Sharpe 18 - Sharpe's Siege (20 page)

The French officer, a captain of skirmishers, clambered to the top of the dune, careless of the small noises made by the cascading sand. Lieutenant Piellot was making enough racket to wake the dead and the small laughter and low voices of his own squad caused the captain no concern. He stared at the fortress and thought he saw a figure move on the ramparts. At night the eyes played tricks and he stared at the place where he thought he had seen movement and decided he was wrong. He hoped the British would surrender swiftly. The captain, who had a fiancee in Rheims and a mistress in Bordeaux, did not relish dying for the Emperor in a useless escalade on this shabby fortress.

Piellot's men fired a volley and the noise slammed over the dunes in two waves; the first from the muskets and the second the echo from the fortress wall. The squad shouted insults, rattled their ramrods in hot barrels, and the captain knew there was no point in his own men startling the enemy until Piellot's men quit their entertainment. He slid down the sand, calling to his men to relax, but suddenly his feet were seized, tugged hard, and the captain slithered down the dune, sprawling and flailing, until a boot slammed into his belly and a knee dropped on to his chest and a voice was hissing in fluent French that unless he kept very silent the knife at his throat would cut through to his spine. The captain kept very silent.

He could see nothing, but he could hear grunts and scuffles. One of his men's muskets banged into the air and, in the muzzle's red flash, the captain had a glimpse of black shapes rising and falling, of blades dripping, and suddenly the smell of raw blood was in his nostrils. Flesh sucked on steel, a blade grated on bone as it was withdrawn, men breathed heavily, then there was a respite from the sound of butchery.

“One,” Frederickson, kneeling on the captain, whispered the word into the sudden silence.

“Two,” Harper hissed.

“Three,” said a German from Mainz who kept a count of the Frenchmen he killed in battle.

“Four,” Thomas Taylor.

“Five,” a youth who was reputed to have stabbed his mother in Bedford then fled to the Army before the law could catch him.

“Six,” a Spaniard recruited in Salamanca to swell ranks depleted by war. The numbers went to thirteen. All Frederickson's men were present, none was wounded, and, of the enemy, only the French captain was alive.

That captain, feeling he had shown insufficient valour this night, pushed his hand down to his belt where a pistol was holstered. The knife pressed on his throat. “Don't move,” the voice said. The captain froze.

Frederickson ran his free hand over the captain's body, found pistol and sword, and drew both free. He pushed the pistol into his jacket, then used his knife to cut the Frenchman's small ammunition pouch free. The Riflemen were slashing at the dead men's cartouches. French musket balls, being fractionally smaller than the British issue, could be used by the Marines and Riflemen in their weapons, whereas captured British ball was useless to the French.

“RSM Harper?” Frederickson backed away from his captive. “Take the bugger back.” Sweet William, careless of the conventions of this war, first tied a gag about the officer's mouth. “Tommy? John? Go with Mr Harper.” Frederickson was careful to give Harper the honorific due to a Regimental Sergeant Major.

It took twenty minutes before the French officer was hauled by a loop of rope to the battlements on the western face, followed by nine precious cartouches of ready ammunition, and it was another ten minutes before Harper and his escort were back with Frederickson. They made themselves known with the harsh call of a nightjar, were answered in kind, then went on to the east where more Frenchmen waited in the darkness.

“He says, sir,” Lieutenant Fytch was acting as interpreter, “that there won't be an attack tonight.”

“He does, does he?” Sharpe kept his eyes on the captured French officer who shook in the corner of the room.

Sharpe did not blame the man. The French captain had been brought to the makeshift surgery to answer questions and the man doubtless believed the ranks of pincers, saws, probes, and razors were to be used on him. Each slow, burping bubble of the simmering pitch made Captain Mayeron shudder.

“Ask him who's in command,” Sharpe ordered. He half listened to the ensuing conversation as he probed through Mayeron's belongings. There was a fine watch with a chased silver lid that told Sharpe it was quarter past three in the morning. There was a bundle of letters, tied in a green ribbon, all written from Rheims and signed Jeanette. There was a miniature painting, enclosed in a leather wallet and presumably of the same Jeanette who simpered artfully at the beholder. There was a handkerchief, a clasp knife, three walnuts, an unwashed fork and spoon, a flask of brandy, a pencil stub, and a small, leather-clad diary that contained sketches of the countryside and a clumsy, heavy-jowled, pencil-drawn portrait of a girl called Marie. In the same page was a slip of pasteboard on which was glued some dried flowers and signed, evidently with love, by the same Marie.

