Sharpe 18 - Sharpe's Siege (17 page)

Yet, in the ominous night of falling mercury, Captain Bampfylde's hopes of glory were mercilessly dashed. Lieutenant Ford woke the captain at half past three. “Sir!”

Bampfylde, struggling out of a dream, noticed that the wind was stronger, gusting as it had before the fog had come down. “What is it?”

“The Comte de Maquerre, sir. With a man from the Mayor's office in Bordeaux. They say their news is urgent.”

Urgent or not, Bampfylde insisted on dressing properly, and it was a half hour before, in the finery of a naval captain, he greeted the two Frenchmen. Both Favier and de Maquerre showed the tiredness of men who had ridden good horses half to death, who were weary in every bone and soaked to the skin. Their news sent a shiver through Captain Bampfylde.

“Major Sharpe is taken.” De Maquerre spoke first.

“Taken?” Bampfylde could only repeat the word.

“The Bonapartistes,” Favier picked up the tale, “knew of your coming here, Captain. A brigade was deployed. It was delayed, but it will be here by tomorrow midday.”

“A brigade?” Bampfylde, who had gone to sleep congratulating himself on the coming success of this expedition, stared at the kindly faced Favier. ,A French brigade?"

Favier wondered what other kind this plump young man expected. “Naturally, monsieur. They have defeated Major Sharpe, the Marines who were with him, and now come to capture your good self.”

Bampfylde was overwhelmed. “Marines?” He seemed only capable of snatching single words from the disastrous flood of news.

“Marines, Captain,” Favier said sympathetically.

So that was where Palmer had got to! Swanning off with the Rifles! Bampfylde made a note to tear out Captain Palmer's guts and wrap them round his neck, except that Palmer was a prisoner now. Or dead. “Coming here? A brigade?”

Favier nodded. “We warn you at some risk to ourselves, Captain. Bordeaux was in ferment, you understand, and our Mayor would support the return of King Louis, but alas!” Favier shrugged, “the tyrant's heel is again upon our necks and we must, as ever, submit.”

Bampfylde, as his daydreams of glory collapsed, stared at the Comte de Maquerre. “But you said Bordeaux had no fighting troops!”

“They do now,” de Maquerre said grimly.

“And Sharpe's captured?” Bampfylde snatched at another scrap in the fuddling flood.

“Or dead. There was appalling slaughter.” Favier frowned. “General Calvet's men are veterans of Russia, Captain, and such fiends are pitiless. They think nothing of drinking their enemies' blood. I could tell you stories,” Favier shrugged, as though the stories were too awful for a naval captain's ears.

“And they're coming here?”

“Indeed.” De Maquerre wondered how many times it must be said before this fool believed them. “By midday tomorrow.” He repeated the lie. He doubted; whether Calvet's troops could reach Arcachon in the next forty-eight hours, but Ducos wanted Sharpe's escape route cut, and the urgency of fear might hasten Bampfylde's evacuation.

Bampfylde stared aghast at the two Frenchmen. His hopes, fed by Colonel Wigram, of leading a successful landing that would lance into Bordeaux were evaporating, but for the moment Bampfylde had other, more pressing worries. He twisted round to tap the glass and the column of mercury sank perceptibly. “You'll come with us, of course?”

Jules Favier, a colonel in the French Army and one of Ducos' most trusted men, felt a sudden leap of exultation. It had worked! “I cannot, monsieur. I have a family in Bordeaux. Should I leave, then I fear for their fate.”

“Of course.” Bampfylde imagined warriors, hardened by the Russian carnage, slashing into the fortress.

“I have no business here.” De Maquerre desperately wanted to stay in France, but Ducos had insisted he return to the British Army to leak news of whatever scheme replaced the landing at Arcachon. “So I will sail with you, Captain.”

Bampfylde tapped the glass again as if to confirm the bad news. There would be a storm, a ship-killing storm, but this welter of news had severed his last need to stay at Arcachon. He looked at the Comte. “We leave on the morning tide.”

Favier's tiredness was suddenly washed away. Ducos' daring scheme had been more successful than Favier had dared hope and, thanks to a growling wind and a falling glass, and thanks to some well-told lies, a Rifleman would be marooned in France, and the trap-jaws would clash home. On Sharpe.

