Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (97 page)

Killick put a hand to his pistol’s hilt and the one-eyed man shook his head. ‘It would distress me to kill you. I have a certain sympathy for your Republic.’

Killick gave his opinion of Frederickson’s sympathy in one short and efficacious word.

‘It is the fortune of war,’ Frederickson said. ‘Sergeant Rossner! I want prisoners, not dead ’uns!‘

‘Sir!’ The Riflemen, taking the Americans from the rear, and coming so unexpectedly with weapons ready, gave the
Thuella’s
crew no chance to fight. Docherty drew his sword, but Taylor’s bayonet touched the Irishman’s throat and the feral eyes of the Rifleman told the lieutenant just what would happen if he raised the blade. Docherty let it fall. Some of
Thuella’s
crew, unable to retreat into the clearing that was covered by the Marines’ muskets, dropped their weapons and ran to shelter with the startled villagers.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Killick asked.

‘Captain Frederickson, Royal American Rifles. You’re supposed to offer me your sword.’

Killick succinctly gave his view of that suggestion, and Frederickson smiled. ‘I can always take it from you. Do you command here?’

‘What if I do?’

Killick’s truculence only made Frederickson more patient. ‘If you want to fight my lads, then I assure you they’ll welcome the chance. They’ve been fighting for six years, and about the only consolation our Army offers to them is the plunder from dead enemies.’

‘Shit,’ said Killick. There was no fight to be had, for the Riflemen were already herding his gun crews back. One of the green-jacketed bastards, the one who had taken Liam Docherty prisoner, was folding the Stars and Stripes into a bundle. Some of his men, Killick saw, were edging away with the villagers, but they had abandoned their weapons so as not to be taken for combatants. Cornelius Killick felt the impotence of a sailor doomed to fight out of water. He could have wept in anger and impotence and for the shame of seeing his flag taken. Instead, clinging to a shred of dignity, he plucked his sword from his scabbard and offered it, hilt first, to Frederickson. ‘If you’d fought me at sea ...’ Killick began.

‘... I would be your prisoner,’ Frederickson politely finished the sentence. ‘And if you give me your word that you will not attempt to escape, then you may keep your sword.’

Killick dutifully slid the blade back into its scabbard. ‘You have my word.’

Frederickson took a silver whistle from the loop on his crossbelt and blew six blasts on it. ‘Just to let our web-footed friends know that we’ve done their job.’ He opened his pouch and took out an eye-patch and false teeth. ‘You’ll forgive my vanity?’ Frederickson asked as he tied the eye-patch in place. ‘Shall we go back now?’

‘Back?’

‘To the fort, of course. As my prisoner I can assure you that your treatment will be that of a gentleman.’

Killick stared at the Rifleman whose face, even with patch and teeth restored, was hardly reassuring. Cornelius Killick expected a British officer to be a supercilious poltroon, all airs and graces and high-spoken delicacies, and he was somewhat shaken to be faced with a man who looked as hard-bitten as this Rifleman. ‘You give me your word we’ll be treated properly?’

Frederickson frowned, as though the question were indelicate. ‘You have my word as an officer.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘I can’t speak for the food tonight, but doubtless there’ll be wine in abundance. This is, after all, the Médoc, and the harvest was good this year or so I believe. Sergeant!’ He gave a shrug of apology to Killick for thus turning away. ‘Leave the guns to the web-foots! Back to the fort!’

‘Sir!’

Cornelius Killick, who had hoped to be as successful on land as he was at sea, had met a Rifleman, and all he could do was light a cigar and console himself that, for a sailor, there was no disgrace in being bested ashore. But it irked all the same, God, how it irked!

And the Arcachon Basin, in which the
Thuella
was stranded, had fallen.

 

 

Henri Lassan, seeing his men cornered in their bastion and recognizing the import of the feared Green Jackets and their long, glittering bayonets, had known there was no future in fighting. ‘Over! Over!’ He pointed over the bastion and down to the strip of wind-drifted sand that edged the fort’s western ramparts. Here, on the fort’s seaward facing flank, there was no flooded ditch for the tidewater was better than any moat, and his gunners leaped from the embrasures to tumble heavily on the sand. Lassan, as he jumped, felt a sudden, keen pang for the loss of his books, then the wind was driven from him by the jar of his landing. Two of his men twisted their ankles, but they were safely helped into the dune’s cover from where, the wounded men assisted by their comrades, Lassan led his men north. Two rifle bullets followed them, but a bark of command ordered the ceasefire.

