the powder so that the barrels were now filled with a dark grey, porridge-like sludge, while the home-made cartridges had come apart in a soggy mess of paper, lead, and wet powder. The captured French cartridges were also heavy with water and Sharpe swore again; swore foully, uselessly, and savagely.
Frederickson fingered the wall over the barrels. “The explosion must have loosened the masonry.”
“It was dry when we came,” Sharpe said. “I checked!”
“Rain takes time to seep through, sir,” Frederickson said.
Six Marines carried the powder to the stone gallery where the cooking fires burned. There the powder could be spread out and some of it would be dry by morning, but Sharpe knew that this disaster meant the end of his defiance.
It was his own fault. He should have covered the powder with a tarpaulin, but he had not thought. There was so much he should have done. He should have foreseen that the enemy had mortars, he should have warned Palmer about the stone dam, he should have made a bigger sortie on the first night, he should have brought Harper’s cannons on to the wall where they would have been safer from the shells. He should have had water ready to fight the fires, he should, perhaps, never have fought at all.
Sharpe sat in the cave of the magazine and a wave of despair hit him. “We used over half our good ammunition?”
“Well over half.” Frederickson was as unhappy as Sharpe. He sat opposite, knees drawn up, and the lantern threw the shadows of the two riflemen high on the arch of the magazine’s ceiling. “We might as well bring the wounded in here now. They’ll be more comfortable.”
“Yes.” But neither man moved. “There’s some French ammunition in the ready magazines, isn’t there?” Sharpe asked.
“Only fifty cartridges in each.”
Sharpe picked up a shard of stone and scratched a square on the magazine floor. He marked the position of the gate on the southern side. “The question,” he spoke slowly, “is whether they’re fooling us with the gate and plan to attack somewhere else, or not?”
“They’ll come for the gate,” Frederickson said.
“I think so.” Sharpe scratched marks over the gate. “We’ll put everyone there. Just leave Minver with a handful of men to guard the other walls.”
Sharpe clung to the pathetic hope that a British brig, nosing up the enemy coast with the impunity that Nelson’s victories had given to the Navy, might see his strange flag. A brig, moored in the channel, could fire hell and destruction into an attacking French column. Yet in this weather, with this fitful, veering wind and the blotting, seething rain that bounced four inches high off the shattered cobbles of the yard, Sharpe knew no brig would come. “Your fellow might have reached our lines by now.” He was clutching at straws, and he knew it.
“If he survived,” Frederickson said grimly. “And if anyone will take him seriously. And even then the Army will have to go on its knees to the Navy and beg them to risk one little boat.”
“Bugger Bampfylde,” Sharpe said. “I hope he gets the pox.”
“Amen.”
A twelve-pounder ball crashed into the gate and there was a pause, a cracking sound like a bone breaking, then the grumbling, tumbling, roaring slide as tons of masonry collapsed inwards and downwards. The two officers stared at each other, imagining the stones thumping and sliding into the wet ditch, then settling in a shambolic mound as the dust, started from old mortar, was soaked by the rain.
“They have a breach,” Frederickson said in a voice which, by its very insouciance, betrayed apprehension.
Sharpe did not answer. If his men could hold off one more attack, just one, then it would buy time. Time for a ship to find them, time for French fears to settle in. Perhaps, if Calvet was repulsed again, the general — would leave the fort alone, content to screen it with a half battalion of men. The rumble of the subsiding stones faded in the hissing rain.
“A week ago,” there was amusement in Sharpe’s voice, “men were hoping, that Bordeaux would rise. We would be heroes, William, ending the war with a grand gesture.”
“Someone told lies,” Frederickson said lightly.
“Everyone lied. Wellington let those buggers believe in a landing so the French would be fooled. The Comte de Maquerre was a traitor all along.” Sharpe shrugged as though nothing much mattered any more. “The Comte de bloody Maquerre. They call him Maquereau. He’s well-named, isn’t he? Bloody pimp.”
Frederickson smiled at Sharpe’s rare display of knowledge.
“But it’s really Ducos,” Sharpe said. Hogan, in his fever, he said both Ducos’ and Maquerre’s names, and this whole deception, that had stranded Sharpe’s men so far from any help, stank of Ducos.
“Ducos?”
“He’s just a bastard who I’ll kill one day.” Sharpe said it in a very matter-of-fact voice, then grimaced because he knew that if this siege was truly Ducos’ work, then the Frenchman was very close to victory. “It’ll be bloody work tomorrow, William.”
“Very.”
“Do the men have the fight in them?”
Frederickson paused. Harper’s huge voice shouted in the yard, bringing order to the men who had gone to see the collapsed gatehouse. “The Rifles do,” Frederickson said. “Most of mine are Germans and they’ll never surrender. The Spanish hate the goddamn crapauds and just want to kill more of them. I think the Marines will fight to show you they’re as good as the Rifles.”
Sharpe gave a half smile, half grimace. “We can hold one attack, William. But after that?”
“Yes.” Frederickson knew exactly how bad things were. And this damned rain, he thought, would not help.
After one attack, Sharpe knew, he must think of the unthinkable. Of surrender. Pride demanded that they defended the breach at least one time, but French anger might not allow a surrender after that one defence. Sharpe had seen men, their blood-lust goaded beyond endurance, put a captured fortress to the sack. Frenchmen, beyond sense, would hunt with sharpened bayonets through the stone corridors to take revenge on the defenders. The butchery would be vile, but pride was still pride and they would fight at least one more time. Sharpe tried to imagine what Wellington might do, he tried to think back over all the sieges he had fought to see if there was something left undone that he could do, he tried to think of some clever move to unsettle the enemy. He thought of nothing useful. “I’ll bet their general’s telling the poor buggers that we’ve got a hundred women in here,” Sharpe laughed.
Frederickson grinned. “He’ll give every man a half pint of wine, tell them they can rape every woman inside, then point them at the breach. It never fails. You should have seen us at San Sebastian.”
“I missed that.” Sharpe had been in England when the British had captured San Sebastian.
Frederickson smiled. “It wasn’t pretty.”
An howitzer shell exploded in the courtyard. “You’d think the buggers would run out of ammunition,” Sharpe said. It was oddly pleasant to sit here, sharing a friendship’s intimacy, knowing that nothing could now be done to diminish the slaughter that would come in the dawn. The French twelve-pounders still fired, even though the breach was formed, but now they sprayed the fallen stones with canister to prevent working parties from steepening the face up which their troops would swarm in the morning.
“If they capture us,” Frederickson said, “perhaps they’ll send us to Paris on our way to Verdun. I’d like to see Paris.”
The words reminded Sharpe of Jane’s wish to see the French capital when the war ended. He thought of his wife dead, of her body taken for a hasty burial. Damn Cornelius Killick, he thought, for taking away his hope.
Frederickson unexpectedly broke into song. „Ein schifflein sah ichfahren.“
Sharpe recognized the tune that was popular among the Germans who fought in Wellington’s Army. “Meaning?”
Frederickson gave a rueful smile. “”I saw a small ship sailing.“ Pray for a frigate to come in the morning, sir. Think of its broadside raking the Frog camp.”
Sharpe shook his head. “I don’t think God listens to soldiers.”
“He loves them,” Frederickson said. “We’re the fools of the Lord, the last honest men, creation’s scapegoats.”
