‘If he survived,’ Frederickson said grimly. ‘And if anyone will take him seriously. And even then the Army will have to go on its knees to the Navy and beg them to risk one little boat.’
‘Bugger Bampfylde,’ Sharpe said. ‘I hope he gets the pox.’
‘Amen.’
A twelve-pounder ball crashed into the gate and there was a pause, a cracking sound like a bone breaking, then the grumbling, tumbling, roaring slide as tons of masonry collapsed inwards and downwards. The two officers stared at each other, imagining the stones thumping and sliding into the wet ditch, then settling in a shambolic mound as the dust, started from old mortar, was soaked by the rain.
‘They have a breach,’ Frederickson said in a voice which, by its very insouciance, betrayed apprehension.
Sharpe did not answer. If his men could hold off one more attack, just one, then it would buy time. Time for a ship to find them, time for French fears to settle in. Perhaps, if Calvet was repulsed again, the general would leave the fort alone, content to screen it with a half battalion of men. The rumble of the subsiding stones faded in the hissing rain.
‘A week ago,’ there was amusement in Sharpe’s voice, ‘men were hoping that Bordeaux would rise. We would be heroes, William, ending the war with a grand gesture.’
‘Someone told lies,’ Frederickson said lightly.
‘Everyone lied. Wellington let those buggers believe in a landing so the French would be fooled. The Comte de Maquerre was a traitor all along.’ Sharpe shrugged as though nothing much mattered any more. ‘The Comte de bloody Maquerre. They call him Maquereau. He’s well-named, isn’t he? Bloody pimp.’
Frederickson smiled at Sharpe’s rare display of knowledge.
‘But it’s really Ducos,’ Sharpe said. Hogan, in his fever, he said both Ducos’ and Maquerre’s names, and this whole deception, that had stranded Sharpe’s men so far from any help, stank of Ducos.
‘Ducos?’
‘He’s just a bastard who I’ll kill one day.’ Sharpe said it in a very matter-of-fact voice, then grimaced because he knew that if this siege was truly Ducos’ work, then the Frenchman was very close to victory. ‘It’ll be bloody work tomorrow, William.’
‘Very.’
‘Do the men have the fight in them?’
Frederickson paused. Harper’s huge voice shouted in the yard, bringing order to the men who had gone to see the collapsed gatehouse. ‘The Rifles do,’ Frederickson said. ‘Most of mine are Germans and they’ll never surrender. The Spanish hate the goddamn crapauds and just want to kill more of them. I think the Marines will fight to show you they’re as good as the Rifles.’
Sharpe gave a half smile, half grimace. ‘We can hold one attack, William. But after that?’
‘Yes.’ Frederickson knew exactly how bad things were. And this damned rain, he thought, would not help.
After one attack, Sharpe knew, he must think of the unthinkable. Of surrender. Pride demanded that they defended the breach at least one time, but French anger might not allow a surrender after that one defence. Sharpe had seen men, their blood-lust goaded beyond endurance, put a captured fortress to the sack. Frenchmen, beyond sense, would hunt with sharpened bayonets through the stone corridors to take revenge on the defenders. The butchery would be vile, but pride was still pride and they would fight at least one more time. Sharpe tried to imagine what Wellington might do, he tried to think back over all the sieges he had fought to see if there was something left undone that he could do, he tried to think of some clever move to unsettle the enemy. He thought of nothing useful. ‘I’ll bet their general’s telling the poor buggers that we’ve got a hundred women in here,’ Sharpe laughed.
Frederickson grinned. ‘He’ll give every man a half pint of wine, tell them they can rape every woman inside, then point them at the breach. It never fails. You should have seen us at San Sebastian.’
‘I missed that.’ Sharpe had been in England when the British had captured San Sebastian.
Frederickson smiled. ‘It wasn’t pretty.’
An howitzer shell exploded in the courtyard. ‘You’d think the buggers would run out of ammunition,’ Sharpe said. It was oddly pleasant to sit here, sharing a friendship’s intimacy, knowing that nothing could now be done to diminish the slaughter that would come in the dawn. The French twelve-pounders still fired, even though the breach was formed, but now they sprayed the fallen stones with canister to prevent working parties from steepening the face up which their troops would swarm in the morning.
