Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe's Revenge, Sharpe's Waterloo, Sharpe's Devil (15 page)

‘Wrong,’ Sharpe said, and his interruption so astonished the room that no one objected to it. ‘Any disagreement between Captain Bampfylde and myself,’ Sharpe said harshly, ‘was ended by a duel. He lost.’

‘I was about to point out,’ Wigram said icily, ‘that all the indications reveal that the predominant credit for the fort’s capture must be given to you, Major Sharpe. Or is it that you wish this tribunal to investigate a clearly illegal occurrence of duelling?’

The Naval Captain smiled, then hastily looked more solemn as Wigram continued. Among those captured at the fort, Wigram said, had been an American Privateer, Captain Cornelius Killick. Killick had been promised good treatment by Captain William Frederickson and, when it appeared that promise was being broken by Bampfylde, Major Sharpe had released the American and his crew.

‘Is that accurate, Major?’ It was the provost Lieutenant-Colonel who asked the question.

‘Yes,’ Sharpe answered.

‘Yes, sir,’ Wigram corrected Sharpe.

‘Yes, it is accurate,’ Sharpe said belligerently.

There was a pause, and Wigram evidently decided not to press the issue.

Major Sharpe, Wigram continued, had subsequently marched inland with all the army troops, plus a contingent of Royal Marines under the command of Captain Neil Palmer.

‘May one enquire,’ it was the army lawyer who now interrupted Wigram, ‘why Captain Palmer is not here to present his evidence?’

‘Captain Palmer has been sent on a voyage to Van Dieman’s Land,’ Wigram replied.

‘He would have been,’ Frederickson said loudly enough for the whole room to hear.

The lawyer ignored Frederickson. ‘We nevertheless have an affidavit from Captain Palmer?’

‘There was no opportunity to secure one.’ Wigram was clearly discomfited by the questions.

‘There wouldn’t have been,’ Frederickson said sardonically.

Sharpe laughed aloud. He wondered how Bampfylde had so conveniently managed to have Palmer sent all the way to Australia, then he wondered how Bampfylde had managed to have this tribunal instituted. God damn the man! He had lost a duel, but had somehow continued the fight. How? The man had lied, had been a coward, yet here, in this captured prefecture, it was Sharpe and Frederickson who were being questioned.

During Sharpe’s absence from the fort, Wigram pressed on with his account, the weather conditions were such that Captain Bampfylde deemed it sensible to take his ships off shore. Bampfylde’s decision was made easier by intelligence which claimed that Major Sharpe and all his men had been defeated and captured. That intelligence later proved to be false.

Major Sharpe subsequently returned to the Teste de Buch fort, defended it against French attack, and finally escaped thanks to the intervention of the American, Killick. Wigram paused. ‘Is that an accurate account, Major Sharpe?’

Sharpe thought for a few seconds, then shrugged. ‘It’s accurate.’ In fact it had been surprisingly accurate. The nature of their quasi-arrest that afternoon had convinced Sharpe that this tribunal had been established solely to exonerate Bampfylde, yet so far he had to admit that the proceedings had been scrupulously fair and the facts not at all helpful to Bampfylde’s reputation. Was it possible that this tribunal was establishing the facts to present at Bampfylde’s court-martial?

Subsequently, Wigram recounted, Captain Bampfylde had accused Major Sharpe of accepting a bribe from the American, Killick. Sharpe, hearing that accusation for the first time, sat up, but Wigram anticipated his outrage by asking whether any evidence had been produced to substantiate the allegation.

‘None at all,’ Captain Harcourt said firmly.

Sharpe was sitting bolt upright now. Was this tribunal indeed to be Bampfylde’s doom? Frederickson must have felt the same hope, for he swiftly drew a sketch of a Naval officer dangling in a noose from a scaffold. He pushed the sketch to Sharpe, who smiled.

Frederickson’s sketched prognostication of Bampfylde’s fate seemed accurate, for Harcourt was now invited to offer the tribunal a summary of the Navy’s own investigation. That investigation, held at Portsmouth at the beginning of April, had found Captain Bampfylde derelict in his duty. Specifically he was blamed for his precipitate abandonment of the captured fort, and for not returning when the storm abated to seek news of the shore party.

‘So court-martial him,’ Sharpe offered harshly.

Harcourt glanced at the Riflemen, then shrugged. ‘It was decided that, for the good of the service, there will be no court-martial. You may be assured, though, that Captain Bampfylde has left the Navy, and that he still has difficulty with his bowels.’

