Pierre Ducos, in the stables of the French headquarters, had kept a swift, English horse taken from a captured officer. He had mounted it when disaster struck, had taken his precious papers, and was already a mile beyond the blockage on the road. He paused where the road climbed a small rise and looked behind.
A rabble swarmed towards him.
Soldiers, bloody soldiers! Trust the soldiers to lose a country which could have been kept by politics and guile. He smiled thinly. He did not feel any desperate sadness at defeat. He had become used to military defeat while in Spain. Wellington against the Emperor, he thought, that would be a battle worth seeing! Like ice meeting fire, or intelligence meeting genius.
He turned east again. He had planned for defeat, and now France would find its salvation in his plans. The fine intricate machine he had wrought, the Treaty of Valençay, would be needed after all. He smiled thinly, spurred his horse, and rode towards the greatness he had so long planned.
Saumier had chosen to go north of the road, well clear of the panic, but he had chosen wrong. A great ditch faced him, full of dirty water, but without a saddle and with the horse double-ridden, he knew he could not jump it. He slid from the horse’s back. ‘Stay there, my Lady.’
‘I’d not planned on leaving you, Captain.’
Saumier gripped the long driving reins with the fingers of his injured arm and walked to the ditch’s edge. He plumbed it with his sabre and found that it was shallow, but with a soft, treacherous bottom. ‘Sit tight, my Lady! Hold onto the collar!’
The horse was nervous so Saumier would have to lead it through the ditch. He stepped into the water and felt his boot sucked into the slimy mud. He slipped, held his balance, then tugged on the reins.
The horse nervously came forward. It put its head down and La Marquesa gripped the mane.
Saumier smiled at her with his yellow teeth. ‘Don’t frighten it, my Lady! Gently, now, gently!’
The horse stepped into the water.
‘Come on! Come on!’
A horseman took the ditch in one stride a few yards to Saumier’s left. The Frenchman looked up, fearing a British cavalryman, but the man wore no uniform. Saumier tugged on the reins again. ‘Come on, boy! Come on!’
La Marquesa screamed and Saumier looked up at her, ready to chide her for frightening the horse, then he saw why she had shouted in fear.
The horseman had stopped beyond the ditch. The man grinned at Saumier.
More horsemen were behind La Marquesa. One of them was a huge man with a beard that seemed to grow from every part of his face.
The bearded man came forward and smiled. From his belt he drew a pistol.
Saumier let go of the reins. He had his sabre drawn, but his boots were stuck in the filth at the ditch’s bottom.
El Matarife still smiled. He had followed the carriage from the city and now he had found the woman he had been ordered to capture. She was to be taken to a nunnery, those were his brother’s orders, but El Matarife planned to give her one taste of the joys she would miss in the close confinement of a convent. He glanced at her, and she was more beautiful than a man could wish for, even screaming in horror at the sight of his face. The man in the ditch dropped his sabre and fumbled for the pistol in his holster.
El Matarife pulled his trigger.
Captain Saumier jerked backwards, hands flying up and pistol falling.
He splashed into the ditch, his boots slowly sucking up from the bubbling mud.
He floated.
His blood drifted in the dirty water, spreading as he died, choking on ditch-water and blood.
El Matarife smiled at La Marquesa, at the woman whose golden hair had been like a beacon in the havoc. ‘My Lady,’ he said. He began to laugh, the laugh getting louder and louder until it blotted out the screams of the chaos. ‘My Lady, my dear lady.’ He reached for her, dragged her belly-downwards over his saddle. She screamed, and he slapped her rump to keep her quiet, then headed back towards the wagons. As he had followed her carriage here he had seen the gold and silver scattered like leaves upon the ground. There would be time, he knew, to take some for himself before he delivered the golden whore to her new prison. He went into the chaos with his prisoner.
CHAPTER 25
‘God save Ireland!’ Patrick Harper’s favourite oath, saved only for the things that truly astonished him, was hardly sufficient to describe what he saw as he crossed the shallow crest where the grass was still scorched from the French guns that had made the slaughter on the bridge. He tried another. ‘God save England, too.’
