Hi all!
Well, I have more stuff coming up soon (after all, Gen Con just passed!) but first, I wanted to share my finished short story homage to Bernard Cornwell and Richard Sharpe... Sharpe's Wine! I've been working on it for a little while, and basically did it to create a little traditional, hit-all-the-high-notes short story to see if I could contribute a little something that fit the feeling of a true Cornwell piece.
So, if you have a little spare time, and want to read the story of a little-known adventure of Richard Sharpe, please give it a read!:)
Note: This story is meant to take place roughly in the midst of Sharpe’s Eagle, some time after the loss of the South Essex’s colors at the battle at the Bridge of Valdelacasa.
Captain Sharpe cuffed the sweat from his eyes and leaned in to
peer through his glass again. The Spanish countryside shimmered in the
heat, the tall grasses and small collection of houses at the bottom of the
quiet valley seeming to ripple like water.
“Anything, Sir?” asked Sergeant Harper from beside him.
Sharpe didn’t answer. He slowly swung the spyglass from left
to right, trying to figure out where the enemy had gone.
The two men lay in the long, dry grass, propped up on their
elbows, atop a low hill at the edge of a valley in the Castilla region of
Spain. Behind them, low and hidden beneath the crest of the hill, were
another dozen or so men, half in red coats, half in green jackets, waiting for
their dour commander to give them an order. They sat in the tall
grass, talking softly or trying to get a few minutes of sleep while they could.
Sergeant Harper coughed politely, as if to avoid asking the
question again, and Sharpe growled. “Nothing, Sergeant. I’ll let you know when I see something.” He reached the end of the valley, and swung
his glass back to check it over again, wondering if he had somehow missed
something in the swells of dusty grassland.
“Maybe they kept moving, Sir?” suggested Harper.
Sharpe didn’t answer, but continued to sweep his glass slowly
along the valley. He knew the enemy had to be somewhere, and his orders
didn’t leave much room for interpretation.
It was a beautiful piece, made in London and given to him by none other than Sir Arthur Wellesley himself after the battle of Assaye. It was even inscribed; "In gratitude. AW. September 1803." But staring through the lenses for too long strained his eyes, and so Sharpe looked down into the valley without it.
He reached down to his half-empty canteen, his eyes still
searching. A quick sip of tepid water helped wash some of the dust out of
his mouth.
“I don’t know,” Sharpe finally admitted. “The tracks died out, and I’m not seeing anything showing they left this valley.
They’ve got to be here.”
“The houses?” asked the big sergeant, looking expectantly at
his Captain.
“Must be,” said Sharpe, sounding frustrated. There was no
better place to hide in the silent valley, and there was no way that any
enemies could have been moving fast enough to have gotten clean away and not
left any trail.
Sharpe looked again down at the houses, without the magnification
of his telescope. It wasn’t even enough to be called a village; built along a
small stream that ran down the center of the valley, maybe seven or eight farm
houses, low, that familiar white-ish color that was so common in this part of
the world, the largest at the far edge of the village. The dusty road ran
straight through the center of the hamlet, and disappeared among the hills on
the far end of the valley. Red
terracotta tiles covered the roofs of the houses. There were a few large fields, and some
fenced in meadows for grazing along the roads… Sharpe’s eyes narrowed.
Harper nodded. “No livestock.”
The two men slid back down the hill, out of sight of anyone who
might be in the village.
“They’re there,” said Sharpe. “There should be something…
cows, pigs… chicken, even. Someone is eating well today.”
“So if they are there… now what?” asked the massive Irishman.
The tall Captain frowned, his eyes narrowing, and thought.
Nobody had ever told Sharpe why this priest was so important, but
he had gotten the order to find him, at all costs, from his Colonel, Sir Henry
Simmerson.
Simmerson had
called Sharpe to his tent urgently, sending Ensign Denny out into camp to pass
on the message.
“Pardon me… sir?” asked Denny nervously from the flap of Sharpe’s
tent.
Sharpe grunted uninvitingly from his seat on his cot, his eyes
never leaving the hanging mirror as he did his best to run an old razor over
his chin.
“Sir, the Colonel would like to see you. Now. In his tent, if you would?”
Sharpe scraped a bit of stubble off the side of his jaw.
“The Colonel?”
“Yessir. Colonel Simmerson?”
“I know who our Colonel is, Ensign. What does he want?” said
Sharpe.
“Of course, sir!” said Denny, gulping. “I don’t know,
sir. What he wants, I mean. He
didn’t tell me. I’m sorry, sir.”
Sharpe had sighed, and dropped the razor into a mug of dirty
water. He stood up, grabbing a scrap of cloth to dry his face as he came
out of his small tent. “Whatever the Colonel wishes, Ensign Denny,”
Sharpe said, shaking his head. Nothing good
could come from this.
“Father Sebastian disappeared at the same time that a small group
of Frenchmen passed through Trujillo, Captain. For reasons I cannot enter
into, reasons that are rather above the paygrade of a Captain, Headquarters
demands that he must be found before it is too late!”
Sharpe kept his eyes straight and level while Simmerson barked at
him. It was a trick he had learned as a private, dealing with officers;
he stared just above their heads, never moving, responding to everything with a
crisp “Yes, sir!” or “No, sir!” It was often the best way to deal with
officers, and Simmerson was no exception.
“And so,
Sharpe,” growled Simmerson, his voice starting lower but rising as he went, “I
am tasking you to find him. Take no more than fifteen men. You may draw supplies from the quartermaster,
and I want you back here in no more than seven days with the priest! Do I
make myself perfectly clear?!”
Sharpe
nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He could
feel the irritation radiating from Simmerson’s small black eyes, and he had to
hold back a smirk.
“What, no
questions, Captain?” demanded Simmerson, sure that the know-it-all former
private would challenge him in some way.
“The Light Company, sir?” asked Sharpe.
Simmerson sneered. “Lieutenant Gibbons will take command of
the Light Company,” he said. “We will all somehow manage in your absence,
I assure you, Captain!”
