Sharpe 18 - Sharpe's Siege (24 page)

“At dawn?” Calvet asked.

Killick drew on his cigar. “It could be done, but not by me. I have taken an oath not to fight against the British.” There was silence, except for the sudden percussion of an howitzer that shook more dust free from the roof. Killick shrugged. “I'm sorry, gentlemen.”

“An oath?” Ducos' voice was sharp with scorn.

“An oath,” Killick repeated. “Major Sharpe spared my life in return for that oath,” the American grinned, “and as the promise wasn't made to a lady, it has to be honoured.”

Killick's levity stung Ducos. “One does not keep oaths to savages. You, of all people, should know that.”

“Is that why you didn't send me the copper sheeting?” Killick stared with dislike at Ducos. “Don't lecture me, Major, about keeping promises.”

The copper sheeting had never come, but the schooner had been patched with coffin-elm and smeared with pitch. The job had been done faster than Cornelius Killick had dared hope.

The topmasts had been swayed up on tackles and lashed into place. Tangled shrouds had been sorted, cleated, and winched home. The Thuella, that had given the appearance of a dead and burning ship, lived again.

That very morning, as Frenchmen died in a fort's gateway, anchors had been laid in the Gujan channel and, at high tide, the windlasses had hauled the empty hull off the mud. The Thuella had slipped into the water. In just a few seconds, an ungainly and grounded hulk had become a slender craft shivering to the touch of wind and waves. Her figurehead had been bolted into place. Meat and water and flour and bread and wine and biscuit and onions and more wine were taken aboard. The carpenter had sounded the bilges and, though some water was leaking through the repaired hull, he had declared the pumps could take care of the seepage.

“So, yes,” Killick now said, “the Thuella can be moored in the channel tomorrow morning, General, but it can't fire a shot. I've taken an oath.”

Calvet, eager to harness the Thuella's firepower, smiled. “Major Sharpe forfeited all honour, Captain Killick, when he chose to use quicklime against my troops. You may therefore consider yourself released from any undertakings of honour made with him.”

Killick, who had already expressed profound disgust at the use of quicklime, now shook his head. “I think I'm the best judge of my own honour, General.”

“You are a civilian,” Pierre Ducos, despite his small size, was endowed with a voice of unusual authority, “and by your own account, Mr Killick, you have trafficked with the enemy. I presume you do not wish to undergo a long period of questioning at the hands of French authorities?” Killick said nothing. The other French officers, even Calvet, were made uneasy by the threat, while Ducos, sensing that he had an advantage over the tall, handsome American, smiled. “If Mr Killick does not offer some satisfactory explanation of his actions on French soil then I will use my authority to seek such an explanation.”

“My explanation.” Killick began.

Ducos interrupted him. “Your explanations are best given with grapeshot at dawn. Do I have your oath, Mr Killick, that you will be there? Or must I investigate you?”

The American's quick temper flared. “I was captured, you little bastard, because I volunteered to defend your bloody fort.”

“And you lost not a man killed,” Ducos said chillingly, “and you were released within hours. I think those circumstances deserve investigation.”

Killick looked to Calvet, but saw that the French general was powerless to countermand the thin, bespectacled major. The American shrugged. “I cannot be there at dawn.”

“Then I will order your arrest,” Ducos said.

“I can't be there at dawn, you bastard,” Killick growled, “because the tide won't serve. I've got twenty miles of shallow water to negotiate. Unless you can threaten God into a premature high-tide?” He stared defiance at Ducos, then looked at the map. “One hour after dawn. No sooner.”

“But one hour after dawn,” Ducos was relentless in victory, “you will be moored off the fortress and bombarding the walls with grapeshot?” He had seen a flicker of hope on Killick's face, and knew the American was thinking that, once on board his ship, Pierre Ducos would be powerless to impose his will. “I want your promise, Mr Killick, your oath.” Ducos had seized a piece of paper and, using the general's charcoal, scrawled big letters that formed a confession that Killick had unlawfully entered into a treaty with the enemy, and a promise that, as recompense, the Thuella would bombard the fortress until surrender or victory ended the morning's engagement. He thrust the paper forward. “Well?”

Killick knew that if he did not sign Ducos would use his authority to detain him. Liam Docherty would not sail without Killick and the Thuella would stay in the Bassin, a hostage to Ducos' whim. In the embarrassed silence the American took the charcoal and scrawled his name. “One hour after dawn.”

Ducos, triumphant, witnessed the piece of paper. “You had better make your preparations, Mr Killick. Should you be tempted to break this oath, I promise you that your name will be known throughout America as that of a man who abandoned his allies and ran away from a fight. It is not pleasant, Mr Killick, to have one's name remembered for ever in the lists of traitors. First Benedict Arnold, then Cornelius Killick?” For a second the look on Killick's face persuaded Ducos that he had said too much, then the American nodded meekly.

Outside the hovel, Killick swore. The guns thumped from their pits and the first heavy rain, drumming from the north, began to fall. That rain, the American knew, was likely to last through the night, making rifles or muskets difficult to fire. The French now had the advantage of rain, so why did they need his ship?

“What will you do?” Henri Lassan asked.

