Sharpe's Revenge (17 page)

‘I can vouch for that,' Frederickson said.

Wigram handed the telescope to Monsieur Roland. ‘Perhaps, Monsieur, you will translate the inscription for the benefit of the tribunal?'

The Frenchman took the telescope, peered at the plate inset on the outer barrel, then spoke the translation aloud. ‘To Joseph, King of Spain and the Indies, from his brother, Napoleon, Emperor of France.'

There was a murmur in the room. Wigram stilled the sound with a further question. ‘Is this the sort of personal belonging, Monsieur, which the Emperor or his brother might have stored in their baggage?'

‘Indeed,' Roland said.

Wigram paused, then shrugged. ‘The tribunal should be apprised that the glass was discovered in Major Sharpe's baggage during an authorized search that was done on my orders during the last hour.' Wigram, buoyed up by the evidence of the telescope, had regained his former confidence and now stared directly at Sharpe. ‘It is not the business of this tribunal to be a judge of the facts, but merely to decide whether a competent court-martial should be given those facts to judge. The tribunal will now make that decision, and will inform you of its findings at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. Until that hour you are forbidden to leave this building. You will discover that Captain Salmon has made adequate billeting arrangements.'

Frederickson collated his sketches and notes. ‘Are we under arrest, sir?'

Wigram paused. ‘Not yet, Captain. But you are under military discipline, and therefore ordered to remain in confinement until your fate is announced tomorrow morning.'

The other officers in the room did not look at either Rifleman. It had been the discovery of the telescope that had plunged their certainty of Sharpe's innocence into an assurance of the Rifleman's guilt. Sharpe stared at them one by one, but they would not look back.

Frederickson plucked Sharpe's arm towards the door. Captain Salmon and a half dozen of his men waited on the landing outside. Sharpe and Frederickson might not be prisoners, but it was clearly only a matter of time before they were formally charged and their swords were taken away.

Salmon was embarrassed. ‘There's a room set aside for you, sir,' he said to Sharpe. ‘Your servant's waiting there.'

‘We're not under arrest,' Sharpe challenged him.

‘The room's upstairs, sir,' Salmon said doggedly, and the presence of his provosts was enough to persuade the two Riflemen to accompany him to the upper floor and into a room that looked out to the city's main square. A very indignant Patrick Harper waited there. There was also a chamber pot, two wooden chairs, and a table on which was a loaf of bread, a plate of cheese, and a tin jug of water. There was a pile of blankets and a heap of baggage that Harper had fetched from the quayside. There were three packs, three canteens, but no weapons or ammunition. Salmon hesitated, as though he wanted to stay in the room with the three Riflemen, but a glare from Harper made the Captain back abruptly into the corridor.

‘That bastard of a provost searched your packs.' Harper was still smarting under that indignity. ‘I tried to stop him, so I did, but he threatened me with a flogging.'

‘They took my rifle?' Sharpe asked.

‘It's in the bloody guardroom downstairs, sir.' Harper was incensed that he, like Sharpe, had been disarmed. ‘They've got my rifle and gun there as well. Even my bayonet!' Sharpe and Frederickson, because they had not been officially placed under arrest, had been allowed to keep their swords, but those were now their only weapons.

‘I hate provosts,' Frederickson said mildly.

‘So what the hell's happening, sir?' Harper asked Sharpe.

‘We're only accused of stealing half the bloody gold in France. Jesus Christ! It's bloody madness!'

‘Indeed it is.' Frederickson was placidly cutting the loaf into big chunks.

‘I'm sorry, William.'

‘Why should you apologize to me?'

‘Because this is my battle. Goddamn bloody Ducos!'

Frederickson shrugged. ‘They could hardly ignore me. They must have known I'd testify to your ignorance, which would be embarrassing for the authorities, so it's much simpler to implicate me in the crime as well. Besides, if there had been that much gold in the fort, I'd have undoubtedly helped you to steal it.' He cut the cheese with his knife. ‘Pity about the telescope, though. It's just the corroborative evidence they needed.'

