Sharpe's Siege

CHAPTER 11

Lieutenant of Marines Fytch, to whom Sharpe had hardly spoken since they had marched inland, brought the civilians to Major Sharpe. The Lieutenant herded them at pistol-point until told by Sharpe to put his damned toy away. Fytch, his martial ardour offended by the Rifleman, gestured at the four stout and worried looking men. “They’re from the town, sir. Buggers want to surrender.”

The four men, all dressed in good woollen clothes, smiled nervously at the mounted officer. They each wore the white cockade which was the symbol of the exiled King Louis XVIII and thus an emblem of anti-Napoleonic sentiment. The sight of the cockade, and the evident willingness of the four men to embrace a British victory, were uncomfortable reminders to Sharpe of Bampfylde’s hopes. Perhaps Bordeaux, like this small town, was ripe for rebellion? He should, Sharpe knew, have interrogated a captured French officer by now, but his determination to obey Elphinstone’s privately given orders, had made him ignore the duty.

“Kindly ask them,” Sharpe said to Fytch who evidently had some French, “if they still wish to surrender when they understand that we will be leaving here this afternoon and may not be back for some months?”

The Mayor’s monarchical enthusiasm evaporated swiftly. He smiled, bowed, fingered the cockade nervously, and backed away. But he still wished to assure the English milord that anything the town could offer his men would be available. They had only to ask for Monsieur Calabord.

“Get rid of him,” Sharpe said. “Politely! And get those damned civilians off the bridge!” Townspeople, hearing the crackle of musketry, had come to view the battle. The one-legged toll-keeper was vainly trying to make them pay for the privilege of their grandstand view.

Frederickson’s rifles snapped from the north as he harried the broken infantry away from the scene of their defeat. Two waggoners and four cavalrymen, hands held high, were being prodded from the beech trees towards the disconsolate prisoners. Marines were piling captured muskets in a pile.

The luckiest Marines were rifling the waggons. Much of the plunder was useless to a looter. There were vats of yellow and black paint that the French mixed to colour their gun-carriages, and which now the Marines spilled on to the road to mingle with the blood and ox-dung. Two of the waggons held nothing but engineer’s supplies. There were coils of three inch white-cable, sap forks, cross-cut saws, bench-hammers, chalk-lines, scrapers, felling-axes, augers, and barrels of Hambro‘ line. There were spare cartouches for the infantry, each bag filled with a wooden block drilled to hold cartridges. Other waggons held drag-chains, crooked-sponges, relievers, bricoles, wad-hooks, sabot-bracers, and hand-spikes. There were garlands for the stacking of round-shot and even band instruments including a Jingling Johnny that a proud Marine paraded about the stripped waggons and shook so that the tiny bells mounted on the wooden frame made a strangely festive sound in the bleak, cold day. Another man banged the clash-pans until Sharpe curtly ordered him to drop the bloody cymbals.

On one waggon there were crates of tinned food. The French had recently invented the process and it was a miracle to Sharpe how such food stayed fresh over weeks or even months. Bayonets prised open lids, and jellied chickens and joints of lamb were hacked into portions so that men’s faces, already blackened by powder smoke, were now smeared with grease. Sharpe accepted a leg of chicken and found it delicious. He ordered two dozen of the tins put aside for Frederickson’s Riflemen.

And in the centre two waggons, strapped down by three inch cable and covered by a double wrapping of tarpaulin, was powder. Barrels of black powder that were destined for the mortars at Bayonne, and coils of quick-match to be cut into shell-fuses. “Lieutenant Minver!”

“Sir?”

“These waggons! Drag them to the bridge. I want the powder packed in the roadway.” It would not be a scientifically controlled explosion, as Hogan so long ago had taught Sharpe to devise, but it might seriously weaken the new stone structure with its proud, carved urns, and the purpose of Sharpe’s incursion was to slow the French supplies. A blown bridge, demanding a detour through an old town, would cause a temper-fraying delay. “And pack all the other waggonloads round it!”

