Sharpe's Rifles s-6

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  Most of the surviving enemy, except those who held the great building in the plaza, were to the south of the city where, in a slew of houses, their officers enjoined them to a sturdy defence. Sharpe’s men took over two housetops and their rifle fire drove the French from windows and courtyards. Vivar led a dismounted charge of Cazadores and Sharpe watched the red and blue-coated cavalry flood into the enemy-held buildings.

  Vivar’s careful plan, which would have sent men to each of the city’s exits, had crumbled in the heat of victory so that men who should have been driving the enemy eastwards were killing and plundering wherever they could. Yet it was this very savagery which drove the attackers through the city, and made the French flee, either to the countryside, or to the French headquarters in the plaza.

  The rising sun revealed that the tricolour was gone from the cathedral’s high dome. In its place, bright as a jewel, a Spanish standard caught the small breeze. It bore the coat of arms of Spanish royalty; a banner for the morning, but not the banner of Santiago that would be unfurled in the cathedral. Sharpe thought how beautiful the city’s skyline was in this dawn. It was an intricate tangle of spires, domes, pinnacles, cupolas and towers, all misted by smoke and sunlight. Above the whole scene was the great cathedral itself. A group of blue-coated Frenchmen appeared on the balustraded balcony of one of the bell towers. They fired downwards, then a volley from below drove them back. One of the Spanish bullets clanged against a bell. The other church bells of the city rang their peals of victory, even though the stammer of musket fire still testified to the last vestiges of French resistance.

  A Rifleman beside Sharpe tracked two Frenchmen scrambling across a roof fifty yards away. The Baker rifle slammed back into his shoulder and one of the enemy slid bloodily down the tiles and fell into the street. The other, in desperation, hurled himself across the roof ridge to disappear. Vivar’s men had hunted forward with sabre and carbine, and Sharpe could see French soldiers running into the southern fields. He told his men to hold their fire, then led them down to the street where the beauty of the city’s skyline was replaced by the curdling stench of blood. One of the Riflemen laughed because a child was carrying a human head. A dog lapped at blood in a gutter and snarled when the Riflemen came too close.

  Sharpe went back to the edge of the plaza where musket fire still whip-cracked above the flagstones. The wide space was empty but for the dead and dying. The French were still barricaded inside the vast and elegant building from which, whenever a Spaniard dared show himself in the plaza, a thunder of musketry crashed out.

  Sharpe kept his Riflemen out of sight. He sidled to the very corner of the street from where he could see what lavish wealth a dead saint had brought to the city’s centre. The wide plaza was surrounded by buildings of spectacular beauty. A scream turned him, and he saw a Frenchman being thrown from one of the cathedral’s bell towers. The body twisted as it fell, then was mercifully hidden by a lower terrace. The cathedral was a miracle of delicately carved stone and intricate design, but on this day, in the labyrinth of its carved roofs, men died. Another Spanish standard was hung from the bell tower as the last Frenchman was killed there. The great bells began their joyful sound, even as a volley of musketry from the French-held side of the plaza tried to take revenge on the Spaniards who had hung the banner into the dawn.

  A Spaniard burst from the cathedral’s western doors to brandish a captured French flag. Immediately a fusillade splintered from the west of the plaza, and its bullets buzzed and cracked about the man. By a miracle he lived and, clearly knowing that this day he was both invincible and immortal, he pranced mockingly down the cathedral steps and through the scattered corpses of the plaza. Each step of the way the enemy’s captured flag was riddled by the hissing bullets, but somehow the man lived and the Riflemen cheered as, at last, he stalked into the cover of the street with his tattered trophy safe.

  Standing in the shadows, Sharpe had watched the French-held building and had tried to gauge how many muskets or carbines had fired from its facade. He estimated at least a hundred shots, and knew that, if the French had as many men on every other side of the great building, then this would prove a stubborn place to take.

  He turned as hooves sounded behind him. It was Bias Vivar, who must have known what threat waited in the plaza for he slid out of the saddle well short of the street’s ending. “Have you seen Miss Louisa?”

  “No!”

  “Nor me.” Vivar listened to the musketry from the plaza. “They’re still in the palace?”