‘They need the gold,' Sharpe said, ‘and it never existed!'

‘It existed all right, but not in the fort.' Frederickson frowned. ‘I've no doubt there'll be a battle-royal between Paris and London as to who the money really belongs to, but the one thing they'll agree on is that we've got a damned good share of it. And who's to disprove that?'

‘Killick?' Sharpe suggested.

Frederickson shook his head. ‘The word of a confessed American pirate against a French government lawyer?'

‘Ducos, then,' Sharpe said savagely, ‘and I'll rip his damned bowels out.'

‘Either Ducos,' Frederickson agreed, ‘or the Commandant,' he looked at his notes to find the Commandant's name, ‘Lassan. The problem is that it will be very difficult to find either man if we're under arrest, and I would suggest to you that we will very soon be placed under arrest.'

Sharpe went to the window and stared at the ships' masts which showed above the rooftops. ‘We've got to get the hell out of here.'

‘Getting the hell out of here,' Frederickson spoke very mildly, ‘is called desertion.' Both officers stared at each other, appalled at the enormity of what they proposed. Desertion would invite a court-martial, loss of rank, and imprisonment, but exactly the same fate would attend them if they were found guilty of stealing the Emperor's gold and concealing it from their masters. ‘And there is rather a lot of gold at stake,' Frederickson added gently, ‘and unlike you, I'm a poor man.'

‘You can't come.' Sharpe turned on Harper.

‘Mary, Mother of God, and why not?'

‘Because if you desert, and are caught, they'll shoot you. They'll only cashier us, because we're officers, but they'll shoot you.'

‘I'm coming anyway.'

‘For God's sake, Patrick! I don't mind taking the risk for myself, and Mr Frcdcrickson's in the same boat as I am, but I won't have you...'

‘And why don't you just save your bloody breath?' Harper asked, then, after a pause, ‘sir?'

Frederickson smiled. ‘I wasn't enjoying peace much anyway. So let's go back to war, shall we?'

‘War?' Sharpe stared back at the ships' masts. He should have been on board one of those vessels, ready for the voyage up the Garonne estuary, across Biscay, around Ushant, and so home to Jane.

‘Because if we're to escape this problem,' Frederickson said softly, ‘then we'll have to fight, and we're rather better at fighting when we're armed and free. So let's get the hell out of here, find Ducos or Lassan, and make some mischief. And some money.'

Sharpe stared west. Somewhere out there, beneath the sinking sun, was an enemy who still skulked and schemed. So his reunion with Jane must wait, and peace must wait, for a last fight must still be fought. But after that, he prayed, he would find his peace in the English countryside. ‘We'll go tonight,' he said, but he suddenly wished to the depths of his heart that he was sailing home instead. But an enemy had decreed otherwise, so Sharpe's war was not yet done.

The Chateau Lassan was in Normandy. It was called a château for it had once had the pretensions of a fortress, and was still the home of a noble family, yet in truth it was now little more than a large moated farmhouse, though it was undeniably a very pleasant farmhouse. The two storeys of the main wing were built of grey Caen stone that had been quarried and dressed fifty years before the Conqueror had sailed for England. In the fifteenth century, and as a result of a fortunate marriage, the lord of the manor had added a second wing at right angles to the first. The new wing, even now in 1814 it was still known as the ‘new' wing, was pierced by a high arched gate and surmounted by a crenellated tower. A private chapel with deep lancet windows completed the château that was surrounded by a moat which also protected an acre of land that had once been gracious with lawns and flowers.

It had been many years since the moat had defended the house against an enemy's attack and so the drawbridge had been left permanently down and its heavy-geared windlass had been taken away to make the upper part of a cider press. Two further wooden bridges were put across the moat; one led from the château to the dairy and the other gave quick access from house to orchards. The old moat-encircled garden became a farmyard; a compost heap mouldered warm by the chapel wall, chickens and ducks scrabbled for feed, and two hogs fattened where once the lords and ladies had strolled on the smoothly scythed lawn. The ‘new' wing, all but for the chapel, had become farm buildings where horses and oxen were stabled, wains were stored, and apples heaped next to the press.

