The French ran, They ran down the ridge’s eastern face and towards the bridges that crossed the canal and led to the city. Sharpe, standing on the captured firestep, could at last stare down at the spires and towers and pinnacles and roofs of Toulouse. He could see the semi-circle of smoke that marked the British positions to the city’s east and south. It was like looking at a woodcut of a siege, taken from some old book about Marlborough’s wars. He stared, oblivious of the sudden silence on the ridge, and all he could think of was that he was alive.
Sharpe turned away from the city and saw Sergeant Harper alive and well. The big Irishman was cutting a canteen off a Frenchman’s belt. A bugle called victory. A wounded Frenchman cursed his pain and tried to stand. A Highland Sergeant was admiring a French officer’s sword which he had taken as a trophy. Men were ladling water from gun-buckets and pouring it down their faces. A dog ran with a length of intestines in its mouth. A British Lieutenant was dying at the base of the empty French flagpole. The man was blinking desperately, as though he knew that if he let his eyelids stay closed he would slip into eternal night.
Frederickson came and stood beside Sharpe and the two Rifle officers turned to stare down into the enemy city. “Tomorrow,” Frederickson said, “I suppose we’ll have to assault the damned place?”
“It won’t be us, William.” Sharpe knew that bloody business would be given to other battalions. The men who had taken this ridge had earned their pay and the proof of it was in the horror all around. Dead men, wounded men, dying horses, broken gun carriages, smoke, litter; it was a field after battle, the last battle. Surely, Sharpe thought, it had to be the last battle.
Sharpe found a cannon’s cleaning rag and wiped his sword clean. He had wet the blade after all, but soon, he thought, he would hang this long sword on a country wall and let it gather dust. To his north British colours advanced along the ridge as fresh battalions hunted down the last nests of stubborn defenders. The smoke was thinning to a misty haze. There were Spanish colours visible at the ridge’s far crest; proof that this day’s battle was won, even if the city itself had yet to fall. Sharpe suddenly laughed. “I had a sudden urge to take Calvet’s eagle. Did you recognize him?”
“I did.” Frederickson offered his canteen to Sharpe. “Be glad you didn’t try to take his bird, You wouldn’t be alive if you had.”
A bagpipe suddenly sounded, and something plangent in its notes made Sharpe and Frederickson turn.
“Oh, God,” Frederickson said softly.
Four Highlanders carried a litter made of enemy jackets threaded on to enemy muskets. On the litter, his white hair hanging, was Nairn.
Sharpe jumped down to the blood-drenched earth of the courtyard. He crossed to the body just as the Highlanders lowered it to the ground. “He’s dead, sir.” One of the men saw Sharpe’s face and offered the bleak news.
“He said it was his leg.” Sharpe frowned at the old man who had been his friend.
“His lung as well, sir.”
“Oh, Christ!” Tears came to Sharpe’s eyes, then fell down his bloodied cheek. “I was to have had supper with him tonight.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
They buried Nairn in the centre of the redoubt that the Scotsman had captured. A bagpipe played a lament for him, and a chaplain said a Gaelic prayer for him, and his beloved Highlanders fired a volley towards the northern stars for him.
And in the morning, when Sharpe awoke with a parched mouth and a heart that lurched with sorrow when he recalled the Scotsman’s death, it was discovered that Marshal Soult had abandoned Toulouse. He had marched through the gap in the British ring, and he had left the city that now was flaunted with white flags to welcome its enemies. Toulouse had surrendered.
Captain William Frederickson, his false teeth and eyepatch restored to give his scarred face a semblance of respectability, discovered Sharpe in a wineshop that lay close to Toulouse’s prefecture. The wineshop was crowded, but something about Sharpe’s scarred face had dissuaded anyone from sharing his table. It was just after dusk and two days after Soult had abandoned the city to the British. “Have you taken to drinking alone?” Frederickson asked.
“I never abandoned the habit.” Sharpe pushed the bottle of wine across the table. “You’re looking damned cheerful.”
“I am damned cheerful.” Frederickson paused because a loud and prolonged huzza sounded from the prefecture next door. Field-Marshal the Lord Wellington was giving a dinner to celebrate his capture of the city. All the prominent citizens of Toulouse were attending, and all wore the white cockade of the French monarchy and were swearing that they had never supported the upstart Corsican tyrant. “It makes one wonder just who it is we’ve been fighting all these years.” Frederickson straddled a back-to-front chair and nodded thanks for the wine. “But we’re fighting them no longer because the Emperor has abdicated. The Goddamned bloody Emperor has thrown in his hand. Allow me to toast your most excellent, and now quite safe, health.”
Frederickson had spoken in a most matter-of-fact tone, so much so that Sharpe did not really comprehend what his friend had just said.
“The war, my dear friend, is over,” Frederickson insisted.
Sharpe stared at Frederickson and said nothing.
“It’s true,” Frederickson said, “as I live and breathe, and may I be cursed if I lie, but a British officer has come from Paris. Think of that! A British officer from Paris! In fact a whole slew of British officers have come from Paris!
Bonaparte has abdicated, Paris has fallen, the war is over, and we have won!“ Frederickson could no longer contain his excitement. He stood and, ignoring the majority of the customers who were French, climbed on to the chair and shouted his news to the whole tavern. ”Boney’s abdicated! Paris has fallen, the war’s over, and we’ve won! By Christ, we’ve won!“
There was a moment’s silence, then the cheers began. Spanish and Portuguese officers sought a hasty translation, then added their own noise to the celebration. The only men who did not cheer were the civilian-clothed and moustached French veterans who stared sullenly into their wine cups. One such man, the news interpreted to him, wept.
Frederickson shouted to a serving girl that he wanted champagne, cheroots, and brandy. “We’ve won!” he exulted to Sharpe. “The damn thing’s over!”
“When did Boney abdicate?” Sharpe asked.
“Christ knows. Last week? Two weeks ago?”
“Before the battle?” Sharpe insisted.
Frederickson shrugged. “Before the battle, yes.”
“Jesus.” Sharpe momentarily closed his eyes. So Nairn’s death had been for nothing? All the blood on the high ridge had been spilt for nothing?
Then, suddenly, he forgot that irony in an overwhelming and astonishing wash of relief. The bells of Europe could ring because the war was over. There would be no more danger. No more summoning the nerve to assault an enemy-held wall, and no more standing rock still as an enemy battalion took aim. No more cannons, no more lancers, no more skirmish line. No more death. It was over. No more waking in the night sheeted with sweat and thinking of a sword blade’s threat. The war was over, and the last ranks had been closed up, and the whole damn thing was done. Europe had been rinsed with blood, and it was over. He would live for ever now, and that thought made Sharpe laugh, and suddenly he was shaking hands with allied officers who crowded about the table to hear the details of Frederickson’s news. Napoleon, the ogre, the tyrant, the scourge of Europe, the damned Corsican, the upstart, the beast, was finished.
Someone began singing, while other officers were dancing between the tables where the Emperor’s veterans sat keeping their thoughts hidden.