Sharpe's Siege

CHAPTER 8

Five French dead and one dead Rifleman were laid in the fort’s chapel, not out of reverence, but simply because it was the most convenient place for the corpses to lie until there was time to bury them. Lieutenant Minver stripped the white frontal from the altar and ordered two of his men to tear it into strips for bandages; then, being a well-trained young man who had been told constantly by his parents never to leave a light burning in an empty room, he pinched out the flame of the Eternal Presence before going back to the courtyard.

The Teste de Buch was in chaos. Riflemen manned the ramparts while Marines and sailors seethed in the courtyard. The six field guns, with their limbers, had been dragged into the fort where they were objects of much curiosity to the seamen. The Scylla, her flanks riven by the heavy shot, was moored beneath the silent guns.

The Marines’ packs and supplies were being ferried from a brig anchored below the Scylla, then slung over the fort’s wall by a system of ropes and pulleys. The Marines had marched in light-order, but had still reached the fort two hours after Sharpe’s Riflemen.

“I must thank you, Major Sharpe.” Captain Bampfylde limped on blistered feet into the room where Sharpe was being bandaged by a naval surgeon. Bampfylde flinched at the sight of so much blood on Sharpe’s face and shirt. “My dear fellow, permit me to say how sorry I am?”

The surgeon, a drunkard of morose disposition, answered in place of Sharpe. “It’s nothing, sir. Head wounds bleed like a stuck pig.” He finished the bandaging and gave Sharpe’s head a light buffet. “I’ll warrant you’ve got a head like a bloody bass drum, though.”

If the man meant painful, then he was right, and the friendly tap had not helped, but at least Sharpe’s sight had come back as soon as the blood was washed from his eyes. He looked up at Bampfylde whose young, plump face looked tired. “The fort wasn’t exactly deserted.”

“So it seems!” Bampfylde crossed to the table and examined a bottle-of wine abandoned by the French garrison. He plucked out the cork and poured a little into a convenient glass. He smelt it, swirled it around, examined it, then sipped it. “Very nice. A trifle young, I’d say.” He poured more wine into the glass. “Still, no bones broken, eh?”

“I lost one man dead.”

Bampfylde shrugged. ‘Scylla lost sixteen!“ He said it as if to show that the Navy had taken the greater punishment.

“And the Marines?” Sharpe asked.

“Two men were scratched,” Bampfylde said airily. “I always thought that clearing was the most likely place for an ambuscade, Sharpe. If they want to catch the likes of us, though, they’ll have to show a livelier leg, what?” He laughed.

Bampfylde was a lying bastard, Sharpe thought. The two Riflemen sent by Frederickson had warned the Marines of the field guns, and Marine Captain Palmer had already thanked Sharpe for the service. But Bampfylde was speaking as though he had both detected and defeated the ambush, whereas the bloody man had done nothing. Bampfylde finished the wine. “Some of the Americans escaped?” He made the question sound like an accusation.

“So I believe.” Sharpe did not care. Bampfylde had thirty American prisoners to send to England, and surely that was enough. The fort was taken, seamen from the Scylla had gone up channel to find the chasse-mare’es, and no man could have expected more of the day.

“So you’ll go inland in the morning, Sharpe?” Bampfylde peered at Sharpe’s head wound. “That’s only a scratch, isn’t it? Nothing to slow your reconnaissance?”

Sharpe did not reply. The fort was taken, Elphinstone would get the extra chasse-marees he needed, and the rest of this operation was farcical. Besides, he did not care whether Bordeaux was seething with discontent or not, he only cared that Jane should not die while he was away. Sharpe twisted round to look at the surgeon. “What’s the first symptom of fever?”

The surgeon was helping himself to the wine. “Black-spot, Yellow, Swamp? Walcheren? Which fever?”

“Any fever,” Sharpe growled.

The surgeon shrugged. “A heated skin, uncontrolled shivering, a looseness of the bowels. I can’t say you have any pyretic symptoms yourself, Major.”

Sharpe felt a horrid dread. For a second he felt a temptation to claim that his wound was incapacitating and to demand that he was returned to St Jean de Luz by the first ship.

