Sharpe's Christmas Read online

  But Picard was not a man to heed a warning and Sharpe, watching through the thinning musket smoke, saw that the French were not retreating to the deeper valley. And just then, far to the south, from where the picquet watched the road leading into Spain, a musket fired and Sharpe span round.

  And knew the other enemy was coming.

  “Captain d’Alembord!” Sharpe shouted.

  “Sir?”

  “You take over here, Dally,” Sharpe said, “and I’ll take your horse.”

  The French brigade was forming a column which could only mean one thing, that they planned to attack straight up the hill, though before advancing their leading rank fired musket volleys at the fifteen remaining barrels that blocked the road. None of the barrels contained gunpowder, for Sharpe had only possessed a limited supply, but the French were not to know that. Their volleys riddled the barrels while their skirmishers climbed the small valley’s side to chase away riflemen who had long retreated. It would take an hour, Sharpe reckoned, before the threatening brigade was in a fit state to advance, and when they did, he doubted it would be with much enthusiasm, for the display of musketry had warned them of what waited.

  But another thousand Frenchmen were coming from the south in a desperate attempt to escape from Spain, and those men knew they must fight through the pass if they were ever to reach home, and their desperation could make those thousand men far more dangerous than the brigade. Sharpe rode back through the village to where a picquet watched the enemy approaching from the south. “They’re still a long way off, sir,” Captain Smith reported nervously, worried that he had summoned Sharpe too soon.

  “You did the right thing,” Sharpe reassured him as he drew out his telescope.

  “What’s happening back there, sir?” Smith asked.

  “We showed the Frogs a trick or two, but they still seem to want a fight. But don’t worry, they won’t be spending their Christmas here.” He could see the approaching French column now. There were mounted dragoons up front, infantry behind, one wagon, no guns and a crowd of women and children. “That’s good,” Sharpe said quietly.

  “Good, sir?” Smith asked.

  “They’re bringing their women, Captain, and they won’t want them hurt, will they? It might even persuade them to surrender.” Sharpe paused, his eye caught by a metallic gleam above the infantry’s dark shakos. “And they’ve got an Eagle!” Sharpe said excitedly. “That would make a nice Christmas present for the batallion, wouldn’t it? A French Eagle! I could fancy that.” He collapsed the glass and wondered how much time he had. The column was still a good two hours’ marching away, which should be enough. “Just watch them,” he told Smith, then he pulled himself back into d’Alembord’s saddle and rode back to the frontier. It was all a question of timing now. If the brigade attacked the hill at the same time as the garrison approached the village, then he was in trouble, but when he was back at the northern ridge he saw to his relief that the enemy had already cleared the road of barrels and that their voltigeurs were spreading out on the slope to herald the attack. The job of the voltigeurs was to advance in a loose skirmish line and harass the redcoats with musket fire. A good skirmish attack could pick off enemy officers and abrade confidence in the waiting ranks and, to frustrate the French light infantry, Sharpe sent his own skirmishers into battle. “Mister d’Alembord! Light Company out! Pick off those voltigeurs.”

  The Light Company, a mix of riflemen and redcoats with muskets, scattered down the hill and took up positions behind rocks. The men would fight in pairs, one man firing while his companion loaded, and the riflemen would concentrate their bullets on officers and sergeants. They waited until at last the French drummers sounded the pas de charge and the voltigeurs, already ahead of the column, pressed upwards to dislodge d’Alembord’s Light Company. The first rifles fired, and a moment later the muskets joined in to dot the hillside with smoke. The French voltigeurs fired back, but Sharpe’s men were sheltered by the boulders and none, so far as Sharpe could see, was hit. A French officer was on his knees, clutching his belly, another was shouting his men up the hill and then he, too, was hit by a bullet.

  “Amateurs,” Sharpe said caustically. The voltigeurs were not forcing home their attack, but trying to stay out of range of the deadly rifles. He stared at the Frenchmen through the glass and reckoned they were nothing but children snatched from a depot and marched to war. It was cruel.