That would take at least two hours. In the meantime captured spades dug graves in the cold soil of the water meadows. A French cavalryman, wearing the odd plaited pigtails at his temples, the cadenettes, was buried first. French prisoners did the work for the twenty-two dead Frenchmen, while the Marines dug graves for their three dead.

“Congratulations, sir,” Palmer said.

“Your men did well, Captain.” Sharpe meant it. He had been impressed by the steadiness of the Marines, and by their swiftness to reload muskets. Those qualities won battles, and battles changed history.

Patrick Harper, a tinned chicken in one hand, brought Sharpe a leather bag taken from the abandoned carriage. “It’s all Frog scribble, sir.”

Sharpe looked through the papers and suspected they were just the kind of thing Michael Hogan prayed for. Hogan might be dead now, but the papers would be a goldmine to whoever had succeeded to his job.

“Guard them, Patrick.”

Harper had also helped himself to a fine, silver-chased pistol that had been discarded in the carriage.

The sun, paled to a silver disc by new cloud and mist, was low. A cold wind, the first wind since Sharpe had spared Killick’s life, sighed chill over the graves. A scream came from the farm, and a cheer went up from the Marines searching the last waggon as they found wine bottles packed in sawdust. A corporal brought a bottle to Sharpe. “Sir?”

“Thank you, Corporal.” Sharpe held the bottle out to Harper who obligingly struck the neck with the blade of his sword-bayonet. The scream sounded again. A girl’s scream.

Sharpe dropped the wine and put his heels back. Prisoners twisted aside as the horse plunged down the bank, jumped a shallow ditch, then Sharpe reined the beast right, ducked under a bare-branched apple tree, and twisted left. Pounding feet sounded behind him, but all Sharpe could see was a man running away, running towards the river and Sharpe put his heels back again.

The man was a Marine. He was clutching his red jacket loose in one hand and holding up his unbuttoned breeches with his other. He looked over his shoulder, saw Sharpe, and dodged to his right.

“Stop!”

The man did not stop, but ducked through a gap in the thorn hedge that tore his jacket from his grasp. He abandoned it and began running across the field. Sharpe forced his horse at the gap, kicked it through, and drew his sword. The man was stumbling, flailing for balance on the tussocks of the meadow, then the flat of the heavy sword, swept down in a clumsy curve, took him on the side of the head. He fell, uncut by the blade, and Sharpe circled the horse back to the fallen man.

It was all because of the farm girl; the green-eyed, pale, shivering girl whom the man had dragged into the scanty hay-store and attacked. She was now sitting, trembling, with the scraps of her torn clothing drawn around her thin body.

“She asked for it,” the Marine, taken back to the dung-stinking farmyard, said.

“Shut your face!” Harper had appointed himself Master-at-Arms. “She wouldn’t be bloody screaming and you wouldn’t be bloody running, would you?”

“Fetch her some clothes,” Sharpe snarled at one of the Marines who had formed a circle about the prisoner. “Captain Palmer! You warned this man?”

Palmer, pale-faced, nodded.

“Well?” Sharpe insisted on a verbal acknowledgement.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Palmer swallowed. “But the girl wasn’t raped, sir.”

“You mean she screamed too loudly. But you know what the orders are, don’t you?” This question was addressed to all the Marines who stared with undisguised hostility at the Rifle Officer who threatened to hang one of their own comrades. There was silence as Sharpe rammed his sword home. “Now back to your duties! All of you!” He jumped off the horse.

Captain Palmer, a Marine sergeant, Harper and Sharpe stayed with the prisoner. The story came slowly at first, then quickly. It had been attempted rape. The girl, the Marine said, had encouraged him, but her screams and the bruises and scratches on her thin arms told a different story.

