Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe's Revenge, Sharpe's Waterloo, Sharpe's Devil (19 page)

Finally Wigram turned to a question he had frequently pondered. ‘I am often asked,’ he said, ‘what qualities are most desirable in a soldier, and I confess to cause astonishment when I reply that it is not a sturdy arm, nor an adventurous spirit which gains an army its victories. Such qualities are necessary, of course, but without leadership they will inevitably fail. No, gentlemen, it is the man who keeps his mental faculties alert who contributes most to the glorious cause. A soldier must be a thinker. He must be a master of detail. He must be a man whose precision of thinking will render him staunch and steady amidst danger and uncertainty.’ It was at that point that Lieutenant-Colonel Wigram paused, his mouth dropped open, and one by one the guests turned to stare with amazement at the apparitions which had appeared in the doorway.

It was commonly said that most men only joined the British Army for drink. The French scornfully accused the British of fighting drunk, indeed of not being able to fight unless they were drunk, though if the charge was true then it was astonishing that the French did not make their own men drunk because, sober, they could never beat the British. There was, nevertheless, a great deal of truth in the charges. The British Army was notorious for drunkenness, and more than one French unit had escaped capture by leaving tempting bottles and casks to waylay their pursuers.

So it was hardly astonishing that the three provosts were drunk. Each had consumed close to a pint and a half of brandy, and they were not merely drunk, but gloriously, happily and carelessly oblivious of being drunk. They were, in truth, in a temporary nirvana so pleasant that none of the three had even noticed when a big Irishman rapped them hard on the skull to introduce a temporary unconsciousness. It was during that blank moment that each of the provosts had been stripped stark naked. Then, to make certain they stayed incapable, Sharpe and Frederickson had poured yet more brandy down their spluttering throats.

Thus it was that Lieutenant-Colonel Wigram’s speech was interrupted by three deliriously drunken men who were as naked as the day on which they were born.

The Provost Sergeant stared about him in blinking astonishment as he found himself in the brilliantly lit banqueting hall. He hiccupped, bowed to the company, and tried to speak. ‘Fire,’ he at last managed to say, then he slid down a wall to fall asleep.

Behind him smoke seeped through the open door.

Wigram stared, aghast.

‘Fire!’ This time the voice came from outside, and was a huge roar of warning. Wigram panicked, but so did almost every man in the room. Glasses and plates smashed as men fought to escape the tables and cram themselves through one of the room’s two doors. The naked provosts were trampled underfoot. Smoke was thickening in the corridor and billowing up the stairwell. Wigram fought to escape with the rest. He lost his glasses in his panic, but somehow managed to scramble through the door, across the vestibule, and down into the town square where the dinner guests assembled to watch the promised inferno.

There was none. A guard sergeant filled a bucket of water and doused the pile of brandy-soaked uniforms which, heavily sprinkled with gunpowder and then piled with loosely stacked, brandy soaked ledgers, had caused the pungent smoke. There was a nasty scorch-mark on the carpet, which hardly mattered for, being embroidered with the imperial initial ‘N’, it was due for destruction anyway. Most of the ledgers were scorched, and a few had burned to ash, but the fire had not spread and so no real harm had been done. The Sergeant ordered the three drunken provosts to be carried to the yard and dumped in a horse-trough, then, pausing only to steal half a dozen bottles of brandy from the table in the banqueting hall, he went to the front door and reported to the officers that all was well.

Except half an hour later someone thought to look on the top floor of the prefecture and discovered that three Riflemen were missing. Two rifles, a seven-barrelled gun, a bayonet, and six ammunition pouches were also missing from the guardroom.

Colonel Wigram, panicking like a wet hen, wanted to call out the guard, then send cavalry galloping all over France to discover the fugitives. Captain Harcourt was calmer. ‘There’s no need,’ he said.

‘No need?’

