Sharpe did not reply. Instead he limped to that part of the balustrade closest to the approaching officers. All three were sweating because of the weight and constriction of their white fur hats. Their leader, whose rank Sharpe could not recognize, curbed his horse and gave the Rifleman a curt nod. ‘Are you French?’ the man asked in that language.
‘My name is Richard Sharpe, and I am a Major in His Brittanic Majesty’s army,’ Sharpe said in English.
‘My name is Colonel Pannizi.’ Pannizi must have understood Sharpe’s reply, though he still spoke in French. He waited, as though expecting Sharpe to offer him a salute, but the filthy, bloodstained Englishman did not move. Pannizi sighed. ‘And what is an English officer doing in the Kingdom of Naples?’
‘Visiting a friend.’
Pannizi was a slim, handsome man. He wore a razor-thin moustache that curled up into sharp waxed tips. Gold tassels hung from his bearskin’s plume, while a tiny gold and silver cuirass hung beneath the high stiff lapels of his white and gold coat. He momentarily closed his eyes in apparent exasperation at Sharpe’s insolent answer. ‘Is General Calvet with you?’
‘I am General Calvet. Who the devil are you?’
Pannizi bowed in his saddle towards the stocky Frenchman who now stumped on to the terrace. ‘My name is Colonel Pannizi.’
‘Good morning, Colonel, and goodbye.’ Calvet had clearly decided that defiance was the best course of action.
Pannizi touched a white-gloved finger to a tip of his moustache. His two companions, both much younger, sat with impassive faces. Pannizi quietened his horse that jarred away from an insistent fly. ‘You are trespassing upon the property of a prince of the Church.’
‘I couldn’t give a bucket of cowshit whose house it is,’ Calvet said.
‘The house and all its contents,’ Pannizi went on with remarkable equanimity, ‘are hereby placed under the protection of the Kingdom of Naples, whose warrant I hold. I therefore request that you leave the villa immediately.’
‘And if I don’t?’ Calvet challenged.
Pannizi shrugged. ‘I shall be forced to arrest you, which will cause me extreme pain. The bravery of General Calvet is legendary.’
The flowery compliment plainly pleased Calvet, but could not persuade him. There was a fortune at stake, and even if Calvet himself did not receive a groat of the treasure, he was determined that his master would be denied none of it. ‘To arrest me,’ he said, ‘you will have to fight me. Not many men have lived to say they fought General Calvet.’
Pannizi gave a flicker of a smile. He drew his sword, but very slowly so as to demonstrate that he meant no threat. He pointed the shining blade down the hill to where his men sat slumped on the grass, then sheathed the blade again. The gesture was eloquent. Pannizi controlled six hundred bayonets, and must have known that Calvet had scarcely more than a dozen. ‘Your bravery, as I said, is legendary.’ Pannizi was hoping to flatter Calvet into surrender.
Calvet glanced at the Neapolitan battalion. Their colours had been unfurled, though the wind was not strong enough to lift the heavy fringed silk. Beneath the two flags the men appeared dispirited and flaccid. ‘You have the stomach for a fight, Colonel?’ Calvet challenged Pannizi.
‘I have the orders for a fight, General, and I am a soldier.’
‘A good answer.’ Calvet scowled down the hill. He knew better than anyone how hopeless this fight was, yet he was a soldier too, and he also had his orders. ‘And if we surrender to you now?’ he asked with evident distaste for the question.
Pannizi looked shocked. ‘My dear General, there is no question of your surrendering! You are invited to be the guests of the Cardinal, the most honoured guests. Consider my regiment to be nothing more than an escort sent to conduct you with due honour into the city.’
Calvet had the grace to smile at the outrageous description. ‘And if we choose not to be the Cardinal’s guests?’
‘You are free to leave the kingdom, all of you.’
‘Free?’ Calvet probed.
Pannizi nodded. ‘Entirely free. And you may take with you your uniforms and personal weapons,’ he paused, ‘but nothing more.’
The threat was in those last three words. Pannizi knew what treasure lay in the villa, and he did not care what became of Calvet, Sharpe, or their men, so long as the treasure became his.