“Matthew Robinson’s a steady man, sir.” Palmer walked with Sharpe to the end of the farmyard. Sharpe could see that Minver’s Riflemen had managed to get the first powder waggon to the end of the bridge, but, faced with the slope of the roadway, could get it no further. They were now rolling the powder barrels to the crown of the arch.

“You know what the Standing Orders are,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“It won’t happen again, sir.” Palmer sounded contrite.

“I know damned well it won’t happen again!” Sharpe, hating the necessity of the moment, snapped the words. “That’s why we’re hanging the bastard!”

“I mean we don’t need Robinson’s death as an example, sir,” Palmer pleaded.

“I’m not doing it as an example.” Sharpe turned and gestured towards the farmer and his wife. “I’m doing it for them! If the French people think we’re savages, Palmer, then they’ll fight us. You know what it’s like having guerrilleros up your backside when you fight? Every waggon we send up from the coast will have to be guarded by a Battalion! Every one! That’s how we beat the French out of Spain, Captain, not just by hammering the bastards in battle, but because half their armies were guarding waggons against Spanish peasants. Peasants like them!“ Again he pointed to the French couple.

“The girl wasn’t, harmed, sir,” Palmer said stubbornly. “And we’ve proved by our action here that we can offer protection.”

“And the story is spread about,” Sharpe said, “that a man can rape a girl and his officers will condone it.”

Palmer stood his ground. “If Robinson was one of your men, sir, one of your Riflemen, would you…”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, and knew instantly that if he was Palmer, and Bampfylde was the officer demanding the hanging, then Sharpe would fight just like Palmer for the life of his man. God damn it, but, years before, Sharpe had even defended the most useless man in his Light Company in just this same situation.

Palmer saw Sharpe’s hesitation. “Robinson fought damned well, sir. Doesn’t your Field Marshal mitigate punishment for bravery in the field?”

Wellington had been known to cancel a half-dozen hangings because the prisoners’ Battalions had fought well. Sharpe swore, hating the decision. “Orders are orders, Mr Palmer.”

“Just as I believe we’re ordered to hang privateers and deserters, sir?” Palmer said it bluntly, daring Sharpe’s wrath.

“Damn your insolence.” Sharpe said it without conviction, almost as a sop to the weakness he was showing. “You will apologize to the girl and to her parents. Give them this.” He took two of the forged silver ten-franc pieces from his pouch.

“Thank you, sir.” Palmer beamed as he took the coins.

“I’m not done with him,” Sharpe warned. “RSM Harper!”

Harper pretended not to notice his restoration to Regimental Sergeant Major. “Sir?”

“Take Marine Robinson and the girl’s father round the back of the barn. I want you at the bridge in ten minutes!”

“Do I need a rope, sir?”

“No. But give the father his chance.” God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had broken orders again. First he spared a damned American, now a Marine, and what was the point of orders if sentimentality weakened a man into disregarding them?

“Thank you, sir,” Palmer said again.

“You won’t thank me when you see what Patrick Harper can do to a man. You’ll be carrying Robinson home.”

“Better than burying him, sir.”

The incident put Sharpe into a sour mood, worsened by the feeling that he had shown weakness. Twice now he had backed out of an execution and he wondered if it was because he had taken a respectable wife. Old soldiers claimed that marriage did weaken a man, and Sharpe suspected they were right. His foul mood was not helped by the agonizing slowness with which the powder was being crammed between the bridge’s balustrades. Lieutenant Fytch had ordered the toll-keeper and his wife out of their house and the woman, who had earlier threatened Sharpe with her blunderbuss, was now weeping for the loss of her home. Her husband, stumping on his wooden leg, was dragging belongings out to the road.

The sound of Frederickson’s rifle fire had finished and Sharpe saw the Company marching back towards the bridge. That meant the French had gone altogether, though he knew Sweet William would have left picquets to guard against their return.

