Sharpe’s Siege: The Winter Campaign, 1814

Lassan smiled sadly. ‘Burn the chasse-marées, of course.’ By so doing he would condemn the two hundred men of the crews and their families to penury. The mayor and curé had begged him to preserve the boats which, even in French defeat, would give life and bread to the communities of the Biscay coast, but in defeat Henri Lassan would do his duty. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ he said.

‘It won’t.’ Killick brandished his cigar to leave an airy trace of smoke like that made by the burning fuse of an arcing mortar shell. ‘It’s a brilliant idea, Henri! So let the buggers come, eh?’

They drank to victory in a winter’s dusk while, far to the south, where they crossed the path of a great convoy tacking the ocean, Richard Sharpe and his small force came north to do battle.

It snowed in the night. Sharpe stood by the stinking tar-coated ratlines on the Amelie’s poop deck and watched the flakes whirl around the riding light. The galley fire was still lit forward and it cast a great sheet of flickering red on the foresail. The galley’s smoke was taken northwards towards the lights of the Vengeance.

The Amelie was making good time. The helmsman said so, even Captain Tremgar, grunting out of his bunk at two in the morning, agreed. ‘Never known the old sow to sail so well, sir. Can you not sleep, now?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll be having a drop of rum with you?’

‘No, thank you.’ Sharpe knew that the merchant Captain was offering a kindness, but he did not want his wits fuddled by drink as well as sleeplessness.

He stood alone by the rail. Sometimes, as the ship leaned to a gust of wind, a lantern would cast a shimmering ray on to a slick, hurrying sea. The snow whirled into nothingness. An hour after Tremgar’s brief conversation Sharpe saw a tiny spark of light, very red, far to the east.

‘Another ship?’ he asked the helmsman.

‘Lord love you, no, sir!’ The snow-bright wind whirled the helmsman’s voice in snatches to Sharpe. ‘That be land!’

A cottage? A soldier’s fire? Sharpe would never know. The spark glimmered, sometimes disappearing altogether, yet then flickering back to crawl at its snail’s pace along the dark horizon, and the sight of that far, anonymous light made Sharpe feel the discomfort of a soldier at sea. His imagination, that would plague him in battle, saw the Amelie shipwrecked, saw the great seas piling cold and grey on breaking timbers among which the bodies of his men would be whirled like rats in a barrel. That one small red spark was all that was safe, all that was secure, and he knew he would rather be a hundred miles behind the enemy lines and on firm ground than be on a ship in a treacherous sea.

‘You cannot sleep. Nor I.’

Sharpe turned. The ghostly figure of the Comte de Maquerre, hair as white as the great cloak that was clasped with silver at his throat, came towards him. The Comte missed his footing as the Amelie’s blunt bow thumped into a larger wave and the tall man had to clutch Sharpe’s arm. ‘My apologies, Major.’

Steadied by Sharpe, the Comte rested his backside on one of the small cannon that had been issued to the Amelie for its protection.

The Comte, his hair remarkably sleek for such an hour of the morning, stared eastwards. ‘France.’ He said the name with reverence, even love.

‘St Jean de Luz was in France,’ Sharpe said in an ungracious attempt to imply that the Comte’s company was not welcome.

The Comte de Maquerre ignored the comment, staring instead at the tiny spark as though it was the Grail itself. ‘I have been away, Major, for eighteen years.’ He spoke with a tragic intonation. ‘Waiting for liberty to be reborn in France.’

The ship dipped again and Sharpe glimpsed a whorl of grey water that was gone as swiftly as it had been illuminated. The snow melted on his face. Everyone spoke of liberty, he thought. The monarchists and the anti-monarchists, the Republicans and the anti-Republicans, the Bonapartists and the Bourbons, all carried the word around as if it was a genie trapped in a bottle and they were the sole possessors of the world’s corkscrew. Yet if Sharpe was to go down to the hold now and wake up the soldiers who slept so fitfully and uncomfortably in the stinking ’tween-decks of the Amelie, and if he was to ask each man what he wanted in life, then he knew, besides being thought mad by the men, that he would not hear the word Liberty used. They wanted a woman as a companion, they wanted cheap drink, they wanted a fire in winter and fat crops in summer, and they wanted a patch of land or a wineshop of their own. Most would not get what they desired.

But nor would Sharpe. He had a sudden, startlingly clear vision of Jane lying sick; sweating in the cold shivers of the killing fever. The image, so extraordinarily real in the freezing night, made him shiver himself.

