Sharpe's Christmas Read online

  Gudin spread his hands. “Honour decrees I should fight you, Sharpe.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing here?” Sharpe demanded truculently.

  “You approached me with a flag of truce. I am using that truce to discover what choices I have.”

  “You’ve got two choices, Colonel,” Sharpe said in a harsh tone. “You can fight me or you can surrender. Either way I don’t care. I like a fight.”

  Gudin smiled. “You haven’t changed, have you?”

  “Your men are down the road,” Sharpe went on as though Gudin had not spoken, “and there’s damn all they can do tonight, but you can lead them up here in the dawn. The pass narrows, Colonel, you’ve seen that, and I’ll fillet you. I’ll give you a Christmas present of dead men. And don’t think your voltigeurs can take my flanks. I’ll have riflemen up on the hills and they like killing voltigeurs. And when they’ve done for them they’ll shoot your officers, then your sergeants, and when your men are a leaderless rabble, I’ll bring in the bayonets. I’ve already done it to those buggers over there,” he pointed north, “and do you know how many men I lost?” He paused, but Gudin offered no guess. “None,” Sharpe said, “not one. And tomorrow I’ll do it again.” It was all bluff. If Gudin decided to fight and if Picard renewed his attack in the morning, then Sharpe would be scrambling for his life across the high ground. But when a man held a weak hand it sometimes helped to bid high. “Your choice, Colonel.”

  “You haven’t changed at all,” Gudin said. “How many men do you have?”

  “Enough.”

  Gudin looked at d’Alembord. “He took me prisoner in India, Captain, and he was only a corporal then.”

  “I’m not a corporal now,” Sharpe said dangerously.

  Gudin smiled sadly. He could see red uniforms and green uniforms inside the tavern and he assumed there were at least two batallions in Irati, and he knew his tired troops could not beat them, and he feared that the partisans might come from his rear in the morning, and so he tugged his sword out of its scabbard and laid it on the table with its hilt towards Sharpe. “I fear I am your prisoner again, caporal,” he said sadly.

  “You and all of your men?” Sharpe asked.

  “Of course.”

  Sharpe hid his relief. He had bluffed and won, so now he pushed the sword back towards the Frenchman. “It’s good to see you, Colonel,” he said, suddenly friendly again, “it truly is.” He poured more wine and pushed the wineskin towards the Colonel. “And how have you been, sir?”

  “Not well, Sharpe, not well,” Gudin confessed. “You see that I am still a Colonel, just as I was in Seringapatam. It seemed that after that I could do nothing right.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true, sir. You were the best officer I ever had.”

  Gudin smiled at the compliment. “But I have had no luck, Sharpe, no luck at all.”

  “So tell me about it, sir. It’s the night before Christmas, a good night for a story. So tell me.”

  So Gudin did.

  General Maximilien Picard sulked. He sat by a miserable fire in the deep cold valley and he listened to the moans of his wounded and he knew he had been well beaten. He had scented defeat from the moment he had seen the demonstration volley that the British had flaunted from their high ridge, but Picard had always thought he was a lucky man and he had hoped that his good luck would serve to drive his column up the hill and through the thin British line. But the column had been shattered and his conscripts, instead of tasting victory, were now more fearful than ever.

  He drank from a brandy flask. It was three o’clock on Christmas morning, but he could not sleep. The skies had cleared, so that the Christmas stars were bright, but General Picard felt nothing but gloom. “Gudin’s doomed,” he said to his chief of staff, Major Santon. “If we couldn’t break those bastards, what hope does he have?”

  “None, sir,” Santon said.

  “I don’t mind losing Gudin,” Picard growled, “but why must we lose Caillou? Now there’s a soldier for you! And if we lose Caillou, Santon, you know what else we lose?”

  “The Eagle, sir.”

  “The Eagle,” Picard said, and flinched. “We will have lost one of the Emperor’s Eagles.” He said the dread words slowly and his eyes filled with tears. “I do not mind defeat, Santon,” he said untruthfully, “but I cannot bear the loss of an Eagle. An Eagle of France, gone to captivity.” Santon said nothing, for there was nothing to say. To a soldier of France there was no shame like losing an Eagle, and in the dark hills above them an Eagle was in desperate danger. “I can bear anything,” Picard said, “except that.”

  Then, from above them, all hell broke loose.

  To the defeated French brigade in the deep valley it sounded like a battle to end the world. True, there was no artillery firing, but the experienced soldiers claimed they had never heard musketry like it. The volleys were unending, and the crash of those musket blasts was magnified and multiplied by the valley’s echoing walls. They could hear faint screams and shouts, and sometimes a bugle call, but above it all, and never ending, the hammer sound of muskets. There was volley after volley, so many that after a while the sound became continuous: a deep, grinding sound like the creak of a hinge on the gates of hell.

  “We should go up and help,” Picard said, rising to his feet.