“Yes, Sir,” said Sharpe, his eyes glued to the canvas of the tent.
Simmerson dismissed Sharpe with an impatient wave.
Waiting just outside the tent flap was Patrick Harper, and he fell
into step with his Captain as he walked past.
“So, where are we off to this time, Captain?” asked the cheerful
Irishman, who had been carefully listening to the entire conversation just
outside the tent flap.
Sharpe shook his head, his boots raising dust as he stalked back
to the relative peace and quiet of the Light Company tents. “We are supposed
to find some idiot priest who managed to get himself captured by some Frogs and
bring him back here, for ‘reasons a bit above the paygrade of a Captain,’” said
Sharpe, investing the last part with a particular venom.
Harper laughed. “Ah, just the South Essex starts to get
comfortable, sir… you can always count on the good Colonel to come up with
something!”
Richard Sharpe didn’t answer. Everyone knew that when
Colonel Simmerson got bored, Colonel Simmerson was dangerous. The man,
who was fabulously wealthy and had patrons at Whitehall, had raised the
regiment himself, and now he was determined to make himself famous. After
the disaster of the Battalion losing its colors, Simmerson was trying to make
up ground. The Battalion had been in
camp for several weeks, without any word of the enemy, so Simmerson was sure to
jump on this mention of the French. But Sharpe would be damned if he
would get anyone killed for it.
He turned to Harper. “We need twelve men. Food for four days. It might end up
being nothing, Patrick.”
Sergeant Harper nodded. “I think I know just the boys!” he
said, a broad smile on his friendly face. “Rescuing a priest… I can’t think of a better way to spend a few
summer days!”
The men had spent two days getting to Trujillo. While it was
nice to be out of camp and out from under the thumb of Simmerson, the summer
was brutal, dry and hot. The sun beat down on Sharpe and his men as they
crossed the rocky hills, leaving them to wipe the sweat from their foreheads
and curse under their breath. Harper had, as Sharpe had expected, picked
carefully, a mix of redcoats and rifles..
Dan Hagman was the senior rifle, a Chosen Man who was the most accurate
of them all, even at forty years old. The regulars were all from the
Light Company, trained by Sharpe and Harper, with the help of Captain Lennox,
who at died at Valdelacasa. While not up
to the level of the greenjackets, Sharpe knew they were reliable men, fighters
all.
After beginning their march through the Spanish countryside on the
second day, which started off comfortably enough but became a furnace by
mid-morning, the group had gotten to Trujillo. Trujillo was a small town
up on a low rocky hill. On the outskirts
of town were a few larger farms and villas.
There were olive orchards and fields surrounding the town, and one
entire side of the hill was vineyards. The town itself was centered on a
plaza with a small stone church at one end. As with many small Spanish towns,
the church was the center of this small town.
It was named after a Spanish saint, Teresa of Avila, a nun who was said
to have once slept there. There were always some pilgrims around the
plaza, people looking for blessings or the sick looking for prayers; in fact,
just as Sharpe and his men marched into the plaza, a small caravan of about ten
pilgrims arrived from a different direction.
Sharpe dismissed the men once they reached the plaza, where they
fell out into the shade and refilled their canteens at a village fountain.
Sharpe knew he could trust the men to stay close and stay sober. Every man in the Company knew that Sharpe had
only three rules; fight well, don’t get drunk without his permission, and don’t
steal, except from the enemy or if starving. Each man knew that the
French might be nearby, so they stayed relatively sober as Sharpe and Harper
walked into the darkness of the church.
Harper crossed himself as he entered, but Sharpe just stalked to
the front of the church. Sitting in the front pew was an old man dressed
in a priest’s habit, carefully reading a battered, old bible.
As Sharpe came to a stop, the priest looked up. His watery
blue eyes peered up at Sharpe, thinning white hair surrounding a bald pate.
“Can I help you, son?” he asked, his Irish accent thick.
Sharpe started just a bit. While he was used to hearing
Irishmen in the army, he hadn’t expected to find one in a small, out-of-the-way
Spanish church. “I’m Captain Sharpe.
I was told that a priest was kidnapped?
From here?”
The old man stared at Sharpe for a second. Then he nodded. “Yes!
Yes, yes, please, come with me,” he said, standing and motioning to a
door that led to a back room.
Sharpe and
Harper followed the priest, the vague smell of wine wafting off of him, into a
back room. It was clearly a combination kitchen and dining room, and the
priest waved them to sit at a rough wooden table in the middle of the room.
The Irish priest cleared some wooden cases of wine off the table, and the
two soldiers sat on a bench, the priest sitting opposite them.
“My name is Father Erin. I know, I know…” he said,
smiling, “That’s a lass’ name, but it’s been my family name for six
generations, and I suppose I won’t be changing that now!” His eyes were
friendly, looking at Harper and then back to Sharpe. “People are always surprised to find an
Irishman in Spain, but Ireland is doing just fine in God’s eye; it’s the rest
of the world that needs His help!”
Sharpe nodded impatiently, Harper smiling broadly. “What can
you tell us about your man, the one who is missing?”
“Father Sebastian? Well, he was taken,” said the old priest,
his eyes wide.
Sharpe pushed down the urge to shake the priest. “I know,”
he said, forcing patience. “What can you
tell me about it?”
Father Erin frowned. “Not a lot, I’m afraid. A small
group of Frenchmen came through a few days ago. They stole some food and
drink and a few horses. They came
through the church, stealing what they could, and they took Father Sebastian,
too.”
“Any idea why?”
The Irish priest shrugged. “Can’t rightfully say. They seemed to be looking for him, though.
Their commander, a small man, blonde moustache, asked specifically for
him. Then they went out to our villa on the outskirts of town… the
church, we have a small villa, where we have fields, and where we teach, like a
school? Then when we arrived, he was gone. There was also some wine, and his...”
Sharpe waved his hand impatiently, cutting the Irish priest off.