CHAPTER 12

Jules Favier slept. It no longer mattered whether Sharpe was turned back towards Bordeaux or continued on to the coast; either way the Rifleman was stranded and the British plan to end the war by a killing stroke into the belly of France was defeated.

A wind rose as Favier slept. It shrieked over the ramparts, dying sometimes to a low moan, then gusting again to a fearsome frenzy. The waters of the channel, normally too enclosed to be stirred by anything other than a fretting tide, were whipped to whitecaps in the dawn's first light. The flotilla's smaller craft snubbed at their anchors while, out beyond the Cape, the Vengeance's great bellying bows shuddered through the waters in towering, wind-lashed sprays of white.

Boat after boat rowed into the channel. Supplies were taken from the fort, stripping it of food and wine. Two Marines were sent to corrall a cow, which they did with difficulty, and the poor beast was prodded back to the fort where it was shot, messily butchered, and the bloody cuts of its carcass were crammed into barrels for seamen's meat. The flagpole was cut down, and the Marines and sailors were ordered to use the garrison's deep well as a latrine so that the brackish water would be fouled. Two seamen, hulking men with muscles hardened by years of service, took axes to the fort's main gates and reduced them to splintered baulks that were then fired. The drawbridge was hauled up close to the burning gates so that it too would be reduced to ashes.

The Vengeance's sailing-master, one eye on the glass and the other on the low scurrying clouds that sometimes spat heavy rain on to the burning timbers of the gate, counselled speed, but Bampfylde was determined to do this task properly. The Comte de Maquerre's news meant that no landing could be made at Arcachon; therefore the fort would be abandoned, but not before it had been made untenable for the French. The Teste de Buch would be slighted.

Men were ordered to the ramparts where they hammered iron spikes into the touch-holes of the huge thirty-six pounder guns. The spikes were sawn through and filed flat so that no pincers could gain sufficient purchase to draw them free. Teams of seamen, using tackles, blocks and ropes from the Cavalier, eased the vast gun barrels from their slides and tipped them, in tumbling crashes, into the channel. The twenty-four pounders, like the six field guns that should have been delivered to Baltimore, were likewise spiked, turned off their carriages, and jettisoned into the flooded ditch. The twelve-pounder carriages were rammed into the burning gate, then Chinese Lights, signalling confections of nitre, sulphur, antimony and orpiment, were tossed among the carriages to encourage the blaze.

Those Marines who had remained at the Teste de Buch were the first men to leave the slighted fortress. They were rowed to the brig and, on their way, tipped muskets from the fort's armoury into the corroding seawater. The Comte de Maquerre, after an emotional farewell to the newly woken Favier, went to the Scylla.

By ten in the morning only a handful of sailors were left ashore. Quickfuses were laid into the fort's magazines, while another was taken to a stack of powder barrels that had been piled in the kitchens beneath the barracks block. The spare rifle ammunition, left by Sharpe to await his return, was piled on to that stack. Jules Favier, who had taken his horse safely beyond the drawbridge before the destruction began, shook Bampfylde's hand. “God save King George, Captain.”

“God bless King Louis.”

Favier used a naval ladder to descend the western battlements, then picked his way through the sand to where his horse was tethered. He waved a last time to Captain Bampfylde who, surrounded by his acolytes, walked to his waiting boat. A lieutenant paused, turned at the fuse's end, and Favier saw the snap of light as flint struck steel.

There was a pause as fire ate up the worsted quick-match that had been soaked with a liquid solution of mealed powder, spirits of wine, and isinglass. Bampfylde was being rowed through choppy waves towards the Cavalier. Spits of rain pitted the sand while gulls, wheeling effortlessly, rode the strong wind that blew from the hills towards the sea. Favier mounted his horse.

The quick-match, hissing sparks, darted into an embrasure of the Teste de Buch. The first brig had hoisted its anchor and was already, under sails blown to a flat hardness, beating towards the channel's mouth. The Scylla, Amelie, and Vengeance, sails reefed, were already hull down.

Captain Bampfylde climbed the Cavalier's tumblehome. The brig's sidesmen twittered their pipes, the anchor was lifted, and Lieutenant Martin ordered sheets hauled tight. He was to take Captain Bampfylde to the Vengeance and it would be a pretty piece of seamanship to transfer the captain in this weather.

