Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 21

It had been easy enough to escape the prefecture by causing some small chaos, but leaving the city itself would be a harder task. Every exit was guarded by a picquet of redcoats. The soldiers were not there to guard Bordeaux against the marauding bands of the countryside, but rather to apprehend any deserter who might have evaded the provosts at the quays and be trying to take his woman back to Spain and Portugal.

Sharpe had used the stars to find a westward road through the city, but now, so close to the open country, he had been forced to stop. He was staring at a picquet of a dozen soldiers who were silhouetted about a brazier. Sharpe was too far away to distinguish their faces or see what regiment they might be from. He silently cursed the lost telescope.

‘If we wait much longer,’ Frederickson warned, ‘they’ll have men after us.’

‘Surely they won’t stop officers walking past?’ Harper offered.

‘Let’s hope not.’ Sharpe decided Harper was right, and that rank alone should suffice to see them past the bored guards. He nevertheless wondered just what he should do if the picquet proved obdurate. It was one thing to strip drunken provosts naked, but quite another to use force against a squad of redcoats. ‘Cock your rifles,’ Sharpe said as they walked forward.

‘Are you going to shoot them?’ Frederickson sounded incredulous.

‘Threaten them, anyway.’

‘I won’t shoot anyone.’ Frederickson left his rifle slung on his shoulder. Harper had fewer scruples and dragged back the cock of his seven barrelled gun. The monstrous click of the heavy lock made the officer commanding the picquet turn towards the approaching Riflemen.

Sharpe was close enough now to see that the picquet’s officer was a tall and dandified man who, like many infantry officers who aspired to high fashion, wore a cavalryman’s fur-edged pelisse over one shoulder. The officer strolled towards the three Riflemen with a languid, almost supercilious, air. The three must have looked strange for, in an army that had swiftly accustomed itself to peace, they were accoutred for war. They had heavy packs, crammed pouches, and were festooned with weapons. The sight of those weapons made the picquet’s sergeant snap an order to his men who unslung their muskets and shuffled into a crude line across the road. The officer calmly waved his hand as if to suggest that the sergeant need not feel any alarm. The officer had now walked thirty yards away from the brazier. He stopped there, folded his arms, and waited for the Riflemen to reach him. ‘If you haven’t got passes,’ he said in a most superior and disdainful voice, ‘then I’ll have no choice but to arrest you.’

‘Shoot the bugger,’ Sharpe said gleefully to Harper.

But Harper was grinning, the officer was laughing, and Fortune, the soldier’s fickle goddess, was smiling on Sharpe. The tall and disdainful officer was Captain Peter d’Alembord of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. He was an old friend who had once served under Sharpe and who now commanded Sharpe’s old light company. D’Alembord also knew Frederickson and Harper well, and was delighted to see both men.

‘How are you, Regimental Sergeant Major?’ he asked Harper.

‘I’m just a Rifleman again now, sir.’

‘Quite right, too. You were far too insubordinate to be promoted.’ D’Alembord looked back to Sharpe. ‘Purely out of interest, sir, but do you have a pass?’

‘Of course I don’t have a bloody pass, Dally. The bastards want to arrest us.’

It had been pure good luck that had brought Sharpe to this picquet that was manned by his old battalion. He was close enough now to recognize some of the men about the brazier. He saw Privates Weller and Clayton, both good men, but this was no time to greet old comrades, nor to implicate them in this night’s escapade. ‘Just get us quietly out of the city, Dally, and forget you ever saw us.’

D’Alembord turned to his picquet. ‘Sergeant! I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

The Sergeant was curious. The picquet duty had been boring, and now some small excitement broke the tedium, but he was too far from the three Riflemen to recognize them. He took a few steps forward. ‘Can I say where you’ll be, sir? If I’m asked.’

