Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege (24 page)

Sharpe pushed himself up from the wall. ‘Take it, Ducos, your army’s stolen everything else in Spain.’

‘Take it! Of course not. You think I’m a thief?’ He looked back at the brass plate. ‘The reward for one of your acts of bravery, no doubt.’ He pulled the telescope open, revealing the polished inner brass tubes. ‘No, Major Sharpe. I’m not going to take it. I’m simply going to pay back the insult you offered me.’

With gritted teeth and sudden frenzy, Ducos swung the telescope by its eyepiece, slamming it on the stone floor and then swinging it again and again. A fortune in finely ground glass was being smashed by the small man who went on beating it, bending the tubes, scattering thick glass fragments on the stone floor. He dropped the telescope and stamped on it, splitting the brass tubes apart, then he kicked at them viciously, skittering them about the floor until, nothing left to kick at, he stood panting. He straightened his jacket and looked with a smile of pitiful triumph at the Rifleman. ‘You have paid me your personal debt, Mr Sharpe. An eye for an eye, so to speak.’

Sharpe had watched the destruction of his telescope, his valued telescope that had been a gift from Wellington, with mounting anger and frustration. He could do nothing. Sergeant Lavin had watched him and the bayonets had been in his ribs. He forced his anger down and nodded at the sword. ‘Do it to that, Ducos.’

‘No, Mr Sharpe.’ Ducos was behind the table, sitting again. ‘When they ask me how you died, I shall say that I offered you parole, you accepted, and that you then attacked me with the sword I had politely returned to you. My life will be saved by Sergeant Lavin.’ The Frenchman smiled. ‘But I truly hate violence, Mr Sharpe. Would you believe me if I said I do not wish you dead?’

‘No.’

Ducos shrugged. ‘It’s true. You can live. You can walk out of here with your sword. We won’t exchange you, of course, you’ll spend the rest of the war in France. We might even civilise you.’ Ducos smiled at his joke and looked down at the papers. ‘So tell me, Mr Sharpe, or even Major Sharpe if it makes you feel better, did Helene seek British help?’

Sharpe swore at him.

Ducos sighed and nodded. Lavin turned, stolid and unstoppable, and this time he punched Sharpe’s face, cutting his lips open and slashing a bloody line over his forehead with a ring he wore. Sharpe fell again, deliberately, and this time boots slammed into his back. He cried out, also deliberately, scrabbled with his hands, and suddenly knew hope.

A twisted, bent tube of brass from his telescope was by the wall. He shouted again as a boot landed, grabbed the tube, and concealed it in his fist. A hand grasped his collar, hauled him up, turned him, and pushed him back to the wall.

It was the smallest tube in his hand. He could feel the torn, knurled rim that had held the small lens of the eyepiece. The tube was six inches in length and one end was split and jagged where Ducos had stamped on it.

Ducos waited for Sharpe’s breathing to slow, for the battered, bleeding face to face him again. ‘It may help you to know, Major, that I will ask you a number of questions to which I already have the answers. You will, therefore, suffer pain unnecessarily. Eventually you will understand the futility of that course. You were accused of murdering Helene’s husband, true?’

‘You know I was.’

Ducos smiled. ‘I arranged it, Mr Sharpe. Did you know that?’ Ducos was pleased by the jerk of Sharpe’s head, the sudden surprise in the bruised eyes. Ducos liked his victims to know who was responsible for their misfortune. ‘Why did Wellington fake your death?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sharpe’s lips were swelling. He was swallowing blood. He made his breathing ragged. He was judging distances, planning not the first death, but the second.

Ducos was enjoying the spectacle of his enemy trampled and broken. It was not the physical beating that gave Ducos pleasure, but Sharpe’s realisation that he had been outmanoeuvred. ‘You were sent to rescue Helene?’

Sharpe’s voice came out thickened and slurred by his bleeding lips. ‘I wanted to know why she lied in her letter.’

The answer checked Ducos, who frowned. ‘The rescue was your own idea?’

‘My idea.’ Sharpe spat a gob of blood onto the floor.

‘How did you know where she was?’

‘Everyone knew. Half of bloody Spain knew.’