Calvet turned abruptly to stare north. The Neapolitan horsemen had cut off that escape route. He turned back. ‘You will give us fifteen minutes to consider our position, Colonel?’
‘Ten,’ Pannizi said, then drew his sword again. He saluted Calvet with the shining blade. ‘And you will do the honour of breakfasting with my officers, General?’
‘Only if you have bacon,’ Calvet said. ‘I have a great liking for fat bacon.’
Pannizi smiled. ‘Bacon will be found for you, General. You have ten minutes to anticipate its taste.’ The Neapolitan Colonel sheathed his sword, nodded a summons to his two companions, then galloped back down the hill.
‘Merde, merde, merde,’ Calvet said.
‘Lime!’ Calvet snarled at Sharpe. ‘I had you trapped in a fort and you escaped with powdered lime. So tell me what foul trick you have this time?’
Sharpe did not reply immediately. He was staring downhill at the dispirited Neapolitan infantrymen who, in anticipation of the ten minutes’ expiry, were being ordered to their feet. ‘Will they fight?’
‘Of course they’ll bloody fight,’ Calvet said. ‘That bastard Pannizi is telling them that there’s a battalion of whores and a king’s ransom in this place! Any minute now and they’ll be raring to fight! They smell plunder.’
‘So give it to them,’ Sharpe said abruptly.
‘What?’
‘Give them the damned gold! It weighs too much anyway. Take the stones and give them the bags of gold.’
Calvet stared at the Rifleman. ‘You’re mad.’
‘On the contrary, General. We haven’t got lime, but we can blind them with gold. Showers of gold! Gold dropping from the heavens!’ Sharpe was suddenly enthusiastic. ‘For God’s sake, General, how much is this treasure worth to you? Would you rather crawl back to your Emperor with nothing? Or would you rather buy your way out of this trap with a little gold?’
Calvet turned to look at the somnolent battalion. ‘So what do I do, Englishman? Go down there and haggle like a shoemaker? Don’t be a fool. If we offer a little gold they’ll want it all, and once they have it all, they’ll want the stones, and once they have the stones, we have nothing.’
‘We don’t offer it to them,’ Sharpe said, ‘but we give it. How good do you think their discipline is?’
Calvet snorted. ‘They’re a shambles! I’ve seen men reeking with drink who made a better show than that.’
‘So we test their discipline by appealing to their greed.’ Sharpe grinned at Harper. ‘I want the grasshopper. And some powder.’
Harper carried the brass gun, a powder keg and a bag of quick-fuse on to the terrace. Sharpe placed the weapon butt down, balanced by its bent rear legs, so that it could fire high into the air like a mortar. Sharpe did not want to blow a swathe of death through the Neapolitan battalion which waited a quarter mile away, he only wanted to swamp it with greed, and so he would literally make the gold of heaven rain from the sky.
Two of Calvet’s men fetched the bags of gold coins while Sharpe ladled a minuscule amount of powder into the gun. He tamped it down. He dared not charge the gun fully, or else the coins would be blasted across empty miles of countryside. He poured a small fortune of gold into the brass barrel, then pushed a length of quick-fuse into the touch-hole. ‘General?’
Calvet had been sulking at the prospect of losing even a small amount of his master’s treasure, but now he brightened at the prospect of firing the first golden volley. The gun was aimed so that the golden shower would fall to the east, away from the sea. Before he fired, Calvet glanced to make certain that his men were ready to make their bid for escape.
H
arper was supporting the still dazed Frederickson, and had Ducos tied to a length of rope. He had cut the Frenchman’s ankles free so Ducos could run. Calvet’s men, all but for the two wounded Grenadiers, were laden with their bags and packs of gems. The prisoners, all but Ducos, would be abandoned. ‘We’re ready,’ Calvet said, then gleefully touched the glowing end of a cheroot to the stub of quick-fuse.
There was a brief hiss, a coughing dull explosion, and a spew of dark smoke. The gun jarred backwards, then toppled, as Sharpe had an impression, nothing more, of a gouting of bright gold that glittered almost straight into the air through the acrid billow of smoke. Then, a second later, it seemed that a patch of the sky twinkled as though fragments of the sun itself were shattering in the upper air. Sharpe knew he watched the coins at the top of their arcing flight, but then they disappeared. He waited, and suddenly Harper whooped as the shards of light bounced and scattered and winked on the ground just beyond the Neapolitan battalion’s right flank.