He tried to shake the vision away, then told himself that Jane suffered from nothing more than an upset stomach and a winter’s cold, but the superstition of a soldier suddenly gripped Sharpe’s imagination and he knew, with an utter certainty, that he sailed away from a dying wife. He wanted to howl his misery into the snow-dark night, but there was no help there. No help anywhere. She was dying. That knowledge might have been vouchsafed by a dreamlike image, but Sharpe believed it. ‘Damn your bloody liberty.’ Sharpe spoke savagely.

‘Major?’ The Comte, hearing Sharpe’s voice but no distinct words, edged down the ship’s rail.

Jane would be dead and Sharpe would return to the coldly heaped soil of her grave. He wanted to weep for the loss.

‘Did you speak, Monsieur?’ the Comte persisted.

Sharpe turned to the Comte then. The Rifleman had been distracted by his thoughts, but now he concentrated on the tall, pale aristocrat. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Here, Monsieur?’ de Maquerre was defensive. ‘For the same reason you are here. To bring liberty to France!’

Sharpe’s instincts were alert now. He was sensing that a new player had entered the game, a player who would confuse the issues of this expedition. ‘Why?’ he persisted.

De Maquerre shrugged. ‘My family is from Bordeaux, Major, and a letter was smuggled to me in which they claim the citizens are prepared to rebel. I am ordered to discover the truth of the letter.’

God damn it, but his instincts were right. Sharpe was supposed to discover the mood of the French, but Wigram, knowing that Sharpe would return a gloomy answer, had sent this aristocrat at the very last moment. Doubtless de Maquerre would give Wigram the answer he wanted; the answer that would lead to madness. Sharpe laughed sourly. ‘You think two Companies of Riflemen can provoke Bordeaux into rebellion?’

‘No, monsieur,’ the Comte de Maquerre paused as a wave lurched the ship sideways. ‘I think two Companies of Riflemen, with the help of some Marines, can hold the fort at Arcachon until more men are carried north by chasse-marée. Isn’t that why the boats are being collected? To make an invasion? And where better to invade than at Arcachon?’

Sharpe did not reply. Elphinstone had ordered him to scotch Wigram’s desk-born ambitions, but now this foppish Frenchman would make that task difficult. It would be simpler, Sharpe thought, to tip the man overboard now.

‘But if the city of Bordeaux is ready for rebellion,’ de Maquerre was happily oblivious of Sharpe’s thoughts, ‘then we can topple the regime now, Major. We can raise insurrection in the streets, we can humble the tyrant. We can end the war!’ Again Sharpe made no reply, and the Comte stared at the tiny glimmer of light in the cold darkness. ‘Of course,’ the Comte continued, ‘if I do succeed in raising the city against the ogre I shall expect your troops to come to my aid immediately.’

Startled, Sharpe twisted to look at the pale profile of the Comte de Maquerre. ‘I have no such orders.’

The Comte also turned, showing Sharpe a pair of the palest, coldest eyes imaginable. ‘You have orders, Major, to offer me every assistance in your power. I carry a commission from your Prince Regent, and a commission from my King. When ordered, Major, you will obey.’

Sharpe was saved from a reply by the harsh clang of the ship’s bell. He wondered, irritably, why sailors did not just ring the hour like other folk, but insisted on sounding gnomic messages of indeterminate meaning upon their bells. Feet padded on the deck as the watch was changed. The binnacle lantern flared bright as the lid was lifted.

‘Your first duty, Major,’ the Count ignored the dark figures who came up the poop-deck ladders, ‘is to safely put my horses ashore.’

Sharpe had taken enough. ‘My first duty, my Lord, is to my men. If you can’t get your horses ashore then they stay here and I won’t lift a goddamned finger to help you. Good day.’ He stalked across the deck, a gesture somewhat spoilt by the need to stagger as the Amelie creaked on to a new course in obedience to lights that flared suddenly from the Vengeance’s poop.

The dawn crept slow from the grey east. The snow stopped and Sharpe could see, in the half-light, that none had settled on the land that proved surprisingly close. A brig was close inshore and signal flags hung bright from her mizzen yard.

‘She wasn’t with us yesterday.’ Sweet William, looking disgustingly well-rested, nodded towards the signalling brig. He had brought Sharpe a mug of tea. ‘She must have been poking around the fortress. Sleep sound?’

‘No sleep.’ Sharpe cradled the mug and sipped the hot, sour liquid. The shore looked barren. Sand dunes were grey behind the flicker of surf and beyond the dunes were the dark shapes of stunted pines. No houses were visible. Far inland there were the low, humped shapes of hills, and to the north there was a promontory of low, shadowed ground that jutted into the bleak waters.

