Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (105 page)

‘Thank you, Corporal.’ Sharpe held the bottle out to Harper who obligingly struck the neck with the blade of his sword-bayonet. The scream sounded again. A girl’s scream.

Sharpe dropped the wine and put his heels back. Prisoners twisted aside as the horse plunged down the bank, jumped a shallow ditch, then Sharpe reined the beast right, ducked under a bare-branched apple tree, and twisted left. Pounding feet sounded behind him, but all Sharpe could see was a man running away, running towards the river and Sharpe put his heels back again.

The man was a Marine. He was clutching his red jacket loose in one hand and holding up his unbuttoned breeches with his other. He looked over his shoulder, saw Sharpe, and dodged to his right.

‘Stop!’

The man did not stop, but ducked through a gap in the thorn hedge that tore his jacket from his grasp. He abandoned it and began running across the field. Sharpe forced his horse at the gap, kicked it through, and drew his sword. The man was stumbling, flailing for balance on the tussocks of the meadow, then the flat of the heavy sword, swept down in a clumsy curve, took him on the side of the head. He fell, uncut by the blade, and Sharpe circled the horse back to the fallen man.

It was all because of the farm girl; the green-eyed, pale, shivering girl whom the man had dragged into the scanty hay-store and attacked. She was now sitting, trembling, with the scraps of her torn clothing drawn around her thin body.

‘She asked for it,’ the Marine, taken back to the dung-stinking farmyard, said.

‘Shut your face!’ Harper had appointed himself Master-at-Arms. ‘She wouldn’t be bloody screaming and you wouldn’t be bloody running, would you?’

‘Fetch her some clothes,’ Sharpe snarled at one of the Marines who had formed a circle about the prisoner. ‘Captain Palmer! You warned this man?’

Palmer, pale-faced, nodded.

‘Well?’ Sharpe insisted on a verbal acknowledgement.

‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Palmer swallowed. ‘But the girl wasn’t raped, sir.’

‘You mean she screamed too loudly. But you know what the orders are, don’t you?’ This question was addressed to all the Marines who stared with undisguised hostility at the Rifle Officer who threatened to hang one of their own comrades. There was silence as Sharpe rammed his sword home. ‘Now back to your duties! All of you!’ He jumped off the horse.

Captain Palmer, a Marine sergeant, Harper and Sharpe stayed with the prisoner. The story came slowly at first, then quickly. It had been attempted rape. The girl, the Marine said, had encouraged him, but her screams and the bruises and scratches on her thin arms told a different story.

‘Matthew Robinson’s a steady man, sir.’ Palmer walked with Sharpe to the end of the farmyard. Sharpe could see that Minver’s Riflemen had managed to get the first powder waggon to the end of the bridge, but, faced with the slope of the roadway, could get it no further. They were now rolling the powder barrels to the crown of the arch.

‘You know what the Standing Orders are,’ Sharpe said bleakly.

‘It won’t happen again, sir.’ Palmer sounded contrite.

‘I know damned well it won’t happen again!’ Sharpe, hating the necessity of the moment, snapped the words. ‘That’s why we’re hanging the bastard!’

‘I mean we don’t need Robinson’s death as an example, sir,’ Palmer pleaded.

‘I’m not doing it as an example.’ Sharpe turned and gestured towards the farmer and his wife. ‘I’m doing it for them! If the French people think we’re savages, Palmer, then they’ll fight us. You know what it’s like having
guerrilleros
up your backside when you fight? Every waggon we send up from the coast will have to be guarded by a Battalion! Every one! That’s how we beat the French out of Spain, Captain, not just by hammering the bastards in battle, but because half their armies were guarding waggons against Spanish peasants. Peasants like them!’ Again he pointed to the French couple.

‘The girl wasn’t harmed, sir,’ Palmer said stubbornly. ‘And we’ve proved by our action here that we can offer protection.’

‘And the story is spread about,’ Sharpe said, ‘that a man can rape a girl and his officers will condone it.’

Palmer stood his ground. ‘If Robinson was one of your men, sir, one of your Riflemen, would you ...’

‘Yes,’ Sharpe said, and knew instantly that if he was Palmer, and Bampfylde was the officer demanding the hanging, then Sharpe would fight just like Palmer for the life of his man. God damn it, but, years before, Sharpe had even defended the most useless man in his Light Company in just this same situation.

Palmer saw Sharpe’s hesitation. ‘Robinson fought damned well, sir. Doesn’t your Field Marshal mitigate punishment for bravery in the field?’