The fortress had fallen, not to Marines, but to Green Jackets, and Lassan wondered how they had come so silently, and how they had pierced the defences without his knowledge, but that was useless speculation today, when he had failed in his task.

He had lost the Teste de Buch, but he could yet frustrate his enemy. He supposed they had come for the
chasse-marées
and Lassan, stumbling in the cloying sand, would go to Le Moulleau and there burn the boats.

Falling night brought cold rain to pit the sand with tiny dark craters. The track wound through dunes, past discarded fish traps and the black ribs of rotted boats. The fishing village lay two miles north and Lassan could see the dense tangle of masts and yards where the
chasse-marées
had been moored by his orders. The owners of the boats mostly lived aboard, waiting and grumbling until they could be released back to their trade.

Vestiges of cannon smoke sifted north with Henri Lassan. The tide, he saw, was turning. Tiny waves rolled over the beds where mussels and oysters thrived. No more would the women bring him the flat baskets of shellfish and stop to gossip about the prices in the Arcachon town market or to whisper, with pretended shock, of the bedtime exploits of the American captain. Lassan wondered what had happened to Killick, but that speculation was as useless as wondering how the Teste de Buch had fallen. Commandant Henri Lassan, sword at his waist and pistol in his belt, had a task to do, and he went north in the gathering darkness to perform it.

And at Le Moulleau the
chasse-marée
crews mutinied. They gathered outside the white-painted Customs House, disused these many years because of the Royal Navy blockade, but still manned by two uniformed men who opened their heavy door to listen to the commotion outside. Behind the crews were the wooden pilings that edged the sheds where the shellfish were broken open and where the murmur swelled into an angry protest. The ships were their livelihoods. Without the ships they would starve, their children would starve, and their women would starve.

Lassan’s men, embarrassed by their predicament, stared at the ground. Torches flared in brackets on the Customs House façade, casting a red light on angry faces. Rain spat from the south. Lassan, a reasonable and kind man, raised his hands. ‘My friends!’ He explained why the boats were needed, how the English would use the craft to make a bridge or to land their Army north of the Adour. ‘What of your children then? What of your wives, eh? Tell me that?’

There was silence, except for the running of the tide and the hiss as rain hit the torches. The faces were suspicious. Lassan knew that the French forces were disliked by the French peasantry, for the Emperor had decreed that French troops could take what rations they wanted and not pay for them. Lassan himself had refused to obey that decree, but the disobedience had been funded from his own pocket. Some of these men knew that, knew that Lassan had always been a decent officer, but still he threatened them with hunger.

‘The English,’ a voice shouted from the anonymity of the crowd, ‘are offering twenty francs a day. Twenty!’

The murmur started again, grew, and Lassan knew he would have to use force to keep these men from interfering with his duty. He had tried reason, but reason was a feeble weapon against the cupidity of peasants, so now he must be savage in his duty. ‘Lieutenant Gerard!’

‘Sir?’

‘You will fire the boats! Start at the southern moorings!’

A jeer went up and Lassan instinctively reached for his pistol, but his sergeant touched his arm. ‘Sir.’ The sergeant’s voice was sad.

A creak sounded, then another. There was the squeak of an oar in its thole, then there were splashes and Lassan could see, in the darkness, the white marks of blades touching water. He still watched and, in the glistening darkness where the torchlight touched the water into ripples, he saw the ghostly shapes of white-painted boats.

On the flowing tide the British had rowed up channel and Lassan, listening to the ridicule of his countrymen, saw the blue-jacketed sailors, cutlasses in their hands, swarming from their longboats on to the
chasse-marées,
The French crews, welcoming English gold, applauded.

Lassan turned away. ‘We go east, Lieutenant.’

‘Sir.’

Henri Lassan, with his little band of gunners, stumbled away from the village. He would follow the Arcachon’s southern shore, then head inland to Bordeaux to report to his superiors that he had failed, that Arcachon was lost, and that the British had taken their boats.

