Sharpe's Siege

by Bernard Cornwell

  And in all honesty, Bampfylde persuaded himself, he had captured the Teste de Buch. It had been his plan, his execution, and, though the Rifles had undoubtedly reached the fort first and taken possession of the gate and ramparts, the Marines, in exploring the labyrinthine tunnels and store-rooms, had discovered six French gunners hiding in a latrine. The existence of those men proved that the Rifles had not possessed all the fortress, and that it had been the Marines, under Bampfylde’s command, who had achieved that task. Captain Bampfylde felt certain that his account, far from being unfair, was a model of generous objectivity.

  ‘Among the prisoners taken were the crew of the American Privateer, Thuella, which crew included in their numbers some Deserters from His Majesty’s Navy.’ Writing that line gave Captain Bampfylde particular satisfaction. Tomorrow he would have those men hanged. Sharpe would be leaving, and when Sharpe was gone Captain Bampfylde would show his men how a privateer’s crew was treated.

  A knock sounded on the door. Bampfylde scowled at the interruption, but looked up. ‘Come!’

  ‘Sir?’ An astonished Lieutenant Ford stood there. ‘They’re letting them go, sir. The Americans.’

  ‘Go?’ Bampfylde stared with disbelief at his lieutenant.

  ‘Gone rather, sir.’ Ford shrugged helplessly. ‘Major Sharpe’s orders, sir.’

  Bampfylde felt a pulse of hatred so fierce and so deep that he thought that never could he assuage such a feeling. Then he knew he must try. ‘Wait.’

  He dipped his quill into ink, and the nib emerged coated with vitriol. ‘Those prisoners, condemned for Desertion or Piracy, were Released, without my Knowledge nor Consent, by Major Richard Sharpe, Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, whom we had Conveyed to the Teste de Buch, together with a small Force of soldiery, for Operations in the interior. As yet, with all the Attendant Duties that this Victory brings, and in the Business of anticipating the Prizes that will lie open to His Majesty’s ships Tomorrow, I have had neither opportunity nor time to Demand of Major Sharpe his Reasons for this,’ Bampfylde paused, then swooped, ‘Betrayal. But be Assured that such Reasons will be sought and Conveyed to their Lordships by Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant, Horace Bampfylde.’

  He sanded the despatch, folded it, then sealed it. Ford would wrap it in waxed paper, then take it to the Lily to would wait for the winds that would speed this message back to London to the greater glory of Horace Bampfylde and to the deserved damnation of Major Richard Sharpe.

  The mist thickened slowly, just as the ice on the marshes thickened. There was no wind as dawn silvered the Bassin d‘Arcachon and as Cornelius Killick, with his men, finished their frozen march to the village of Gujan where the Thuella was grounded.

  Liam Docherty was astonished by the night’s events. First his life had been spared by an Englishman, then, as he left the fort, a savage-faced Rifleman had thrust a cloth bundle into his arms. That bundle proved to be the Thuella’s ensign and, to Docherty, a further proof that some supernatural force had given the Thuella’s crew protection in the cold, still night.

  Cornelius Killick took their release more carelessly, as though he knew his time on this earth was not yet finished. ‘There never was a saying, Liam, that hanging a sailorman in still airs brought revenge. But it seemed worth an attempt, eh?’ He laughed softly. ‘And it worked!’ He stared up at his beached schooner, knowing that it needed days of work before it could float. ‘We’ll patch with the elm and hope for the best.’

  ‘At least the bastards won’t find us in this mist,’ Docherty said hopefully.

  ‘If the wind doesn’t spring.’ Killick stared over the saltings beyond the creek and saw how the slow, creeping whiteness was thickening into a vaporous shroud that might yet be his schooner’s salvation. ‘But if we burn her,’ he said slowly, ‘the British can’t.’

  ‘Burn her?’ Docherty sounded appalled.

  ‘Get the topmasts down. I want the bowsprit off her. Make her look like a hulk, Liam.’ Killick, despite his sleepless night, was suddenly full of demonic energy. ‘Then set smoke fires in the hold.’ He stared up at the sleek bulge of the careened hull. ‘Streak it with tar. Make her look abandoned, burned, and wrecked.’ For if the British saw a canted, mastless hull, seeping a smudge of smoke, they would think the Thuella beyond salvage. They would not know that men carefully tended the smoke-rich fires, or that the topmasts, guns and sails were held safe ashore. ‘Do it, Liam! Fast now, fast!’

