Sharpe's Christmas

PART THREE

"CAPTAIN d'Alembord! " Sharpe shouted.

"Sir?"

"You take over here, Dally, " Sharpe said, "and I'll take your horse."

The French brigade was forming a column. It could mean only one thing, that they planned to attack straight up the hill. But before advancing their leading rank fired musket volleys at the fifteen remaining wine barrels that blocked the road, the remnant of Sharpe's ingenious and deadly trap.

None of the barrels contained gunpowder, for Sharpe had possessed only a limited supply, but the French were not to know that. Their volleys cleared the road while their skirmishers climbed the small valley's side to chase away riflemen who had already retreated. It would take an hour, Sharpe reckoned, before this brigade was in a fit state to advance, and when they did he doubted it would be with much enthusiasm, for they knew what was waiting for them.

But another thousand Frenchmen were coming from the south in their desperate attempt to escape from Spain, and those men knew they must fight through the pass if they were ever to reach home, and their desperation could make those thousand men far more dangerous than the brigade. Sharpe now rode back through the village to where a picquet watched the enemy approaching from the south.

"They're still a long way off, sir, " Captain Smith reported nervously, worried that he had summoned Sharpe too soon.

"You did the right thing, " Sharpe reassured him as he drew out his telescope.

"What's happening back there, sir?" Smith asked.

"We showed the Frogs a trick or two, but they still seem to want a fight. But don't worry, they won't be spending their Christmas here." He could see the French refugees now. There were mounted dragoons up front, infantry behind, and one wagon, no guns and a crowd of women and children in the middle.

"That's good, " Sharpe said quietly.

"Good, sir?" Smith asked.

"They're bringing their women, captain, and they won't want them hurt, will they? It might even persuade them to surrender." Sharpe paused, his eye caught by a metallic gleam above the infantry's dark shakos. "And they've got an Eagle! " Sharpe said excitedly. "That would make a nice Christmas present for the battalion, wouldn't it? A French Eagle! I could fancy that."

He collapsed the glass and wondered how much time he had. The column was still a good two hours marching away, which should be enough.

"Just watch them, " he told Smith, then he pulled himself back into d'Alembord's saddle and rode back to the frontier. It was all a question of timing now.

If the brigade attacked the hill at the same time as the garrison approached the village, then he was in trouble, but when he was back at the northern ridge he saw to his relief that the enemy had already cleared the road of the barrels and that their voltigeurs were spreading out on the slope to herald the attack. The voltigeurs' job was to advance in a loose, scattered line and harass the redcoats with musket fire. To prevent this, Sharpe sent his own skirmishers into battle.

"Mister d'Alembord! Light Company out! Pick off those voltigeurs." The French were brave, Sharpe thought. As brave as could be, but also stupid.

They knew volley fire waited for them, but their general would not back down without more blood and Sharpe was ready to give it to him. He had already guessed that the enemy was inexperienced, because the voltigeurs were not forcing home their attack, but trying to stay out of range of the deadly rifles. They were just children, he thought, snatched from a depot and marched to war. It was cruel.

The French column advanced behind the voltigeurs. It looked formidable, but columns always did. This one was thirty files wide and sixty ranks deep: a great solid block of men who had been ordered to climb an impossible slope into a gale of fire. It would be murder, not war, but it was the French commander who was doing the murdering. Sharpe called in his Light Company, then sent them back to join Smith's picquet. If the French Dragoons rode ahead of the approaching garrison then the riflemen could pick off the horsemen.

"But you stay here, " Sharpe told d'Alembord. "I've got a job for you."

The column lost its cohesion as it tried to cut across the corners of the zig-zagging road. They were getting close now, little more than a hundred paces away, and Sharpe could see the men were sweating despite the day's cold.

They were wearing, too, and whenever they looked up they saw nothing except a group of officers waiting on the crest. The line of redcoats had pulled back out of sight of the enemy, and Sharpe did not plan to bring them forward until the very last moment.

"Cutting it fine, sir, " d'Alembord observed.

