Sharpe 18 - Sharpe's Siege (3 page)

Sharpe, uncomfortably trapped between the two men, kept his voice very mild. “Reports, sir?”

Captain Bampfylde, evidently Wigram's ally in the disagreement, chose to reply. “We hear, Sharpe, that the city of Bordeaux is ready to rebel against the Emperor. If it's true, and we profoundly hope that it is, then we believe the city might rise in spontaneous revolt when they hear that His Majesty's forces are merely a day's march away.”

“And if they do rise,” Colonel Wigram took up the thread, “then we shall ship troops north to Arcachon and invade the city, thus cutting France in two.”

“You note, Sharpe,” Elphinstone was relishing this chance to stir more trouble, “that you, a mere major, are chosen to make the reconnaissance. Thus, if anything goes wrong, you will carry the blame.”

“Major Sharpe will make his own decisions,” Wigram said blandly, “after interrogating his prisoners.”

“Meaning you won't go to Bordeaux,” Elphinstone said confidingly to Sharpe.

“But you have been chosen, Major,” Wigram's pale eyei looked at Sharpe, “not because of your lowly rank, as Colonel Elphinstone believes, but because you are known as a gallant officer unafraid of bold decisions.”

“In short,” Elphinstone continued the war across the table, “because you will make an ideal scapegoat.”

The naval officers seemed embarrassed by the contretemps, all but for Bampfylde who had evidently relished the clash of colonels. Now the naval captain smiled. “You merely have to understand, Major, that your first task is to escalade the fortress. Perhaps, before we explore the subsequent operations, Colonel Wigram might care to tell us about the Teste de Buch's defences?”

Wigram turned pages in his notebook. “Our latest intelligence demonstrates that the garrison can scarcely man four guns. The rest of its men have been marched north to bolster the Emperor's Army. I doubt whether Major Sharpe will be much troubled by such a flimsy force.”

“But four fortress guns,” Elphinstone said harshly, “could slice a Battalion to mincemeat. I've seen it!” Implying, evidently truthfully, that Wigram had not.

“If we imagine disaster,” Bampfylde said smoothly, “then we shall allow timidity to convince us into inaction.” The comment implied cowardice to Elphinstone, but Bampfylde seemed oblivious of the offence he had given. Instead he unrolled a chart on to the table. “Weight the end of that, Sharpe! Now! There seems to me just one sensible way to proceed.”

He outlined his plan which was, indeed, the only sensible way to proceed. The naval flotilla, under Bampfylde's command, would sail northwards and land troops on the coast south of the Point d'Arcachon. That land force, commanded by Sharpe, would proceed towards the fortress, a journey of some six hours, and make an escalade while the defenders were distracted by the'incursion of a frigate into the mouth of the Arcachon channel. “The frigate's bound to take some punishment,” Bampfylde said equably, “but I'm sure Major Sharpe will overcome the gunners swiftly.”

The chart showed the great Basin of Arcachon with its narrow entrance channel, and marked the fortress of Teste de Buch on the eastern bank of that channel. A profile of the fort, as a landmark for mariners, was sketched on the chart, but the profile told Sharpe little about the stronghold's defences. He looked at Elphinstone. “What do we know about the fort, sir?”

Elphinstone had been piqued by Bampfylde's discourteous treatment and thus chose to use the technical language of his trade, doubtless hoping thereby to annoy the bumptious naval captain. “It's an old fortification, Sharpe, a square-trace. You'll face a glacis rising to ten feet, with an eight counterscarp into the outer ditch. A width of twenty and a scarp often. That's revetted with granite, by the way, like the rest of the damned place. Climb the scarp and you're on a counterguard. They'll be peppering you by now and you've got a forty foot dash to the next counterscarp.” The colonel was speaking with a grim relish, as if seeing the figures running and dropping through the enemy's plunging fire. “That's twelve feet, it's flooded, and the enceinte height is twenty.”

“The width of that last ditch?” Sharpe was making notes.

“Sixteen, near enough.” Elphinstone shrugged. “We don't think it's flooded more than a foot or two.” Even if the naval

Though other officers did not understand Elphinstone's language, they could understand the importance of what he was saying. The Teste de Buch might be an old fort, but it was a bastard; a killer.

“Weapons, sir?” Sharpe asked.

Elphinstone had no need to consult his notes. “They've got six thirty-six pounders in a semi-circular bastion that butts into the channel. The other guns are twenty-fours, wall mounted.”

