Sharpe's Rifles

CHAPTER 9

A dozen French wounded lay in the barn, filling its cavernous space with the stench of blood, pus, and camphorated vinegar. The casualties lay on rough beds of hay at one end while at the other, in front of a stack of woven sheep hurdles, the officers had made a crude command post out of an upturned water barrel. A half-dozen officers stood about the barrel and among them was the chasseur in his red pelisse, who greeted Sharpe warmly and in fluent English. “My name is Colonel Pierre de l’Eclin, and I have the honour to be a chasseur of His Majesty’s Imperial Guard.”

Sharpe returned the hint of a bow. “Lieutenant Richard Sharpe of the Rifles.”

“The Rifles, eh? You make it sound like a very proud boast.” De l’Eclin was a handsome man; as tall as Sharpe, strongly built, and with a square-jawed face and golden hair. He gestured at a flask of wine which stood on the makeshift table. “Will a Rifle take some wine?”

Sharpe was not certain whether he was being mocked or complimented. “Thank you, sir.”

The chasseur waved away a Lieutenant, insisting on filling the two small silver cups himself. He handed one towards Sharpe but, before the Rifleman could take the cup, de l’Eclin withdrew it slightly as though giving himself a chance to study his scarred face. “Have we met, Lieutenant?”

“By a bridge, sir. You broke my sabre.”

De l’Eclin seemed delighted. He gave the cup to Sharpe and clicked his fingers as the memory came back. “You parried! A quite remarkable parry! Or was it luck?”

“Probably luck, sir.”

“Soldiers should be lucky, and consider how lucky you are that I didn’t catch up with you in open ground today. All the same, Lieutenant, I salute your Rifles’ excellent defence. It’s a pity it must end like this.”

Sharpe drank the wine to scour the sour taste of powder from his mouth. “It isn’t ended, sir.”

“No?” De l’Eclin raised a polite eyebrow.

“I’m here, sir, solely on behalf of some English civilians, trapped inside the farm, who desire to leave. They are willing to trust to your kindness, sir.”

“My kindness?” De l’Eclin gave a gleeful bellow of laughter. “I told you that I am a chasseur of the Emperor’s Imperial Guard, Lieutenant. A man does not achieve that signal honour, let alone a colonelcy, by kindness. Still, I’m grateful for what was indubitably meant as a compliment. Who are these civilians?”

“English travellers, sir.”

“And these are their books?” De l’Eclin gestured at two muddy Spanish testaments which lay on the upturned barrel. The French had clearly been curious about the spilt books, a curiosity which Sharpe tried to satisfy. “They’re Methodist missionaries, sir, trying to turn Spain from the Papacy.”

De l’Eclin inspected Sharpe for evidence of levity, found none, and burst into laughter. “They’ve as much hope, Lieutenant, of turning tigers into cows! What strange people it is a soldier’s privilege to meet. Do I have your word that these Methodists have not carried weapons?”

Sharpe conveniently forgot Louisa’s small pistol. “You have, sir.”

“You can send them out. God knows what we’ll make of them, but we won’t shoot them.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sharpe turned to go.

“But don’t leave me yet, Lieutenant. I’d like to talk to you.” De l’Eclin saw the flicker of worry on Sharpe’s face, and shook his head. “I won’t keep you against your will, Lieutenant. I do respect flags of truce.”

Sharpe went to the barn door and shouted to the farmhouse that the Parker family could leave. He also suggested that the three Spaniards in the farm might take this chance to escape, but it seemed none of them wanted to risk French hospitality, for only the Parker family emerged from the besieged house. Mrs Parker was the first to appear, stumping through the mud and rain with her umbrella carried like a weapon. “Dear God,” de l’Eclin murmured behind Sharpe. “Why don’t you recruit her?”

George Parker stepped hesitantly into the rain, then Louisa emerged and de l’Eclin breathed a sigh of appreciation. “It seems we have to thank you.”