Captain Tremgar pointed to the headland. ‘Point Arcachon.’ He turned away from the two Rifle officers and bellowed orders through a speaking trumpet. Sharpe heard the thumping rumble as the anchor cables snaked and whipped out of the hawse-holes. Sails, that a moment before had been filled with wind, flapped like monstrous bat wings as the topmen furled the stiff canvas on to the yards. The Vengeance, looming vast in the morning light, was already anchored, and already launching her first boats. ‘Christ on his cross!’ Sweet William vented a sudden anger. He was staring at the boats that huddled beside the Vengeance.

Sharpe took his spyglass from the sleeve-pocket on his overalls and extended the ivory barrels. The glass had been a gift from the Emperor of the French to his brother, the King of Spain, but the gift had been lost among the loot of Vitoria and was now carried by an English Rifleman.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Sharpe echoed Frederickson’s blasphemy. The Vengeance had launched three longboats and each was filling with red-jacketed Marines. ‘There must be a hundred of them!’ He watched the men gingerly descend the tumble-home to step into the rocking boats. The sea, miraculously, was gentle this morning, heaving with the long swells of the ocean, but not broken into whitecaps. Sharpe raised the glass, cursing because the small movements of the Amelie made training the telescope difficult, and he saw yet more red-coated Marines waiting on the Vengeance’s maindeck. ‘That bastard didn’t need us at all!’

‘Not to take the fort, perhaps,’ Sweet William lit a cheroot, ‘but a force of trained Riflemen will be damned useful for the march on Bordeaux.’

‘Damn his bloody soul!’ Sharpe understood now. Wigram had sent de Maquerre to force a decision, and Bampfylde had secreted the Marines to implement the decision. Come hell or high water Wigram and Bampfylde wanted to take Bordeaux, and Sharpe was caught in the middle. He watched the packed longboats pull towards the breaking surf and he felt a bitter anger at Bampfylde who had lied about a malady so that he could have trained skirmishers for his madcap scheme. Even the sun, showing through the clouds for the first time in weeks, could not alleviate Sharpe’s anger.

‘It’s my belief,’ Frederickson said, ‘that he wanted you personally.’

‘Me?’

‘He probably has an exalted view of your ability,’ Frederickson said drily. ‘If the celebrated Major Sharpe fails, then no reasonable man could expect Captain Bampfylde to succeed. On the other hand, of course, who better than yourself to guarantee success?’

‘Bugger Bampfylde,’ Sharpe said.

The longboats landed their red-coated troops, then were launched back through the surf. The oarsmen, tugging against wind and tide, jerked like small marionettes to pull the heavy boats free of the shore’s suction. They did not come to the Amelie; instead they went to the Vengeance where still more Marines waited for disembarkation.

The morning ticked on. A breakfast of gravy-dipped bread was passed around the Riflemen who waited on the Amelie’s deck. Those Marines already ashore formed up in ranks and, to Sharpe’s astonishment, a half Company was marched off the beach towards the shelter of the dark pines. Sharpe himself was supposed to command the land operations, yet he was being utterly ignored. ‘Captain Tremgar!’

‘Sir?’

‘Your boat can put me ashore?’

Tremgar, a middle-aged man wrapped in a filthy tarpaulin jacket, knocked the dottle from his pipe on the brass binnacle cover that was covered with tiny dents from just such treatment. ‘Ain’t got orders to do it, Major.’

‘I’m giving you orders!’

Tremgar turned. One of the longboats was pulling away from the Vengeance and carrying, instead of Marines, a group of blue-cloaked naval officers. Tremgar shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not, Major.’

It took twenty minutes to lower the Amelie’s small tender into the water, and another five before Sharpe was sitting uncomfortably on the stern thwart. The Comte de Maquerre, seeing a chance to escape from the stinking collier, had insisted on sharing the boat. He had exchanged his British uniform for a suit of brown cloth.

From the Amelie’s deck the sea had appeared benign, but here, in the tiny boat, it swelled and threatened and ran cold darts of fear up Sharpe’s back. The oars spattered him with water, the waves heaved towards the gunwales, and at any moment Sharpe expected the small rowboat to turn turtle. The Comte, wrapped in his cloak, looked seasick.

Sharpe twisted. The Amelie’s tar- and salt-stained hull reared above him. A cook jettisoned a bucket of slops over the side and gulls, screaming like banshees, swooped from the air between the yards to fight over the scraps.