  Killick grinned at his men, filling them with hope, then stalked back to the small tavern where Commandant Henri Lassan, wet and disconsolate, huddled before a smoking fire. ‘You’ll not stay with us, Henri?’

  Lassan was wondering what fate had attended upon his small and valuable library. No doubt it would be burned. The British, in Lassan’s grim view, were entirely capable of burning books, which made it all the more surprising that they had released the Americans. ‘What was the name of the officer?’

  ‘Sharpe.’ Killick, with relief, had found some of his cigars safe amongst the baggage stored at Gujan. He lit one now, noticing that the mist was thickening to fog.

  ‘Sharpe?’ Lassan frowned. ‘A Rifleman?’

  ‘Green Jacket, anyway.’ Killick watched as Lassan scribbled in a small notebook. The French officer, resting in Gujan on his eastward journey, wanted to know all that Killick could tell him about the British force and the American, considering the request, decided that the giving of information did not break his promise to Sharpe. ‘Does it matter who he is?’

  ‘If he’s the man I think he is, yes.’ Lassan sounded dispirited by his defeat. ‘You’ve met one of their more celebrated soldiers.’

  ‘He met one of America’s more celebrated sailors,’ Killick said happily. He wondered if this unnatural calm presaged a storm. He saw Lassan’s pencil pause, and sighed. ‘Let me think now. I’d guess a hundred Riflemen, maybe a few more.’

  ‘Marines?’ Lassan asked.

  ‘At least a hundred.’ Killick shrugged.

  Lassan looked through the window, saw the fog, and knew he must find a horse, any horse, and take his news to those who could best use it. The British had come, had won their victory, but they had not yet left Arcachon, so Lassan would go to Bordeaux and there find the men who could organize revenge on a Rifleman.

  Fog writhed about the low walls of the Teste de Buch, utterly obscuring the ramparts from the courtyard where Sharpe, in the dawn, paraded his Riflemen.

  ‘He’s not best pleased with you,’ Captain of Marines Palmer spoke hesitantly. Sharpe replied with his brief opinion of Captain Bampfylde that made the tough Marine smile. ‘I’m to give you this.’ Palmer handed Sharpe a sealed paper.

  Sharpe supposed the paper was a reprimand or protest from Bampfylde, but it was merely a reminder that Major Sharpe was expected back at the Teste de Buch by noon on Thursday. Doubtless Bampfylde was unwilling to face Sharpe in person, and Sharpe did not care. His head was aching, sometimes pulsing with a stab of dark agony, and his mood was bleak.

  ‘We’re marching with you,’ Captain Palmer said. He had fifty Marines on parade. He had also taken two of the captured gun-limbers, each harnessed behind a pair of cart-horses that had been discovered in a meadow by the village and which now drew the Marines’ packs and supplies. ‘The men aren’t hardened to marching,’ Palmer explained.

  ‘You’re attached to us?’ Sharpe asked with surprise.

  Palmer shook his head. ‘We’re supposed to be hunting your Americans.’

  ‘If they’ve got any sense,’ Sharpe said, ‘they’ll be long gone.’

  The gate squealed open, boots slammed on the cobbles, and the small force that was intended to cut the French supply-road marched into the cold whiteness of the fog. If his map was right Sharpe reckoned they faced a full day’s march. First they would follow the main road, keeping to its ruts in the blinding fog as far as a bridge at a village called Facture. There they would turn south-east and follow the River Leyre until they reached the supply road. O
ne day on the road to cause what chaos he could, then one day for the return journey.

  The Riflemen again outstripped the Marines. Gradually the sound of the horses’ trace-chains faded behind and Sharpe’s men marched amidst the clinging, soft wet fog as if in a silent cloud.

  Nothing stirred in Arcachon. The fog half obscured the buildings, the shuttered windows stayed shuttered, but the road led straight through the market-place.

  ‘I wanted to thank you,’ Frederickson said, ‘for your actions last night.’

  Sharpe had been lost in the private pain of a stabbing headache. He had to think to remember the events of the night, then he shrugged. ‘For nothing.’

  ‘I doubt that Bampfylde feels it’s nothing?’

