Sharpe's Siege s-18

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  “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 5

  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.

  Some of his men slept, some clenched muskets, others played cribbage or dice. They were nervous, but they took comfort from their captain’s blithe confidence.

  Killick’s confidence was a pretence. He was as nervous as any of his men, and regretting his impulsive offer to defend the fort’s landward approaches. It was not that the American was afraid of a fight, but it was one thing to fight at sea, where he knew the meaning of every catspaw on the water and where he could use his skill at the Thuella’s helm to run confusion about his enemies, and quite another to contemplate a fight on dry land. It was, as his Irish lieutenant would say, a horse of a different colour, and Cornelius Killick was not sure he liked the colour.

  He hated the fact that the land was such a clogging, cloying platform for a fight. A ship moved guns much faster than wheels, and there was nowhere to hide at sea. There, in the clean wind, a fight was open and undisguised, while here any bush could hide an enemy. Killick was keenly aware that he had n
ever trained as a soldier, nor even experienced a battle on land, yet he had made the offer to Commandant Lassan, and so, in this chill wind, he was preparing to offer battle if the British Marines came.

  Yet if Cornelius Killick had doubts to plague his confidence, he also had compensating encouragements. With him were the six twelve-pounder guns that had been swung out of the Thuella’s hold and mounted on their carriages. Their solidity gave Killick an odd comfort. The guns, so beautifully designed and yet so functional in their appearance, offered an implicit promise of victory. The enemy would come with muskets and be faced with these weapons that Napoleon called his ‘beautiful daughters’. They were Gribeauval twelve-pounders, brute killers of the battlefield, massive.

  To serve those guns Killick had sixty men; all of them trained in the use of cannon. The American knew well what fate the British might give to a captured privateer’s crew, so Killick had not ordered his men to give battle, but had instead invited their help. Such was their faith in him, and such their liking for him, that only two dozen men had declined this chance. Thus Killick would be served this day by volunteers, fighters all. How, Killick asked himself, could impressed troops, led by arrogant, dandified officers, defeat such men as these?

  A wind stirred the pines and drifted the fire’s smoke towards the village. No one was visible on the far ramparts of the fort, nor did any flag show.

  “Maybe the bastards won’t come today.” Lieutenant Docherty poured himself some of the muddy coffee.

  “Maybe not.” Killick leaned to the fire and lit a cigar. He felt a sudden pang that he should be forced to this unnatural fight or else lose his ship. He could not face losing the Thuella. ‘But if they do come, Liam, we’ll shock the bastards out of their skins.“ That was Killick’s third advantage; that he had the surprise of ambush on his side.

  An hour later the first message arrived from Point Arcachon. Killick had posted four scouts, each one mounted on a lumbering carthorse, and the news came clumping northwards that Marines had landed safely and were already advancing along the tangle of sandy tracks that edged the beach.

  “Did they see you?” Killick asked the gun-captain who brought the message.

  “No.” The man was scornful of the Marines’ watchfulness.

  Killick stood and clapped his hands. “We’re moving, lads! We’re moving!” The Thuella’s crew had waited with the guns at a point midway between the beach paths and the inland road. Now Killick knew which route the British were taking and so the guns had to be manhandled westwards to bar that route.

  Other messages came as the guns were shifted. A hundred and fifty Marines had landed; they had neither artillery nor horses, and all marched north. Other men had followed the Marines ashore, but they had stayed on the beach. The scouts, all four of them, came back to the ambush site.

  Henri Lassan had chosen the place, and chosen well. The guns were sited at the edge of a pine wood that topped a shallow ridge that jutted into a spreading, flat expanse of sand that edged the dunes of the beach. Two cottages had stood in the sandy space, but both had burned down in the last few years and their charred remains were all that broke up the area across which the Marines must march.

  The gun emplacement also offered Killick’s men protection. The twelve-pounders were shadowed by the pines, so that the grapeshot would blast, obscene and sudden, out of the darkness into the light. And even if the Marines were to counter-attack and brave the maelstrom of fire that would be slashing diagonally towards the sea they must climb a crumbling bank of sand that was six feet high and steep enough to demand the help of hands if it was to be negotiated.

  Twenty men went back for the gun limbers, while the rest of Killick’s men prepared the big guns for battle. The barrels had to be shifted on the carriages from their travelling position into the fighting stance, then trunnions must be clamped with iron capsquares as powder and grapeshot were rammed into cold muzzles. The grapeshot was adapted from the stocks taken from the Thuella’s magazine, and each canvas-wrapped bundle of balls would be propelled by four pounds and four ounces of French powder that came in a serge bag shaped to the cannon’s breech. Vent-prickers slid into touch-holes to break the powder bags, then tin tubes filled with finely mealed powder were rammed down to carry the fire to the charge.

  Killick stooped at the breech of one gun. He squinted through the tangent sights, set for point blank range, then gave the brass handle of the elevating screw a quarter turn. Satisfied, he went to each of the other guns and stared down the sights to imagine the tangling death he would cause to flicker above the clearing’s sand. The guns’ mute promise of terrible power gave Killick a welcome surge of confidence.