  The column was advancing now, pressing close behind the nervous voltigeurs. It looked formidable, but columns always did. This one was twenty files wide and thirty-one ranks deep, a great solid block of men who had been ordered to climb an impossible slope into a gale of fire. It would be murder, not war, but it was the French commander who was doing the murdering.

  The column lost its cohesion as it tried to cut across the corners of the zig-zagging road and around the splintered remnants of the barrels. Sergeants and officers shoved the men back into place and the drummers beat them on, pausing every few seconds so the men could give a half hearted war cry, “Vive I’Empereur!” The rifles were biting at the column’s front rank that had advanced so far up the road that the voltigeurs were now running to join its ranks rather than fight the British skirmishers. “Call the Light Company in,” Sharpe told his bugler.

  D’Alembord, grinning because he knew his men had won the fight of skirmishers against voltigeurs, came to stand beside Sharpe. “Not a man touched,” he said.

  “Tell them they did well,” Sharpe said, “then send them back to Captain Smith.” If the French dragoons rode ahead of the approaching garrison then the riflemen could pick off the horsemen. “But you stay here,” Sharpe added to d’Alembord. “I’ve got a job for you.”

  The enemy column was getting close now, little more than a hundred paces away, and Sharpe could see the men were sweating despite the day’s cold. They were weary too, and whenever they looked up they saw nothing except a group of officers waiting on the crest. The line of redcoats had pulled back out of sight of the enemy and Sharpe did not plan to bring them forward until the very last moment.

  “Cutting it fine, sir?” d’Alembord observed.

  “Give it a minute yet,” Sharpe said. The drums were loud, rattling energetically, though whenever the drummers paused to let the men shout “Vive I’Empereur” the response was feeble. These men were winded, weary and wary. And only fifty paces away.

  “Talion! Advance!” The Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers marched forward, their muskets loaded, and Sharpe stepped back through the ranks and tried not to feel sorry for the Frenchmen he was about to kill. They were fools, he thought, fools come to the slaughter.

  “Talion!” Sharpe shouted, “present!”

  The muskets came up into shoulders. The French front rank faltered at the sight, then was shoved on by the men behind.

  “Fire!” Sharpe shouted and his whole batallion fired in unison so that their bullets smacked home in one lethal blow. “Platoon fire!” Sharpe shouted before the echo of the volley had died away. “From the centre!”

  Sharpe could see nothing of the enemy now, for they were hidden behind the thick cloud of grey white powder smoke, but he could imagine the horror. Probably the whole French front rank was dead or dying, and most of the second rank too, and the men behind would be pushing and the men in front would be stumbling on the dead and wounded, and then, just as they were recovering from the first volley, the rolling platoon fire began. “Aim low!” Sharpe shouted. “Aim low!”

  A column was a battering ram, designed to let half-trained troops feel the confidence of being part of a crowd, but the men in the centre of the column could not use their muskets for they would only hit their own comrades, while the men in the front ranks and outer files were exposed to the murderous musketry of the redcoat line. That line, only two ranks deep, far outflanked the column and so the musket balls came from in front and from the sides, and the unrelenting fire, the product of endless training, flailed the enemy.

  The air fill
ed with the rotten-egg stench of powder smoke. The redcoats’ faces were flecked with burning powder scraps, while the paper cartridge wadding, spat out behind each bullet, started small flickering fires in the grass. On and on the volleys went as men fired blindly down into the smoke, pouring death into a small place, and still they loaded and rammed and fired, and Sharpe did not see a single man in his own regiment fall. He did not even hear a French bullet. It was the old story. A French column was being pounded by a British line, and British musketry was crushing the column’s head and flanks and flecking its centre with blood.

  “They’re running, sir! They’re running!” Sharpe had posted Ensign Nicholls wide of the line so that he could see past the smoke. “Away and running, sir!” Nicholls shouted excitedly as though he had spotted a fox breaking from a covert. “Running like hell!”

  “Cease fire!” Sharpe bellowed. “Cease fire!”

  And slowly the smoke cleared to show the horror on the winter grass. Blood and horror and broken men. A column had met a line. Sharpe turned away. “Mister d’Alembord!”

  “Sir?”