And thus the battle of Arcachon, that had begun with such high hopes for its defenders, ended in a rain-cold night of bleak defeat.

Five French dead and one dead Rifleman were laid in the fort’s chapel, not out of reverence, but simply because it was the most convenient place for the corpses to lie until there was time to bury them. Lieutenant Minver stripped the white frontal from the altar and ordered two of his men to tear it into strips for bandages; then, being a well-trained young man who had been told constantly by his parents never to leave a light burning in an empty room, he pinched out the flame of the Eternal Presence before going back to the courtyard.

The Teste de Buch was in chaos. Riflemen manned the ramparts while Marines and sailors seethed in the courtyard. The six field guns, with their limbers, had been dragged into the fort where they were objects of much curiosity to the seamen. The
Scylla,
her flanks riven by the heavy shot, was moored beneath the silent guns.

The Marines’ packs and supplies were being ferried from a brig anchored below the
Scylla,
then slung over the fort’s wall by a system of ropes and pulleys. The Marines had marched in light-order, but had still reached the fort two hours after Sharpe’s Riflemen.

‘I must thank you, Major Sharpe.’ Captain Bampfylde limped on blistered feet into the room where Sharpe was being bandaged by a naval surgeon. Bampfylde flinched at the sight of so much blood on Sharpe’s face and shirt. ‘My dear fellow, permit me to say how sorry I am?’

The surgeon, a drunkard of morose disposition, answered in place of Sharpe. ‘It’s nothing, sir. Head wounds bleed like a stuck pig.’ He finished the bandaging and gave Sharpe’s head a light buffet. ‘I’ll warrant you’ve got a head like a bloody bass drum, though.’

If the man meant painful, then he was right, and the friendly tap had not helped, but at least Sharpe‘s, sight had come back as soon as the blood was washed from his eyes. He looked up at Bampfylde whose young, plump face looked tired. ’The fort wasn’t exactly deserted.‘

‘So it seems!’ Bampfylde crossed to the table and examined a bottle of wine abandoned by the French garrison. He plucked out the cork and poured a little into a convenient glass. He smelt it, swirled it around, examined it, then sipped it. ‘Very nice. A trifle young, I’d say.’ He poured more wine into the glass. ‘Still, no bones broken, eh?’

‘I lost one man dead.’

Bampfylde shrugged.
‘Scylla
lost sixteen!’ He said it as if to show that the Navy had taken the greater punishment.

‘And the Marines?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Two men were scratched,’ Bampfylde said airily. ‘I always thought that clearing was the most likely place for an ambuscade, Sharpe. If they want to catch the likes of us, though, they’ll have to show a livelier leg, what?’ He laughed.

Bampfylde was a lying bastard, Sharpe thought. The two Riflemen sent by Frederickson had warned the Marines of the field guns, and Marine Captain Palmer had already thanked Sharpe for the service. But Bampfylde was speaking as though he had both detected and defeated the ambush, whereas the bloody man had done nothing. Bampfylde finished the wine. ‘Some of the Americans escaped?’ He made the question sound like an accusation.

‘So I believe.’ Sharpe did not care. Bampfylde had thirty American prisoners to send to England, and surely that was enough. The fort was taken, seamen from the
Scylla
had gone up channel to find the
chasse-marées,
and no man could have expected more of the day.

‘So you’ll go inland in the morning, Sharpe?’ Bampfylde peered at Sharpe’s head wound. ‘That’s only a scratch, isn’t it? Nothing to slow your reconnaissance?’

Sharpe did not reply. The fort was taken, Elphinstone would get the extra
chasse-marées
he needed, and the rest of this operation was farcical. Besides, he did not care whether Bordeaux was seething with discontent or not, he only cared that Jane should not die while he was away. Sharpe twisted round to look at the surgeon. ‘What’s the first symptom of fever?’

The surgeon was helping himself to the wine. ‘Black-spot, Yellow, Swamp? Walcheren? Which fever?’

‘Any fever,’ Sharpe growled.

The surgeon shrugged. ‘A heated skin, uncontrolled shivering, a looseness of the bowels. I can’t say you have any pyretic symptoms yourself, Major.’

Sharpe felt a horrid dread. For a second he felt a temptation to claim that his wound was incapacitating and to demand that he was returned to St Jean de Luz by the first ship.