Sharpe laughed. The sight, for a few seconds, had taken his mind from La Marquesa.
Angel stared open-mouthed. An army was running a race. Thousands and thousands of Frenchmen, all order gone, ran between the river and the city, streaming eastwards, abandoning muskets, packs, anything that would slow them.
From Sharpe’s right, cavalry approached, British cavalry who stared and laughed at the tide of panicked men. Their Major came towards Sharpe and grinned. ‘It’s cruel to charge them!’
Sharpe smiled. ‘Do you have a glass, Major?’
The cavalryman offered Sharpe a small spyglass. The Rifleman opened it, trained it, and saw what he thought he had seen with his naked eye. The road was blocked. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of wagons that were stuck in the fields east of Vitoria. He could see carriages there, their windows red from the setting sun. There was a woman there, and a treasure there. He closed the glass and gave it back to the cavalryman. ‘You see those wagons, Major?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a god-damned fortune there. The gold of a bloody empire.’
The cavalryman stared at Sharpe as if he was mad, then slowly smiled. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. It’s a king’s ransom.’
The cavalryman looked at Angel, ragged on his stolen horse, then at Harper, huge on his. ‘You think you can keep up with us?’
‘Think you can keep up with us?’ Sharpe smiled. In truth he needed these Hussars to help cut through the panicked mass of fugitives who still streamed between them and the city.
The Major grinned, brushed at his moustaches and turned to look at his men. ‘Troop!’
The trumpeter challenged the sky, the troopers drew their sabres and walked the horses forward. The men were in ranks of ten, knee to knee. The Major drew his sabre and looked at Sharpe. ‘This is going to be better than a strong scent on a fine day!’ He looked at his trumpeter and nodded.
The trumpet sounded the gallop. There was no other way to go through the flood of fugitives and the Hussars shouted, raised their sabres, and plunged into the fleeing army.
If Sharpe had not been so concerned for the fate of La Marquesa he would have remembered that ride for ever. The Hussars cut into the French retreat like men going into a dark river, and, just as in a river, the current took them downstream. The French, seeing their enemy coming, parted before the horses and only those who could not move fast enough were cut down by the curved blades.
They went like steeplechasers. They crossed a small stream, hooves shattering water silver in the air, scrambled up a field bank, jumped a stone wall, and the men whooped like maniacs and the French split before them. The hooves hurled mud higher than the guidon that was held aloft by the standard bearer.
There were guns everywhere, abandoned field guns with blackened muzzles, their wheels mired in the soft earth. The cavalry rode in the middle of their enemies and not a hand was lifted against them.
There were carts overturned, mules running free, wounded men crawling eastwards, and everywhere there were women. They called for their men, for their husbands or lovers, and their voices were forlorn and hopeless.
The Major, breaking free of the French rout, cut his men towards the wagons. Sharpe shouted at Harper and Angel, pulled left, and reined Carbine in. He had stopped by a dark blue carriage, its wheels sunk into soft turf, its varnished panels spattered with mud. He stared at the coat of arms that
was painted on the carriage door. He knew it. He had seen it first on another carriage in Salamanca’s splendid square.
It was La Marquesa’s carriage, and it was empty.
The upholstery had been split open and the horses led away. One window was broken. He peered inside and saw no blood on the torn cushions of the seats. One silver trace chain was left in the mud.
He stared into the havoc of wagons and carriages. She could be anywhere in that chaos of shouting and theft, of musket shots and screams, or she could be gone.
Harper looked at the carriage and frowned, ‘Sir?’
‘Patrick?’
‘Would that be her Ladyship’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that why we’re here?’
‘Yes. I want to find her. God knows how.’
The Irishman stared at the baggage park. ‘You say there’s treasure here?’
‘A god-damned fortune.’
‘Seems a good place to start looking, sir.’
Sharpe urged his horse towards the wagons. He was looking for the great mane of golden hair amidst the chaos that had once been King Joseph’s baggage train. ‘Helene!’
A box of fine porcelain was spilt ahead of him, the plates smashed into a thousand gilded shards. A woman, blood streaming from her scalp, hurled a second dinner service out of its packing cases, looking for gold.