  “We can’t, sir,” Santon insisted, and he pointed up to the crest where a line of British soldiers still stood guard. The moon was unsheathed from the clouds, and any Frenchman trying to climb the slope would be a sitting target to those riflemen. “Gudin must fight on his own,” Santon said.

  And Gudin must have been fighting, for the musketry, instead of fading, grew in intensity. Picard reckoned it must be Caillou who fought, for surely poor old Gudin could never fight a battle like this. Every now and then a brief glow showed in the sky, betraying where a group of muskets flamed together, and soon the heavy foul-smelling smoke spilled over the pass’s lip to drift down the moonlit slope. And still the splintering volleys ground on.

  Up in the pass Sharpe loaded his rifle. He did it quickly, trained to the intricate motions by a lifetime of soldiering, and when the gun was loaded he raised it to his shoulder, held the muzzle high into the sky, and pulled its trigger. “Faster!” he shouted, “faster!”

  And all around him redcoats peppered the sky. They fired volley after volley at the stars, and in between the volleys they whooped and screamed like demons. “I pity any poor angel up there tonight, sir,” Sergeant Patrick Harper said to Captain d’Alembord. “He’ll lose a few wing feathers, so he will.” And then Harper fired his volley gun at the moon and down in the valley the deafened French gasped, thinking that at last the artillery was joining the fight.

  “Faster!” Sharpe shouted. “Vite! Vite!” A group of French soldiers pulled their triggers, scattering a volley towards the snow on the highest peaks.

  Daniel Hagman walked calmly through the chaos and noise. “It’s a girl, sir!” he shouted at Colonel Gudin.

  “A girl?” Gudin said. “I thought, on Christmas Day, it might be a boy.”

  “It’s a pretty little girl, sir, and she’s just fine and so is her mother. The women are looking after her, and she’ll be ready to move in a while. Just a little while.”

  Sharpe had overheard the news and grinned at Gudin. “A cold night to be born, Colonel.”

  “But she’ll live, Sharpe. They’ll both live. That’s what matters!”

  Sharpe fired his rifle at the stars. “I was thinking of the baby Jesus, Colonel. His birth must have been cold as hell.”

  Gudin smiled. “I think Palestine is a warm country, Sharpe, like India. I doubt the first Christmas was cold. I think Our Lord was born on a warm night.”

  “But at least he never joined the army, sir. He had more sense.” Sharpe rammed another bullet in his rifle, then walked down the boisterous line of soldiers. Redcoats and Frenchmen from Gudin’s garrison were mixed together, all of them firing like maniacs into the star-bright sk
y. “Faster!” Sharpe shouted. “Come on, now! Faster! You’re celebrating Christ’s birth! Make some bloody effort! Vite! Vite!”

  It took a half hour before Maria and her newborn child could be laid in the wagon where they were cushioned with blankets and swathed in sheepskins. The new baby had gifts: a rifleman’s silver button, a broken ivory boot-hook that a redcoat had lifted from the battlefield of Vitoria and a golden guinea that was a present from Peter d’Alembord. When the mother and child were comfortable the wagon driver whipped his horses northwards, and all the Spanish women and children whom Gudin had tried so hard to save fell in behind the lumbering vehicle. They climbed the gentle pass, and the French troops who had been shooting at the stars fell in around them as the wagon passed. A hundred Frenchmen joined the women, all of them from Gudin’s garrison, and their colonel was the very last man to join the procession. “Here, sir,” Sharpe said, and he stepped forward and offered Colonel Gudin the Eagle.

  Gudin stared in disbelief at the trophy. “You are giving it to me?”

  Sharpe grinned. “I’ve already captured one, sir, I don’t need another. Besides, I took the flag off the staff. Just as a keepsake.”

  Gudin took the Eagle on its bare staff, then hugged Sharpe and kissed him farewell. “After the war, Sharpe?” he said huskily. “I shall see you after the war?”

  “I hope so, sir. I do hope so.”

  There was one last charade to mount. The riflemen guarding the frontier ridge, those who were in sight of the enemy far below, fired their weapons, then ran in pretended panic as Gudin’s small procession approached.

  And from the valley below General Picard watched in amazement as a small group of Frenchmen appeared at the ridge’s crest. They were only a few men, a mere handful, less than a tenth of those he had expected, but they had fought their way through, they had even brought a wagon through, and then Picard saw a golden glint shine above the dark shapes who fired back at the ridge behind them and he raised his telescope and stared intently, trying to track down the elusive gleam, and suddenly it was there. It was the Eagle. He could see its spread wings. “They’ve brought the Eagle!” Picard shouted. “They’ve saved the Eagle!” And his defeated men began to cheer.

