Sharpe took the telescope from his haversack, extended the tubes, and looked at the guns. He could see the canisters, the tin cans that spread their balls in a fan of death, being carried to the muzzles of the three guns.
This was the moment when he hated being a Major. He must learn to delegate, to let other men do the dangerous, hard work, yet at this moment, as the French gunners made the last adjustments to the gun trails, he wished he was with the Company of Riflemen that he had been given for this day’s work.
The first canister was pushed into a barrel.
‘Now, Bill!’ Sharpe said it aloud. Michael Trumper-Jones wondered if he was supposed to reply and decided it was best to say nothing.
To the left of the road, from the high rocks that dominated the track, white puffs of smoke appeared. Seconds later came the crack of the rifles. Already three of the gunners were down.
It was a simple ambush. A company of Riflemen hidden close to where the guns would be forced to unlimber. It was a ploy Sharpe had used before; he supposed he would use it again, but it always seemed to work.
The French were never ready for Riflemen. Because they did not use rifles themselves, preferring the smoothbore musket that fired so much quicker, they took no precautions against the green-jacketed men who used cover so skilfully, and who could kill at three or four hundred paces. Half the gunners were down now, the rocks were thick with rifle smoke, and still the cracks sounded and the bullets span into the gun teams. The Riflemen, changing their positions to aim past the smoke of their previous shots, were shooting the draught horses so the guns could not be moved and killing the gunners so the immobilised guns could not be fired.
The enemy rearguard that was on the road behind the guns was doubled forward. They were formed beneath the rocks and ordered upwards, but the rocks were steep and the Riflemen nimbler than their heavily laden opponents. The French attack did, at least, stop the Riflemen firing at the gunners, and those artillerymen who survived crawled out from the shelter of their limbers to continue the loading.
Sharpe smiled.
There was a man in those hills called William Frederickson, half German, half English, and as fearsome a soldier as any Sharpe knew. He was called Sweet William by his men, perhaps because his eye patch and scarred face were so horrid. Sweet William let the surviving gunners uncover themselves, then he ordered the Riflemen to the right of the road to open fire.
The last gunners dropped. The Riflemen, reacting to Frederickson’s shouts, switched their aim to the mounted officers of the infantry. The enemy, by a few, well-aimed rifle shots, had been denied artillery and thrown into sudden chaos. Now was the time for Sharpe to unleash his other weapon. ‘Lieutenant?’
Michael Trumper-Jones, who was trying to hide the damp white flag that drooped from his sabre tip, looked at Sharpe. ‘Sir?’
‘Go to the enemy, Lieutenant, give them my compliments, and suggest that they lay down their weapons.’
Trumper-Jones stared at the tall, dark-faced Rifleman. ‘That they surrender, sir?’
Sharpe frowned at him. ‘You’re not suggesting that we surrender, are you?’
‘No, sir.’ Trumper-Jones shook his head a little too emphatically. He was wondering how to persuade fifteen hundred Frenchmen to surrender to four hundred wet, disconsolate British infantrymen. ‘Of course not, sir.’
‘Tell them we’ve got a Battalion in reserve here, that there’s six more behind them, that we’ve got cavalry in the hills, that we’ve got guns coming up. Tell them any god-damned lie you like! But give them my compliments and suggest that enough men have died. Tell them they have time to destroy their Colours.’ He looked over the bridge. The French were scrambling up the rocks, yet still enough rifle shots, muffled by the damp air, sounded to tell Sharpe that men died wastefully in the afternoon. ‘Go on, Lieutenant! Tell them they have fifteen minutes or I will attack! Bugler?’
‘Sir?’
‘Sound the Reveille. Keep it sounding till the Lieutenant reaches the enemy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The French, warned by the bugle, watched the lone horseman ride towards them with his white handkerchief held aloft. Politely, they ordered their own men to cease firing at the elusive Riflemen in the rocks.
The smoke of the fight drifted away in a shower of windblown rain as Trumper-Jones disappeared into a knot of French officers. Sharpe turned round. ‘Stand easy!’
