Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 23

For three days Lucille Castineau wept and would not be comforted. The curé tried, the local doctor tried, and her cousins tried. It was all in vain. Only after the funeral did she show some of her old spirit when she saddled her brother’s horse, took his new pistol from his study, and rode to the far side of Seleglise where she fired shot after shot into the thick woodland.

Then she went home where she ordered both wooden bridges over the moat to be dismantled. It was a horrific job, for the timbers were massive, and it was even a pointless job, for the damage had already been done, but the farm workers, with help from the villagers, sawed through the great pieces of wood that were taken away to strengthen barns, byres, and cottages. Then Lucille had a notice posted on the church door, and another posted on the door of the church at Seleglise, which promised a reward of two hundred francs for information which would lead to the capture and death of the Englishmen who had murdered her family.

The villagers believed that the widow Castineau was distraught to temporary madness, for there was no evidence that the killers had been English and, indeed, the kitchenmaid swore she had heard a voice call out in French. A very deep voice, Marie remembered distinctly, a real devil’s voice, she said, but Lucille insisted that it had been Englishmen who had committed the murders, and so the reward notices faded in the sunlight and curled in the night’s dew. Lucille had sworn she would sell the upper orchards to raise the reward money if someone would just lead her to revenge.

One week after the funerals Madame Pellemont arrived with her family lawyer and an impudent claim that half the château’s estate, and half the château itself, properly belonged to her daughter who had gone through a betrothal ceremony with the dead Comte de Lassan. Lucille listened in apparent patience, then, when at last the lawyer politely requested her response, she opened her brother’s drawer, took out the silver-hilted pistol, and threatened to shoot both Madame Pellemont and her lawyer if they did not leave her home immediately. They hesitated, and it was said that Lucille’s voice could be heard in the sexton’s house beyond the blacksmith’s shop as she screamed at them to leave the château.

Madame Pellemont and her lawyer left, and the silver-hilted pistol, which turned out to be unloaded, was thrown after them. It lay in the road for three hours before anyone dared to pick it up.

Lucille’s father-in-law, old General Castineau, came all the way from Bourges to sympathize with her. The General had only one leg; his other had been lost to an Austrian cannonball. He sat for hours with Lucille. He told her she should marry again, that every woman needed a husband, and, because he was a widower, and because he was sentimental, and because he saw in Lucille what his sharp-eyed son had once seen, he offered himself. Lucille turned him down, though so gently that the old General had no chance to take offence.

General Castineau also assured her that it was most unlikely for any Englishmen to have killed Henri and the Dowager.

‘I saw them,’ Lucille insisted.

‘You saw men in green. Every country’s army has men in green coats. Our own dragoons wear green. Or wore green. God knows what they’ll wear now.’

‘Those men were English.’

The General tried to explain that the English were hardly likely to be in Normandy since their army had invaded the south of France and had already been evacuated from Bordeaux. A few Englishmen had been with the allies who reached Paris, but not many. And anyway, why should an Englishman seek out this family? He begged Lucille to give the question her most serious attention.

‘They were English,’ Lucille said stubbornly.

The General sighed. ‘Marie tells me you’re not eating.’

Lucille ignored his concern, preferring her own. ‘I hate the English.’

‘That’s understandable,’ General Castineau said soothingly, though from all he had heard it was better to be captured by the English than by the Russians, and he was about to expatiate on that grisly theme when he remembered that Lucille was hardly in a receptive frame of mind for such reflections. ‘You should eat,’ he said sternly. ‘I’ve ordered a dish of lentil soup for you today.’

‘If the Englishmen come back,’ she said, ‘I’ll kill them.’

‘Quite right, quite right, but if you don’t eat you won’t have the strength to kill them.’

That remark made Lucille look shrewdly at the General, almost as though he had propounded a peculiarly difficult idea, but one which made surprising sense. She nodded agreement. ‘You’re right, Papa,’ and at lunchtime she wolfed down all the lentil soup, then carved herself a thick slice of the ham that the General had been hoping to carry off the next day in his saddlebag.