Sharpe righted the fallen gun, ladled in another scoop of powder, then rammed yet more coins on to the charge. He glanced downhill and saw the movement as men turned in the infantry’s ranks. He rammed another length of quick-fuse home, then touched Calvet’s cheroot to its tip.
Another shower of gold sparkled high, then fell to earth in a glitter of greed.
‘They’re trying to hold the buggers!’ Harper reported gleefully.
A third charge, then a fourth, and now Sharpe was adding a half ounce to the charge so that the gold was spreading itself in a bright swathe that led away from the sea. He touched the cheroot on the fifth charge and this time, as the gold shattered the dawn sky into a thousand bright sparks, the battalion below broke their ranks, cheered, and stormed the empty fields to make their fortunes. The three Neapolitan ranks had dissolved like men hit by canister. Their sergeants and officers could not hold them and the men scattered like a chaotic mob to the countryside. They threw away their packs, muskets and shakoes as they fought and scrambled for the coins. They plucked the golden harvest and constantly watched the sky for yet more of the wonderful goldfall.
Sharpe gave them a last heavy blast of gold, this one from a barrel almost fully charged so that the thick coins glittered a full half mile inland as they fell. For the last time he watched the brightness tumble, then he turned and hobbled after Calvet’s men.
It was a race now. The infantry had been taken from the equation, but there were still the cavalry and Pannizi’s mounted officers. Calvet’s men, weighed with their prize of precious gems and their two wounded comrades, stumbled down the steep hill. Harper forced Ducos on, while Sharpe helped Frederickson. ‘I’m all right,’ Frederickson protested, but as soon as Sharpe let him go, he stumbled as if drunk.
‘Ware left!’ Harper warned.
Pannizi and three officers were spurring to cut off their retreat. Sharpe dropped to one knee, aimed, and put a bullet across their path. The crack of the Baker Rifle sounded very purposeful and the spurt of dust in front of Pannizi’s small group was more than enough to check their ardour.
Sharpe ran on. One of Calvet’s men was watching the right flank, from where the cavalry might appear, but the hill had hidden those horsemen from the fall of gold and they were still ignorant of what happened to their south. Far off to Sharpe’s left a rabble of infantrymen still rooted through the grass, olive groves and stubble. Some officers and sergeants tried to whip the men back to their duty, but the lure of the gold had turned the battalion into a mob. Some of the lucky Neapolitans were finding more money in five minutes than they could have expected to make in a lifetime.
Sharpe stumbled through a dry watercourse, scrambled up its far bank, and half carried Frederickson through patches of tall, thick leaved plants that had saw-like edges. The village lay to their left, its harbour just beyond. Lieutenant Herguet, who had led Calvet’s small band down to the harbour, jumped up and down on the quay. The cavalry had still not appeared, and Pannizi’s infantry were scattered to uselessness. Sharpe was limping badly, but Frederickson, his one good eye almost closed by the swelling dark bruise, found new strength. Harper kicked Ducos on. Calvet was suddenly enjoying himself; he whooped his men through the village, past the barking dogs, and on to the sharp flinty quay. They ran past drying nets and wicker pots, down to where Herguet guarded a bright-painted boat on which two disconsolate crewmen cowered beneath his men’s two guns.
‘Cavalry!’ Calvet’s man warned. But the cavalry was too late. They burst over the hill’s shoulder, they drew their swords, they spread out in fine array, but Calvet’s men were already aboard the fishing boat, Harper was slashing at the stern line with his bayonet, and the dirty sail was already catching the dawn’s land breeze to drive the high-prowed craft out into the bay.
Ducos, with his hands still tied, was pushed to the bottom of the fish hold. He stared myopic hatred at Sharpe, but then Sharpe closed the hatch to leave his enemy in a stinking darkness. The Grenadiers were laughing with the pleasure of victory. It might not have been Jena or Wagram or Austerlitz, but it was still a victory for an Emperor who all the world thought was past winning victories.