‘In a whorehouse, of course.’ D’Alembord sighed. ‘The trouble with Sergeant Huckfield,’ he said to Sharpe, ‘is that he’s so damned moral. A good soldier, but horribly tedious. We’ll go this way.’ He led the three Riflemen into a foetid black alley that reeked with an overwhelming stench of blood. ‘They put me next to a slaughterhouse,’ d’Alembord explained.

‘Is there a safe way out of the city?’ Sharpe asked.

‘There are dozens,’ d’Alembord said. ‘We’re supposed to patrol these alleys, but most of the lads don’t take kindly to arresting women and children. Consequently we tend to do quite a lot of looking the other way these days. The provosts, as you might imagine, are more energetic.’ He led the Riflemen away from the butcher’s stink and into a wider alley. Dogs barked behind closed doors. Once a shutter opened from an upper window and a face peered out, but no one called any alarm or query. The alley twisted incomprehensibly, but eventually emerged into a rutted lane edged with sooty hedges where the smell of open country mingled with the city’s malodorous stench. ‘The main road’s that way,’ Dally pointed southwards across dark fields, ‘but before you go, sir, would you satisfy my curiosity and tell me just what in God’s name is happening?’

‘It’s a long story, Dally,’ Sharpe said.

‘I’ve got all night.’

It did not take that long, merely ten minutes to describe the day’s extraordinary events. Then the sound of hooves on a road to the north forced another delay, and Sharpe used it to discover how his old battalion was managing without him. ‘What’s the new Colonel like?’

‘He’s a rather frightened and fussy little man who quite rightly believes we’re all wondrously expert and that he’s got a lot to learn. His biggest terror is that the army will somehow post you back to the regiment and thus show up his manifold deficiencies. On the other hand he’s not an unkind man, and given time, might even become a decent soldier. I doubt he’s good enough to beat the French yet, but he could probably squash a Luddite riot without killing too many innocents.’

‘Are they sending you to America?’ Sharpe asked.

D’Alembord shook his head. ‘Chelmsford. We’re to recruit up to scratch ready for garrison duty in Ireland. I suppose I shall have the pleasure of knocking your countrymen’s heads together, RSM?’

‘Make sure they don’t knock yours, sir,’ Harper said.

‘I’ll try to avoid that fate.’ D’Alembord cocked his head to the night wind, but the mysterious hoofbeats had faded to the west. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help here, sir?’ he asked Sharpe.

‘When do you go to Chelmsford?’

‘Any day now.’

‘Do you have any leave owing?’

‘My God, do I? They owe me half my life.’

‘So you can deliver a message for me?’

‘With the greatest of pleasure, sir.’

‘Find Mrs Sharpe. The last address I had was in Cork Street, London, but she may have moved to Dorset since then. Tell her everything I’ve told you tonight. Tell her I shall come home when I can, and tell her that I need some influence on my side. Ask her to find Lord Rossendale.’

‘That’s a clever thought, sir.’ D’Alembord recognized Lord Rossendale’s name, for d’Alembord had been with Sharpe during the strange London interlude when Sharpe had been adopted as a favourite of the Prince Regent’s. One result of that favouritism was the naming of Sharpe’s old regiment as the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, and another was a distant but friendly acquaintanceship with one of the Prince’s military aides, Lord John Rossendale. If any man could harness the full power of influence to clear Sharpe’s name, it was Rossendale. Sharpe knew that the best method of establishing his innocence was to discover Lassan or Ducos, but if that search failed then he would need powerful friends in London, and Rossendale was the first and most approachable of those friends.

‘If you can’t find my wife,’ Sharpe added, ‘then try and see Rossendale directly. He can talk to the Prince.’

‘I’ll do that gladly, sir. And how do I send messages back to you?’

Sharpe had not thought of that problem, nor did he want to consider it now. The night was getting cold, and he was impatient to be on his way westwards. ‘We’ll probably be home within a month, Dally. It can’t take much longer than that to find one French officer. But if we fail? Then for God’s sake make sure Rossendale knows we’re innocent. There never was any gold.’