Wellington had been known to cancel a half-dozen hangings because the prisoners’ Battalions had fought well. Sharpe swore, hating the decision. ‘Orders are orders, Mr Palmer.’

‘Just as I believe we’re ordered to hang privateers and deserters, sir?’ Palmer said it bluntly, daring Sharpe’s wrath.

‘Damn your insolence.’ Sharpe said it without conviction, almost as a sop to the weakness he was showing. ‘You will apologize to the girl and to her parents. Give them this.’ He took two of the forged silver ten-franc pieces from his pouch.

‘Thank you, sir.’ Palmer beamed as he took the coins.

‘I’m not done with him,’ Sharpe warned. ‘RSM Harper!’

Harper pretended not to notice his restoration to Regimental Sergeant Major. ‘Sir?’

‘Take Marine Robinson and the girl’s father round the back of the barn. I want you at the bridge in ten minutes!’

‘Do I need a rope, sir?’

‘No. But give the father his chance.’ God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had broken orders again. First he spared a damned American, now a Marine, and what was the point of orders if sentimentality weakened a man into disregarding them?

‘Thank you, sir,’ Palmer said again.

‘You won’t thank me when you see what Patrick Harper can do to a man. You’ll be carrying Robinson home.’

‘Better than burying him, sir.’

The incident put Sharpe into a sour mood, worsened by the feeling that he had shown weakness. Twice now he had backed out of an execution and he wondered if it was because he had taken a respectable wife. Old soldiers claimed that marriage did weaken a man, and Sharpe suspected they were right. His foul mood was not helped by the agonizing slowness with which the powder was being crammed between the bridge’s balustrades. Lieutenant Fytch had ordered the toll-keeper and his wife out of their house and the woman, who had earlier threatened Sharpe with her blunderbuss, was now weeping for the loss of her home. Her husband, stumping on his wooden leg, was dragging belongings out to the road.

The sound of Frederickson’s rifle fire had finished and Sharpe saw the Company marching back towards the bridge. That meant the French had gone altogether, though he knew Sweet William would have left picquets to guard against their return.

Using the Marines to help, the Riflemen hastened the setting of the explosives. The other supplies, destined for Soult’s army, were heaped about the powder barrels. Frederickson sounded his whistle to pull in the picquets, while a squad of Minver’s men pushed the townspeople further away from the bridge. It was getting dark, and Sharpe wanted to be moving.

‘Sir!’ Patrick Harper, who had silently reappeared at the bridge, pointed northwards. ‘Sir!’

Two horsemen had appeared. They had not come by the road, but instead, perhaps forewarned by the retreating infantry, had made a wide detour through the fields. Now, with white handkerchiefs skewered to their sword-tips as makeshift flags of truce, they galloped their horses towards the bridge.

They were good horses, corn fed and with strong hindquarters. Both took the soft, plunging ground like thorough breds and were scarcely blowing as they were curbed beside Sharpe who waved down the cautious rifles of Frederickson’s newly arrived Company.

The Comte de Maquerre, dressed in his
Chasseurs Britannique
uniform beneath his pale cloak, nodded cautiously at Sharpe. The other rider was a slim, middle-aged man in civilian clothes. He had a face of such startling and pleasant honesty that Sharpe’s weariness and self-disgust seemed to vanish like frost beneath the rising sun. The man was so calm and self-composed that Sharpe instinctively smiled in response to his greeting, which consisted of mild astonishment at the evidence of carnage on the road and a frank expression of admiration for Sharpe’s success.

The man was French, but spoke good English, and his loyalty was proclaimed by the white cockades that he wore, not only on his brown cloak, but also on his bicorne hat. ‘I am Jules Favier, assistant to the Mayor of Bordeaux.’ He spoke as he climbed from the saddle. ‘And I am at your service, Major.’

The Comte de Maquerre stayed on horseback. His thin face, reddened by the cold, seemed nervous. ‘Bordeaux has risen, Major.’

Sharpe stared up at the Comte. ‘Risen?’ This was the news Sharpe most feared, the spur into what Elphinstone had described as madness.

‘Risen for the King!’ Favier said happily. ‘The Bonapartistes have been ejected!’ Favier, contentment suffusing his honest, cold-chapped face, smiled. ‘The rising ended when the garrison came over to our side. The white flag of Bourbon flies, the defences are manned by subjects of his most Christian Majesty, King Louis XVIII, whom God bless.’

