‘Porto?’
‘All those poor bastards,’ Harper said, remembering the awful moment when the pontoon bridge across the Douro had snapped. The roadway had been crowded with folk fleeing the invading French, and hundreds of them had drowned. Sharpe still saw the children in his dreams.
The three French officers were riding down to the bridge’s far end now. They waited there and Sharpe hurried past the women. ‘Jack?’ he called to Bullen. ‘I need you to translate.’
Sharpe and Bullen led the way to the Spanish bank. The women followed hesitantly. The three French officers waited and, as Sharpe drew near, one of them took off his cocked hat in salute. ‘My name is Lecroix,’ he introduced himself. He spoke in English. Lecroix was a young man, exquisitely uniformed, with a lean handsome face and very white teeth. ‘Captain Lecroix of the 8th,’ he added.
‘Captain Sharpe.’
Lecroix’s eyes widened slightly, perhaps because Sharpe did not look like a captain. His uniform was torn and dirty and, though he wore a sword, as officers did, the blade was a heavy cavalry trooper’s weapon, which was a huge and unwieldy blade better suited for butchering. He carried a rifle too, and officers did not usually carry longarms. Then there was his face, tanned and scarred, a face you might meet in some foetid alley, not in a salon. It was a frightening face and Lecroix, who was no coward, almost recoiled from the hostility in Sharpe’s eyes. ‘Colonel Vandal,’ he said, putting the stress on the name’s second syllable, ‘sends his compliments, monsieur, and requests that you permit us to recover our wounded,’ he paused, glancing at the handcart that had been stripped of the women’s luggage, thus revealing the powder kegs, ‘before you attempt to destroy the bridge.’
‘Attempt?’ Sharpe asked.
Lecroix ignored the scorn. ‘Or do you intend to leave our wounded for the amusements of the Portuguese?’
Sharpe was tempted to say that any French wounded deserved whatever they got from the Portuguese, but he resisted the urge. The request, he reckoned, was fair enough and so he drew Jack Bullen away far enough so that the French officers could not overhear him. ‘Go and see the brigadier,’ he told the lieutenant, ‘and tell him these buggers want to fetch their wounded over the river before we destroy the bridge.’
Bullen set off back across the bridge while two of the French officers started back towards Fort Josephine, followed by all the women except the two Spaniards who, barefoot and ragged, hurried south down the river’s bank. Lecroix watched them go. ‘Those two didn’t want to stay with us?’ He sounded surprised.
‘They said you captured them.’
‘We probably did.’ He took out a leather case of long thin cigars and offered one to Sharpe. Sharpe shook his head, then waited as Lecroix laboriously struck a light with his tinderbox. ‘You did well this morning,’ the Frenchman said once the cigar was alight.
‘Your garrison was asleep,’ Sharpe said.
Lecroix shrugged. ‘Garrison troops. No good. Old and sick and tired men.’ He spat out a shred of tobacco. ‘But I think you have done all the damage you will do today. You will not break the bridge.’
‘We won’t?’
‘Cannon,’ Lecroix said laconically, gesturing at Fort Josephine, ‘and my colonel is determined to preserve the bridge, and what my colonel wants, he gets.’
‘Colonel Vandal?’
‘Vandal,’ Lecroix corrected Sharpe’s pronunciation. ‘Colonel Vandal of the eighth of the line. You have heard of him?’
‘Never.’
‘You should educate yourself, Captain,’ Lecroix said with a smile, ‘read the accounts of Austerlitz and be astonished by Colonel Vandal’s bravery.’
‘Austerlitz?’ Sharpe asked. ‘What was that?’
Lecroix just shrugged. The women’s luggage was dropped at the bridge’s end and Sharpe sent the men back, then followed them until he reached Lieutenant Sturridge who was kicking at the planks on the foredeck of the fourth pontoon from the bank. The timber was rotten and he had managed to make a hole there. The stench of stagnant water came from the hole. ‘If we widen it,’ Sturridge said, ‘then we should be able to blow this one to hell and beyond.’
‘Sir!’ Harper called and Sharpe turned eastwards and saw French infantry coming from Fort Josephine. They were fixing bayonets and forming ranks just outside the fort, but he had no doubt they were coming to the bridge. It was a big company, at least a hundred men. French battalions were divided into six companies, unlike the British who had ten, and this company looked formidable with fixed bayonets. Bloody hell, Sharpe thought, but if the Frogs wanted to make a fight of it then they had better hurry because Sturridge, helped by half a dozen of Sharpe’s men, was prising off the pontoon’s foredeck and Harper was carrying the first powder barrel towards the widening hole.
There was a thunderous sound from the Portuguese side of the bridge and Sharpe saw the brigadier, accompanied by two officers, galloping onto the roadway. More redcoats were coming from the fort, doubling down the stony track, evidently to reinforce Sharpe’s men. The brigadier’s commandeered stallion was nervous of the vibrating roadway, but Moon was a superb horseman and kept the beast under control. He curbed the horse close to Sharpe. ‘What the devil’s going on?’
‘They said they wanted to fetch their wounded, sir.’
‘So what are those bloody men doing?’ Moon looked at the French infantry.
‘I reckon they want to stop us blowing the bridge, sir.’
‘Damn them to hell,’ Moon said, throwing Sharpe an angry look as if it was Sharpe’s fault. ‘Either they’re talking to us or they’re fighting us, they can’t do both at the same time! There are some bloody rules in war!’ He spurred on. Major Gillespie, the brigadier’s aide, followed him after giving Sharpe a sympathetic glance. The third horseman was Jack Bullen. ‘Come on, Bullen!’ Moon shouted. ‘You can interpret for me. My Frog ain’t up to scratch.’
Harper was filling the bows of the fourth pontoon with the barrels and Sturridge had taken off his jacket and was unwinding the slow match coiled about his waist. There was nothing there for Sharpe to do, so he went to where the brigadier was snarling at Lecroix. The immediate cause of the brigadier’s anger was that the French infantry company had advanced halfway down the hill and were now arrayed in line facing the bridge. They were no more than a hundred paces away, and were accompanied by three mounted officers. ‘You can’t talk to us about recovering your wounded and make threatening movements at the same time!’ Moon snapped.
‘I believe, monsieur, those men merely come to collect the wounded,’ Lecroix said soothingly.
‘Not carrying weapons, they don’t,’ Moon said, ‘and not without my permission! And why the hell have they got fixed bayonets?’
‘A misunderstanding, I’m sure,’ Lecroix said emolliently. ‘Perhaps you would do us the honour of discussing the matter with my colonel?’ He gestured towards the horsemen waiting behind the French infantry.
But Moon was not going to be summoned by some French colonel. ‘Tell him to come here,’ he insisted.
‘Or you will send an emissary, perhaps?’ Lecroix suggested smoothly, ignoring the brigadier’s direct order.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Moon growled. ‘Major Gillespie? Go and talk sense to the damned man. Tell him he can send one officer and twenty