“You might not, sir, when you meet the aunt.”

“I don’t intend to bed the aunt.” De l’Eclin ordered a Captain to take care of the civilians, then drew Sharpe back into the barn. “So, my Rifle Lieutenant, what do you plan to do now?”

Sharpe ignored the patronizing tone and pretended incomprehension. “Sir?”

“Let me tell you your plans.” The tall Frenchman, whose pelisse hung so elegantly from his right shoulder, paced up and down the barn. “You’ve succeeded in loopholing the end walls of the farm’s upstairs room, which means I cannot surprise you until it is dark. A night attack might succeed, but it will be risky, especially as you will doubtless have a stock of combustibles inside the house with which you plan to illuminate the exterior.” He cocked an amused eye to catch a reaction from the Rifleman, but Sharpe betrayed nothing. De l’Eclin paused to refill Sharpe’s cup. “I suspect you feel you can survive at least one more attack and you also gauge that, once that attack fails, I will wait for first light. So, at about two or three in the morning, when my men are at their weariest, you will make a sally. I imagine you’ll head west, because there’s a gully of brushwood just a hundred paces away. Once there you will be relatively safe, and there are woodland paths up to the hills.” De l’Eclin had begun his pacing again, but now swivelled back to stare at Sharpe. “Am I right?”

The chasseur had been entirely, utterly accurate. Sharpe had not known about the gully, though he would have seen it from the hole in the roof and would undoubtedly have chosen to make his attack in that direction.

“Well?” de l’Eclin insisted.

“I was planning something different,” Sharpe said.

“Oh?” The chasseur was exquisitely polite.

“I was planning to capture your men and do to them what they did to those Spanish villagers in the highlands.”

“Rape them?” de l’Eclin suggested, then laughed. “Some of them might even enjoy that, but I assure you that most will resist your bestial, though doubtless very English, lusts.”

Sharpe, made to feel extremely foolish by the Frenchman’s poise, said nothing. He also felt unbearably ragged. His jacket was torn and blood-stained, he was hatless, his trousers were gaping because of the missing silver buttons and his cheap boots were in shreds. De l’Eclin, in contrast, was exquisitely uniformed. The chasseur wore a tight red dolman jacket with loops and buttons of gold. Over it hung his scarlet pelisse; a garment of utter uselessness but high fashion for cavalrymen. A pelisse was merely a jacket that was worn on one shoulder like a cloak. Decorated with golden braid, de l’Eclin’s was fastened about his neck with a golden chain, and edged with soft black lamb’s fleece. Its empty sleeves hung down to the gold-coloured chains of his sabre slings. The inner legs and lower cuffs of his dark green overalls had been reinforced with black leather to resist the chafing of a saddle, while their outer seams were red stripes brightened with golden buttons. His tall boots were of soft black leather. Sharpe wondered how much such a uniform cost, and knew it was probably more than his salary for a year.

De l’Eclin opened his sabretache and took out two cigars. He offered one to the Rifleman, who saw no reason to refuse it. The two men companionably shared the flame of a tinder-box, then the Frenchman, blowing a stream of smoke over Sharpe’s head, sighed. “I think, Lieutenant, that you and your Rifles should surrender.”

Sharpe kept a stubborn silence. De l’Eclin shrugged. “I will be honest with you, Lieutenant,” he paused, “Sharpe, did you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will be honest with you, Lieutenant Sharpe. I do not wish my men to be in this place at night. We have the honour to be the vanguard of our army and we are, therefore, exposed. The Spanish peasantry is sometimes tempted to make itself a nuisance. If I am here tonight, then I might lose a handful of men to knives in the dark. Those men will die horribly, and I do not think that the best cavalry in the world should suffer such an ignoble and painful death. So I expect you to surrender long before nightfall. Indeed, if you do not do so now, I shall not accept a surrender later. Do I make myself plain?”