“Calvet,” Fytch said. “A general.”

“Never heard of him. Ask him if Bordeaux has risen for the King?”

The question elicited an indignant, long answer that translated simply as `no'.

Sharpe was not surprised by the answer, but he probed further. “Ask him if there was any trouble in the city recently?”

Captain Mayeron, prompted by a particularly rich burst of bubbling from the cauldron of pitch, said there had been some bread riots at Christmas, but no political trouble except the usual grumbling of merchants made poor by the blockade. And no, the garrison had not rebelled, and no, he did not think the population was ready to rebel against the Emperor. He seemed to think about the last answer, shrugged, then repeated it.

Sharpe listened to the translation and began to understand the treachery of the Comte de Maquerre. Hogan, in his feverish babbling, had used the man's name, together with the name of Pierre Ducos, and now Sharpe suspected he was a victim of the clever Frenchman's scheming.

Or was he? In these last few hours, alone with his thoughts, Sharpe had begun to suspect a deeper, more secret scheme. Why would Wellington allow men like Wigram and Bampfylde to harbour grandiose schemes of invasion? Neither staff colonels nor naval captains had the authority to authorize such adventures, yet neither man had been slapped down except by Elphinstone who was of their own rank. Wellington or the Admiral of the Biscay Squadron could have ordered the two men to stop their scheming, yet they had been allowed to indulge their dreams of madness. And why had the Comte de Maquerre been sent to Bordeaux? Surely the answer was that Wellington wanted the French to believe in an Arcachon landing. General Calvet's presence at Arcachon meant that he could not oppose a bridge across the Adour. So the victim was not Sharpe, but the French, yet de Maquerre's treachery had still abandoned Sharpe to this fate in a slighted fortress.

Captain Mayeron, fearful because of the boiling pitch, suddenly spoke.

“He asks,” Fytch translated, “whether he can be exchanged.”

“For whom?” Sharpe asked. “They haven't taken any of us prisoner! Give him his belongings back, then lock him in the liquor store.”

Sharpe returned to the ramparts and there stood down half of his men and sent them to get some precious sleep. The captured Captain Mayeron had convinced Sharpe that the enemy he faced, though overwhelming in numbers, was half-trained and incapable of a night-time escalade. The Frenchman had also convinced Sharpe that he was not caught in a trap, but was an unwitting part of a greater trap. But that was no consolation, for in the morning the French guns would begin their fire and the time of trial would begin.

Frederickson first led his squad eastwards, then south through the tangle of small meadows. He was drawn by a rhythmic, clanging sound that came from the direction of the watermill.

He paused in the black-shadowed shelter of the byre where Harper had drawn his own tooth. There was the beat of owl-wings overhead, then silence again except for the ring of picks or crowbars on the watermill's stones.

Frederickson waved his men into hiding, then stared at the mill. There was the faintest glow of light limning the doors and windows, suggesting that men worked inside the big stone building by the light of shielded lanterns.

“They're putting guns in there,” Harper offered his opinion in a hoarse whisper.

“Probably.” Artillery placed in the mill would be protected by stone walls from rifle fire, and would be able to rake the southern and eastern flanks of the beleaguered fortress.

Frederickson turned towards the village where the bulk of the enemy forces had gone. More half-shielded lights showed among the small buildings, but he could see no movement between the village and the mill. He wondered how many picquets guarded the big stone building that straddled the stream. “Hernandez?”

The Spanish Rifleman from Salamanca appeared beside Frederickson. He moved with an uncanny silence; a stealth learned when he was a guerrillero, and a stealth much prized by Captain Frederickson. The Spaniard listened to his Captain's quick orders, showed a white grin against blackened skin, and went southwards. Hernandez, Frederickson believed, could have picked the devil's own pockets and got clean away.

