Sharpe's Revenge Page 9

  ‘Steady, lads, steady!’ Nairn had launched his attack on an impulse, now he had to slow it down so that his men did not become ragged with fear or eagerness. ‘Watch your dressing! Steady, lads!’ He smiled as Sharpe joined him. ‘One last effort, Sharpe, just one last effort!’

  One of the Highlander’s Colours fell, was retrieved, and hoisted again. A Sergeant’s leg was sliced off at the knee by a cannonball. The pipes whipped fervour into flagging hearts.

  The French infantry was loaded and their muskets were raised. There was no sign of Calvet who must have stayed inside the redoubt. Sharpe watched the Frenchmen cock their muskets. ‘We’ll break the bastards!’ Nairn shouted. ‘We’ll break them!’

  The French infantry fired and the air was filled with the splintering volley and the whiplash hiss of its bullets. Smoke gouted thick as blood from the cannon embrasures and Sharpe saw the ground ahead of him churn with the strike of canister. Nairn staggered backwards and Sharpe turned to him in alarm.

  ‘It’s only my leg, man! It’s nothing! Go on! Go on!’ Nairn was wounded, but still exultant. He limped, but would not let Sharpe stay with him. ‘Give them a volley, Richard, now’s your moment!’

  ‘Brigade!’ Sharpe’s voice was huge. ‘Brigade will halt! Present!’

  The redcoats stopped. They raised their heavy muskets. The French battalion knew what was coming and frantically tried to reload. Sharpe raised his sword, paused a heartbeat, then swept it down. ‘Fire!’

  A crashing thunderous volley, a spew of acrid smoke, and no time to wonder what damage the bullets had done. ‘Charge!’

  ‘Take the boys home, Richard!’ Nairn called. ‘Take them home!’

  ‘Charge!’ Sharpe felt the rage rising, the unreasonable rage of battle, the anger that would only be slaked by victory. It was this same pride and rage that had made Taplow spur ahead of his men to certain death, and which had made Nairn lead his men into the cauldron that was the redoubt’s killing ground. ‘Charge!’ A musket ball slapped past his face. Sharpe could see the faces of the French infantry now, and they looked desperately young and desperately frightened.

  ‘Charge!’ That was Nairn, behind Sharpe now, and the word seemed to hurl the remnants of the brigade into the stench of bodies and blood among which the enemy stood. The Highlanders ran at the French infantry who had nowhere to retreat. The enemy hesitated, and were lost. Nairn’s English battalion was coming at their flank.

  Scottish bayonets went forward and came back bloody. The clansmen were old in war, fighting conscripts. Sharpe, on their flank, watched the enemy run, but, in their panic, the French ran towards the closing English. One youngster ran straight towards Sharpe, then, seeing the English officer, the boy raised his bayonet to strike. Sharpe disdainfully stepped to one side and tripped the boy. He left him on the ground for one of Frederickson’s men to disarm or kill.

  A cannon crashed canister into the mass of struggling men, killing both Scot and Frenchmen alike.

  ‘Give them fire!’ Frederickson shouted, and his skirmishers fired up at the French embrasures. A gunner was flung backwards. A voice bellowed in French from the palisade. Nairn’s Highlanders were already clawing at the sloping earth wall of the fort’s southern face.

  ‘Come right! Come right!’ Sharpe shouted at the makeshift English battalion to angle their advance and follow him to the redoubt’s western wall.

  Sharpe jumped the ditch and reached for the palisade. A musket flamed at him. His foot slipped on the wet earth and he fell back to the ditch’s foot as Frederickson’s men leaped past him. Sergeant Harper had his seven-barrelled gun unslung. He fired it blindly upwards and three Frenchmen were thrown back to make a space where the Riflemen could reach the top. Sharpe went after them. A man’s blood soaked his face, a body fell on him, but he pushed it aside and helped another man tug at the palisade. A splinter of wood ripped his palm open as he tugged, but then the parapet cracked outwards to make a space through which a man could pass. A French bayonet reached for them, but Sharpe stabbed with his sword and raked the man’s forearm so that the musket and blade dropped.