A French soldier lay dying, his throat half cut by a Spaniard who ripped with his knife at the man’s pockets. He found a watch, a stolen masterpiece made by Breguet in Paris. He put it to his ear, heard no tick, and furiously smashed the crystal with the hilt of his knife.
‘Helene!’
Sharpe’s horse trampled on leather-bound books, books that had been made before the printing press had been invented, books made by patient men over months of work, with exquisitely painted capitals that were now ground into the mire.
A tapestry that had been made in Flanders when Queen Elizabeth was a child was torn by two women to make blankets. Another woman, wine bottle in hand, danced between the wagons with the gilded coat of a Royal Chamberlain on her shoulders. She wore nothing else. A French soldier, drunk on brandy, plucked the coat from her and tore at the gilt braid. The naked woman hit him with her bottle and snatched the coat back.
‘Helene!’
Silver Spanish dollars, each worth five English shillings, were strewn like pebbles between the wagons. No one wanted silver when there was so much gold.
‘Helene!’
Two men bent, twisted, and hacked apart a golden candelabra, one of a set of four that had been given to King Phillip II by Queen Mary of England when she had married the Spanish King.
‘Helene!’
Two Frenchwomen, abandoning their army and their children for the sake of a box of jewels, prised the stones from a reliquary that contained the shin-bone of John the Baptist. The jewels were glass, replacements for the real stones that had been stolen three centuries before. They dropped the shin-bone into the mud where it was snapped up by a dog.
One man shot another to get a wooden box that the victim had been dragging away. The murderer took it beneath a wagon, reloaded his musket, and blew the lock off. It contained horseshoes and nails.
‘Helene!’
It was hopeless. The wagons seethed with people. He could see nothing. Sharpe swore. A four year old child, abandoned by its mother, was trampled by a rush of men towards an untouched wagon. The child cried, unheard and unseen, its ribs broken.
‘Helene!’
A Frenchman ran at Sharpe, musket held like a club, and tried to knock the Rifleman from his horse. Sharpe snarled, chopped down with the sword, knocked the musket aside, and chopped again. The man screamed, the sword cut into his neck, shearing his ear off, and then Harper’s gun butt slammed into the other side of his head. The man fell, golden francs spilling from his pockets, and in an instant he was set on by a score of people who slashed with knives and scrambled in the mud for gold.
There were acres of wagons! Hundreds of them. Many as the plunderers were, there were still scores of untouched wagons.
‘Helene!’
He galloped down between a row of wagons, turned into the next row and galloped back. Silver dollars were beneath Carbine’s hooves. A woman tossed and unrolled a bolt of silk, scarlet in the failing sunlight, silk that arched and fell into the mud.
A man threw crates of silver cutlery off a wagon, spilling them into the mud, searching for gold.
‘Helene!’
A woman staggered towards Sharpe, blood flowing in a dozen rivulets down her head and matting her hair. She had found her box of gold, but a man had taken it from her. She cried, not from the pain, but from loss. She picked up some silver forks and thrust them into her dress.
‘Helene!’
A man, trousers at his knees, was on top of a woman by an overturned coach. Sharpe hit him with the flat of the sword, trying to see the woman’s face. She had none. It was just blood from a cut throat. The man tried to scramble away, but Sharpe sliced the sword in a backswing and cut the man’s throat as he had cut his victim’s.
A pretty girl, incongruously dressed in tight French cavalry uniform, danced on top of a wagon and whirled a rope of pearls. A British cavalryman laughed with her, protecting her, and then bent to scoop more pearls from a box. A horde of people, seeing the treasure, scrambled like rats up to the wagon’s top.
‘Helene!’
Sharpe put his heels back, shouting at the plunderers to clear the way. A drunk, a bottle of priceless wine in each hand, staggered in Carbine’s path and the horse threw the man down. Sharpe held his balance, urged the horse on, and never noticed the painting that the hooves trampled. Van Dyck had worked long on the canvas which was pulled out of the mud by a man who needed a tarpaulin to cover a mule-load of plunder.