Bampfylde, grinning with anticipation like a raw midshipman, stood at the rail of the Cavalier's small quarterdeck. “It should be a picture, Ford!”

“Indeed it should, sir.” Ford opened his watch and saw that it was still an hour short of midday, the time when the French brigade should arrive. Now they would come to find a fortress destroyed.

The two men waited. The rain striking the Cavalier's vast driver sail made a rapping tattoo that was matched by the quiver of Bampfylde's excited fingers.

Lieutenant Ford was nervous. “Perhaps, sir, the rain's.”

But even as he spoke the fuse-borne fire bit home.

A lance of light, white and sharp and straight as a blade, pierced into the low cloud from the very centre of the Teste de Buch. It was followed by smoke; roiling greasy smoke shot through with red flames that spat outwards in sudden, angry dashes.

Then came the noise; the rolling, grumbling, hammering sound of the powder magazines exploding, and in the noise came another roar as the explosives in the barracks caught the fire and Captain Bampfylde clapped his hands with delight as stones, tiles, and timbers shattered upwards.

The single flame vanished, to be replaced by a horror of dirty smoke that carried ashes, made sodden by the rain, far out to sea. A few flames flickered bright above the unscathed ramparts, then, dampened by the squalls, disappeared. Bampfylde, pleased with his work, smiled. “The French nation is deprived of one fortress, Ford. That is a consolation to us.”

“Indeed, sir.”

Bampfylde turned. “I shall use your cabin, Mr Martin. Pray send me some coffee or, failing that, tea..”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The brigs turned where the shoals marked the limit of Cap Ferrat and were swallowed in the rising sea and the squalls of rain. The coast was left deserted, its fort empty and shattered, and the squadron was gone.

Sharpe's last sight of the bridge over the Leyre was of the powder billowing flame and smoke outwards, of stones from the balustrade making vast splashes in the shallow water, of the toll-keeper's windows smashing inwards, and of four toppling stone urns. The bridge still stood, but it was weakened and no artilleryman would dare take the weight of guns over that stone roadway until a competent engineer, fond of life, volunteered to stand beneath the blackened arch as the guns trundled overhead.

The Riflemen and Marines bivouacked after a mere five miles, leaving the river bank to go to an enormous house standing in a vast garden of lawns and lakes. The house remained shut despite all the hammering on its doors and, though Sharpe saw dark figures, silhouetted by candlelight, who folded shutters on the upper floor, no one appeared to inquire who the soldiers were. A carved escutcheon over the main door suggested that the house had been, and maybe still was, the residence of aristocrats.

There was a barn at the house's rear that was more than an adequate bivouac. There was straw, kindling for fires, and blessed shelter against the rain that had started to sweep in great gust-borne swathes over the garden.

Sharpe ate tinned chicken with the cheese Jane had packed for him, and washed both down with wine taken from the ambushed convoy. Frederickson squatted beside him at the end of the barn that had been designated officer's territory.

“She said,” Frederickson told Sharpe, “that she didn't mean to scream. She's called Lucille. She's rather fetching, don't you think?”

“She's not ugly,” Sharpe allowed. He watched the pale girl who sat shyly with her man at the barn's far end. “But Robinson's a Marine! Marines can't take wives on to ships.”

“She says he paid for her. Twenty francs.” Frederickson sucked a wing-bone clean. “That's a very fair price for a bride in these parts.”

“I paid that!” Sharpe protested.

“I suppose she's yours, then,” Frederickson laughed.

“What's he going to do? Kiss her goodbye at Arcachon? Does she know he's a Marine?”

“I told her,” Frederickson said.

Sharpe shrugged. Any troops marching through the countryside seemed to end with a tail of women, but it was one thing to be a soldier, rooted on land, and quite another to be a Marine who could offer a wife no home. “Can they ship her to England?” Sharpe asked Palmer.

“No.” Palmer was cleaning the vent of his pistol. “Anyway, Robinson's already married. Got a wife and two nippers in Portsmouth.” He blew dust away from the touch-hole.