Calvet embraced Harper, then the foully bruised Frederickson, and lastly Sharpe. ‘I forgive you for the lime, Englishman, and I will say that, for a man who is not French, you fight with a reasonable skill.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘Be glad, General, that you will not have to fight me again.’
‘Who knows?’ Calvet’s voice was mischievous. ‘If I can bring the Emperor enough gold then perhaps he can raise an army again?’
The mischievous remark reminded Sharpe of Major-General Nairn’s wistful dream of one last great battle, one climactic killing in which the Emperor would be arrayed against the world, but Nairn was dead, his old bones flensing in a French grave. Sharpe smiled. ‘No, General, there’ll be no more battles.’
‘You’re right.’ Calvet sounded miserable as he made the admission. ‘You and I are finished, my friend. The world’s at peace and we’re useless now. We’re the hunting dogs, but rabbits rule the earth now.’ Calvet turned to watch the Neapolitan cavalry curb their horses on the far quay. ‘But I tell you, my friend, that within a year, you and I will be wishing for battle again.’
‘I won’t,’ Sharpe said fervently.
‘You wait.’ Calvet turned away from the land, and stared out to sea where two sails showed on the hazy horizon. ‘So what will you do now, my friend?’ he asked Sharpe.
‘Take Ducos to Paris and present him to Wellington. After that he will be given to the authorities.’
‘Which authorities?’
‘The ones who will execute him for the murder of Henri Lassan.’
Calvet offered Sharpe a mocking smile. ‘That small crime worries you?’
‘It worries Madame Castineau.’
Calvet still smiled. ‘And why should Madame Castineau’s concerns be of any interest to you?’
Sharpe turned away because one of the Neapolitan cavalrymen had fired a carbine at the fishing boat. The ball splashed uselessly a hundred yards astern. None of the boat’s occupants even bothered to raise a weapon in reply.
Calvet fished in his pouch and brought out a handful of gems. He sorted through them with a grimy finger, then selected one flawless, blood-red ruby. ‘Give that to Madame Castineau, for, even if unwittingly, by writing her letter she did a great service for France.’
Sharpe hesitantly took the jewel. ‘For France, General? Or for Elba?’
‘Napoleon is France, my friend. If you tied him in chains and dropped him to the ocean’s deepest pit, he would still be France.’ Calvet folded Sharpe’s hand over the precious jewel. ‘I will give you nothing more, Englishman. Does that hurt? That you must go empty-handed from a fight where we filled a morning sky with gold?’
‘I lived,’ Sharpe said simply.
‘And you left empty-handed.’ Calvet smiled. ‘So you see, Englishman, the French won after all!’
‘Vive l’Empereur, mon Gen
eral.’
‘Vive l’Empereur, mon ami.’
An hour later they accosted a Piedmontese merchant ship which, for a handful of imperial gold and under the threat of a dozen muskets, agreed to take the soldiers on board. Calvet would go to Elba and Sharpe, with his prisoner, would seek a Royal Naval ship. Thereafter they would be unwanted hounds in a kingdom of rabbits, but they had lived when so many had died, and that, at least, was something. Thus, in their separate ways, they sailed towards peace.
EPILOGUE
Pierre Ducos died in a fortress ditch, shot by a firing squad from France’s royalist army. No one mourned him; not even those soldiers in the firing squad who were still secretly loyal to the exiled Emperor. Ducos had betrayed Napoleon, just as he had betrayed France, and thus he was shot like a dog and buried like a suicide in an unmarked grave beyond the fortress glacis.
In London an aide-de-camp to the Prince Regent heard of Ducos’s death and, as a result, suffered sleepless nights. The Frenchman’s execution was a triumph for a Rifleman who had come from ignominy to regain his reputation, and any day now that man would cross the channel. Lord Rossendale contemplated flight to the remnants of his family’s Irish estates, but his pride forced him to stay and show a bravado he did not feel. Each morning he went to a fencing master in Bond Street and each afternoon he shot with long-barrelled duelling pistols at targets in the yard of Clarence House. He claimed he was just honing his military skills, but all society knew he was practising for the ordeal of grass before breakfast. ‘He’s left Paris,’ Rossendale told Jane one autumn morning.