Using the Marines to help, the Riflemen hastened the setting of the explosives. The other supplies, destined for Soult’s army, were heaped about the powder barrels. Frederickson sounded his whistle to pull in the picquets, while a squad of Minver’s men pushed the townspeople further away from the bridge. It was getting dark, and Sharpe wanted to be moving.

“Sir!” Patrick Harper, who had silently reappeared at the bridge, pointed northwards. “Sir!”

Two horsemen had appeared. They had not come by the road, but instead, perhaps forewarned by the retreating infantry, had made a wide detour through the fields. Now, with white handkerchiefs skewered to their sword-tips as makeshift flags of truce, they galloped their horses towards the bridge.

They were good horses, corn fed and with strong hindquarters. Both took the soft, plunging ground like thoroughbreds and were scarcely blowing as they were curbed beside Sharpe who waved down the cautious rifles of Frederickson’s newly arrived Company.

The Comte de Maquerre, dressed in his Chasseurs Britannique uniform beneath his pale cloak, nodded cautiously at Sharpe. The other rider was a slim, middle-aged man in civilian clothes. He had a face of such startling and pleasant honesty that Sharpe’s weariness and self-disgust seemed to vanish like frost beneath the rising sun. The man was so calm and self-composed that Sharpe instinctively smiled in response to his greeting, which consisted of mild astonishment at the evidence of carnage on the road and a frank expression of admiration for Sharpe’s success.

The man was French, but spoke good English, and his loyalty was proclaimed by the white cockades that he wore, not only on his brown cloak, but also on his bicorne hat. “I am Jules Favier, assistant to the Mayor of Bordeaux.” He spoke as he climbed from the saddle. “And I am at your service, Major.”

The Comte de Maquerre stayed on horseback. His thin face, reddened by the cold, seemed nervous. “Bordeaux has risen, Major.”

Sharpe stared up at the Comte. “Risen?” This was the news Sharpe most feared, the spur into what Elphinstone had described as madness.

“Risen for the King!” Favier said happily. “The Bonapar-tistes have been ejected!” Favier, contentment suffusing his honest, cold-chapped face, smiled. “The rising ended when the garrison came over to our side. The white flag of Bourbon flies, the defences are manned by subjects of his most Christian Majesty, King Louis XVIII, whom God bless.”

“Indeed,” Sharpe said. The news explained why the Comte de Maquerre could wear an enemy’s uniform deep in France, but the news meant much, much more. If it was true that the third city of France had rebelled against Bonaparte and persuaded its garrison troops to forsake their Imperial allegiance, then Sharpe was hearing of the end of this war. Wigram and Bampfylde would be proved right. Sharpe knew he should feel an elation, a great soaring of spirit that all the sacrifices had been worthwhile and that twenty-one years of relentless savagery had been brought to peace by Napoleon’s fall, but he could raise nothing more than a grim smile to meet Favier’s enthusiasm.

“We have come,” de Maquerre said, “for your help.” He spoke lamely, almost as if what he said gave him embarrassment.

Favier took a paper from his saddle-bag. “If you will accept this, monsieur, on behalf of the Provisional and Royalist Government of Bordeaux.” He handed the paper to Sharpe, then gave a small bow.

The paper was entirely in French, and was decorated with an elaborate seal. Sharpe saw that his name had been spelt wrong; without its final ‘e’. “What is it?”

“You have no French?” Favier sounded politely surprised. „Monsieur, it is a commission that appoints you a Major General in the forces of his most Catholic Majesty, King Louis XVIII of France, whom God bless.“

“God bless him,” Sharpe said automatically. “A Major General?”

“Indeed.” De Maquerre spoke from his saddle. It had been Ducos’ idea that a soldier as ambitious as Sharpe could not resist such a lure.

Sharpe was wondering what Wellington would make of the appointment, and imagined that aristocrat’s grim amusement that a one time private should be offered such a rank. “I…” he began, but Favier interrupted him.

