Frederickson shrugged. ‘Leave him to me, sir.’
Two Companies of the green-jacketed Riflemen had been given to Sharpe. Frederickson commanded one, a Lieutenant Minver the other, and together they numbered one hundred and twenty-three men. Not many, Sharpe thought, to assault a fortress on the French coast. He walked further along the quay with Frederickson, stopping by a fish cart that dripped bloody scales into a puddle. ‘Between you and me, William, it’s a mess.’
‘I thought it might be.’
‘We leave tomorrow to capture a fortress. It isn’t supposed to be heavily defended, but no one’s sure. After that, God knows what happens. There’s a madman who wants us to invade France, but between you and me we’re not.’
Frederickson grinned, then turned and looked at the two Companies of Riflemen. ‘We’re capturing a fort all by our little selves?’
‘The Navy says a few Marines might be well enough to help us.’
‘That’s very decent of them.’ Frederickson stared at the great bulk of the Vengeance. Barges, propelled by huge sweeps, were taking casks of water from the harbour to the huge ship.
‘You’ll draw extra ammunition,’ Sharpe said. ‘The First Division’s paying for it.’
‘I’ll rob the bastards blind,’ Frederickson said happily.
‘And tonight you’ll do me the honour of dining with Jane and myself?’
‘I’d like to meet her.’ Frederickson sounded guarded.
‘She’s wonderful.’ Sharpe said it warmly, and Frederickson, seeing his friend’s enthusiasm, hoped that a new wife had not sapped Sharpe’s appetite for the bloody business that lay ahead at Arcachon.
Commandant Henri Lassan thought he detected sleet in the dawn, but he could not be sure until he climbed to the western bastion and saw how the flakes settled briefly on the great cheeks of his guns before melting into cold rivulets of water. The guns were loaded, as they always were, but their muzzles and vent-holes were stoppered against the damp. ‘Good morning, Sergeant!’
‘Sir!’ The sergeant stamped his feet and slapped his hands against the cold.
Lassan’s orderly climbed the stone ramp with a tray of coffee-mugs. Lassan always brought the morning guard a mug of coffee each and the men appreciated the small gesture. The Commandant, they said, was a gentleman.
Children ran across the courtyard and women’s voices sounded from the kitchens. There should not be women in the fort, but Lassan had let the families of his gun crews take up the quarters vacated by the infantry who had gone to the northern battles. Lassan believed his men were less likely to desert if their families were inside the defences.
‘There she is, sir.’ The sergeant pointed through the sleeting rain.
Lassan looked over the narrow Arcachon channel where the tide raced across the shoals. Beyond the sandbanks the surging grey waves were torn by wind into a maelstrom of broken white water amidst which, beating southwards, was a little ship.
The ship was a British brig-sloop with two tall masts and a vast driver-sail at her stern. Her black and white banded hull hid, Lassan knew, eighteen guns. Her sails were reefed, but even so she seemed to plunge through the waves and Lassan saw how high the spray fountained from the brig’s stem. ‘Our enemies,’ he said mildly, ‘are having a disturbed breakfast.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The sergeant laughed.
Lassan cradled his coffee mug. There was something vulnerable about his face, a drawn and frightened look that made his men protective of him. They knew Commandant Lassan wished to become a priest when this war ended and they liked him for it, but they also knew that he would fight as a soldier until the last shot of the war had been fired. Now he stared at the British brig. ‘You saw her last night?’
‘At sundown, sir,’ the sergeant was certain. ‘And there were lights out there at night.’
‘He’s watching us, isn’t he?’ Lassan smiled. ‘He’s seeing what we’re made of.’
The sergeant slapped the gun as a reply.
Lassan turned to stare thoughtfully into the fort’s courtyard. A warning had come from Bordeaux that he was to prepare for a British attack, but Bordeaux had sent him no men to reinforce his shrunken garrison. Lassan could man his big guns, or he could protect the landward walls, but he could not do both. If the British landed troops, and sent warships into the channel, then Lassan would be trapped between the hammer and the anvil. He turned back to stare at the British brig. If Bordeaux was right, that inquisitive craft was making a reconnaissance, and Lassan must deceive the watchers. He must make them think the fort was so thinly defended that a landing by troops would be unnecessary.
Lieutenant Gerard came yawning from the green-painted door of the officers’ quarters. Lassan hailed him. ‘Lieutenant!’
