Sharpe's Honor

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Mr Collip!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I want an ammunition check on all companies.’

  ‘We’ve lost the limber, sir.’

  ‘Then god-damned find it! And if you see my horse, send it here!’

  ‘Horse, sir?’

  ‘Black, undocked tail.’ Sharpe had taken over a house in the village plaza. Its furniture had all gone to the barricades. He listened to the French guns open fire again, and knew that the attackers would be dying as they struggled to cross the bridge. ‘Paddock!’

  The Battalion clerk grinned from the kitchen door. He had been speechless when he saw Sharpe and he still grinned like a madman. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Someone must have some bloody tea.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Sharpe ducked out into the street. A dog ran past with a cut of meat in its mouth. He preferred not to wonder what kind of meat it was. The smoke of the French cannons drifted over the village roofs, low enough to touch the belfry. Once or twice the bell would clang as a fragment of canister bounced from the bridge to strike the instrument.

  ‘Sir! Sir!’ Sharpe looked left. Harry Price was running towards him. ‘Mr Sharpe!’

  ‘Harry.’ Sharpe grinned.

  Lieutenant Price, formality forgotten, thumped Sharpe on the back. He had been Sharpe’s Lieutenant in the Light Company. ‘Christ! I thought the buggers had hanged you!’

  ‘This army can’t do anything right, Harry.’ It was the twentieth time he had said it.

  Price was beaming. ‘What in hell’s name happened?’

  ‘Long story.’

  ‘Here.’ Price thrust a bottle of brandy at Sharpe. ‘Found it in their headquarters.’

  Sharpe smiled. ‘Later, Harry. There might be more to do.’

  ‘God, I hope not! I want to live to be thirty.’ Price tipped the bottle to his mouth. ‘I suppose you’re the commanding officer now?’

  ‘You suppose right.’ Leroy’s body had been brought into the village. His death had at least been quick. Leroy would have known nothing. The other consolation was that he had left no family, no letters that needed to be written or widow to console.

  The guns still fired at the bridge. Sharpe frowned. ‘Why in hell haven’t we got guns?’

  ‘I heard they got lost,’ Price grinned. ‘This bloody army never does anything right. Jesus! It’s good to see you, sir!’

  And, oddly to Sharpe, it seemed the whole Battalion thought the same. The officers wanted to shake his hand, the men wanted to look at him as if to prove to themselves that he still lived, and he grinned shyly at their pleasure. Angel, who had come into the village with Sharpe’s horse, basked in the reflected glory. Dozens of bottles were thrust at Sharpe, dozens of times he claimed that the army couldn’t hang a curtain if they tried. He knew he was smiling idiotically, but he could not help it. He shook Harry Price off by ordering him to set up picquets at the village’s northern edge and took refuge from embarrassment in his temporary headquarters.

  Where someone else found him.

  ‘Sir?’

  The doorway was shadowed by a huge man who was festooned with weapons. Sharpe felt the smile coming again. ‘Patrick?’

  ‘Christ!’ The Sergeant ducked under the lintel. There were tears in his eyes. ‘I knew you’d be back.’

  ‘Couldn’t let you bastards fight a war without me.’

  ‘No!’ Harper grinned.

  There was an odd silence, which both men broke together. Sharpe waved at the Irishman. ‘Go on?’

  ‘No, sir. You?’

  ‘Just that it’s good to be back.’

  ‘Aye.’ Harper stared at him. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Long story, Patrick.’

  ‘It would be.’

  There was silence again. Sharpe felt an immense relief that the Sergeant was alive and well. He knew he should say something to that effect, but it would be too embarrassing. Instead he waved at the window-ledge. ‘Paddock made some tea.’

  ‘Grand!’

  ‘Is Isabella well?’

  ‘She’s just grand, sir.’ Harper tipped the cup up and drained it. ‘Mr Leroy gave us permission to get married.’

  ‘That’s wonderful!’