“Our citizens have taken Bordeaux, monsieur, but their confidence needs the presence of an ally. Especially an ally as famous and redoubtable as yourself.” Favier softened his flattery with an honest smile. “And once it is known that Allied troops are in the city, then the whole countryside will rise with us.” Favier spoke with an enthusiasm and confidence that was entirely lacking in the Comte.

Sharpe thought of the local Mayor who had already tried to surrender. Doubtless France was filled with men and women eager to disavow their Napoleonic past and declare for the winning side, but Sharpe was equally sure that Napoleon’s fanatical supporters were not so ready for surrender. The nearest allied forces to Bordeaux, besides Sharpe, were a hundred miles away and there was Marshal Soult with a French army screening their advance. “I don’t,” Sharpe said, “have orders from my General that would allow me to help you.” He held the commission out to Favier.

“You have orders,” de Maquerre said coldly, “to give me every assistance.”

Favier seemed upset by de Maquerre’s hostile tone. He smiled at Sharpe. “Your Field Marshal, I think, would admire a soldier who grasped the moment?”

“Maybe.”

“And you have a reputation, monsieur, as a man not afraid of great risks?”

Sharpe said nothing. He had been secretly charged by Elphinstone with scotching Bampfylde’s high hopes. One part of Sharpe, that part which had so often dared impossible things, drew him towards Bordeaux, but the soldier within him could imagine his men besieged in that city and surrounded by a population that, with a brigade of Soult’s veterans pressing close, might well decide that their change of allegiance had been premature. “I cannot, sir.” He held out the commission again. “I’m sorry.”

A look of disappointment, suggesting personal hurt, crossed Favier’s face. “I understand, Major, that your expedition is commanded by Captain Bampfylde, of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy?”

Sharpe paused, thinking that on land Bampfylde held an equal rank to himself, but, merely by boarding the Vengeance, Bampfylde magically arose to become the equivalent of a full colonel, and so, in that knowledge, Sharpe reluctantly nodded. “He does command, yes.”

Favier shrugged. “Would it offend you, Major, if the Comte and I sought to countermand your refusal by seeking Captain Bampfylde’s approval?”

“I can’t stop you,” Sharpe said ungraciously, “but I must tell you that I’m starting the return march within an hour. I expect to be at Arcachon this time tomorrow.”

The Comte de Maquerre, as though eager to be on his way, had turned his horse away from Sharpe. Favier, leaving the forged commission in Sharpe’s hand, collected his horse’s reins and pulled himself into the saddle. “I hope to meet you in the morning, Major, with orders that will reverse your march. God save King Louis!”

“God save him.” Sharpe watched as the two Frenchmen put their horses to the ford. As they threaded the boulders Favier twisted in his saddle to give a parting wave, then put his heels back.

“What did they want?” Frederickson, unashamedly curious, asked Sharpe.

“To make me into a Major General,” Sharpe said. He tore the commission into shreds of paper and tossed them into the River Leyre. “They said Bordeaux’s risen and declared itself for fat Louis.” Sharpe watched the horsemen disappear in the dusk. The two men evidently knew a cross-country route to Arcachon for they disdained the river bank up which Sharpe had marched the night before. “They wanted us to go there.”

“So bloody Bampfylde’s right?” Frederickson uttered the suspicions that Sharpe feared to face.

But Sharpe was wondering why the Comte de Maquerre had left most of the talking to the Mayor’s assistant. Aristocrats did not usually defer to bureaucrats. And why, if there were French troops on this road, even defeated French troops, had Maquerre been so confident as to wear his Chasseurs Britannique uniform?

“I think they were lying,” Sharpe said, “and I’m not going near Bordeaux.”

Sweet William shrugged. “Perhaps the war’s over, sir?”

“Maybe.” A cold wind suddenly gusted over the scattered remnants of the French convoy. Tiny flames had been lit in the carriage lamps of the coach in which the two Frenchwomen were safely sheltered. “But we’ll still blow the goddamned bridge,” Sharpe said, “because no one’s told us not to.”