“Well, Sharpe?” Bampfylde was offended that Sharpe had ignored his questions. “You will be marching inland?”

“Yes, sir.” Sharpe stood. Anything rather than endure this bumptious naval captain. Sharpe would march inland, ambush the road, then return and refuse to have any further part of Bampfylde’s madness. He knew he should dry his sword if it was not to have rust spots by morning, but he was too tired. He had not slept last night, he had marched all day, and he had taken a fortress. Now he would sleep.

He pushed past Bampfylde and went to find a cot in an empty room of the barracks. There, surrounded by the small belongings of a gunner evicted by his Green Jackets, he lay down and slept.

It was night now, a cold night. Sentries shivered on the ramparts and the flooded ditch had a skin of thin ice. The wind dropped, the rain had died, and the clouds thinned to leave a sky pricked by cold, white, winter-bright stars above the shimmering, glittering, ice-edged marshes.

Across those silent marshes, and from the silvered, steel-flat waters of Arcachon, a glimmer of mist was born. The mist skeined slow in a still night, a night of frost and white vapour beyond a fort where the blood spilt in a skirmish froze hard in the darkness.

Torches flared in the courtyard of the Teste de Buch. Breath smoked to vapour. Frost touched the cobbles white and rimed the gun barrels on the ramparts.

Bampfylde had ordered the Green Jackets to rest and replaced them with Marines whose scarlet coats and white crossbelts seemed bright in the starlit night.

Nine French prisoners, one of them the sergeant who had fired at Sharpe from the barrack roof, were locked in an empty ready magazine. They would be taken by Bampfylde’s ships to the rotting prison hulks in the Thames or else to the new stone jail built by French prisoners in the wilds of Dartmoor.

The other prisoners were locked in the spirit store that Bampfylde had ordered emptied of its brandy and wine. Thirty men were crammed into a space fit for no more than a dozen. They were the Americans.

“At least they claim they’re Americans!” Bampfylde, his bootless feet propped on an ammunition box, sat in front of a fire that had been lit in Lassan’s old quarters. “But I’ll warrant half of them are our deserters!”

“Indeed, sir.” Lieutenant Ford knew that American ships, both Navy and civilian, were heavily crewed by seamen who had run from the harsh discipline of the Royal Navy.

“So have the bastards out one at a time.” Bampfylde paused to bite into a chicken leg that should have been a part of Henri Lassan’s dinner. He sucked the bone clean then tossed it at the fire. “And talk to them, Lieutenant. Use two reliable bo’sun’s mates, understand me?”

“Aye aye, sir.” Ford understood very well.

“Any man you believe is a deserter, put in a separate room. The real Americans can go back to the store.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Barnpfylde poured more of the wine. It might be a young vintage, but it was very, very hopeful. He made a mental note to have all the crates shipped to the Vengeance. He had also found some fine crystal glasses, incised with a coat of arms, that would look very fine in his Hampshire house. “You think I’m being too particular with the American prisoners, Ford?”

Ford did. “They’re all going to hang, sir.”

“True, but it is important that they hang in the proper manner! We can’t have a pirate flogged, can we? That would be most uncivil!” Barnpfylde laughed at his small jest. Those crewmen of the Thuella who were suspected of being British seamen and deserters would face the worst fate. They would be placed in a ship’s boat and rowed past all the ships of Bampfylde’s command. In front of each ship, under the gaze of the crews, they would be lashed with the cat o‘ nine tails as a visible, bloody warning of the price a deserter must pay. The knotted thongs would flay their skin and flesh to the bone, but they would be restored to consciousness before they were hanged from the Vengeance’s yardarm. The others, the Americans, would be hanged ashore, without a flogging, as common pirates.

Lieutenant Ford hesitated. “Captain Frederickson, sir…” he began nervously.

“Frederickson,” Barnpfylde frowned. “That’s the fellow with the beggar’s face, yes?”

“Indeed, sir. He did say they were his prisoners. That he’d guaranteed them honourable treatment.”

