Sharpe’s Siege: The Winter Campaign, 1814

But Sharpe did not reply. He was staring at a group of seated Riflemen who sheltered from the icy wind in a fold of the sand-dunes. ‘You!’ he bellowed, ‘come here!’

The Riflemen’s faces, bland with the innocence that always greeted an officer’s anger, turned to stare at Sharpe, but one man stood, shook sand from his green jacket, and started towards the two officers. ‘Did you know?’ Sharpe turned furiously on Frederickson.

‘No,’ Frederickson lied.

Sharpe looked towards the man he had summoned. ‘You stupid bloody fool!’

‘Sir.’

‘Jesus Christ! I make you a bloody RSM and what do you do? You throw it away!’

Patrick Harper’s cheek was even more swollen from the toothache and, as though it explained all, he touched the swelling. ‘It was this, sir.’

The reply took the wind from Sharpe’s anger. He stared at the huge Irishman who gave him a lopsided grin in return. ‘Your tooth?’ Sharpe asked menacingly.

‘I went to the surgeon to have the tooth pulled, so I did, sir, and he gives me some rum against the pain, so he does, sir, and I think I must have taken a drop too much, sir, and the next thing I know is I’m on a ship, sir, and the bastard still hasn’t touched the tooth, nor has he, sir, and the only explanation I can possibly think of, sir, is that in my legally inebriated condition some kind soul presumed I was one of Captain Frederickson’s men and put me on to the Amelie.’ Harper paused in his fluent, practised lie. ‘It was the very last thing I wanted, sir. Honest!’

‘You lying bastard,’ Sharpe said.

‘Maybe, sir, but it’s the truth so help me God.’ Patrick Harper, delighted with both his exploit and explanation, grinned at his officer. The grin spoke the real truth; that the two of them always fought together and Harper was determined that it should stay that way. The grin also implied that Major Richard Sharpe would somehow avert the righteous wrath of the Army from Harper’s innocent head.

‘So your tooth still isn’t pulled?’ Sharpe asked.

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Then I’ll damn well pull it now,’ Sharpe said.

Harper took a step backwards. He was four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, with muscles to match his size, while on his shoulders were slung a rifle and his fearful seven-barrelled gun, but over his broad, swollen face there suddenly appeared a look of sheer terror. ‘You’ll not pull the tooth, sir.’

‘I damn well will.’ Sharpe turned to Frederickson. ‘Find me some pincers, Captain.’

Frederickson’s hand instinctively went to the pouch at his belt, then checked. ‘I’ll ask the men, sir.’

Harper blanched. ‘Mr Sharpe! Sir! Please!’

‘Quiet!’ Sharpe stared at the huge Ulsterman. In truth he was relieved that Harper was here, but the Army was the Army and the relief could not be betrayed. ‘You’re a damned fool, RSM. What about your son?’

‘He’s a bit too young to fight yet, sir.’ Harper grinned, and Sharpe had to look away so that he did not return the grin.

‘No pincers, sir!’ Frederickson sounded disappointed, though Sharpe suspected Sweet William had made no kind of real search for the implement. ‘You’ll want us under way, sir?’

‘Inland. Sergeant Harper!’

‘Sir?’

‘Attach yourself to Captain Frederickson’s Company and assume whatever rank he sees fit to give you.’

‘Sir!’

Like beasts of burden the Riflemen shouldered packs, canteens, weapons, greatcoats and supplies. They went eastwards into the trees, then northwards on the country road that straggled between the few marsh hamlets of this barren coast.

It was not much of a road, merely a rutted cart track that wound between brush and pine and edged past great swamps where long-legged wading birds flapped slowly into the winter air as the Riflemen passed. The Green Jackets marched fast, as they were trained to march, and always, a quarter mile ahead, the picquets signalled back towards Sharpe that the road was clear.

It seemed strange to be this deep in France. This was the land of Bonaparte, the enemy land, and between Sharpe and Bordeaux, indeed between Sharpe and Paris, there were no friendly troops. A single squadron of enemy cavalry could cut this march into butcher’s offal, yet the Green Jackets marched undisturbed and unseen.

‘If we go at this pace,’ Frederickson said, ‘we’ll overtake the Marines.’

‘It had occurred to me,’ Sharpe said mildly.

The eye-patched man stared at Sharpe. ‘You’re not thinking of taking the …’

‘No,’ Sharpe interrupted. ‘If Bampfylde wants to take the fort, he can. But if the map’s right we have to go close to Arcachon, so we might take a look at the fort before we turn eastwards.’

