Sharpes assassin, p.7
Sharpe's Assassin, page 7
“What are you doing, Sharpe?” Vincent asked.
“Taking the high ground, Major.”
Jefferson met Sharpe as he walked back to the gatehouse. “Split your company into two,” Sharpe ordered him. “Half goes to those windows,” he pointed to the upper floor of the building that lay on the left of the courtyard, “and half to the other side. Send five riflemen with each half company. The Crapauds think they can drive us out, so your men shoot at them from above. The riflemen take out the officers and sergeants, your boys just keep shooting. But don’t show yourselves till the shooting starts, and I want their colonel with the wooden leg as a prisoner.”
“You’re left with five riflemen,” Vincent pointed out.
“They go up there.” Sharpe gestured at the high gatehouse. He sent Patrick Harper and five men to the high windows above the gatehouse. “Let the Crapauds shoot first,” Sharpe told him, “then start killing the bastards, but I want the bugger with the wooden leg alive. Captain Godwin!”
Godwin ran to Sharpe. “Sir?”
“Split your company into two. One half to that building,” again he pointed left, “and the other there. The bastards might try to outflank us by sending men through the buildings. You stop them.”
“Yes, sir.” Godwin was new to the battalion, having joined a month before, but he had proved steady and sensible, and Colonel Ford, whom Sharpe had replaced during the battle, had put him in command of Number Three Company.
“Captain Jefferson will have men on the top floors,” Sharpe told Godwin, “so protect the stairways.”
“Yes, sir.”
The courtyard was only ninety paces wide, which meant the remaining companies of the battalion could form two ranks across its width. “It will be firing by company when we start!” Sharpe stood in front of the three ranks. “The bastards think they can run us out of here, boys, and we’re going to beat them! Don’t fire high! A low shot will bounce off the cobbles and cripple a man, so aim low and keep firing! This one’s going to be easy!”
“Easy?” Vincent asked quietly.
“They have to think that,” Sharpe said. “Can I suggest you join Pat Harper? You’ll get a better view from up there.”
“And you?”
Sharpe slapped his rifle butt. “I’ll join the front rank, Major. Or is it Colonel?”
“One or the other,” Vincent said, amused, then edged through the ranks to find the staircase.
Sharpe stood in the front rank. He had considered a swift charge down the length of the courtyard, but there were enemy troops there and he suspected more would erupt from the buildings on either side of the long courtyard to assault his rear. Better to do it the slower way and rely on his men’s musketry, which should still be quick enough to keep the prisoners safe. He loaded the rifle, forcing the leather-wrapped ball down the barrel. Once the fighting started he doubted he would bother with the leather patch that made loading a rifle so slow, but just blast away. He was standing among Number Six Company and for the life of him could not recall the name of the soldier to his left. He prided himself on knowing all their names. He knew Jem Carter was to his right, but he could not recall the man on the left, though his face was familiar. “Ready, Jem?” Sharpe asked.
“The buggers won’t surrender, sir?”
“They think they can beat us.”
“Never, sir.”
“Keep your aim low,” Sharpe said loudly, “and wait for the order. I’m letting the Crapauds shoot first.”
“Why, sir?”
“Because I’m giving them a chance to surrender.” He raised his voice. “We’ll begin with a battalion volley, lads! Then fire by companies from the right! But wait for it!”
He waited. The far end of the courtyard was shadowed from the moonlight, but he saw men moving there, and the faint sound of boots on the cobbles reached him. This, he reflected, was a rare killing ground, stone floored and edged with stone, a space where musket balls could glance off walls and cobbles to strike the men at either end of the long courtyard. “Can you see how many there are, Jem?” he asked.
“Too many of the buggers, sir.”
“Two hundred and forty so far,” the man on Sharpe’s left said.
“You can count them?”
“Bastards are coming from that door.” The man pointed down the courtyard. “Two hundred and sixty now, and still coming.”
Sharpe could just make out the white crossbelts of the men filing into the deep shadow. He tried to remember the man’s name. A corporal. “Keep counting,” he said, “and well done.”
