“Congratulations on your fight, Monsieur.” He spoke perfect English; courteously, gravely, with respect. Sharpe acknowledged the compliment.
“You have our congratulations, too. You have won a notable victory, sir.” The words felt stilted and inept. It was extraordinary how men could claw savagely at each other, fight like demented fiends, yet in a few moments become polite, generous even about the damage an enemy had inflicted. The French Captain smiled briefly.
“Thank you, M’sieu.” He paused a moment, looked at the bodies lying near the bridge, and when he turned back to Sharpe his expression had changed; it had become less formal and more curious. “Why did you come across the river?”
Sharpe shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The Frenchman dismounted and looped his reins on his wrist. “You were unlucky.” He smiled at Sharpe. “But you and your men fought well and now this?” He nodded at the bridge.
Sharpe shrugged again. The Chasseur Captain with the big moustache looked at him for a moment. “I think perhaps you are most unlucky in your Colonel, yes?” He spoke quietly so that the men who were staring curiously at their erstwhile enemy should not hear. Sharpe did not react, but the Frenchman spread his hands. “We have them, too. My regrets, M’sieu.”
It was all getting too polite, too cosy. Sharpe looked at the bodies lying untended in the field. “You wish to discuss the wounded?”
“I did, M’sieu, I did. Not that I think we have too many, but we need your permission to search this piece of the field. As for the rest,” he bowed slightly to Sharpe. “We are the masters of it.”
It was true. Chasseurs were now riding around the field corralling the stray horses. They were gaining a bonus, for there were half a dozen English thoroughbreds, lost by officers of the South Essex, and Sharpe knew they would be better remounts than anything the French could hope to buy in Spain. But there was something curious about the wording the Captain had used.
“You did, sir? Did?” Sharpe looked into the sympathetic brown eyes of the Frenchman, who shrugged slightly.
“The situation, M’sieu, has changed.” He waved a hand at the destroyed bridge. “I think you will have problems reaching the other side? Yes?” Sharpe nodded, it was undeniable. “I think, M’sieu, my Colonel will want to renew the fight after a suitable period.”
Sharpe laughed. He pointed at the muskets, the rifles, the long bayonets. “When you are ready, sir, when you are ready.”
Trie Frenchman laughed too. “I will enquire, M’sieu, and inform you in ample time.” He pulled out a watch. “Shall we say that we have one hour in which to look after our wounded? After that we shall talk again.”
He was giving Sharpe no choice. An hour was not nearly enough for his two hundred men to collect the wounded, carry them despite their agony, bring them to the entrance of the bridge and devise a way of getting them to safety. On the other hand an hour was far more than the French needed, and he knew there was no point in asking for more time. The Captain unlooped his reins and prepared to mount.
“My congratulations again. Lieutenant?” Sharpe nodded. “And my sincere regrets. Bonne chancel‘ He mounted and cantered back towards the skyline.
Sharpe took stock of his new company. The survivors from the square had added some seventy men to his small command. Leroy was the senior officer, of course, but his wound forced him to leave the decisions to Sharpe. There were two more Lieutenants, Knowles from the Light Company and a man called John Berry. Berry was overweight with fleshy lips, a young man who petulantly demanded the date of Sharpe’s commission, and, on finding Sharpe was his senior, complained sulkily that his horse had been shot. Sharpe suspected that it was the only reason Berry had stayed with the colours.