Barnpfylde laughed. “Perhaps he thinks they should be hanged with a silken rope? They are privateers, Ford, pirates! That makes them the Navy’s business, and you will oblige Captain Frederickson to keep his opinions to himself Barnpfylde smiled reassurance at his lieutenant. ”I shall talk to the American officers myself. Send me my bargemen, will you?“

The capture of Cornelius Killick had given Captain Barnpfylde a particular and keen pleasure. American sea-men had twisted the Royal Navy’s tail, winning single-ship battles with contemptible ease, and men like Killick had become popular heroes to their countrymen. The news of his capture and ignominious death would teach the Republic that Britain could lash back when it so wished. Their Lordships of the Admiralty, Bampfylde knew, would be well pleased with this news. Not many enemies still defied Britain on the waves, and the downfall of even one, even though he be a common pirate, would be a rare victory these days.

“I am not,” Cornelius Killick said when he was brought into Bampfylde’s presence, “a pirate.”

Bampfylde’s fleshy face showed ironic amusement. “You’re a common and vulgar pirate, Killick, a criminal, and you’ll hang as such.”

“I carry Letters of Marque from my government, and well you know it!” Killick, like Lieutenant Docherty, had been stripped of his sword and his hands were bound behind his back. The American was chilled to the bone, furious and helpless.

“Where,” Bampfylde looked innocently at Killick, “are your Letters of Marque?”

“I got ‘em, sir.” Bampfylde’s bo’sun produced a thick fold of papers that Killick had carried in a waterproof pouch on his belt. Bampfylde took, opened, and read the papers with scant interest. The Government of the United States, in accordance with the customary laws, gave permission to Captain Cornelius Killick to wage warfare on the enemies of the Republic wherever on the High Seas those enemies might be found, and extended to Captain Killick the full protection of the said Government of the United States.

“I see no Letters of Marque.” Bampfylde threw the document on to the fire.

“Bastard.” Killick, like every privateer, knew that such letters offered small protection, but no captain liked to lose his papers.

Bampfylde laughed. He was scanning the other papers that were certificates of American citizenship for the Thuella’s crew. “A fanciful name for a pirate ship, Thuella?”

“It’s Greek,” Killick said scornfully, “and means storm-cloud.”

“An American educated in the classics!” Bampfylde mocked the fine looking man. “What miracles this young century brings!”

Bampfylde’s bo’sun, the man who governed the captain’s private barge, elbowed Lieutenant Docherty in the ribs. “This one’s no Jonathon, sir, he’s a bloody Mick.”

“An Irishman!” Bampfylde smiled. “Rebelling against your lawful King, are you?”

“I’m an American citizen,” Docherty said.

“Not any longer.” Bampfylde threw all the certificates on to the fire where they flared bright, then shrivelled. “I smell the whiff of the Irish bogs on you.” Bampfylde looked back to Killick. “So where’s the Thuella?”

“I told you.”

Bampfylde was not sure he believed Killick’s story that the Thuella was stranded, stripped, and useless, but tomorrow the brigs could search the Bassin d’Arcachon and make certain. Bampfylde also hoped that the rest of the privateer crew could be hunted down and brought to his justice. “How many of your crew are British subjects?” he asked Killick.

“None.” Killick’s face glared defiance. Fully one-third of his men had once served in the Royal Navy and Killick well knew what ghastly fate awaited them if they were discovered. “Not one.”

Bampfylde took a cigar from his case, cut it, then held a twisted paper spill made of a page torn from Lassan’s copy of Montaigne’s Essays in the fire. “You’re all going to hang, Killick, all of you. I could claim that you’re all deserters, even you!” He lit his cigar, then dropped the flaming spill. “You fancy a thrashing, Killick? Or would you prefer to tell me the truth?”

Killick, whose cigars had been stolen from him by a Marine, watched enviously as the British captain drew on the glowing tobacco. “Piss on you, mister.”

Bampfylde shrugged, then nodded to the bo’sun.

There were seven bargemen, all favourites of their captain, and all strengthened by their time at the oars. They were also veterans of countless brawls in dockside taverns and of the fights they had won when part of a press gang, and two bound men, however strong, were no match for them.

