Sharpes command, p.9
Sharpe's Command, page 9
‘Stay here and watch the prisoners, make sure La Aguja doesn’t castrate them.’
Love blanched, ‘Surely she wouldn’t …’
‘Surely she would,’ Sharpe said, ‘and I don’t blame her.’
Love frowned. ‘Did the French really strip her naked, sir?’
‘They did much more than that, Lieutenant. Why do you think she hates them so much?’
Love blushed. He was gazing at Teresa with evident appreciation of her stern beauty. ‘Poor woman,’ he murmured.
‘She’s fine now, got herself a husband.’
‘She’s married, sir?’ Love sounded almost disappointed.
‘To me, Lieutenant. She’s Mrs Sharpe. Go and introduce yourself. She doesn’t bite, much.’ He followed Harris into the house to discover the rifleman and his captive sitting at the kitchen table sharing a bottle of wine. Blanchet looked nervously at Sharpe and spoke in rapid French.
‘He wants to know what we’re doing here, sir,’ Harris translated.
‘Tell him we got lost.’
‘Lost?’
‘We were sent to Truxillo to bring some wounded men home and got chased by some bloody dragoons.’ It was a thin story, but not impossible. The army had retreated through Truxillo some weeks before and wounded men had been left there, though by now those men were either dead or on their way to a French prison camp north of the Pyrenees. But it might put some doubt into the French mind by persuading them that the presence of riflemen in the hills south of the Tagus was pure ill-chance and had nothing to do with the pontoon bridge.
‘And he wants to know what happens to him now, sir,’ Harris translated another question.
‘He goes back where he came from,’ Sharpe said, ‘to Miravete Castle?’
Blanchet nodded, understanding Sharpe’s question. ‘Oui,’ he said. ‘Miravete chateau.’
‘And he takes his wounded in the handcarts. And tell him he did well.’
‘Well, sir?’
‘I was watching,’ Sharpe said, ‘and he was the officer who deployed the second company into a skirmish line. He damn well near beat me. And tell him he can keep his uniform on. And ask him why they didn’t attack the village long ago? They must have known El Héroe was here.’
Blanchet’s reply was long and hesitant, but Harris slowly translated it to reveal that El Héroe and the French garrison did indeed have an understanding. ‘They leave him alone, sir, and the yellow bastard doesn’t attack their forage parties.’
‘Live and let live, eh?’
‘Sounds like it, sir.’
Such arrangements were common between the picquets of both armies. More than once Sharpe had visited a picquet line at night to discover his men entertaining their French opposite numbers with tea and tobacco they had exchanged for French brandy. Sharpe had always left them alone, knowing that such fraternisation was common. Indeed, he had known Lord Wellington to send friendly messages to opposing picquets warning them to retreat in the face of an impending attack, yet Sharpe had never heard of Spanish partisans coming to an agreement with the French; the hatred between the Spanish and the French was too fierce. ‘Has El Héroe ever fought them?’ he asked.
‘He says the bastard attacked their forage parties last year,’ Harris translated, ‘then Colonel Aubert arranged a parley.’
‘Aubert?’
‘He commands the forts, sir.’
‘And what was agreed at that parley?’
Sharpe waited as Harris questioned the young Frenchman. ‘El Héroe sells them mutton for rations, sir, and they leave him alone.’
‘That’s all?’
‘All he’ll tell me, sir, unless you want me to put the boot in?’
‘No,’ Sharpe said, ‘but ask him how many men Aubert commands.’
Blanchet refused to answer. ‘He says he’s certain,’ Harris interpreted, ‘that you would not betray your country’s strength. And he won’t either.’
‘Quite right,’ Sharpe said, then reached across the table and picked up Blanchet’s shako, that had a ragged hole torn just above the tarnished badge. ‘Thirty-ninth of the line, eh?’ He read the number embossed in the badge. ‘Your whole battalion is here?’
Again Blanchet refused to answer and Sharpe tossed the battered shako back to him. ‘Keep him out of Teresa’s way,’ he added to Harris, ‘or she’ll make him answer.’
‘Is that so bad, sir?’ Harris asked.
‘We do it to them and they start doing it to us. Just let him be.’