Sharpe hid his astonishment at the threat, “I understand you, sir.”

De l’Eclin, despite Sharpe’s assent, could not resist embroidering his menace. “You will all die, Lieutenant. Not slowly, as we kill the Spanish peasants, but die all the same. Tomorrow the army will catch up with me, and I shall deploy artillery to grind your Rifles into mincemeat. It will be a lesson to other enemies of France not to waste the Emperor’s time.”

“Yes, sir.”

De l’Eclin smiled pleasantly. “Does that affirmative signify your surrender?”

“No, sir. You see, sir, I don’t believe in your guns. You’re carrying forage nets,” Sharpe gestured through the barn’s gaping rear door at the officers’ horses which, tethered safely out of sight of the Rifles, all had heavy nets of hay slung from their saddle spoons. Tf your army was going to catch up with you, sir, you’d let the waggons carry your feed. You’re on a patrol, nothing more, and if I resist long enough, you’ll leave.“

The French Colonel gazed thoughtfully at him for a few seconds. It was plain that, just as de l’Eclin had correctly guessed Sharpe’s tactics a moment before, so Sharpe had now guessed the Frenchman’s. De l’Eclin shrugged.

“I admire your courage, Lieutenant. But it won’t avail you. There really is no choice. Your army is defeated and fled home, the Spanish armies are broken and scattered. No one will help you. You can surrender now or you can be stubborn, which means that you will be cut to shreds by my blades.” His voice had lost its light and bantering tone, and was now deadly serious. “One way or another, Lieutenant, I will see you all killed.”

Sharpe knew he had no chance to win this siege, but was too pig-headed to give way. “I want time to think about it, sir.”

“Time to delay, you mean?” The chasseur shrugged scornfully. “It won’t help, Lieutenant. Do you really think we’ve come this far just to let Major Vivar escape?” Sharpe stared blankly at him. De l’Eclin entirely misunderstood Sharpe’s expression; mistaking the Rifleman’s incomprehension for guilty astonishment. “We know he’s with you, Lieutenant. He and his precious strongbox!”

“He’s…“ Sharpe did not know what to say.

“So you see, Lieutenant, I really will not abandon the hunt now. I was charged by the Emperor himself to take that strongbox to Paris, and I do not intend to fail him.” De l’Eclin smiled condescendingly. “Of course, if you send the Major out to me, with his box, I might let you continue south. I doubt if a few ragged Rifles will endanger the future of the Empire.”

“He’s not with me!” Sharpe protested.,

“Lieutenant!” de l’Eclin chided.

“Ask the Methodists! I haven’t seen Major Vivar in two days!”

“He’s lying!” The voice came from behind the stack of sheep hurdles, from where the tall civilian in the black coat and white riding boots appeared. “You’re lying, Englishman.”

“Piss on you, you bastard.” Sharpe snarled at the insult to his honour.

Colonel de l’Eclin moved swiftly to interpose himself between the two angry men. He addressed himself in English to the man in the black coat, though he still stared at the Rifleman. “It seems, my dear Count, that your brother might have successfully spread a false rumour? He is not, after all, travelling south to find remounts?”

“Vivar is his brother?” Sharpe’s confusion was absolute. Vivar, whose hatred of the French was so overwhelming, had a brother who rode with the enemy? Who must have watched as the Dragoons raped and killed Spanish women and children? His disbelief must have shown on his face for de PEclin, clearly astonished that Sharpe had not known of the relationship, made a formal introduction. “Allow me to name the Count of Mouromorto, Lieutenant. He is indeed Major Vivar’s brother. You have to understand that, contrary to the lies told in the English newspapers, there are many Spaniards who welcome the French presence. They believe it is time to sweep away the old superstitions and practices that have crippled Spain for so long. The Count is such a man.” De l’Eclin bowed to the Spaniard at the end of that description, but the Count merely glared at the Englishman.

Sharpe returned the hostile stare. “You let these bastards kill your own people?”