Bampfylde watched impassively. To him these two Americans were pirates, pure and simple, who wore no recognized uniform and their fate did not disturb him any more than he might worry about the rats in the Vengeance’s bilge. He let his men hit them, he watched the blood smear from split lips and noses, and not until both men were on the floor with bloodied faces and bruised ribs did he raise a hand to stop the violence. “How many of your men, Killick, are deserters?”

Before Killick could make any reply the door opened. Standing there, and with taut fury on his face, was Captain William Frederickson. “Sir!”

Bampfylde twisted in his chair and frowned at the interruption. He was not concerned that the Rifleman should witness this beating, but it offended Bampfylde that the man had not had the simple courtesy to knock first. “It’s Frederickson, isn’t it? Can’t it wait, man?”

It was evident that Frederickson was struggling to control his temper. He swallowed, drew himself to attention, and forced civility into his face. “I gave Captain Killick my word, as a gentleman, that he would be treated with respect and honour. I demand that my word is kept.”

Bampfylde was truly astonished at the protest. “They’re pirates, Captain!”

“I gave my word.” Frederickson stood his ground stubbornly.

“Then I, as your superior, have rescinded it.” Bampfylde’s voice was suddenly infused with anger at this soldier’s impertinence. “They are pirates and in the morning they will hang from a gallows. That is my decision, Captain Frederickson, mine, and if you say one more word on it, just one, then by God I will have you put under arrest like them! Now get out!”

Frederickson stared at Bampfylde. For a second he was tempted to dare Bampfylde to make good his threat, then, without a word, he turned and stalked from the room.

Bampfylde smiled. “Shut the door, Bo’sun. Now, where were we, gentlemen?”

In the fort’s yard, carpenters from the Scylla hammered six inch nails into beams that, when all the work was done, would be raised to make a gallows for the morning where Cornelius Killick, instead of dancing scorn about the Navy, would dance attendance on a rope.

Thomas Taylor, the Rifleman from Tennessee who had so far done his duty without murmur or protest, stopped Captain Frederickson close to the busy hammers. “Sir?”

“It’ll stop, Taylor, I promise you.”

Taylor, satisfied because of the fury on his captain’s face, stepped back. The air about the fort was ghostly with a mist that blurred the stars and touched frigid on Frederickson’s scarred skin. He saw his own anger mirrored in Taylor’s eyes and knew that loyalties were being stretched in this cold night. “It will stop,” he promised again, then went to wake Sharpe.

Sharpe struggled out of a dream in which he saw his wife as a flesh-rotted skeleton presiding at a tea-party. He groped for his sword, flinched from a stab of pain that seared in his bandaged head, then recognized the eye-patched face in the light of the horn-lantern that Frederickson carried. “Dawn already?” Sharpe asked.

“No, sir. But they’re beating the hell out of them, sir.” Sharpe sat up. It was piercingly cold in the room. “They’re doing what?”

“The Americans.” Frederickson told how the seamen were being dragged before Ford, while the officers were being entertained by Captain Bampfylde. Rifleman Taylor had woken Frederickson with the news, now Frederickson woke Sharpe. “They’ve found two deserters already.”

Sharpe groaned as his head split with pain. “The deserters will have to hang.” His tone conveyed that such men deserved nothing else.

Frederickson nodded agreement. “But I gave my word to Killick that he would be treated like a gentleman. They’re half killing the poor bastard. And they’re all to hang, Bampfylde says, deserters or no.”

“Oh, Christ.” Sharpe pulled his boots on, not bothering to tuck his overall trousers into the leather. He put his arms into his jacket, then stood. “Bugger Bampfylde.”

“Page nine, paragraph one of the King’s Regulations might be more appropriate, sir.”

Sharpe frowned. “What?”

“”Post Captains,“‘ Frederickson quoted, ”’commanding Ships or Vessels that do not give Post, rank only as Majors during their commanding such Vessels.“”

Sharpe buttoned his jacket then buckled the snake hasp of his sword belt. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I took care to look up the respective pages before we left, sir.”

“Jesus. I should have done that!” Sharpe snatched up his shako and led the way downstairs. “But he’s commanding the Vengeance. That gives Post and makes him a full Colonel!”