  “The Commandant thanks you, Cornelius.” Lieutenant Liam Docherty had warned Commandant Lassan that the British had landed. “He wishes you joy of the meeting.”

  Killick gave his swooping, bellowing laugh as if in anticipation of victory. “They’ll not be here for six hours yet, Liam,” he paused to light a cigar, “but we’ll kill the sons of devils when they do come, eh?”

  “We will indeed.” For Liam Docherty the coming battle would be one tiny shard of the vengeance he took on the British for their savagery in suppressing the rebellion of the United Irishmen. Docherty’s father had been hanged as a rebel in Ireland, casually strung up beside a peat-dark stream with as little ceremony as might attend the death of a rabid dog, and the boy’s mother, rearing him in America, would not let him forget. Nor did Liam Docherty wish to forget. He imagined the redcoats coming into the clearing and he relished the savage surprise that would be unleashed from the six gun barrels.

  Some villagers, made curious by the strange happenings to the south, had come into the trees to watch the Americans prepare. Cornelius Killick welcomed them. In the night he had been besieged by fears, by imaginings of disaster, but now, when the shape of the enemy’s approach was plain and the skilful placing of his ambush apparent, he felt sure of success and was glad that this victory would be witnessed by spectators. “I wonder what they’d say in Marblehead if they could see us now,” he said happily to Docherty.

  Liam Docherty thought that few people in Marblehead would be astonished by this new adventure of Killick’s. Cornelius Killick had always had the reputation of being a reckless rogue. “Maybe they’ll name a street after you.”

  “A street? Why not rename the bloody town?”

  Only one thing remained to be done, and that was done with a due solemnity. Cornelius Killick unfurled the great ensign that he had fetched from the Thuella. Its stars and stripes had been sewn together by a committee of Marblehead ladies, then blessed by a Presbyterian Minister who had prayed that the flag would see much slaughter of the Republic’s enemies. This day, Killick promised himself, it would. The flag, drooping in the windless space beneath the trees, would be carried forward at the first gunshot and it would stand proud as the gunners worked and as the enemy fell.

  Cornelius Killick and the men of the Thuella were ready.

  The beach was strangely deserted when the Marines were gone. The wind was cold as Sharpe’s men tumbled uncertainly through the surf to drag their packs, greatcoats and weapons to the dunes.

  “One more boat, sir,” Frederickson said unnecessarily.

  Sharpe grunted. The clouds had hidden the sun again and he could see little inland through his telescope. On one far hill a track seemed to wind uncertainly upwards, but there was no visible village or church that might correspond to the scanty map that Frederickson spread on the sand. “The captain said we were three miles south of Point Arcachon, here.”

  Sharpe knew the map by heart and did not bother to glance down. “There are no roads eastwards. Our quickest route is up to Arcachon then use the Bordeaux road.”

  “Follow the web-foots on the beach?”

  “Christ, no.” Sharpe did not care if he never saw Bampfylde again. “We’ll take the inland road.” He turned. The Comte de Maquerre was standing disconsolate by the tideline watching as his two horse
s, each given a long lead rope, were unceremoniously dumped overboard. The horses would have to swim now, tethered to the Amelie’s boat, and the Count feared for their loss.

  Frederickson still stared at the map. “How are you going to stop Bampfylde invading France?”

  “By refusing to believe that prinked-up bastard.” Sharpe nodded towards the Frenchman. “I should have heaved him overboard last night.”

  “I could have an accident with a rifle?” Frederickson offered helpfully.

  It was a cheerful thought for a cold morning, but Sharpe shook his head before turning to watch a working party of Riflemen wrestling supplies through the surf. “We can jettison the bloody ladders,” Sharpe said sourly. He wondered how Bampfylde proposed crossing the ditches and walls of the Teste de Buch without scaling-ladders, then dismissed the problem as irrelevant now. Sharpe’s job now was to go inland, ambush a military convoy on the great road that led southwards, and try to discover the mood of Bordeaux from the captives he would take. “We’ll split the supplies between the men. What we can’t carry, we leave.”

  “Yes, sir.” Frederickson folded the map and pushed it into his pouch. “You’ll leave the order of march to me?”

  But Sharpe did not reply. He was staring at a group of seated Riflemen who sheltered from the icy wind in a fold of the sand-dunes. “You!” he bellowed, “come here!”

  The Riflemen’s faces, bland with the innocence that always greeted an officer’s anger, turned to stare at Sharpe, but one man stood, shook sand from his green jacket, and started towards the two officers. “Did you know?” Sharpe turned furiously on Frederickson.

  “No,” Frederickson lied.

  Sharpe looked towards the man he had summoned. “You stupid bloody fool!”

  “Sir.”

  “Jesus Christ! I make you a bloody RSM and what do you do? You throw it away!”

  Patrick Harper’s cheek was even more swollen from the toothache and, as though it explained all, he touched the swelling. “It was this, sir.”