"Give it a minute yet, " Sharpe said. He could hear the drums in the column's centre now, thought whenever the drummers paused to let the men shout "Vive l'Empereur! " the response was feeble. These men were winded, wearing and wary.

And only fifty paces away.

"Now, Sergeant Major, " Sharpe said, and he stepped back through the advancing ranks and tried not to feel sorry for the Frenchmen he was about to kill.

«Fire!» Harper shouted, and this time the whole line fired in unison so that their bullets smacked home in one lethal blow. "Platoon, fire! " Harper shouted before the echo of the volley had died away. "From the centre!»

Sharpe could see nothing of the enemy now, for they were hidden behind a thick cloud of grey-white powder smoke, but he could imagine the horror. Probably the whole French front rank was dead or dying, and most of the second rank, too, and the men behind would be pushing and the men in front stumbling on the dead and wounded, and then, just as they were recovering from the first volley, the rolling platoon fire began. "Aim low! " Harper shouted. "Aim low!»

The air filled with the rotten-egg stench of powder smoke. The men's faces were flecked with burning powder scraps, while the paper cartridge wadding, spat out behind each bullet, started small, flickering fires in the grass.

On and on the volleys went as men fired blindly down into the smoke, pouring death into a small place, and still they loaded and rammed and fired, and Sharpe did not see a single man in his own regiment fall. He did not even hear a French bullet. It was the old story, a French column was being pounded by a British line, and British musketry was crushing the column's head and flanks and flecking its centre with blood.

Sharpe had posted a man wide of the line so that he could see past the smoke.

"They're running, sir! They're running! " the man shouted excitedly. "Running like hell!»

"Cease fire! " Sharpe bellowed. "Cease fire!»

And slowly the smoke cleared to show the horror on the winter grass. Blood and horror and broken men. A column had met a line. Sharpe turned away. "Mister d'Alembord."

"Sir?"

"Take a white flag and ride to the southern road. Find the garrison commander.

Tell him we broke a French brigade and that we'll break him in exactly the same manner if he doesn't surrender."

"Sir! Sir! Please sir! " That was Ensign Nicholls, jumping up and down beside d'Alembord. "Can I go with him, sir? Please, sir. I've never seen a Frog. Not close up, sir."

"They've got tails and horns, " d'Alembord said, and smiled when Nicholls looked alarmed.

"If you can borrow a horse, " Sharpe told the ensign, "you can go. But keep your mouth shut! Let Mister d'Alembord do the talking."

"Yes, sir, " Nicholls said, and ran happily away while Sharpe turned back to the north. The French had broken and run, and he doubted they would be back, but he was not willing to care for their wounded. He had neither the men nor the supplies to do that, so someone would have to go down to the enemy under a flag of truce and offer them a chance to clear up the mess they had made.

Just in time for Christmas.

Colonel Caillou watched the two red-coated horsemen approach under their flag of truce and felt an immense rage surge inside him. Gudin would surrender, he knew it, and when that happened Caillou would lose the Eagle that the Emperor himself had presented to the 75th.

He would not let it happen, and so, in a blind fury, he drove back his spurs and galloped after Gudin.

Gudin heard him coming, turned and waved him back, but Caillou ignored him.

Instead he drew his pistol. "Go back! " he shouted in English to the approaching officers. "Go back!»

D'Alembord reined in his horse. "Do you command her, monsieur?" he asked Caillou in French.

"Go back! " Caillou shouted angrily. "We do not accept your flag. You hear me?

We do not accept it. Go! " He leveled the pistol at the younger officer who held the offending flag of truce, a white handkerchief tied to a musket's ramrod. «Go!» Caillou shouted, then spurred his horse away from Gudin who had moved to intervene.

"It's all right, Charlie, " d'Alembord said. "He won't shoot. It's a flag of truce." He looked back to Caillou. "Monsieur? I insist upon knowing if you command here."

"Just go! " Caillou shouted, but at that moment Nicholls's horse stumbled a pace forward and Caillou, overwhelmed with rage for the anticipated shame of surrender, pulled the pistol's trigger.