For a second it seemed as if the Count would lash out at him. He was taller than Bias Vivar, but now that he was close, Sharpe could see the familiarity. He had the same pugnacious jaw and fervent eyes, which now regarded Sharpe with hostility. “What would you know of Spain, Lieutenant?” the Count asked, “or of Spain’s desperate needs? Or of the sacrifices its people must make if they are to know liberty?”

“What do you know of liberty? You’re nothing but a bloody murdering bastard.”

“Enough!” De l’Eclin raised his left hand to check Sharpe’s anger. “You say Major Vivar is not with you?”

“He is not with me, nor is his damned strongbox. If it’s any business of yours, which it is not, I parted from Major Vivar in anger and I don’t much care if I never see him again! But he’s sent you on a wild goose chase, hasn’t he?”

De l’Eclin seemed amused at Sharpe’s anger. “Maybe, but you’re the goose, Lieutenant, and you’re the one who’ll be plucked. You and your Rifles.” The Colonel was entranced by the word. He knew Hussars, chasseurs, lancers, Dragoons, and gunners, he was familiar with sappers and cuirassiers, grenadiers and fusiliers, but he had never before heard a man described as a ‘Rifle’. “On the other hand,” de l’Eclin continued, “if Major Vivar is with you, then you are bound to deny his presence, are you not? Just as you are bound to defend him, which might explain your persistence in this hopeless fight.”

“He isn’t here,” Sharpe said wearily. “Ask the Methodists.”

“I shall certainly ask the girl,” de l’Eclin said happily.

“Do that.” Sharpe spat the words. Bias Vivar, he thought, had been superbly clever, using a rumour to persuade the French that he had fled south with the Riflemen, thereby sacrificing them. But Sharpe could feel no anger against the Spaniard, only a reluctant admiration. He threw his cigar onto the floor. “I’m going back.”

De l’Eclin nodded. “I shall give you ten minutes to make up your mind about surrender. Au revoir, Lieutenant.”

“And go to hell yourself.”

Sharpe went back to the farmhouse. The wild goose was trapped, and would now be killed and plucked. That, in a way, was Vivar’s revenge for Sharpe’s abandonment and Sharpe laughed at it, for there was nothing else to do. Except fight.

“What did the bugger want, sir?” Harper asked.

“He wants us to surrender.”

“Bugger would.” Harper spat towards the fire.

“If we don’t surrender now, they won’t let us do it later.”

“So he’s got the wind up his backside, has he? He’s scared of the night?”

“He is, yes.”

“So what are you going to do, sir?”

“Tell him to go to hell. And make you a Sergeant.”

Harper grimaced. “No, sir.”

“Why the hell not?”

The big man shook his head. “I don’t mind telling the lads what to do in a fight, sir. Captain Murray always let me do that, so he did, and I’ll do it whether you wanted me to or not. But I’ll go no further. I won’t run your punishments for you or take a badge from you.”

“For Christ’s sake, why not?”

“Why the hell should I?”

“Why the hell did you save my life out there?” Sharpe gestured beyond the farmhouse to where, in the panicked scramble to escape the Dragoons, he had been rescued by Harper’s volleys.

The big Irishman looked embarrassed. “That would be Major Vivar’s fault, sir.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Well, sir, he told me that, with one exception, you were the best man in a fight he’d ever seen. And that so long as the heathen English were fighting for a free Catholic Spain, sir, that I was to keep you alive.”

“The best?”

“With the one exception.”

“Who is?”

“Me, sir.”

“The Major’s a lying bastard,” Sharpe said. He supposed he must accept what was offered, which was Harper’s support on the battlefield. Even that would be better than no support at all. “So if you are such a God-damned good fighter, tell me how we get out of this God-damned hole?”

“We probably don’t, sir, and that’s the truth. But we’ll give the buggers a hell of a damned fight, and they won’t be so cocksure the next time they meet the Rifles.”