Ducos accepted that truth. Her fate was supposed to have been a secret, but nothing was secret that happened in Spain. Even Verigny, a gaudy fool, had eventually discovered where his lover was held. None of that worried Ducos. All that worried Ducos was the security of the treaty. ‘So you rescued her five days ago?’

‘Something like that.’

‘And General Verigny discovered you the next day?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you sleep with her, Mr Sharpe?’

‘No.’

‘But you said that’s why you wanted to rescue her.’

‘She wouldn’t have me.’ Sharpe shut his eyes and leaned his head on the wall. The last two times he had been attacked the armed soldiers had not bothered to use their bayonets to stop him retaliating. They could see he was beaten and defenceless. They were wrong, but he must wait for his moment and he was planning it carefully. He had fallen to his right the last time and the man there had stepped back and away to give Lavin room. He must be made to do it again.

‘Did you sleep with her?’

‘No.’

‘Did she tell you why she was in the convent?’

‘She wanted a rest.“

Ducos shook his head. ‘You are a stubborn fool, Mr Sharpe.’

‘And you’re a filthy little bastard.’

‘Mr Sharpe,’ Ducos leaned back in his chair, ‘tell me what explanation she offered to you. She must have offered you some reason for her arrest?’

Sharpe shook his head as though he was having difficulty with his senses. ‘She said she had a dream about you. She was ordered to marry you by the Emperor and she saw you naked and it was the most horrid thing she’d ever ...’

‘Sergeant!’

The first blow landed on Sharpe’s skull, a glancing blow, but then there was a pile-driving thump in his belly and the air rushed out of him. He forced himself to the right, was helped by a blow to his head, and then he was on the ground. ‘Stop!’

A boot thudded at his kidneys. He pulled the brass tube out of his sleeve, turned it, and gripped it with his right hand. He would have one chance only, just one.

‘No!’ He shouted it desperately, as if he was a child begging to be spared a beating, and then yelped as a boot hammered on his thigh. Ducos spoke a word in French.

The blows stopped. The Sergeant leaned down to haul Sharpe up by his collar. The other three men were standing back, weapons lowered, grins on their faces.

Lavin pulled Sharpe up and never saw the hand that struck up with the jagged brass tube.

Sharpe bellowed in anger, the war shout. They thought him weak and beaten, but he had one fight in him and they would learn what a Rifleman was in a fight.

The tube, jagged brass edges splayed at its end, struck Lavin’s groin and Sharpe twisted it, pushed and gouged as the Sergeant let go of him and screamed a horrid, high scream and dropped his hands to the blood and pain, but already Sharpe had let the tube go, was rising to the Sergeant’s right, was moving with all his speed and filling the room with his battle-shout.

The Sergeant’s body blocked two men. The third raised his musket, but the muzzle was seized, pulled, and the heel of Sharpe’s right hand struck the man’s moustache, breaking bone, snapping the head back, then Sharpe dropped his bleeding hand to the musket’s lock, turned the gun, and pulled the trigger.

The two remaining men had dared not fire for fear of their own comrades. Seconds only had passed since the Sergeant had stooped to pick up the broken English officer. Now a musket belched smoke and noise.

One man fell, the musket ball in his lungs, and Sharpe hammered back with the brass butt at the man whose musket he had taken and who still grappled with him. The butt hit the man’s head, but he dragged Sharpe down, close to the bleeding, sobbing Sergeant, and the room echoed to a second musket shot, hammering louder than thunder in the room, drowning even the agony of Sergeant Lavin.

Sharpe twisted, heaved, flailed with the musket at the man who had fired as he fell. He still shouted, knowing that men are frightened by noise, by savagery, and he wrenched his right foot free from the man who held it, rose snarling from the bloody floor and lunged with his captured bayonet in short, professional strokes at the last of his enemies still standing. Ducos, his mouth open, was standing terrified at the door. He had no weapon.

The bayonets clashed, Sharpe pushed his opponent’s aside, lunged again, then broke to his right, to the table, seized the sword and his voice was triumphant as he swung it, the scabbard scraping free and flying across the room, and he sliced down with the blade, shouting in savage victory, and cut into the last man’s neck, dragging the blade back against bone and blood. He saw the man begin to fall, then finished him off with a lunge that was dragged downwards by the dying man. In seconds, just seconds, he had killed two men and wounded two others.

