‘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.
CHAPTER 8
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 st
ate 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.’
Sharpe wondered what the pig-woman had to do with his friend’s scepticism about love. ‘And seeing an ugly woman was worth sixpence?’ he asked instead.
‘One received one’s money’s worth, as I recall. Her manager used to make the wretched creature snuffle chopped apple and cold porridge out of a feeding trough on the floor, and if you paid an extra florin she’d strip to the waist and suckle a rather plump litter of piglets.’ Frederickson chuckled at the memory. ‘She was, in truth, hideously loathsome, but I heard a month later that a gentleman from Tamworth had proposed marriage to her and had been accepted. He paid the manager a hundred guineas for the loss of business, then took the pig-lady away for a life of wedded bliss in Staffordshire. Extraordinary!’ Frederickson shook his head at this evidence of love’s irrationality. ‘Don’t you find it extraordinary?’
‘I’d rather know if you paid the extra florin,’ Sharpe said.
‘Of course I did.’ Frederickson sounded irritated that the question was even asked. ‘I was curious.’
‘And?’
‘She had entirely normal breasts. Do you think the gentleman from Tamworth was in love with her?’
‘How would I know?’
‘One has to assume as much. But whether he was or not it’s entirely inexplicable. It would be like going to bed with Sergeant Harper.’ Frederickson grimaced.
Sharpe smiled. ‘You’ve never been tempted, William?’
‘By Sergeant Harper? Don’t be impertinent.’
‘By marriage, I mean.’
‘Ah, marriage.’ Frederickson was silent for a while and Sharpe thought his friend would not answer. Then Frederickson shrugged. ‘I was jilted.’
Sharpe immediately wished he had not asked the question. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I can’t see why you should be.’ Frederickson sounded angry at having revealed this aspect of his past. ‘I now regard it as a most fortunate escape. I have observed my married friends, and I don’t exclude present company, and all I can say, with the greatest of respect, is that most wives prove to be expensive aggravations. Their prime attraction can be most conveniently hired by the hour, so there seems little reason to incur the expense of keeping one for years. Still, I doubt you’ll agree with me. Married men seldom do.’ He twisted back into the byre to find Harper’s sword-bayonet that he drew from its scabbard and tested against his thumb. ‘I have a fancy for a breakfast of mutton.’
‘I had the very same wish.’
‘Or would you prefer lamb?’ Frederickson asked solicitously.
‘I think mutton. Shall I go?’
‘I need the exertion.’ Frederickson carefully extinguished his cheroot, then stored it in his shako. He stood, peered for a moment into the slashing rain, then plunged into the night.
Harper snored behind Sharpe. At the hilltop the great branches of foliage heaved and bucked in the sodden wind. Lightning sliced the sky, and Sharpe wondered what malevolent fate had brought his career to this extremity, and then he prayed that the weather would clear so that this journey could be done and an honest Frenchman found.
Henri Lassan had struggled with his conscience. He had even gone so far as to consult with the Bishop, he had prayed, until at last he had made his decision. One night at the supper table he informed his mother of that decision. The family was eating sorrel soup and black bread. They drank red wine which was so bad that Lucille had put some grated ginger in the bottle to improve its taste.
Henri sat at the head of the table. ‘Maman?’
‘Henri?’
Henri paused with a spoonful of soup just inches above his plate. ‘I will marry Mademoiselle Pellemont, as you wish.’
‘I am very pleased, Henri.’ The old lady was not going to revel in her victory, but offered her response very gravely and with the smallest inclination of her head.
Lucille showed more pleasure. ‘I think that’s wonderful news.’
‘She has excellent hips,’ the Dowager said. ‘Her mother had sixteen children, and her grandmother twelve, so it’s a good choice.’
‘A very solid choice,’ Henri Lassan said with a trace of a smile.
‘She has a very lovely nature,’ Lucille said warmly, and it was true. There might be those who thought Marie Pellemont to have the placidity and attractiveness of a gentle and not very energetic cow, but Lucille had always liked Marie who was her own age, and who would now become the new Comtesse de Lassan.
A betrothal ceremony was fixed for a fortnight’s time and, even tho
ugh the château had fallen on lean times, the family tried hard to make apt provision for the occasion. All but one of the château’s saddle horses were sold so that the guests could receive their traditional gifts, sword knots for the men and nosegays for the women, and so there would be lavish food and decent wine for the guests of quality. The villagers and tenantry must also be fed, and provided with great vats of cider. Lucille found herself busy baking apple-cakes, and pressing great trays of nettle-wrapped cheese. She made sure that the hams hanging in the château’s chimneys were not too nibbled by bats. She cut away the worst of the ravages, then rubbed pepper into the dark hams to keep the animals at bay. It was a happy time. The days were lengthening and growing warmer.
Then, just a week before the betrothal ceremony, the first armed brigands were reported in the château’s vicinity.
The report came from a man ditching the top fields above the mill-stream. He had watched as some ragged fugitives, all armed and wearing the vestiges of imperial uniforms, had skulked along the stream-bed. They had been carrying two slaughtered lambs.
That night Henri Lassan slept with a loaded musket beside his bed. He barricaded the bridges over the moat with old cider vats, then released geese into the yard to act as sentries. Geese were more reliable than dogs, but no strangers disturbed the geese, neither that night nor the next, and Henri dared to hope that the vagabonds had merely been passing through the district.
Then, just the very next day, a horrific report came of a farmhouse burned beyond the next village of Seleglise. The smoke of the burning barn could be plainly seen from the château. The farmer, all his family, and both his maid-servants had been killed. The details of the massacre, brought by the miller of Seleglise, were appalling, so much so that Henri did not tell either his mother or Lucille. The miller, an elderly and devout man, shook his head. ‘They were Frenchmen who did this, my Lord.’