The five companies relaxed. Sharpe looked to the river bank. ‘Sergeant Harper!’
‘Sir!’ A huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, came from the bank. He was one of the Riflemen who, with Sharpe, had been stranded in this Battalion of redcoats as part of the flotsam of war. Although the South Essex wore red and carried the short-range musket, this man, like the other Riflemen of Sharpe’s old Company, still wore the green uniform and carried the rifle. Harper stopped by Sharpe. ‘You think the buggers will give in?’
‘They haven’t got any choice. They know they’re trapped. If they can’t get rid of us within the hour, they’re done for.’
Harper laughed. If any man was a friend of Sharpe’s it was this Sergeant. They had shared every battlefield together in Spain and Portugal, and the only thing that Harper could not share was the guilt that haunted Sharpe since his wife’s death.
Sharpe rubbed his hands against the unseasonal cold. ‘I want some tea, Patrick. You have my permission to make some.’
Harper grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’ He spoke with the raw accent of Ulster.
The tea was still warm in Sharpe’s cupped hands when Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones returned with the French Colonel. Sharpe had already ordered the fake Colours to be lowered and now he went forward to meet his forlorn enemy. He refused to take the man’s sword. The Colonel, who knew he could not take this bridge without his guns, agreed to the terms. He took consolation, he said, in surrendering to a soldier of Major Sharpe’s repute.
Major Sharpe thanked him. He offered him tea.
Two hours later, when General Preston arrived with his five Battalions, puzzled because he had heard no musketry ahead of him, he found fifteen hundred French prisoners, three captured guns, and four wagons of supplies. The French muskets were piled on the roadway. The plunder they had brought from their garrisoned village was in the packs of Sharpe’s men. Not one of the South Essex, nor one of Frederickson’s Riflemen, was even wounded. The French had lost seven men, with another twenty-one wounded.
‘Congratulations, Sharpe!’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Officer after officer offered him congratulations. He shook them off. He explained that the French really had no choice, they could not have broken his position without guns, yet still the congratulations came until, shy with embarrassment, he walked back to the bridge.
He crossed the seething water and found the South Essex’s Quartermaster, a plump officer named Collip who had accompanied the half battalion on its night-time march.
Sharpe backed Collip into a cleft of the rocks. Sharpe’s face was grim as death. ‘You’re a lucky man, Mr Collip.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Collip looked terrified. He had joined the South Essex only two months before.
‘Tell me why you’re a lucky man, Mr Collip?’
Collip swallowed nervously. ‘There’ll be no punishment, sir?’
‘There never would have been any punishment, Mr Collip.’
‘No, sir?’
‘Because it was my fault. I believed you when you said you could take the baggage off my hands. I was wrong. What are you?’
‘Very sorry, sir.’
In the night Sharpe and his Captains had gone ahead with Frederickson’s Riflemen. He had gone ahead to show them the path they must take, and he had left Collip, with the Lieutenants, to bring the men on. He had gone back and discovered Collip at the edge of a deep ravine that had been crossed with harsh difficulty. Sharpe had led the Riflemen over, climbing down one steep bank, wading an ice-cold stream that was waist deep with th
e water of this wet spring, then scrambling up the far bank with dripping, freezing clothes.
When he returned for the five companies he had found failure waiting for him.
Mr Collip, Quartermaster, had decided to make the crossing easier for the redcoats. He had made a rope out of musket slings, a great loop that could be endlessly pulled over the chasm, and on the rope he had slung across the ravine all the mens’ weapons, packs, canteens, and haversacks. On the last pass the knotted slings had come undone and all the South Essex’s musket ammunition had gone down into the stream.
When the French approached the bridge only Sharpe’s Riflemen had ammunition. The French could have taken the bridge with one volley of musketry because Sharpe had nothing with which to oppose them.
‘Never, Mr Collip, ever, separate a man from his weapons and ammunition. Do you promise me that?’
Collip nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I think you owe me a bottle of something, Mr Collip.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’
‘Good day, Mr Collip.’