‘If they capture us,’ Frederickson said, ‘perhaps they’ll send us to Paris on our way to Verdun. I’d like to see Paris.’
The words reminded Sharpe of Jane’s wish to see the French capital when the war ended. He thought of his wife dead, of her body taken for a hasty burial. Damn Cornelius Killick, he thought, for taking away his hope.
Frederickson unexpectedly broke into song. ‘Ein schifflein sah ich fahren.’
Sharpe recognized the tune that was popular among the Germans who fought in Wellington’s Army. ‘Meaning?’
Frederickson gave a rueful smile. ‘“I saw a small ship sailing.” Pray for a frigate to come in the morning, sir. Think of its broadside raking the Frog camp.’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘I don’t think God listens to soldiers.’
‘He loves them,’ Frederickson said. ‘We’re the fools of the Lord, the last honest men, creation’s scapegoats.’
Sharpe smiled. In the morning, he thought, they would give this General Calvet a fight to remember, and afterwards, when it was over, but that did not bear thinking about. Then, suddenly, he stared at his friend. ‘Ein schiff?’ Sharpe asked, ‘what was it again?’
‘Ein schifflein sah ich fahren,’ Frederickson said slowly. ‘I saw a small ship sailing.’
‘God damn it!’ Sharpe’s helplessness suddenly vanished with the burgeoning of an idea as bright as a shell’s explosion. ‘I’m a fool!’ He faced defeat for want of a ship, and a ship existed. Sharpe scrambled to his feet and shouted into the yard for a rope to be fetched. ‘You’re to stay here, William. Prepare for an assault on the gate, you understand?’
‘And you?’
‘I’m going out. I’ll be back by dawn.’
‘Out? Where?’
But Sharpe had gone to the ramparts. A rope was fetched so he could climb down to the sand where the French corpses still lay, and so that, in a wet night, he could make a devil’s pact that might bring deliverance to the fools of the Lord.
CHAPTER 18
In the morning the rain fell in a sustained cloudburst. It hammered and seethed and bounced on the fort and ran from the ramparts to slop in bucketfuls on to the puddled courtyard. It seemed impossible for rain to be so savage, yet it persisted. It drummed on men’s shakoes, it flooded into the galleries carved into the ramparts, and its noise made even the firing of the twelve-pounders seem dull. It was like the rains before the great flood; a deluge.
It doused the cooking fires of the French and flooded the hovels where Calvet’s men had tried to sleep. It turned the powder in musket pans to gritty mud. The fire-rate of the artillery was slowed because each serge bag of powder had to be protected from the rain and each vent had to be covered until the last second before the portfire was touched. The artillery colonel cursed that the damned British had burned out the mill’s roof with their sortie, and cursed again because his howitzers had to give up the unequal struggle when their pits filled with yellow-coloured floodwater.
‘Bacon for breakfast!’ Calvet spoke with delighted anticipation.
His cooks, working under a roof, fried bacon for the general. The smell tormented those poor souls who huddled against hovel walls and cursed the rain, the mud, the goddamns, and the war.
The cavalry, who had vainly cast south for Sharpe’s force, had been sent north in the dawn. A cavalry sergeant, his cloak plastered wet to his horse’s rump, splashed back with news that, because the wind was so small this morning, the Thuella was being towe
d down the Arcachon channel by two longboats.
‘Bugger the wind,’ Calvet said, ‘and bugger the rain.’ He stumped through mud to the sand-dunes and stared north. Far off, drab, black, and with wet sails dropping from her yards, the big schooner was just visible. ‘We won’t attack,’ Calvet growled, ‘till the damn thing’s in place.’
‘Perhaps,’ Favier ventured cautiously, ‘Captain Killick’s guns won’t fire in this weather?’
‘Don’t be a damned fool. If anyone can make guns fire in the wet it has to be a sailor, doesn’t it?’ Calvet took out his glass, wiped the lenses, and stared at the fortress. The gate was a heap of rubble, a mound of wet stone, a causeway to victory. He went back to his bacon with confidence that this morning’s business would not take long. The British rifles would be useless in this rain and their lime would be turned into whitewash.