The white flag toppled slowly. Nicholls stared at Caillou with a look of astonishment on his young face, then he turned in puzzlement to gaze at d'Alembord. D'Alembord reached out a hand, but Nicholls was already falling.

The bullet had broken through one of the gold laces his mother had sewn onto his jacket and then it had pierced his young heart.

Caillou seemed suddenly shocked, as if he had only just realized the enormity of his crime. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Instead, a second pistol sounded and Caillou, just like Nicholls, toppled dead from his horse.

Colonel Gudin put his pistol back in its holster. "I command here, " he told d'Alembord in English. "To my shame, sir. I command here. You have come to offer terms?"

"I have come to fetch your surrender, sir, " d'Alembord said, and saw from Gudin's face that he would get it. The battle was over.

SHARPE heard of Nicholls's death while he was still watching the French take their dead from the northern slope. He swore when he heard the news, and then he stalked back to the village with pure bloody murder in his head.

A ground of unarmed French soldiers stood nervously outside the tavern, and he pushed his angry way through them and then kicked open the door. "What bastard Frenchman dared killed my officer?" he shouted, storming into the room with one hand on the hilt of his heavy cavalry sword.

A tall, grey-haired French officer stood to face him. "The man who killed your officer is dead, monsieur, " the Frenchman said. "I shot him."

Sharpe stopped and stared. His hand fell from the sword and his mouth dropped open. For a second he seemed unable to speak, but then he found his voice.

"Colonel Gudin?" he asked in amazement.

Gudin smiled. "Oui, Caporal Sharpe."

"I'm a major now, sir, " Sharpe said, and he stepped forward with his hand outstretched, but Gudin ignored the hand and instead clasped Sharpe in both arms and kissed him on both cheeks. D'Alembord watched, smiling.

"I knew it was you, " Gudin said, his hands still on Sharpe's shoulders. "I'm proud of you, Sharpe. So very proud." There were tears in the colonel's eyes.

"And for your officer who died, I am sorry. There was nothing I could do."

The door from the kitchens opened and Daniel Hagman poked his head through.

"Need more towels, Captain, " he said to d'Alembord.

"What the hell are you doing, Dan?" Sharpe asked.

"Delivering a baby, sir, " Hagman said, as if that was the most natural thing in the world for a Rifleman to be doing on Christmas Eve. "Isn't the first baby I've done, sir. The Frog doctor was going to cut her open, and that would have killed her, but I'll see her right. It's no different from slipping a lamb into the world. Thank you, sir." He took the proffered rags from d'Alembord and ducked back into the candlelit kitchen.

Sharpe sat. D'Alembord and Gudin had started on the wine, so he poured himself a mug and took a long drink. "So what am I going to do with you?" he asked his old colonel.

Gudin spread his hands. "I could choose to fight you, I suppose, but if I do, I lose. So I fear I am your prisoner again." The colonel looked at d'Alembord.

"He took me prisoner in India, and he was only a corporal then."

"That was a long time ago, sir, a long time ago." Sharpe poured more wine and pushed the wineskin towards the colonel. "And how have you been since, sir?"

"Not well, Sharpe, not well, " Gudin confessed. "You see I am still a colonel, just as I was then. It seemed that after Seringapatam I could do nothing right."

"I'm sure that's not true, sir. You were the best officer I ever had."

Gudin smiled at the compliment. "But I have had no luck, Sharpe, no victories."

"So tell me about it, sir. It's the night before Christmas, a good night for a story. So tell me."

So Gudin did.

GENERAL Maximillien Picard sulked. He sat by a miserable fire in the deep, cold valley listening to the moans of his wounded and knew that he had been well beaten.

He had scented defeat from the moment he had seen the demonstration volley the British had flaunted from their high ridge, but Picard had always thought he was a lucky man and he had hoped that his good luck would serve to drive his column up the hill and through the thin British line. But the column had been shattered and his conscripts, instead of tasting victory, were now more fearful than ever.