That evening the General met privately with the doctor and both men agreed that the terrible events had sadly disturbed Madame Castineau’s wits. The doctor could think of no easy cure, unless Madame Castineau could be persuaded to take the waters, which sometimes worked, but which were horribly expensive. Otherwise, he said, nature and time must do the healing. ‘Or marriage,’ the doctor said with a certain wistfulness, ‘Madame needs a man’s touch, if you understand me.’

‘She won’t marry again,’ General Castineau opined. ‘She was too much in love with my son, and now she’d rather wither away than dilute his memory. It’s a sad waste, Doctor.’

General Castineau left next morning, though he made certain that there would always be reliable men from the village in the château in case the brigands should return and, indeed, just two hours after the General had left, five strange horsemen approached from the northern road that dropped off the wooded ridge and the farmworkers ran to the château’s entrance with loaded muskets and hefted pitchforks.

The strange horsemen approached slowly, with their hands held in clear view. They stopped a good few yards from the moat’s bridge and their leader, a plump man, politely requested an audience with Monsieur the Comte de Lassan.

‘He’s dead.’ It was the miller’s son who answered truculently.

Monsieur Roland, the advocate from Paris, eyed the ancient musket in the boy’s hands and chose his next words very carefully. ‘Then I would like to speak with a member of his family, Monsieur? My name is Roland, and I have the honour to be a lawyer in the service of his Most Christian Majesty.’

The words, gently said, impressed the miller’s son who ran to tell Madame Castineau that yet another gentleman had come to see her.

Roland, whose rump had been made excruciatingly sore by long days in the saddle, walked with Lucille in the orchards. His four men patrolled the edges of the trees with drawn pistols to deter any strangers from intruding on the discussion.

Roland explained that he was charged by the Royal Treasury with the recovery of a sum of gold stolen by the English. The coins had been deposited in the Teste de Buch fort, and Roland had come to Normandy to hear Commandant Lassan’s evidence about the loss of the bullion. He was desolated, Roland repeated the word, desolated, to hear of the Commandant’s death.

‘Murder,’ Lucille corrected him.

‘Murder,’ Roland humbly accepted the correction.

‘The English murdered him,’ Lucille said. ‘The men in green coats. The Riflemen.’

Roland stopped his slow pacing and turned an astonished face on the widow. ‘Are you certain, Madame?’

Lucille, galled that no one believed her, turned in fury on the plump lawyer. ‘Monsieur, I am sure! I am sure! I saw them! They were men in green coats, Englishmen just like those my brother feared, and they murdered my mother and my brother. They are animals, Monsieur, animals! My brother had said they might come, and they did! He even knew the Englishman’s name. Sharpe!’

‘I think you are right, Madame,’ Roland said quietly, and Lucille, who till now had not been taken seriously by a single person, could only stare at the Parisian lawyer. ‘In fact I am sure you are right,’ Roland added.

‘You believe me, Monsieur?’ Lucille said in a very relieved and somewhat surprised voice.

‘I do believe you. These are ruthless men, Madame. Believe me, I have met this Sharpe.’ Roland shuddered. ‘He and his comrade have stolen a fortune that belongs to France, and now they will try to kill the men who can testify to that theft. I should have thought to warn your brother. Alas, dear lady, that I did not think to do so.’

Lucille shook her head in denial of the lawyer’s self accusation. ‘Henri mentioned no gold,’ she said after a while.

‘A soldier should carry secrets well, and the existence of this gold was most secret.’ Roland, sweating profusely in the spring sunshine, turned and walked back towards the château. ‘I do not think the Englishmen will return now,’ he said soothingly.

‘I wish they would return.’ Lucille alarmed the lawyer by revealing an enormous brass-muzzled horse-pistol that lay heavy in the wide pocket of her apron. ‘If they do return, Monsieur, I shall kill at least one of them.’

‘Leave the killing to those who know best how to do it.’ Roland, knowing this visit was wasted, was eager to return to Caen where there was at least a vestige of civilization. He feared that Lucille would invite him to luncheon, and that the château’s evident poverty would provide a most meagre meal, but, to his relief, Lucille made no such offer.

Roland mounted his horse at the château’s entrance. He had given Madame Castineau his address, and begged her to write to him if the Englishmen returned, though he admitted he put small faith in such a thing happening. Nevertheless, looking down at the sad Lucille, he felt a pang of sympathy. ‘May I presume to give Madame advice?’