  The firing in the high pass died slowly to leave a rill of powder smoke sifting down the slope. The riflemen and redcoats grinned. They had enjoyed the nonsense. None had wanted to spend Christmas in this high country that was so far from their beef and plum pudding, but the expedition had turned into a game. It was a pity about Ensign Nicholls, of course, but what had he expected? Everyone knew that Mister Sharpe was fatal for ensigns, but at least Mister Nicholls was to be buried in France. Sharpe had insisted on that. The boy had come to fight the French and for all eternity he would hold a tiny scrap of captured French soil. But no one else had died. No one else had even taken a wound, and the regiment had turned back a whole French brigade, while in the village, under the guard of the grenadier company, nine hundred French prisoners waited to be marched back into Spain and captivity.

  But one hundred Frenchmen went free. One hundred Frenchmen, their women, their children, their colonel and an Eagle. They went free because Sharpe, to help an old friend, had given that friend a victory, and Sharpe now watched Gudin’s men go down the slope and he saw the men of the defeated brigade run to greet them. He heard the cheers and in the silver moonlight, framed in the lens of his telescope, he saw the brigade officers cluster around Colonel Gudin. Unlucky Gudin, who on a Christmas morning had saved an Eagle and fought his way to freedom. Colonel Jean Gudin, a hero at last.

  “Do you think they’ll ever find out that it was all faked?” Harper asked Sharpe.

  “Who’d ever believe it? If you heard the tale, would you believe it?”

  “I’d think the man telling it was drunk,” Harper said, and then, after a pause. “A happy Christmas to you, sir.”

  “And to you, Patrick.”

  “I suppose it’ll be mutton for dinner?”

  “I suppose it will. We’ll buy a few sheep and you can kill them.”

  “Not me, sir. You, sir.”

  Sharpe laughed, then turned south towards the village. It was Christmas morning, a crisp, clean, new Christmas morning, and his men were alive, an old friend was a hero and there would be mutton for dinner. It was Sharpe’s Christmas.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bernard Cornwell was born in London, raised in Essex, and now lives mainly in the USA, with his wife. He was awarded an OBE in 2006.

  As well as the Sharpe series, he is the author of a number of other historical novels including Azincourt and his current series on the Making of England.

  For more information visit www.bernardcornwell.net

  ALSO BY BERNARD CORNWELL

  The SHARPE Series

  (in chronological order)

  Sharpe’s Tiger (1799)

  Sharpe’s Triumph (1803)

  Sharpe’s Fortress (1803)

  Sharpe’s Trafalgar (1805)

  Sharpe’s Prey (1807)

  Sharpe’s Rifles (1809)

  Sharpe’s Havoc (1809)

  Sharpe’s Eagle (1809)

  Sharpe’s Gold (1810)

  Sharpe’s Escape (1810)

  Sharpe’s Fury (1811)

  Sharpe’s Battle (1811)

  Sharpe’s Company (1812)

  Sharpe’s Sword (1812)

  Sharpe’s Enemy (1812)

  Sharpe’s Honour (1813)

  Sharpe’s Regiment (1813)

  Sharpe’s Siege (1814)

  Sharpe’s Revenge (1814)

  Sharpe’s Waterloo (1815)

  Sharpe’s Devil (1820–21)

  The SHARPE Series

  (in order of publication)

  Sharpe’s Eagle (1981)

  Sharpe’s Gold (1981)

  Sharpe’s Company (1982)

  Sharpe’s Sword (1983)

  Sharpe’s Enemy (1984)

  Sharpe’s Honour (1985)

  Sharpe’s Regiment (1986)

  Sharpe’s Siege (1987)

  Sharpe’s Rifles (1988)

  Sharpe’s Revenge (1989)

  Sharpe’s Waterloo (1990)

  Sharpe’s Devil (1992)

  Sharpe’s Battle (1995)

  Sharpe’s Tiger (1997)

  Sharpe’s Triumph (1998)

  Sharpe’s Fortress (1999)

  Sharpe’s Trafalgar (2000)

  Sharpe’s Prey (2001)

  Sharpe’s Havoc (2003)

  Sharpe’s Escape (2004)

  Sharpe’s Fury (2007)

  Azincourt

  The Fort

  The MAKING OF ENGLAND Series

  The Last Kingdom

  The Pale Horseman

  The Lords of the North

  Sword Song

  The Burning Land

  Death of Kings

  The GRAIL QUEST Series

  Harlequin

  Vagabond

  Heretic

  Stonehenge: a novel of 2000 BC

  The STARBUCK Chronicles

  Rebel

  Copperhead

  Battle Flag

  The Bloody Ground

  The WARLORD Chronicles

  The Winter King

  The Enemy of God

  Excalibur

  Gallows Thief

  By Bernard Cornwell and Susannah Kells

  A Crowning Mercy

  Fallen Angels

  Copyright

  While some of the events and characters are based on historical incidents and figures, this novel is entirely a work of fiction.

  Harper

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Hammersmith

  London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

  Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1994

  Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue recor
d for this book is available from the British Library

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  EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 978 0 00 723753 1

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