Calvet looked at his orderly who was putting an edge on to his sword. ‘Make sure the point’s wicked!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Won’t be a day for the edge, Favier.’ Calvet knew that wet uniforms resisted a sword cut much better than dry. ‘It’ll be a day for stabbing. In and out, Favier, in and out!’ Calvet, feeling far better for his breakfast, glanced at the door where Ducos had suddenly appeared. ‘You look damp, Ducos, and I ate your bacon.’
Ducos did not care that the general goaded him. Today he would capture Richard Sharpe and it would be a consolation to Pierre Ducos amidst the tragedies that beset France. ‘There’s a wind stirring.’
‘Splendid.’
‘The schooner should be anchored soon.’
‘God bless our allies,’ Calvet said. ‘It might have taken them twenty damned years to join the war, but better late than never.’ He went to the doorway and saw that the Thuella had indeed used the freshening wind to hasten her progress. A splash of water showed as the forward anchor was let go. ‘I think,’ Calvet said as the schooner’s gunports opened, ‘that we are at last ready.’ He called for his horse and, from its saddle, saw his wet, dispirited troops forming into their attack column. ‘We shall give our gallant allies twenty minutes of target practice,’ Calvet said, ‘then advance.’
Ducos was staring at the Thuella. ‘If Killick opens fire at all,‘ he said. The schooner lay silent in the channel. Her wet sails were being furled on to the yards, but otherwise there was no sign of movement on the sleek vessel. ’He’s not going to fire!‘ Ducos said savagely.
‘Give him time.’ Calvet also watched the Thuella and imagined the rain seething on the wooden decks.
‘He’s broken his word,’ Ducos said bitterly, then, quite suddenly, the schooner’s battle ensign broke open and flames stabbed across the water, smoke billowed above the channel, and the Thuella’s broadside opened the final attack on the Teste de Buch.
Cornelius Killick’s qualms about honour had evidently been settled, and the American had opened fire.
The American grapeshot whistled over Sharpe’s head. A few balls struck the flag of St George, but the rest went high above the fortress. Sharpe sat beneath the wet flag, his back against the ramparts. He was weary to the very heart of his bones. He had returned to the fort a half hour before sunrise, narrowly evading French cavalry, and now, after yet another night’s lack of sleep, he faced a French attack.
‘Are the Frogs moving?’ he shouted to Frederickson who waited beside the breach.
‘No, sir.’
Sharpe’s wounded men, bloodied bandages soaking in the rain, lay on the western rampart. Marines, faces pale in the wan, wet light, crouched behind granite as a second American broadside spat overhead. Sharpe, huddling low, nodded to Harper. ‘Now.’
The huge Irishman used his sword bayonet to cut the wet ropes which bound the flagpole to the merlon. He sawed, cursing the tough sisal, but one by one the strands parted and, just after Killick’s third broadside, the pole toppled. The flag of St George, its white tablecloth stained red by dye from the sleeves which had formed the cross, fell.
‘Cease firing!’ Sharpe heard Killick’s voice distinct over the water. ‘Stop muzzles!’
Sharpe stood. The American captain, wearing a blue jacket in honour of this day, was already climbing down to one of the Thuella’s two longboats. The American crew, grinning by their guns, stared at the fortress.
Which Richard Sharpe had just surrendered.
General Calvet also stared at the fort. The smoke from the American broadsides drifted in the small wind, obscuring the view, but Calvet was sure the British had struck their colours.
‘Do I keep firing, sir?’ The artillery colonel, uniform soaked by rain, splashed through puddles towards the general’s horse.
‘They’re not showing a white flag,’ Pierre Ducos said, ‘so keep firing.’
‘Wait!’ Calvet snapped open his glass. He saw figures on the ramparts, but could not tell what happened. ‘Colonel Favier!’
‘Sir?’
‘Go forward with a flag of truce,’ Calvet ordered, ‘and find out what the bastards are doing. No, wait!’ At last Calvet could see something that made sense. Men had come to the southern wall which faced the French and there they shook out a great cloth to hang down the wet, battered ramparts. The cloth signified that the fortress of Teste de Buch was no longer held by the British, but had been surrendered to the United States of America. ‘God damn,’ Calvet said as he stared at the Stars and Stripes, ‘God bloody hell and damn.’