“He’s not on board,” Frederickson said persuasively, “and the Vengeance is a half mile offshore. If he commands anything, it’s the Scylla, and frigates aren’t Post.”

Sharpe shrugged. The quibble seemed dubious grounds for taking command from Bampfylde.

Frederickson clattered down the stairs behind Sharpe. “And may I remind you of the next paragraph?”

“You’re going to anyway.” Sharpe pushed open a door and went into the pitiless cold of the courtyard. The air stung his cheeks and brought tears to his eyes.

“”Nothing in these regulations is to authorize any Land Officer to command any of His Majesty’s Squadrons or Ships, nor any Sea Officer to command on Land.“‘ Frederickson paused, raised his heel, and slammed it down on the iced cobbles. ”Land, sir.“

Sharpe stared at Frederickson. The carpenter’s mauls sounded like small cannons thumping to increase the throbbing agony of his skull. “I don’t give a damn, William, if they hang Killick. The bloody Americans shouldn’t be butting into this bloody war anyway, and I don’t give a tuppenny damn if we hang every mother’s son of them. But you gave your word?”

“I did, sir.”

“So I give a damn that your word’s kept.”

Sharpe did not bother to knock on Bampfylde’s door, instead he kicked it in and the crack of the swinging wood slamming against the wall made Captain Bampfylde jump in alarm.

This time there were two Rifle officers, both scarred, both with faces harder than rifle butts, and both displaying an anger that was chilling in the fire-heated room.

Sharpe ignored Bampfylde. He crossed the room and stooped to the fallen men who had been further punched and kicked since Frederickson had left. Sharpe straightened and looked at the bo’sun. “Untie them.”

“Major Sharpe…” Bampfylde began, but Sharpe turned on him.

“You will oblige me, Captain Bampfylde, by not interfering with my exercise of command on land.”

Bampfylde understood instantly. He knew a quotation from the Regulations and he knew a lost battle. But a battle was not a campaign. “These men are the Navy’s prisoners.”

“These men were captured by the Army, on land, where they were fighting as auxiliaries to the Imperial French Army.” Sharpe was making it up as he went along. “They are my prisoners, my responsibility, and I order them un-tied!” This last was to the captain’s barge crew who, startled by the sudden shout, stooped to the bound men.

Captain Bampfylde wanted these Americans, but he wanted to preserve his dignity more. He knew that in a struggle over precedence, a struggle fuelled by legalistic interpretations of the Regulations, he would barely survive. He also felt the disarming touch of fear in the presence of these men. Bampfylde well knew what reputations came with Sharpe and Frederickson, and their ruffianly looks and scarred faces suggested that this was a battle Bampfylde could not win by force. Instead he would have to use subtlety, and in that knowledge he smiled. “We shall discuss their fate in the morning, Major.”

“Indeed we will.” Sharpe, somewhat surprised by the ease of his victory, turned to Frederickson. “Order the other Americans into proper confinement, Mr Frederickson. Use our men as guards. Then clear the kitchen and ask Sergeant Harper to join me there. Bring them.” He nodded at the American officers.

In the kitchens, Sharpe offered an awkward apology.

Cornelius Killick, who was tearing a loaf of bread apart, cocked a bloodied eyebrow. “Apologize?”

“You were given an officer’s word, and it was broken. I apologize.”

Patrick Harper pushed open the kitchen door. “Captain Frederickson said you wanted me, sir?”

“To be a cook, Sergeant. There’s some Frog soup on the stove.”

“Pleasure, sir.” Harper, whose face was almost back to its normal size and who seemed remarkably well recovered from his self-inflicted surgery, opened the stove’s fire-box and threw in driftwood. The kitchens were blessedly warm.

“You’re Irish?” Lieutenant Docherty suddenly asked Harper.

“Thai I am. From Tangaveane in Donegal and a finer piece of God’s country doesn’t exist. It’s fish soup, sir,” Harper said to Sharpe.

“Tangaveane?” The thin-faced lieutenant stared at Harper. “Then you’d be knowing Cashelnavean?”