It was almost dark when the small force of Riflemen and Marines was at last assembled in the river meadow. They were weighed down with plunder, with joints of the dead oxen, with captured wine illicitly stuffed into packs and with enemy weaponry that all soldiers delighted to keep, but inevitably threw away as soon as the marching became heavy and tedious. Most of the surviving French horses had been rounded up, bridled and were being used to carry packs or wounded men, among whom was Marine Matthew Robinson whose face looked as if it had received the full recoil of a twelve-pounder field-gun. The French prisoners, their braces and belts and bootlaces cut, had been released on the river’s far bank.

Sharpe looked around for the last time. The captured quickfuse snaked from the explosives, past the toll-house, down the bank, through the rickety fence, and reached to the centre of the meadow. The townsfolk were far back, the prisoners a half mile up the road, and only the stupid oxen were close to the gunpowder. Sharpe nodded to Minver. “Light it.”

Flint struck on steel, half-charred linen kindling was blown to life, and the flame was lowered to the fuse.

“Wait! Wait!” A dozen Marines were shouting suddenly.

Minver looked to Sharpe, who nodded, and the flame was blown out. Men were staring north-east, across the river, and in the twilight Sharpe saw a small slim figure, clothed in white, running frantically towards the bridge.

It was the girl, green-eyed and slender, who had been scratched and punched when Robinson tried to rape her. Desperately, her skirts catching the sudden wind like moth-wings, she scrambled over the bridge’s parapet, past the powder, then jumped down into the meadow. She ran on, past Sharpe, past Frederickson’s Company who would form the rearguard, running to the man with the battered face who had forced her into the byre and torn at her clothes.

“Jesus Christ,” Sharpe said. The girl was holding one of Robinson’s hands, staring up at him, speaking in fast French, but the expression on her face was one of adoration.

Captain Palmer, as astonished as Sharpe, laughed. “Strange things, women.” He watched the girl pulling herself up to share Robinson’s saddle. “An unmarried girl, sir, wants nothing but a husband.”

“And once she’s got one,” Sharpe said sourly, “she wants everything. It would have been better for both of them if I’d hanged the bastard.” He looked at Minver. “Light it, Lieutenant.”

Flint struck steel again, the flame flickered to illuminate the fuse laying in the grass, then the powder caught, sparked, and fizzed its swift way towards the bridge.

“March!” Sharpe turned to his heavily-laden force and pointed the way home. “March!”

“It’s a hulk, sir.” Lieutenant Tom Martin, of the brig-sloop Cavalier, twisted his bicorne hat in both his hands.

“A hulk?” Bampfylde frowned. They were in Commandant Lassan’s old quarters where, because of a lack of firewood, Bampfylde’s steward warmed his master with volumes taken at random from the shelves. The books were in French, which made them unreadable, so both the steward and his master considered that no great harm was being done.

Martin dropped his hat and showed Captain Bampfylde where, on the chart, the Thuella had been found. The schooner was ashore at the end of the tidal creek that led to the village of Gujan. “She’s dismasted, sir, aground, and derelict.”

“You fired at her?”

“Aye, sir.” Martin, when at last the damned fog had cleared, had spotted the Thuella far across the shoals. The tide was low, and still falling, so the most he could do was fire at long range. Two or three shots had crashed into the Thuella’s timbers, but at that range, and with such small calibre guns as the Cavalier carried, the damage was slight.

“Derelict, you say?” Bampfylde asked.

“Bottomed, emptied, stripped, scorched, dismasted, and smoking.” Martin delivered the gloomy words in hope that they would be sufficient. The glass was falling ominously and all the experienced sailors wanted to be at sea before the storm struck, but if Captain Bampfylde believed that the Thuella was salvageable then he might be tempted to stay at Arcachon and God alone knew what damage a storm could wreak on a brig in these enclosed waters.