Patrick Harper carried the picquets’ packs and coats as punishment, but the extra weight made no difference to his marching pace. His tooth bothered him; the pain of that was foul and throbbing, but he had no other cares in the world. He had followed Sharpe because it was unthinkable to stay behind when Sharpe went off on his own. Harper had seen that happen before and the Major had nearly killed himself in Burgos Castle as a result. Besides, Jane Sharpe, giving him the oil of cloves, had suggested he stowed away, Isabella had insisted he stay with the Major, and Captain Frederickson had turned his blind eye to Harper’s presence. Harper felt he was in his proper place; with Sharpe and with a column of Riflemen marching to battle.

Their green jackets and dark trousers melded with the cloud-darkened pines. The 60th had been raised for just such terrain, the American wilderness, and Sharpe, turning sometimes to watch the men, could see how well chosen the uniform was. At a hundred paces an unmoving man could be invisible. For a moment Sharpe felt the sudden pride of a Rifleman. The Rifles, he believed as an article of his soldier’s faith, were simply, indisputably, the finest troops in all the world.

They fought like demons and were made more deadly because they were trained, unlike other infantry, to fight independently. These men, in danger, would not look to an officer or sergeant for instruction, but would know, thanks to their training, just what to do. They were mostly squat and ugly men, toothless and pinched-faced, villainous and foul-mouthed, but on a battlefield they were kings, and victory was their common coin.

They could fight and they could march. God, but they could march! In ’09, trying to reach the carnage of Talavera, the Light Division had marched forty-two hilly miles in twenty-six hours and had arrived in good order, weapons primed, and ready to fight. These men marched thus now. They did it unthinkingly, not knowing that the pace they unconsciously assumed was the fastest marching pace of all the world’s armies. They were Riflemen, the finest of the best, and they were going north to war.

While to their west, on the less happy trails that edged the tumbled dunes, the Marines faltered.

It was not their fault. For months now, on a diet of worm-infested biscuit, rotting meat, foul water and rum, they had been immured in the forecastles of the great ships that weathered the Biscay storms. They were not hardened to marching, and the sand they crossed gave treacherous footing and chafed their boots on softened skin. Their muskets, all of the heavy Sea Service pattern, seemed to grow heavier by the mile. Their chest straps, whitened and taut, constricted labouring lungs. It was a cold day, but sweat stung their eyes while the muscles at the backs of their legs burned like fire. Some of the men were burdened by ropes and grapnel hooks that they would use to scale the fort’s wall instead of the long ladders that Bampfylde had deemed unnecessary for the Marines.

‘We shall call a halt.’ Captain Bampfylde did not do it for the men’s benefit, but his own. If they laboured, he suffered. His handmade boots had rubbed his right heel raw and raised blisters on his toes. The leather band of his bicorne hat was like a ring of steel and his white breeches were cutting into his crotch like a sawhorse.

The captain was regretting his intrepidity. He had been eager to lead these men into battle, and that could not be done from the deck of the Vengeance any more than it could be done from the quarterdeck of the Scylla. That frigate, under Captain Grant, would nose into the Arcachon channel to draw the fire of what few defenders might infest the fort’s bastions. Once those defenders were occupied with the frigate, and while their gaze was fastened seawards, the Marines would assault the empty landward ramparts. It was that assault which would capture the imagination of the British public when it was printed in the Naval Gazette, not the old story of a ship bombarding a battery.

Captain of Marines Palmer saluted Bampfylde. ‘We’re behind time, sir.’

‘God damn it, Palmer, if I require your contribution then I shall ask for it!’

‘Sir!’ Palmer was unmoved by Bampfylde’s anger. Neil Palmer was ten years older than Bampfylde and too experienced to be worried by the petulance of yet another ambitious young captain who resented the fame gained by Nelson’s band of brothers. ‘I’ll put picquets out, sir?’

‘Do it!’ Bampfylde subsided against the trunk of a tree. He wanted to haul off his precious boots and dabble his sore feet in the shallows of the sea, but he dared not betray such weakness in front of his men.

‘Water, sir?’ Lieutenant Ford offered a canteen.

‘After you, Ford.’ Bampfylde knew such behaviour was proper, and he was a man eager to be seen to behave heroically in all things.

He consoled himself that his discomfort was a small price to pay for the renown that he would win this day. The Marines might come late to the fortress, but the fortress would fall just the same, and the blisters on his feet would be forgotten in the blaze of glory. He opened his watch, saw they had already rested ten minutes, but decided a few more minutes could not hurt. He stretched out tired legs, tipped his hat forward, and polished the news of victory that he would write this night.

While a hundred yards away, standing on a sudden rise of sandy soil that made a bare ridge through the thin pines, Captain Palmer stared at the countryside through a heavy, ancient telescope. Far to the north, beyond the fading ridges of sand and conifers, a rainstorm misted the land like a vast curtain. The rain lifted for a brief instant and Palmer thought he saw the malevolent, dark shape of the fort hull-down on the horizon, but, as the rain closed again on his view, he could not be certain of what he had seen.