Sharpe's Skirmish (2 page)

And Napoleon had sent Ducos to Spain because the Marshals were failing.

They were being beaten! They were losing eagles! The armies of France, faced by a rabid pack of Spanish peasants and a despicable little British army, were being trounced. Ducos's responsibility was to analyse those defeats and inform the Emperor what should be done, but no one in Spain knew that was the limit of Ducos's instructions. They just knew that Ducos had the Emperor's ear, and if Ducos, having made his analysis, then suggested a remedy, the Marshals were inclined to listen to him.

And now, just after Ducos's arrival, Marmont had been destroyed!

Humiliated! His so-called Army of Portugal was running through Spain as hard as it could, and even Madrid was being abandoned. Only Soult, Marshal of the Army of the South, was winning victories, but what use were victories over rag-tag Spanish armies when the real war was being fought in Castile?

So Ducos had ridden south, protected from the guerilleros by six hundred cavalrymen, and he had presented Marshal Soult with opportunity, though at first Soult had been unwilling to grasp it. "I cannot spare any men, monsieur," he told Ducos. "Wherever you look there are guerilleros! And General Ballesteros's army is intact."

Ballesteros's Spanish army was intact, Ducos thought, because Soult had not destroyed it. He had merely defeated it, and so driven it back to the protection of the great guns of the British garrison at Gibraltar. Defeat was not enough. The enemy had to be annihilated! There was a lack of audacity among the French commanders in Spain, Ducos had decided. They feared losing battles, and so did not take the risks which might let them win great victories.

"Ballesteros does not count," Ducos said, "he is a pawn. The guerilleros do not count. They are bandits. Only Wellington's army counts."

"And part of his army is on my northern flank," Soult pointed out. "I have General Hill to my north, Ballesteros to my south, and you want me to send men to help Marmont?"

"No," Ducos said, "the Emperor wants you to send men to defeat Wellington."

Soult looked at the map. The mention of Napoleon had stilled his protests, and in truth the idea that Major Ducos had suggested was not unappealing.

It was daring, very daring. By itself it might not destroy Wellington, but it would unbalance him and bring him hurrying back to the Portuguese border. Such a retreat would save Madrid, it would give Marmont time to reform his army and it would damage Wellington's reputation.

Take a few thousand men, Ducos had suggested, and march them eastwards until they could cross the headwaters of the Guadiana. There they must strike north, through Madridejos to Toledo, where the bridge over the Tagus was still in French hands. The British would find nothing odd in such a manouevre, indeed they would assume that Soult was merely retreating northwards like the rest of the French armies. But from Toledo, Ducos urged, the force should strike north west towards the roads on which Wellington's supply convoys travelled. To reach those vulnerable roads they must cross the Sierra de Gredos, then bridge the deep, fast-flowing River Tormes. That was the problem, crossing the river, but Ducos had identified a little-used bridge guarded by a mediaeval fortress called San Miguel. At best, Ducos told Soult, San Miguel would be garrisoned by a company of Spaniards, maybe two, and once across the bridge the French would be in the flat country across which the British supply line ran from Portugal. "The British believe they are safe," Ducos urged Soult. "They believe there is not a Frenchman within a hundred miles of those roads!

They are sleeping."

And if Soult's picked force could come down from the Sierra de Gredos like a pack of wolves then for a week, no more, they could destroy, capture and kill, before they would need to march away. A ring of retreating British troops would otherwise tighten about them, but that week could save the French in Spain. And it would also make the Emperor very grateful to Nicolas Jean-de Dieu Soult, Duke of Dalmatia.

So Soult agreed.

And picked six thousand men, of whom a third were cavalry, and put them under the command of his best cavalry general, Jean Herault.

Who now led his men north through Toledo, with Ducos by his side, a sleeping enemy ahead and glory in his grasp.

Major Tubbs insisted that one small room of the fortress, which only had four usable rooms on its three floors, be described as an officer's mess, and there Sharpe, Teresa, Major Tubbs, Lieutenant Price and Ensign Hickey ate. Sharpe, perhaps wanting to unsettle Lucius Tubbs, had insisted on inviting the major's foreman, Mister MacKeon, and so the Scotsman, who was a tall, frowning man with huge hands, sat awkwardly at the table which was far too small for six people.