The other Riflemen waited for twenty minutes. A French squad fired from the glacis, shouted insults at the ramparts, but no defender fired back. A dog barked in the village, then yelped as it was kicked into silence.

Frederickson smelt Hernandez before he saw him, or rather he smelt blood, then heard two thumps as the Spaniard seemed to materialize out of the shadows. “There are four men on the track from the mill to the village,” Hernandez whispered, “and there were two guarding the bridge.”

“Were?”

,Si, senor." Hernandez gestured to the ground and thus explained the curious double thump that had presaged his return.

Frederickson's voice was gentle with reproof. “You didn't cut their heads off, did you, Marcos?”

,Si, senor. Now they cannot give the alarm."

“That's certainly true.” Frederickson was glad that the darkness cloaked the horrors at his feet.

He led his squad south, following the path reco'nnbitred by Hernandez, a path that led to the small bridge beside the mill. Once at the bridge they were close enough to see the shapes of men working inside the building. One group of men, using crowbars, sledgehammers and picks, were making loopholes in the thick outer wall of the mill, while others cleared the mill's machinery to leave a space for the guns. “There were twenty French bastards inside,” Hernandez whispered.

“Guns?”

“I didn't see them.”

One of the lantern shields was lifted as a man stooped to light a cigar. Frederickson thought he saw the shape of a-French field gun in the recesses of the mill, but it was hard to tell exactly what lay in the deep shadows. But Frederickson knew that at least twenty men worked inside, and another four Frenchmen were close to the mill. Sweet William had thirteen men, but his were Riflemen. The odds therefore seemed stacked against the French, in which case there was small point in waiting, so Frederickson, sword drawn, led his men to the attack.

General Calvet was not unduly annoyed, he was even amused. “So he's good! That makes him a worthy foe. I'll take another egg.” Another rifle crack and another scream betrayed that some fool had shown himself on the northern edge of the village. “Four hundred paces!” Calvet looked at Favier.

“They have some marksmen,” Favier said apologetically.

“I've never understood,” Calvet broke off a piece of bread with which to mop up his egg-yolk, “why the Emperor won't use rifles. I like them!”

“Slow to load,” Favier ventured.

“Tell that to the poor bugger who's on his way to the surgeons.” Calvet grunted scant thanks as his servant tipped another runny egg from the pan on to the plate. “Where's the bacon?”

The British took it all to the fort."

“So they're eating bacon for breakfast and I'm not,” Calvet growled, then looked at Ducos who sat in the corner with a pen and notebook. “Tell your master, Ducos, that we lost thirty-four dead, six wounded, and had one twelve-pounder scorched. We lost two limbers of ammunition. That's not a big loss! I remember a night we got in among the Ivans at Vilna. I had two of them on this sword! One behind the other like chickens on a spit! And the one in front was grinning at me and jabbering away in his heathen language. Remember that?” He twisted to look at his aide. “How many guns did we take?”

“Four, sir.”

“I thought it was six.”

“Six it was,” the aide said hastily.

“Six guns!” the general said happily, “and Sharpe didn't take one last night! Not one! He just scorched a carriage!”

The mill had burned, but the stone walls were still intact and the guns were being emplaced behind the finished, scorched embrasures. Calvet acknowledged that the British troops had done well in the night. They had scoured the mill of its work-party, exploded the limbers, but they could have done much better. Sharpe, in Calvet's book, had made a mistake. He had only sent out a small force and, though that force had committed butchery, they had done not nearly so much damage as a major sortie from the fortress might have achieved. Calvet chuckled. “He thought we were going to pounce, so he kept most of his men at home.” The general spooned half the fried egg into his mouth, then went on talking despite the mouthful. “So we'll just have to surprise this half-clever bugger, won't we?” He wiped egg yolk from his chin with his sleeve, then looked at Favier. “Go and have a talk with this Sharpe. You know what to say.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And tell him I'd be obliged for some bacon. The fat sort.”

“Yes, sir.” Favier paused. “He'll probably want some brandy in return.”

“Give it to him! I'll get it back by the end of the day, but I do feel like some fat bacon for lunch. Right, gentlemen,” Calvet slapped the table to show that the pleasantries were over, and that the siege proper could begin.