Sharpe walked away. He smiled suddenly, perhaps because the clouds in the west had parted and there was a sudden shaft of red sunlight that glanced down to the scene of his victory. He looked for Patrick Harper, stood with his old Riflemen, and drank tea with them. ‘A good day’s work, lads.’
Harper laughed. ‘Did you tell the bastards we didn’t have any ammunition?’
‘Always leave a man his pride, Patrick.’ Sharpe laughed. He had not laughed often since Christmas.
But now, with this first fight of the new campaign, he had survived the winter, had made his first victory of the spring, and he looked forward at last to a summer untrammelled by the griefs and tangles of the past. He was a soldier, he was marching to war, and the future looked bright.
CHAPTER 2
On a day of sunshine, when the martins were busy making their nests in the old masonry of Burgos Castle, Major Pierre Ducos stared down from the ramparts.
He was hatless. The small west wind lifted his black hair as he stared into the castle’s courtyard. He fidgeted with the earpieces of his spectacles, wincing as the curved wire chafed his sore skin.
Six wagons were being dragged over the cobbles. The wagons were huge, lumbering fourgons, each pulled by eight oxen. Tarpaulins covered their loads, tarpaulins roped down and bulging with cargo. The tired oxen were prodded to the far end of the courtyard where the wagons, with much shouting and effort, were parked against the keep’s wall.
The wagons had an escort of cavalrymen who carried bright-bladed lances from which hung red and white pennants.
The garrison of the castle watched the wagons arrive. Above their heads, at the top of the keep, the tricolour of France flapped sullenly in the wind. The sentries stared out across the wide countryside, wondering whether the war would once again lap against this old Spanish fortress that guarded the Great Road from Paris to Madrid.
There was a rattle of hooves in the gateway and Pierre Ducos saw a bright, gleaming carriage come bursting into the courtyard. It was drawn by four white horses that were harnessed to the splinter-bar with silver trace chains. The carriage was driven too fast, but that, Ducos decided, was typical of the carriage’s owner.
She was known in Spain as La Puta Dorada, “the Golden Whore”.
Beside the carriage, where it stopped beneath Ducos’ gaze, was a General of cavalry. He was a youngish man, the very image of a French hero, whose gaudy uniform was stiffened to carry the weight of his medals. He leaped from his horse, waved the coachmen aside, and opened the carriage door and let down the steps with a flourish. He bowed.
Ducos, like a predator watching its victim, stared at the woman.
She was beautiful, this Golden Whore. Men who saw her for the first time hardly dared believe that any woman was so beautiful. Her skin was as white and clear as the white pearl shells of the Biscay beaches. Her hair was golden. An accident of lip and bone, of eye and skin had given her a look of innocence that made men wish to protect her. Pierre Ducos could think of few women so little in need of protection.
She was French. She was born Helene Leroux and she had served France since her sixteenth year. She had slept in the beds of the powerful and brought from their pillows the secrets of their nations, and when the Emperor had taken the decision to annex Spain to his Empire, he had sent Helene as his weapon.
She had pretended to be the daughter of victims of the Terror. She had married, on instructions from Paris, a man close to the Spanish King, a man privy to the secrets of Spain. She was still married, though her husband was far off, and she bore the title that he had given her. She was the Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba. She was lovely as a summer dream and as treacherous as sin. She was La Puta Dorada.
Ducos smiled. A hawk, high above its victim, might have felt the same satisfaction that the bespectacled French Major felt as he ordered his aide to send his compliments to the Marquesa with a request, which, from Pierre Ducos, was tantamount to an order, that her Ladyship come to his presence immediately.
La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba, smelling of rosewater and smiling sweetly, was ushered into Major Ducos’ bare room an hour later. He looked up from the table. ‘You’re late.’
She blew a kiss from her lace-gloved hand and walked past him to the bastion. ‘The country looks very pretty today. I asked your deliciously timid Lieutenant to fetch me some wine and grapes. We could eat out here, Pierre. Your skin needs some sun.’ She shaded her face with a parasol and smiled at him. ‘How are you, Pierre? Dancing the nights away, as ever?’