‘I should be honoured. Monsieur.’

Roland collected his reins. ‘Marry again, Madame. A woman such as yourself should not be alone; not in these troubled times and in this sad country. Permit me to say that I am married, Madame, and that it gives me the greatest peace and happiness.’

Lucille smiled, but said nothing.

Roland turned his horse, then, remembering one last question, turned the animal back again. ‘Madame? Forgive my indelicacy, but did your brother lose two fingers of his right hand?’

‘They cut them off!’ Lucille wailed the words in sudden agony. ‘The Englishmen cut them off!’

Roland, thinking the loss of the two fingers must have happened when Sharpe’s men had captured the Teste de Buch fort, did not ask Lucille to amplify the answer which already seemed to confirm Ducos’s written testimony. Instead the lawyer raised his hat. ‘Thank you, Madame, and I am sorry if I have caused you distress.’

That night, in his comfortable lodgings in Caen, Monsieur Roland wrote two reports. The first would be sent to the King’s Minister of Finance and it respectfully and regretfully reported the murder of Henri Lassan and the consequent lack of any new evidence that might lead to the gold’s recovery. Roland added his suspicions that the two English officers, Sharpe and Frederickson, had been responsible for Lassan’s death. ‘They must certainly be charged with murder,’ he wrote, ‘and the search for them must continue, both in France and in Britain.’

Roland’s second report was far more detailed. It began by saying that Pierre Ducos’s written testimony had been substantially confirmed, and that it now seemed virtually certain that the two English Rifle officers had stolen the Emperor’s gold. They had also killed Lassan, presumably so that he could not testify against them. The death of Lassan prompted Roland to consider the possibility that the two English officers had already murdered Pierre Ducos; how else to account for Ducos’s continued silence? Roland respectfully suggested that the two Englishmen must already have left France, but hoped they might yet be found and brought to vengeance. He added the welcome news that the English Navy had been requested by the new French government to desist from their explorations in and around the Teste de Buch fort, which request had been reluctantly complied with. The English search about the fort had found none of the imperial gold or baggage.

This second report was written on fine India paper which Monsieur Roland took to a calligrapher in Paris. The calligrapher sealed the India paper inside two sheets of thicker paper that were so cleverly pasted together that they appeared to a casual glance to be one thick sheet of paper. Then, on the thicker paper’s creamy surface, the calligrapher inscribed an extremely tedious ode in praise of the Greek Gods.

The ode was briefly read by a French government censor. Two weeks later the poem was delivered to the island of Elba, off the Tuscany coast, where the creamy page was delicately peeled apart to reveal the India paper inside. Within an hour Roland’s longer report was being read by an Emperor in exile, but an Emperor who still retained some sharp claws. Except that the claws could not be unsheathed, for the enemy was hidden, and so, though Monsieur Roland’s report was filed carefully away, it was not forgotten. The report, after all, concerned money, and the exiled Emperor had need of money if his dreams were once again to blazon Europe with his glory. The English Riflemen might have vanished for the moment, but they would reappear, and when they did the Emperor would have them found and have them killed. For glory.

The Saxon Dragoon wished to go home. He told Sergeant Challon as much, and the Sergeant reminded the Saxon of the vow they had all taken when they had waited in the deserted farmhouse. The vow had been an agreement that all the Dragoons would remain with Major Ducos until everything was safe, but if any man did wish to leave then he must forfeit his share of the Emperor’s treasure.

The Saxon shrugged. ‘I just want to go home.’

Challon put his arm about the big man’s shoulder. ‘It won’t be long, Herman.’

‘Home,’ the Saxon said stubbornly.

‘And you’ll go home without any of the money?’ Challon asked enticingly. The two men were in the stableyard of a tavern in Leghorn. Challon had gone to the stables to make certain the horses were being fed, and the Saxon had followed the Sergeant in hope of finding some privacy for this conversation.

Herman shrugged. ‘I deserve something, Sergeant, and you know it.’ It had been the Saxon who had been slightly wounded when he crossed the wooden bridge with Sergeant Challon to kill Henri Lassan, and it had been the Saxon who had made such havoc in the Seleglise farmhouse which Ducos had ordered attacked so that the local people would believe the subsequent attack on Lassan the work of casual brigands.

