Sharpe’s feet. „Trots hommes,“ the man said, holding up three fingers in case these heathen German troops did not understand him, „six sous.”
“Bugger him.” Sharpe raised the black-painted metal latch that held the gate shut and, from above him, a click sounded and he looked up to see the toll-keeper’s wife leaning from an upper window. She was a woman of squat, startling ugliness, her hair bound with a muslin scarf, and, more to the immediate point, armed with a vast, brass-barrelled blunderbuss that covered the three officers.
„Six sous,“ said the toll-keeper stoically. Life held few surprises for toll-keepers, and strange troops were nothing new to him.
Captain Palmer, who held Major Richard Sharpe’s reputation in some awe, was now astonished to see the Rifleman grudgingly take out a ten-franc silver piece. A delay ensued while the toll-keeper went indoors, unlocked his iron-bound chest, found the right change, then gave Sharpe a written receipt which, Frederickson explained, would enable reimbursement to be made at the District Headquarters in Bordeaux.
“I can’t have that bugger charging for all of us,” Sharpe said. “Rather than disarm his Grenadier, William, we’ll march the men through the ford.”
“Yes, sir.” Frederickson was highly amused by the whole transaction.
“Shouldn’t we…?” Palmer began hesitantly.
“No,” Sharpe said. “We’re under orders not to agitate civilians, Captain. No stealing, no raping. If anyone breaks that order he’ll be hanged. By me. Instantly.” His headache had made him speak more sharply than he had intended.
“Yes, sir.” Palmer sounded subdued.
They walked to the stand of beeches that Frederickson had patrolled in the night. “It’s the right place,” Sharpe said grudgingly, “if anything travels today. Which I doubt.” Any sensible man would stay indoors on this cold day.
The beeches lay to the right of the road, the farm to the left. The farm was a miserable hovel of a place; merely a mud-walled cottage surrounded by frosted slush with two dilapidated outbuildings where chickens lived in filthy straw.
A pigsty lay beyond a low hedge. Sharpe broke a piece of cat-ice with his heel, then swivelled to look where the road passed between the beeches and the farm’s hedgerow. “We use your Marines there, Palmer. You stop them, and the Rifles will kill them.”
Palmer, not wanting to show any lack of understanding, nodded. Frederickson understood instantly. By using the Marines, with their heavy firepower of quick-loading muskets, as the stop in the bottle, Sharpe would force an enemy to scatter left and right to outflank the road-block. On those flanks they would run into the hidden Riflemen. It would be quick, bloody, and effective. “What if they come from the south?”
“Leave them.” Sharpe knew that any northward-bound convoy would be travelling empty.
It took two hours to set the trap. No one could be visible, and so Minver’s Company of Riflemen and Palmer’s Marines were somehow crammed into the tiny farm buildings. Frederickson’s Company, drawing the short straw because Sharpe trusted their officer, were in the more exposed beech wood. Harper, with two of Frederickson’s Riflemen, was a half mile to the north as look-out.
The farmer, with his wife and daughter, crouched in a corner of their kitchen that was filled with big, stinking men armed with the heavy Sea-Service muskets. The daughter was waif-like and, beneath her stringy, dirty hair, pretty in a winsome and frightened way. The Marines, starved of women for months, eyed her hopefully.
“One flicker of trouble,” Sharpe warned Palmer, “and I’ll kill the man responsible.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sharpe visited the Riflemen in the small barn. The barn’s outside end wall, as in England, served as the countryman’s museum. A stoat was nailed to the wood, its old, dry fur pricked with frost. Ravens decayed there, and an otter skin hung empty. The Riflemen, despite their cold breakfast and shivering night, grinned at Sharpe.
He walked north along the hedgerow. He saw two men strolling down the road with a dog at their heels. A quarter of an hour later a woman drove a skeletal cow north, doubtless to sell the beast at market to raise enough cash to see the winter through. None of them saw the Rifleman.