  Sharpe gave a dutiful smile. He flinched as a dart of pain stabbed behind his bandaged forehead.

  Frederickson saw the flinch. ‘Are you well, sir?’

  ‘I’m well.’ It was said curtly.

  Frederickson walked in silence for a few paces. ‘I doubt Captain Palmer can find the fugitives in this fog.’ He spoke in the tones of a man who openly changed the subject.

  ‘Bampfylde’s got the chasse-marées,’ Sharpe said, ‘what the hell else does he want?’

  ‘He wants the American schooner for prize money. Did you ever meet a naval captain who didn’t want prize money?’ Frederickson sounded scornful. ‘The web-foots fight a battle and spend the next ten years in litigation over the division of the spoils. The Navy’s made the legal profession wealthy!’

  It was an old Army complaint. A naval captain could become rich for ever by capturing an unarmed enemy merchantman, while a soldier could fight a score of terrible engagements and never see a sixpence for all the crammed warehouses he might capture. Sharpe could hardly complain, for he and Harper had stolen their wealth off a battlefield, but the old soldier’s envious habit of despising the Navy for legalizing theft persisted. The Army did award prize money; a saddle horse, taken in battle, fetched three shillings and ninepence, but that sum shared between a Company of infantry made no man wealthy and no lawyers fat. Sharpe forced a smile and fed Frederickson’s resentment. ‘You can’t be rude about the Navy, William; they’re the heroes, remember?’

  ‘Bloody web-foots.’ Frederickson, like the rest of the Army, resented that the Navy received so much acclaim in Britain while the Army was despised. The jealous grousing, so well practised and comforting, kept Frederickson voluble through the long morning’s march.

  In the afternoon the Riflemen marched clear of the fog which hung behind them like a great cloud over the Bassin d‘Arcachon. Wisps of mist, like outriders to the fog bank, still drifted above the flat, marshy landscape over which the road was carried on an embankment shored by plaited hurdles. Widgeon, teal and snipe flapped away from the marching men. Harper, who loved birds, watched them, but not so closely that he did not see the twisted rope handle of an eel-trap. Two eels were inside and the beasts were chopped up with a sword bayonet and distributed among the Riflemen.

  It was cold, but the march warmed them. By late afternoon, within sight of two small villages, they reached a miserable, plank bridge rotting over a sluggish stream. ‘I suppose this could be Facture.’ Sharpe stared at the map. ‘Christ knows.’

  He sent Lieutenant Minver with six men to discover the names of the closest villages, and with them went a bag of silver French francs to buy what food could be prised from the peasants. The ten-franc silver coins were forgeries, made at Wellington’s command by counterfeiters recruited from the Army’s ranks. The Peer insisted that all supplies in France were paid for with good coin, but French peasants would not touch Spanish silver, only French, so Wellington had simply melted the one down to make the other. The silver content was good, the coins indistinguishable from those minted in Paris, and everyone concerned was happy.

  ‘They’re bloody poor, sir.’ Minver returned with five loaves, three eels, and a basket of lentils. ‘And this is the River Leyre, sir.’

  ‘No meat?’ Frederickson was disgusted. Each of the Riflemen carried three days’ supply of dried beef in their packs, but Frederickson, Sharpe knew, was very fond of freshly-killed pork.

  ‘No meat,’ Minver said. ‘Unless they’re hiding it.’

  ‘Of course they’re bloody hiding it,’ Frederickson said scathingly. ‘You want me to go, sir?’ He looked hopefully to Sharpe.

  ‘No.’ Sharpe was staring back the way they had come where, in the distance, a straggle of redcoats appeared. Sharpe was cold, his head was hurting like the devil, and now he had the Marines on his coat-tails. ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘I was hoping you’d be here, sir,’ Palmer greeted Sharpe.

  ‘Hoping?’

  ‘If Killick went inland, which seems likely, then we’re better following you. Or going with you.’ Palmer grinned, and Sharpe realized that the Marine captain had no intention of hunting Killick and only wanted to be a part of Sharpe’s expedition. Setting an ambush on a high road of France was, to Captain Palmer, a taste of real soldiering, while following some half-armed fugitives in a scramble over a cold marsh was just a waste of time. Palmer’s lieutenant, a thin, vacant youth called Fytch, hovered close to his seniors to overhear Sharpe’s decision.