‘Indeed,’ Sharpe said. The news explained why the Comte de Maquerre could wear an enemy’s uniform deep in France, but the news meant much, much more. If it was true that the third city of France had rebelled against Bonaparte and persuaded its garrison troops to forsake their Imperial allegiance, then Sharpe was hearing of the end of this war. Wigram and Bampfylde would be proved right. Sharpe knew he should feel an elation, a great soaring of spirit that all the sacrifices had been worthwhile and that twenty-one years of relentless savagery had been brought to peace by Napoleon’s fall, but he could raise nothing more than a grim smile to meet Favier’s enthusiasm.

‘We have come,’ de Maquerre said, ‘for your help.’ He spoke lamely, almost as if what he said gave him embarrassment.

Favier took a paper from his saddle-bag. ‘If you will accept this,
monsieur,
on behalf of the Provisional and Royalist Government of Bordeaux.’ He handed the paper to Sharpe, then gave a small bow.

The paper was entirely in French, and was decorated with an elaborate seal. Sharpe saw that his name had been spelt wrong; without its final ‘e’. ‘What is it?’

‘You have no French?’ Favier sounded politely surprised.
‘Monsieur,
it is a commission that appoints you a Major General in the forces of his most Catholic Majesty, King Louis XVIII of France, whom God bless.’

‘God bless him,’ Sharpe said automatically. ‘A Major General?’

‘Indeed.’ De Maquerre spoke from his saddle. It had been Ducos’ idea that a soldier as ambitious as Sharpe could not resist such a lure.

Sharpe was wondering what Wellington would make of the appointment, and imagined that aristocrat’s grim amusement that a one time private should be offered such a rank. ‘I ...’ he began, but Favier interrupted him.

‘Our citizens have taken Bordeaux,
monsieur,
but their confidence needs the presence of an ally. Especially an ally as famous and redoubtable as yourself.’ Favier softened his flattery with an honest smile. ‘And once it is known that Allied troops are in the city, then the whole countryside will rise with us.’ Favier spoke with an enthusiasm and confidence that was entirely lacking in the Comte.

Sharpe thought of the local Mayor who had already tried to surrender. Doubtless France was filled with men and women eager to disavow their Napoleonic past and declare for the winning side, but Sharpe was equally sure that Napoleon’s fanatical supporters were not so ready for surrender. The nearest allied forces to Bordeaux, besides Sharpe, were a hundred miles away and there was Marshal Soult with a French army screening their advance. ‘I don’t,‘ Sharpe said, ’have orders from my General that would allow me to help you.‘ He held the commission out to Favier.

‘You have orders,’ de Maquerre said coldly, ‘to give me every assistance.’

Favier seemed upset by de Maquerre’s hostile tone. He smiled at Sharpe. ‘Your Field Marshal, I think, would admire a soldier who grasped the moment?’

‘Maybe.’

‘And you have a reputation,
monsieur,
as a man not afraid of great risks?’

Sharpe said nothing. He had been secretly charged by Elphinstone with scotching Bampfylde’s high hopes. One part of Sharpe, that part which had so often dared impossible things, drew him towards Bordeaux, but the soldier within him could imagine his men besieged in that city and surrounded by a population that, with a brigade of Soult’s veterans pressing close, might well decide that their change of allegiance had been premature. ‘I cannot, sir.’ He held out the commission again. ‘I’m sorry.’

A look of disappointment, suggesting personal hurt, crossed Favier’s face. ‘I understand, Major, that your expedition is commanded by Captain Bampfylde, of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy?’

Sharpe paused, thinking that on land Bampfylde held an equal rank to himself, but, merely by boarding the
Vengeance,
Bampfylde magically arose to become the equivalent of a full colonel, and so, in that knowledge, Sharpe reluctantly nodded. ‘He does command, yes.’

Favier shrugged. ‘Would it offend you, Major, if the Comte and I sought to countermand your refusal by seeking Captain Bampfylde’s approval?’

‘I can’t stop you,’ Sharpe said ungraciously, ‘but I must tell you that I’m starting the return march within an hour. I expect to be at Arcachon this time tomorrow.’

The Comte de Maquerre, as though eager to be on his way, had turned his horse away from Sharpe. Favier, leaving the forged commission in Sharpe’s hand, collected his horse’s reins and pulled himself into the saddle. ‘I hope to meet you in the morning, Major, with orders that will reverse your march. God save King Louis!’