The working parties took jackets from the dead, threaded the sleeves onto abandoned muskets, and made crude stretchers on which wounded men were carried to the bridge. Half the men worked on the piles round the spot where Sharpe and Harper had clambered across the blood and corpses to rescue the colour; the other half worked among the bodies that formed a fan shape ending at the entrance to the bridge. The French were swiftly finished and started rummaging through the blue-coated bodies of the Spanish. It was not mercy they were showing but a desire to loot the dead and the wounded. The British did the same, there was no stopping them; the spoils of a fight were the one reward of the survivors. The Riflemen, on Sharpe’s orders, collected abandoned muskets, dozens of them, and took ammunition pouches from the dead. If the French should attack then Sharpe planned to arm each man with three or four loaded guns and meet the horsemen with a continuous volley that would destroy the attackers. It would not bring back the lost colour. That had gone for ever or until in some unimaginable future the army might march into Paris and take back the trophy. As he moved among the carnage, directing the work, he doubted if the French really meant to attack again. The losses they would incur would hardly be worth the effort; perhaps instead they were hoping for his surrender. He helped Leroy to the bridge, propped him against the parapet, and cut away the white breeches. There was a bullet wound in the American’s thigh, dark and oozing, but the carbine ball had gone clean through, and, despite Leroy’s evident disgust, Sharpe summoned Harper to put maggots in the wound before binding it with a strip torn from the shirt of a dead man. Forrest was alive, stunned and bleeding, found where the colours had fallen with his sword still gripped in his hand. Sharpe propped him next to Leroy. It would be minutes before Forrest recovered himself, and Sharpe doubted whether the Major, who looked like a vicar, would want to take any more military action that day. He put the colour with the two wounded officers, propped its great yellow flag over the parapet as a symbol of defiance to the French, but what about the British? Twice he had walked gingerly to the edge of the broken roadway and hailed the far bank, but it was as if the men there inhabited a different world, went about their business oblivious of the carnage just a few hundred feet away. For the third time Sharpe walked out onto the bridge through the broken stones.
“Hello!” There could only be thirty minutes of the hour left. He cupped his hands again. “Hello!”
Hogan appeared, waved to him, and came across the other part of the broken bridge. It was reassuring to see the Engineer’s blue coat and cocked hat, but there was something different about the uniform. Sharpe could not place the oddity but it was there. He waved at the gap between them.
“What happened?”
Hogan spread his hands. “Not my doing. Simmerson lit the fuse.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Why do you think? He got frightened. Thought the French would swarm all over him. I’m sorry. I tried to stop him but I’m under arrest.” That was it! Hogan wore no sword. The Irishman grinned happily at Sharpe. “So are you, by the way.”
Sharpe swore viciously and at length. Hogan let him finish. “I know, Sharpe, I know. It’s just plain stupid. It’s all because we refused to let your Riflemen form a skirmish line, remember?”
“He thinks that would have saved him?”
“He has to blame someone. He won’t blame himself, so you and I are the scapegoats.” Hogan took off his hat and scratched his balding pate. “I couldn’t give a damn, Richard. It’ll just mean enduring the man’s spleen till we get back to the army. After that we’ll hear no more about it. The General will tear him apart! Don’t worry yourself!”
It seemed ridiculous to be discussing their mutual arrest in shouts across the gap where the water broke white on the shattered stonework. Sharpe waved his hand at the wounded.
“What about this lot? We’ve got dozens of wounded and the French are coming back soon. We need help. What’s he doing?”
“Doing?” Hogan shook his head. “He’s like a chicken with its head chopped off. He’s drilling the men, that’s what he’s doing. Any poor sod who doesn’t have a musket will be lucky if he only gets three dozen lashes. The bastard doesn’t know what to do!”
“But for Christ’s sake!”
&nb
sp; Hogan held up his hand. “I know, I know. I’ve told him he’s got to get timber and ropes.” He pointed at the forty-foot gap. “I can’t hope to get timber to bridge this, but we can make rafts and float them across. But there’s no timber here. He’ll have to send back for it!”
“Has he done it?”
“No.” Hogan said no more. Sharpe could imagine the argument he had had with Simmerson, and he knew the Engineer would have done his best. For a moment they discussed names, who was dead, who was wounded. Hogan asked after Lennox but Sharpe had no news, and he wondered whether the Scotsman was lying dead on the field. Then there was the clatter of hooves and Sharpe saw Lieutenant Christian Gibbons ride onto the bridge behind Hogan. The blond lieutenant stared down at the Engineer.
“I thought you were under arrest, Captain, and confined?”
Hogan looked up at the arrogant Lieutenant. “I needed a piss.”
Sharpe laughed. Hogan waved, wished him luck, and turned back to the convent leaving Sharpe facing Gibbons across the water. The Lieutenant’s uniform was clean and pristine.
“You’re under arrest, Sharpe, and I am ordered to tell you that Sir Henry will request a General Court Martial.”