A carbine bullet whiplashed through the kitchen window. De l’Eclin’s ten minutes were over, and the fight had started again.

From one of the holes in the roof, Sharpe saw the wooded gully of which de l’Eclin had spoken. Just to its north, in a walled paddock, most of the Dragoon’s horses were pastured. “Hagman!”

The old poacher climbed the ladder. “Sir?”

“Make yourself a firing position and start killing horses. That’ll keep the buggers busy.”

Downstairs the farm wife was busy with food. She produced a cask of salted mackerel and whiting, evidence of how close the sea lay, which she distributed among the soldiers. Her husband, his loophole completed, had charged a fowling piece with powder and shot that he discharged deafeningly towards the east.

The French moved their horses further north. From the barn came the tantalizing smell of pork being cooked. The rain seethed harder, then stopped. The carbine fire never stopped, but neither did it do much damage. One Rifleman suffered a flesh wound in the arm and, when he yelped, was scornfully jeered by his colleagues.

In the late afternoon a few Dragoons made a half-hearted charge through the orchard which lay to the north, but they were easily discouraged. Sharpe, going from window to window, wondered what devilry de l’Eclin plotted. He also wondered what Bias Vivar was doing with the time he had gained by sending de l’Eclin on this wild goose chase. The strongbox was clearly of even more importance than Sharpe had suspected; so important that the Emperor himself had sent the chasseur to capture it. Sharpe supposed he would never know what it contained. Either he would be captured or killed here, or else, when the French tired of this vigil, they would leave and Sharpe would continue south. He would find a ship home, rejoin the mainstream of the army and he supposed, with a sudden lurch of his heart, once again become a Quartermaster. He had not realized until this second just how much he loathed that God-damn job. “Sir!” The voice was scared. “Sir!” Sharpe ran to the front kitchen window. “Fire!” The French had made screens from the sheep hurdles.

They had lashed them together to make heavy mats of birch-wattle that were large enough to hide half a dozen men and resilient enough to stop rifle bullets. The cumbersome shields were being inched across the yard, coming ever closer, and Sharpe knew that, once they reached the house, the French would use axes and bars to break down the doors. He fired his own rifle, knowing that the bullet was wasted against the supple wood. The carbine fire rose to a new pitch.

Sharpe twisted about the table to the northern window. Powder smoke spurted from the orchard, showing that Dragoons barred that escape, yet it was his only hope. He shouted up the ladder. “Come down!”

He turned to Harper. “We’ll take the Spaniards with us. We’re breaking southwards.”

“They’ll catch us.”

“Better that than dying like rats in a pit. Fix swords!” He looked up the ladder to the bedroom. “Hurry!”

“Sir!” It was Dodd who called back; quiet Dodd who stared out of the loophole in the roof and who sounded most unnaturally excited. “Sir!”

Because a new trumpet challenged the sky.

Major Bias Vivar scraped his sword free of its scabbard. He raised it high, then, as the trumpet reached its screaming high note, he lashed the blade down.

The horses spurred forward. There were a hundred of them; all that Lieutenant Davila had brought from Orense. They scrambled up from the gully, found firm footing on the pasture, and charged.

The crimson-uniformed Galician who held the guidon on its lance-like stave lowered the point. The flag snapped in the wind. Dismounted French Dragoons turned in shock.

“Santiago! Santiago!” Vivar drew out the last syllable of his war cry as his Cazadores pounded behind him. The remnants of his scarlet-clad elite company were here, reinforced by their blue-coated comrades who had come north with Lieutenant Davila. Clods of earth were flung high into the air from the horses’ hooves. “Santiago!” There was a ditch ahead, lined with Dragoons who had been firing at the farmhouse and who now rose, twisted, and aimed at the Spanish cavalry. A bullet hissed past Vivar’s face. “Santiago!” He came to the ditch, jumped it, and his blade hissed down to slice blood from a Frenchman’s face.