“Smoking?”

“Looked as if the Jonathons tried to fire her, sir. Must be damp wood, though, ’cos she hadn’t burned through.“

“You could,” Bampfylde said sourly, “have sent a party to burn her properly, Mr Martin. That would have made sure of her.”

“They’ve made a battery ashore, sir. Mounted all her guns to face the water.” Thomas Martin sensed that perhaps he should have informed Captain Bampfylde of that salient fact earlier. “They didn’t return fire, sir, but we saw them.”

Damn Sharpe, Bampfylde thought. The Thuella existed, her crew had made themselves a fortress on land, and it would take two days to extirpate that nest of pirates. Bampfylde might not have the two days. The weather was surly, threatening a Biscay storm. For two days fog had shrouded the Bay, and now, when at last the fog lifted, all prudent seamen were advising Bampfylde to give his squadron sea-room. “Can they refloat her?”

“No, sir. Looks to me as if they’ve ripped out what’s good and abandoned the rest.” Captain Cornelius Killick would have loved to hear that statement, for he had worked hard to give just that impression. He had careened the schooner hard over, streaked her timbers and copper with pitch to suggest scorch marks, and lit smoking fires of damp grass to suggest smouldering embers deep in an abandoned hold. “And they’ve cut away her figurehead,” Martin added hopefully.

“Ah!” That nugget of information pleased Bampfylde. No sailor would take away a figurehead if a ship still had life in her. “It sounds as if she’s done for! And doubtless the storm will finish her off.”

“Indeed, sir.” Martin, dismissed, shuffled from the room.

The storm, not the Thuella, was Bampfylde’s chief worry. The still air was being stirred now by a strangely warm wind and every look at the weatherglass confirmed that the mercury shrank inside its four-foot tube. The continued existence of the American privateer, even if grounded and abandoned, was a nuisance, but it was palliated by Bampfylde’s success in having found two splendid French brigs that were both now his prizes and already on their way to England. The chasse-marees had gone south, the fort was garrisoned by Marines and, apart from the Americans, Captain Bampfylde could count his job well done. All that was needed now was for de Maquerre to confirm that Bordeaux was ready to surrender.

But the Comte de Maquerre had not returned and Bampfylde dared not sail until the news from Bordeaux was received. If de Maquerre did not return till Thursday, then the storm would be on the flotilla and it would take seamanship of genius to claw off this shoaled coast.

But at least, if he must wait till Thursday, Bampfylde could send the remaining Marines by longboat to attack the Americans across the Gujan shoals. That thought made Bampfylde frown. Palmer should have searched the village of Gujan, so where was the damned Captain of Marines? Captured? Lost in the fog? Damn the bloody man! Damn and damn again. Bampfylde stared at the chart. If the two brigs covered Killick’s land-battery with gunfire, then the Marines could go in with powder barrels, pitch-blende, and Chinese lights to torch the Thuella down to charred ribs. If the weather held. If.

He climbed to the ramparts of the Teste de Buch where warm rain came ominous and heavy to aggravate his fear. An east wind, he thought, would be best. That would take his ships well offshore to the wide seas where they would be safest in a hard blow, but a west wind would destroy him and no amount of boastful despatches would forgive a captain who lost his 74 on a lee shore. Bampfylde paused to stare northwards where tiny lights flickered in a village. If de Maquerre came in the morning then Bampfylde would leave a strong garrison in the fort, sail his flotilla out to weather the storm at sea, then return to lead the advance on a rebellious Bordeaux. The storm might delay that glorious moment for two days, but it would also finish off the wounded American schooner.

Yet, in the ominous night of falling mercury, Captain Bampfylde’s hopes of glory were mercilessly dashed. Lieutenant Ford woke the captain at half past three. “Sir!”

Bampfylde, struggling out of a dream, noticed that the wind was stronger, gusting as it had before the fog had come down. “What is it?”

