Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Siege

“I thought it might be.”

“We leave tomorrow to capture a fortress. It isn’t supposed to be heavily defended, but no one’s sure. After that, God knows what happens. There’s a madman who wants us to invade France, but between you and me we’re not.”

Frederickson grinned, then turned and looked at the two Companies of Riflemen. “We’re capturing a fort all by our little selves?”

“The Navy says a few Marines might be well enough to help us.”

“That’s very decent of them.” Frederickson stared at the great bulk of the Vengeance. Barges, propelled by huge sweeps, were taking casks of water from the harbour to the huge ship.

“You’ll draw extra ammunition,” Sharpe said. “The First Division’s paying for it.”

„I’ll rob the bastards blind,“ Frederickson said happily.

“And tonight you’ll do me the honour of dining with Jane and myself?”

“I’d like to meet her.” Frederickson sounded guarded.

“She’s wonderful.” Sharpe said it warmly, and Frederickson, seeing his friend’s enthusiasm, hoped that a new wife had not sapped Sharpe’s appetite for the bloody business that lay ahead at Arcachon.

Commandant Henri Lassan thought he detected sleet in the dawn, but he could not be sure until he climbed to the western bastion and saw how the flakes settled briefly on the great cheeks of his guns before melting into cold rivulets of water. The guns were loaded, as they always were, but their muzzles and vent-holes were stoppered against the damp. “Good morning, Sergeant!”

“Sir!” The sergeant stamped his feet and slapped his hands against the cold.

Lassan’s orderly climbed the stone ramp with a tray of coffee-mugs. Lassan always brought the morning guard a mug of coffee each and the men appreciated the small gesture. The Commandant, they said, was a gentleman.

Children ran across the courtyard and women’s voices sounded from the kitchens. There should not be women in the fort, but Lassan had let the families of his gun crews take up the quarters vacated by the infantry who had gone to the northern battles. Lassan believed his men were less likely to desert if their families were inside the defences.

“There she is, sir.” The sergeant pointed through the sleeting rain.

Lassan looked over the narrow Arcachon channel where the tide raced across the shoals. Beyond the sandbanks the surging grey waves were torn by wind into a maelstrom of broken white water amidst which, beating southwards, was a little ship.

The ship was a British brig-sloop with two tall masts and a vast driver-sail at her stern. Her black and white banded hull hid, Lassan knew, eighteen guns. Her sails were reefed, but even so she seemed to plunge through the waves and Lassan saw how high the spray fountained from the brig’s stem. “Our enemies,” he said mildly, “are having a disturbed breakfast.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant laughed.

Lassan cradled his coffee mug. There was something vulnerable about his face, a drawn and frightened look that made his men protective of him. They knew Commandant Lassan wished to become a priest when this war ended and they liked him for it, but they also knew that he would fight as a soldier until the last shot of the war had been fired. Now he stared at the British brig. “You saw her last night?”

“At sundown, sir,” the sergeant was certain. “And there were lights out there at night.”

“He’s watching us, isn’t he?” Lassan smiled. “He’s seeing what we’re made of.”

The sergeant slapped the gun as a reply.

Lassan turned to stare thoughtfully into the fort’s courtyard. A warning had come from Bordeaux that he was to prepare for a British attack, but Bordeaux had sent him no men to reinforce his shrunken garrison. Lassan could man his big guns, or he could protect the landward walls, but he could not do both. If the British landed troops, and sent warships into the channel, then Lassan would be trapped between the hammer and the anvil. He turned back to stare at the British brig. If Bordeaux was right, that inquisitive craft was making a reconnaissance, and Lassan must deceive the watchers. He must make them think the fort was so thinly defended that a landing by troops would be unnecessary.

Lieutenant Gerard came yawning from the green-painted door of the officers’ quarters. Lassan hailed him. “Lieutenant!”

“Sir?”

“No flag today! And no washing hung to dry on the barracks’ roof!” Not that anyone was likely to dry washing in this weather.

Gerard, his blue jacket unbuttoned above his braces, frowned. “No flag, sir?”

“You heard me, Lieutenant! And no men in the embrasures, you hear? Sentries in the citadels only.”

“I hear you, sir.”

Lassan turned back to see the brig-sloop tack into the rain-sodden wind. He saw a shiver of sails, a spume of foam, and he imagined the cloaked officers, their braid tarnished by salt, staring at the grey, crouching fort through their spyglasses. He knew that such little ships, sent to spy on the French coast, often stopped the fishing boats that worked close inshore. Today then, and every day for the next week, only those fishermen whom Henri Lassan trusted would be allowed past the guns of the Teste de Buch. They would be encouraged to take English gold, and encouraged to drink a glass of dark rum in English cabins, and encouraged to sell lobsters to blue-coated Englishmen, and in return they would tell a plausible lie or two on behalf of Henri Lassan.

Then, with a roar from these great, passive guns that waited for employment, Henri Lassan would strike a blow for France.

He smiled, pleased with his notion, and went to breakfast.

Before dinner Sharpe faced a miserable and unhappy few moments. “The answer,” he repeated, “is no.”

Regimental Sergeant Major Patrick Harper stood in the small parlour of Jane’s lodgings and twisted his wet shako in thick, strong fingers. “I talked with Mr d’Alembord, sir, so I did, and he said I could come. I mean we’re only sitting around like washer-women in a bloody drought, so we are.”

“There’s a new colonel coming, Patrick. He needs his RSM.”

Harper frowned. “Needs his major, too.”

“He can’t lose both of us.” Sharpe did not have the power to deny the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers the services of this massive Irishman. “And if you come, Patrick, the new man will only appoint a new RSM. You wouldn’t want that.”

Harper frowned. “I’d rather be in a scrap if one’s going, sir, and Mr Frederickson wouldn’t take me amiss, nor would he.”

Sharpe could not be persuaded. “No.”

The huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, grinned. “I could take sick leave, sir, so I could.”

“You have to be sick first.”

“But I am!” Harper pointed to his mouth. “I’ve got a toothache something desperate, sir. Here!” He opened his mouth, jabbed with his finger, and Sharpe saw that Harper did indeed have a reddened and swollen upper gum.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s dreadful, so it is!” Harper, sensing a chink in Sharpe’s armour, became enthusiastic about his pain. “It’s more of a throb, sir. On and off, on and off, like a great drumbeat in your skull. Desperate, it is!”

“Then see a surgeon tonight,” Sharpe said unsympathetically, “and have it pulled. Then get back to Battalion where you belong.”

Harper’s face dropped. “Truly, sir? I can’t come?”

Sharpe sighed. “I’d rather have you along, RSM, than any dozen other men.” That was true a thousand times over. Sharpe knew of no man he would rather fight beside, but it could not be at Arcachon. “I’m sorry, Patrick. Besides you’re a father now. You should take care.” Harper’s Spanish wife, just a month before, had given birth to a son that had been christened Richard Patricio Augustine Harper. Sharpe had found the choice of Richard an embarrassment, but Jane had been delighted when Harper sought permission to use the name. “And I’m doing you a favour, RSM,” Sharpe went on.