This was strange; what would a bunch of French soldiers in Spain want
with a priest from some village in the middle of nowhere? “So which way
did they go?”
Father Erin flapped his hand vaguely towards the wall of the
church. “They went east, following the road… a few mounted, the rest
marching. Twenty five of them, maybe?”
Sharpe nodded again. He was thinking... about how far ahead
the French were, and what they might be doing with the priest, and exactly how
they would catch the French and rescue him, while Erin began to talk again.
A few more minutes of the chatty, possibly inebriated priest talking
and Sharpe and Harper listening didn’t reveal much, unless you cared about how
Father Erin made it to Spain, and the history of the priests in this town
making wine. Harper made a fantastic audience, asking several questions
and nodding sagely, Sharpe fairly certain the Sergeant was only looking to
irritate him. Apparently Father
Sebastian was some sort of wine-maker; some of the wine in the crates in the
kitchen were his. The priest even poured a small cup from a bottle
plucked from one of the crates and gave it to Harper to taste, clearly proud of
it, describing the barrels in which it was aged and how Sebastian chose the
particular hillside the grapes grew on and how it had a little smoky taste to
it. The large Sergeant nodded like a good Christian at all of this,
sniffed the wine carefully, and then drank it down, nodding appreciatively as
he did.
“Now, can I ask, Father… I’ve always wondered... when you are
stomping on the grapes in those big barrels… it seems like a lot of work to…
well, do you get out of the tub when you have to relieve yourself?” the huge
Irishman asked with a grin.
The priest laughed. “Being a God-fearing man, son, I of
course will insist that I do, but I don’t presume to speak for everyone.
Not everyone is as civilized as we Irish, Sergeant!”
“Thanks for the information, Father,” Sharpe interrupted, just as
the priest was in the middle of an explanation of what made the grapes in
Trujillo so special. He stood. So…
a priest, taken, no reason why, and now they had to get him back. “I’m not sure we’ll find your priest, but
we’ll do what we can. Thank you for your
time, Father. Sergeant?”
Harper followed Sharpe out of the darkened church and into the
bright Spanish sunlight.
For a day Sharpe and his men followed the road out of Trujillo in
the direction that the French had gone, with no sign that the French had left
the road, leaving what passed for civilization and heading out into the empty
countryside.
“Apparently the grapes in Trujillo are unique in the country, sir.
The ground on the hill is, too, which makes the wine particularly
special. And it was, too… a grand red, if I may say. Smoky, almost,” said Harper, walking beside
Sharpe, who made no sign of listening. “And to think, the church holds
all that land! It’s almost like God’s
wine, don’t you think, sir?”
Sharpe stifled a sarcastic response, instead looking back over his
shoulder at his men. They were good men all, and while the regulars
weren’t quite in the marching shape of the riflemen, they kept up.
“Ah, well, would you look at that!” exclaimed Harper, looking off
to the west. Sharpe turned to see a small bird rise up from some
bushes. “A black-throated diver, I
think! What a beauty!”
Again Sharpe had to hold his tongue, the heat and dust and
ridiculous search grating as his nerves almost as much as the irrepressible
good nature of Patrick Harper.
On the morning of the second day the party came to a wide, grassy
valley. Sharpe ordered the men to rest below the crest of the ridge, and
crawled up to look down on the valley with Harper at his side, looking for some
missing Frenchmen and a missing priest.
“So, now what?” repeated Harper.
Sharpe looked at the dozen men who had gathered around him.
“They’ve got to be there.” He motioned to two of the men, a rifleman and
a regular. “Peters, Horrell, I want you two to circle around to the other
end of the valley, keep an eye on the road leading in. Stay low, and stay
out of sight. Let me know if anyone comes or goes.” He looked at Harper. “Sergeant, I want two men posted watching
those houses at all time. The rest can rest. Tonight, I’ll go take a look.”
Harper nodded, and the men looked at each other, glad to get
orders from their Captain, glad to finally have something to do.
The
day eventually began to cool as the sun set, the valley still silent and dusty.
Nobody and nothing moved among the houses, and nothing entered or left
the valley, and Sharpe’s men lounged, waiting.
Finally night fell, Sharpe not allowing a fire to be lit. It
took some time before it was dark enough.
Sharpe was on the ridgeline again, looking down at the houses.
“There’s definitely someone there, sir… they’ve lit a fire,” said
Harper, pointing towards the largest house, which, although the doors and
windows were firmly closed, still had some smoke rising from the chimney.
“I guess they don’t expect anyone to be around,” said Sharpe.
Harper
looked at him. “So, how d’you propose taking a peek?”
Sharpe
shrugged as he pulled his canteen off. “Just sneak down and give it a
look,” he replied. There wasn’t a lot of cover between the ridge and the
houses, and it might take an hour to get there moving slowly, but the grasses
were tall enough, and there wasn’t much moon.
“No
sentry?”
Sharpe
looked down at the houses for the hundredth time. “I’m not seeing
anything at all down there. Maybe
they’re asleep.”
Sharp
slid his cartridge box and haversack off his shoulders. He didn’t
anticipate a gunfight, and would run back to the ridge at the first sign of
trouble. He still kept his sword.
His men, minus Peters and Horrell, and led by Harper, would watch
carefully for any trouble.
“Alright then. I’ll be back.
Keep quiet,” he said, and Patrick nodded seriously. He slipped
over the ridge and started down the hill.
It took a little more than an hour, and Sharpe was careful the
whole way. He stayed low in the grass, slowly moving from bush to bush,
clump of grass to clump of grass. Occasionally he looked over the tall
grass, the houses getting closer, the night silent. Looking back at the ridge behind him, all he
saw was blackness below the night sky. It was unlikely anyone would see
one man moving down through the darkness.
Eventually Sharpe found himself in a row of bushes along the road,
near the closest small house. The night was quiet. Silently he crept through the shadows and up
to the wall of the house. The shutters
of the house were closed, but Sharpe was able to peer through a crack in one.