‘But if we are delayed,’ Frederickson was more cautious, ‘then perhaps we can send a message to you?’

‘Send it to Greenwoods.’ Greenwoods was another firm of Army Agents. ‘And take care, sir.’ D’Alembord shook Sharpe’s hand.

‘You haven’t seen us, Dally.’

‘I haven’t even smelt you, sir.’

The three Riflemen crossed a rough piece of pastureland towards the embanked high road. The high road was not the most direct route to Arcachon, for it led more south than west, but it was a road that Sharpe and Frederickson had ambushed not many weeks before and, once they reached the ambush site, they knew they could find their way across country to the Teste de Buch fort.

‘I’d forgotten you had such high connections,’ Frederickson said with amusement.

‘You mean Lord Rossendale?’

‘I mean the Prince Regent. Do you think he’ll help?’

‘I’m sure he’ll help.’ Sharpe spoke with a fervent confidence, for he remembered the Prince’s assiduous kindnesses in London. ‘Just so long as Jane can reach Lord Rossendale.’

‘Then I wish your wife Godspeed.’ Frederickson climbed the turf bank and stamped his feet on the flint roadbed. He waited for his two companions to climb the embankment, then all three turned southwest. Thus, on a night road, Sharpe walked away from the army. He was a fugitive now, sought by the British authorities, by the French, and doubtless by his old enemy, Ducos. The Riflemen had become rogues, ejected from their own society, and gone to vengeance.

Jane Sharpe felt aggrieved.

Her grievance had come with the arrival of peace and her slow realization that her husband was a man who was entirely bereft of the ambitions of peace. Jane had never doubted his resolve in war, when Private Richard Sharpe had risen high by his own merits and energy, but Jane knew that her husband had no wish to transmute that wartime reputation into peacetime success. He only wanted to bury himself in the depths of rural England, there to farm and vegetate. Jane had spent most of her life in rural England, out on the cold clay marshland of Essex, and she had no wish to return to those bare comforts. She could understand that her husband might enjoy such an existence, but Jane dreaded the prospect of rural exile and foresaw that the only visitors to their country house would be old army comrades like Sergeant Harper.

Jane liked Harper, but she did not think she should mention that liking to Lady Spindacre, for it was quite clear that the Lady Spindacre would not approve of a Major’s wife being fond of a mere Sergeant, and an Irish Sergeant at that. Lady Spindacre moved in altogether more exalted circles, and Jane’s grievance was fuelled when she realized that those circles were now open to her, but only if Sharpe would be willing to forsake the country and use the high friendships he had made in London.

‘But he won’t,’ she bemoaned to the Lady Spindacre.

‘You must force him, dearest. He has instructed you to buy a house, so buy one in London! You say he has given you power of the money?’

The memory of that trusting gesture touched Jane with a few seconds’ remorse, but then the remorse was overborne by her new and certain realization that she alone knew what was best for Richard Sharpe’s career. The war had ended, yet there was still promotion to be had, but not if he resigned from the service and buried himself in some Dorsetshire hamlet. The Lady Spindacre, impressed that Jane had once been presented to the Prince Regent, and convinced that the presentation had sprung from the Prince’s genuine interest in her husband, opined that there were a multitude of peacetime jobs that were in the gift of Royalty, and that such jobs, filled by military men, were not demanding of time, yet were generous in their pay, promotion, and prestige. ‘He cannot retire as a Major,’ Lady Spindacre said scathingly.

‘And only a brevet Major, indeed,’ Jane confessed.

‘At the very least he should secure his Colonelcy. He could take a sinecure at the Tower, or at Windsor. My dear Jane, he should insist on a knighthood! Look how many other men, with much lesser achievements, are being deluged with rewards! All your husband needs do, my dearest, is to cultivate those high attachments. He must present himself at Court, he must persist in his acquaintances there, and he will succeed.’