“On the road to Ballybofey? Where the old fort would be?” Harper’s face suddenly took on a look of magical happiness. “I’ve walked that road more times than I remember, so I have.”

“We farmed on the slopes there. Before the English took the land.” Docherty gave Sharpe a sour, challenging look, but the English officer was leaning against the wall, apparently oblivious. “Docherty,” Docherty said to Harper.

“Harper. There was a Docherty,” Harper said, “who had a smithy in Meencrumlin.”

“My uncle.”

“God save Ireland.” Harper stared in wonder at the lieutenant. “And you from America? Do you hear that, sir? He has an uncle that used to tinker my ma’s pans.”

“I heard,” Sharpe spoke sourly. He was thinking that he had stuck his neck out and to small avail. He had saved these men for twelve hours, no more, and there were times, he thought, when a soldier should know when not to fight. Then he remembered how Ducos, the Frenchman, had treated him in Burgos and how a French officer had risked his career to save Sharpe, and Sharpe knew he could not have lived with his conscience if he had simply allowed Bampfylde to continue his savagery. These men might well be pirates, they probably did deserve the rope, but Frederickson had pledged his word. Sharpe walked to the table. “How are your wounds?”

“I lost a tooth,” Killick grinned to show the bloody

“That’s a fashion these days,” Harper said equably from the range.

Sharpe pulled a bottle of wine towards him and knocked the neck off against the table. “Are you pirates?”

“Privateer,” Killick said it proudly, “and legally licensed.”

Frederickson, shivering from the cold in the yard, came through the door. “I’ve put the rest of the Jonathons in the guardroom. Ressner’s watching them.” He looked towards the seated Americans. “I’m sorry, Mr Killick.”

“Captain Killick,” Killick said without rancour, “and thank you for what you did. Both of you.” He held out a tin mug for wine. “When they dangle us at a rope’s end I’ll say that not every Britisher is a bastard.”

Sharpe poured wine into Killick’s cup. “I saw you,” he said, “at St Jean de Luz.”

Killick gave a great, hoarse whoop of a laugh that reminded Sharpe of Wellington’s strange merriment. “That was a splendid day!” Killick said. “We had them wetting their breeches, right enough!”

Sharpe nodded, remembering Bampfylde’s fury in the dining-room as the naval captain had watched the American. “You did.”

Killick felt in his pocket, realized he had no cigars, and shrugged. “Nothing in peace will offer such joy, will it?” Sharpe made no reply and the American looked at his Lieutenant. “Perhaps we ought to become real pirates in peacetime, Liam?”

“If we live that long.” Docherty stared sourly at the Rifleman.

“For an Irishman,” Killick said to Sharpe, “he has an unnatural sense of reality. Are you going to hang us, Major?”

“I’m feeding you.” Sharpe avoided the question.

“But in the morning,” Killick said, “the sailormen will want us, won’t they?”

Sharpe said nothing. Patrick Harper, by the stove, watched Sharpe and took a chance. “In the morning,” he said softly, “we’ll be away from here, so we will, and more’s the pity.”

Sharpe frowned because the sergeant had seen fit to interrupt, yet in truth he had asked for Harper’s presence because the good sense of the huge Ulsterman was something that he valued. Harper’s words had served two purposes; first to warn the Americans that the Riflemen could not control their fate, and secondly to tell Sharpe that the consensus, among the Green Jackets at least, was that a hanging would not be welcome. The Rifles had captured these Americans, had done it without bloodshed to either side, and they felt bitterly that the Navy should so highhandedly decide to execute opponents whose only fault had been to fight with unrealistic hopes.

No one spoke. Harper, his pennyworth contributed, turned back to the stove. Docherty stared at the scarred, stained table, while Killick, a half smile on his bruised face, watched Sharpe and thought that here was another English officer who did not match the image encouraged by the American news-sheets.

Frederickson, still by the door, thought how alike Sharpe and the American were. The American was younger, but both had the same hard, good-looking face and both had the same savage recklessness in their eyes. It would be interesting, Frederickson decided, to see whether such similar men liked or hated each other.