Nothing but blackness inside; there wasn’t anyone home. He edged through the night to the next
building. Again, nobody home. He peeked around the edge of the house,
looking across a small, empty space at the largest house. Like the
others, the shutters and door were closed, but a trickle of smoke could still
be seen against the sky, a greyish smudge against the black-blue night.
And then suddenly the door banged open, startling Sharpe so badly
that he nearly jumped backwards.
Out stormed a girl. She was small and clearly young… maybe
ten or so. She was wearing a dirty white shift dress, and no shoes.
Black hair tumbled down across her back as she stalked out of the
building and into the darkness.
Then, immediately behind her, came two French soldiers.
Sharpe froze. One of the Frenchmen stopped at the door, the
other nearly having to run to keep up, calling after the girl in French, Sharpe
unable to understand what he said. But the girl turned on him fiercely,
and snapped back in French. Whatever she
said seemed to have the desired effect, as the pursing French soldier stopped
in his tracks, and the other burst into laughter, oddly loud after so many
hours of silence. The girl spun back around and disappeared in the
bushes.
Sharpe carefully watched around the corner of the farmhouse,
invisible in the inky black of the night. The two French soldiers both
wore the uniforms of voltigeurs, the yellow and green epaulets visible even in
the dark. The one by the door continued to chuckle as his comrade stood,
looking a bit lost, in the middle of the empty yard.
A minute later the girl came back out of the bushes, adjusting her
shift, and walked right back past the soldiers with a quick comment in French.
Both soldiers followed her back inside, the one still chuckling, closing
the door behind them.
Sharpe
exhaled, not even realizing he had been holding his breath.
“There’s
a girl,” said Sharpe.
Even
Patrick Harper’s voice nearly rolled it’s eyes. “Oh, Jesus wept! There’s always a girl!” he said.
Sharpe
ignored the outburst. “A little girl, maybe ten years old. I think
about ten, maybe a few more, French soldiers, all in the largest house.”
The French were clearly feeling rather confident; Sharpe had made it all
the way up to the windows of the building without making a sound, and had
managed to peek in through the slats of the shutters and get a rough count of
Frenchmen.
“Are
we going to go down now?” asked Rifleman Jenkins, who had been with Sharpe
since the retreat to Corunna. “Catch them sleeping?”
Sharpe
shook his head. “No,” he said.
“There is a sentry.”
Harper
looked at him sharply. “A sentry, sir?” he asked, the disbelief obvious
in his voice.
Sharpe
nodded. Somehow they had missed him; they had all missed him. As
Sharpe had started back from the houses, he had used some haystacks as cover.
Just as he came up behind one, he was startled by a cough, a cough that
was so close that Sharpe expected a hand on his shoulder. He had frozen
in place, eyes wide, ears listening.
After a moment he realized where the cough had come from.
“In
a haystack,” said Sharpe. “Near the westmost house. Maybe two of them.” It was a fantastic
position, one which had escaped the notice of all of the British, and it was
only sheer, blind luck that Sharpe’s careful trip down to the houses had been
along a path, maybe the only path, that was difficult to see from there… but if
more than one man tried it, they would be seen.
“Just
one of us neak down, cut their throats, Sir?” asked Hagman.
“No…
would take too long to do it right. To get down there again would take
forever, and when the sun came up, it would be behind them.”
“So
what’s the plan, sir?” asked Harper. “Anything we try, they’ll see us a
half mile away and cut us up before we can get close. Do we wait until
tomorrow night?”
Sharpe
paused a moment. He knew they could just turn around and head home now,
just tell Simmerson they had no luck finding the damn priest, let the damn
French go, making sure nobody got killed on this ridiculous fool’s errand.
But his ego wouldn’t let that happen.
He was given an order, and he’d carry it out. He just didn’t know how it would be possible.
And
then, a moment later, he began to see how.
“A
wagonload, Captain!” huffed Private Peters, still catching his breath.
“Maybe 15 men and women and a few children. Pilgrims.
And then two priests on donkeys, all heading for Trujillo, to the
church.”
Richard
Sharpe frowned, and nodded. “You stopped them?”
Peters
nodded curtly. “Yessir. Me and
Horrell, sir. I came to let you know; he’s got them hidden in a grove of
trees right off the road. Couldn’t let them go through the village.”
Sharpe
appreciated what his men had done. If the pilgrims had gone through the
town, with the French there… well, maybe the French would have let them go, but
all too often, these sorts of encounters turned out bloody and horrifying, as
the humanity on both sides had been worn out by the savage war.
Sergeant
Harper looked at Sharpe. “So?”
“So
nothing,” said Sharpe. “Turn them around, Peters. Tell them to head home… the Church is…”
He
paused.
An
idea had come to him, as suddenly as a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue
sky.
“Wait.
Take me to them.”
It
took about thirty minutes to skirt around the small hamlet and to the
out-of-sight grove where the pilgrims had been kept. Sharpe and Harper
stepped into the small clearing, dirty and sweating in the dry, dusty heat of
Spain. Private Horrell greeted the two
men and brought them to the priest in charge of the pilgrims, a short, dark
skinned man with curly black hair poking out from under a large brimmed hat and
a surly look on his face. “Sir, this is Father Lopez…”
“Senor,
please, this is not allowed!” interrupted the priest, as soon as Sharpe and
Harper got close. “We are pilgrims, simple pilgrims, and we have nothing
to do with your war!”
Sharpe
shook his head. “I’m sorry, Father, but the French are in the hamlet
ahe…”
The
priest scoffed. “We are Spanish, senor! We are blessed! God will look after his people, and will…”
It
was Sharpe’s turn to interrupt. “Yes, Father, I’m sure he will.” He paused, and looked around him. It
was as Peters had described… about 15 pilgrims, men, women, and children… all
peasants… with two priests, this dark haired one and a younger one leading
them. “Father,” said Sharpe.
“I need your help.”
The
priest’s eyebrows raised. “Senor, as I said, this is not our war!