  Tn force,“ Sharpe said.

  Vivar peered round the corner to stare at the building. It was under fire from men on the cathedral roof. Window panes shattered. French muskets answered the fire, spurting smoke into the rising sun. He swore. “I can’t leave them in the palace.”

  “It’ll be damned hard to get them out.” Sharpe was wiping blood from his sword blade. “Have we found any artillery?”

  “None that I’ve seen.” Vivar jerked back as a musket ball slapped the wall close to his head. He grinned as though apologizing for a weakness. “Perhaps they’ll surrender?”

  “Not if they think they’ll get slaughtered.” Sharpe gestured to the street behind, where a disembowelled French corpse witnessed to the fate awaiting any enemy who was caught by the townspeople.

  Vivar stepped away from the corner. “They might surrender to you.”

  “Me!”

  “You’re English. They trust the English.”

  “I have to promise them life.”

  A Spaniard must have shown himself somewhere on the plaza’s edge, for there was a sudden, echoing crash of musket fire which bore witness to just what strength the French had crammed inside the palace. Vivar waited until the splintering volleys were done. “Tell them I’ll set the palace on fire if they don’t surrender.”

  Sharpe doubted whether the stone building could be fired, but that was not the threat the French feared most. They feared torture and horrid death. “Can the officers keep their swords?” he asked.

  Vivar hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “And you guarantee that every Frenchman will be safe?”

  “Of course.”

  Sharpe did not want to negotiate the surrender; he felt such diplomacy would be done better by Bias Vivar, but the Spaniard seemed convinced that an English officer would be more reassuring to the French. A Cazador trumpeter sounded the cease-fire.

  A bedsheet was found, tied to a broom handle, and waved around the street corner. The trumpeter repeated the call to cease fighting, but it took a full quarter-hour just to convince the vengeful Spaniards about the plaza’s rim that the call was genuine. It was a further ten minutes before a French voice called suspiciously from the palace.

  Vivar translated. “They’ll see one man only. I hope it isn’t a trick, Lieutenant.”

  “So do I.” Sharpe sheathed his sword.

  “And ask them about Louisa!”

  “I was going to,” Sharpe said, and stepped into the sunlight.

  CHAPTER 15

  No fusillade greeted Sharpe; only silence. The rising sun threw the intricate shadow of the cathedral’s pinnacles onto the palace’s bullet-pocked stone, through the haze of dawn mist that had been thickened by musket smoke. The sound of his footsteps echoed from the buildings. A wounded man moaned and turned over in his own blood.

  Sharpe could tell some of the morning’s events from the manner in which the wounded and dead lay in the plaza. Frenchmen, fleeing to the safety of the palace, had been cut down by pursuing Spaniards who, in turn, had been repulsed by volleys from the Frenchmen already safe inside. Those Frenchmen now watched him thread his way through the extraordinary litter of battle.

  There were bodies lying with curled fists. A dead horse bared yellow teeth to the dawn. A cuirassier’s half-polished breastplate lay beside a single drumstick. Scraps of cartridge paper lay black and curled on the flagstones. A block of pipeclay had crumbled to white dust. A Spanish spur that had com
e unscrewed from its boot socket glinted beside a bent ramrod. There was an empty sabre scabbard, a helmet cover, cartouches, and French shakos abandoned among the weeds which thrust through the cracks in the paving. A cat bared its teeth at Sharpe, then slunk quickly away.

  Sharpe paced through the litter, conscious of the watching eyes in the palace. He also felt ill-accoutred for the diplomatic task he faced. His boot sole flapped and scraped on the flagstones. He had no hat, the seams of his trousers had opened again, while his face and lips were stained black by Powder. His rifle was slung on his right shoulder, and he supposed he should have discarded the weapon as inappropriate to this mission.

  Sharpe noted the rejas of black iron that barred the windows of the palace’s lowest storey; bars that would force an assault to attack the double doors. As he approached, one of those doors was opened a few cautious inches. Loopholes had been smashed in its timbers. Shards of glass, broken when the French punched out the windows with their musket butts, lay on the paving amidst misshapen musket balls. Skeins of powder smoke, stinking like rotten eggs, clung to the palace fagade.