He twisted and jerked the sword free, then turned to the door. ‘Ducos!’

The door was empty.

He went to it, the sword bloody in his hand. His face was a mask of blood, his uniform soaked with Lavin’s blood. One man against four, and that a Rifleman! Sergeant Harper would say they were fair odds.

‘Ducos! You bastard! Ducos!’

He walked into the corridor. Behind him the Sergeant sobbed and wailed and bled into the hands cupped over his groin.

‘Ducos! You filth!’

The voice came from his right. Sharpe turned.

A group of French officers stood there. They were elegant and clean, staring aghast at the bloody man with the swollen face and the savage voice and the sword that dripped blood.

The French officers wore swords, but none was drawn.

One man stepped forward, a tall man in green and pink, a man who frowned. ‘Major Vaughn?’

It was Verigny. His face was screwed up, either because of the smell of blood, or the sight of Sharpe. ‘Major?’

‘My name is Sharpe.’ There was no point in concealment any longer. ‘Major Richard Sharpe.’ He leaned on the wall. The tip of the sword rested on the flagstones and made there a small pool of thick blood.

Verigny seemed to stand to attention. ‘I came from honour, Major, that you would be treated in accord with honour.’

Sharpe jerked his head towards the door. ‘The bastards tried to kill me. I had no sword then. I fought back.’ Sergeant Lavin was sobbing in high, pitiful cries from within the square, stone-walled room.

Verigny looked through the door. He stepped back and stared in awe at the Rifleman who had made the room look like a slaughterhouse. ‘You will be treated good, Major. You have need of a doctor?’

‘Yes. And water. Food. A bed.’

‘Of course.’

‘These clothes washed. A bath.’

‘Of course.’

Sharpe pulled his right hand from the sword. His palm was a bloody mess. It hurt. He held the sword out with his left hand. ‘I am your prisoner again, it seems.’

‘You will do me the honour to keep the sword,
M’sieur,
till we have discussion on what we do to you.‘

Sharpe nodded, then turned back into the room. He retrieved his scabbard and sword belt, but could not fasten them with his wounded hand. He went and stood over the moaning, sobbing Sergeant Lavin who looked up at him with eyes that seemed to mix pain with an astonishment that he had been beaten. Sharpe looked at the French General. ‘Sir?’

‘Major?’

‘Tell this eunuch he got his wish.’

Verigny was chilled by the Rifleman’s voice. ‘His wish,
M’sieu?‘

‘He wanted an Englishman. He got one.’

Sharpe was led to one of the buildings in the castle yard that was still in a state of repair, then helped upstairs to a limewashed room, decently furnished with a bed, table and chairs, and with a view from a barred window into the fortress’ biggest courtyard. He could see across to the squat keep, past the castle church, and every spare inch of the courtyard was crowded with the treasure wagons.

A doctor came. Sharpe’s wounds were washed and bandaged. He was bled with lancet and cup, then given food and brandy.

A great tub was brought to his room, filled by a succession of buckets, and he soaked his body in it. His uniform was taken away, laundered, mended, and returned.

He was still a prisoner. Two guards were outside his door, at the head of the stairs which led down into the courtyard. One of the guards, a cheerful young man no older than Angel, shaved him. Sharpe could not hold a razor in his bandaged right hand.

His sword was propped by the bed. He had cleaned the blade with difficulty. In the ridges of the wooden handle, that should have been wrapped with leather and bound with wire, there was blood that he did not have the energy to clean. He slept instead; a sleep of bad dreams and intermittent pain.

His guards brought him food, good food, and two bottles of red wine. They tried to tell him something, grinning good-naturedly at his incomprehension. He heard the name Verigny and supposed that the General had sent the food. He smiled, nodded to show he understood, and the guards left him with candles and his own thoughts. He paced the floor, thinking only that soon all Spain would think that Wellington had released the murderer of a Spanish Marqués. He had failed Wellington, Hogan, and himself.

In the morning the doctor came again, unpeeled the bandages, and muttered to himself. He examined Sharpe’s night-soil in the bucket, seemed pleased by it, then bled Sharpe’s thigh into a small cup. He did not re-bandage Sharpe’s head, only the cut hand that was still painful.

His lips were swollen. Their insides were coated with congealed blood. Rather that, he thought, than the Sergeant’s wound.