  ‘Aye, well.’ Harper shrugged. ‘There’s a wee one on the way, sir. I think Mr Leroy thought it would be best.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Harper smiled. ‘I had a bet with Mr d’Alembord that you’d be back, sir.‘

  Sharpe laughed. ‘You’ll need money if you’re going to marry, Patrick.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true. Nothing like a woman for spending a man’s money, eh?’

  ‘So when’s the wedding?’

  ‘Soon as I can find a priest. She’s got herself a dress, so she has. It’s got frills.’ He said it gloomily.

  ‘You’ll let me know?’

  ‘Of course!’ Harper was embarrassed. ‘You know what women are like, sir.’

  ‘I’ve seen one or two, Patrick.’

  ‘Aye well. They like marrying, so they do.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Especially when they’re pregnant, yes?’

  Harper laughed. There was silence again. The huge Sergeant put the cup down. ‘It is grand to see you, sir.’

  ‘You won your bet, eh?’

  ‘Only a bloody pound.’

  ‘You had that much faith in me, eh?’

  They laughed again.

  A horse’s hooves were loud outside. A voice shouted. ‘South Essex!’

  ‘In here!’ Sharpe shouted back, glad suddenly of the distraction from the emotion he felt.

  A staff officer dismounted and ducked under the lintel. ‘Colonel Leroy?’ He straightened up.

  It was Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones, in his hand a folded order for the Battalion. He stared at Sharpe, his mouth dropped open, and, his head slowly shaking and his eyes widening, he fell backwards in a dead faint. His scabbard chains clinked as he slumped on the floor. Sharpe nodded at the prostrate body. ‘That’s the bugger who defended me.’

  Harper laughed, then cocked his head. ‘Listen!’

  The French guns had stopped. The bridge must have fallen, and suddenly Sharpe knew what he wanted to do. ‘Angel!’

  ‘Señor?’

  ‘Horses! Patrick?’

  ‘Sir?’ .

  ‘Grab that fool’s horse.’ He pointed at Trumper-Jones. ‘We’re going hunting!’

  ‘For what?’ Harper was already moving.

  ‘Wedding presents and a woman!’ Sharpe followed Harper into the street, looked around, and spotted a Captain of the South Essex. ‘Mr Mahoney!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You’ll find orders in that house! Obey them! I’ll be back!’ He gave the mystified Mahoney the letter for Hogan, swung onto Carbine’s saddle, and rode towards the bridge.

  To the north of Gamarra Mayor, at a village called Durana, Spanish troops cut the Great Road. The defenders at Durana had been the Spanish regiments loyal to France.

  Countrymen fought countrymen, the bitterest clash, and Wellington’s Spaniards, faithful to Spain, won the bridge at five o‘clock. The Great Road to France was cut.

  The Spanish troops had climbed barricades of the dead. They had fought till their musket barrels were almost red hot, till they had savaged the defenders and won a great victory. They had blocked the Great Road.

  The French could still have broken through. They could have screened themselves to the west and thrown their great columns at the tired, blood-soaked Spaniards, but in the confusion of a smoke filled plain no one knew how few men had broken through in the rear. And all the time, minute by minute, the British Battalions were coming from the west while the great guns, massed wheel to wheel by Wellington, tore huge gaps in the French lines.

  The French broke.

  King Joseph’s army, that had started the day with a confidence not seen by a French army in Spain for six years, collapsed.

  It happened desperately fast, and it happened in pieces. One Brigade would fight
, standing fast and firing at their enemies, while another would crumble and run at the first British volley. The French guns fell silent one by one, were limbered up and taken back towards the city. Generals lost touch with their troops, they shouted for information, shouted for men to stand, but the French line was being shredded by the regular, staccato volleys of the British Battalions while overhead the British shells cracked apart in smoke and shrapnel and the French troops edged backwards and then came the rumour that the Great Road was cut and that the enemy came from the north. In truth the French guns still held the British at Gamarra Mayor and the Spaniards further north were too tired and too few to attack south, but the rumour finally broke the French army. It ran.

  It was early evening, the time when the trout were rising to feed in the river that flowed beneath the now unguarded bridge at Gamarra Mayor. The French who had guarded the bridge so well had seen their comrades run. They joined the flight.