It was midday before the naked prisoners walked back the way they had come. They were jeered by the partisans, but Sharpe reckoned the Frenchmen were lucky to be alive. He waited until they had climbed the far side of the valley and had disappeared over the skyline before he and Teresa followed, Sharpe mounted on one of her men’s horses. ‘You ride like a sack of grain,’ Teresa said coldly, still angry that he had insisted on keeping the prisoners alive.
‘I’m an infantryman.’
‘And a father!’ she said, suddenly happy.
‘How is Antonia?’
‘Very well, happy and safe. I think she is a clever girl.’
‘You can tell?’
‘She will be a terror when she grows up!’ Teresa laughed.
‘Like her mother.’
‘Only now men will say her mother has gone soft. Letting the prisoners live! And why did you let the officer keep his clothes?’
‘Because he’s a brave man and a good officer.’
‘All the more reason to kill him.’
The track led southwards. They rode slowly, not wanting to catch up with Blanchet and his men, and it was mid-afternoon before they came to a crossroads. The ruts left by the handcarts showed that Blanchet had turned right, so they followed, finally stopping where the new track crossed a low ridge. Sharpe crawled through long grass to the ridgeline and trained his telescope northwards. ‘Dear God,’ he said, ‘that’s a bastard.’
He was gazing at Miravete Castle, a foursquare stone building perched on a low hillock. He could see cannon muzzles on the castle’s top battlement. There was a scatter of stone houses to the castle’s east, and he could see that they had been loopholed for defence, but the biggest obstacle was neither the castle nor the houses but a big earthwork the French had thrown up in front of the buildings. It was a great raw bank and its summit was interrupted by cannon embrasures. Sharpe could see the guns’ muzzles and reckoned they were the big French twelve-pounders and he imagined them gouting blasts of canister across the open ground. The earth wall was not just a formidable obstacle, but it protected the castle and the houses from enemy cannon fire. There was a big French garrison there, and the earthwork with its formidable cannons lay right across the road that General Harris would need to drag his artillery down to the Tagus. ‘It is a problem?’ Teresa asked.
‘We need cannon to flatten the forts by the river,’ Sharpe said, ‘but to get them there we have to go through the Miravete pass. It could take a week to destroy that castle, and by that time the French will have a small army on the river.’
Teresa turned to look back the way they had come. ‘But the road through El Cobarde’s village goes to the river.’
‘It’s a sheep track and the guns won’t manage it, or not quickly enough.’
‘You’re saying it can’t be done? Guns have wheels, yes?’
‘It’s not just the guns,’ Sharpe said, ‘there are ammunition caissons, supply wagons, a portable forge. Tons of wagons and guns.’ He sounded gloomy. ‘And if they can’t get past that bastard,’ he nodded at the castle, ‘then we’ll have to capture the bridge the old-fashioned way,’ Sharpe paused, ‘and it will be bloody.’ He paused again. ‘I hate sieges.’
‘General Hill must get the guns through the village!’ Teresa said, ‘we will help.’
‘Our artillerymen can work miracles,’ Sharpe said, ‘but that sheep track won’t take the weight of the guns and wagons.’ He wondered why Hogan had not heard of the strength of Miravete Castle, and supposed that El Héroe had dismissed the French fortress as negligible. ‘What do you know of El Héroe?’ he asked Teresa.
‘El Cobarde?’ she corrected him. ‘Nothing except what I saw.’
‘And what did you see?’
‘A man who tells everyone he is a great man, which means he is a small man. He is a coward because he ran away, and he thinks all women will worship him.’
‘You don’t.’
‘He is handsome,’ Teresa said grudgingly, ‘but beneath his good looks is nothing but rottenness. I would rather have my man from the London gutter.’ She reached out and stroked Sharpe’s face. ‘You need a shave.’
‘Lost my razor.’
‘And a haircut, Richard.’
‘We lost our scissors.’
‘I have scissors.’
‘Then you can cut it,’ Sharpe said as he stared through the glass as Blanchet’s naked troops trudged the last few paces to Miravete Castle. He could see a crowd of blue-uniformed men laughing at them from the battlements, but in reality the French had nothing to laugh about. Every force they had sent out in the last two days had been ripped apart and too many men had died. ‘All the buggers have to do is sit behind their stone walls and that bloody great earth bank,’ Sharpe said, ‘and we’ll be helpless.’