It seemed extraordinary to Sharpe that he could be here, deep in France, unchallenged. Only the Navy, he supposed, could make such a thing possible. The French, bereft of a fleet, could never set such a trap on a Hampshire road. But Sharpe could come here, strike like a snake, and be gone by the next sundown, while Bampfylde’s flotilla, riding at the mouth of the Arcachon Channel, was as safe as if it was anchored in the River Hamble.
Sharpe turned back towards the farm. The cold weather and the emptiness of the road made him doubt whether any convoy would travel today. His head hurt foully and, safe from any man’s gaze, he flinched with the pain and rubbed a cautious hand over his bandaged forehead. Johnny Pearson, he remembered, had just pitched forward into a dish of hot tripe; no warning, no sound, just stone dead a few seconds after he had cheerfully said it was time to take the bandage off his scalp. Sharpe pressed his forehead to test whether the bone grated. It did not, but it hurt like the very devil.
Back in the farm hovel a cauldron boiled on the open fire and the Marines had pooled their tea to fill the small room with a homely smell. The girl, Sharpe noticed, was now giving the strangers shy smiles. She had catlike, green eyes, and she laughed when the men tried to talk to her.
“Take some tea to the barn,” Sharpe ordered.
“Twas our leaves,” a voice said from the back of the room.
Sharpe turned, but no one pressed the objection and the tea was taken out to the Riflemen.
The frost melted outside. The mist cleared somewhat, showing the poplars to the north where Harper lay hidden in a ditch. A grey heron, enemy of trout fishermen, sailed with slow, flapping wings towards the north.
Sharpe, as the morning wore on and as the Marines beguiled the green-eyed girl into giggling flirtation, decided the day was being wasted. Nothing would come. He crossed to Fredcrickson’s men to find them hidden deep beneath the thick drifts of dead leaves and told Sweet William that, if nothing appeared within two hours, they would start to withdraw. “We’ll, march-to Facture and billet the men warm tonight.” That would leave a short crisp distance for the morning march to Arcachon where Sharpe would insist that the.nonsense about taking Bordeaux be abandoned.
Frederickson was disappointed that this journey might be in vain. “You wouldn’t wait till dusk?”
“No.” Sharpe shivered inside his greatcoat. He was sure nothing would come now, though he partly suspected that he rather hoped nothing would come so that he could begin the homeward journey. Besides, his head was splitting fit to burst. He told himself he needed a doctor, but he dared not reveal the extent of his pain to Frederickson. Sharpe forced a rueful smile. “Nothing’s going to come, William. I feel it in my bones.“
“You have a reliable skeleton?”
“It’s never wrong,” Sharpe said. “
The enemy came at midday.
Harper and his two men brought news of it. Twenty cavalry, walking rather than riding their horses, led six canvas-covered wagons, two coaches, and five Companies of infantry. Sharpe, trying to ignore the searing stabs in his head, considered Harper’s report. The enemy was coming in strength, but Sharpe decided that surprise would nullify that advantage. He nodded to Palmer. “Go.” He ran to the barn and ordered Minver’s Riflemen to their hidden positions. “If I blow ”withdraw“,” he said, “you know where to go.”
“Over the bridge.” Minver drew his sword and licked his lips. “And cover the retreat.”
Sharpe doubled back, Harper with him, to where the Marines crouched behind the hedge. “You see the milestone?” Sharpe said to Palmer.
Palmer nodded. Fifty yards up the road was a milestone that had been first defaced of its number of miles, then re-inscribed with the strange kilometres that had recently been introduced in France. The stone recorded that it was 43 kilometres to Bordeaux, a distance that meant nothing to Sharpe. “We don’t move till they reach that stone, understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Palmer blanched to think of letting the enemy come that close, but raised no objection.
Normally all Sharpe’s presentiments, any gloom, would have vanished at the first sight of the enemy, but the pain in his skull was a terrible distraction. He wanted to lie down in a dark place, he wanted the oblivion of sleep,
