissues. Harper spilt it onto the ground and worked his knife beneath a new lid. ‘God in his heaven!’ The box had gold altar furniture in it; ewers, cups, candlesticks, a jewelled monstrance, and a great golden crucifix. He took the smaller items. Angel had found a set of duelling pistols, their butts chased with gold. He pushed them into his belt.
‘Patrick!’ Sharpe’s voice was urgent.
‘Sir?’
‘Follow me!’
Sharpe had put Carbine into a gallop, disappearing into the chaos. Harper had caught a glimpse of his officer’s face, and he thought that never had he seen Sharpe look so grim and savage. The Irishman looked at Angel. ‘Come on, lad.’
Harper mounted his horse. He had made himself rich beyond the wildest dreams of the wildest Irishman that ever marched to war, and, like a true friend, he had made Sharpe rich too. Of course the Englishman had not noticed, but that was Mr Sharpe. Mr Sharpe was thinking of someone else, of another treasure. Harper looked into the seething mass of plunderers. ‘Where the hell is he?’
Sharpe had disappeared. Harper stood in his stirrups and stared about the seething mass of people who swarmed around the half-stripped wagons. The setting sun bathed the whole scene in a vivid, blood-red light. There was laughter and tears all about him. ‘Where the hell is he?’
‘There, senor’ Angel was still standing on the wagon. He pointed south. ‘El Matarifel’
‘What?’
The boy was pointing at a band of horsemen. In their lead was a man who looked half-beast, a hulking brute with a face of thick hair, a man who had a woman held on her belly over his saddle. The woman, Harper saw, had hair the colour of fine gold.
Harper urged his horse through the crowd. He saw how many armed men were with the bearded man. He saw too, that Sharpe was riding alone towards them and he knew that Sharpe, in this savage mood, would think nothing of taking on all those horsemen with his sword. Only one thing puzzled Har
per and that was the presence, in Sharpe’s left hand, of a great length of silver chain. Harper cocked his seven-barrelled gun and rode, a rich man, to the fight.
Chapter 26
Sharpe had seen El Matarife. The Partisan, with a group of his men, was stripping one of the French wagons that had brought the defeated army’s arrears of pay. Some of his men unloaded the gold twenty franc pieces, the rest kept other looters away. El Matarife had La Marquesa over his saddle.
Sharpe knew he could not defeat all of them. There were twenty muskets there that would snatch him from the saddle and leave her to the mercy of the bearded man. Yet El Matarife, Sharpe knew, would not be able to resist a challenge to his manhood. There was one way, and one way only, that this fight must be fought.
He swerved Carbine towards La Marquesa’s abandoned carriage. He drew his sword and, reaching the vehicle, he leaned down, grasped the last trace chain, and hacked with his sword at the leather strap which held it to the splinter-bar.
He looped the chain in his left hand, and turned towards his enemy.
Weeks before, he thought, he had been foolish enough to accept a challenge to a duel. Now he would issue the challenge.
He rode towards the wagon, and the men who ripped at the chests stopped when they saw him coming. They called to their leader and El Matarife, who had been told that this man was dead, crossed himself and stared at the tall Rifleman who came out of the scarlet lit chaos. ‘Shoot him!’
But no one moved. The Rifleman had tossed a silver chain onto the ground into the mud that was thick with unwanted silver dollars, and he stared with savage loathing at the bearded man. ‘Are you a coward, Matarife? Do you only fight women?’
Still none of them moved. Those who had been scooping handfuls of gold from the broken chests stared at the tall Englishman who, slowly, his eyes on El Matarife, dismounted. Sharpe unbuckled his sword. He laid it, with his haversack, beside the wheel of the wagon.
El Matarife looked down at the chain, then back to Sharpe as the Rifleman looped the silver links about his upper left arm. Sharpe left a length of the chain to swing free from his arm. ‘Are you a coward, Matarife?’