  Sharpe stepped carefully through the broken glass. A voice from the doorway demanded something of him in harsh Spanish. “English,” he called in reply, “English.” There was a pause, then the door was pulled back.

  Sharpe stepped through, finding himself in a high, pillared hall where a group of French infantrymen faced him with bayonets. The men were stationed behind a makeshift battlement of plump sacks; evidence that they had foreseen that the doors might be assaulted. Surely, Sharpe reasoned, the French would not allow him to see such careful preparations if they had not already decided to surrender. That thought gave him confidence.

  “You’re English?” An officer spoke from the shadows to Sharpe’s left.

  “I’m English. My name is Sharpe, and I command a detachment of His Majesty’s 95th Rifles present in this city.” It seemed best, at this moment, not to betray his lowly rank which would hardly impress men in such desperate danger as these French.

  Not that the small deception mattered, for another voice spoke from the gloom of the big stairway ahead of him. “Lieutenant Sharpe!” It was Vivar’s brother, the Count of Mouromorto. “Are you the best emissary they could find, Lieutenant?”

  Sharpe said nothing. He wiped his face on his sleeve, thereby smudging his cheeks with the sootlike powder. Somewhere on the city’s edges a volley of musketry sounded, then, closer to the plaza, a cheer. The French officer pulled his sword belt straight. “This way, Lieutenant.” He led him up the stairs, past the Count who, as always dressed in his black riding coat and odd white topboots, fell into step behind. Sharpe wondered if Louisa was in the palace. He was tempted to ask the officer, but supposed the question was better posed to Colonel de l’Eclin or whoever waited to negotiate the surrender upstairs.

  “I must congratulate you, Lieutenant.” The French officer, like Sharpe, had a voice made hoarse from the effort of shouting orders in battle. “I understand it was your Riflemen who made the first assault?”

  “Indeed.” Sharpe always found the politeness of such truces incongruous. Men who had been trying to disembowel each other at sunrise talking, an hour later, in flowery compliments.

  “The Lieutenant was fool enough to sacrifice his men for my brother’s madness.” The Count of Mouromorto was evidently not disposed to compliments, flowery or otherwise. “I thought the British had more sense.”

  Sharpe and the French officer both ignored the comment. Sharpe deduced from the Count’s presence that Colonel de l’Eclin would indeed be waiting at the top of these stairs, and he found himself dreading the meeting. He did not think he could deceive de l’Eclin into surrender; the chasseur officer was too good, and Sharpe knew his own fragile confidence would wane before the Colonel’s knowing and sceptical gaze.

  “This way, Lieutenant.” The French officer ushered him past another barricade on the half landing, then up to doors which opened into a tall and once gracious room which served as a passage to other, similar rooms. To their right were the palace windows, where infantrymen crouched with loaded weapons amidst the shards of broken glass. Upturned shakos full of cartridges lay beside the men at the firing positions. The upper part of the room’s rear wall was pitted by musket strikes, as was the fine moulding of the plaster ceiling. A huge mirror above the mantel had been shattered into savage glass spikes which leaned dangerously from the gilt frame. A portrait of a stern man, dressed in an ancient ruff, was punctured with bullet holes. The soldiers turned to watch Sharpe with silent and hostile curiosity.

  The next room had a score of soldiers embrasured in its windows, too. Like the men in the first room they were mostly infantry, with just a smattering of dismounted cuirassiers or lancers. No Dragoons, Sharpe noted. The men were protected by cushions and upturned furniture, or by sacks which, struck by musket fire, had leaked flour or grain onto the parquet floor. Sharpe’s confidence that the French would surrender was beginning to erode. He could see that this French headquarters had plenty of both men and ammunition for a siege. His feet scrunched the shards of a shattered chandelier as he was led into the third room where a group of officers awaited his arrival.

  To Sharpe’s relief de l’Eclin was not among the Frenchmen who stiffened as he appeared in the doorway. Instead it was a blue-coated Colonel of infantry who stepped forward and gave the smallest bow.

  “Sir,” Sharpe acknowledged the courtesy, though his voice was little more than a croak because of his hoarseness.