‘Sir?’
‘No flag today! And no washing hung to dry on the barracks’ roof!’ Not that anyone was likely to dry washing in this weather.
Gerard, his blue jacket unbuttoned above his braces, frowned. ‘No flag, sir?’
‘You heard me, Lieutenant! And no men in the embrasures, you hear? Sentries in the citadels only.’
‘I hear you, sir.’
Lassan turned back to see the brig-sloop tack into the rain-sodden wind. He saw a shiver of sails, a spume of foam, and he imagined the cloaked officers, their braid tarnished by salt, staring at the grey, crouching fort through their spyglasses. He knew that such little ships, sent to spy on the French coast, often stopped the fishing boats that worked close inshore. Today then, and every day for the next week, only those fishermen whom Henri Lassan trusted would be allowed past the guns of the Teste de Buch. They would be encouraged to take English gold, and encouraged to drink a glass of dark rum in English cabins, and encouraged to sell lobsters to blue-coated Englishmen, and in return they would tell a plausible lie or two on behalf of Henri Lassan.
Then, with a roar from these great, passive guns that waited for employment, Henri Lassan would strike a blow for France.
He smiled, pleased with his notion, and went to breakfast.
Before dinner Sharpe faced a miserable and unhappy few moments. ‘The answer,’ he repeated, ‘is no.’
Regimental Sergeant Major Patrick Harper stood in the small parlour of Jane’s lodgings and twisted his wet shako in thick, strong fingers. ‘I talked with Mr d’Alembord, sir, so I did, and he said I could come. I mean we’re only sitting around like washer-women in a bloody drought, so we are.‘
‘There’s a new colonel coming, Patrick. He needs his RSM.’
Harper frowned. ‘Needs his major, too.’
‘He can’t lose both of us.’ Sharpe did not have the power to deny the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers the services of this massive Irishman. ‘And if you come, Patrick, the new man will only appoint a new RSM. You wouldn’t want that.’
Harper frowned. ‘I’d rather be in a scrap if one’s going, sir, and Mr Frederickson wouldn’t take me amiss, nor would he.’
Sharpe could not be persuaded. ‘No.’
The huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, grinned. ‘I could take sick leave, sir, so I could.’
‘You have to be sick first.’
‘But I am!’ Harper pointed to his mouth. I’ve got a toothache something desperate, sir. Here!‘ He opened his mouth, jabbed with his finger, and Sharpe saw that Harper did indeed have a reddened and swollen upper gum.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘It’s dreadful, so it is!’ Harper, sensing a chink in Sharpe’s armour, became enthusiastic about his pain. ‘It’s more of a throb, sir? On and off, on and off, like a great drumbeat in your skull. Desperate, it is!’
‘Then see a surgeon tonight,’ Sharpe said unsympathetically, ‘and have it pulled. Then get back to Battalion where you belong.’
Harper’s face dropped. ‘Truly, sir? I can’t come?’
Sharpe sighed. ‘I’d rather have you along, RSM, than any dozen other men.’ That was true a thousand times over. Sharpe knew of no man he would rath
er fight beside, but it could not be at Arcachon. ‘I’m sorry, Patrick. Besides you’re a father now. You should take care.’ Harper’s Spanish wife, just a month before, had given birth to a son that had been christened Richard Patricio Augustine Harper. Sharpe had found the choice of Richard an embarrassment, but Jane had been delighted when Harper sought permission to use the name. ‘And I’m doing you a favour, RSM,’ Sharpe went on.
‘How would that be, sir?’
‘Because your son will still have a father in two weeks.’ Sharpe was seeing that black, sheer, wet wall and the image of it made his voice savage. Then he turned as the door opened. ‘My dear.’
Jane, beautiful in a blue silken dress, smiled delightedly at Harper. ‘Sergeant Major! How’s the baby?’
‘Just grand, ma’am!‘ Harper had formed a firm alliance with Mrs Sharpe that seemed aimed at subverting Major Sharpe’s authority. ’And Isabella thanks you for the linen.‘
‘You’ve got toothache!’ Jane frowned with concern. ‘Your cheek’s swollen.’
Harper blushed. ‘It’s only a wee ache, ma’am, nothing at all!‘
‘You must have oil of cloves! There’s some in the kitchen. Come along!’
