‘You should enjoy yourself, sir,’ Sergeant Challon said slyly. ‘You’ve got the money, sir, and what else is money for?’
And Ducos did try to enjoy himself. One week, after a comet had been discovered, he fancied himself as an astronomer and ordered celestial globes and telescopes to be sent from Naples. That enthusiasm died to be replaced with a burning desire to write the history of Napoleon’s wars, which project evaporated after four nights of feverish writing.
He devised a scheme for irrigating the high fields behind the village which lay between the villa and the sea, then he took up painting and insisted that Sergeant Challon fetched the prettiest girls from the village to stand before his easel. He obsessively worked at mathematical problems, he tried to learn the spinet, he found a fascination in maps on which he refought the campaigns of two decades and, in so doing, pushed the bounds of Empire further than Napoleon had ever done. He took to wearing the uniforms that had been in the Emperor’s baggage, and the villagers spoke of the mad, half-blind French Marshal who paced his vast house dressed in gold braid and with a huge curved sword hanging by his skinny legs. Ducos might call himself the Count Poniatowski, and claim to be a sickly Polish refugee, yet the villagers knew he was as French as their own King who had once been a real French Marshal.
Sergeant Challon endured all the enthusiasms, for the benefits of indulgence were manifold. There truly was so much money to be divided that this temporary exile was endurable. Challon knew that Ducos could go on spending money like water and there would still be a fortune at the year’s end. Even so, when Ducos insisted that more guards be hired, Challon felt constrained to offer a warning note.
‘The lads won’t be too happy to pay them, sir.’
‘I’ll pay them.’ That generosity was easy to offer because Ducos had insisted that he himself guard the treasure which was stored in a great iron chest cemented to the floor in Ducos’s rooms. Even Challon was not certain just how much money was in the box, though he knew down to the last sou just how much each man had been promised at the year’s ending. Ducos, to keep faith with the Dragoons, only had to ensure that those shares were faithfully paid when the time came, and in the meantime the balance was his to spend. He knew, even if Challon did not, that the balance was an Emperor’s ransom; more than even the greedy Cardinal might imagine.
Challon again tried to change Ducos’s mind. ‘There might be trouble, sir, between my lads and these new fellows.’
‘You’re a Sergeant, Challon, you know how to prevent trouble.’
Challon sighed. ‘The new men will want women.’
‘They may have them.’
‘And weapons, sir.’
‘Buy only the best.’
So Challon went to the waterfront at Naples and found twenty men who had once served as soldiers. They were scum, Challon told Ducos, but they were scum who knew how to fight. They were deserters, jailbirds, murderers, and drunks, yet they would be loyal to a man who could pay good wages.
The newly hired men moved into the half ruined rooms in the villa’s centre. They brought women, pistols, sabres and their muskets. There was no trouble, for they recognized Challon’s natural authority and were well rewarded for very little effort. They were not allowed on to the western terrace which was the private domain of their new employer who rarely appeared elsewhere outside the building for he said the sun hurt his eyes, though sometimes they would glimpse him strolling through the big internal courtyard in one of his magnificent uniforms. It was rumoured that he rarely had a woman in his rooms, though once, when he did, the girl reported that the Count Poniatowski had done nothing except stare north to where, far beyond the horizon, another imperial exile had his small kingdom in the Mediterranean. The newly hired guards opined that the Count Poniatowski was mad, but his pay was good, his food and wine plentiful, and he did not quibble when a village girl complained of rape. He would simply have the girl or her parents paid in gold, then encourage his men to practise with their weapons and to keep a good look out for strangers in the hot barren landscape. ‘We should have a cannon,’ he said to Challon one day.
Sergeant Challon, presented with this new evidence of Major Ducos’s fears, sighed. ‘It’s not necessary, sir.’
‘It is necessary. Vitally necessary.’ Ducos had decided that his safety depended on artillery, and nothing would change his mind. He showed Challon how a small field gun, mounted in the villa’s southern wall, would dominate the road which approached the hill. ‘Go to Naples, Challon. Someone will know where a gun can be had.’