  The Colonel’s left arm was in a sling, while his cheek had been scratched by a splinter that had drawn enough blood to soak the white silk stock at his neck. The left tip of his moustache was similarly discoloured by blood. “Coursot,” he said curtly. “Colonel Coursot. I have the honour to command the Headquarter’s Guard of this city.”

  “Sharpe. Lieutenant Sharpe. 95th Rifles, sir.”

  The Count of Mouromorto, having followed Sharpe in silence from the stairway, went to one of the windows from which he could stare at the cathedral’s shadowed facade. He seemed to disdain the proceedings, as though the fate of Spain was above such petty negotiations.

  Yet Colonel Coursot’s opening struck Sharpe as anything but petty. The Frenchman took a watch from his waistcoat pocket and touched the button which sprang open its lid. “You have one hour to leave the city, Lieutenant.”

  Sharpe was non-plussed. He had come expecting to deliver the ultimatum, but instead it was this tall, grey-haired Frenchman who so confidently dictated terms. Coursot snapped the watch shut. “You should know, Lieutenant, that an army corps is approaching this city from the north. It will arrive here in a matter of hours.”

  Sharpe hesitated, not knowing what to say. His mouth was dry and, to give himself time, he uncorked his canteen, swilled the taste of salty gunpowder from his tongue, then spat into the ashes of the grate. “I don’t believe you.” It was, and Sharpe knew it, a feeble response, but probably a truthful one. If either Marshal Soult or Marshal Ney had left Corunna, then news would have reached Vivar by now.

  “Disbelief is your privilege, Lieutenant,” Coursot said, “but I assure you the army corps is coming.”

  “And I assure you,” Sharpe said, “that we shall defeat you before they arrive.”

  “That assumption is also your privilege,” the Colonel said equably, “but it will not make me surrender to you. I assume you have come here to seek my surrender?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a tense silence. Sharpe wondered if some of the officers in this room had urged a surrender on Coursot; these Frenchmen were vastly outnumbered, surrounded, and every moment of continued fighting would make more casualties to join the wounded who lay in the corners of the room. Tf you don’t surrender now,“ Sharpe pressed his case awkwardly, ”we shall give you no further opportunity. You wish the palace to burn down around you?“

  Coursot chuckled. “I assure you, Lieutenant, that a stone building does not catch fire
easily. You, I think, lack artillery? So what are you hoping for? That St James will send down heavenly fire?”

  Sharpe blushed. The Count of Mouromorto translated the jibe and the tension in the room relaxed as the French officers laughed.

  “Oh, I know all about your miracle,” Coursot said mock-ingly. “What astonishes me is to find an English officer involved in such nonsense. Ah, the coffee!” He turned as an orderly entered the room with a tray of cups. “Do you have time for coffee?” he asked Sharpe. “Or must you hurry away to pray for a divine thunderbolt?”

  Til tell you what I’ll do.“ Sharpe, stung out of his efforts at diplomacy, spoke with a biting savagery. Til put my best Riflemen on those bell towers.” He pointed through the window at the cathedral. “Your muskets aren’t accurate at that range, but my men can pick the eyes out of your French skulls at twice that distance. They’ve got all day to do it, Colonel, and they’ll turn these rooms into a charnel house. Frankly, I don’t give a bugger. I’d rather shoot Frenchmen than talk to them.”

  “I do believe you.” If the Colonel was rattled by Sharpe’s threat he did not betray it, but nor did he press his own threat of an approaching army corps which Sharpe sensed had been made purely as a formality. Instead he placed a cup of coffee on the table in front of the Rifleman. “You can kill a lot of my men, Lieutenant, and I can make myself a considerable nuisance to your miracle.” Coursot took a cup from the orderly, then looked with amusement at Sharpe. “The gonfalon of Santiago? Isn’t that right? Don’t you think you’re clutching at straws if you need such a nonsensical bauble for victory?”

  Sharpe neither confirmed nor denied it.

  The Colonel sipped coffee. “Of course I’m no expert, Lieutenant, but I would imagine miracles are best performed in an atmosphere of reverent peace, wouldn’t you agree?” He waited for a reply, but Sharpe kept silent. Coursot smiled. “I am suggesting a truce, Lieutenant.”