  “Take a white flag and ride to the southern road. Find the garrison commander. Tell him we’ve broken a French brigade and that we’ll break him in exactly the same damned manner if he doesn’t surrender.”

  “Sir, sir! Please, sir!” It was Ensign Nicholls, jumping up and down beside d’Alembord. “Can I go with him, sir? Please, sir. I’ve never seen a Frog! Not close up, sir.”

  “They’ve got tails and horns,” d’Alembord said, and smiled when Nicholls looked alarmed.

  “If you can borrow a horse,” Sharpe told the Ensign, “you can go. But keep your mouth shut. Let Mister d’Alembord do the talking.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nicholls said, and ran happily away while Sharpe turned back to the north. The French had broken and run, and he doubted they would be back, but he was not willing to care for their wounded. He had neither the men nor the supplies to do that, so someone would have to go down to the enemy under a flag of truce and offer them a chance to clear up their own bloody mess. Just in time for Christmas.

  Colonel Caillou watched Colonel Gudin walk towards the two red-coated horsemen and felt an immense rage surge inside him. The British were holding a white flag, but only because they would offer Gudin terms and Caillou knew that Gudin would surrender, he knew it, and when that happened Caillou would lose his Eagle that the Emperor himself had presented to the 75th. The standard would be taken back to England and jeered through the streets, and Caillou was determined to prevent that. He drove back his spurs and, in blind fury, galloped after Gudin.

  Gudin heard him coming, turned and waved him back, but Caillou ignored him. Instead he drew his pistol. “Go back!” he shouted in English to the two approaching British officers. “Go back!”

  “You will leave me to deal with this!” Gudin insisted.

  D’Alembord reined in his horse. “Do you command here, monsieur?” he asked Caillou in French.

  “Go back!” Caillou shouted angrily, ignoring both d’Alembord and Gudin. “We do not accept your flag! You hear me? We do not accept a truce. Go!” He levelled his pistol at the younger officer who held the offending white flag that was nothing more than d’Alembord’s handkerchief tied to the ramrod of a musket. “Go back!” Caillou shouted again, then spurred his horse away from Gudin who had tried to place himself between Caillou and the two British officers.

  “Sir?” Nicholls looked nervously at d’Alembord.

  “It’s all right, Charlie,” d’Alembord said. “He won’t shoot. It’s a flag of truce.” He looked back to Caillou. “Monsieur? I must insist upon knowing if you command here.”

  “I command here,” Gudin asserted with a glare at Caillou.

  “Then, monsieur,” d’Alembord said, removing his hat and bowing in the saddle towards the dishevelled Gudin, “I must tell you that we have already …”

  “He does not command here!” Caillou shouted, and he pressed a knee against his horse and the animal obediently stepped sideways, knocking Gudin away. “By the authority of the Emperor I am taking command.” He turned in the saddle and gestured towards the voltigeurs of his regiment who were two hundred yards away. “Advance!” he shouted.

  “You do not command here!” Gudin snapped. He was suddenly as angry as Caillou and he drew his own pistol and d’Alembord watched, astonished, as the two Frenchmen threatened to shoot each other, and just then, as their fingers tightened on the triggers, Ensign Nicholl’s borrowed horse twitched and the Ensign instinctively reacted by tugging the reins and the horse tossed its head. Colonel Caillou, seeing the motion at the edge of his vision, must have thought the younger British officer was attacking him, or at least trying to disarm him and, still enraged, he swung the pistol round and pulled the trigger.

  The pistol’s flame was very bright in the dusk. The sound of the shot echoed from the hills, then faded. The voltigeurs, obedient to their colonel, were hurrying past the watching dragoons, but then their officer held up his hand.

  Because a second shot had sounded.

  The shot sounded as Ensign Nicholls was falling from his saddle. Caillou’s bullet had torn through one of the gold laces his mother had sewn onto his red jacket and then it had pierced his young heart. He was hurled back in the saddle and the makeshift white flag toppled. He made a choking noise and threw a last fading glance at d’Alembord and then collapsed sideways to thump onto the stony road.