Cornelius Killick, standing beside Sharpe on the southern ramparts, stared at the great French column that waited beside the village. ‘If they choose to fight, Major, you know I can’t fire on them.’
‘I agree it would be difficult for you.’ Sharpe opened his glass and stared at the French until the rain bleared the outer lens. He snapped the tubes shut. ‘Do I have your permission, Captain Killick, to put my wounded on board?’
‘You have my permission,’ Killick spoke solemnly, as if to invest this agreed charade with dignity. ‘You also have my permission to keep your sword that you failed to offer me.’
‘Thank you.’ Sharpe grinned, then turned to the western ramparts. ‘Captain Palmer! You may begin the evacuation! Wounded and baggage first!’ All the packs of Sharpe’s small garrison were heaped next to the wounded men, for he was determined to leave the French nothing.
Sharpe’s men, sensing that their ordeal was over, relaxed. They knew that Major Sharpe had gone into the night, and the rumour had spread that he had talked to the Americans and the Americans had agreed to take them away. The American Colours, bright on the fort’s outer face, testified to that deliverance. ‘It’s all because we didn’t hang the buggers,’ a Marine sergeant opined. ‘We scratched their backsides, now they scratch ours.’
Rifleman Hernandez, watching the French column, wondered aloud whether he would now be going to America and, if so, whether there were Frenchmen there waiting to be killed. William Frederickson assured him they were not bound for the United States. Frederickson was staring at the French and saw three horsemen suddenly spur forward. He cupped his hands towards Sharpe. ‘Sir! Crapauds coming!’
Sharpe did not want the three enemy officers to come too close to the fort, so he ran, jumped from the broken ramparts, and sprawled in an ungainly, bruising fall on the jagged summit of the breach. He clambered down the outer stones, then leaped the gap on to the roadway. Frederickson and Killick followed more slowly.
Sharpe waited in the narrow cutting that led through the glacis. The road was thick with musket balls that had already half settled into the wet, sandy surface. He held up a hand as the horsemen came close.
Favier was the leading horseman. Behind Favier was a general, cloak open to show the braid on his jacket, and behind the general was Ducos. Sharpe, warned by Killick that he might see his old enemy, stared with loathing, but he had nothing to say to Ducos. He spoke instead to Colonel Favier. ‘Good morning, Colonel.’
‘What’s the meaning of that?’ Favier pointed to the American flag.
‘It mean
s,’ Sharpe spoke loud enough for Ducos to hear, ‘that we have surrendered ourselves to the armed forces of the United States and put ourselves under the protection of her President and Congress.’ Killick had given him the words last night, and Sharpe saw the flicker of anger that they provoked in Pierre Ducos.
There was silence. Frederickson and Killick joined Sharpe, then the general demanded a translation that Favier provided. Rain dripped from bridles and sword scabbards.
Favier looked back at Sharpe. ‘As allies of America we will take responsibility for Captain Killick’s prisoners.’ He doffed his hat to Killick. ‘We congratulate you, Captain.’
‘My pleasure,’ Killick said. ‘And my prisoners. I’m taking them aboard.’
Again there was a pause for the exchange to be translated and, when Favier looked back, his face was angry. ‘This is the soil of France. If British troops surrender on this soil then those troops become prisoners of the French government.’
Sharpe dug his heel into the wet, sandy road. ‘This is British soil, Favier, captured by my men, held by my men against your best efforts, and now surrendered to the United States. Doubtless you can negotiate with those States for its return.’
‘I think the United States would agree to return it.’ Killick, amused by the pomposities of the moment, smiled.
There was a fall of dislodged stone from the breach and all six men, their attention drawn by the noise, saw the huge figure of Patrick Harper, head bare, standing on the breach’s summit. Over his right shoulder, like a dreadful threat, lay the French engineer’s axe that Sharpe had used the day before. Favier looked back to Killick. ‘It seems you do not disarm your prisoners, Mr Killick?’
‘Captain Killick,’ Killick corrected Favier. ‘You have to understand, Colonel, that Major Sharpe has sworn a solemn oath not to take up arms against the United States of America. Therefore I had no need to remove his weapons, nor those of his men.’