Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Siege

“A week ago,” there was amusement in Sharpe’s voice, “men were hoping, that Bordeaux would rise. We would be heroes, William, ending the war with a grand gesture.”

“Someone told lies,” Frederickson said lightly.

“Everyone lied. Wellington let those buggers believe in a landing so the French would be fooled. The Comte de Maquerre was a traitor all along.” Sharpe shrugged as though nothing much mattered any more. “The Comte de bloody Maquerre. They call him Maquereau. He’s well-named, isn’t he? Bloody pimp.”

Frederickson smiled at Sharpe’s rare display of knowledge.

“But it’s really Ducos,” Sharpe said. Hogan, in his fever, he said both Ducos’ and Maquerre’s names, and this whole deception, that had stranded Sharpe’s men so far from any help, stank of Ducos.

“Ducos?”

“He’s just a bastard who I’ll kill one day.” Sharpe said it in a very matter-of-fact voice, then grimaced because he knew that if this siege was truly Ducos’ work, then the Frenchman was very close to victory. “It’ll be bloody work tomorrow, William.”

“Very.”

“Do the men have the fight in them?”

Frederickson paused. Harper’s huge voice shouted in the yard, bringing order to the men who had gone to see the collapsed gatehouse. “The Rifles do,” Frederickson said. “Most of mine are Germans and they’ll never surrender. The Spanish hate the goddamn crapauds and just want to kill more of them. I think the Marines will fight to show you they’re as good as the Rifles.”

Sharpe gave a half smile, half grimace. “We can hold one attack, William. But after that?”

“Yes.” Frederickson knew exactly how bad things were. And this damned rain, he thought, would not help.

After one attack, Sharpe knew, he must think of the unthinkable. Of surrender. Pride demanded that they defended the breach at least one time, but French anger might not allow a surrender after that one defence. Sharpe had seen men, their blood-lust goaded beyond endurance, put a captured fortress to the sack. Frenchmen, beyond sense, would hunt with sharpened bayonets through the stone corridors to take revenge on the defenders. The butchery would be vile, but pride was still pride and they would fight at least one more time. Sharpe tried to imagine what Wellington might do, he tried to think back over all the sieges he had fought to see if there was something left undone that he could do, he tried to think of some clever move to unsettle the enemy. He thought of nothing useful. “I’ll bet their general’s telling the poor buggers that we’ve got a hundred women in here,” Sharpe laughed.

Frederickson grinned. “He’ll give every man a half pint of wine, tell them they can rape every woman inside, then point them at the breach. It never fails. You should have seen us at San Sebastian.”

“I missed that.” Sharpe had been in England when the British had captured San Sebastian.

Frederickson smiled. “It wasn’t pretty.”

An howitzer shell exploded in the courtyard. “You’d think the buggers would run out of ammunition,” Sharpe said. It was oddly pleasant to sit here, sharing a friendship’s intimacy, knowing that nothing could now be done to diminish the slaughter that would come in the dawn. The French twelve-pounders still fired, even though the breach was formed, but now they sprayed the fallen stones with canister to prevent working parties from steepening the face up which their troops would swarm in the morning.

“If they capture us,” Frederickson said, “perhaps they’ll send us to Paris on our way to Verdun. I’d like to see Paris.”

The words reminded Sharpe of Jane’s wish to see the French capital when the war ended. He thought of his wife dead, of her body taken for a hasty burial. Damn Cornelius Killick, he thought, for taking away his hope.

Frederickson unexpectedly broke into song. „Ein schifflein sah ichfahren.“

Sharpe recognized the tune that was popular among the Germans who fought in Wellington’s Army. “Meaning?”

Frederickson gave a rueful smile. “”I saw a small ship sailing.“ Pray for a frigate to come in the morning, sir. Think of its broadside raking the Frog camp.”

Sharpe shook his head. “I don’t think God listens to soldiers.”

“He loves them,” Frederickson said. “We’re the fools of the Lord, the last honest men, creation’s scapegoats.”

Sharpe smiled. In the morning, he thought, they would give this General Calvet a fight to remember, and afterwards, when it was over, but that did not bear thinking about. Then, suddenly, he stared at his friend. ‘Ein schiff?“ Sharpe asked, ”what was it again?“

„Ein schifflein sah ich fahren,“ Frederickson said slowly. ”I saw a small ship sailing.“

“God damn it!” Sharpe’s helplessness suddenly vanished with the burgeoning of an idea as bright as a shell’s explosion. “I’m a fool!” He faced defeat for want of a ship, and a ship existed. Sharpe scrambled to his feet and shouted into the yard for a rope to be fetched. “You’re to stay here, William. Prepare for an assault on the gate, you understand?”

“And you?”

“I’m going out. I’ll be back by dawn.”

“Out? Where?”

But Sharpe had gone to the ramparts. A rope was fetched so he could climb down to the sand where the French corpses still lay, and so that, in a wet night, he could make a devil’s pact that might bring deliverance to the fools of the Lord.

In the morning the rain fell in a sustained cloudburst. It hammered and seethed and bounced on the fort and ran from the ramparts to slop in bucketfuls on to the puddled courtyard. It seemed impossible for rain to be so savage, yet it persisted. It drummed on men’s shakoes, it flooded into the galleries carved into the ramparts, and its noise made even the firing of the twelve-pounders seem dull. It was like the rains before the great flood; a deluge.

It doused the cooking fires of the French and flooded the hovels where Calvet’s men had tried to sleep. It turned the powder in musket pans to gritty mud. The fire-rate of the artillery was slowed because each serge bag of powder had to be protected from the rain and each vent had to be covered until the last second before the portfire was touched. The artillery colonel cursed that the damned British had burned out the mill’s roof with their sortie, and cutsed again because his howitzers had to give up the unequal struggle when their pits filled with yellow-coloured floodwater.

“Bacon for breakfast!” Calvet spoke with delighted anticipation.

His cooks, working under a roof, fried bacon for the general. The smell tormented those poor souls who huddled against hovel walls and cursed the rain, the mud, the god-damns, and the war.

The cavalry, who had vainly cast south for Sharpe’s force, had been sent north in the dawn. A cavalry sergeant, his cloak plastered wet to his horse’s rump, splashed back with news that, because the wind was so small this morning, the

Thuella was being towed down the Arcachon channel by two longboats.

“Bugger the wind,” Calvet said, “and bugger the rain.” He stumped through mud to the sand-dunes and stared north. Far off, drab, black, and with wet sails dropping from her yards, the big schooner was just visible. “We won’t attack,” Calvet growled, “till the damn thing’s in place.”

“Perhaps,” Favier ventured cautiously, “Captain Killick’s guns won’t fire in this weather?”

“Don’t be a damned fool. If anyone can make guns fire in the wet it has to be a sailor, doesn’t it?” Calvet took out his glass, wiped the lenses, and stared at the fortress. The gate was a heap of rubble, a mound of wet stone, a causeway to victory. He went back to his bacon with confidence that this morning’s business would not take long. The British rifles would be useless in this rain and their lime would be turned into whitewash.