This was all sweet and sensible music to Jane who, newly released from a stultifying youth, saw the world as a great and exciting place in which she could soar. Sharpe, she knew, had already had his adventures, but surely he would not deny her the opportunities of social advancement?

And Juliet, Lady Spindacre, was ideally placed to advise on such advancement. She was no older than Jane, just twenty-five, yet she had cleverly married a middle-aged Major-General who had died of the fever in southern France. Jane met the newly widowed Lady Juliet on the boat which returned them both to England, and the two girls had made an immediate friendship. ‘You must not keep calling me Lady Spindacre,’ Juliet had said, and Jane had revelled in the intimacy that was cemented by the similarities between the two girls. They were both women who attracted lascivious glances from the ship’s officers, they shared a fascination in the feminine accoutrements of clothes and cosmetics, men and intrigue, and they were both ambitious to succeed in society. ‘Of course,’ the Lady Spindacre explained, ‘I shall have to be reticent for a while, because of dear Harold’s death, but it will only be for a short while.’ Lady Spindacre was not wearing mourning for, she said, her dear Sir Harold would not have wanted it. ‘He only ever wanted me to be a spirit at liberty, to enjoy myself.’

Juliet Spindacre’s enjoyment of life was nevertheless threatened by her health, which was fragile, and by her constant worries about the dead Sir Harold’s will. ‘He had children by his first wife,’ Juliet told Jane, ‘and they are monsters! They will doubtless attempt to purloin the inheritance, and till the case is settled I am quite penniless.’

This penury was no immediate problem, for Jane Sharpe had the resources of her husband’s great fortune that had been taken from the enemy at Vitoria. ‘At the very least,’ Lady Spindacre advised, ‘you should establish yourself in London until the Major returns. That way, dearest one, you can at least attempt to assist his career, and if he should be so ungrateful on his return as to insist on a country home, then you can rest in the assurance that you did your best.’

Which all seemed eminently sensible to Jane who, on reaching London, and advised by the dear Lady Spindacre, withdrew all her husband’s money. She disliked Messrs Hopkinsons of St Alban’s Street who, when she first approached them, had tried by every means possible to prevent her from closing Major Sharpe’s account. They questioned his signature, doubted her authority, and it was only a visit from Lady Spindacre’s lawyer that eventually persuaded them to make over a letter of credit which Jane sensibly lodged in a proper banking house where a young and elegant man seemed delighted to make her acquaintance.

Not all the money was so sensibly secured. The Lady Spindacre had much to teach Jane about the ways of society, and such lessons were expensive. There was a house in fashionable Cork Street to buy, new servants to find, and furniture to buy. The servants had to be uniformed, and then there were the necessary dresses for Jane and Lady Spindacre. They needed dresses for morning wear, for receiving, for dinners, for luncheons, for suppers, and such were the strictures of Jane’s new busy life that no single dress could be worn more than once, at least, Lady Spindacre averred, not in front of the people the two friends intended to court. There were calling cards to engrave, carriages to hire, and connections to make, and Jane persuaded herself that she did it all in her husband’s best interests.

Thus Jane was busy and, in her business, happy. Then, just two weeks after the bells of London had rung their joyous message of peace, the thunderbolt had struck.

The thunderbolt arrived in the form of two dark-suited men who claimed to bear the authority of the Judge Advocate General’s office. Jane had refused to receive them in her new drawing-room in Cork Street, but the two men forced their way past the maid and firmly, though courteously, insisted on speaking with Mrs Jane Sharpe. They asked first whether she was the wife of Major Richard Sharpe.

Jane, pressed in terror against the Chinese wallpaper that the dear Juliet had insisted on buying, confirmed that she was.

And was it true, the two men asked, that Mrs Sharpe had recently withdrawn eighteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-four pounds, fourteen shillings and eightpence from Messrs Hopkinsons and Sons, Army Agents, of St Alban’s Street?

And what if she had? Jane asked.

Would Mrs Sharpe care to explain how her husband came to have so much money in his possession?