The oil of cloves was discovered and Harper sent, disconsolate, into the night.
‘He can’t come,’ Sharpe said after dinner, when he and Jane walked back alone through the town.
‘Poor Patrick,’ Jane insisted on stopping at Hogan’s lodgings, but there was no news. She had visited earlier in the day and thought the sick man was looking better.
‘I wish you wouldn’t risk yourself,’ Sharpe said.
‘You’ve said so a dozen times, Richard, and I promise I heard you each time.’
They went to bed and, just four hours later, the landlady hammered on their door. It was pitch dark outside and bitterly cold inside the bedroom. Frost had etched patterns on the small windowpanes, patterns that were reluctant to melt even though Sharpe revived the fire in the tiny grate. The landlady had brought candles and hot water. Sharpe shaved, then pulled on his old and faded Rifleman’s uniform. It was the uniform in which he fought, stained with blood and torn by bullet and blade. He would not go into action in any other uniform.
He oiled his rifle’s lock. He always carried a long-arm into battle, even though it had been ten years since he had been made into an officer. He drew his Heavy Cavalry sword from its scabbard and tested the fore-edge. It seemed odd to be going to war from his wife’s bed, odder still not to be marching with his own men or with Harper, and that thought gave him a flicker of unrest for he was not used to fighting without Harper beside him.
‘Two weeks,’ he said. ‘I should be back in two weeks. Maybe less.’
‘It will seem like eternity,’ Jane said loyally, then, with an exaggerated shudder, she threw the bedclothes back and snatched up the clothes that Sharpe had hung to warm before the fire. Her small dog, grateful for the chance, leaped into the warm pit of the bed.
‘You don’t have to come,’ Sharpe said.
‘Of course I’ll come. It’s every woman’s duty to watch her husband sail to the wars.’ Jane shivered suddenly, then sneezed.
A half hour later they went into the fish-smelling lane and the wind was like a knife in their faces. Torches flared on the quayside where the Amelie rose on the incoming tide.
A dark line of men, weapons gleaming softly, filed aboard the merchantman that was to be Sharpe’s transport. The Amelie was no jewel of Britain’s trading fleet. She had begun life as a collier, taking coal from the Tyne to the smoke thick Thames, and her dark timbers still stank thickly of coal-dust.
Casks and crates and nets of supplies were slung on board in the pre-dawn darkness. Boxes of rifle ammunition were piled on the quayside and with them were barrels of vilely salted and freshly-killed beef. Twice baked bread was wrapped in canvas and boxed in resinous pine. There were casks of water for the voyage, spare flints for the fighting, and whetstones for the sword-bayonets. Rope ladders were coiled in the Amelie’s scuppers so that the Riflemen, reaching the beach where they must disembark, could scramble down to the longboats sent from the Vengeance.
A smear of silver-grey marked the dawn and flooded slowly to show the filthy, littered water of the harbour. Aboard the Scylla, a frigate moored in the harbour roads, yellow lights showed from the stern cabin where doubtless the frigate’s captain took his breakfast.
‘I’ve wrapped you a cheese.’ Jane’s voice sounded small and frightened. ‘It’s in your pack.’
‘Thank you.’ Sharpe bent to kiss her and wished suddenly that he was not going. A wife, General Craufurd used to say, weakens a soldier. Sharpe held his wife an instant, feeling her ribs beneath the layers of wool and silk, then, suddenly, her slim body jerked as she sneezed again.
‘I’m catching a cold.’ She was shivering. Sharpe touched her forehead and it was oddly hot.
‘You’re not well.’
‘I hate rising early.’ Jane tried to smile, but her teeth were chattering and she shivered again. ‘And I’m not certain the fish was entirely to my taste last night.’
‘Go home!’
‘When you’re gone.’
Sharpe, even though a hundred men watched him, kissed his wife again. ‘Jane ...’
‘My dear, you must go.’
‘But...’
‘It’s only a cold. Everyone gets a cold in winter.’
‘Sir!’ Sweet William saluted Sharpe and bowed to Jane. ‘Good morning, ma’am! Somewhat brisk!‘
‘Indeed, Mr Frederickson.’ Jane shivered again.
‘Everyone’s aboard, sir.’ Frederickson turned to Sharpe.