The small jesting reference to the duel passed unnoticed. If there was to be no court-martial, Sharpe wondered, then why in hell were they here? The Navy had decided to hush up an embarrassing incident, yet this army tribunal was re-opening the sack of snakes and apparently doing it with the Navy’s connivance.

It would be assumed, Wigram continued, from the evidence already offered to the tribunal, that Captain Bampfylde’s accusations against Major Sharpe were groundless. The army had indeed already decided as much. Major Sharpe had been faced by a French brigade commanded by the notorious General Calvet, which brigade Major Sharpe had roundly defeated. Nothing but praise could attach itself to such an action. Captain Harcourt, who seemed rather sympathetic to the two Riflemen, applauded by slapping the table top. The French lawyer, who could hardly be supposed to share Harcourt’s sympathy, nevertheless beamed happily.

‘Perhaps they want to give us both Presentation swords,’ Frederickson wrote on his piece of paper.

‘Now, however,’ Wigram’s voice took on a firmer tone, ‘fresh evidence has been received at the Adjutant-General’s office.’ Wigram laid down the papers from which he had been reading and looked owlishly to his right. ‘Monsieur Roland? Perhaps you would be so kind as to summarise that evidence?’

The room was suddenly expectant and quiet. Sharpe and Frederickson did not move. Even the two clerks, who had been busily writing, became entirely still. The French lawyer, as if enjoying this moment of notoriety, slowly pushed back his chair before rising to his feet.

Monsieur Roland was a fleshy, happy-looking man. He was entirely bald, all but for two luxurious side-whiskers that gave his benevolent face an air of jollity. He looked like a family man, utterly trustworthy, who would be happiest in his own drawing room with his children about him. When he spoke he did so in fluent English. He thanked the tribunal for the courtesy shown in allowing him to speak. He understood that the recent events in Europe might lead ignorant men to suppose that no Frenchman could ever again be trusted, but Monsieur Roland represented the law, and the law transcended all boundaries. He thus spoke, Roland said, with the authority of the law, which authority sprang from a ruthless regard for the truth. Then, more prosaically, he said that he was a lawyer employed by the French Treasury, and that therefore he had the honour to represent the interests of the newly restored King of France, Louis XVIII.

‘Might one therefore presume,’ the lawyer from the Adjutant-General’s department had a silky, almost feline voice, ‘that until a few weeks ago, Monsieur, you were perforce an advocate for the Emperor?’

Roland gave a small bow and a bland smile. ‘Indeed, Monsieur, I had that honour also.’

The tribunal’s members smiled to demonstrate that they understood Roland’s apparently effortless change of allegiance. The smiles suggested that the tribunal was composed of worldly men who were above such petty things as the coming and going of emperors and kings.

‘In December last year,’ Roland had arranged his papers, and could now begin his peroration, ‘the Emperor was persuaded to contemplate the possibility of defeat. He did not do this willingly, but was pressed by his family; chief among them his brother, Joseph, whom you gentlemen will remember as the erstwhile King of Spain.’ There was a delicacy in Roland’s tone which mocked Joseph Bonaparte and flattered the British. Wigram, whose contribution to Joseph’s downfall had been to amass paperwork, smiled modestly to acknowledge the compliment. Sharpe’s face was unreadable. Frederickson was drawing two Rifle officers.

‘The Emperor,’ Roland hooked his thumbs behind his coat’s lapels, ‘decided that, should he be defeated, he might perhaps sail to the United States where he was assured of a warm welcome. I cannot say that he was enthusiastic about such a plan, but it was nevertheless urged upon him by his brother who alarmed the Emperor by tales of the ignominy that the family would suffer if they were forced to surrender to their enemies. Happily the generosity of those enemies has made such prophecies worthless,’ again Roland had flattered his hosts, ‘and it is now evident that the Emperor may confidently rely on his victors to treat him with a proper dignity.’

‘Indeed.’ Wigram could not forbear the pompous interruption.

Frederickson, who had always had a great facility at sketching, was now surrounding his two Rifle officers with a battery of field artillery. All the guns faced the two Greenjackets.