We are simple pilgrims. Our
country, our people, we are sick of war. You English, you…”
Now
Harper interrupted. “Your country needs your help, Father.” He gave
the priest a long, meaningful look. “And if your flock is ever going to get to
Trujillo, ye need our help. So… let’s all be helpful, okay?”
The
priest looked first at Harper, whose smile was betrayed by serious eyes, and
then at Sharpe, whose expression was rarely welcoming and warm in the best of
times… and he nodded.
“God
bless Spain!” exclaimed Harper.
“Father,”
said Sharpe, “I need your hat.”
“Okay,”
said Sharpe an hour later, after the majority of his force had joined Harper
and him in the small wood, and now knelt around him. “Dan, I want you to
take four of the rifles and work your way down towards the village as best you
can. That little stream, the bed is deep
enough, there are some bushes along the creek you can use as cover… they can’t
cover more than a few men, but that’s all you need. Make sure you have
your eyes on the houses nearest this end of the village and on the fields, in
case they send men to the flank. You’ll
cover us.” Hagman nodded.
“Now
Pat, I want you to take the clothes from these pilgrims,” said Sharpe.
Harper raised an eyebrow. “Their
cloaks, all of that… and get the rest of our boys into them.”
Patrick
Harper grinned. “We’re pilgrims now, sir?”
Sharpe
nodded. “Just off to pray to a saint. Cut up some cloth, too, as
wigs for some of the boys… make them look more like women, at least from a
little ways away. That should get us close enough.”
Harper
nodded and grinned impishly. “You going to be leading us, sir? The moment they see you, the Frogs will know…
you don’t look like a godly man, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, and you
don’t speak a lick of Spanish…”
Sharpe
knew that what Harper said was true. While being bigger than practically
every man in Spain was fine when it came to fighting, he did stand out a bit.
He thought for a moment, and then turned to the disconsolate priest.
“Well,
Father Lopez… you may get to lead your pilgrims to Trujillo after all.”
When
the first French sentry saw them trundling down the dusty road towards the
small village in the valley, he gave out a loud whistle, and immediately the
doors of the two largest houses flew open and French soldiers hustled out.
A half dozen came right out to the road, muskets held at the ready, while
another half dozen spread out into the fields on both sides of the road,
several voltigeurs scattered among them.
An officer joined his men on the road, his hand on the hilt of his
sword, although his frown melted away when he saw the sorry procession coming
down the road… a beat up old wagon with nearly a dozen dusty, dirty Spanish
peasants hunched in it, most of whom were women with the long, dark hair most
Spaniards had, and leading them, a pair of priests on donkeys, a short one in
front, a taller one wearing a hat in back.
“Pilgrims?”
one of his men said, and Lieutenant Broullard nodded. The Spanish were a
faithful people, and Spain was full of pilgrims. However, Lieutenant
Broullard thought, no matter how hard they prayed, it seemed that life in this
dusty country was always hard. It wasn’t at all like France, a lush
countryside full of life… Spain was hot and harsh, and Broullard couldn’t wait
to leave it, to get home to his small farm in Auvergne, to his wife and four
small girls.
The
small procession drew to a halt when the French appeared, but Broullard walked
into the road and waved them forward, and that gesture, along with the dozen
muskets waiting, seemed to do the trick. The priest at the front of the
group, a short man with curly black hair, nervously prodded his donkey forward
again, followed by the large priest on the donkey behind him and then the
wagon.
Sharpe
turned his head slightly, his face largely covered by the brim of the hat he
was wearing. His eyes were searching the edges of the small creek that
ran through the valley, looking for some sign of his riflemen, but he didn’t
see anything. He would just have to trust that Hagman and his other men
were there. He turned his attention back
to the thin French officer coming towards them.
Lieutenant
Broullard stopped next to Father Lopez’s donkey and nodded at him, while three
of his men walked over to the wagon. “Father,” he said in passable
Spanish, a genuinely apologetic look on his thin face, “I’m afraid I cannot let
you pass without taking a look at your people and what you have with you in
your wagon.”
The
priest looked down at the Frenchman, and then back at the larger priest, who
had ridden up behind him. Broullard looked at the larger priest, and then
looked back at Father Lopez… and something about the nervousness in Lopez’s
eyes, and the look on the half-hidden face of the rather large priest who had
now ridden up right next to the French officer…
“NOW!”
shouted Sharpe, and he lashed out with one huge fist, catching Broullard full
in the face, while his second hand brought up a pistol from inside his habit.
Broullard dropped like a sack of bricks, just as the “pilgrims” in the
wagon leapt up, pulling muskets and rifles out from under bags and rags. Before the French could react the British men
in the wagon opened fire, and five of the French men on the road were down.
Sharpe
took all of this in in an instant, and leveled his pistol at the last Frenchman
standing on the road, a tall man with the mustache and pigtails of a veteran,
and before the stunned man could bring his musket up Sharpe fired, the ball
catching the man in the chest with a thump, throwing him down.
On
either side of the road the French voltigeurs recovered quickly, and began to
level their muskets to fire, when suddenly a quick fire crashed into them from
the rifles hidden along the creek bed. At that range the rifles were
deadly; half of the men in the near field dropped, and the rest instinctively
ducked down into the golden wheat. The
Frenchmen in the far field were able to fire some hurried shots, but only a
single ball found a target, one of the British regulars in the wagon grunting
in pain as it tore into his thigh.
“MOVE!
RELOAD!” roared Harper, as he leapt down out of the wagon and quickly
moved into cover along the fence and bushes on the side of the dusty road.
Redcoats and rifles, all still wearing the rags of the pilgrims, spilled out
of the wagon and into cover, reloading as quickly as they could.
Sharpe looked down and saw that the French officer was out cold,
and quickly swung down off of his donkey, which surprisingly hadn’t moved an
inch since the shooting started. Father Lopez had tumbled right off his
mount, only half on purpose, and was lying flat on the ground, his hands over
his head. Sharpe crashed down next to
Harper, who handed him his rifle and his sword, which had been hidden in the
wagon’s bed. “Not a bad start, sir!” said the Irishman, who somehow
managed to look like he was enjoying himself despite French bullets cracking
over his head.