Mrs Sharpe did not care to explain. Jane was frightened, but she found the courage to brazen out her defiance. Besides, she saw how both men were attracted to her, and she had the wit to know that such men would not be personally unkind to a young lady.

The two dark-suited men nevertheless respectfully informed Mrs Sharpe that His Majesty’s Government, pending an investigation into the behaviour of her husband, would seek the return of the monies. All the monies, which, Jane knew, meant all the monies spent on powder and lace and hair-pieces and satin and champagne and the house; even the house! Her house!

She panicked when the men were gone, but dear Lady Spindacre, who had been in bed with a mild fever, rallied swiftly and declared that no dark-suited men from the Judge Advocate General’s office had the right to persecute a lady. ‘The Judge Advocate General is a nonentity, dearest one. Merely a tiresome civilian who needs to be slapped down.’

‘But how?’ Jane no longer appeared as a sophisticated and elegant beauty, but rather resembled the timid and innocent girl she had been just a year before.

‘How?’ The Lady Spindacre, seeing the threat to the source of Jane’s money, which was also the only source of the Lady Spindacre’s present wealth, was ready for battle. ‘We use those connections, of course. What else is society for? What was the name of the Prince Regent’s aide de camp? The one who was so solicitous of your husband?’

‘Lord Rossendale,’ Jane said, ‘Lord John Rossendale.’ So far she had been too scared to try and profit from that tenuous connection; it seemed too ambitious and too remote, but now an emergency had happened, and Jane well understood that Carlton House, where the Prince’s court resided, far outranked the drab offices of the Judge Advocate General. ‘But I only met Lord Rossendale once,’ she said timidly.

‘Was he rude to you?’

‘Far from it. He was most kind.’

‘Then write to him. You will have to send him some small trifle, of course.’

‘What could I possibly send such a man?’

‘A snuff-box is usual,’ Lady Spindacre said casually. ‘For a respectable favour, he’d expect one costing at least a hundred pounds. Would you like me to buy one, dearest? I am not feeling so poorly that I cannot reach Bond Street.’

A jewelled snuff-box was duly bought and, that same evening, Jane wrote her letter. She wrote it a dozen times until she was satisfied with her words then, as carefully as a child under the stern eye of a tutor, she copied those words on to a sheet of her new perfumed writing-paper.

Next morning a servant delivered the letter and the precious snuff-box to Carlton House.

And Jane waited.

The curé of Arcachon was hearing confessions when the ugly foreign soldier came into his church. The soldier came silently out of the night and, though he carried no weapons, other than the sword which any gentleman might wear, his eye-patch and scarred face caused a shiver of horror to go through the parishioners who waited their turn for the confessional. One of the parishioners, an elderly spinster, whispered the news to Father Marin through the muslin which served as a screen in the confessional box. ‘He has only one eye, Father, and a horrid face.’

‘Is he armed?’

‘He has a sword.’

‘What is he doing?’

‘Sitting at the back of the church, Father, near the statue of St Genevieve.’

‘Then he’s doing no harm, and you are not to worry yourself.’

It was another hour before Father Marin had finished his task, by which time two other parishioners had come to the church to tell him that the foreign soldier was not alone, but had two comrades who were drinking in the tavern by the saddler’s shop. Father Marin had learned that the strangers wore very old and faded green uniforms. One woman was certain they were Germans, while another was equally sure they were British.

Father Marin eased himself out of the confessional and, by the light of St Genevieve’s votive candles, saw the ugly stranger still sitting patiently at the back of the now empty church. ‘Good evening, my son. Did you come for confession?’

‘I doubt God has the patience to hear all my sins.’ Frederickson spoke in his idiomatic French. ‘Besides, Father, I’m a Protestant heretic rather than a Catholic one.’

Father Marin genuflected to the altar, crossed himself, then lifted his stained stole over his grey head. ‘Are you a German heretic or an English one? My parishioners suspect you of being both.’