Roland paused to drink water. ‘Nevertheless,’ he began again, ‘at Joseph’s instigation, preparations were made for an emergency flight from France. Thus, at all times, a travelling coach stood prepared for the Emperor. In its baggage were clothes, uniforms, and decorations. However, the Emperor understood that the carriage could not be too heavily burdened, or else its weight would impede his flight. He therefore arranged, and in the most solemn secrecy, to have his heavy baggage stored at a coastal fort where, in the event of flight, it could be swiftly loaded on board a ship and carried to the United States of America. The officer chosen to convey that baggage to the Atlantic coast was a Colonel Maillot. I have here copies of his orders, signed by the Emperor himself.’ Roland picked up the sheets of paper and carried them to the three members of the tribunal.

‘Where is this Colonel now?’ the English lawyer asked sharply. Despite his unfriendly face, the lawyer seemed assiduous to ask any question that might help Sharpe and Frederickson.

‘Colonel Maillot is being sought,’ Roland replied suavely. ‘Sadly the present confusion in France makes his whereabouts a mystery. It is even possible, alas, that Colonel Maillot was killed in the last few weeks of the fighting.’

There was silence as the tribunal scanned the papers. Frederickson, abandoning his gloomy drawing, wrote a quick question. ‘Have you heard of Maillot?’

‘No,’ Sharpe scrawled in reply.

Roland had returned to his own table and picked up another sheet of paper. ‘Colonel Maillot delivered the baggage to a trusted officer here in Bordeaux. That officer was a Major named Pierre Ducos.’

Sharpe hissed a curse under his breath. Now he understood why he was in this room. He did not know how Ducos had worked this, but Sharpe knew who his enemies were, and none was more remorseless than Pierre Ducos. Sharpe felt ambushed. He had been prepared to fight down the clumsy and untruthful attack of the disgraced Captain Bampfylde, and all the time it had been the far more dangerous, and far more cunning, Pierre Ducos who had been working for his downfall. ‘I know Ducos,’ he wrote.

‘Major Ducos,’ Roland went blandly on, ‘conveyed the baggage in great secrecy to the Teste de Buch fort which covers the seaward entrance of the Bassin d’Arcachon.’

‘He’s lying!’ Sharpe interrupted.

‘Quiet!’ Wigram slapped the table.

‘It was that fortress, of course,’ Roland was quite unmoved by Sharpe’s interruption, ‘which, thanks to the great gallantry of Major Sharpe,’ here Roland bowed slightly towards the angry Sharpe, ‘was captured shortly after the baggage had been conveyed thither. The baggage consisted of four large wooden crates that had been concealed inside the fortress.’

‘How were the crates concealed?’ Frederickson asked, but in such a respectful tone that no one reprimanded him for interrupting.

‘I have here Major Ducos’s report,’ Roland held up the sheets of paper, ‘which reveals that the four wooden crates were bricked up in the fort’s main magazine. The work was done by men entirely loyal to the Emperor. None of the fort’s garrison was present when the work was done, and only the fort’s commandant was apprised of the existence of the baggage. The tribunal already has copies of the commandant’s report, and that of Major Ducos, but I now submit those officers’ original documents.’

The papers were duly handed across, and again there was silence as the tribunal perused them. It was the Adjutant-General’s lawyer who broke the silence with a petulant complaint that the Commandant’s handwriting was almost illegible.

‘Commandant Lassan explains in the final paragraph of his report that he lost two fingers of his right hand during the defence of the fort,’ Roland excused the almost indecipherable scrawl, ‘but you will nevertheless discover that your copy is an exact transcription of his words.’

‘I assume,’ the Adjutant-General’s lawyer aligned the edges of the papers in front of him, ‘that, if it should prove necessary, these officers can give evidence?’

‘Indeed,’ Roland bowed acknowledgement of the point, ‘but they were unwilling to travel into British-held territory at this moment.’

‘We are fortunate,’ Wigram said fulsomely, ‘that you yourself showed no such reluctance, Monsieur Roland.’

Roland bowed at the compliment, then explained that he had travelled with a party of British officers to London where he had taken this matter to the Judge Advocate General in Whitehall. That official had ordered the Adjutant-General to establish an investigative tribunal, and ordered the Royal Navy to bring Monsieur Roland to Bordeaux. The Frenchman picked up his papers again. ‘You will notice, gentlemen, that on the final page of Commandant Lassan’s account, he states that when the fortress was finally reoccupied by the French, the baggage was gone.’ Roland paused to look at his copy of the report. ‘You will further note from Commandant Lassan’s testimony that before the fort was evacuated by the British he saw heavy objects being transported from the seaward bastions to the American’s vessel.’