Sharpe didn’t answer, but instead rolled onto his back to see what
the Riflemen in the creek bed were doing. Judging by the smoke, Hagman
was moving them down along the creekbed to engage the Frenchmen on the other
side of the stream, just as Sharpe would have done. Two of the Frenchmen
in that field were already down, and there didn’t seem to be any more fire from
the near field.
But the gunfire had attracted more attention. From the two
larger houses spilled more Frenchmen, almost two dozen, including several
wearing the red epaulets that indicated they were Grenadiers. Often the
largest, fiercest men in the battalion, the Grenadiers were used to press home
the attack and break through the enemy lines where the fight was fiercest.
Sharpe saw them coming. “DAN!” he bellowed over the cracks
of the muskets and rifles. Obviously there was no way for Hagman to
respond, but Sharpe caught a glimpse of Rifleman as they dashed down the
streambed and began to fire on the newest French reinforcements. A
sergeant at the front of the group was the first to go down, clutching his
belly, a testament both to the Rifles’ accuracy and the careful picking of
targets by their owners, leaving the newly arrived reinforcements without
leadership and looking anxiously for the source of the fire.
Sharpe looked out to the fields on their flanks. Both groups
of French voltigeurs who had been there were gone, either dead or fled, and the
new group was just mustering out into the road between the buildings, and so
Sharpe turned to Harper, who was in the midst of reloading his rifle, and the
mix of regulars and riflemen who were now hunched in cover along the road, a
few bullets cracking through the air overhead. “Okay!” he bellowed, “Make
sure you are loaded, one quick volley, and then we go!” His men nodded, a few grinning, although
Rifleman Hine’s usual arrogant look had been replaced with one that suggested
he was maybe ready to be sick.
Sharpe looked at him. “Hine,” he said, his voice suddenly
calm and level.
Hine looked up at Sharpe.
“One shot. One charge. They’ll be done. Can you give me that?”
Hine looked at Sharpe, then at the men around him, who were all
watching him expectantly, several bullets still cutting through the air around
them. “Yessir,” he said, nodding, taking a deep breath.
Sharpe nodded.
“Good. Fix bayonets.” There
was series of loud clicks as the men fixed their bayonets or, in the case of
the riflemen, their sword bayonets. Everyone appeared to be ready. “Let’s go!” Sharpe said, and he leapt
up. “Ready!” he bellowed, and the mix of
Riflemen and regulars stood and leveled their firearms.
The sudden appearance of a line of armed men along the fenceline
at the road checked the still-organizing Frenchmen, who hadn’t been entirely
sure what was going on… they just knew that their comrades were either dead or
gone, and suddenly a line of armed men had appeared, bayonets glinting, in
front of them.
“FIRE!” yelled Sharpe, and at once they did, a rolling cloud of
acrid smoke obscuring their targets. The volley crashed into the French
troops on the road, throwing down a handful of them, and causing the rest to
flinch at the violence of it.
“CHARGE!” roared Sharpe, and he charged through the smoke,
dragging his sword out of its scabbard as he went.
He came out of the smoke to find the French in some disarray.
Their officers down, fired on by some unknown assailant on their flank,
and now flailed by this volley from their front, they were not really ready to
fight. Several men had loaded their muskets and quickly fired. A ball whipped past Sharpe’s shoulder,
another snatched down one of the South Essex men in a cloud of red mist, but
the rest, hurriedly aimed, either missed or went high.
And the British crashed into them, bayonets stabbing forward, with
a roar.
Sharpe ripped his sword forward in a huge arc, forcing two French
soldiers backwards. They had no place to go, backing right into the men
behind them, and one fell, his throat ripped out by the tip of Sharpe’s blade.
The second tried to lunge forward with his bayonet, being pushed forward
by the man behind him, but Sharpe sidestepped it and moved forward, inside the
range of the bayonet, and punched the man in the face with the hilt of his huge
sword. A musket fired next to Sharpe, loud, and another Frenchman was in
front of him, screaming, jamming his bayonet forward, when suddenly one of the
South Essex men took him from the side, and the Frenchman screamed a high
pitched, shrill scream as he fell, the British bayonet deep in his chest.
With a little space cleared around him, Sharpe was now faced by a
knot of five French soldiers, including three Grenadiers, but then Harper was
there at his side, his seven barrelled Nock gun at the ready. It was a
massive gun, originally designed as a naval gun, intended to be used from the
rigging to clear the deck of an enemy ship.
In the hands of the huge Rifleman, it was instead used to clear the
road. Harper pulled the trigger, and the
gun fired, the boom sounding like a small cannon. Three of the Frenchmen
were thrown down, but two of them, both Grenadiers, survived, and now raised
their muskets and fired.
Sharpe threw himself to the side just as they brought up their
muskets and he saw one trying to adjust his aim to follow Sharpe as he pulled
the trigger. There was an explosion of smoke in front of him and he felt
the air as the bullet cracked past his head.
Next to him he heard a grunt, and in his peripheral vision saw Harper
flinch backward. Sharpe was then moving up and forward, his massive,
straight bladed cavalry sword swinging in a glittering arc. The Grenadier in front of him, a tall man
with a blond beard, blocked the blade with his musket and then smashed himself
forward, catching Sharpe with his shoulder and throwing him back several feet.
The Frenchman then stamped his foot forward, trying to find Sharpe with
his bayonet, and Sharpe again tried to sidestep and close the distance.
But this time his opponent was expecting it, and again he smashed
bodily into Sharpe, knocking the Rifle Captain violently to the ground.