The Comte, offended by Sharpe’s cavalier treatment in the small hours, said not a word. Slowly, oar-tug by oar-tug, the four boatmen dragged the small craft away from the Amelie and the grumble of the surf, like the roar of a far-off, relentless battle, grew louder.

Sharpe instinctively touched his weapons. His rifle was muzzle-stopped against sea-water splashes, while the lock was wrapped in an old rag for protection. His sword was clumsy in the confines of the tiny boat. A surge heaved the boat up and ran it forward towards the breaking surf that betrayed itself to Sharpe as a spume of spray being whipped from a curling wave by the wind’s flick, then the boat dropped into a valley of sliding, glassy grey water that was flecked with floating seaweed.

This was the point of danger. This was the moment when the small boats must go from the sea’s cradle into the broken forces where the waves battered at the shore. Years ago, on a beach like this in Portugal, Sharpe had watched the longboats broach in the combers and spill their men like puppets into the killing sea. The bodies, he remembered, had come ashore white and swollen, uniforms split by the swelling flesh, and dogs had worried at the corpses for days.

‘Pull!’ the bo’sun shouted. ‘Pull, you bastards!’

The oarsmen pulled and, like a wagon loaded with cannon-shot, the boat fought the upward slope of the wave. The oars bent under the strain, then the vast power of the sea caught the boat’s transom and it was running, suddenly free of all constraint, and the bo’sun was shouting at the men to ship oars and was leaning his full weight on the tiller behind Sharpe.

The bo’sun’s shout seemed like a prolonged bellow that melded with the roar of the surf. The world was white and grey, streaked bottle green at its heart where the wave broke to carry the tiny boat surging forward. Sharpe’s right hand was a cold and bloodless white where it gripped the gunwale, then the boat’s bow was dipping, falling, and the water was smashing around Sharpe’s ears in scraps of freezing white and still the shout echoed in his ears and he felt the panic of a man caught in a danger that is uncontrollable.

The bow caught, the boat twisted and shuddered, and suddenly she was running amidst bubbling sea-streaks beneath which the sand made a hissing noise as tons of beach were drawn backwards by the sucking water.

‘Now!’ the bo’sun shouted, ‘now, you heathens!’ and the bow-men were overboard, up to their knees in churning water and dragging the small boat towards the safety of the shelving beach.

‘There, Major. That was easy,’ the bo’sun said calmly.

Sharpe, trying not to show the terror he had felt, stepped forward over the thwarts. The two remaining oarsmen, grinning at him, helped his unsteady progress. Another wave, breaking and running up the beach, lifted the boat and shifted it sideways so that Sharpe fell heavily on to a huge black man who laughed at the soldier’s predicament.

Sharpe stood again, balanced himself at the prow, then leaped into the receding wave. No firm ground, no lush soil of the most peaceful village green in England, had ever felt so good to him. He splashed to dry sand, breathing a silent thanks for safety as at last his boots crunched the small ridge of seaweed, shells, and timber scraps that marked the height of the winter tides.

‘Major!’ A voice hailed him. Lieutenant Ford, Bampfylde’s aide, walked through the clinging sand. ‘Welcome ashore. You’re precipitate, are you not, sir?’

‘Precipitate?’ Sharpe, taking the rag off his rifle-lock, had to shout over the noise of wind and surf.

‘You’d not been ordered ashore, sir.’ Ford spoke respectfully, but Sharpe was certain the young lieutenant had been sent by Bampfylde to deliver this reproof. The captain himself, resplendent in blue, white and gold, directed affairs fifty yards down the strand.

‘Let me remind you, Lieutenant,’ Sharpe said, ‘that proceedings ashore are under my command.’

The Comte de Maquerre, looking grey beneath the powder he had put on to his face, brushed at his cloak then stumped through the sand towards Bampfylde.

Ford glanced at the Comte, then back to Sharpe. ‘You can see, sir,’ the lieutenant could not hide his embarrassment, ‘that our Marines have had a miraculous recovery.’

‘Indeed.’ There must have been hundreds of Marines on the beach and Sharpe had seen at least another fifty march inland.

‘The captain feels,’ Ford had carefully placed himself in a position that made it impossible for Sharpe to walk towards Bampfylde, ‘that we can safely look after the matter ourselves.’ He smiled, as though he had brought splendid news.

Sharpe stared at the young, nervous lieutenant. ‘The matter?’

‘The capture of the Teste de Buch,’ Ford still smiled as if he could infect Sharpe with his good tidings.

Sharpe stared at Ford. ‘You’re standing in my path, Lieutenant.’

