Sharpe's Christmas s-17 Page 4

A ground of unarmed French soldiers stood nervously outside the tavern, and he pushed his angry way through them and then kicked open the door. "What bastard Frenchman dared killed my officer?" he shouted, storming into the room with one hand on the hilt of his heavy cavalry sword.

  A tall, grey-haired French officer stood to face him. "The man who killed your officer is dead, monsieur, " the Frenchman said. "I shot him."

  Sharpe stopped and stared. His hand fell from the sword and his mouth dropped open. For a second he seemed unable to speak, but then he found his voice.

  "Colonel Gudin?" he asked in amazement.

  Gudin smiled. "Oui, Caporal Sharpe."

  "I'm a major now, sir, " Sharpe said, and he stepped forward with his hand outstretched, but Gudin ignored the hand and instead clasped Sharpe in both arms and kissed him on both cheeks. D'Alembord watched, smiling.

  "I knew it was you, " Gudin said, his hands still on Sharpe's shoulders. "I'm proud of you, Sharpe. So very proud." There were tears in the colonel's eyes.

  "And for your officer who died, I am sorry. There was nothing I could do."

  The door from the kitchens opened and Daniel Hagman poked his head through.

  "Need more towels, Captain, " he said to d'Alembord.

  "What the hell are you doing, Dan?" Sharpe asked.

  "Delivering a baby, sir, " Hagman said, as if that was the most natural thing in the world for a Rifleman to be doing on Christmas Eve. "Isn't the first baby I've done, sir. The Frog doctor was going to cut her open, and that would have killed her, but I'll see her right. It's no different from slipping a lamb into the world. Thank you, sir." He took the proffered rags from d'Alembord and ducked back into the candlelit kitchen.

  Sharpe sat. D'Alembord and Gudin had started on the wine, so he poured himself a mug and took a long drink. "So what am I going to do with you?" he asked his old colonel.

  Gudin spread his hands. "I could choose to fight you, I suppose, but if I do, I lose. So I fear I am your prisoner again." The colonel looked at d'Alembord.

  "He took me prisoner in India, and he was only a corporal then."

  "That was a long time ago, sir, a long time ago." Sharpe poured more wine and pushed the wineskin towards the colonel. "And how have you been since, sir?"

  "Not well, Sharpe, not well, " Gudin confessed. "You see I am still a colonel, just as I was then. It seemed that after Seringapatam I could do nothing right."

  "I'm sure that's not true, sir. You were the best officer I ever had."

  Gudin smiled at the compliment. "But I have had no luck, Sharpe, no victories."

  "So tell me about it, sir. It's the night before Christmas, a good night for a story. So tell me."

  So Gudin did.

  GENERAL Maximillien Picard sulked. He sat by a miserable fire in the deep, cold valley listening to the moans of his wounded and knew that he had been well beaten.

  He had scented defeat from the moment he had seen the demonstration volley the British had flaunted from their high ridge, but Picard had always thought he was a lucky man and he had hoped that his good luck would serve to drive his column up the hill and through the thin British line. But the column had been shattered and his conscripts, instead of tasting victory, were now more fearful than ever.

  He drank from a brandy flask. It was three o'clock on Christmas morning, but he could not sleep. The skies had cleared, so that the Christmas stars were bright, but General Picard felt nothing but gloom. "Gudin's doomed, " he said to his chief of staff Major Santon. "If we couldn't break those bastards, what hope does he have?"

  "None, sir, " Santon said.

  "I don't mind losing Gudin, " Picard said, "but why must we lose Caillou? Now there's a soldier for you. And if we lose Caillou, Santon, you know what else we lose?"

  "The Eagle, sir."

  "The Eagle, " Picard said, and flinched. "We will have lost one of the Emperor's Eagles." His eyes filled with tears. "I do not mind defeat, Santon, he said untruthfully, "but I cannot bear the loss of an Eagle. It will be taken to London and flaunted in front of that fat prince. And Eagle of France, gone to captivity."

  Santon said nothing, for there was nothing to say. To a soldier of France there was no shame like losing an Eagle. The birds might be nothing more than little bronze statuettes poised on a staff from which the tricolour flew, but they had all been touched by the Emperor and they were all sacred to France.

  And in the dark hills above them, an Eagle was in desperate danger.

  "I can bear anything, " Picard said, "except that."

  Then, from above them, all hell broke loose.

  To the defeated French brigade in the deep valley it sounded like a battle to end the world. True, there was no artillery firing, but the experienced soldiers claimed they had never heard musketry like it. The volleys were unending, and the crash of those musket blasts was magnified and multiplied by the valley's echoing walls. They could hear faint screams and shouts, and sometimes a bugle call but, above it all, and never ending, the hammer sound of muskets. There was volley after volley, so many that after a while the sound became continuous; a deep grinding sound like the creak of a hinge on the gate of hell.

  "We should go up and help, " Picard said, rising to his feet.

  "We can't, sir, " Santon insisted, and he pointed up to the crest where a line of British soldiers still stood guard. The moon was unsheathed from the clouds, and any Frenchman trying to climb the slope would be a sitting target for those riflemen. "Gudin must fight on his own, " Santon said.

  And Gudin must have been fighting, for the musketry, instead of fading, grew in intensity. Picard reckoned it must be Caillou who fought, for surely poor old Gudin could never fight a battle like this. Every now and then a brief glow showed in the sky, betraying where a group of muskets flamed together, and soon the heavy, foul-smelling smoke spilled over the pass's lip to drift down the slope. And still the splintering volleys ground on.