Sharpe hit the ground with a heavy thud, his breath forced from him, and
the Grenadier drew his musket back again to stab… and suddenly the large
Frenchman gasped as a bullet smacked right into the center of his chest, right
where his two crossbelts met in an X. He fell just as the second
Grenadier turned his attention from Harper to the now-prone Sharpe. The French soldier lifted his musket high,
fully intending to drive his bayonet down through Sharpe’s body and into the
dusty road beneath him.
But Sharpe didn’t give him that opportunity. He quickly
rolled to the side while simultaneously dragging his sword across, at ankle
level. While missing the full weight of a body behind it, it was enough
to crash into the Grenadier’s ankle and throw him off balance, which in turn
gave Sharpe enough time to scramble to his feet. But the Grenadier was
quick; he lunged forward with his bayonet, and Sharpe ducked aside, and the
Guard’s injured ankle couldn’t support him, and the bayonet ripped sideways
into the flowing priest’s robes that Sharpe was wearing, where it got stuck. The
Grenadier’s mouth opened in shock, and then Sharpe’s blade cut down into his
shoulder, sending the Frenchman crashing into the dust.
“Pat!” cried Sharpe, looking over, but he saw the Irishman down on
the road beside him, his hand clutching his arm, blood seeping out from between
his fingers.
Harper gritted his teeth. “I should have ducked,” he hissed,
the pain obvious. Sharpe knelt down next to him and pried his hand away
from the wound. “It’s not so bad, sir,” said Harper, and Sharpe realized
with a sudden surge of relief that Harper was right; the bullet had hit the
Sergeant in the arm, but the bullet had largely grazed him, hitting the meat
but not shattering a bone. The big Irishman was already getting to his feet,
his teeth still gritted in pain, surveying the results of the attack as a
veteran sergeant should.
And in the eyes of the veteran sergeant… despite a bullet to the
arm, things looked good indeed.
Sharpe looked at the young French lieutenant who was standing in
front of him, a livid bruise on his cheek. The Lieutenant’s eyes
took in everything. The growing pile of
French dead that the British troops were stacking up. The French
prisoners sitting in a circle next to one of the houses. The victorious British troops wrapping up
wounds and sharing bits of captured garlic sausage taken from French packs.
A small group of the Rifles grumbling as they smashed several cases of
wine that they had found in a house, cases which Sharpe had immediately ordered
destroyed so that none of the men would drink themselves sick.
Finally his eyes came back to Sharpe himself. He nervously
scratched at his blonde moustache, and said something in French that sounded
like a question. Sharpe, who spoke no French, frowned, and the man said
something else, this time in Spanish.
Sharpe looked at Father Lopez, who was now standing next to him.
“He wants to know, senor, what you will do with his men that you
captured?”
Sharpe looked back at Lieutenant Broullard. Broullard was
doing his best to look strong in front of the English Captain, but Sharpe could
read the mix of concern and shame in the man’s eyes. Behind him, Harper
coughed.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
Patrick Harper shifted a bit where he stood, wincing and moving
his arm a bit to get it more comfortable in the makeshift sling. “Well,
we can’t rightly take’em with us, Sir…”
Sharpe nodded, sighed. He was tired, that wave of the
exhilaration of battle long since receded. While the French were indeed
his enemy, he couldn’t possibly march a dozen or more prisoners, some of whom
were wounded, back to the British army. He felt the French Lieutenant’s
eyes on him. “Well, I’m not going to
kill him and his men, if that’s what he’s worried about,” he said to the
priest, who translated for the Frenchman, who immediately looked relieved.
“But what about this priest, Sebastian?”
Lopez spoke, and the French officer nodded and responded, and
pointed to the largest house behind him.
Sharpe’s eyes swung to the house. Standing beside the door,
guarded by two redcoats, was a large priest in rough robes and, beside him, the
girl Sharpe had seen the night before.
Sharpe and Harper walked forward, Harper’s rifle held casually
over his uninjured shoulder. “Father Sebastian?” the sergeant asked, his
Irish accent thick.
“Indeed!” said the priest, a calm smile on his wide, tan, simple
face.
Then the girl stepped in front, her eyes fierce, her face
scowling, her fists balled up. “Who are you?” she demanded of Harper, her
Spanish accent thick.
Sharpe heard one or two men chuckle, and Harper, who towered over
the girl, grinned a wide grin at her ferocity. “Just the men sent to
rescue you, senorita, if you please.”
“Father,” said Sharpe, nodding sharply at the priest.
Father Sebastian looked Sharpe over,
taking in his ragged uniform, the worn rifle, the look in his eye, and
recognized immediately the sort of man he was facing. “Yes, Captain. I have to thank you and your men for finding
us, for rescuing us,” he said in a deep voice, his accent thick.
“I hope you did not suffer for our sake.”
Sharpe nodded. “Two men dead,
another five wounded. Whatever you have, or do, you must be important.”
A concerned look came across
Sebastian’s face. “I am sorry, Captain, but I don’t have any idea what
you mean. I…”
Sharpe waved his hand.
“Whatever it is, I don’t care, Father. It’s above the paygrade of a
Captain. I just need to get you back.”
Sharpe looked at the girl, who was now standing, arms crossed defiantly,
next to Rifleman Jenkins, who was twice as tall but no fiercer looking than the
girl. “And her?”
Father Sebastian smiled. “My sobrina, Captain… my niece? Sofia. She is staying with me, learning mathematics
and English and French and the like, when the French came. They took her,
maybe to ensure that I behaved?” The
priest nodded, and then looked directly at Sharpe. “And this Frenchman?” he inquired, nodding at
the Lieutenant who, knowing he was being discussed, shifted uncomfortably from
one foot to the other.
Sharpe nodded. “What about
him?”
“If I may, Captain? While I
know that we Spanish harbor no love for the French, Lieutenant Broullard here,
his men, have really been quite kind. I would appreciate if you could
show him and his men mercy?”
Sharpe looked at the priest.
“Really?” he said, his voice slightly disbelieving. “They didn’t
torture you? Your niece?”
“Torture me?! Mio dios, no,
Captain!” exclaimed the priest, looking positively mortified. “Why on
earth would they torture an innocent priest?