  ‘I presume, Captain,’ Sharpe said carefully, ‘that you were given a free hand in your search for Captain Killick?’

  ‘Indeed, sir. I was told not to come back till I’d found the scoundrel. Not till Thursday, anyway.’

  ‘Then I can’t stop you accompanying me, can I?’ Fifty muskets would be damned useful, so long as the Marines could keep pace with the Riflemen. ‘We march that way.’ Sharpe pointed south-east into the damp water-meadows that edged the Leyre.

  Palmer nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  They marched, and if it had not been for his piercing, spiking headache, Sharpe would have been a happy man. For three days he was free to cause chaos, to carry the war, which the French had carried throughout Europe, deep into the heart of France itself. He would dutifully question his prisoners, but Sharpe already knew that he would not recommend an advance on Bordeaux and, if de Maquerre returned with such a recommendation, Sharpe, as senior land officer, would forbid the madness. He felt relieved of care, he was free, he was a soldier released from the leash to fight his own war; to which end, and reinforced with fifty footsore Marines, he marched south-east to set an ambush.

  ‘I expected an answer to my letter,’ Ducos said, ‘I hardly expected you to come yourself.’

  The Comte de Maquerre was chilled to the marrow. He had ridden across freezing marshland, and through low, vine-covered hills where the wind had been as bitter as a blade of ice; and all to be thus ungraciously received in a capacious room lit by six candles on a malachite table. ‘My news is too important to be entrusted to a letter.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘A landing.’ De Maquerre crouched by the fire, holding his thin hands to its small flames. ‘At Arcachon. The fort’s probably taken already and more men can be shipped north within a week.’ He twisted to stare at Ducos’ thin face. ‘Then they’ll march on Bordeaux.’

  ‘Now? In this weather?’ Ducos gestured towards the un-curtained windows where the wind beat a sharp tattoo of freezing rain on the black glass. Only that morning Ducos had found three sparrows frozen to death on the balcony of his quarters. ‘No one could land in this weather!’

  ‘They already have landed,’ de .Maquerre said. ‘I was with them. And once they hold the Bassin d’Arcachon they’ll have sheltered waters to land a bigger force.‘ The Comte thrust impotently at the glowing coals, trying to rouse fierce flames, then described how he was supposed to return to Bampfylde with an encouragement for the British plans. ’If I say the city will rebel, then they’ll ship their troops north.‘

  ‘How many?’

  ‘The First Division.’

  Ducos trimmed the wick of a smoking candle. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Through a man called Wigram, a colonel ...’

 
‘... on the staff of the British First Division.’ Ducos’ knowledge of the enemy was encyclopaedic, and he loved to display it. ‘A painstaking man.’

  ‘Indeed,’ de Maquerre shivered violently, ‘and a man who will offer indiscretions in return for an aristocrat’s company. Even a French aristocrat!’ de Maquerre laughed softly, then twisted to face the table. ‘Hogan’s sick.’

  ‘How sick?’ Ducos’ interest was quickened by the news.

  ‘He’ll die.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Pierre Ducos stared at his maps. He had the answer he had so desperately sought, but, like a man brought a priceless gift, he began to doubt the generosity of the giver. Suppose this news had been planted on de Maquerre? Suppose, after all, the British planned a bridge across the Adour, but wished the French to concentrate troops at Arcachon? Or suppose the invading force flooded ashore at the mouth of the Gironde? The answer had brought him no relief, merely more doubts. ‘How many troops are already ashore?’

  ‘Three Companies of Marines, two of Riflemen.’

  ‘That’s all!’ Ducos snapped the words.

  ‘They think it’s enough,’ de Maquerre said mildly. ‘They plan to take the fortress, then ambush the supply road.’

  ‘Ambitious of them,’ Ducos said softly.

  ‘They’ve got an ambitious bastard doing it,’ de Maquerre said viciously. ‘A real bastard. It would be a pleasure to bury him.’

  ‘Who?’ Ducos asked in polite interest. His attention was on the map where his finger traced the thin line of the River Leyre. If such an ambush was planned, then that would be the closest stretch of road to the British landing.

  ‘Major Richard Sharpe, Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. He’s really a Rifleman. God knows why he fights in a line Battalion.’