‘Oh! My apologies, sir!’ Ford stepped aside.

Bampfylde was greeting the Comte de Maquerre with evident familiarity, but, seeing Sharpe approach, he gestured for the Frenchman to wait, then stepped briskly towards the Rifleman, ‘’Morning Sharpe! Quite a clever one, what?’

‘Clever, sir?’

‘The weather! God smiles on sailormen.’ A gust of wind picked up particles of sand and rattled them against Sharpe’s tall boots.

‘Lieutenant Ford, sir, tells me you do not require my services.’

‘Not at the Teste de Buch, certainly. One of our brigs quizzed a fisherman yesterday, Sharpe. Seems the Frogs have abandoned the fort! How about that, eh? There’s a few fencibles left there, but I can’t see you need to bother yourself with that sort of scum! I think the prudent thing, Major, is for you to march inland.’

‘Inland, sir?’

‘Weren’t you planning to ambush the high road? But I want you back here, with your report, by the forenoon on Thursday. Is that clear?’

Sharpe looked past the plump, confident Bampfylde to see the Marines being paraded on the sand. They were in light order, having left their packs and greatcoats on the Vengeance. They also seemed to be in fine fettle and the sight angered Sharpe. ‘Your men made a miraculous recovery, Captain?’

‘Did they not, Major?’ Bampfylde, in the heartiest of moods, smiled. ‘A ruse de guerre, Major. You understand?’

Sharpe contained his fury. ‘A ruse, sir?’

‘We didn’t want enemy agents in St Jean de Luz to suspect our plans. They’ll have reported sick Marines and a tiny force of soldiery; scarce sufficient to round up a herd of sheep, let alone march on Bordeaux, eh?’ Bampfylde saw Sharpe’s disbelief and smiled at it. ‘I’ve got more Marines afloat, Sharpe, if they’re needed.’

‘To capture Bordeaux?’ Sharpe’s voice was mocking.

‘If Maquereau says it can be done, then we shall. He’s riding direct to Bordeaux, Sharpe. A brave fellow, what? Your advice will be invaluable, of course, but Maquereau will be the judge of failure or success.’ Bampfylde, on the brink of his triumph, was trying hard to be affable.

‘Maquereau, sir?’

‘Ah, the Comte de Maquerre. You mustn’t use his nickname, Sharpe, it’s not polite.’ Bampfylde laughed. ‘But you’re on the verge of great events, Major. You’ll be grateful for this opportunity.’

Sharpe’s gratitude was lost in anger. Bampfylde had lied consistently. He had wanted Sharpe and the Riflemen for his dreams of glory, and now, on a cold French beach, Sharpe was exposed to the madness against which Elphinstone had warned him. ‘I thought, sir, that the decision about Bordeaux was my responsibility.’

‘And we’ve spared you that decision, Major. You can’t deny that de Maquerre will be a more cogent witness?’ Bampfylde paused, sensing Sharpe’s anger. ‘Naturally I shall take your advice, Major.’ Bampfylde opened the lid of his watch as if to demonstrate that Sharpe was delaying his advance. ‘Be back by Thursday, Major! That’s when Maquereau should bring us the good news from Bordeaux. Remember now! Speed and surprise, Major! Speed and surprise!’

Bampfylde turned away, but Sharpe called him back. ‘Sir! You believe the fisherman?’

Bampfylde bridled. ‘Is it your business, Sharpe?’

‘You’ll send picquets ahead, sir?’

Bampfylde snapped his watch-lid shut. ‘If I wish for lessons in the operations of military forces, Major, then I shall seek them from my superiors, not my inferiors. My boats will fetch your men now, Major Sharpe, and I will bid you good day.’

Bampfylde walked away. He did not need Sharpe to capture the fort, so he would not dilute his victory by having Sharpe’s name mentioned in the despatch he would send to the Admiralty. That despatch was already taking shape in Bampfylde’s head, a despatch that would be printed in the Naval Gazette and tell, with a modesty that would be as impressive as it was transparent, of a fortress carried, of a bay cleared, and of a victory gained. But that small victory would be but a whisper compared to the trumpeted glory when Bordeaux fell. Thus Bampfylde walked through the cloying, crunching sand and his head was filled with dreams of triumph and the sweeter dreams of victory’s rewards that were fame and wealth beyond measure.

CHAPTER FIVE

Cornelius Killick spat coffee grounds into the fire that had been lit beneath the pine trees. The wind was chill, but at least it was not raining, though Killick suspected the lull in the foul weather would not last.