  The men who watched from the western hills or from the Puebla Heights were given a view of magnificence, a view granted to few men, an eagle’s view of victory.

  The smoke cleared slowly from the plain to show an army marching forward: Not in parade order, but in a more glorious order. From the mountains to the river, across two miles of burned and bloodied country, the allied Regiments were spread. They marched beneath their Colours and the sun lanced between the smoke to touch the ragged flags red, white, blue, gold, and red again where the blood had soaked them. The land was heavy with the men who marched, Regiment after Regiment, Brigade after Brigade, climbing the low hills that had been the French second line. Their shadows went before them as they marched towards the city of golden spires.

  And in the city the women saw the French army break, saw the troops come running, saw the cavalry heading the panicked flight. The tiered seats emptied. Through the city, from house to house, the news spread, and the camp-followers and families and lovers of the French began their own headlong flight from Vitoria. They were spurred on their way by Marshal Jourdan’s last orders in Vitoria, orders brought by harried cavalrymen who shouted at the French to make for Salvatierra.

  The Great Road was cut and the only road left for retreat was a narrow, damp track that wound its way towards Salvatierra and from there to Pamplona. From Pamplona, by tortuous paths, the army might struggle back to France through the high Pyrenees.

  The chaos began. Civilians, coaches, wagons and horses blocked the narrow streets while, to the west, beneath a sun hazed by the smoke of battle, the victorious Battalions marched in their great line towards the city. The victors darkened the plain and their Colours were high.

  While to the south three horsemen crossed Gamarra Mayor’s bridge. They had to pick their way through the corpses, which were already thick with flies, onto the Zadorra’s northern bank.

  Sharpe touched his heels to Carbine’s flank. He had his victory, and now, with Harper and Angel beside him, he would ride into the chaos of defeat to search for the Marquesa.

  CHAPTER 24

  The road to Pamplona was wide enough for a single wagon or gun. The verges and fields either side of the road were too softened by the rain to take either.

  Onto that road the whole of the French army, with more than twenty thousand camp-followers, three thousand wagons and over a hundred and fifty guns and limbers, was trying to reach safety.

  All day the baggage park had listened to the thunder and watched the smoke over the spires of the cathedral. Now came the orders to retreat, not up the Great Road, but directly east towards Salvatierra and Pamplona.

  Whips cracked, oxen protested the iron-shod poles that prodded them into motion, and from a half dozen field tracks and from the crowded city streets the vehicles started towards the single, narrow road. Into the confusion came the guns, thundering from the battlefield and adding their weight to the press of baggage and animals.

  The first wagon stuck just a hundred yards beyond the place where the field tracks converged on the road. A carriage, trying to go round it on the soft verge, overturned. A gun swerved, skidded, and the two tons of metal slammed into the carriage, horses screaming, gunners falling beneath the metal, and the road was blocked. Oxen, horses, carriages, wagons, carts, cannon, howitzers, portable forges, ambulances and limbers, all were trapped between the road block and the British.

  The wagons swarmed with people. Soldiers fleeing the city, drivers, camp-followers, all ran through the wagon park. Some began to slit the tarpaulins and drag boxes from the loads. Muskets fired as guards tried to protect the Emperor’s property, and then the guards realised that the Emperor had lost this property and whoever took it now might keep it. They joined the looters.

  Thousands of French troops were streaming past the blocked wagons, trampling the crops and running eastwards. Generals rode with the cavalry, rehearsing the excuses they would make, while other men swerved into the wagons and searched desperately for wives and children.

  King Joseph was in his carriage, fleeing towards the road block, and then there was the thunder of hooves, the sight of lifted sabres, and the first British cavalry, sent around the city, descended on the panicked, fleeing mob.

  The King escaped only by abandoning his carriage. He scrambled from the right hand door as the British cavalry wrenched open the left. He abandoned his belongings and ran with his erstwhile subjects.

  Women and children screamed. They did not know where their men were, only that the army had dissolved into a mob and they must run. Hundreds stayed in the baggage park, tearing the wagonloads down, not caring that the British cavalry were coming. Better to be rich for just a few minutes than eternally poor. From the city came the Spaniards, many with long knives ready for the slaughter.

