Sharpe's Eagle (12 page)

Someone slapped his back; men shouted as though he had won a victory when all he had done was
halve the victory of the French. The company was with them, standing with the dead, watching the
Chasseurs trot away with their trophy. There was no hope of retrieving the King's Colour; it was
already three hundred yards away, surrounded by triumphant horsemen at the beginning of its long
journey which would take it over the Pyrenees to be mocked by the Parisian mob before it joined
the other colours, Italian, Prussian, Austrian, Russian and Spanish, that marked French victories
round Europe. Sharpe watched it go and felt sickened and ashamed. The Spanish colours were there
too, both of them, but they were not his concern. His own honour was tied up with the captured
flag, his reputation as a soldier; it was a question of pride.

He touched Harper on the elbow. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, sir." The Sergeant was panting, still holding the pike, which was bloodied for half its
length. "Yourself?"

"I'm fine. Well done. And thank you."

Harper shook the compliment off but grinned at his Lieutenant. "It was a rare one, sir. At
least we got one back."

Sharpe turned to look at the colour. It hung above the company, tattered and blood-stained,
lost and regained.

An officer was below it and Sharpe recognised Leroy, morose, solitary Captain Leroy, whom
Lennox had described as the only other decent soldier in the Battalion. His face was masked in
blood, and Sharpe pushed through the ranks towards him.

"Sir?"

"Well done, Sharpe. This is a miserable shambles." The Captain's voice was strange, the accent
unusual, and Sharpe remembered he came from America; one of the small band of loyalists who still
fought for the Mother country. Sharpe indicated Leroy's head.

"Are you hurt badly?"

"That's just a scratch. I've been cut in the leg though."

Sharpe looked down. Leroy's thigh was smothered in blood. "What happened?"

"I was at the colours. Thank God you came, though Simmerson deserves to lose both. The
bastard."

Sharpe looked towards the bridge. Little could be seen of it because the field between was
still full of French horsemen. There were puffs of smoke and the crackle of musketry, so someone
had organised a scratch defence, but the Chasseurs were no longer fighting. Bugles called them
from the slaughter, back up the road to where they formed ranks round their three trophies. They
should feel proud of themselves, thought Sharpe; four hundred light cavalry had broken two
Regiments, captured three colours, and all because of the stupidity and pride of Simmerson and
the Spanish Colonel. He wondered where Simmerson was. He had not been in the group round the
colours unless his dead body lay in one of the heaps. He turned to Leroy.

"Have you seen Simmerson?"

"God knows what happened to him. Forrest was there."

"Dead?"

Leroy shrugged. "I don't know."

"Lennox?"

"I haven't seen him. He was in the square."

Sharpe looked round the field. It was an appalling sight. The spot where they stood, where the
colours had been fought for, was ringed with bodies. There were wounded men, stirring and crying,
horses that lay on their sides, coughed blood, and beat the soil in a frantic tattoo. Sharpe
found a Sergeant.

"Get those horses shot, Sergeant."

"Sir?" The man stared dumbly at Sharpe.

"Shoot them! Hurry!"

He could not stand the sight of the wounded animals. Men walked to them and pointed muskets at
their heads, and Sharpe turned to count his Riflemen.

"They're all safe, sir." Harper had counted already.

"Thanks." They had been in little danger as long as they stayed in ranks and kept the bayonets
steady. He remem-bered thinking the same thing as the South Essex proudly marched up the field,
banners waving, and now they were broken. He tried to estimate the butcher's bill. There were no
more than thirty or forty dead Frenchmen on the field, a high enough price from four hundred, but
they had gained glory for their Regiment and had inflicted appalling losses on the British and
Spanish. A hundred dead? He looked at the piles of dead, the broken trail of bodies leading to
the bridge; it was impossible to guess the number. It would be high, and there would be far more
wounded, men whose faces had been laid open by the horsemen, blinded men who would be led to
Lisbon, shipped home, and abandoned to the cold charity of a society long inured to maimed
beggars. He shivered.

But it was not just the dead and injured. In its first fight Simmerson's Battalion had lost
its pride as well. For sixteen years Sharpe had fought for the army, had defended colours in the
melee of battle and thrust with a bayonet as he tried to reach the enemy's standard; he had seen
captured banners paraded through camp and felt the fierce elation of victory, but this was the
first time he had seen a British flag taken on the field and he knew how his enemies would
celebrate when the trophy reached Marshal Victor's army. Soon Wellesley's army would have to
fight a battle, not a skirmish against four squadrons of Chasseurs, but a real battle in which
the killing machines of the artillery made survival a game of chance, and their enemies would now
go into that battle with their spirits raised because they had already humiliated the British. He
felt the beginnings of an idea, an idea so outrageous that he smiled, and young Pendleton,
waiting to return his rifle, grinned back at his officer.