Ensign Hickey could not take his eyes from Teresa. He did try once or twice, and even ventured a conversation with MacKeon, but MacKeon just scowled at him and Hickey's watery eyes inevitably strayed back to Teresa who was illuminated by the large candles that the village priest had carried up from the church. The flamelight cast intriguing shadows on Teresa's face and Hickey stared at her mournfully.

"You've never seen a woman before, Mister Hickey?" Sharpe asked.

"Yes, sir. Yes, I have. Yes." Hickey nodded vigorously. He was sixteen, new to the battalion and in awe of Captain Sharpe. "Sorry, sir," he mumbled, reddening.

"Stare away, Hickey," Harry Price said, "I do! Damned watchable is Mrs Sharpe, if you'll forgive me saying so, Ma'am."

"I forgive you, Harry." Teresa said.

"The first woman who ever has," Sharpe said.

"Not fair, Richard," Price said, "I'm forever being forgiven by women."

Hickey was again gazing at Teresa and, realising that Sharpe was looking at him, he tried to make conversation. "You really do fight, Ma'am?"

"When I have to," Teresa said.

"Against the French, Ma'am?" Hickey suggested.

"Who the hell else?" Sharpe growled.

"Against all men who are rude," Teresa said, dazzling Hickey with a smile.

"But I have fought the French, Mister Hickey, since the day they killed my family."

"Oh, my Lord," Hickey said. Such things did not happen in Danbury, Essex, where his family farmed three hundred placid acres.

"And I am at San Miguel to fight them again," Teresa said.

"No French here, Ma'am," Major Tubbs said happily. "Not a frog within hopping distance."

"And if one does come within hopping distance," Teresa said, "then my men will see them coming. We are your cavalry scouts."

"And glad we are to have you, Ma'am," Tubbs said gallantly.

John MacKeon, who until now had stayed silent, suddenly looked at Sharpe, and the fierceness of the Scotsman's gaze was so intense that it brought an awkward silence to the cramped table. "You no remember me?" He said to Sharpe.

Sharpe looked at the craggy face with its thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes. "Should I, Mister MacKeon?"

"I was with you, Sharpe, when you crossed the wall at Gawilghur."

"Then I should remember you," Sharpe said.

"Ah, no," MacKeon said dismissively. "I was just another soldier. One of Campbell's men in the 96th, ye remember them?"

Shape nodded. "I remember them. I remember Captain Campbell too."

"There's a laddie who's done well for himself," MacKeon said, "and no more than he's deserved, I dare say. It was a great day's work ye both did."

"We all did it," Sharpe said.

"But you were first across the wall, man. I remember seeing you climb and I thought to myself, there's a dead man if ever I did see one!"

"What happened?" Teresa asked.

Sharpe shrugged. "It was in India. A battle. We won."

Teresa raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. "What a wonderful story teller you are, Richard. A battle. In India. We won."

"Aye," MacKeon said, shaking his head. "Gawilghur! A rare fight, that one.

A rare fight. A horde of heathen, there were, a horde! And this wee laddie," he gestured at Sharpe, "scrambled up a cliff like a monkey. A dead man if ever I did see one. Aye," he nodded at Sharpe, "I thought it was you."

"So what did happen?" Tubbs demanded, echoing Teresa's earlier plea.

"It was a battle," Sharpe said, getting to his feet. "In India."

"And you won?" Teresa asked earnestly.

"We did," Sharpe said, "we did." He paused, thinking, and it almost seemed he was going to tell the story, but instead he touched a finger to the long scar that ran up one cheek and which gave him such a grim appearance.

"I fetched this scar in that fight," he said, then shook his head, "but if you'll forgive me, it's time to check the sentries." He picked up his shako, rifle and sword belt and ducked out the door.

"It was a battle," Teresa said, imitating Sharpe, "in India. We won. So what really happened, Mister MacKeon?"

"He just told you, didn't he? It was a battle in India, and we won it."

The Scotsman scowled and lapsed into his previous silence.

Sharpe crossed the bridge, spoke to the two men who stood guard at the southern end, then went back to the picquets at the northern side, and afterwards he climbed the wooden ladders in the fortress, past the room where Hickey still stared forlornly at Teresa, and found Patrick Harper on the southern parapet. Harper nodded a greeting, then passed his canteen to Sharpe.