CHAPTER 15

The moment Colonel Favier removed his hat, Sharpe recognized the man who had spoken to him at the bridge over the Leyre. Favier smiled. “My general sends his congratulations.”

“Give him my commiserations.”

The French corporal holding the white flag of truce stood miserably beside Favier's horse, while Favier stared along the ramparts. There was no one but Sharpe to be seen. Favier smiled. “My general informs you that you have acquitted yourself nobly and that you may march out with all the honours of war.” Favier shouted far louder than was necessary for just Sharpe to hear; he wanted the hidden garrison to listen to this offer. “You will be imprisoned, of course, but treated as honourable and brave opponents.”

“I'll give you my answer,” Sharpe said, “at midday.”

Favier, who knew all the rules of this game, smiled. “If your answer is not forthcoming in ten minutes, Major, we shall presume that it is a rejection of our most generous terms. In the meantime may we remove our dead from the north ground?”

“You can send six men, unarmed, and one light cart. You should know that Captain Mayeron is our prisoner.”

“Thank you.” Favier calmed his horse that had suddenly skittered sideways on the road that led through the glacis. “And you should know, Major, that your ships believe you to be defeated and captured. They will not return for you.” He waited for a response, but Sharpe said nothing. Favier smiled. “You and your officers are invited to take lunch with General Calvet.”

“I shall give you that answer with the other,” Sharpe said.

“And General Calvet begs a favour of you. He would be appreciative of some fat bacon. He offers this in return.” Favier held up a black, squat bottle. “Brandy!”

Sharpe smiled. “Tell the general that we have all the food and drink we need. When you come for your answer I'll give you the bacon.”

“It's a pity for brave men to die!” Favier was shouting again. “For nothing!”

Eight minutes later Sharpe gave Favier the answer that the Frenchman expected, a rejection of the offered terms, and also tossed down a muslin-wrapped leg of bacon that the flag-carrier had to pick up from the broad ledge of the counter-guard. Favier waved a friendly farewell, then turned his horse away.

To the north a small waggon was still picking up the dead left in the dunes by Frederickson's men. Sharpe wanted the French conscripts to see those corpses and to fear the night. The French could rule the day, but his Riflemen could make the environs of the Teste de Buch into a nightmare.

Yet within minutes of Favier's departure Sharpe had some evidence that the Frenchman had planted some fear into his own men. Lieutenant Fytch, albeit sheepishly, wanted to know whether there was any hope in a fight.

“Who rules the waves, Lieutenant?” Sharpe asked.

“Britannia?”

Sharpe pointed to the sea. “So that's our territory. Any moment, Lieutenant, a ship could appear. When it does, we're safe. How would you feel if we surrendered and a naval squadron appeared an hour later?” The very fact that the question had been asked was cause for worry. Sharpe did not fear for the morale of his Riflemen, but the Marines had not been righting the French so consistently and, bereft of their ships, they felt the flickers of fear that could gnaw into a man's confidence. “We've sent a message south, the Navy patrols this coast, we only have to hold on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yet, in truth, Sharpe might have shared the tremor of despair that the lieutenant's question had shown. There were no ships in sight, even though the waters beyond Cap Ferrat had settled to a gentle, sun-glittering chop. He waited on the ramparts, wondering what surprises the French general planned, and found himself contemplating the very thing Favier had encouraged; surrender.

Sharpe told himself that he was trapped, out-numbered, and with limited supplies of food, water and ammunition. When one of those things gave out, he was doomed.

Yet to be made a prisoner was to be taken far away from this part of France, to be marched north to the grim fortress town of Verdun and he would be even further from Jane. He had told his men they fought in hope of rescue, but he had lied.

Sharpe's troubled thoughts were interrupted by Frederickson climbing the ramp. “I thought you were sleeping,” Sharpe said.

“I slept for three hours.” Frederickson stared out to sea. These western ramparts were the safest, the only wall not covered by the French forces, and the two officers could lean in a gun embrasure and stare at the waves.

“There's something I should have told you,” Sharpe said uncertainly.

“You have an unnatural passion for my beauty.” Frederickson blew steam from a mug of tea. “I understand it.”

Sharpe smiled a dutiful appreciation. “Jane.”