‘They’re right in both respects, Father, for I have the blood of both peoples. But my uniform is that of a British Captain.’

‘What’s left of your uniform,’ Father Marin said with amusement. ‘Are you anything to do with the Englishmen who are exploring the Teste de Buch fort?’ The old priest saw that he had astonished the stranger.

‘Exploring?’ Frederickson asked suspiciously.

‘English sailors have been occupying the fort for ten days. They’ve pulled down what’s left of the internal walls, and now they’re digging in the surrounding sand like rabbits. The rumour is that they’re searching for gold.’

Frederickson laughed. ‘The rumour’s true, Father, but there’s no gold there.’

‘It’s further rumoured that the gold was buried by the Englishmen who captured the fort in January. Were you one of those men, my son?’

‘I was, Father.’

‘And now you are here, in my humble church, while your companions are drinking wine in the town’s worst tavern.’ Father Marin rather enjoyed seeing Frederickson’s discomfiture at the efficiency of Arcachon’s gossips. ‘How did you come here?’

‘We walked from Bordeaux. It took three days.’

Father Marin lifted his cloak from a peg behind the Virgin’s statue and draped it about his thin shoulders. ‘You had no trouble on the road? We hear constantly of brigands.’

‘We met one band.’

‘Just the three of you?’

Frederickson shrugged, but said nothing.

Father Marin held a hand towards the door. ‘Clearly you are a capable man, Captain. Will you walk home with me? I can offer you some soup, and rather better wine than that which your companions are presently enjoying.’

It took three hours of conversation and two lost games of chess before Frederickson persuaded the old priest to reveal Henri Lassan’s address. Father Marin proved very careful of his old friend, Lassan, but after the two chess games the old priest was satisfied that this one-eyed Captain Frederickson was also a good man. ‘You mean him no harm?’ Marin sought the reassurance.

‘I promise you that, Father.’

‘I shall write to him,’ Father Marin warned, ‘and tell him you are coming.’

‘I should be grateful if you did that,’ Frederickson said.

‘I do miss Henri.’ Father Marin went to an ancient table that served as his desk and began sifting through the detritus of books and papers. ‘In truth he was a most unsuitable soldier, though his men liked him very much. He was very lenient with them, I remember. He was also most distressed that you defeated him.’

‘I shall apologise to him for that.’

‘He won’t bear a grudge, I’m sure. I can’t swear he’ll be at his home, of course, for he was intent on joining the priesthood. I constantly tried to dissuade him, but …’ Father Marin shrugged, then returned to his slow search among the curled and yellowing papers on the table.

‘Why did you try to dissuade him?’

‘Henri’s altogether too saintly to be a priest. He’ll believe every hard luck story that’s fed to him, and consequently he’ll kill himself with compassion, but, if that’s what he wishes, then so be it.’ Father Marin found the piece of paper he sought. ‘If you do him harm, Captain, I shall curse you.’

‘I mean him no harm.’

Father Marin smiled. ‘Then you have a very long walk, Captain.’ The address was in Normandy. The Château Lassan, Father Marin explained, was not far from the city of Caen, but it was very far from the town of Arcachon. ‘When will you leave?’ the priest asked.

‘Tonight, Father.’

‘And the sailors?’

‘Let them dig. There’s nothing to find.’

Father Marin laughed, then showed his mysterious visitor to the door. A pale scimitar moon hung low over the church’s roof-ridge. ‘Go with God,’ Father Marin said, ‘and thank Him for sending us peace.’

‘We brought the peace, Father,’ Frederickson said, ‘by beating that bastard Napoleon.’

‘Go!’ The priest smiled, then went back indoors. He fully intended to write his warning letter to Henri Lassan that very same night, but he fell asleep instead, and somehow, in the days that followed, he never did put pen to paper. Not that it mattered, for Father Marin was convinced Frederickson meant no harm to the Comte de Lassan.

And in the sand dunes, like rabbits, the sailors dug on.