Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (36 page)

‘Packed?’

‘In case we have to retreat.’

La Marquesa stared at the ugly man. ‘You’re serious?’

‘I am, my Lady.’

She knew defeat. If Sharpe had still lived, she thought, she would have been tempted to stay in Vitoria in the sure knowledge that Sharpe would dare to do what General Verigny dared not; snatch her wagons back from the Inquisitor. But Sharpe was dead, and she dared not stay. She consoled herself that in her coach, prudently concealed beneath the driver’s bench, there were jewels enough to save her from utter poverty in France. She shrugged. ‘There’s still time, surely?’

‘I hope so, my Lady.’

She smiled sadly. ‘You still think Wellington can’t attack, Captain?’

He frowned, not at her question, but at her face. She had turned from him and now stared in horror and puzzlement at the crowd who stood at the foot of the tiered seats. Saumier touched her arm. ‘My Lady?’

She took her arm away. ‘It’s nothing, Captain.’ Yet she could have sworn, for one instant, that she had seen a bearded face, a face so covered in beard as to resemble a beast, a face that had stared at her, turned away, and which she had seen on a cold morning in the mountains. The Slaughterman. She told herself she imagined it, for no Partisan would dare show himself in the heart of the French army, and she looked back to the plain where the battle still thundered and where that army fought for its existence.

Regimental Sergeant Major MacLaird reported that the burning thatch was now extinguished. ‘And we’ve got forty-one prisoners, sir. Half the buggers are wounded badly.’

‘Where’s the surgeon?’

‘Outside the village, sir.’

‘Lieutenant Andrews!’

‘Sir?’ The Lieutenant still did not seem to believe that Sharpe was alive.

‘My respects to Mr Ellis. Tell him there’s work in the village and I want him here now!’

‘Yes, sir.’

The South Essex had been ordered to rest while other Battalions streamed through the village to attack the bridge. Sharpe thought of the guns just up the slope. His hopes of reaching Vitoria seemed slim so long as the French battery was unmolested.

‘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!’

‘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.

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.