He drank from a brandy flask. It was three o'clock on Christmas morning, but he could not sleep. The skies had cleared, so that the Christmas stars were bright, but General Picard felt nothing but gloom. "Gudin's doomed, " he said to his chief of staff Major Santon. "If we couldn't break those bastards, what hope does he have?"

"None, sir, " Santon said.

"I don't mind losing Gudin, " Picard said, "but why must we lose Caillou? Now there's a soldier for you. And if we lose Caillou, Santon, you know what else we lose?"

"The Eagle, sir."

"The Eagle, " Picard said, and flinched. "We will have lost one of the Emperor's Eagles." His eyes filled with tears. "I do not mind defeat, Santon, he said untruthfully, "but I cannot bear the loss of an Eagle. It will be taken to London and flaunted in front of that fat prince. And Eagle of France, gone to captivity."

Santon said nothing, for there was nothing to say. To a soldier of France there was no shame like losing an Eagle. The birds might be nothing more than little bronze statuettes poised on a staff from which the tricolour flew, but they had all been touched by the Emperor and they were all sacred to France.

And in the dark hills above them, an Eagle was in desperate danger.

"I can bear anything, " Picard said, "except that."

Then, from above them, all hell broke loose.

To the defeated French brigade in the deep valley it sounded like a battle to end the world. True, there was no artillery firing, but the experienced soldiers claimed they had never heard musketry like it. The volleys were unending, and the crash of those musket blasts was magnified and multiplied by the valley's echoing walls. They could hear faint screams and shouts, and sometimes a bugle call but, above it all, and never ending, the hammer sound of muskets. There was volley after volley, so many that after a while the sound became continuous; a deep grinding sound like the creak of a hinge on the gate of hell.

"We should go up and help, " Picard said, rising to his feet.

"We can't, sir, " Santon insisted, and he pointed up to the crest where a line of British soldiers still stood guard. The moon was unsheathed from the clouds, and any Frenchman trying to climb the slope would be a sitting target for those riflemen. "Gudin must fight on his own, " Santon said.

And Gudin must have been fighting, for the musketry, instead of fading, grew in intensity. Picard reckoned it must be Caillou who fought, for surely poor old Gudin could never fight a battle like this. Every now and then a brief glow showed in the sky, betraying where a group of muskets flamed together, and soon the heavy, foul-smelling smoke spilled over the pass's lip to drift down the slope. And still the splintering volleys ground on.

UP IN THE PASS, Sharpe loaded his rifle. He did it quickly, trained to the intricate motions by a lifetime of soldiering, and when the gun was loaded he raised it to his shoulder, held the muzzle high into the sky, and pulled its trigger.

«Faster!» he shouted, «faster!» And all around him redcoats and greenjackets peppered the sky. They fired volley after volley at the stars and, in between the volleys, they whooped and screamed like demons.

"I pity any poor angel up there tonight, sir, " Patrick Harper said to Captain d'Alembord. "He'll lose a few wingfeathers, so he will." And then Harper fired his volley gun at the moon and down in the valley the deafened French gasped, thinking that at last the artillery was joining the fight.

«Faster!» Sharpe shouted. "Vite! Vite! " A group of French soldiers pulled their triggers, scattering a volley towards the snow on the highest peaks.

Daniel Hagman walked calmly through the chaos and noise. "It's a girl, sir!»

he shouted at Colonel Gudin.

"A girl?" Gudin said. "I thought, on Christmas Day, it might be a boy."

"It's a pretty little girl, sir, and she's just fine and so is her mother. The women are looking after her, and she'll be ready to move in a while. Just a while."

Sharpe had overheard the news and grinned at Gudin. "A cold night to be born, colonel."

"But she'll live, Sharpe. They'll both live. That's what matters."

Sharpe fired his rifle at the stars. "I was thinking of the baby Jesus, colonel. His birth must have been cold as hell."

Gudin smiled. "I think Palestine is a warm country, Sharpe, like India. I doubt the first Christmas was cold."

"At least He never joined the Army, sir. He had more sense." Sharpe rammed another bullet in his rifle, then walked down the boisterous line of soldiers.