Sharpe wanted to linger with Jane, he wanted to reassure himself that she had not caught Hogan’s fever, but Frederickson was waiting for him, men were holding the ropes that would swing the gangplank away, and he could not stay. He gave Jane a last kiss, and her forehead was like fire. ‘Go home to bed.’
‘I will.’ She was shaking now, hunched and clenched against the bitter wind.
Sharpe paused, wanting to say something memorable, something that would encompass the inchoate, extraordinary love he felt for her, but there were no words. He smiled, then turned to follow Frederickson on to the Amelie’s deck.
The daylight was thin now, seeping through the hilly landscape behind the port and making the streaked, bubbling, heaving water of the harbour silver. The gangplank crashed on to the stones of the quay.
Far out to sea, like some impossible mountain forming on the face of the waters, an airy structure of dirty grey sails caught the morning daylight. It was the Vengeance getting under way. She looked formidably huge; a great floating weapon that could make the air tremble and the sea shake when she launched her full broadside, but she would be useless in the shoal waters by the Teste de Buch fort. That would have to be taken by men and by hand-held weapons.
‘He’s signalling.’ Tremgar, master of the Amelie, spat over the side. ‘Means they’ll be moving us off. Stand by, forrard!’ He bellowed the last words.
A topsail dropped from the nearby Scylla’s yards and the movement, suggesting an imminent departure, made Sharpe turn to the quay. Jane, swathed in her powder-blue cloak, was still there. Sharpe could see her shivering. ‘Go home!’
A voice shouted. ‘Wait! Wait!’ The accent was French and the speaker a dully-dressed man, evidently a servant, who rode a small horse and led a packhorse on a leading rein. ‘Amelie! Wait!’
‘Bloody hell.’ Tremgar had been packing a pipe with dark tobacco that he now pushed into a pocket of his filthy coat.
Behind the servant and packhorse and, stately as a bishop in procession, rode a tall, elegant man on a tall, elegant horse. The man had a delicate, sensitive face, a white cloak clasped with silver, and a bicorne hat shielded with oiled-cloth against the rain.
The gangplank was rigged again and the man, with a faint shudder as though the stench of the Amelie was too much for a gentleman of his fastidious tastes, came aboar
d. ‘I seek Major Sharpe,’ he announced in a French accent to the assembled officers who had gathered in the ship’s waist.
‘I’m Sharpe.’ Sharpe spoke from the poop deck.
The newcomer turned in a movement that would have been elegant on a dance-floor, but seemed somewhat ludicrous on the battered deck of an erstwhile collier. He took a quizzing glass from his sleeve and, with its help, inspected the tattered uniform of Major Richard Sharpe. He bowed, somehow suggesting that he should have been the recipient of such an honour himself, then took off his waterproofed hat to reveal sleek, silver hair that was brushed back to a black velvet bow. He held out a sealed envelope. ‘Orders.’
Sharpe had jumped down from the poop and now tore open the envelope. ‘To Major Sharpe. The bearer of this note is the Comte de Maquerre. You will render him every assistance within your power. Bertram Wigram, Colonel.’
Sharpe looked into the narrow face that had been powdered pale. He suddenly remembered that Hogan, in his sick ramblings, had mentioned the name Maquereau, meaning ‘pimp’, and he wondered if the insult was a nickname for this elegant, fastidious man. ‘You’re the Comte de Maquerre?’
‘I have that honour, Monsieur, and I travel to Arcachon with you.’ De Maquerre’s cloak had fallen open to reveal the uniform of the Chasseurs Britannique. Sharpe knew that regiment’s reputation. The officers were Frenchmen loyal to the ancien régime, while its men were deserters from the French Army and all unmitigated scoundrels. They could fight when the mood took them, but it was not a regiment Sharpe would want on his flank in battle.
‘Captain Frederickson! Four men to get the Frenchman’s baggage on board! Quick now!’
De Maquerre tugged at his buttoned, kidskin gloves. ‘You have quarters for my horse? And the packhorse.’
‘No horses,’ Sharpe said sourly, which only tossed the Comte de Maquerre into a sulky fit of protests in which the name of the Duc d‘Angoulême, Louis XVIII, and the Lord Wellington featured prominently. In the meantime an angry message came from the Scylla demanding to know why the Amelie had not slipped her moorings at the flood tide, and finally Sharpe had to give way.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege Page 68