So Challon took the money and returned three days later with an old-fashioned grasshopper gun. It was a small field piece which, fifty years before, had been issued to infantry battalions in some armies. The gun was reckoned small enough for two men to carry, which only proved that its inventor had never had to march over rough country with the three-foot brass barrel roped to his shoulder. The barrel was fitted with four stout legs which served as a carriage and, when it was fired, the whole contraption leaped into the air; thus earning the weapon its nickname. Mostly it toppled over after each convulsion, but it could easily be set on its feet again. ‘It’s all I could get, sir.’ Challon seemed somewhat embarrassed by the small and old-fashioned grasshopper gun.
Ducos, though, was delighted, and for a week the landscape echoed with the dull blows of the gun’s firing. It took less than a half pound of powder for its charge, yet still it succeeded in blasting a two and a half pound ball over six hundred yards. For a week, solaced by his new toy, Ducos could forget his fears, but when the novelty wore off his terror returned and a green man again began to haunt his dreams. Yet he was fiercely armed, he had loyal men, and he could only wait.
On the day Sharpe left the château Lucille Castineau discovered a piece of paper behind the mirror on the chest of drawers in her room. Sharpe had scrawled Lucille’s name on the paper which, when unfolded, proved to contain twelve English golden guineas.
Lucille Castineau did not wish to accept the coins. The gold pieces somehow smacked of charity, and thus offended her aristocratic sense of propriety. She supposed that the big Irishman had brought the money. Her instinct was to return the guineas, but she had no address to which she could send any draft of money. Sharpe had written a brief message in hurried and atrocious French on the sheet of paper which had enclosed the coins, but the message only contained a fulsome thanks for Madame Castineau’s kindnesses, a hope that this small donation would cover the expenses of Sharpe’s convalescence, and a promise that he would inform Madame Castineau of what had happened in Naples.
Lucille fingered the thick gold coins. Twelve English guineas amounted to a small fortune. The château’s dairy urgently required two new roof beams, there were hundreds of cuttings needed if the cider orchard was to be replenished, and Lucille had a nagging desire to own a small two-wheeled cart that could be drawn by a docile pony. The coins would buy all those things, and there would still be enough money left over to pay for a proper grave-slab for her mother and brother. So, putting aristocratic propriety to one side, Lucille swept the coins into the pocket of her apron.
‘Life will be better now,’ Marie, the elderly kitchen-maid, who had elected herself as a surrogate mother to the widow Castineau, said to Lucille.
‘Better?’
‘No Englishmen.’ The maid was skinning a rabbit which Harper and Sharpe had snared the previous evening.
‘You didn’t like the Major, Marie?’ Lucille sounded surprised.
Marie shrugged. ‘The Major’s a proper man, Madame, and I liked him well enough, but I did not like the wicked tongues in the village.’
‘Ah.’ Lucille sounded very calm, though she knew well enough what had offended the loyal Marie. Inevitably the villagers had gossiped about the Englishman’s long stay in the château and more than one ignorant person had confidently suggested that Madame and the Major had to be lovers. ‘Tongues will be tongues,’ Lucille said vaguely. ‘A lie cannot hurt the truth.’
Marie
had a peasant’s firm belief that a lie could sully the truth. The villagers would say there was no smoke without fire, and mud on a kitchen floor spoke of dirty boots, and those snidely sniggering suggestions upset Marie. The villagers told lies about her mistress, and Marie expected her mistress to share her indignation.
But Lucille would not share Marie’s anger. Instead she calmed the old woman down, then said she had some writing to do and was not to be disturbed. She added that she would be most grateful if the miller’s son could be fetched to take a letter to the village carrier.
The letter went to the carrier that same afternoon. It was addressed to Monsieur Roland, the advocate from the Treasury in Paris, to whom, at long last, Lucille told the whole truth. ‘The Englishmen did not want you to be told,’ she wrote, ‘for they feared you would not believe either them or me, yet, on my honour, Monsieur, I believe in their innocence. I have not told you this before because, so long as the English were in my house, so long did I honour their fear that you would arrange their arrest if you were to discover their presence here. Now they are gone, and I must tell you that the scoundrel who murdered my family and who stole the Emperor’s gold is none other than the man who accused the Englishmen of his crime; Pierre Ducos. He now lives somewhere near Naples, to which place the Englishmen have gone to gain the proof of their innocence. If you, Monsieur, can help them, then you will earn the gratitude of a poor widow.’