The lance slammed into a Dragoon, burying the guidon flag in his chest. The standard-bearer rode the staff free, screaming his own challenge, then was hit in the neck by a carbine bullet. A horseman coming behind seized the toppling staff and raised the blood-soaked flag high again.

“Santiago!”

Dismounted Dragoons were fleeing in the farmyard. The Spanish cavalry crashed into them. Blades chopped down. Frightened horses twisted, snapped with yellow teeth and lashed with their hooves. Swords clashed, ringing like blacksmith’s hammers. A Spaniard fell from the saddle, a Frenchman screamed as a sword pinned him against the barn. The hurdle screens were abandoned in the mud.

The charge had scoured the French clean out of the farmyard, and had made carnage of the eastern ditch. The trumpeter was sounding the call to reform as Vivar reined in, turned his horse, and started back. A French Dragoon, reeling from the first attack, made a feeble thrust at the Major and was rewarded with a cut throat. “Rifles! Rifles!” Vivar shouted.

Some French officers ran from the barn and Vivar slewed his horse towards them, his men close behind him. The Frenchmen turned and fled. The Cazadores rode right into the barn, ducking under the lintel, and screams sounded inside. Mounted Dragoons appeared and Vivar shouted at his men to form a line, to charge home, to fight for Santiago.

It was then that the Riflemen appeared from the house, splintering down the bullet-riddled door and running into the yard with sword-bayonets fixed. They cheered the Spaniard. “East!” Vivar shouted above their cheers, pointing with his sword. “East!”

The Riflemen ran eastwards, away from the sea, into the wooded gully where there would be temporary safety from the French Dragoons. Those Dragoons, recovering from the shock of Vivar’s attack, and realizing how they outnumbered the Spanish horsemen, were reforming their ranks on the road beneath the farmhouse. The French trumpet sounded the advance.

Vivar let the counterattack come. He was yielding ground, content that the French should regain the farm buildings while he withdrew to the gulley. His men fired from the saddle. When they reloaded they rammed the bullets down their carbine barrels with ramrods that were attached by a hinged sleeve at the weapons’ muzzles and so could not be dropped. The farmer, his wife, and the Parkers’ coachman fled with the greenjackets.

The last of the Spanish Cazadores crashed down the gully’s slope. Sharpe’s Riflemen lined the brink, firing at the Frenchmen whose pursuit, though enthusiastic, was doomed. The gully’s brush and thorn would force the Dragoons to funnel into the narrow paths that were covered by the Rifles and, realizing the danger, de l’Eclin called his men back. A few Frenchmen, stung to anger, spurred onwards and Sharpe watched as the rifle bullets destroyed their scattered charge. “Cease fire!”

“Follow us!” Vivar called from the gully’s far crest.

“Sir!” Harper shouted the warning, making Sharpe turn back.

Sprinting over the pasture, her skirt held up in her right hand and her bonnet grasped in her left, came Louisa Parker. A bellow of rage sounded from the farm, evidently her aunt’s despairing protest, but the girl ignored it. She skirted a fallen, bleeding horse. A Frenchman began running in pursuit, but Hagman dropped the man with a single shot.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” Louisa shouted.

“God Almighty!” Harper laughed as the girl, gasping for breath and eyes wide with the excitement of the moment, crashed into the gully and threw herself at Sharpe as though he could protect her against all the world.

Sharpe, exhilarated by her arrival, opened his arms to check her headlong flight. For a second she clung to him, laughing and breathless, then she drew away. Sharpe’s men cheered the girl’s defiance.

“Lieutenant!” Vivar had spurred back to hasten the Riflemen’s retreat, and now stared with amazement at the girl at Sharpe’s side. “Lieutenant?”

But there was no time for explanations, no time for anything but the panicked flight eastwards, away from the sea’s safety, and back to the mysteries enshrined in Bias Vivar’s strongbox. The wild goose was safe.