‘Helene!’
A box of Legion d‘Honneur medals was tossed to the crowd. The Spaniards, laughing, attached the medals to hang beneath their horses’ tails. Angel caught one and laughed at the trophy.
A British cavalryman ripped a tarpaulin from a wagon to find pictures beneath. They had been cut from their frames. He pulled a Rubens from the top of the pile to see if it concealed gold. It did not, and he rode on, looking for better plunder.
A golden clock, made in Augsburg three hundred years before, that showed the houses of the zodiac, the phases of the moon, as well as the time, was hacked apart by men with bayonets for the sake of its golden case. One of them, piercing his palm with the clock’s dragon hand, smashed at it with the butt of his musket. The brass and iron clockwork, that had been cared for over centuries, was scattered in the mud. Its jewelled astrolabe was carried off by a British sergeant.
‘Helene!’
They searched row after row of wagons until Sharpe felt the hopelessness rise in him. He reined in and looked at Harper. ‘It’s no good.’
The Irishman shrugged. He looked eastwards into the valley of the Pamplona Road that was thick with fugitives. ‘She’d have been foolish to stay around here, sir.’ That had been his private opinion ever since they began this frantic, useless galloping amongst the stranded wagons. He wondered just what had happened to Sharpe in the last weeks. Somehow he was not surprised that the golden-haired woman was involved; Sharpe always had been a fool for women.
Sharpe swore. He wiped his sword on his leg and sheathed it. A bare-footed British infantry Captain walked past. He carried his boots carefully, both boots filled to the top with gold twenty franc pieces. Three of his men cheerfully guarded him.
Another woman dressed in French cavalry uniform called to Sharpe for protection. Sharpe ignored her. He was staring about him, watching the plunderers tear at wagons. He tried to see La Marquesa’s golden hair. A British infantryman, one of the many who now swarmed into the baggage, grabbed the woman’s hand. She clung to him and went happily enough with her new guardian.
Harper edged his horse close to the nearest wagon. If Major Sharpe wanted to look for a woman,
Harper might as well look for a marriage settlement. The wagon had words stencilled on its backboard. Domaine Exterieur de S.M. L‘Empereur. He wondered what they meant, then drew his knife, slashed the tarpaulin, and started working at the first box.
Sharpe watched the British infantry come like children into this wonderland of treasure. He thought of La Marquesa’s wagons and wondered if they too were being stripped and if she was trying to protect them from the muskets and bayonets. He stood in his stirrups. God damn it! Her carriage was here, she must be close by; and then he supposed that she must have fled eastwards and abandoned her wealth. Or perhaps Ducos had taken her. He swore again. He wished he would meet Ducos in this chaos for one brief moment, a moment long enough to use the heavy sword.
‘God in his Irish heaven! Jesus! Mary, Mother of God, would you be looking at this. God save Ireland!’
Sharpe turned. Harper held up a diamond necklace. The Irishman looked at Sharpe with pure delight. ‘Open your haversack, sir.’
‘Patrick?’
‘For Christ’s sake, open your haversack!’
Sharpe frowned. He was thinking of La Marquesa.
‘Mr Sharpe, sir!’
‘What?’ He snapped the word, still trying to see the golden mane of hair in the failing light.
‘Give us your bloody haversack!’ Harper shouted it as if he was addressing a particularly stupid recruit. ‘Give it to me!’
Sharpe obeyed, hardly knowing what he was doing.
Harper called to Angel to help him. They tethered their horses to the wagon and stood on the load to lever open the locked chests. Harper was emptying the first chest of small leather boxes, each lined with white silk. He tossed the leather boxes away, keeping the jewels that they contained. He worked fast, knowing as a soldier to take swift advantage of good luck. He opened leather box after leather box, taking out necklaces, tiaras, bracelets, earrings, drops, brooches, scabbard furniture, enamelled decorations studded with stones, enough pieces for Sharpe’s haversack, his own, and Angel’s pockets. He buckled Sharpe’s haversack and tossed it to his officer. ‘A welcome home present, sir.’