‘You deserve something,’ Challon said soothingly. ‘I’ll talk to Major Ducos. He won’t like it, but I’ll try and persuade him to be generous. I’ll tell him how loyal you’ve been.’ Challon had smiled, begun to walk away, but then whipped back as he drew his long straight sword. The Saxon’s own blade was only half out of its scabbard as Challon’s sword ripped into his throat. Twenty minutes later the Saxon’s naked body was left in the street outside the tavern yard where it was reckoned to be just another dead sailor.

Ducos sold the Dragoons’ horses in Leghorn, then paid the captain of a barca-longa to take himself and the seven remaining Dragoons southwards to Naples. It was a nervous voyage, for the coast was infested by Barbary pirates, but the occasional presence of a British naval squadron cheered Ducos. Despite that naval protection, the barca-longa, a two-masted coastal cargo vessel, put into a safe haven each night and the consequent delays meant that the voyage to Naples took eight days.

Sergeant Challon, in a rare outburst of disagreement with Pierre Ducos, had argued against seeking refuge in Naples. The city was the capital of the Kingdom of Naples, and its King was a Frenchman who had once been a Marshal in Napoleon’s armies. Surely, Challon argued, Marshal Murat would not offer shelter to men who had betrayed Napoleon, but Ducos patiently explained that Murat had broken with his erstwhile master. Napoleon might have put Murat on the throne of Naples, but Murat could only keep that throne if he was now seen to be an enemy of the broken Emperor, to which end he was busy cultivating new alliances and his Neapolitan troops had even marched north to expel the remnants of the Imperial French Army from Rome. ‘So you see,’ Ducos patiently continued, ‘an enemy of the Emperor’s will be a friend to the Marshal.’

Not that Ducos had any intention of seeking an audience with Murat, yet he knew he must somehow secure the help of the authorities. Strangers were suspect in a place like Naples, so Ducos must not be a stranger.

Ducos established his men in a small harbour tavern, then used his old skills, and not a little money, to discover who, besides Murat, was the power in this filthy and ramshackle city beneath its smoking volcano. It took Ducos ten days, but then he found himself kneeling before an elaborate throne and kissing the plump ring of a very fat Cardinal. ‘My name,’ Ducos said humbly, ‘is Count Poniatowski.’

‘You are Polish?’ The Cardinal was so fat that his breath rasped in his throat if he even waddled the short distance from his throne’s dais to the door of his audience chamber. The throne itself was supposed to face the wall, unused, except during the short period between the death of one Pope and the election of the next, but the Cardinal liked to sit in its cushioned magnificence and look down on the humble petitioners who knelt before its dais.

‘I am Polish, your Eminence,’ Ducos confirmed.

‘Perhaps you would prefer it if we spoke in Polish?’ the Cardinal asked in French.

‘Your Eminence is too kind,’ Ducos replied in heavily accented Polish.

The Cardinal, who spoke Italian, Latin and French, but not a word of any other language, smiled as if he had understood. It was possible, he allowed to himself, that this scrawny little man was truly a Polish aristocrat, but the Cardinal doubted it. Most refugees these days were from France, but the Cardinal’s first very simple trap had failed to embarrass this petitioner, so his Eminence graciously suggested that perhaps they should continue their conversation in Italian so that the Count Poniatowski could practise that language. ‘And allow me to ask, my dear Count, why you have come to our humble country?’

The country might be humble, Ducos reflected, but not this monstrous Prince of the Church who employed more than a hundred and twenty servants in his own household and whose private chapel had more eunuchs in its choir than had ever sung at any one time in St Peter’s. On either side of the cardinal young boys wielded paper fans to cool the great man’s brow. At the foot of the dais were guards in yellow and black, armed with ancient halberds which, despite their age, could still cleave a man from skull to balls in the time it would take to cock a pistol. The room itself seemed a fantasy of decorated stone, carved into adoring angels and archangels. In truth the decorations were of scagliola, a false stone made of plaster and glue, but Ducos recognized the skill of the craftsmen who had made the dazzling objects. ‘I have come, your Eminence, for the sake of my health.’

‘You are a consumptive, my son?’