“Ah.” Frederickson, abandoning jest, turned and leaned his rump on the stone. “Well?”

“She has the fever.”

Frederickson's one eye considered Sharpe. “She was well the night before.”

“The symptoms appeared next morning.”

Frederickson sighed. “I wish I could express my sorrow properly, sir.”

“It's not that.” Sharpe was embarrassed into incoherence. “I just think I'm fighting here because I can't bear to leave her. If she dies, and I'm not there. You understand? If I surrender,” he waved feebly towards the north, “I'll be taken away from her.”

“I understand.” Frederickson took a cheroot from his pocket. He only had six left and had rationed himself to one a day. He lit it, and drew the smoke into his lungs. He watched Sharpe, knowing what Sharpe wanted to hear, but unable and unwilling to express it. He was saved an immediate reply by the presence of three Riflemen carrying a barrel of lime to one of the citadels.

Frederickson did not know Jane. He had met her just once, and he had discovered a girl of startling prettiness, but that did not make her special. Many girls, to one degree or another, were pretty. Marine Robinson's green-eyed drab, for whom Robinson risked a deserter's death, would be as pretty as any society girl if she was washed, dressed properly, and taught the monkey-antics of the salon. Frederickson had noted that Jane had a sweet-natured smile and a pleasant, vivacious personality, but such things were the stock-in-trade of the young woman seeking matrimony. Any father from the middling sort in Britain, and hopeful of marrying his daughter into the better classes, made sure his child was tricked out with such allurements. And as for intelligence, which Jane seemed to have, in Frederickson's view the largest part of female humanity so blessed inevitably wasted the gift on cheap novels, gossip, or evangelical religion.

So to suffer for such a girl, as Sharpe was evidently suffering, did not touch a nerve in Frederickson's soul. He allowed that Jane Sharpe might one day prove to be above the common ruck, might even prove to have a distinction and character that would outlast the fading of her beauty, and doubtless Sharpe saw those possibilities within her, but Frederickson, not knowing her, did not. To agonize over a wife was therefore beyond Sweet William's comprehension; indeed for a soldier to take a wife was beyond his comprehension. Whores could scratch that itch, and so Frederickson found he could say nothing that would be of comfort to his friend. Instead, abandoning sympathy, he posed a question. “If you died this morning, God forbid, then I'd take over?”

“Yes.” Sharpe knew that Frederickson's commission was senior to Palmer's.

“Then I,” Frederickson said stonily, “would fight the bastards.”

“Why?”

“Why!” Frederickson stared at Sharpe with amazement. “Because they're crapauds! Because they're slimy Frogs! Because as long as they're fighting us they can't go south and give the Peer a headache! Because the English have a God-given duty to rid the world of the French! Because it's what I'm paid to do. Because I've got nothing better to do! Because Napoleon Bonaparte is a foul little worm who grovels in his own excrement! Because no one's ordered me to surrender just because the odds are unhealthy! Because I don't want to live under French rule and the more of those bastards I kill the more the rest of them will slowly comprehend that fact! Do you need more?” He watched Sharpe. “If you weren't married, would you surrender?”

“No.”

“So being married has weakened you. It does, you know. Saps a man.” He grinned to show that he did not want to be taken seriously, even if he had spoken with real conviction. “I'm sorry about Jane, I truly am. But her fight isn't here and you are.”

“Yes.” Sharpe felt ashamed of himself. He wanted to tell Frederickson about the superstition that had kept him going through the ambush and how Killick, unwittingly, had taken that strength away from him, but he could say nothing. “I'm sorry.”

“You need a good fight,” Frederickson said cheerfully. “Nothing like a good fight to raise the spirits. And two weeks from now, my friend, we'll open a bottle and be embarrassed this conversation ever took place.”

“Yes.” Sharpe had expected some sympathy, and had found none. “They came for a parley.”

“So I heard.”

“They said that Bampfylde was told we'd been defeated. That's why the Navy buggered off.”

“Clever.” Frederickson blew smoke into the wind.

It was de Maquerre, Sharpe thought. Perhaps Hogan had known de Maquerre was a traitor, but no one else had known. But now Sharpe knew and he vowed, should he survive this siege, that he would seek the Frenchman out. Then the first howitzer shell cracked apart and both men twisted towards the explosion even as the shards of broken shell casing, humming and fizzing from the smoke, spattered about them.