“A lot of them,” the corporal said.
“But garrison troops,” Sharpe said, “not nearly as good as us.”
“We hope, sir.” The corporal sounded amused.
“Butler, isn’t it?” The name suddenly came to Sharpe.
“Tom Butler, sir.”
The French must have had close to three hundred men lining across the courtyard’s shadowed end. Sharpe suspected that neither their discipline nor their training would match his own battalion, but some of their musket balls would strike home. “Battalion,” he shouted, “kneel!”
The movement at the courtyard’s far end had ceased. The French were in line, just like Sharpe’s men, and he guessed they were in their usual three ranks. Gourgand would be hoping his first volley would decimate the redcoats, which was why Sharpe had made them kneel. Badly trained troops tended to fire high, and the kick of the heavy French muskets exaggerated that fault. He heard a voice call a command. “Wait for it, lads,” he said. The French were aiming their muskets.
“Tirez!” a voice bellowed, and the far end of the courtyard vanished in a great rill of smoke as the muskets fired. Sharpe heard the balls striking the wall above and behind him. The first rifles were already shooting from the high windows. “Battalion, stand! Present!”
The redcoats stood, brought muskets to their shoulders.
“Aim low! Fire!”
The massive volley flamed and smoked, the balls searing down the courtyard. “Platoon fire!” Sharpe shouted. He heard ramrods scraping in musket barrels. He had not fired his rifle, waiting for the smoke to clear so he could aim the weapon.
“There’s a good few of them down,” Butler said as he rammed his musket.
Number Two Company fired, then Four, and the musket fire rippled down the redcoat line. This was what the men were trained to do; to deliver an unending fire of musketry. Sharpe’s men had already sent two shots each down the courtyard and the French had not yet managed their second volley. Sharpe fired his rifle, not really aiming it, just sending the ball down the courtyard and confident it must hit someone. A few shots came back, but still the French, half blinded by the musket smoke, were firing high. Sharpe slung his rifle and took two paces out of the line. “Fix swords!” There was a pause as the bayonets were latched onto the musket barrels. “Now charge!” Sharpe drew his sword and began running, while behind him the men cheered and ran forward.
This will be messy, Sharpe thought. Maybe he should have let the platoon fire go on for another two or three minutes, but the feeble French response had convinced him that the troops he faced were ill-trained.
He ran past the tree and a musket ball whipped past his face. The smoke ahead was thick, undisturbed by any wind, but he could see the French clearly enough, their white crossbelts standing out in the shadows. Some were reloading muskets, but others, seeing the oncoming glint of moonlight on steel blades, were backing away. Gourgand was there, shouting at his men, and Sharpe saw dozens of dead or wounded on the cobblestones. Some men ran toward the doorways, desperate to escape.
“Battalion, halt!” Sharpe roared the command. “Form line! Present!”
They were twenty paces from the French now. The men lifted their muskets. Sharpe doubted that most were loaded, but it was the threat that would do the job. He looked at the French. “Drop your weapons!” he called in their language. “Muskets on the ground! Now!”
The muskets dropped. One, loaded, fired as it dropped and a Frenchman cried out as the ball pierced his foot. Sharpe could see four officers, betrayed by their sword scabbards, lying on the cobbles, which meant his riflemen had done their work well, but he could no longer see Gourgand.
“That one-legged bugger’s getting away, sir,” Butler muttered.
“Where?”
Butler pointed and Sharpe saw men filing into a doorway. The prisoners, he thought. “Number Six Company,” he bellowed, “with me!”
He ran toward the doorway, clearing the French out of his way with the threat of his sword. He hurtled through the door into a lamplit passageway that turned sharply to the left. A musket shot echoed from within the building and Sharpe kept running. He turned the corner and saw he was in the prison. Cells lay on the left of the long passage that was filled with blue-coated French infantrymen, one of whom had just fired through a barred door. “Kill them!”
