Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe's Revenge, Sharpe's Waterloo, Sharpe's Devil (21 page)

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 Chateau 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.

Father Marin had warned Frederickson that it might take a full month for a man to walk from Arcachon to Caen, but that was by daylight and without needing to avoid either predatory bandits or patrolling provosts. There were public coaches that could make the journey in a week, and such coaches were well guarded by armed outriders, but both Sharpe and Frederickson reckoned that the new French government, believing them to be thieves, might already be seeking them. Similarly, the news that British sailors were searching the Teste de Buch persuaded Sharpe that they were just as much at risk from their own countrymen as from the French. It was better, Sharpe and Frederickson agreed, to walk by night and thus to avoid all eyes.

They encountered their greatest obstacle just three nights after leaving Arcachon. They had headed east to meet the River Garonne south of Bordeaux. The river was too deep and wide to be safely swum, and it took a full night’s scouting before they found a boat. It was a ferry-man’s skiff that was chained to a thick wooden post sunk deep into the river bank. Harper spat on his hands, crouched, then tugged the post bodily from the flinty soil. Frederickson had already cut two branches to serve as paddles. The river’s current was so swift that Sharpe feared their boat might be swept clear into Bordeaux itself, but somehow they managed to steer the small craft safe to the eastern shore.

They crossed another and smaller river the next night, and then at last could turn north. Father Marin had given Frederickson a route; by Angoulême, Poitiers, Tours, Le Mans, Alençon, Falaise, and thus to Caen.

All three Riflemen were accustomed to travelling by night, for the army had always marched long before dawn so that its day’s journey was done before the Spanish sun was at its fiercest. Now, in the French countryside, it was doubtful whether a single soul was aware of the Riflemen’s passing. The skills they used were by now innate; the skills of men who had patrolled in war for all their lives. They knew how to travel in silence and how to hunt. One night, despite the presence of three guard dogs in a farmyard, Frederickson and Harper stole two freshly farrowed piglets that were roasted the next day in a tumbledown and deserted farmhouse high on a hill. Two nights later, in a wood that was thick with wild-flowers, Sharpe shot a deer that they disembowelled and butchered. They plucked fish from streams with their bare hands. They dined on fungi and dandelion roots. They ate hares, rabbits, and squirrels, and all they missed from their diet was wine and rum.

They avoided towns and villages. Sometimes they would hear a church bell tolling in the dusk, or smell the stench of a great town, but always they looped east or west before continuing along deserted tracks or following the contour lines of great vineyards. They waded streams, climbed hills, and struggled through brackish marshland. They followed the Pole Star on clear nights, and on others they would walk a high road to find their directions from its milestones. In their tattered uniforms they looked like vagabonds, but vagabonds so well armed that they must have appeared more fearsome than the brigands they took such trouble to avoid.

On the tenth night of their journey they were forced to lay up through the darkness. All day they had watched the clouds piling up in the west, and by nightfall the whole sky was shrouded by sullen black thunderheads. The three Riflemen were snug in a ruined byre, and when the first stab of lightning flickered to earth Sharpe decided to stay put. It had already begun to rain, softly at first, but soon it began to spit malevolently, then swelled until the downpour was thrashing the earth in a sheeting and stinging deluge. The thunder cracked and tumbled across the sky, sounding just like the passage of heavy roundshot.

Harper slept while Sharpe and Frederickson crouched in the byre’s entrance. Both men were fascinated by the storm’s violence. Lightning twisted and split into rivulets of brilliant white fire so that it seemed as if the sky itself was in agony.

‘Didn’t it thunder the night before the battle at Salamanca?’ Frederickson almost had to shout to be heard above the violent noise.

‘Yes.’ Sharpe could hear sheep bleating their panic somewhere to the west, and he was considering the prospect of mutton for breakfast.

Frederickson sheltered his tinderbox inside his greatcoat and struck a flame for one of his few remaining cheroots.

‘I astonish myself by positively enjoying this life. I think perhaps I could wander in darkness for the rest of my life.’

Sharpe smiled. ‘I’d rather reach home.’

Frederickson uttered a scornful bark of laughter. ‘I hear an echo of a married man’s lust.’

‘I was thinking of Jane, if that’s what you mean.’ Since leaving Bordeaux, Sharpe had taken care not to mention Jane, for he knew with what small sympathy Frederickson regarded the state of marriage, but Sharpe’s worries had only increased with his silence and now, under the storm’s threat, he could not resist articulating those worries. ‘Jane will be fretting.’

‘She’s a soldier’s wife. If she isn’t prepared for long absences and long silences, then she shouldn’t have married you. Besides, d’Alembord will see her soon enough.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And she has money,’ Frederickson continued remorselessly, ‘so I cannot see that she has great cause for concern. Indeed, I rather suspect that you’re more worried about her than she is about you.’

Sharpe hesitated before admitting to that truth, but then, needing his friend’s consolation, he nodded. ‘That’s true.’

‘You’re worried that she’s tired of you?’ Frederickson insisted.

‘Good God, no!’ Sharpe protested vehemently, too vehemently, for in truth that worry was never far from his thoughts. It was a natural concern occasioned by the unhappiness of their parting and by Jane’s subsequent silence, but Sharpe had no taste to discuss such intimacies even with Frederickson. His voice sounded harsh. ‘I’m merely worried because bloody Wigram knew she’d withdrawn that money. It means someone’s investigated my affairs at home. What if they try to confiscate her money?’

‘Then she’ll be poor,’ Frederickson said heartlessly, ‘but doubtless she’ll live until you clear your name. One presumes your wife has friends who won’t allow her to slide into ignominious penury?’

‘She has no friends that I know of.’ Sharpe had snatched Jane from her uncle’s house where she had been forced to live a reclusive life. That life had prevented her from making any close friends and, bereft of such help, Sharpe did not know how Jane would survive poverty and isolation. She was too young and innocent for hardship, he thought, and that realization provoked a surge of affection and pity for Jane. He suddenly wished he had risked the coach journey. Perhaps, by now, they could already have found Lassan and be on their way home with the proof they needed, but instead Sharpe was marooned in this water-lashed storm and he imagined a penniless Jane crouching beneath the same thunderous violence in solitary and abject fear. ‘Maybe she thinks I’m already dead.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Frederickson was disgusted with Sharpe’s self-pity. ‘She can read the casualty lists, can’t she? And she must have received one of your letters. And d’Alembord will be with her soon, and you can be sure he won’t permit her to starve. For God’s sake, man, stop agitating about what can’t be altered! Let’s find Henri Lassan, then worry about the rest of our damned lives.’ Frederickson paused as a shattering explosion of thunder slammed a snake’s tongue of lightning into some woods on a nearby hill. Flames blazed from twisted branches after the lightning strike, but the burning leaves were soon extinguished by the numbing rain. Frederickson drew on his cheroot. ‘I wish I understood love,’ he said in a more conversational tone, ‘it seems a very strange phenomenon.’

‘Does it?’

‘I remember, the last time I was in London, paying sixpence to see the pig-faced woman. Do you remember how celebrated she was for a few months? She was exhibited in most of the larger towns, I recall, and there was even talk that she might be displayed in Germany and Russia. I confess it was a most singular experience. She was very porcine indeed, with a rather snouty face, small eyes, and bristly hairs on her cheeks. It was not quite a sow’s face, but a very close approximation. I rather think her manager had slit her nostrils to increase the illusion.’