“I suppose when he's finished with her,” Frederickson said, “she'd better go to one of my men. We can smuggle her on to the Amelie.” No one demurred. It was a normal enough solution to a routine problem, and there were always men willing to take on a discarded or widowed woman. Sharpe remembered, after Badajoz, meeting a weeping woman who had just lost her husband in the dreadful slaughter of that fight. She did not weep for the loss, but because she had precipitately accepted another man in marriage and then been asked for the same favour by a sergeant who would have been a much better catch.

Sharpe slept seven hours, waking to the predawn darkness and the hiss of rain on the wooden roof. Sergeants stirred sleepers awake with boot toe-caps and the first flames flickered to boil water.

Sharpe went outside and stood against the barn wall where Frederickson companionably joined him.

“He's gone,” Sweet William said.

Sharpe yawned. “Who's gone?”

“Marine Robinson. He buggered off with his Lucille. Another of Cupid's walking wounded.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Palmer's not best pleased.” Frederickson buttoned his breeches.

“Did the picquets see anything?”

“They say not.” Frederickson walked with Sharpe to a fire where Sergeant Harper was stewing tea. “Morning, Sergeant! It's my guess,” Frederickson looked back to Sharpe, “that the picquets were asked to look the other way.” The Marines had provided the guard last night.

“Or he gave them a canter on the filly,” Harper said. “I've known that a good few times.”

“You should write your memoirs,” Frederickson said cheerfully. He looked into the wet landscape where Robinson had disappeared. “We'll not see him again.”

Nor did they. Love had struck, as callous in its target as a musket ball fired at a Battalion, and a man ran for freedom while Sharpe marched his force into the rain-smeared dawn, going to the ships, going to his own woman whom he had married with as little forethought as Marine Robinson had shown in his desertion, and going home.

At first Sharpe thought a ship must have burned at its moorings, then he thought it a rick-fire, then he assumed Bampfylde must have torched the village. Finally, in the half gale that blew his straggling force along the embanked road of the marshes, he saw that there were no masts in the channel and that the smoke, grey and hazy in the evening light, came from the fortress.

“Jesus wept,” Frederickson said.

“God save Ireland!” Patrick Harper stared at the gaping hole that had been the entrance to the fort. “Were they captured?”

“Frogs would still be here.” Sharpe turned to stare at the village, at the trees to the south, but nothing moved in the landscape. A few villagers stood watching them, but nothing more.

“They've gone!” Palmer spoke with horror in his voice.

It was a nightmare. It took minutes to establish that there truly were no ships, not one, that not a single mast reared above a sand-dune, that no brig lay up channel and no frigate beat the stormy waters off the Cape. They had been abandoned.

The gate of the fort was a smoking wreckage, tangled with the charred remains of gun carriages. The drawbridge was dangling chains, scorched by fire, and grey-edged, blackened beams that had fallen into a ditch to lay across the twelve-pounder gun barrels that were half sunk in muddy water.

Two of the Marines splashed over the ditch and one heaved the other up to the stone platform to which the drawbridge had been hinged. The two men disappeared into the fort and came back with the beams that had been intended to be the gallows from which the Americans would hang. The timbers were long enough to bridge the ditch and, by that precarious means and with the horses abandoned to a meadow, Sharpe and his men went into the Teste de Buch. Its granite walls still stood, and the offices were untouched, but precious little else remained.

There were no guns. There was no powder. The arched doorways to the magazines were blasted black. The barracks were a heap of damp ashes. Frederickson, suspicious that the brass-banded well bucket had been left in place, smelt the water. “Fouled.”

Sharpe went to the highest rampart and stared with his telescope to sea. The ocean was an empty, heaving, grey mass whipped to white flecks by the wind. Empty. The broken, charred damp trail of a burned quick-match showed where the fuse had been laid. He swore uselessly.

“We never saw those Frogs again!” Harper said.

“Maquereau.” Sharpe spoke the nickname aloud, recalling his suspicions that the tall aristocrat had been nervous at their last meeting. Not that it mattered now. The bleak truth was, that with less than two hundred men and with no more ammunition than those men carried in their pouches, he was marooned on the French coast a hundred miles from safety. His Riflemen could march that in four days, but could the Marines? And what of the wounded? And if they were caught, Sharpe knew, they would be finished. Even the poorly mounted French cavalry would make short work of a hundred and seventy men.