Sharpe seemed embarrassed by the encounter, as if he was uncertain what to do with this exotic and unfamiliar enemy. He turned to Harper instead. “Isn’t that soup ready?”

“Not unless you want it cold, sir.”

“A full belly,” Killick said, “to make us hang heavier?” No one responded.

Sharpe was thinking that in the morning, once the Riflemen were gone, Bampfylde would string these Americans up like sides of beef. Ten minutes ago that thought had not upset Sharpe. Men were hanged in droves every day, and a hanging was prime entertainment in any town with a respectable sized population. Pirates had always been hanged and, besides, these Americans were the enemy. There were good reasons, therefore, to let the Thuella’s crew hang.

Yet to reason thus, in cold blood, was one thing, and it was quite another to look across a table-top and apply that chilling reason to men whose only fault had been to pick a fight with Riflemen. There were French soldiers grown old in war who would have hesitated to take on Green Jackets, so should a seaman hang because of optimism? Besides, and though Sharpe knew this was not a reasonable objection, he found it hard to think of men who spoke his own language as enemies. Sharpe fought Frenchmen.

Yet the law was the law, and in the morning Sharpe’s orders would take him far from this fort, and far from Cornelius Killick who would, abandoned to Bampfylde’s mercies, hang. That, Sharpe decided, was certain and so, unable to offer any reassurance, he poured wine instead. He wished Harper would hurry with the damned soup.

Cornelius Killick, understanding all of Sharpe’s doubts from the troubled look on the Rifleman’s bandaged face, spoke a single word. “Listen.”

Sharpe looked into Killick’s eyes, but the American said nothing more. “Well?” Sharpe frowned.

Killick smiled. “You hear nothing. No wind, Major. There’s not a breath of wind out there, nothing but frost and mist.”

“So?”

“So we have a saying back home, Major,” the American was staring only at Sharpe, “that if you hang a sailorman in still airs, his soul can’t go to hell. So it lingers on earth to take another life as revenge.” The American pointed at Sharpe. “Maybe your life, Major?”

Killick could have said nothing more helpful to his cause. His words made Sharpe think of Jane, shivering in the cold sweat of her fever, and he thought, with sudden self-pity, that if she could not be saved then he would rather catch the fever and die with her than be in this cold, ice-slicked fort where the mist writhed silent about the stones.

Killick, watching the hard face that was slashed by a casual scar, saw a shudder go through the Rifleman. He sensed that Docherty was about to speak and, rather than have their situation jeopardized by Irish hostility, he kicked his lieutenant to silence. Killick, who had spoken lightly enough before, knew that his words had struck a seam of feeling and he pressed his advantage with a gentle voice. “There’s no peace for a man who hangs a sailorman in a calm.”

Their eyes met. Sharpe wondered whether the American’s words were true. Sharpe told himself it was nonsense, a superstition as baseless as any soldier’s talisman, yet the thought was irresistibly lodged. Sharpe had been cursed years before, his name buried on a stone, and his first wife had died within hours of that curse. He frowned. “The deserters must hang. That’s the law.”

No one spoke. Harper waited for the soup to seethe and Frederickson leaned against the door. Docherty licked bloodied lips, then Killick smiled. “All my men are citizens of the United States, Major. What they were before is not your business, nor my President’s business, nor the business of the bloody law. They all have citizens’ papers!” Killick ignored the fact that the certificates had been burned by Bampfylde.

“You give those scraps of paper to anyone who volunteers; anyone!” Sharpe said mockingly. “If a donkey could pull a trigger you’d make it into a citizen of the United States!”

“And what do you give to your volunteers?” Killick retorted with an equal scorn. “Everyone knows a murderer is forgiven his crime if he’ll join your Army! You expect us to be more delicate than your own service?” There was no reply, and Killick smiled. “And I tell you now that none of my men deserted the Royal Navy. Some may have fouled-anchor tattoos, some may have English voices, and some may have scarred backs, but I tell you now that they are all, every last jack of them, free-born citizens of the Republic.”

Sharpe looked into the hard, bright eyes. “You tell me? Or do you swear to me?”

