“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 before 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.