‘I have a breathing problem, your Eminence, which is aggravated by cold weather.’

The Cardinal suspected that the Count’s breathing problem was more likely to be aggravated by an enemy’s sword, but it would be impolite to say as much. ‘The city,’ he said instead, and with a wave of his plump hand about his splendid audience chamber, ‘will be hard on your lungs, my dear Count. There is much smoke in Naples.’

‘I would prefer to live in the countryside, your Eminence, on a hilltop where the fresh air is untainted by smoke.’

And where, the Cardinal thought, enemies could be perceived at a good distance, which explained why the Count Poniatowski had so generously presented a large ruby to the Cardinal’s funds as an inducement for this audience. The Cardinal shifted himself on his cushioned throne and stared over the Count’s head. ‘It is my experience, my dear Count, that invalids such as yourself live longer if they are undisturbed.’

‘Your Eminence understands my paltry needs only too well,’ Ducos said.

‘His Majesty,’ it was the first time the Cardinal had acknowledged the existence of a higher power in the state than himself, ‘insists upon the prudent policy that our wealthier citizens, those who pay the land taxes, you understand, should live in peace.’

‘It is well known,’ Ducos said, ‘that his Majesty pays the closest attention to your Eminence’s wise advice.’ Ducos doubted whether any wealthy person in the kingdom paid any tax at all, but doubtless the Cardinal was merely using the word to describe the gifts he would expect, and now was the time to make it clear that the Count Poniatowski was a man who had gifts to give. Ducos took a purse from his pocket and, closely watched by the Cardinal, poured some gems into his palm. Ducos, knowing that the sheer weight of the boxed gold would prove too heavy to carry across an embattled continent, had bought diamonds, rubies, sapphires and pearls in Bordeaux. He had purchased the gems for a very low price, for the starving merchants in Bordeaux had been desperate for trade, and especially for gold. ‘I was hoping, your Eminence,’ Ducos began, but then let his voice tail away.

‘My dear Count?’ The Cardinal waved away the small boys whose job was to fan him in the sultry months.

‘It takes time for a man to settle in a foreign country, your Eminence,’ Ducos still held the handful of precious stones, ‘and under the pressures of strange circumstances, and due to the necessities of establishing a home, a man might forget some civic duties like the payment of his land tax. If I were to offer you a payment of that tax now, perhaps your Eminence can persuade the authorities to take a kindly view of my convalescence?’

The Cardinal reached out a fat palm which was duly filled with some very fine gems. ‘Your responsibility does credit to your nation, my dear Count.’

‘Your Eminence’s kindness is only exceeded by your Eminence’s wisdom.’

The Cardinal pushed the gems into a pocket that was concealed beneath his red, fur-trimmed Cappa Magna. ‘I have a mind, my dear Count, to help you further. Mother Church has long admired the stalwart manner in which you Poles have resisted the depredations of the tyrant Napoleon, and now it falls to my humble lot to give a proper appreciation of that admiration.’

Ducos wondered what new financial screw the Cardinal would turn, but bowed his thanks.

‘You seek a house,’ the Cardinal said, ‘upon a hill. A place where an invalid can live in peace, undisturbed by any past acquaintances who might disturb his fragile recovery?’

‘Indeed, your Eminence.’

‘I know such a place,’ the Cardinal said. ‘It has belonged to my family for many years, and it would give me the keenest pleasure, my dear Count, if you were to occupy the house. You will need to give it the merest touch of paint, but otherwise …’ The Cardinal shrugged and smiled.

Ducos realized that the house was a ruin which he would now have to rebuild at his own expense, and all the while he would be paying this fat man an extortionate rent, but in return Ducos was receiving the protection of the Cardinal who, more than any other man, was the real power in the kingdom of Naples. Ducos accordingly offered the Cardinal a very low bow. ‘Your Eminence’s kindness overwhelms me.’

‘It is a very spacious house,’ the Cardinal said, thereby warning Ducos that the rent would be concomitantly large.

‘Your Eminence’s generosity astounds me,’ Ducos said.

‘But a large house,’ the Cardinal said slyly, ‘might be a suitable dwelling for a man who has arrived in our humble country with seven male servants? And all of them armed?’