„I’ll swear on every damned Bible in Massachusetts if you demand it.“ Which meant that Killick lied, but that he lied to protect his men, and Sharpe knew that he himself would tell just such a lie for his own men.

“Thomas Taylor is American,” Frederickson observed mildly to Sharpe. “Would you approve of him being hanged if the tables were turned?”

And if he let them go, Sharpe thought, then the Navy-would complain to the Admiralty and the Admiralty would huff and puff to the Horse Guards and the Horse Guards would write a letter to Wellington and all hell would break loose about Major Richard Sharpe’s head. Men like Wigram, the bores who worshipped proper procedure, would demand explanations and decree punishments.

And if he did not let the Americans go, Sharpe thought, then a girl might die, and he would go back to St Jean de Luz to be shown the fresh, damp earth of her grave. Somehow he believed, with the fervour of a man who would cling to any hope, that he could buy Jane’s life by not hanging a sailor-man in still airs. He had lost one wife by a curse; he could not risk it again.

He was silent. The soup boiled and Harper shifted it from the flames. Killick, as if he did not care what the outcome of this meeting was, smiled. “A flat calm, Major, and the ice will mask our dead faces just because we fought like men for our own country.”

„If I were to let you go,“ Sharpe spoke so quietly that, even in this night’s uncanny silence, Killick and Docherty had to lean forward to hear his voice, ”would you give me your word, as American citizens, that neither of you, nor any man in your crew, here or absent, will take up arms against Britain for the rest of this war’s duration?“

Sharpe had expected instant acceptance, even gratitude, but the tall American was wary. “Suppose I’m attacked?”

“Then you run.” Sharpe waited for a reply that did not come, then, to his astonishment, found himself pleading with a man not to choose a hanging. “I can’t stop Bampfylde hanging you, Killick. I don’t have the power. I can’t escort you into captivity; we’re a hundred miles behind enemy lines! So the Navy has to take you away from here and the Navy will string you up, all of you. But give me your word and I’ll release you.“

Killick suddenly let out a great breath, the first sign of the tension he had felt. “You have my word.”

Sharpe looked at the Irishman. “And you?”

Docherty stared in puzzlement at Sharpe. “You’ll let all of us go? All the crew?”

“I said so.”

“And how do we know…?”

Harper spoke in sudden Gaelic. His words were brief, harshly spoken, and a mystery to every man in the room except to himself and Docherty. The American lieutenant listened to the huge Irishman, then looked back to Sharpe with a sudden, unnatural humility. “You have my word.”

Cornelius Killick held up a hand. “But if I’m attacked, Major, and can’t run, then by Christ I’ll fight!”

“But you won’t seek a fight?”

“I will not,” Killick said.

Sharpe, his head splitting with pain from the bullet-strike, leaned back. Harper brought the cauldron to the table and splashed soup into five bowls. Frederickson came and sat down, Harper sat beside him, and only Sharpe did not eat. He looked at Killick instead, and his voice was suddenly very weary. “Your boat’s wrecked?”

“Yes,” Killick told the lie glibly.

“Then I suggest you go to Paris. The American Minister there can arrange passage home.”

“Indeed,” Killick smiled. He spooned soup into his mouth. “So what now, Major?”

“You finish your soup, collect your men, and go. I’ll make sure there’s no trouble at the gate. You forfeit your weapons, of course, except for officers’ swords.”

Killick stared at Sharpe as though he could not believe what he was hearing. “We just go?”

“You just go,” Sharpe said. He pushed his chair back and walked to the door. He went into the yard, stared upwards, and sure enough the Union flag that the sailors had raised to the flagpole’s peak was hanging utterly limp in the still, misting air.

It was a flat calm, an utter stillness; no airs in which to hang a sailorman, and so Richard Sharpe would let an enemy go and he would say he did it for honour, or because the war was so close to ending that there was no need for more death, or because it was just his pleasure to do it.

He felt tears in his eyes that had been earlier closed with blood, then walked to the gate to make sure that no man stopped the Thuella’s crew from leaving. His wife would live and Sharpe, for the first time since the Amelie had sailed, felt that he, just like the Americans, was free.