  UP IN THE PASS, Sharpe loaded his rifle. He did it quickly, trained to the intricate motions by a lifetime of soldiering, and when the gun was loaded he raised it to his shoulder, held the muzzle high into the sky, and pulled its trigger.

  «Faster!» he shouted, «faster!» And all around him redcoats and greenjackets peppered the sky. They fired volley after volley at the stars and, in between the volleys, they whooped and screamed like demons.

  "I pity any poor angel up there tonight, sir, " Patrick Harper said to Captain d'Alembord. "He'll lose a few wingfeathers, so he will." And then Harper fired his volley gun at the moon and down in the valley the deafened French gasped, thinking that at last the artillery was joining the fight.

  «Faster!» Sharpe shouted. "Vite! Vite! " A group of French soldiers pulled their triggers, scattering a volley towards the snow on the highest peaks.

  Daniel Hagman walked calmly through the chaos and noise. "It's a girl, sir!»

  he shouted at Colonel Gudin.

  "A girl?" Gudin said. "I thought, on Christmas Day, it might be a boy."

  "It's a pretty little girl, sir, and she's just fine and so is her mother. The women are looking after her, and she'll be ready to move in a while. Just a while."

  Sharpe had overheard the news and grinned at Gudin. "A cold night to be born, colonel."

  "But she'll live, Sharpe. They'll both live. That's what matters."

  Sharpe fired his rifle at the stars. "I was thinking of the baby Jesus, colonel. His birth must have been cold as hell."

  Gudin smiled. "I think Palestine is a warm country, Sharpe, like India. I doubt the first Christmas was cold."

  "At least He never joined the Army, sir. He had more sense." Sharpe rammed another bullet in his rifle, then walked down the boisterous line of soldiers.

  Redcoats and Frenchmen were mixed together, all of them firing like maniacs into the star-bright sky. «Faster!» Sharpe shouted. "Come on, now! Faster!

  You're celebrating Christ's birth! Make some effort! Vite! Vite!»

  It took a half-hour befor
e Maria and her newborn child could be laid in the wagon where they were cushioned with blankets and swathed in sheepskins. The new baby had gifts: a Rifleman's silver button, a broken ivory boot-hook that a redcoat had lifted from the battlefield of Vitoria, and a golden guinea that was a present from Peter d'Alembord.

  When the mother and child were comfortable, the wagon driver whipped his horses northward, and all the Spanish women and children whom Gudin had tried so hard to save fell in behind the lumbering vehicle. They climbed the gentle pass, and the French troops who had been shooting at the stars fell in around them as the wagon passed. A hundred Frenchmen joined the women, all of them from Gudin's garrison, and their colonel was the very last man to join the procession.

  "Here, sir, " Sharpe said, and he stepped forward and offered Colonel Gudin the Eagle.

  Gudin stared at the trophy. "Are you sure, Sharpe?"

  Sharpe grinned. "I've already captured one, sir. I don't need another."

  Gudin took the Eagle, then hugged Sharpe and kissed him farewell.

  "After the war, Sharpe?" he said huskily. "I shall see you after the war?"

  "I hope so, sir. I do hope so."

  There was one last charade to mount. The men guarding the frontier ridge fired their muskets, then ran in pretended panic as Gudin's small procession approached.

  And from the valley below, General Picard watched in amazement as a small group of Frenchmen appeared at the ridge's crest. They were only a few men, a mere handful, less than a tenth of those he had expected, but they had fought their way through; they had even brought a wagon through.

  And then Picard saw a golden glint shine above the dark shapes who fired back at the ridge behind them and he raised his telescope and stared intently, trying to track down the elusive gleam, and suddenly there it was. It was the Eagle. He could see its spread wings and its banded flag.

  "They've brought the Eagle! " Picard shouted. "They've saved the Eagle! " And his defeated men began to cheer.

  The firing in the high pass died slowly to leave a layer of gunsmoke lingering above the road. The riflemen and redcoats grinned. They had enjoyed the nonsense. None had wanted to spend Christmas in this high country that was so far from their beef and plum-pudding, but the expedition had turned into a game.

  It was a pity about Ensign Nicholls, of course, but what had he expected?

  Everyone knew that Mister Sharpe was fatal for ensigns, but at least Mister Nicholls was to be buried in France. Sharpe had insisted on that. The boy had come to fight the French and, for all eternity, he would hold a tiny scrap of captured French soil.

  But no one else had died. No one else had even taken a wound, and the regiment had turned back a whole French brigade, while in the village, under the guard of the Grenadier company, 900 French prisoners waited to be marched back into Spain and captivity.

  But one hundred Frenchmen went free. One hundred Frenchmen, their women, their children, their colonel and an Eagle. They went free because Sharpe, to help an old friend, had given that friend a victory, and Sharpe now watched Gudin's men go down the slope, and he saw the men of the defeated brigade run up to greet them. He heard the cheers and, in the silver moonlight, framed in the lens of his telescope, he saw the brigade officers cluster around Colonel Gudin.

  Unlucky Gudin, who, on Christmas morning 1813, had saved an Eagle and fought his way to freedom. Colonel Jean Gudin, a hero at last.

  "Do you think they'll ever find out that it was all faked?" Harper asked.

  "Who'd ever believe it?" Sharpe asked.

  "No one, I suppose, " Harper said, and then, after a pause. "A happy Christmas to you, sir."

  "And to you, Patrick."

  "I suppose it'll be mutton for dinner?"

  "I suppose it will. We'll buy a few sheep and you can kill them."

  "Not me, sir. You, sir."

  Sharpe laughed, and then turned south towards the village. It was Christmas morning, a crisp, clean, new Christmas morning, and his men were alive, an old friend was a hero and there would be mutton for dinner. It was Sharpe's Christmas.

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