  Captain Saumier heard the shout for the army to go to Salvatierra and guessed that the city’s single eastern gate would already be cramming with desperate people. He shouted at the coachman to go for the north gate.

  It was a sensible move. The narrow eastern streets were filled with carriages and wagons, with men shouting and women screaming in fear. Saumier would take La Marquesa through the northern gate and then turn east.

  The wheels bounced on the cobbles, skidded at one corner, but the driver held the balance and cracked the long whip over the horses’ heads.

  Saumier, his one good hand holding a pistol, leaned from the window and saw the city gate ahead. ‘Go on! Go on!’ His voice was loud over the harsh sound of the wheels and hooves, over the crack of the whip and the shouts of other fugitives. General Verigny had told Captain Saumier to protect this woman, and Saumier, who thought her more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen, hoped that his protection would merit a reward.

  The carriage slowed to pass the narrow gate, a soldier tried to jump onto the step and Saumier hit the man with the brass butt of his pistol. The man fell under the wheel, screaming, the carriage leaped into the air, jarred down, and then it was through the archway and rattling down the street of houses that lay outside the wall. The coachman turned the horses eastwards at a crossroads, shouted at them, cracked the whip again, and the carriage picked up speed as Saumier leaned back on the upholstered cushions and pushed his pistol into his belt.

  La Marquesa, her maid nervous beside her, looked at him. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Wherever we can, dear lady.’ Saumier was nervous. He could see the men running from the battle and could hear the heavy noise of the gun wheels coming from the plain. As the coach cleared the last houses of the northern suburb he leaned again from the window and was appalled by the chaos he saw. It was as if a whole army ran a panicked race. Then he heard the brakeshoes slap on the wheels, he lurched as the carriage slowed, and he looked ahead to see the massive jam of wagons, guns and carriages that blocked the eastern road. ‘Go round! Go round!’

  The coachman pulled on the reins, bumping the carriage off the road and onto the verge. He shouted at the horses, cracking the whip above their ears, and the carriage seemed to surge and heave its way over the
wet ground, yet whip the horses as he could, the coachman knew the carriage was slowing.

  The rear of the coach dipped and Saumier, opening the door to lean out, saw people clinging to the baggage rack. He threatened them with his pistol, but their weight had slowed the carriage too much, the wheels were already sinking into the morass, and, slowly, finally, it stopped.

  Saumier swore.

  A dozen people were running towards the horses, knives drawn to cut the traces and use the animals for their own escape. He reached for La Marquesa, politeness forgotten, and pulled her out of the coach. ‘Come on!’

  The maid was hunched into a corner, refusing to go out into the panicked mass of people. La Marquesa, made of sterner stuff, jumped onto the wet ground. Saumier saw she had a pistol. ‘Stop them!’

  A man was hacking at the silver trace chains of the horses. La Marquesa aimed at him, her teeth gritted, pulled the trigger, and the man screamed, blood spurting from his neck, and Captain Saumier, his own pistol thrust into his sling, finished the man’s work by hacking down with his sabre. He led the horse from the harness. ‘My Lady?’

  ‘Wait!’ She had climbed onto the driver’s seat, lifted the coachman’s bench, and now dragged a leather sack from the compartment beneath. She gestured Saumier to lead his horse closer, then, modesty gone and not caring who saw her legs, she slithered across from the driving perch onto the horse’s back. Saumier climbed up behind La Marquesa and shook the long driving rein with his good hand. Behind them, sabres raised, the British cavalry swept towards the road block. The coachman had taken another horse and galloped eastwards.

  Saumier kicked back with his heels and the horse, frightened and lively, went into a gallop that took them past the stuck wagons. La Marquesa, mourning the fact that she had been forced to abandon all her belongings and her wealth, saw the soldiers and their women scattering silver dollars on the ground and scrambling at the wagons for more plunder. There were riches to be made here this day, but the British were coming fast from the west, and she would ride eastwards to safety. Saumier, the bandage on his eye flecked with mud thrown up by the hooves, took her to the north of the road and galloped onwards.