Sharpe laughed. It was the only possible response, and it enraged the Lieutenant. “It’s no laughing matter! You are ordered to surrender your sword to me.”
Sharpe looked at the water. “Will you fetch it, Gibbons? Or shall I bring it to you?”
Gibbons ignored the comment. He had been given a message to deliver and was determined to reach the end, whatever the difficulties. “And you are ordered to return the Regimental Colour.”
It was unbelievable. Sharpe could scarcely credit his ears. He stood on the shattered bridge in the searing heat while behind him were rows of wounded men whose cries could clearly be heard, yet Simmerson had sent his nephew to demand that Sharpe surrender his sword and hand over the colour.
“Why was the bridge blown up?”
“It is not your business, Sharpe.”
“It damn well is, Gibbons, I’m on the wrong bloody side of it.” He looked at the elegant Lieutenant, whose uniform was quite unstained by any blood or earth. He suspected Simmerson’s uniform would be the same. “Were you going to abandon the wounded, Gibbons? Was that it?”
The Lieutenant looked at Sharpe with distaste. “Will you please fetch the colour, Sharpe, and throw it to this side of the bridge?”
“Go away, Gibbons.” Sharpe spoke with an equal disdain. “Get your precious uncle to talk with me, not his lapdog. As for the colour? It stays here. You deserted it and I fought for it. My men fought for it and it stays with us till you get us back across the river. Do you understand?” His voice was rising with anger. “So tell that to your fat windbag! He gets his colour with us. And tell him the French are coming back for another attack. They want that colour and that’s why I’m keeping my sword, Gibbons, so that I can fight for it!” He drew the thirty-five inches of steel. There had been no time to clean the blade, and Gibbons could scarcely take his eyes off the crusted blood. “And Gibbons. If you want this you can bloody well come and get it yourself.” He turned away from the Lieutenant, back to the wounded and dead, back to where Harper was waiting with a distressed face.
“Sergeant?”
“We found Captain Lennox, sir. He’s bad.”
Sharpe followed Harper through the rows of wounded, who stared at him dumbly. There was so little he could do! He could bind up wounds but there was no way to dull the pain. He needed brandy, a doctor, help. And now Lennox.
The Scotsman was white, his face drawn with pain, but he nodded and grinned when Sharpe squatted beside him. Sharpe felt a pang of guilt when he remembered the last words he had spoken to the Captain of the Light Company only a few feet from this spot. They had been ‘enjoy yourself. Lennox grinned through the pain.
“I told you he was mad, Richard. Now this. I’m dying.” He spoke matter-of-factly. Sharpe shook his head.
“You’re not. You’ll be all right. They’re making rafts. We’ll get you home, to a doctor, you’ll be all right.”
It was Lennox’s turn to shake his head. It moved with agonising slowness, and he bit his lip as a fresh stab of pain shot through him. The lower half of his body was soaked in blood, and Sharpe did not dare pull at the soaked and torn uniform for fear of making the wound worse. Lennox breathed a long sigh.
“Don’t cheat me, Sharpe. I’m dying and I know it.” His Scottish accent was thicker. He looked up into Sharpe’s face. “The fool tried to make me form a skirmish line.”
“Me too.”
Lennox nodded slowly. He frowned slightly. “I was caught early on. Bastard laid me open with a sabre, right in the belly. I couldna‘ do a thing.” He looked up again. “What happened?”
Sharpe told him. Told how the Spanish had broken the British square by seeking safety inside, how the survivors had rallied and beaten off the French attack, of the carbine fire and the loss of the colour. When he spoke of the King’s Colour Lennox flinched in pain. The disgrace of it hurt more than the ripped open body that was killing him.
“Sir! Sir!” A private was calling Sharpe, but he waved him away. Lennox was trying to say something but the private insisted. “Sir!”
Sharpe turned and saw three Chasseurs trotting towards him. The hour must be up.
“More trouble?” Lennox grinned weakly.
“Yes. But it can wait.”
Lennox’s hand gripped Sharpe’s. “No. I can wait. I’ll not die yet. Listen. I have something I want to ask you. You and that big Irishman. Will you come back? Promise?” Sharpe nodded. “Promise?”