“Christ knows.” Killick threw the remains of his cigar into the mud where it was snatched up by a sentry. The American stared at the low profile of the fort that gouted smoke with each burst of an howitzer shell. “Is it worse to betray an enemy or an ally, Henri?”

Henri Lassan, who hated what Ducos had done, shrugged helplessly. “I don't know.”

“I suppose I'll have to fire high,” Killick said, “and hope Major Sharpe will forgive me.” He paused, wondering what carnage was being done inside the cauldron of the fort's walls where the smoke pulsed from the relentless shells. “The bastard's my enemy, Henri, but I can't help liking the bugger,”

“I fear that if Major Ducos had his way,” Lassan said, “Major Sharpe will be dead by this time tomorrow.”

“So I suppose it doesn't matter what I do.” The American gazed at the embattled fortress. “You believe in prayer, my friend, perhaps you'd better pray for my soul.”

“I already pray for it,” Lassan said.

“Because my honour,” Killick said softly, “is bargained away. Goodbye, my friend! Till the dawn.”

So the French had two allies; rain and an American, and their victory was thus made certain.

An hour before midnight the archway shuddered as the facing stones fell into the flooded ditch. Every shot thereafter worked more damage on the gateway, gouging out the rubble-filling and tipping the rampart's pavement above the arch. Frederickson, carrying a hooded lantern, climbed the gate's internal staircase to examine the extent of the destruction. He came out disgusted. “It's going to fall. Surbedded work.”

“Surbedded?” Sharpe asked.

“Stone laid against the grain. Frederickson paused as another roundshot thudded into the archway. ”The stone's cut vertically from the quarry and laid horizontally. It lets the water in. That gate's a shoddy piece of building. They should be ashamed of it."

But if the French could not build, they could shoot. Even in the rain-curtained darkness the French gunners were hitting their target and Sharpe suspected that dark-lanterns must have been placed on the esplanade as aiming marks. Once in a while the French fired a light ball; a metal, cloth-wrapped cage filled with saltpetre, powder, sulphur, resin and linseed oil. The balls burned fiercely, hissing in the rain, showing the gunners what damage they had inflicted. That damage was more than sufficient to make Sharpe pull his sentries away from the ramparts by the arch, thus abandoning the gateway to the enemy's artillery.

Yet the rain did greater damage than the guns that night. At midnight, when Sharpe was going around the ramparts, a Marine sergeant found him. “Captain Frederickson says can you come, sir?”

Frederickson was in the scorched cavern of the fort's second magazine, which had been the least damaged by Bampfylde's explosion. A lantern cast a dull, flickering glow on the blackened rear wall and on the pathetic hoard of powder and made-up cartridges that were Sharpe's final reserve of ammunition. “I'm sorry, sir,” Frederickson said.

Sharpe swore. Water had seeped through the granite blocks of the magazine's arched ceiling and soaked the powder so that the barrels were now filled with a dark grey, porridge-like sludge, while the home-made cartridges had come apart in a soggy mess of paper, lead, and wet powder. The captured French cartridges were also heavy with water and Sharpe swore again; swore foully, uselessly, and savagely.

Frederickson fingered the wall over the barrels. “The explosion must have loosened the masonry.”

“It was dry when we came,” Sharpe said. “I checked!”

“Rain takes time to seep through, sir,” Frederickson said.

Six Marines carried the powder to the stone gallery where the cooking fires burned. There the powder could be spread out and some of it would be dry by morning, but Sharpe knew that this disaster meant the end of his defiance.

It was his own fault. He should have covered the powder with a tarpaulin, but he had not thought. There was so much he should have done. He should have foreseen that the enemy had mortars, he should have warned Palmer about the stone dam, he should have made a bigger sortie on the first night, he should have brought Harper's cannons on to the wall where they would have been safer from the shells. He should have had water ready to fight the fires, he should, perhaps, never have fought at all.

Sharpe sat in the cave of the magazine and a wave of despair hit him. “We used over half our good ammunition?”

“Well over half.” Frederickson was as unhappy as Sharpe. He sat opposite, knees drawn up, and the lantern threw the shadows of the two riflemen high on the arch of the magazine's ceiling. “We might as well bring the wounded in here now. They'll be more comfortable.”

“Yes.” But neither man moved. “There's some French ammunition in the ready magazines, isn't there?” Sharpe asked.

“Only fifty cartridges in each.”

Sharpe picked up a shard of stone and scratched a square on the magazine floor. He marked the position of the gate on the southern side. “The question,” he spoke slowly, “is whether they're fooling us with the gate and plan to attack somewhere else, or not?”

“They'll come for the gate,” Frederickson said.

“I think so.” Sharpe scratched marks over the gate. “We'll put everyone there. Just leave Minver with a handful of men to guard the other walls.”

Sharpe clung to the pathetic hope that a British brig, nosing up the enemy coast with the impunity that Nelson's victories had given to the Navy, might see his strange flag. A brig, moored in the channel, could fire hell and destruction into an attacking French column. Yet in this weather, with this fitful, veering wind and the blotting, seething rain that bounced four inches high off the shattered cobbles of the yard, Sharpe knew no brig would come. “Your fellow might have reached our lines by now.” He was clutching at straws, and he knew it.

“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.”