Captain Horace Bampfylde had listened to the technical language and understood that a small point was being scored against him. Now he smiled. “We should be grateful it's not a tenaille trace.”

Elphinstone frowned, realizing that Bampfylde had understood all that had been said. “Indeed.”

“No lunettes?” Bampfylde's expression was seraphic. “Caponiers?”

Elphinstone's frown deepened. “Citadels at the corners, but hardly more than guerites.”

Bampfylde looked to Sharpe. “Surprise and speed, Major! They can't defend the complete enceinte, and the frigate will distract them!” So much, it seemed, for the problems of capturing a fortress. The talk moved on to the proposed naval operations inside the Bassin d'Arcachon, where more chasse-marees awaited capture, but Sharpe, uninterested in that part of the discussion, let his thoughts drift.

He did not see Bampfylde's plush, shining cabin, instead he imagined a rising grass slope, scythed smooth, called a glacis. Beyond the glacis was an eight foot drop into a granite faced, sheer-sided ditch twenty feet wide.

At the far side of the ditch his men would be faced with a ten foot climb that would lead to a gentle, inward-facing slope; the counterguard. The counterguard was like a broad target displayed to the marksman on the inner wall, the enceinte. Men would cross the counterguard, screaming and twisting as the balls thumped home, only to face a twelve foot drop into a flooded ditch that was sixteen feet wide.

By now the enemy would be dropping shells or even stones. A boulder, dropped from the twenty foot high inner wall, would crush a man's skull like an eggshell, yet still the wall would have to be climbed with ladders if the men were to penetrate into the Teste de Buch. Given a month, and a train of siege artillery, Sharpe could have blasted a broad path through the whole trace of ditches and walls, but he did not have a month. He had a few moments only in which he must save a frigate from the terrible battering of the fort's heavy guns.

“Major?” Abruptly the image of the twenty foot wall vanished to be replaced by Bampfylde's quizzically mocking smile. “Major?”

“Sir?”

“We are talking, Major, of how many men would be needed to defend the captured fortress while we await reinforcements from the south?”

“How long will the garrison have to hold?” Sharpe asked.

Wigram chose to answer. “A few days at the most. If we do find that Bordeaux's ripe for rebellion, then we can bring an Army corps north inside ten days.”

Sharpe shrugged. “Two hundred? Three? But you'd best use Marines, because I'll need all of my Battalion if you want me to march inland.”

It was Sharpe's first trenchant statement and it brought curious glances from the junior naval officers. They had all heard of Richard Sharpe and they. watched his weather-darkened, scarred face with interest.

“Your Battalion?” Wigram's voice was as dry as old paper.

“A brigade would be preferable, sir.”

Elphinstone snorted with laughter, but Wigram's expression did not change. “And what leads you to suppose, Major, that the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers are going to Arcachon?”

Sharpe had assumed it because he had been summoned, and because he was the de facto commander of the Battalion, but Colonel Wigram now disabused him brutally.

“You are here, Major, because you are supernumerary to regimental requirements.” Wigram's voice, like his gaze, was pitiless. “Your regimental rank, Major, is that of captain. Captains, however ambitious, do not command Battalions. You should be apprised that a new commanding officer, of due seniority and competence, is being appointed to the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers.”

There was a horrid and embarrassed silence in the cabin. Every man there, except for the young Captain Bampfylde, knew the bitter pangs of promotion denied, and each man knew they were watching Sharpe's hopes being broken on the wheel of the Army's regulations. The assembled officers looked away from Sharpe's evident hurt.

And Sharpe was hurt. He had rescued that Battalion. He had trained it, given it the Prince of Wales's name, then led it to the winter victories in the Pyrenees. He had hoped, more than hoped, that his command of the Battalion would be made official, but the Army had decided otherwise. A new man would be appointed; indeed, Wigram said, the new commanding officer was daily expected on the next convoy from England.

The news, given so coldly and unsympathetically in the formal setting of the Vengeance's cabin, cut Sharpe to the bone, but there was no protest he could make. He guessed that was why Wigram had chosen this moment to make the announcement. Sharpe felt numbed.

“Naturally,” Bampfylde leaned forward, “the glory attached to the capture of Bordeaux will more than compensate for this disappointment, Major.”

“And you will rejoin your Battalion, as a major, when this duty is done,” Wigram said, as though that was some consolation.

“Though the war,” Bampfylde smiled at Sharpe, “may well be over because of your efforts.”

Sharpe stirred himself from the bitter disappointment. “Single-handed efforts, sir? Your Marines are poxed, my Battalion can't come, what am I supposed to do? Train cows to fight?”