He ignored her mockery. He stood in the doorway and his deep voice was harsh. ‘You have six wagons in this fortress.’
She pretended awe. ‘Has the Emperor made you his wagonmaster, Pierre? I must congratulate you.’
He took a folded piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket. ‘They are loaded with gold and silver plate, paintings, coins, tapestries, statues, carvings, and a wine cellar packed in sawdust. The total value is put at three hundred thousand Spanish dollars.’ He stared at her in silent triumph.
‘And some furniture, Pierre. Did your spy not find the furniture? Some of it’s rather valuable. A very fine Moorish couch inlaid with ivory, a japanned éscritoire that you’d like, and a mirrored bed.’
‘And doubtless the bed in which you persuaded General Verigny to guard your stolen property?’ General Verigny was the cavalry officer whose men had guarded the wagons on their journey from Salamanca.
‘Stolen, Pierre? It all belongs to me and my dear husband. I merely thought that while Wellington threatens to defeat us I would remove our few household belongings into France. Just think of me as a simple refugee. Ah!’ She smiled at Ducos’ aide who had brought a tray on which stood an opened bottle of champagne, a single glass, and a dish of white grapes. ‘Put it on the parapet, Lieutenant.’
Scowling, Ducos waited till his aide had gone. ‘The property is loaded on French army wagons.’
‘Condemned wagons, Pierre.’
‘Condemned by General Verigny’s Quartermaster.’
‘True.’ She smiled. ‘A dear man.’
‘And I will countermand his condemnation.’
She stared at him. She feared Pierre Ducos, though she would not give him the satisfaction of showing her fear. She recognised the threat that he offered her. She was running from Spain, running from the victory that Wellington threatened, and she was taking the wealth with her that would make her independent of whatever tragedies befell France. Now Ducos menaced that independence. She plucked a grape from the bunch. ‘Tell me, Pierre, do you order your breakfast with a threat? If you want something of me, why don’t you just ask? Or is it that you want to share my plunder?’
He scowled at that. No one could accuse Pierre Ducos of greed. He changed the subject. ‘I wanted to know how you felt about your husband returning from America.’
She laughed. ‘You want me to go back to
his bed, Pierre? Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough for France?’
‘Does he still love you?’
‘Love? What an odd word from you, Pierre.’ She stared up at the tricolour. ‘He still wants me.’
‘He knows you’re a spy?’
‘I’m sure someone’s told him, aren’t you? But Luis doesn’t take women seriously, Pierre. He’d think I was a spy because I was unhappy without him. He thinks that once he’s back and I’m neatly tucked up beneath his glass dome then everything will be all right again. He can grunt all over me and then weep to his confessor. Men are so stupid.’
‘Or do you choose stupid men?’
‘What a boudoir conversation we are having.’ She smiled brilliantly at him. ‘So what do you want, Pierre?’
‘Why has your husband come home?’
‘He doesn’t like the climate in South America, Pierre. It gives him wind, he says. He suffers from wind. He once had a servant whipped who laughed when he broke it.’
‘He’s gone to Wellington.’
‘Of course he has! Luis is Spain’s new hero!’ She laughed. Her husband had led a Spanish army against rebels in the Banda Oriental, the area of land north of the River Plate. The rebels, seeing Spain humiliated by France, were trying to wrest their independence from the Spanish. To the Marquesa’s surprise, indeed, to the surprise of many people, the Marqués had defeated them. She flicked a grape pip over the parapet. ‘He must have outnumbered them by a hundred to one! Or perhaps he broke wind in their faces? Do you think that’s the answer, Pierre? A grape?’ She smiled at his silence and poured herself champagne. ‘Tell me why you summoned me here with your usual charm and consideration.’
‘Your husband wants you back?’
‘You know he does. I’m sure you intercept all his letters. His lust exceeds his patriotism.’
‘Then I want you to write a letter to him.’
She smiled. ‘Is that all? One letter? Do I get to keep my wagons then?’ She asked the question in a small girl’s voice.
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