  A Greenjacket went into the gap, was shot, then another man pulled him aside. Harper was wrenching at another part of the barricade, pulling out an earth-filled wicker basket that collapsed a whole section of the defences on to a wounded redcoat. Harper was screaming his own Gaelic challenge. Redcoats were mixed with the Greenjackets, the whole mass of men scrabbling and tearing at the mud bank and timber palisade. They trampled over the wounded and fought their way up to where French muskets hammered and bayonets stabbed down. One Frenchman stabbed too far, his arm was seized, and the man screamed as he was tugged down to the waiting blades. Sharpe was wedged in a gap of the palisade now, desperately trying to fend off a bayonet, when suddenly a whole section of the wall behind him collapsed inwards under the weight of attackers. There were shouts of victory, and the British were suddenly spilling on to the narrow firestep, then leaping down into the courtyard where General Calvet tried to line his men into a solid mass, but Nairn’s Highlanders had already pierced the southern wall, and the first of those Scots now carried their bayonets towards Calvet’s frightened men. The courtyard had been left like a slaughterhouse from the two previous attacks.

  ‘Close on them! Close!’ Sharpe shouted, then jumped down to the courtyard.

  Now it was blood and stench and blades in a very small place. A French officer tried to duel with Sharpe, but the Rifleman had no time for such heroics and simply threw himself forward, past the man’s lunge, and punched the heavy sword’s guard into the man’s face. The Frenchman fell backwards and Sharpe kicked him in the ribs. Sharpe would have left the man there, but the French officer fumbled at his belt to draw a pistol and Sharpe forgot his superstition about killing, reversed his sword, and thrust the blade down once. A man came at Sharpe with a bayonet, but two Rifle sword-bayonets caught the Frenchman first. A Highland officer disembowelled a gunner with a sweep of the claymore, then hacked at the dead man’s head to make certain of his death.

  Calvet was swearing at his men; tugging them into line, cursing them for chicken-livered bastards. A Scots officer came close enough to the General to threaten him with a claymore, but Calvet almost casually parried the blow then lunged his own sword into the Scotsman’s belly before turning back to shout at his men to stand fast and fight the God-damn bastards off.

  Calvet’s men were mostly young conscripts who had fought like demons this day, but Nairn’s attack had drained their last courage. Despite their General, they edged back.

  A few fought on. A French gunner swung a rammer like a great club. Sharpe ducked under the swing, then lunged. The Frenchman looked oddly surprised as the blade punctured his belly. A Highlander finished the job for Sharpe. A piper was on the southern rampart, flaying the Scots on with his wild music.

  Sharpe’s sword handle was slippery with blood. Calvet’s men were breaking and running. The first of them were already spilling over the northern wall. Sharpe looked for Calvet and saw him in the centre of a few moustached veterans and beneath the bright eagle standard. ‘Calvet!’ Sharpe shouted the name as a challenge. ‘Calvet!’

  The Frenchman saw Sharpe. Oddly, instead of bridling at the challenge, he raised his sword in a mock salute. Sharpe struggled to get close to the man, but a sudden rush of Highlanders came between him and the group of Frenchmen. The Colours of three British battalions were in the redoubt now, the mass of men was overwhelming, and Calvet’s last staunch defenders had to give way. They had fought well, but now they just wanted to be out of this courtyard of blood. They retreated calmly, firing their muskets to hold the Scots at bay, then broke to scramble across the northern parapet.

  ‘Man the firestep!’ Sharpe ran to the northern parapet.

  ‘Spike those damned guns!’ That was the Scots Colonel.

  Frederickson’s men were on the northern parapet, firing at the retreating French. Sharpe joined them, unslung his rifle and looked for Calvet. He saw the
General walking away, not bothering to run, but just slashing at weeds with his sword as though he took a walk in the country. Sharpe aimed his rifle dead at the small of Calvet’s back, but could not bear to pull the trigger. He twitched the barrel up and to one side before firing so that the bullet slapped past the French General’s right ear.

  Calvet turned. He saw the Riflemen lining the parapet. None fired at him, for his calm demeanour spoke of a bravery they could admire. He was a beaten man, but a brave one. He stared at the Riflemen for a second, then bowed an ironic bow. As he straightened up he made an obscene gesture, then walked quietly on. He only began to run when British troops, flooding either side of the redoubt, threatened to cut him off. Ahead of Calvet the smoke blossomed as the Spaniards renewed their assault on the ridge’s northern end. That assault, and the fall of the large fort, broke what spirit was left in Marshal Soult’s army.