Bampfylde's face showed a flicker of a frown. “There will be Marines, Major. The Biscay Squadron will be combed for fit men.”

Sharpe, his belligerence released by Wigram's news, stared at the young naval captain. “It's a good thing, is it not, that the malady has not spread to your sailors, sir? You seemed to have a full ship's company as I came aboard?”

Bampfylde stared like a basilisk at Sharpe. Colonel Elphinstone gave a quick, sour laugh, but Wigram slapped the table like a timid schoolmaster calling a rowdy class to order. “You will be given troops, Major, in numbers commensurate to your task.”

“How many?”

“Enough,” Wigram said testily.

The question of Sharpe's troops was dropped. Instead Bampfylde talked of a brig-sloop that had been sent to watch the fortress and to question any local fishermen who put to sea. The presence of the American privateer was discussed and Bampfylde smiled as he spoke of the punishment that would be fetched on Cornelius Killick. “We must regard that doomed American as a bonus for our efforts.” Then the talk went to naval signals, far beyond Sharpe's competence to understand, and again he wondered about that fortress. Even under-manned a fortress was a formidable thing, and no one in this wide cabin seemed interested in ensuring that he was given a proper force. At the same time, as the voices buzzed about him, he tried to assuage the deep pain of losing the command of his Battalion.

Sharpe knew the regulations disqualified him from commanding the Battalion, but there were other Battalions commanded by majors and the regulations seemed to be ignored for those men. But not for Sharpe. Another man was to be given the superb instrument of infantry that Sharpe had led through the winter's battles and, once again, Sharpe was adrift and unwanted in the Army's flotsam. He reflected, bitterly, that if he had been a Northamptonshire Sharpe, or a Wiltshire Sharpe, with an Honourable tag to his name and a park about his father's house, then this would not have happened. Instead he was a Middlesex Sharpe, conceived in a whore's transaction and whelped in a slum, and thus a fit whipping-boy for bores like Wigram.

Colonel Elphinstone, sensing that Sharpe was miles away again, kicked the Rifleman's ankle and Sharpe recovered attentiveness in time to hear Bampfylde inviting the assembled officers to dine with him.

“I fear I can't.” Sharpe did not want to stay in this cabin where his disappointment had shamed him in front of so many officers. It was a petty motive, pride-born, but a soldier without pride was a soldier doomed for defeat.

“Major Sharpe,” Bampfylde explained with ill-concealed scorn, “has taken a wife, so we must forgo his company.”

“I haven't taken a wife,” Elphinstone said belligerently, “but I can't dine either. Your servant, sir.”

The two men, Sharpe and Elphinstone, travelled back to St Jean de Luz in Bampfylde's barge. Elphinstone, swathed in a vast black cloak, shook his head sadly. “Bloody madness, Sharpe. Utter bloody madness.”

It began to rain. Sharpe wished he was alone with his misery.

“You're disappointed, aren't you?” Elphinstone remarked.

“Yes.”

“Wigram's a bastard,” Elphinstone said savagely, “and you're to take no bloody notice of him. You're not going to Bordeaux. Those are orders.”

Sharpe, stirred from his self-pity by Elphinstone's ferocious words, looked at the big Engineer. “So why are we taking the fort, sir?”

“Because we need the chasse-marees, why else? Or were you dozing through that explanation?”

Sharpe nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The rain fell harder as Elphinstone explained that the whole Arcachon expedition had been planned simply to release the three dozen chasse-marees that were protected behind the fortress guns. “I need those boats, Sharpe, not to waltz into bloody Bordeaux, but to build a bloody bridge. But for Christ's sake don't tell anyone it's a bridge. I'm telling you, because I won't have you gallivanting off to Bordeaux, you understand me?”

“Entirely, sir.”

“Wigram thinks we want the boats for a landing, because that's what the Peer wants everyone to think. But it's going to be a bridge, Sharpe, a damned great bridge to astonish the bloody Frogs. But I can't build the bloody bridge unless you capture the bloody fort and get me the boats. After that, enjoy yourself. Go and ambush the high road, then go back to Bampfylde and tell him the Frogs are still loyal to Boney. No rebellion, no farting about, no glory.” Elphinstone stared gloomily at the water which was being pocked by the cold rain into a resemblance of dirty, heaving gunmetal. “It's Wigram who's got this bee in his bonnet about Bordeaux. The fool sits behind a bloody desk and believes every rumour he hears.”