The Revolution had left the Château Lassan unscathed, though its master, dutifully and humbly serving his King in Paris, had gone to the guillotine solely because he possessed an ancient title. The local Committee of Public Safety had visited the homely château and tried to summon a fashionable and bloodthirsty enthusiasm to pillage the dead Count's belongings, but the family was well-liked and, after much harmless bluster, the Committee had muttered an apology to the dowager Countess and contented themselves with stealing five barrels of newly pressed cider and a wagon-load of the old Count's wine. The new Count, an earnest eighteen-year-old, was troubled by his conscience into the belief that the disasters of France were truly the result of social inequalities, and so told the local Committee that he would renounce his title and join the new Republic's army. The Committee, privately astonished that anyone should renounce the privileges they so publicly despised, applauded the decision, though the dowager Countess was seen to purse her lips with disapproval. Her daughter, just seven years old, did not understand any of it. There had been five other children, but all had died in infancy. Only the eldest, Henri, and the youngest, Lucille, had survived.

Now, twenty-one years later, the wars that had begun against the Republic and continued against the Empire were at last over. The Dowager Countess still lived, and liked to sit where the sun was trapped by the junction of the château's two wings and where roses grew clear up to the moss which grew on the château's stone roof. The old lady shared the château with her daughter. Lucille had been married to a General's son, but within two months of the wedding her husband had died in the snows of Russia and Lucille Castineau had returned to her mother as a childless widow.

Now, in the peace that came after Easter, the son had come home as well. Henri, Comte de Lassan, had walked up the lane and crossed the drawbridge, just as if he was returning from a stroll, and his mother had wept with joy that her soldier son had survived, and that night, just as if he had never been away, Henri took the top place at the supper table. He had quietly and unfussily folded his blue uniform away in the pious hope that he would never again be forced to wear it. He said grace before the meal, then commented that the apple blossom looked thin in the orchards.

‘We need to graft new stock on to the trees,' his mother said.

‘Only there isn't any money,' Lucille added.

‘You must borrow some, Henri,' the Dowager Countess said. ‘They wouldn't lend to two widows like us, but they'll lend to a man.'

‘We have nothing to sell?'

‘Very little.' The Dowager sat very straight-backed.

‘And what little is left, Henri, must be preserved. It is not right that a Comte de Lassan be without family silver or good horses.'

Henri smiled. ‘The titles of the old nobility were abolished over twenty years ago, Maman. I am now Monsieur Henri Lassan, nothing more.'

The Dowager sniffed disapproval. She had seen the fashions of French nomenclature come and go. Henri, Comte de Lassan had become Citoyen Lassan, then Lieutenant Lassan, then Capitaine Lassan, and now he claimed to be plain Monsieur Lassan. That, in the Dowager's opinion, was nonsense. Her son was the Count of this manor, lord of its estates and heir to eight centuries of noble history. No government in Paris could change that.

Yet, despite his mother, Henri refused to use his title and disliked it when the villagers bowed to him and called him ‘my Lord'. One of those villagers had once been on the Committee of Public Safety, but those heady days of equality were long gone and the ageing revolutionary was now as eager as any man to doff his cap to the Comte de Lassan.

‘Why don't you please Maman?' Lucille asked her brother. It was a Sunday afternoon soon after Henri's return and, while the Dowager Countess took her afternoon nap, the brother and sister had crossed one of the wooden bridges and were walking between the scanty blossomed apple trees towards the millstream that lay at the end of the château's orchards.

‘To call myself Count would be a sin of pride.'

‘Henri!' Lucille said reproachfully, though she knew that no reproach would sway her gentle, but very stubborn brother. She found it hard to imagine Henri as a soldier, though it had been clear from his letters that he had taken his military responsibilities with great seriousness, and, reading between the lines, that he had been popular with his men. Yet always, in every letter, Henri had spoken of his ambition to become a priest. When the war is over, he would write, he would take orders.