  The French ran. They ran down the ridge’s eastern face and towards the bridges that crossed the canal and led to the city. Sharpe, standing on the captured firestep, could at last stare down at the spires and towers and pinnacles and roofs of Toulouse. He could see the semi-circle of smoke that marked the British positions to the city’s east and south. It was like looking at a woodcut of a siege, taken from some old book about Marlborough’s wars. He stared, oblivious of the sudden silence on the ridge, and all he could think of was that he was alive.

  Sharpe turned away from the city and saw Sergeant Harper alive and well. The big Irishman was cutting a canteen off a Frenchman’s belt. A bugle called victory. A wounded Frenchman cursed his pain and tried to stand. A Highland Sergeant was admiring a French officer’s sword which he had taken as a trophy. Men were ladling water from gun-buckets and pouring it down their faces. A dog ran with a length of intestines in its mouth. A British Lieutenant was dying at the base of the empty French flagpole. The man was blinking desperately, as though he knew that if he let his eyelids stay closed he would slip into eternal night.

  Frederickson came and stood beside Sharpe and the two Rifle officers turned to stare down into the enemy city. ‘Tomorrow,’ Frederickson said, ‘I suppose we’ll have to assault the damned place?’

  ‘It won’t be us, William.’ Sharpe knew that bloody business would be given to other battalions. The men who had taken this ridge had earned their pay and the proof of it was in the horror all around. Dead men, wounded men, dying horses, broken gun carriages, smoke, litter; it was a field after battle, the last battle. Surely, Sharpe thought, it had to be the last battle.

  Sharpe found a cannon’s cleaning rag and wiped his sword clean. He had wet the blade after all, but soon, he thought, he would hang this long sword on a country wall and let it gather dust. To his north British colours advanced along the ridge as fresh battalions hunted down the last nests of stubborn defenders. The smoke was thinning to a misty haze. There were Spanish colours visible at the ridge’s far crest; proof that this day’s battle was won, even if the city itself had yet to fall. Sharpe suddenly laughed. ‘I had a sudden urge to take Calvet’s eagle. Did you recognize him?’

  ‘I did.’ Frederickson offered his canteen to Sharpe. ‘Be glad you didn’t try to take his bird. You wouldn’t be alive if you had.’

  A bagpipe suddenly sounded, and something plangent in its notes made Sharpe and Frederickson turn.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Frederickson said softly.

  Four Highlanders carried a litter made of enemy jackets threaded on to enemy muskets. On the litter, his white hair hanging, was Nairn.

  Sharpe jumped down to the blood-drenched earth of the courtyard. He crossed to the body just as the Highlanders lowered it to the ground. ‘He’s dead, sir.’ One of the men saw Sharpe’s face and offered the bleak news.

  ‘He said it was his leg.’ Sharpe frowned at the old man who had been his friend.

  ‘His lung as well, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Tears came to Sharpe’s eyes, then fell down his bloodied check. ‘I was to have had supper with him tonight.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  They buried Nairn in the centre of the redoubt that the Scotsman had captured. A bagpipe played a lament for him, and a chaplain said a Gaelic prayer for him, and his beloved Highlanders fired a volley towards the northern stars for him.

  And in the morning, when Sharpe awoke with a parched mouth and a heart that lurched with sorrow when he recalled the Scotsman’s death, it was discovered that Marshal Soult had abandoned Toulouse. He had marched through the gap in the British ring, and he had left the city that now was flaunted with white flags to welcome its enemies. Toulouse had surrendered.

  Captain William Frederickson, his false teeth and eyepatch restored to give his scarred face a semblance of respectability, discovered Sharpe in a wineshop that lay close to Toulouse’s prefecture. The wineshop was crowded, but something about Sharpe’s scarred face had dissuaded anyone from sharing his table. It was just after dusk and two days after Soult had abandoned the city to the British. ‘Have you taken to drinking alone?’ Frederickson asked.

  ‘I never abandoned the habit.’ Sharpe pushed the bottle of wine across the table. ‘You’re looking damned cheerful.’

  ‘I am damned cheerful.’ Frederickson paused because a loud and prolonged huzza sounded from the prefecture next door. Field-Marshal the Lord Wellington was giving a dinner to celebrate his capture of the city. All the prominent citizens of Toulouse were attending, and all wore the white cockade of the French monarchy and were swearing that they had never supported the upstart Corsican tyrant. ‘It makes one wonder just who it is we’ve-been fighting all these years.’ Frederickson straddled a back-to-front chair and nodded thanks for the wine. ‘But we’re fighting them no longer because the Emperor has abdicated. The God-damned bloody Emperor has thrown in his hand. Allow me to toast your most excellent, and now quite safe, health.’