The letter was sent, and Lucille waited. The summer grew oppressively hot, but the countryside was safer now as cavalry patrols from Caen scoured the vagabonds out of the woodlands. Lucille often took her new pony-cart between the neighbouring villages, and the old gossip about her faded because the villagers now saw that the widower doctor frequently served as the pony-cart’s driver. It would be an autumn marriage, the villagers suggested, and quite right too. The doctor might be a good few years older than Madame, but he was a steady and kindly man.
The doctor was indeed a confidant of Lucille, but nothing more. She told the doctor, and only the doctor, about the letter she had sent, and expressed her sadness that she had received no reply. ‘Not a proper reply, anyway. Monsieur Roland did acknowledge that he had received my letter, but it was only that, an acknowledgement.’ She made a gesture of disgust. ‘Perhaps Major Sharpe was right?’
‘In what way?’ the doctor asked. He had driven the pony-cart to the top of the ridge where it rolled easily along a dry-rutted road. Every few seconds there were wonderful views to be glimpsed between the thick trees, but Lucille had no eyes for the scenery.
‘The Major did not want me to write. He said it would be better if he was to find Ducos himself.’ She was silent for a few seconds. ‘I think perhaps he would be angry if he knew I had written.’
‘Then why did you write?’
Lucille shrugged. ‘Because it is better for the proper authorities to deal with these matters, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Major Sharpe didn’t think so.’
‘Major Sharpe is a stubborn man,’ Lucille said scornfully, ‘a fool.’
The doctor smiled. He steered the little cart off the road, bumped it up on to a patch of grass, then curbed the pony in a place from where he and Lucille could stare far to the south. The hills were heavy with foliage and hazed by heat. The doctor gestured at the lovely landscape. ‘France,’ he said with great complacency and love.
‘A fool.’ Lucille, oblivious of all France, repeated the words angrily. ‘His pride will make him go to be killed! All he had to do was to speak to the proper authorities! I would have travelled to Paris with him, and I would have spoken for him, but no, he has to carry his sword to his enemy himself. I do not understand men sometimes. They are like children!’ She waved irritably at a wasp. ‘Perhaps he is already dead.’
The doctor looked at his companion. She was staring southwards, and the doctor thought what a fine profile she had, so full of character. ‘Would it trouble you, Madame,’ he asked, ‘if Major Sharpe was dead?’
For a long time Lucille said nothing, then she shrugged. ‘I think enough French children have lost their fathers in these last years.’ The doctor said nothing, and his silence must have convinced Lucille that he had not understood her words, for she turned a very defiant face on him. ‘I am carrying the Major’s baby.’
The doctor did not know what to say. He felt a sudden jealousy of the English Major, but his fondness for Lucille would not let him betray that ignoble feeling.
Lucille was again staring at the slumbrous landscape, though it was very doubtful if she was aware of the great view. ‘I’ve told no one else. I haven’t even dared take communion these last weeks, for fear of my confession.’
A professional curiosity provoked the doctor’s next words. ‘You’re quite certain you’re pregnant?’
‘I’ve been certain these three weeks now. Yes, I am certain.’
Again the doctor was silent, and his silence troubled Lucille who again turned her grey eyes to him. ‘You think it is a sin?’
The doctor smiled. ‘I’m not competent to judge sinfulness.’
The bland reply made Lucille frown. ‘The château needs an heir.’
‘And that is your justification for carrying the Englishman’s child?’
‘I tell myself that is why, but no.’ She turned to stare again at the distant hills. ‘I am carrying the Major’s child because I think I am in love with him, whatever I mean by that, and please do not ask me. I did not want to love him. He has a wife already, but . . .’ she shrugged helplessly.
‘But?’ the doctor probed.
‘But I do not know,’ she said firmly. ‘All I do know is that a bastard child of a bastard English soldier will be born this winter, and I would be very grateful, dear doctor, if you would attend the confinement.’