"I'm not thirsty, Pat."

"That's medicine in there, so it is."

"Ah," Sharpe tipped the canteen and drank some of the red wine. "So how many bottles did you keep back?"

"None that I know of, sir," Harper said in a voice of injured innocence, "but I might have missed a few. It's dark in that store-room, so it is, especially when the door's shut, and it's easy to miss a few dark bottles in a black place." He drank from the canteen. "But the boys got your message, Mister Sharpe, so they did, and if one of them gets drunk I'll kill him myself."

"And keep Mister Price away from the bottles," Sharpe said. Lieutenant Price was a good companion, but much too fond of liquor.

"I'll do my best, so I will," Harper said, then stared south down the long white road that finally vanished among the distant hills. There was a half moon in the western sky and the olive groves, which filled the landscape to the west, looked silvered and calm. The river slid under the bridge, swirling on its long loop about the plain where Marshal Marmont had been thrashed by Wellington. "Are we expecting trouble here?" Harper asked.

"No, Pat," Sharpe said. "Soft duty."

"Soft duty, eh? Then why give it to you?"

"I'm still recovering from the wound." Sharpe said, patting his belly where a Frenchman's pistol bullet had injured him.

"So it's a convalescent, you are, eh?" Harper chuckled. "Good job there's still some medicine about the place."

Sharpe leaned on the stone parapet. He wondered how old the fortress was.

Five hundred years? More? It was in dreadful condition, nothing more than a square stone shell of weathered walls that were thick with weeds and so riven with cracks that they looked as if one good kick would bring them down. The fort must have been abandoned years ago, but the present war had revived the its usefulness as a look-out post and so the Spanish, and then the French, had rebuilt its collapsed floors in timber, and put a staircase of wooden ladders up to the western parapet. An original stone stairway still ran down to the courtyard where an archway, missing its gates, opened onto the northern approach to the bridge. The store-room where the muskets had been found occupied the whole western side of the fort and was the only stone room left in San Miguel. It had an elegant curved ceiling and Sharpe guessed the room must have once been the main hall, or perhaps even a chapel. Then, after the rest of the fort's interior collapsed, someone had driven a door through the northern wall and used the store-room as a cattle byre. Now, for a time at least, the ruined fort had been restored to martial duty, though it had precious little value except as an observation post. The place would not last five minutes against a cannonade.

Sharpe stared at the moonlit fields across the river. There was a farm just two hundred yards down the road, a small place with a white-walled yard and a tower above the entrance gate. Good place for a battery of cannon, he thought, because the artillerymen could knock loopholes in the farmyard wall and so be safe from rifle fire, and the frogs would have the fort reduced to dust and rubble in less time than it would take to soft boil an egg, and then their infantry would come from the olive groves on the other side of the road, and how the hell would he defend San Miguel then? But there would be no attack, he told himself, and even if there were, the partisans in the Sierra de Gredos would send warning of the French approach and Sharpe would have a full day in which to summon reinforcements from Salamanca.

But that would not happen. He was only supposed to stay here one week, after which a Spanish garrison would arrive. One week for Tubbs to sort through the captured muskets, and that week should be uneventful. A rest.

"I don't know why they bother to send a full Commissary to do this work,"

Sharpe said, staring down into the courtyard where Tubbs's ox-wagon waited for the muskets.

"I don't think 'they' sent him," Harper said, "he sent himself, sir, if you follow my meaning."

"Which I don't."

Harper held out a huge right hand and rocked it to and fro. "There's five thousand muskets, sir, near enough, and who's to say how many Mister Tubbs will condemn? And who's to know when he sells the condemned ones? There's a pretty penny to be made, so there is."

"He's on the take?"

"Who isn't?" Harper asked, "and Mister MacKeon reckons Tubbs will condemn at least half of them, and if they only fetched a shilling apiece that'd be a fair profit."

"I should have known the bastard was on the fiddle," Sharpe growled.

"How were you to know?" Harper asked. "I wouldn't have guessed if Mister MacKeon hadn't told me. He's an interesting fellow. You know he was once a swoddy? In the 96th, he was. He reckoned he'd seen you in India."

"So he says."

"And he says you took a fortress all by yourself?"