Sharpe leaped forward. There was no room to swing the sword in the narrow passage so he lunged with it, skewering a man’s belly, then kicking him to free the blade. Butler went past him, his bayonet reaching. A musket fired, the sound huge in the stone passageway, and Sharpe saw that the gun had been fired through the bars, aimed presumably at a prisoner, then Colonel Gourgand shouted at his men to cease fire.
“Hold it, lads!” Sharpe called. His sword was dripping blood and he used the blade to push the French to either side of the passage as he walked toward Colonel Gourgand, who had his saber drawn. He reversed the blade and held the hilt toward Sharpe. “We surrender, monsieur,” he said.
“You bastard,” Sharpe said, “you’d kill the prisoners?” He took the saber with his free hand, rested the tip on the flagstone floor, then stamped on the blade. It snapped. He gave the broken part of the blade still attached to the hilt back to Gourgand. “Corporal Butler!”
“Sir?”
“Guard this bugger.” He looked back to Gourgand. “You have a surgeon here?”
“Oui.”
“He can tend your wounded. And Butler?”
“Sir?”
“If this bugger gives you any trouble, shoot his other leg.”
“Pleasure, sir.”
Gourgand might not have understood the language, but he could not mistake Sharpe’s anger, nor the feral expression on Butler’s face. He backed against the wall and held his hands wide.
Major Vincent had come into the passageway. “Well done!” he called. Then held up a hand as Sharpe pushed past him. “Where are you going?”
“To see what damage we’ve suffered.” Sharpe leaned down to the first man he had killed in the passageway and cleaned his sword on the skirts of the dead man’s jacket. He sheathed the sword. “The prisoners are yours, Major. And that bugger Gourgand was about to kill them.”
Sharpe left the prison block and called to Sergeant Huckfield. “What’s our butcher’s bill?”
“Two dead and six wounded. Sergeant Hoskins and Private Peters died.”
“Damn it,” Sharpe said. It was a small butcher’s bill, very small, but that was no consolation for the two who had died. “The Crapauds have a surgeon,” he told Huckfield, “make sure he treats our men too.”
Men were detailed to collect the French muskets, while the captured men were ordered to take off their boots, jackets, and belts. “Kick them out the front gate,” Sharpe ordered Huckfield, “but warn them there’s to be no plundering in the town.”
Captain Godwin had discovered the commandant’s quarters, which were half of one of the long buildings down the side of the courtyard. Gourgand had a wife there and a daughter, so Sharpe ordered Godwin to put a guard on them. “And find his office. If there’s any money there, it’s ours.”
“Ours, sir?”
“It belongs to the army, not us, but just bring it.”
Sharpe suddenly felt immensely tired, the weariness that followed the tension of battle. “Sir! Colonel Sharpe!” It was Captain Yates of Six Company, calling excitedly. “Come and look, sir!” Yates was the youngest captain in the battalion, newly promoted from lieutenant and eager to impress.
Yates was standing by a window of one of the long buildings, the same one that contained Gourgand’s quarters. Sharpe crossed to him and Yates gestured through the window that had been broken by a musket ball. The room inside was dark, and for a moment Sharpe could see nothing, but then a door inside the building opened and a wash of lamplight dispersed the shadows. “Christ,” Sharpe said.
At first all he had seen were the tall timbers reaching to the room’s ceiling. There were two of them and they seemed to spring from a low wooden platform, then the light glinted off metal and he saw it was a guillotine. The slanted blade was in the lowest position.
“Dear God,” Yates breathed, “what an awful thing.”
“Better than a hanging,” Sharpe said. There was a door nearby that led into the room, and Sharpe found a lantern inside, which he lit. The guillotine had plainly been used, judging by the dried blood on the lower platform. Thick leather straps showed where a victim was pinioned to the machine. “It must be a quick death,” Sharpe said. “Messy, but quick.”
“You’ve seen one at work, sir?” Yates asked. “In Normandy, perhaps?”
“Never seen one working,” Sharpe said, “but I remember there was a guillotine in Yorkshire.”
“In Yorkshire?” Yates sounded disbelieving.
“In Halifax,” Sharpe said.
“They behead people in Halifax!”