“I promise.” He stood up, surprised that he had to wipe his vision clear, and walked between the wounded to where the Chasseurs waited. The Captain who had come before was there and with him two troopers, who looked curiously at the charnel house their sabres had created. Sharpe saluted, suddenly realising that he still held the sword with its crusted blade, and the French Captain winced when he saw it.
“M’sieu.”
“Sir.”
“The hour is up.”
“We have still not collected all our wounded.”
The Frenchman nodded gravely. He looked round the field. There was another hour’s work, and that was before Sharpe could hope to begin dealing with the dead. He turned back to Sharpe and spoke gently.
“I think, M’sieu, you must consider yourselves our prisoners.” He waved down Sharpe’s protests. “No, M’sieu, I understand. You can throw the colour to your compatriots, we are not after that, but your position is hopeless. The wounded outnumber your living. You cannot fight further.”
Sharpe thought of the muskets he had collected, each one loaded, each checked; they would destroy the French if they were foolish enough to attack. He bowed slightly to the Chasseur.
“You are thoughtful, sir, but you will see I am not from the Regiment whose standard you captured. I am a Rifleman. I do not surrender.” A little bravado, he decided, was not out of place. After all, the French Captain had to be bluffing; he was experienced enough to know that his men would not break an infantry formation properly led, and he had proof enough that the tall Rifleman with the bloody sword could provide the leadership. The Captain nodded as if he had expected the answer.
“M’sieu. You should have been born a Frenchman. By now you would be a Colonel!”
“I began, sir, as a private.”
The Frenchman showed surprise. It was not uncommon for soldiers from the French ranks to become officers, but clearly the Chasseur Captain had thought it impossible in the British army. Gallantly he raised his silver-looped shako.
“I congratulate you. You are a worthy opponent.”
Sharpe decided that the conversation was once again becoming too flowery and polite. He looked pointedly at the rows of wounded. “I must get on, sir. If you wish to attack again, that is your affair.” He turned away but the Frenchman demanded his attention.
“You do
not understand, Lieutenant.”
Sharpe turned back. “Sir. I understand. Please permit me to continue?”
The Captain shook his head. “M’sieu. I am not talking about we Chasseurs. We are merely the… “ he paused, looking for the right word. ”The vanguard? Your position, Lieutenant, is truly hopeless.“ He pointed up the hill to the far skyline but there was nothing there. The Captain waited and then turned back to Sharpe with a rueful smile. ”My timing, Lieutenant, is hopeless. I would have been a terrible actor.“
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”
But then he did. The Captain needed to say nothing more because there was a sudden movement on the crest, and Sharpe had no need of his telescope to tell him what he saw. Horses, riderless horses, just a dozen, but Sharpe knew what they meant. A gun, the French had brought a gun, a field gun that could pound his small force into oblivion. He looked back to the Captain, who shrugged.
“Now you understand, Lieutenant?”
Sharpe stared at the horizon. Only one gun? It was probably a small four-pounder, so why only one? Were there more coming or had the French bent all their effort into getting one gun into action? If they were short of horses then it was possible that the others were miles behind. Presumably the Chasseurs had sent a message back to their main force that they were faced with two Regiments of infantry, and the French had sent the gun as fast as they could to help break the squares. There was an idea far back in his head. He looked at the Captain.
“It makes no difference, M’sieu.” He held up his sword. “Today you are the second person who has demanded my sword. I give you the same answer. You must come and take it for yourself.”
The Frenchman smiled, raised his own sword, and bowed. “It will be my pleasure, M’sieu. I trust you will survive the encounter and do me the honour of dining with me afterwards. It is poor food.”
“Then I am glad I shall not have the honour of tasting it.”
Sharpe grinned to himself as the Captain rattled orders in French and the three men turned their horses back up the slope. For a bastard risen from the ranks he fancied he had played the diplomatic game like a master. Then the thought of Lennox came to him, and he hurried back, all the time trying to pin the thought in his head. There was so much to be done, so many arrangements to make, and so little time, but he had promised Lennox. He glanced backwards. The gun, with its limber, was coming slowly down the hill. He had a half hour yet.