"We did it, sir! We did it!"

"Did what?" Sharpe wanted to savour his idea but there was too much to do.

"Saved the flag, sir. Didn't we?"

Sharpe looked at the teenager's face. After a life of thieving in the streets of Bristol the
boy had a pinched, hungry face, but his eyes were shining and there was a desperate plea for
reassurance in his expression. Sharpe smiled. "We did it."

"I know we lost the other one, sir, but that wasn't our fault, was it, sir?"

"No. If it hadn't been for us they'd have lost both flags. Well done!"

The boy beamed. "And you and Sergeant Harper, sir." The boy's words tumbled out in his urgent
need to share the excitement. "They was terrified of you, sir!"

Sharpe took his rifle and laughed. "I don't know about Sergeant Harper, but I was fairly
frightened, too."

Pendleton laughed. "You're just saying that, sir!"

Sharpe smiled and walked away among the bodies. There was so much to do, the dead to be
buried, the wounded to be patched up. He looked towards the bridge. It was empty now, the
fugitives had crossed, and Sharpe could see them being organised into companies on the far bank.
The French were half a mile away, in ordered ranks, and watching a lone horseman who was trotting
his horse towards Sharpe. He supposed it was a French officer coming to discuss a truce while
they sorted out their wounded. Sharpe felt a great weariness. He looked back at the bridge and
wondered why Simmerson was not sending any men across to start the grave-digging, the bandaging,
the stripping of the dead. It would take a whole day to clear up this mess. Sharpe slung his
rifle and started walking towards the Chasseur officer, whose horse was picking a delicate course
through the bodies. He raised a hand in salute. And at that moment the bridge exploded.

The bridge was reluctant to be destroyed. It had stood through two millennia over the waters
of the Tagus, and the old stonework yielded slowly to the modern explosives. The central pier
gave a deep shudder that was felt as far away as Sharpe and his company; they wheeled round to
see what had caused it, and dust flew from the crevices of the masonry. For a second it seemed as
if the bridge might hold; the stones bulged and then tore themselves apart with an agonising
slowness, until the black powder finally won and the masonry was blasted outwards in an obscene
gout of smoke and flame. The road on the bridge rose into the air, hung suspended for a fraction,
and then collapsed into the water. The pier, two arches, the purpose of the bridge, all were
destroyed by the thunderous explosion that rolled interminably across the flat grasslands,
fright-ening the horses of the French, making the loose horses whose owners had been unseated in
battle whinny and gallop fitfully on the grass, as though looking for human reassurance. A huge,
dirty plume of smoke, boiling with ancient dust, rose over the ruined spans, the water seethed,
far up and down stream the stones fell into the green depths; only slowly did silence follow the
thunder, the river rearrange itself to the new pattern of stones on its bed, the black smoke
drift slowly westwards like a small, low, malevolent storm cloud. Hogan need not have worried.
Forty feet had been ripped from the bridge, Wellesley was safe from marauding cavalry to his
south, and Sharpe and his men were now marooned on the wrong side of the Tagus.

Captain Leroy collapsed on the grass. Sharpe wondered if he had been hit by some stray and
freakishly driven stone chip from the bridge but the Captain shook his head.

"It's my leg. Don't worry, Sharpe, I'll manage." Leroy nodded towards the smoking ruin of the
bridge. "Why the hell did they do that?"

Sharpe wished he knew. Had it been a mistake? Hogan surely would have waited for Sharpe and
his swollen company of two hundred men to reach the safety of the other bank before lighting the
fuses that ran into the base of the pier? He stared across the river but there was no sense to be
made of the activity he could see, the men parading in companies; he thought he could see
Simmerson on his grey horse surrounded by officers, staring at the destruction wrought to the
bridge.

"Sir, sir." Gataker, the Rifleman, was calling him. The French Chasseur officer had arrived, a
Captain, with a suntanned face split by a large black moustache. Sharpe walked to him and
saluted. The Frenchman returned the salute and looked round at the carnage.

"Congratulations on your fight, Monsieur." He spoke perfect English; courteously, gravely,
with respect. Sharpe acknowledged the compliment.

"You have our congratulations, too. You have won a notable victory, sir." The words felt
stilted and inept. It was extraordinary how men could claw savagely at each other, fight like
demented fiends, yet in a few moments become polite, generous even about the damage an enemy had
inflicted. The French Captain smiled briefly.

"Thank you, M'sieu." He paused a moment, looked at the bodies lying near the bridge, and when
he turned back to Sharpe his expression had changed; it had become less formal and more curious.
"Why did you come across the river?"

Sharpe shrugged. "I don't know."

The Frenchman dismounted and looped his reins on his wrist. "You were unlucky." He smiled at
Sharpe. "But you and your men fought well and now this?" He nodded at the bridge.

