The enemy, by a few, well-aimed rifle shots, had been denied artillery and thrown into sudden chaos. Now was the time for Sharpe to unleash his other weapon. ‘Lieutenant?’
Michael Trumper-Jones, who was trying to hide the damp white flag that drooped from his sabre tip, looked at Sharpe. ‘Sir?’
‘Go to the enemy, Lieutenant, give them my compliments, and suggest that they lay down their weapons.’
Trumper-Jones stared at the tall, dark-faced Rifleman. ‘That they surrender, sir?’
Sharpe frowned at him. ‘You’re not suggesting that we surrender, are you?’
‘No, sir.’ Trumper-Jones shook his head a little too emphatically. He was wondering how to persuade fifteen hundred Frenchmen to surrender to four hundred wet, disconsolate British infantrymen. ‘Of course not, sir.’
‘Tell them we’ve got a Battalion in reserve here, that there’s six more behind them, that we’ve got cavalry in the hills, that we’ve got guns coming up. Tell them any goddamned lie you like! But give them my compliments and suggest that enough men have died. Tell them they have time to destroy their Colours.’ He looked over the bridge. The French were scrambling up the rocks, yet still enough rifle shots, muffled by the damp air, sounded to tell Sharpe that men died wastefully in the afternoon. ‘Go on, Lieutenant! Tell them they have fifteen minutes or I will attack! Bugler?’
‘Sir?’
‘Sound the Reveille. Keep it sounding till the Lieutenant reaches the enemy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The French, warned by the bugle, watched the lone horseman ride towards them with his white handkerchief held aloft. Politely, they ordered their own men to cease firing at the elusive Riflemen in the rocks.
The smoke of the fight drifted away in a shower of windblown rain as Trumper-Jones disappeared into a knot of French officers. Sharpe turned round. ‘Stand easy!’
The five companies relaxed. Sharpe looked to the river bank. ‘Sergeant Harper!’
‘Sir!’ A huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, came from the bank. He was one of the Riflemen who, with Sharpe, had been stranded in this Battalion of redcoats as part of the flotsam of war. Although the South Essex wore red and carried the short-range musket, this man, like the other Riflemen of Sharpe’s old Company, still wore the green uniform and carried the rifle. Harper stopped by Sharpe. ‘You think the buggers will give in?’
‘They haven’t got any choice. They know they’re trapped. If they can’t get rid of us within the hour, they’re done for.’
Harper laughed. If any man was a friend of Sharpe’s it was this Sergeant. They had shared every battlefield together in Spain and Portugal, and the only thing that Harper could not share was the guilt that haunted Sharpe since his wife’s death.
Sharpe rubbed his hands against the unseasonal cold. ‘I want some tea, Patrick. You have my permission to make some.’
Harper grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’ He spoke with the raw accent of Ulster.
The tea was still warm in Sharpe’s cupped hands when Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones returned with the French Colonel. Sharpe had already ordered the fake Colours to be lowered and now he went forward to meet his forlorn enemy. He refused to take the man’s sword. The Colonel, who knew he could not take this bridge without his guns, agreed to the terms. He took consolation, he said, in surrendering to a soldier of Major Sharpe’s repute.
Major Sharpe thanked him. He offered him tea.
Two hours later, when General Preston arrived with his five Battalions, puzzled because he had heard no musketry ahead of him, he found fifteen hundred French prisoners, three captured guns, and four wagons of supplies. The French muskets were piled on the roadway. The plunder they had brought from their garrisoned village was in the packs of Sharpe’s men. Not one of the South Essex, nor one of Frederickson’s Riflemen, was even wounded. The French had lost seven men, with another twenty-one wounded.
‘Congratulations, Sharpe!’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Officer after officer offered him congratulations. He shook them off. He explained that the French really had no choice, they could not have broken his position without guns, yet still the congratulations came until, shy with embarrassment, he walked back to the bridge.
He crossed the seething water and found the South Essex’s Quartermaster, a plump officer named Collip who had accompanied the half Battalion on its night-time march.
Sharpe backed Collip into a cleft of the rocks. Sharpe’s face was grim as death. ‘You’re a lucky man, Mr Collip.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Collip looked terrified. He had joined the South Essex only two months before.
‘Tell me why you’re a lucky man, Mr Collip?’
Collip swallowed nervously. ‘There’ll be no punishment, sir?’
‘There never would have been any punishment, Mr Collip.’
‘No, sir?’
‘Because it was my fault. I believed you when you said you could take the baggage off my hands. I was wrong. What are you?’
‘Very sorry, sir.’
In the night Sharpe and his Captains had gone ahead with Frederickson’s Riflemen. He had gone ahead to show them the path they must take, and he had left Collip, with the Lieutenants, to bring the men on. He had gone back and discovered Collip at the edge of a deep ravine that had been crossed with harsh difficulty. Sharpe had led the Riflemen over, climbing down one steep bank, wading an ice-cold stream that was waist deep with the water of this wet spring, then scrambling up the far bank with dripping, freezing clothes.
When he returned for the five companies he had found failure waiting for him.
Mr Collip, Quartermaster, had decided to make the crossing easier for the redcoats. He had made a rope out of musket slings, a great loop that could be endlessly pulled over the chasm, and on the rope he had slung across the ravine all the men’s weapons, packs, canteens, and haversacks. On the last pass the knotted slings had come undone and all the South Essex’s musket ammunition had gone down into the stream.
When the French approached the bridge only Sharpe’s Riflemen had ammunition. The French could have taken the bridge with one volley of musketry because Sharpe had nothing with which to oppose them.
‘Never, Mr Collip, ever, separate a man from his weapons and ammunition. Do you promise me that?’
Collip nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I think you owe me a bottle of something, Mr Collip.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’
‘Good day, Mr Collip.’
Sharpe walked away. He smiled suddenly, perhaps because the clouds in the west had parted and there was a sudden shaft of red sunlight that glanced down to the scene of his victory. He looked for Patrick Harper, stood with his old Riflemen, and drank tea with them. ‘A