Redcoats and Frenchmen were mixed together, all of them firing like maniacs into the star-bright sky. «Faster!» Sharpe shouted. "Come on, now! Faster!

You're celebrating Christ's birth! Make some effort! Vite! Vite!»

It took a half-hour before Maria and her newborn child could be laid in the wagon where they were cushioned with blankets and swathed in sheepskins. The new baby had gifts: a Rifleman's silver button, a broken ivory boot-hook that a redcoat had lifted from the battlefield of Vitoria, and a golden guinea that was a present from Peter d'Alembord.

When the mother and child were comfortable, the wagon driver whipped his horses northward, and all the Spanish women and children whom Gudin had tried so hard to save fell in behind the lumbering vehicle. They climbed the gentle pass, and the French troops who had been shooting at the stars fell in around them as the wagon passed. A hundred Frenchmen joined the women, all of them from Gudin's garrison, and their colonel was the very last man to join the procession.

"Here, sir, " Sharpe said, and he stepped forward and offered Colonel Gudin the Eagle.

Gudin stared at the trophy. "Are you sure, Sharpe?"

Sharpe grinned. "I've already captured one, sir. I don't need another."

Gudin took the Eagle, then hugged Sharpe and kissed him farewell.

"After the war, Sharpe?" he said huskily. "I shall see you after the war?"

"I hope so, sir. I do hope so."

There was one last charade to mount. The men guarding the frontier ridge fired their muskets, then ran in pretended panic as Gudin's small procession approached.

And from the valley below, General Picard watched in amazement as a small group of Frenchmen appeared at the ridge's crest. They were only a few men, a mere handful, less than a tenth of those he had expected, but they had fought their way through; they had even brought a wagon through.

And then Picard saw a golden glint shine above the dark shapes who fired back at the ridge behind them and he raised his telescope and stared intently, trying to track down the elusive gleam, and suddenly there it was. It was the Eagle. He could see its spread wings and its banded flag.

"They've brought the Eagle! " Picard shouted. "They've saved the Eagle! " And his defeated men began to cheer.

The firing in the high pass died slowly to leave a layer of gunsmoke lingering above the road. The riflemen and redcoats grinned. They had enjoyed the nonsense. None had wanted to spend Christmas in this high country that was so far from their beef and plum-pudding, but the expedition had turned into a game.

It was a pity about Ensign Nicholls, of course, but what had he expected?

Everyone knew that Mister Sharpe was fatal for ensigns, but at least Mister Nicholls was to be buried in France. Sharpe had insisted on that. The boy had come to fight the French and, for all eternity, he would hold a tiny scrap of captured French soil.

But no one else had died. No one else had even taken a wound, and the regiment had turned back a whole French brigade, while in the village, under the guard of the Grenadier company, 900 French prisoners waited to be marched back into Spain and captivity.

But one hundred Frenchmen went free. One hundred Frenchmen, their women, their children, their colonel and an Eagle. They went free because Sharpe, to help an old friend, had given that friend a victory, and Sharpe now watched Gudin's men go down the slope, and he saw the men of the defeated brigade run up to greet them. He heard the cheers and, in the silver moonlight, framed in the lens of his telescope, he saw the brigade officers cluster around Colonel Gudin.

Unlucky Gudin, who, on Christmas morning 1813, had saved an Eagle and fought his way to freedom. Colonel Jean Gudin, a hero at last.

"Do you think they'll ever find out that it was all faked?" Harper asked.

"Who'd ever believe it?" Sharpe asked.

"No one, I suppose, " Harper said, and then, after a pause. "A happy Christmas to you, sir."

"And to you, Patrick."

"I suppose it'll be mutton for dinner?"

"I suppose it will. We'll buy a few sheep and you can kill them."

"Not me, sir. You, sir."

Sharpe laughed, and then turned south towards the village. It was Christmas morning, a crisp, clean, new Christmas morning, and his men were alive, an old friend was a hero and there would be mutton for dinner. It was Sharpe's Christmas.