Ducos spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘As your Eminence so wisely observed, an invalid needs peace, and armed servants are conducive to peace.’ He bowed again. ‘If I might offer your Eminence some rent now?’

‘My dear Count!’ The Cardinal seemed overwhelmed, but recovered sufficiently to accept the second purse which contained a handful of French golden francs.

The Cardinal was quite sure that the Count Poniatowski was neither a Count, nor Polish, but was almost certainly a wealthy French refugee who had fled the wrath of the victorious allies. That did not matter so long as the ‘Count’ lived peaceably in the kingdom, and so long as he was a source of income to the Cardinal who needed a very large income to sustain his household. Thus the Count was made welcome, and the very next day a lugubrious priest with an enormously long nose was instructed to lead the Count northwards to the Villa Lupighi which stood mouldering on a steep bare hill above the coast.

The villa was indeed a ruin; a vast and decaying structure which would cost a fortune to be fully restored, but Ducos had no intention of making a full restoration, only of lying low, in security, until the last question about an Emperor’s missing gold had been asked and answered. He explored his new home that overlooked the astonishingly blue sea, and Ducos saw how no one could approach the villa without being seen, and so he expressed to the long-nosed priest his full and grateful satisfaction.

Ducos had found both a refuge and a powerful protector, and thus, for the first time since he had shot Colonel Maillot, Pierre Ducos felt safe.

Sharpe had to risk letting Frederickson enter the city of Caen, for the Riflemen needed detailed instructions if they were to find the village where Henri Lassan lived.

Frederickson went into the city alone and unarmed, posing as a discharged German veteran of Napoleon’s army who sought his old Chef de battalion. No one challenged his right to be in the city, and thus he indulged himself with a tour of the great church where his namesake, William the Conqueror, lay buried. Frederickson stood for a long time in front of the marble slab, then was accosted by a cheerful priest who merrily recounted how the Conqueror’s body had been so filled with putrefaction at the time of its burial in 1087 that it had exploded under the pressure of the foul-smelling gases. ‘The church emptied!’ The priest laughed as if he had actually been there. ‘Not that our Billy’s down there any more, of course.’

‘He isn’t?’ Frederickson was surprised.

‘Those Revolutionary bastards desecrated the tomb and scattered the bones. We collected a few scraps in ’02, but I doubt if any of them are the real thing. On Judgement Day we’ll likely find a scrofulous beggar coming out of the hole instead of the Conqueror.’

The priest gladly accepted the offer of a glass of wine, and just as gladly told Frederickson how to reach Henri Lassan’s village which lay some forty miles away. ‘But be careful!’ The priest reiterated Father Marin’s warning. ‘The countryside is a dangerous place, my friend. It’s full of villains and murderers! The Emperor would never have allowed such a state.’

‘Indeed not,’ Frederickson agreed, and the two men commiserated with each other over the sad state of France now that the Emperor was gone.

It was dusk before Frederickson rejoined his companions, and night had fallen by the time Sharpe led them away from the city’s environs. The three Riflemen still planned to travel in the dark, for by daylight a man moving across country could prompt a score of telltale signs; a hare running from its lay, a pigeon startled to clatter through leaves, or even the curious gaze of somnolent cattle could alert a suspicious man to surreptitious movement. At night those dangers were lessened, for after sundown the Norman cottages were tight barred. It was easy to avoid the cottages, even in the darkness, for each one had a great manure heap piled against an outer wall and the Riflemen’s sense of smell was sufficient to send them looping far from any wakeful and suspicious villagers.

They travelled west. Sometimes they would walk for miles along deep and rutted lanes like those in England’s west country. At other times they struggled through high-hedged fields, or climbed to some wooded ridge from where they could judge their position by moonlight. It took two nights to find the right district, and another night to discover Lassan’s château in its deep, private valley that was filled with drifts of decaying blossom. Sharpe and Harper spent the last two hours of that night scouting round the château. They saw a youth sitting in the château’s gateway. Behind him, and silhouetted by a lantern, was a crude barricade of barrels. The youth was armed with what looked like an old fowling piece. He had tipped his chair back, and seemed asleep, and Sharpe had been tempted to make his entry there and then. He resisted the urge, for to have entered at that witching hour would have caused a frantic alarm. The boy was clearly posted to guard against the brigands who threatened the countryside, and Sharpe had no wish to be mistaken for such a villain. Instead he and Harper went back to the high wooded spur where Frederickson had found a hiding place.