And the Lieutenant took Sofia under his protection… he said she reminded
him of his youngest daughter.”
Sharpe frowned. If it wasn’t
information that the priest knew and the French wanted, some list of spies or
agents, then what was it? “Well, what the hell did they want with an
innocent priest in the first place, then?”
Harper eyes widened in mock horror
at Sharpe’s blasphemy. Sebastian didn’t seem to mind, but again shrugged.
“The only thing that he asked about was wine, Captain. Apparently their
General wanted me for my wine making?”
“Fine,” said Sharpe, irritated by
the priest’s dogged reluctance to admit what was really going on here.
“Wine. Gather your things; we
leave soon.” And he turned from the
priest and his niece to organize his men for the march back to Trujillo.
It took three days to get back to
Trujillo, slowed as they were by the wounded and by Father Lopez and his
pilgrims, who insisted on joining them. Things had worked out well,
actually, as the wounded were put in the wagon, and the pilgrims walked. Sharpe couldn’t take prisoners, and so had
taken the guns from Broullard and his men and destroyed them, and told them to
march back to their army; the French left the village soon thereafter, and the
villagers themselves filtered back in from the hills, where they had been
hidden. While some of their livestock had been killed and eaten by the
French, they had kept enough with them to survive.
Patrick Harper enjoyed the trip back
to Trujillo, chatting amiably with Father Sebastian about Spain and local
wildlife and especially about winemaking, which the huge Irishman had taken a
recent, amateur interest in. He also seemed to enjoy teasing Sofia, whose
fierce scowl would occasionally drop in gales of laughter as the massive
Sergeant, such a terror with his enemies yet strangely such a natural with
children, played the fool for her. The pilgrims, and Father Lopez, still
treated Sharpe with some nervousness, keeping a fearful distance, which suited
Sharpe just fine. And slowly but surely,
the strange procession of soldiers, priests, pilgrims and one fierce little
Spanish girl made its way back to Trujillo.
Sharpe stood at attention in front
of Colonel Simmerson in the large kitchen of Father Sebastian’s villa outside
of town. Father Sebastian sat at the rough wooden table in the room, his
niece Sofia sat beside him, a large
case of his finest wine on the table.
“Two dead, and five wounded Sharpe?”
demanded Simmerson, his small bloodshot eyes boring into the Captain.
“Yes sir,” said Sharpe, staring just
above Simmerson’s head. “Ran into some Frenchmen.”
Simmerson snorted. “Well, I
hope you gave better than you received, Captain!” He shuffled through
some papers in his hands, as if looking for something. “Seven
casualties? For such a small job?”
Richard Sharpe’s flinty eyes
suddenly drifted downwards, downwards until he was looking Simmerson in the
eye. “There were a lot of Frenchmen. Sir.”
Simmerson’s lip curled a bit, but
there was a moment of hesitation in his eyes. Just then, there was a loud
bang as the front door of the priest’s villa banged open, and Sharpe heard
several men walking, speaking loudly as they did, and suddenly Sir Arthur
Wellesley came striding into the room, along with several staff officers.
He pulled up short when he realized who was in the room, and also as he
realized that he had entered at some moment of tension.
“Ah. Colonel,” said Wellesley,
nodding curtly at Simmerson. His eye flitted over to Sharpe. “Captain.”
Simmerson, his eyes still afire,
turned his back to Sharpe and gave Wellesley a curt salute. “Ah. General.
So I take it you have accepted my invitation to dinner?” he said, doing
his best to sound both dignified and strong.
After a moment, Wellesley turned his
eyes back to Simmerson. “In a way.
I suppose my messenger never arrived?”
Simmerson’s mouth opened slightly
and then closed. “I am afraid not, Sir.”
“Ah,” said Wellesley, nodding like
he had decided it was time to deliver bad news. “Well, I’ll be making
this divisional headquarters for now.
I’m afraid you’ll have to find yourself a new billet in town. So
sorry.” He paused to allow Simmerson to
digest this news, and then turned back to his staff officers.
Simmerson’s recoiled slightly, his
mouth open now. “Oh! Well… Sir…
but the cook… this case of wine… the winemaker…? That you liked…?” and he
motioned towards the table, towards Father Sebastian and the case of wine.
Wellesley turned his attention back
to Simmerson with a slightly furrowed brow, as if irritated, and then nodded
curtly. “Ah. Yes. That red wine,
that was from this town.” He looked at
Father Sebastian. “It is quite
delicious.” Sebastian smiled at the
General. “And I suppose this is for me?” Wellesley said, nodding at the
case of wine on the table.
“Ah,” said Simmerson.
“Yes. Sir.”
Wellesley nodded again, the look of
irritation still in his eyes. “Well… quite thoughtful.” He turned to one of his aides. “We can open that case with dinner.” He
then turned back to Sir Henry. “Much
obliged. Well… not enough time in the
day. We should get going.”
Wellesley was ready to leave. He turned on his heel.
“Captain Sharpe. I hope you are staying out of trouble.”
Sharpe saluted. “Yes, sir.”
And Wellesley swept out of the
kitchen, his staff officers following him, Sir Henry Simmerson following a
moment later, looking a bit like a boy who had lost his dog.
Sharpe turned to Father Sebastian,
who looked a bit awestruck, and Sofia, who had a huge grin splitting her tan
face. For a moment he just stood there, shaking his head slightly. All of this… the march, battle, the
casualties… so Simmerson could curry favor with Wellesley. “It really was
about the wine,” he said.
Sebastian nodded, a warm smile
breaking across his tan, open face. “I told you, Captain. It really was about the wine.”
Richard Sharpe
shook his head and stood. He nodded to Father Sebastian, then winked at
the little girl standing beside him, who winked back fiercely. Sharpe
then walked over to the table, slid one of the bottles of red wine out of the
case, tucked it under his arm, and left the kitchen, heading back to camp, to
drink a toast to their adventure, with Sharpe’s Wine.