‘So you do it the old-fashioned way,’ Teresa said. ‘And what is that?’
‘It’s the way that makes widows and leaves orphans,’ Sharpe said as he collapsed the glass. ‘And I reckon we’ll be doing it. Let’s go back.’
‘You’re frightened?’ Teresa said, sounding disappointed.
‘Widows and orphans,’ Sharpe said grimly. ‘You and Antonia. But we do have one thing on our side.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We have rifles,’ Sharpe said, ‘and we have riflemen.’
Because rifles and riflemen could make the hopeless possible. They rode back.
CHAPTER 4
‘I want you to take the Truxillo road,’ Sharpe told Teresa.
‘Tired of me already?’
‘Don’t be daft. I need to send a messenger to General Hill, and a messenger I trust.’
‘You should go!’ Teresa insisted.
Sharpe shook his head. ‘We’ve woken the damned French. They know we’re here. If they come to smoke us out, I need to be here. And before I meet General Hill I’m ordered to cross the river and look at the fort on the other bank.’
‘We can help,’ Teresa said enthusiastically.
‘If I can even get across,’ Sharpe said dully, then explained that the French had evidently scoured the riverbanks to destroy any boats.
‘Of course there’ll be boats,’ Teresa said confidently. ‘As soon as people knew what the French were doing, they’d have hidden some boats. My men will find some.’
‘I only need one.’
‘You’ll have one. And besides, you don’t want to send a messenger to General Hill before you’ve crossed the river.’
Sharpe conceded the point, and Teresa sent horsemen upriver while Sharpe stayed at the village church that he turned into a small fortress. He wanted a fortress of his own in case the French came in force and the small village church with its thick stone walls was the strongest building available. It was surrounded by open ground, broken only by small gravestones, which gave defenders a killing ground. He used the French crates to make firesteps at each window, then had his men load all the French muskets. ‘If they come for us,’ he said, ‘we fire the rifles and when they get close start using the muskets.’ There were sufficient muskets for each man to have six which, fired one after the other, would provide a torrent of lead. There were eight windows to defend; three on both the northern and southern walls and two high windows flanking the door at the western end. The big eastern window above the altar had been bricked up at some point in the church’s long history and was now half hidden by a crudely painted wooden screen.
No French force came. Sharpe had put three piquets, each of two men, to watch the approaches to the village, but they saw nothing. Rifleman Henderson led three men to the big house that had been El Héroe’s quarters and they returned with sacks of grain, a barrel of salted mutton and three of wine. Henderson also slammed a heavy box onto the church floor. ‘It was hidden under the kitchen flagstones, Mister Sharpe,’ he said, ‘and you’ll like it.’
Sharpe lifted the lid and whistled in surprise. The box was half filled with coins. He picked up a couple. They were gold and he could see Napoleon’s head on both. He tipped one towards a window and saw the words Napoléon Empereur inscribed round the margin. Turning them over he saw they were both five-franc pieces. One proclaimed it was issued by the Republique Français and the other, presumably more recent, by the Empire Français. ‘It’s a fortune,’ he said. ‘I assume you’ve got a few in your pouch, Joe?’
‘Me, Mister Sharpe?’ Henderson asked, grinning.
‘Keep them safe, Joe.’
‘God looks after riflemen, Mister Sharpe.’
‘Let’s hope he keeps the Crapauds away.’
‘After the beating we’ve given them? The bastards won’t dare come near us.’
‘And if they do?’
‘One shot and they’ll go right about.’
Sharpe left Harris counting the coins. It was indeed a fortune and Sharpe suspected it was payments from the French to ensure El Héroe left them alone. He remembered what Major Hogan had said about El Héroe, that he cared about money, and he took pleasure in imagining El Héroe’s fury when he discovered the loss of his French gold. ‘Why didn’t he take the gold with him?’ he wondered aloud.
‘Too heavy,’ Harris suggested. ‘If you’re running away you don’t want to carry heavy stuff. Besides, he reckoned it was well hid.’