A howitzer was merely a short-barrelled cannon useful for the firing of exploding shell. The loss of accuracy occasioned by the stunted barrel was compensated by the diameter of the shell's explosion.

Their proper use, in battle, was to lob shells over the heads of friendly troops. Thus, unlike the long-barrelled cannons, they were fired at a gentle upward angle.

Yet General Calvet did not want to use a shallow trajectory. Instead he wanted his four howitzers to fire as mortars; firing almost vertically so their shells would plummet straight down into the killing confines of the fortress walls.

So each eight hundred and eighty pound barrel had to be wrestled from its carriage and laid in a specially made cradle of timbers laid in the gunpits. The timbers were levered and sawn from the village houses, notched to take the howitzer's trunnions, then wedged solid with wooden quoins. Now, angling up to the sky, they would arc their shells high over the walls. Or so the theory went.

The problems, apart from the shifting and settling of the timbers beneath the hammer blows of each shot, were twofold. First, the gunner must precisely gauge the weight of powder that would send the ball neatly into the courtyard of the Teste de Buch. A quarter ounce too much would send the shell searing far beyond the enemy. Second, the duration of the ball's flight had to be estimated and one of the five fuses selected as appropriate. It was a science fleshed out with instinct, and the very first guesses of the French artillery colonel were a tribute to his experience.

He ordered five ounces of powder used, far less than a mortar would take for the same distance, and he selected the middle fuse. The first gun, firing its experimental shot, hammered down into the timbers and squirted a quoin loose, but the colonel, watching the tiny trace of smoke from the burning fuse, saw the shell arc sweetly towards the fort, then fall, faster and faster, to provoke a cracking, dirty-smoked explosion in the very centre of the enemy.

The shell was a sphere of cast-iron filled with powder. When the fuse burned to the powder, the shell exploded and fragments of iron whistled out to fill a circle, twenty yards in diameter, with possible death. The shells dropped almost vertically.

“Take cover!” Sharpe shouted through the smoke.

Two men were down, one screaming and clutching his belly, the other motionless.

A second shell hit the ramparts, bounced, and trickled down the stone ramp. Sharpe waited for the explosion.

A third shell tore through the rafters of the garrison's offices and exploded on the upper floor. Lieutenant Fytch, shooting out of the door like a rabbit pursued by a ferret, shouted for water.

The fourth shell buried itself in the ashes and blackened timber of the burned barracks and vented those relics up and out as it coughed its dark explosion.

“We've got one dead, sir!” A Rifleman pointed to the second shell which had come to rest on the ramp. No smoke came from the reed which held the fuses, but Sharpe had seen such things explode quite inexplicably.

“Stay clear of it!”

There was a pause in which, Sharpe knew, the enemy was realigning the guns and ladling black powder into the swabbed barrels. Sharpe was furious with himself. For some reason he had not anticipated mortar fire and the shock of it stunned him.

“I suppose,” Frederickson said, “we're going to have to endure it for a while.”

“I imagine so.” But the powder laboratory was threatened, as was the surgeon's room, and Sharpe shouted for Lieutenant Minver to make up a work-party to remove both to safer places deep in the stone galleries.

Six men ran with fouled water from the well and handed their buckets into the offices where other men fought the fire. Two Marines carried the wounded man towards the surgery, while a Rifleman dragged the dead man to the side of the yard. Sharpe saw, with approval, how the dead man's ammunition was rescued.

Two more guns fired, this time with a different sound, and Sharpe whipped round to see that two of the enemy's twelve-pounder guns, Napoleon's `beautiful daughters', were successfully embrasured in the scorched watermill. They were firing heavy canister, presumably to scour the defenders from the ramparts, and the heavy balls thudded on stone or whispered overhead. “Rifles! Watch those bastards!” The gunners, five hundred yards away to the south-east, just might show themselves in a window of the mill, though the smoke of their guns provided a sheltering screen against the Rifles' aim. Then, in a shattering beat of sound, the six other twelve-pounders, some inside the mill and the others sheltered by a stone wall that ran alongside the stream-race, opened fire.