They spent the whole of the next day on the high ground of the ridge. They were hidden by hornbeams, elms, beeches, and oaks. It was frustrating to be so close to their quarry, and yet be forced to let the daylight hours pass in inactivity, but Sharpe had decided that, in their ragged state, a daylight approach would cause suspicion and might even trigger disaster. He could see from his eyrie that every man in the valley carried a gun; even the two boys in the big orchard who laboriously ringed the trunks of the apple trees with tar carried muskets.

‘We’ll go just after sundown,’ Sharpe decided. The dusk was a time when men were relaxing from a day’s labours.

The Riflemen anticipated their success. One evening’s conversation, Frederickson averred, would be sufficient to persuade Henri Lassan to travel to England. In a week, Sharpe thought, he would be back in London. Within two weeks, at the very most, he would be back with Jane.

‘I’ll take some leave when we’re home,’ Frederickson said.

‘You can visit us in Dorset.’ Sharpe had a homely dream of entertaining old friends in his well-deserved comfort.

Frederickson smiled crookedly. ‘I have a greater yearning to visit Rome. I’d like to stand where the emperors once stood. They say an astonishing amount of the imperial city still stands, though it’s evidently much decayed. Perhaps you’ll come with me?’ he offered to Sharpe.

‘Dorset will do me well enough.’ Sharpe, lying on the high ground and staring down at the moated château, envied Henri Lassan his house. Sharpe might not have rejoiced, as Frederickson did, in the ruins of the ancient world, but he perceived a great calmness in this old Norman farmhouse. He hoped Jane had found something similar in England. He suddenly did not want a modern house with its regular geometric windows and square angular lines. He wanted something calmer and older like this château which slumbered in its deep valley.

‘I’ll be back in Donegal,’ Harper said wistfully. ‘I’ll buy some Protestant acres, so I will.’

‘You’ll be a farmer?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Aye, sir, and I’ll have a grand house, so I will. Somewhere where the children can grow in peace.’ Harper fell silent, perhaps thinking of how close that coveted heaven had become.

‘Soldiers’ dreams,’ Frederickson said dismissively, ‘just soldiers’ dreams.’ He rolled on to his belly, parted the leaves in front of him, and stared down the barrel of his rifle towards the distant château. Six cows were being driven to the byre for milking. He could just see a man standing in the farmyard, beyond the moat, and he wondered if that solitary figure was Henri Lassan, and Frederickson thought how many soldiers’ dreams were fixed on that one man’s honesty. A farm in Ireland, a house in Dorset, and a sketchbook in the Roman Forum; all would come true if only one honest man would tell the truth. He let the leaves fall slowly back, then slept, waiting for the dusk.

An hour after the sun had sunk, and when the light was still thick and gold about the lengthening shadows, the three Riflemen crept from the woods and stalked down a deep hedgerow which led to the laneway which edged the moat at the front of Lassan’s château.

Sharpe reached the laneway first and saw the same young man standing guard in the château’s archway. The youth was clearly bored. He thought himself unobserved and so was practising a crude arms drill of his own invention. He shouldered his fowling piece, presented it, grounded it, then thrust it forward as though it was tipped with a bayonet. After a while, and tiring of his military dreams, the boy sidled past the crude barricade of barrels and disappeared into the château’s yard.

Frederickson crouched beside Sharpe. ‘Shall we go now?’ he asked.

Sharpe stared at the crenellated tower above the gatehouse. He could not imagine why Lassan had not thought to post a sentry on that high commanding platform, but no man watched from that eyrie so Sharpe decided it was safe to go. Sharpe had decreed that just he and Frederickson would approach the château, and that neither man would carry weapons. Two unarmed men in the twilight posed no great threat. Harper would wait with all the weapons in the hedgerow, and only join the officers once Lassan had been safely reached.

The boy was still hidden inside the yard as Sharpe and Frederickson scrambled through the hedge and walked down the lane’s grass verge. No one called an alarm. This façade of the château, hard on the moat and facing the village, was an almost featureless wall, betraying that the building had once been a small fortress.

