oarsmen were grunting with the effort of fighting the tide’s last ebb as the barge rounded the harbour’s northern mole. Sharpe understood well enough what was happening. A simple cutting out expedition, necessitating the capture of a coastal fort, was needed to release the chasse-marées, but ambitious officers, eager to make a name for themselves in the waning months of the war, wished to turn that mundane operation into a flight of fancy. Sharpe, who would make the reconnaissance inland, was ordered to blunt their hopes.
The steersman pointed the boat’s prow towards a flight of green-slimed steps. The white-painted barge, in smoother water now, cut swiftly towards the quay. The rain became tempestuous, slicking the quay’s stones darker and drumming on the top of Sharpe’s shako.
‘In oars!’ the steersman shouted.
The white bladed oars rose like wings and the craft coasted in a smooth curve to the foot of the steps. Sharpe looked up. The harbour wall, sheer and black and wet, reared above him like a cliff. ‘How high is that?’ he asked Elphinstone.
The Colonel squinted upwards. ‘Eighteen feet?’ Then Elphinstone saw the point of Sharpe’s question and shrugged. ‘Let’s hope Wigram’s right and they’ve stripped the Teste de Buch of defenders.’
Because if the fort’s enceinte was defended Sharpe would have no chance, none, and his men would die so that the naval officer could blame the Army for failure. That was a chilling thought for a winter’s dusk in which the rain slanted from a steel-grey sky to pursue Sharpe through the alleys to where his wife sewed up a rent in his old jacket; his battle-jacket, the green jacket that he would wear to a fortress wall that waited for him in Arcachon.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I suppose,’ Richard Sharpe said harshly, ‘that the Army couldn’t find any real soldiers?’
‘That’s about the cut of it,’ the Rifle captain replied. ‘Mind you, I suppose the Army couldn’t find any real commanding officers either?’
Sharpe laughed. Colonel Elphinstone had done his best, and that best was very good indeed for, if Sharpe could not take his own men into battle, then there was no unit he would rather lead than Captain William Frederickson’s men of the 60th Rifles. He took Frederickson’s hand. ‘I’m glad, William.’
‘We’re not unhappy ourselves.’ Frederickson was a man of villainous, even vile, appearance. His left eye was gone and the socket was covered by a mildewed patch. Most of his right ear had been torn away by a bullet while two of his front teeth were clumsy fakes. All the wounds had been taken on the battlefield.
Frederickson’s men, with clumsy and affectionate wit, called him ‘Sweet William’. The 60th, raised to fight against the Indian tribes in America, was still known as the Royal American Rifles, though half the Company were Germans, a quarter were Spaniards enrolled during the long war, and the rest were British except for a single, harsh-faced man who alone justified his regiment’s old name. Sharpe had fought alongside this Company two years before and, seeing the bitter face, the name came back to him. ‘That’s the American. Taylor, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Frederickson and Sharpe stood far enough from the two paraded Companies so their voices could not be overheard by the men.
‘We might come up against some Jonathons,’ Sharpe said. ‘There’s some bugger called Killick skulking in Arcachon. Will it worry Taylor if he has to fight his countrymen?’
Frederickson shrugged. ‘Leave him to me, sir.’
Two Companies of the green-jacketed Riflemen had been given to Sharpe. Frederickson commanded one, a Lieutenant Minver the other, and together they numbered one hundred and twenty-three men. Not many, Sharpe thought, to assault a fortress on the French coast. He walked further along the quay with Frederickson, stopping by a fish cart that dripped bloody scales into a puddle. ‘Between you and me, William, it’s a mess.’
‘I thought it might be.’
‘We leave tomorrow to capture a fortress. It isn’t supposed to be heavily defended, but no one’s sure. After that, God knows what happens. There’s a madman who wants us to invade France, but between you and me we’re not.’
Frederickson grinned, then turned and looked at the two Companies of Riflemen. ‘We’re capturing a fort all by our little selves?’
‘The Navy says a few Marines might be well enough to help us.’
‘That’s very decent of them.’ Frederickson stared at the great bulk of the Vengeance. Barges, propelled by huge sweeps, were taking casks of water from the harbour to the huge ship.
‘You’ll draw extra ammunition,’ Sharpe said. ‘The First Division’s paying for it.’
‘I’ll rob the bastards blind,’ Frederickson said happily.
‘And tonight you’ll do me the honour of dining with Jane and myself?’
‘I’d like to meet her.’ Frederickson sounded guarded.
‘She’s wonderful.’ Sharpe said it warmly, and Frederickson, seeing his friend’s enthusiasm, hoped that a new wife had not sapped Sharpe’s appetite for the bloody business that lay ahead at Arcachon.
Commandant Henri Lassan thought he detected sleet in the dawn, but he could not be sure until he climbed to the western bastion and saw how the flakes settled briefly on the great cheeks of his guns before melting into cold rivulets of water. The guns were loaded, as they always were, but their muzzles and vent-holes were stoppered against the damp. ‘Good morning, Sergeant!’
‘Sir!’ The sergeant stamped his feet and slapped his hands against the cold.
Lassan’s orderly climbed the stone ramp with a tray of coffee-mugs. Lassan always brought the morning guard a mug of coffee each and the men appreciated the small gesture. The Commandant, they said, was a gentleman.
Children ran across the courtyard and women’s voices sounded from the kitchens. There should not be women in the fort, but Lassan had let the families of his gun crews take up the quarters vacated by the infantry who had gone to the northern battles. Lassan believed his men were less likely to desert if their families were inside the defences.
‘There she is, sir.’ The sergeant pointed through the sleeting rain.
Lassan looked over the narrow Arcachon channel where the tide raced across the shoals. Beyond the sandbanks the surging grey waves were torn by wind into a maelstrom of broken white water amidst which, beating southwards, was a little ship.
The ship was a British brig-sloop with two tall masts and a vast driver-sail at her stern. Her black and white banded hull hid, Lassan knew, eighteen guns. Her sails were reefed, but even so she seemed to plunge through the waves and Lassan saw how high the spray fountained from the brig’s stem. ‘Our enemies,’ he said mildly, ‘are having a disturbed breakfast.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The sergeant laughed.
Lassan cradled his coffee mug. There was something vulnerable about his face, a drawn and frightened look that made his men protective of him.