Sharpe shrugged again. The Chasseur Captain with the big moustache looked at him for a moment.
"I think perhaps you are most unlucky in your Colonel, yes?" He spoke quietly so that the men who
were staring curiously at their erstwhile enemy should not hear. Sharpe did not react, but the
Frenchman spread his hands. "We have them, too. My regrets, M'sieu."

It was all getting too polite, too cosy. Sharpe looked at the bodies lying untended in the
field. "You wish to discuss the wounded?"

"I did, M'sieu, I did. Not that I think we have too many, but we need your permission to
search this piece of the field. As for the rest," he bowed slightly to Sharpe. "We are the
masters of it."

It was true. Chasseurs were now riding around the field corralling the stray horses. They were
gaining a bonus, for there were half a dozen English thoroughbreds, lost by officers of the South
Essex, and Sharpe knew they would be better remounts than anything the French could hope to buy
in Spain. But there was something curious about the wording the Captain had used.

"You did, sir? Did?" Sharpe looked into the sympathetic brown eyes of the Frenchman, who
shrugged slightly.

"The situation, M'sieu, has changed." He waved a hand at the destroyed bridge. "I think you
will have problems reaching the other side? Yes?" Sharpe nodded, it was undeniable. "I think,
M'sieu, my Colonel will want to renew the fight after a suitable period."

Sharpe laughed. He pointed at the muskets, the rifles, the long bayonets. "When you are ready,
sir, when you are ready."

Trie Frenchman laughed too. "I will enquire, M'sieu, and inform you in ample time." He pulled
out a watch. "Shall we say that we have one hour in which to look after our wounded? After that
we shall talk again."

He was giving Sharpe no choice. An hour was not nearly enough for his two hundred men to
collect the wounded, carry them despite their agony, bring them to the entrance of the bridge and
devise a way of getting them to safety. On the other hand an hour was far more than the French
needed, and he knew there was no point in asking for more time. The Captain unlooped his reins
and prepared to mount.

"My congratulations again. Lieutenant?" Sharpe nodded. "And my sincere regrets. Bonne chancel`
He mounted and cantered back towards the skyline.

Sharpe took stock of his new company. The survivors from the square had added some seventy men
to his small command. Leroy was the senior officer, of course, but his wound forced him to leave
the decisions to Sharpe. There were two more Lieutenants, Knowles from the Light Company and a
man called John Berry. Berry was overweight with fleshy lips, a young man who petulantly demanded
the date of Sharpe's commission, and, on finding Sharpe was his senior, complained sulkily that
his horse had been shot. Sharpe suspected that it was the only reason Berry had stayed with the
colours.

The working parties took jackets from the dead, thread-ed the sleeves onto abandoned muskets,
and made crude stretchers on which wounded men were carried to the bridge. Half the men worked on
the piles round the spot where Sharpe and Harper had clambered across the blood and corpses to
rescue the colour; the other half worked among the bodies that formed a fan shape ending at the
entrance to the bridge. The French were swiftly finished and started rummaging through the
blue-coated bodies of the Spanish. It was not mercy they were showing but a desire to loot the
dead and the wounded. The British did the same, there was no stopping them; the spoils of a fight
were the one reward of the survivors. The Riflemen, on Sharpe's orders, collected abandoned
muskets, dozens of them, and took ammunition pouches from the dead. If the French should attack
then Sharpe planned to arm each man with three or four loaded guns and meet the horsemen with a
continuous volley that would destroy the attackers. It would not bring back the lost colour. That
had gone for ever or until in some unimaginable future the army might march into Paris and take
back the trophy. As he moved among the carnage, directing the work, he doubted if the French
really meant to attack again. The losses they would incur would hardly be worth the effort;
perhaps instead they were hoping for his surrender. He helped Leroy to the bridge, propped him
against the parapet, and cut away the white breeches. There was a bullet wound in the American's
thigh, dark and oozing, but the carbine ball had gone clean through, and, despite Leroy's evident
disgust, Sharpe summoned Harper to put maggots in the wound before binding it with a strip torn
from the shirt of a dead man. Forrest was alive, stunned and bleeding, found where the colours
had fallen with his sword still gripped in his hand. Sharpe propped him next to Leroy. It would
be minutes before Forrest recovered himself, and Sharpe doubted whether the Major, who looked
like a vicar, would want to take any more military action that day. He put the colour with the
two wounded officers, propped its great yellow flag over the parapet as a symbol of defiance to
the French, but what about the British? Twice he had walked gingerly to the edge of the broken
roadway and hailed the far bank, but it was as if the men there inhabited a different world, went
about their business oblivious of the carnage just a few hundred feet away. For the third time
Sharpe walked out onto the bridge through the broken stones.