‘It’s a very pretty house,’ Frederickson murmured.

‘Monsieur Lassan’s a very lucky man,’ Sharpe agreed.

They had to step off the verge to approach the bridge across the moat. Once on the roadbed their boots crunched on loose stone, but still no one challenged them, not even when they reached the moat and stepped on to the mossedged planks of the ancient drawbridge. They hurried into the shelter of the archway, then edged silently by the crude barricade of empty barrels. Sharpe saw a flock of geese cropping at a thin patch of grass at the far side of the château’s yard.

‘Back!’ Frederickson hissed. He had glimpsed the boy coming back towards the arch. The lad had evidently gone to the kitchen to collect his supper that he was now carefully carrying in both hands. His long-barrelled fowling piece was slung on his shoulder.

The two Riflemen pressed themselves against the wall of the arch. The boy, intent on not spilling a drop of his soup, did not even look up as he turned into the thick shadow of the gateway.

Frederickson pounced.

The boy, in sudden terror, let the bowl fall as he twisted violently away. He was too slow. The wooden bowl spilt its contents across the cobbles as a knife jarred cold against his throat. An arm went round the boy’s face, muzzling his mouth.

‘Not a word!’ Frederickson hissed in French. He was holding the flat of a clasp-knife’s blade against the boy’s adam’s apple. ‘Be very quiet, my lad, very quiet. You’re not going to be hurt.’

Sharpe took the old fowling piece from the boy’s shoulder. He opened the lock’s frizzen and blew the priming powder away to make the gun safe. The boy was wide-eyed and shivering.

‘We mean no harm,’ Frederickson spoke very slowly and softly to the boy. ‘We don’t even have guns, you see? We’ve simply come here to talk to your master.’ He took his hand from the boy’s mouth.

The boy, clearly terrified out of his wits by the two scarred and ragged men, tried to speak, but the events of the last few seconds had struck him dumb. Frederickson gripped the nape of the boy’s jerkin. ‘Come with us, lad, and don’t be frightened. We’re not going to hurt you.’

Sharpe propped the fowling piece against the wall, then led the way out of the shadowed arch. He could see a lit window across the château’s yard, and the shadow of a person moving behind the small panes of glass. He hurried. Frederickson kept hold of the frightened boy. Two of the geese stretched their necks towards the Riflemen.

The geese began their cackling too late, for Sharpe had already reached the kitchen door which, because the boy had to return his soup bowl, was still unlocked. Sharpe did not wait on ceremony, but just pushed open the heavy door.

Frederickson thrust the boy away from him, then ducked under the lintel behind Sharpe.

Two women were in the candle-lit kitchen. One, an elderly woman with work-reddened hands, was stirring a great vat that hung on a pothook above the fire. The other, a much younger and thinner woman who was dressed all in black, was sitting at the table with an account book. The two women stared in frozen horror at the intruders.

‘Madame?’ Frederickson said from behind Sharpe who had stopped just inside the door.

‘Who are you?’ It was the thin woman in black who asked the question.

‘We’re British officers, Madame, and we apologize for thus disturbing you.’

The thin woman stood. Sharpe had an impression of a long and bitter face. She turned away from the intruders to where two water vats stood in an alcove. ‘Haven’t you done enough already?’ she asked over her shoulder.

‘Madame,’ Frederickson said gently, ‘I think you misunderstand us. We are only here …’

‘William!’ Sharpe, understanding none of what was being said, turned and pushed Frederickson out of the kitchen. He had seen the thin black-dressed woman turn back from the vats, and in her hands was a great brassmuzzled horse-pistol. Her grey eyes held nothing but a bitter hatred and Sharpe knew, with the certainty of the doomed, that everything had gone wrong. He pushed Frederickson desperately into the yard and he tried to throw himself out of the door, but he knew he was too late. His body flinched from the terrible pain to come. He had already begun to scream in anticipation of that pain when Lucille Castineau pulled the trigger and Sharpe’s world turned to thunder and agony. He felt the bullets strike like massive blows, and he saw a sear of flame flash its light above him, and then, blessedly, as the gun’s stunning echo died away, there was just nothing.