  Caillou was suddenly aghast, as if he had only just realised the enormity of his crime. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came, for Colonel Gudin had fired and that second pistol ball took Caillou beneath the jaw, ripped up through his soft palate and so into his brain and Caillou, without a sound, slumped dead onto his pommel.

  Colonel Gudin put his pistol back into its holster. “I command here,” he told d’Alembord in English. “To my shame, sir, I command here.”

  D’Alembord, his face hard as stone, delivered Sharpe’s message. One brigade of Frenchmen had already been defeated and the British force at the top of the pass was now ready to give the same treatment to Gudin’s men. D’Alembord carefully did not say what forces the British possessed, for if the Frenchman had known it was only a single batallion then he might have chosen to fight. “We are waiting for you with riflemen and redcoats,” he said instead, implying that there might be at least two batallions at Irati. “You may fight, sir, or you can spare your mens’ lives.”

  Gudin had heard the terrible musketry and knew what kind of horror his men must endure if they tried to force the pass, but he was not inclined to yield too easily. “I respect your flag of truce,” he told d’Alembord, glancing at the red-stained handkerchief that showed beside Nicholl’s corpse, “and I agree to talk with your commanding officer.”

  D’Alembord hesitated. If he agreed with Gudin’s proposal then the Frenchman would discover just how weak the British were, but, on the other hand, he would also meet Major Sharpe, and no one had ever thought him weak. So d’Alembord nodded. “You will order your troops to stay where they are,” he insisted, “and you may come to the village to discuss terms.”

  Gudin nodded and the battle, at least for the moment, was over.

  Sharpe heard of Nicholls’s death while he was still watching the French take their dead from the northern slope. He swore when he heard the news, but he dared not leave the pass, not until he was sure the French brigade was gone, but he sent two more companies back to the village to keep their eyes on the enemy who were waiting a mile southwards. Then, when night fell, and he was satisfied that the northern brigade had withdrawn to the deeper valley and offered no threat, he stalked back to Irati with pure bloody murder in his heart. He saw the horses tethered outside the Casa Alta and he kicked open the tavern door in a rage. “What bastard bloody Frenchman dared kill my officer?” he shouted, storming into the room with one hand on the hilt of his heavy cavalry sword.

  A tall, grey-haired French officer stood to face him. “
The man who murdered your officer is dead, monsieur,” the Frenchman said in good English. “I shot him.”

  Sharpe stopped and stared. His hand fell from the sword hilt and his mouth dropped open. For a second he seemed unable to speak, but then he found his voice. “Colonel Gudin?” he asked in amazement.

  Gudin smiled. “Oui, Caporal Sharpe.”

  “Mon Colonel,” Sharpe said and he stepped forward with his hand outstretched, but Gudin ignored the hand and instead clasped Sharpe in both arms and kissed him on both cheeks. D’Alembord, watching, smiled.

  “I knew it was you!” Gudin said, his hands still on Sharpe’s shoulders. “I’m proud of you, Sharpe. So very proud.” There were tears in the Colonel’s eyes. “And for your officer who died, I am sorry. There was nothing I could do.”

  The door from the kitchens opened and Daniel Hagman poked his head through. “Need more towels, Captain,” he said to d’Alembord, then noticed Sharpe. “Hello, Major, didn’t know you were here.”

  “Well, I am bloody here,” Sharpe said, “and what do you want towels for? Aren’t you supposed to be on picquet duty? Not having a bloody bath!”

  “I’m delivering a baby, sir,” Hagman said, as if that was the most natural thing in the world for a rifleman to be doing on Christmas Eve. “Isn’t the first baby I’ve done, sir. The Frog doctor was going to slice her open, and that would have killed her, but I’ll see her right. It’s no different from slipping a lamb into the world, except the hooves aren’t as sharp. Thank you, sir.” He took the proffered rags from d’Alembord and ducked back into the candle-lit kitchen.

  Sharpe sat. D’Alembord began to explain that he had permitted the pregnant woman to come to the village, but Sharpe waved the explanation away. He did not care. He saw that d’Alembord and Gudin had started on the wine so he poured himself a mug and took a long drink. “So what am I going to do with you?” he asked his old Colonel.