  Frederickson had spoken in a most matter-of-fact tone, so much so that Sharpe did not really comprehend what his friend had just said.

  ‘The war, my dear friend, is over,’ Frederickson insisted.

  Sharpe stared at Frederickson and said nothing.

  ‘It’s true,’ Frederickson said, ‘as I live and breathe, and may I be cursed if I lie, but a British officer has come from Paris. Think of that! A British officer from Paris! In fact a whole slew of British officers have come from Paris! Bonaparte has abdicated, Paris has fallen, the war is over, and we have won!’ Frederickson could no longer contain his excitement. He stood and, ignoring the majority of the customers who were French, climbed on to the chair and shouted his news to the whole tavern. ‘Boney’s abdicated! Paris has fallen, the war’s over, and we’ve won! By Christ, we’ve won!’

  There was a moment’s silence, then the cheers began. Spanish and Portuguese officers sought a hasty translation, then added their own noise to the celebration. The only men who did not cheer were the civilian-clothed and moustached French veterans who stared sullenly into their wine cups. One such man, the news interpreted to him, wept.

  Frederickson shouted to a serving girl that he wanted champagne, cheroots, and brandy. ‘We’ve won!’ he exulted to Sharpe. ‘The damn thing’s over!’

  ‘When did Boney abdicate?’ Sharpe asked.

  ‘Christ knows. Last week? Two weeks ago?’

  ‘Before the battle?’ Sharpe insisted.

  Frederickson shrugged. ‘Before the battle, yes.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Sharpe momentarily closed his eyes. So Nairn’s death had been for nothing? All the blood on the high ridge had been spilt for nothing?

  Then, suddenly, he forgot that irony in an overwhelming and astonishing wash of relief. The bells of Europe could ring because the war was over. There would be no more danger. No more summoning the nerve to assault an enemy-held wall, and no more standing rock still as an enemy battalion took aim. No more cannons, no more lancers, no more skirmish line. No more death. It was over. No more waking in the night sheeted with sweat and thinking of a sword blade’s threat. The w
ar was over, and the last ranks had been closed up, and the whole damn thing was done. Europe had been rinsed with blood, and it was over. He would live for ever now, and that thought made Sharpe laugh, and suddenly he was shaking hands with allied officers who crowded about the table to hear the details of Frederickson’s news. Napoleon, the ogre, the tyrant, the scourge of Europe, the damned Corsican, the upstart, the beast, was finished.

  Someone began singing, while other officers were dancing between the tables where the Emperor’s veterans sat keeping their thoughts hidden.

  Brandy and champagne arrived. Frederickson, without asking, poured the red wine from Sharpe’s cup on to the sawdust covered floor and replaced it with champagne. ‘A toast! To peace!’

  ‘To peace!’

  ‘To Dorset!’ Frederickson beamed.

  ‘To Dorset!’ Sharpe wondered whether a letter had come from England, then forgot the thought to savour this astounding news. It was over! No more canister, no more bayonets, no more shivering on long night marches, no more stench of French cavalry, no more sabres chopping down, no more bullets. Easter had triumphed and death was defeated. ‘I must write to Jane,’ Sharpe said, and he wondered whether she was celebrating the news in some Dorset village. There would be oxen roasting, hogsheads of ale, church bells ringing. It was over.

  ‘You can write to Jane tomorrow,’ Frederickson ordered, ‘for tonight we get drunk.’

  ‘Tonight we get drunk,’ Sharpe agreed, and by one o‘clock they were on the city’s walls where they sang nonsense and shouted their triumph towards the British bivouac fires that lay to the city’s west. By two o’clock they were searching for another wineshop, but instead found a group of cavalry sergeants who insisted on sharing some plundered champagne with the Rifle officers. At three o‘clock, arm in arm to keep themselves upright, Sharpe and Frederickson staggered through the abandoned French fortifications and crossed the wooden bridge over the canal where two friendly sentries prevented them from falling into the water. At four o’clock they arrested Sergeant Harper on a charge of being sober, and at five o‘clock they found him not guilty because he no longer was. At six o’clock Major Richard Sharpe was being sick, and at seven o’clock he staggered to Nairn’s vacant tent and gave instructions that he was not to be woken up ever again. Ever.