“Used to,” Sharpe said. “When I was a lad I worked in a Sheffield tavern and they had a great big picture of the Halifax guillotine on the taproom wall. I always wanted to see the real thing, but I never did get to Halifax. The Crapauds like to say they invented it, but Yorkshire was way ahead of them.” He unhooked the rope from its cleat and remembered his disappointment at not seeing a beheading. Fourteen-year-olds, he thought, could be bloodthirsty little buggers. He had been fascinated by the old woodcut of the guillotine, and that old feeling stirred as he gazed up at the ungainly device. He hauled the heavy blade to the top of the frame and cleated the rope off. “Maybe we can try it out.”
“Really, sir?” Yates sounded appalled.
“I’ve always wanted to see if they work,” Sharpe said, then noticed the five guns parked at the far end of the big room. “Those must be the cannon brought for the Garde Nationale.” He crossed to them. “Old-fashioned six-pounders. Thank God the buggers didn’t wheel them out.”
“What do we do with them?”
“We’ll blow the things up. See if your lads can make wedges. There must be a carpentry shop somewhere.”
The other long building was a barracks, and some of the defeated French had been married. Their wives now came from the barracks and stood watching nervously. “Keep those women safe,” Sharpe told Yates. “When their men leave, they leave too.”
Harper had come down from the gatehouse and joined Sharpe as he went back into the building that formed the end of the courtyard, where the prison cells were built. Another door led out into a second, much smaller courtyard, and Sharpe heard voices there. He went through.
“They’re starving,” Vincent greeted him, pointing to the freed prisoners.
“There must be kitchens here.”
There were a score of prisoners, all dressed in white fatigue uniforms. Vincent gestured at a small group, half a dozen men, standing together. “Those are our lads,” he said. “I’m not sure they’re strong enough to walk back to the army.”
“Then we find the stables,” Sharpe said, “and if there aren’t enough horses, we buy some in the town.” He looked at the six prisoners. “Is our fellow among them?” he asked.
“He is, thank God,” Vincent said with evident relief. “Gourgand gave orders to execute them all, but they were too slow.”
“What do you want done with Gourgand?”
“He’s a beast,” Vincent said, “he killed one of the prisoners before we stopped him. If it was my decision I’d stand him against a wall and shoot him.”
“So you don’t want him alive?”
“I don’t care what happens to him.”
Meaning, Sharpe thought, that it was his decision. “Pat?”
“Mister Sharpe?”
“Take Colonel Gourgand to Captain Yates, he’ll know what to do with him.”
“Gladly, sir.”
“But tell him I’ll loosen the rope,” Sharpe called after Harper.
“Loosen the rope?” Vincent asked.
“He’ll know what I mean,” Sharpe brushed the question aside. “Do we take all the prisoners?”
“Just the one,” Vincent said, “the other five Britons can come if they want or fend for themselves. But our task now is to rejoin the army quickly. One of those gentlemen,” Vincent nodded at the six men standing apart, “has information the Duke needs to hear. Urgently.” He stressed the last word.
“We leave in the morning,” Sharpe said.
Next morning they tipped the French six-pounders into the river. The guns were spiked first. They could have been blown apart, but it would have taken time to fashion the wedges that would have jammed the cannonballs in the barrels. There were eight horses in the citadel’s stables, four of them carriage horses, and one horse was saddled and given to the man Vincent wanted returned to the army. The carriage horses pulled a wagon with the remaining five released prisoners and Sharpe’s wounded. Then, under a light drizzle, they marched. The garrison of the citadel, who had spent a cold damp night outside the fortress, watched them go and doubtless would reoccupy the fort as soon as the British were gone, and Sharpe left them to discover Gourgand’s decapitated body still strapped on the guillotine’s base. His men had cheered when the blade fell, though some could not bring themselves to watch, and young Pat Bee had thrown up a meal of mutton stew.
“You did well, Sharpe,” Vincent said as he rode alongside the rifleman.
“Still buried two men there, Major. They probably thought they’d go home soon.”
“I pray we all go home soon, Sharpe, but this war isn’t over.”