Shortly before midday Teresa’s men returned to say they had discovered a boat hidden in thick reeds a mile or so upriver. It was big enough, they reckoned, for four or five men.
‘Three are enough,’ Sharpe said. He left Patrick Harper in charge at the church. ‘If the bastards send a battalion up here then just get out,’ Sharpe ordered him. ‘If it’s a company you can probably beat them.’ He hesitated, ‘I’m sorry, Pat, I’m leaving Lieutenant Love here and he might insist on being in command.’
‘I can handle Cupid,’ Harper said firmly.
‘But you probably can’t handle a full Crapaud battalion.’
‘If a battalion comes, sir,’ Harper said, ‘we’ll go west. Find a place to lie low.’
‘If there is such a place.’
‘It’s like my mother always says, sir, if it’s not here it’s there.’
Sharpe doubted Harper’s mother was an expert on infantry tactics, but consoled himself that most of Teresa’s partisans would also stay in the church which, with its thick stone walls and plentiful firing positions, would prove a formidable bastion.
Sharpe took Hagman, because the old man had the best eyesight in his company and was also the deadliest rifleman, and Joe Henderson because the big northerner was staunch, reliable, and had assured Sharpe he had grown up with small boats on the River Wear. Lieutenant Love pleaded to accompany Sharpe, who explained to the artilleryman that the danger was from an infantry attack and that he should let Sergeant Harper decide how to counter it. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘you’ve no business on the northern bank. No one’s proposing to take guns over the river.’
‘That’s true, sir,’ Love conceded reluctantly, ‘and I’ll take Sergeant Harper’s advice, sir.’
‘Make sure you do,’ Sharpe said.
‘You think a French attack is likely, sir?’ Love asked nervously.
‘If I was them, I’d bring a bloody battalion up here, but so far they’ve showed themselves to be bloody useless, so probably not.’
‘I’ll pray not, sir.’
‘I’m sure that will help,’ Sharpe said, then went outside where Teresa had horses ready. She and one of the men who had discovered the boat led them eastwards, only descending to the riverbank when a bend in the Tagus hid them from the French forts beside the pontoon bridge.
The boat was about ten foot long and narrow with a thwart in its centre and two clumsy oars in its belly. ‘It’ll do fine,’ Henderson declared, and heaved the boat from its hiding place into the river.
‘Right, get in,’ Sharpe ordered. ‘Not you!’
‘I’m coming,’ Teresa insisted, and clambered into the boat and sat on its stern thwart next to Sharpe while Hagman crouched nervously in the bow.
Teresa’s man stayed on the southern bank to look after the horses while Henderson rowed across the river. The boat seemed fragile to Sharpe and they had not been afloat more than a minute before water began rising round his boots. ‘All boats leak,’ Henderson grunted as he heaved on the oars.
‘And sink?’ Sharpe asked.
‘She dried out, Mister Sharpe,’ Henderson said, taking a hand from an oar and rapping the boat’s hull, ‘she’s been too long out of water. She’ll heal up once she’s proper wetted.’
The current was strong, pushing the boat downstream so fast that Sharpe feared they would be swept round the bend into the view of the French engineers working on the old broken bridge, but Henderson gave the oars some mighty heaves and the craft crunched into the southern bank well short of the bend.
They hauled the boat out of the water and then Sharpe led them uphill through a belt of low trees. They had left their shakoes in the boat so their silhouettes on the skyline would not betray them as British troops and, reaching that skyline, Sharpe lay in the sun-warmed grass and used his telescope to gaze at Fort Ragusa.
It was another stone fort on a low steep hill, its battlements equipped with small cannon. Some of the guns faced north up the main road to deter a land attack while others covered the pontoon bridge itself. Between the fort and the bridge was a low bastion, the tête de pont, which guarded the northern end of the bridge of boats. He could see infantry and cannon in the low earthwork, which was almost identical to the bastion at the bridge’s southern end. He did not see much point in this reconnaissance because, though Fort Ragusa was smaller than Fort Napoleon and would be an easier fort to attack, he did not see any way Hill could get his men across the river short of crossing the Tagus in Portugal, which he doubted was a real choice. He trained the telescope on the fort’s high battlements and frowned.