‘Of course.’
‘You may tell people of my condition,’ Lucille said very matter of factly, ‘and I would be grateful if you would tell them who the father is.’ She had decided that the news was best spread quickly, before her belly swelled, so that the malicious tongues could exhaust themselves long before the baby was born. ‘I will tell Marie myself,’ Lucille added.
The doctor, despite his fondness for the widow, rather relished the prospect of spreading this morsel of scandal. He tried to anticipate the questions that he would be asked about the widow’s lover. ‘And the Major? Will he return to you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lucille said very softly. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘But you would like him to return?’
She nodded, and the doctor saw a gleam in her eye, but then Lucille cuffed the tear away, smiled, and said it was time they went back to the valley.
Lucille made her confession that week, and attended Mass on the Sunday morning. Some of the villagers said they had never seen her looking so happy, but Marie knew that the happiness was a mere pose which she had assumed for the benefit of the church. Marie knew better, for she saw how often Madame would gaze down the Seleglise road as if she hoped to see a scowling horseman coming from the south. Thus the warm weeks of a Norman summer passed, and no horseman came.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 13
It proved a long journey. Sharpe still feared capture and so he avoided all livery stables, coaching inns and barge quays. They had purchased three good horses with a portion of the money Harper had brought from England, and they coddled the beasts south from Paris. They travelled in civilian clothes, with their uniforms and rifles wrapped inside long cloth bundles. They avoided the larger towns, and spurred off the road whenever they saw a uniformed man ahead. They only felt safe from their shadowy enemies when they crossed the border into Piedmont. From there they faced a choice between the risk of brigands on the Italian roads or the menace of the Barbary pirates off the long coastline. ‘I’d like to see Rome,’ Frederickson opted for the land route, ‘but not if you’re going to press me to make indecent haste.’
‘Which I shall,’ Sharpe said, so instead they sold the horses fo
r a dispiriting loss and paid for passage on a small decaying coaster that crawled from harbour to harbour with an ever-changing cargo. They carried untreated hides, raw clay, baulks of black walnut, wine, woven cloth, pigs of lead, and a motley collection of anonymous passengers among whom the three civilian-clothed Riflemen, despite their bundled weapons, went unremarked. Once, when a dirty grey topsail showed in the west, the captain swore it was a North African pirate and made his passengers man the long sweeps which dipped futilely in the limpid water. Two hours later the ‘pirate’ ship turned out to be a Royal Navy sloop which disdainfully ghosted past the exhausted oarsmen. Frederickson stared at his blistered hands, then snarled insults at the merchant-ship’s captain.
Sharpe was impressed by his friend’s command of Italian invective, but his admiration only earned a short-tempered reproof. ‘I am constantly irritated,’ Frederickson said, ‘by your naive astonishment for the mediocre attainments of a very ordinary education. Of course I speak Italian. Not well, but passably. It is, after all, merely a bastard form of dog-Latin, and even you should be able to master its crudities with a little study. I’m going to sleep. If that fool sees another pirate, don’t trouble to wake me.’
It was a difficult journey, not just because circumspection and Harper’s shrinking store of money had demanded the most frugal means of travel, but because of Lucille Castineau. Frederickson’s questions about the widow had commenced almost as soon as Sharpe rejoined his friend in Paris. Sharpe had answered the questions, but in such a manner as to suggest that he had not found anything specifically remarkable in Madame Castineau’s life, and certainly nothing memorable. Frederickson too had taken care to sound very casual, as though his enquiries sprang from mere politeness, yet Sharpe noted how often the questions came. Sharpe came to dread the interrogations, and knew that he could only end them by confessing a truth he was reluctant to utter. The inevitable moment for that confession came late one evening when their cargo-ship was working its slow way towards the uncertain lights of a small port. ‘I was thinking,’ Frederickson and Sharpe were alone on the lee rail and Frederickson, after a long silence, had broached the dreaded subject, ‘that perhaps I should go back to the château when all this is over. Just to thank Madame, of course.’ It was phrased as a benign suggestion, but there was an unmistakable appeal in the words; Frederickson sought Sharpe’s assurance that he would be welcomed by Lucille.