“The Comte de Maquerre, sir. With a man from the Mayor’s office in Bordeaux. They say their news is urgent.”

Urgent or not, Bampfylde insisted on dressing properly, and it was a half hour before, in the finery of a naval captain, he greeted the two Frenchmen. Both Favier and de Maquerre showed the tiredness of men who had ridden good horses half to death, who were weary in every bone and soaked to the skin. Their news sent a shiver through Captain Bampfylde.

“Major Sharpe is taken.” De Maquerre spoke first.

“Taken?” Bampfylde could only repeat the word.

“The Bonapartistes,” Favier picked up the tale, “knew of your coming here, Captain. A brigade was deployed. It was delayed, but it will be here by tomorrow midday.”

“A brigade?” Bampfylde, who had gone to sleep congratulating himself on the coming success of this expedition, stared at the kindly faced Favier. „A French brigade?“

Favier wondered what other kind this plump young man expected. “Naturally, monsieur. They have defeated Major Sharpe, the Marines who were with him, and now come to capture your good self.”

Bampfylde was overwhelmed. “Marines?” He seemed only capable of snatching single words from the disastrous flood of news.

“Marines, Captain,” Favier said sympathetically.

So that was where Palmer had got to! Swanning off with the Rifles! Bampfylde made a note to tear out Captain Palmer’s guts and wrap them round his neck, except that Palmer was a prisoner now. Or dead. “Coming here? A brigade?”

Favier nodded. “We warn you at some risk to ourselves, Captain. Bordeaux was in ferment, you understand, and our Mayor would support the return of King Louis, but alas!” Favier shrugged, “the tyrant’s heel is again upon our necks and we must, as ever, submit.”

Bampfylde, as his daydreams of glory collapsed, stared at the Comte de Maquerre. “But you said Bordeaux had no fighting troops!”

“They do now,” de Maquerre said grimly.

“And Sharpe’s captured?” Bampfylde snatched at another scrap in the fuddling flood.

“Or dead. There was appalling slaughter.” Favier frowned. “General Calvet’s men are veterans of Russia, Captain, and such fiends are pitiless. They think nothing of drinking their enemies’ blood. I could tell you stories,” Favier shrugged, as though the stories were too awful for a naval captain’s ears.

“And they’re coming here?”

“Indeed.” De Maquerre wondered how many times it must be said before this fool believed them. “By midday tomorrow.” He repeated the lie. He doubted; whether Calvet’s troops could reach Arcachon in the next forty-eight hours, but Ducos wanted Sharpe’s escape route cut, and the urgency of fear might hasten Bampfylde’s evacuation.

Bampfylde stared aghast at the two Frenchmen. His hopes, fed by Colonel Wigram, of leading a successful landing that would lance into Bordeaux were evaporating, but for the moment Bampfylde had other, more pressing worries. He twisted round to tap the glass and the column of mercury sank perceptibly. “You’ll come with us, of course?”

Jules Favier, a colonel in the French Army and one of Ducos’ most trusted men, felt a sudden leap of exultation. It had worked! “I cannot, monsieur. I have a family in Bordeaux. Should I leave, then I fear for their fate.”

“Of course.” Bampfylde imagined warriors, hardened by the Russian carnage, slashing into the fortress.

“I have no business here.” De Maquerre desperately wanted to stay in France, but Ducos had insisted he return to the British Army to leak news of whatever scheme replaced the landing at Arcachon. “So I will sail with you, Captain.”

Bampfylde tapped the glass again as if to confirm the bad news. There would be a storm, a ship-killing storm, but this welter of news had severed his last need to stay at Arcachon. He looked at the Comte. “We leave on the morning tide.”

Favier’s tiredness was suddenly washed away. Ducos’ daring scheme had been more successful than Favier had dared hope and, thanks to a growling wind and a falling glass, and thanks to some well-told lies, a Rifleman would be marooned in France, and the trap-jaws would clash home. On Sharpe.