‘My dear Wigram, there are picquets at every exit from the city, and even if Major Sharpe’s party evades those sentries, we know precisely where they’re going.’

‘We do?’

‘Naturally. That one-eyed Rifleman was entirely correct in his evidence to the tribunal. No men could have removed six tons of gold under enemy fire. Surely you understood that?’

Wigram had understood no such thing, but was unwilling to display such ignorance. ‘Of course,’ he said huffily.

‘They could never have carried the gold away, so they must have hidden it at the Teste de Buch, and I warrant you that’s where they’ve gone. And that’s where we’ve had a sloop since last week. Might I trouble you for a single messenger to warn the crew that they’ll have to arrest Major Sharpe and his companions?’

‘Of course.’ Wigram felt aggrieved that no one had told him about the Navy’s precautions. ‘You’ve had a sloop there for a week?’

‘You don’t want the bloody French to get the gold, do you?’

‘But by law it belongs to them!’

‘I’ve spent the last twenty years killing the bastards, and don’t intend to hand them a pile of gold just because a peace treaty’s been signed. If it’s necessary we’ll tear that damned fort apart to find the bloody stuff!’ Harcourt glanced up at the stars, as if judging the weather, then grinned. ‘There is one consolation in all this, my dear Colonel. By running away, Major Sharpe and Captain Frederickson have proved their guilt, so when the Navy catches them, you shouldn’t have any trouble in convening a court-martial. Shall we send that messenger? And because the roads are likely to be dangerous, perhaps he’d better be given a cavalry troop as escort? Then perhaps you’d care to finish your speech? I must admit to a great fascination in your theory as to the role of the thinking man in gaining victory.’

But somehow the joy had deserted Wigram’s evening. He did at least find his spectacles, but someone had trampled them in the rush and one lens was broken and an earpiece bent. So he abandoned his speech, cursed all Riflemen, then went to his quarters and slept.

It had been easy enough to escape the prefecture by causing some small chaos, but leaving the city itself would be a harder task. Every exit was guarded by a picquet of redcoats. The soldiers were not there to guard Bordeaux against the marauding bands of the countryside, but rather to apprehend any deserter who might have evaded the provosts at the quays and be trying to take his woman back to Spain and Portugal.

Sharpe had used the stars to find a westward road through the city, but now, so close to the open country, he had been forced to stop. He was staring at a picquet of a dozen soldiers who were silhouetted about a brazier. Sharpe was too far away to distinguish their faces or see what regiment they might be from. He silently cursed the lost telescope.

‘If we wait much longer,’ Frederickson warned, ‘they’ll have men after us.’

‘Surely they won’t stop officers walking past?’ Harper offered.

‘Let’s hope not.’ Sharpe decided Harper was right, and that rank alone should suffice to see them past the bored guards. He nevertheless wondered just what he should do if the picquet proved obdurate. It was one thing to strip drunken provosts naked, but quite another to use force against a squad of redcoats. ‘Cock your rifles,’ Sharpe said as they walked forward.

‘Are you going to shoot them?’ Frederickson sounded incredulous.

‘Threaten them, anyway.’

‘I won’t shoot anyone.’ Frederickson left his rifle slung on his shoulder. Harper had fewer scruples and dragged back the cock of his seven barrelled gun. The monstrous click of the heavy lock made the officer commanding the picquet turn towards the approaching Riflemen.

Sharpe was close enough now to see that the picquet’s officer was a tall and dandified man who, like many infantry officers who aspired to high fashion, wore a cavalryman’s fur-edged pelisse over one shoulder. The officer strolled towards the three Riflemen with a languid, almost supercilious, air. The three must have looked strange for, in an army that had swiftly accustomed itself to peace, they were accoutred for war. They had heavy packs, crammed pouches, and were festooned with weapons. The sight of those weapons made the picquet’s sergeant snap an order to his men who unslung their muskets and shuffled into a crude line across the road. The officer calmly waved his hand as if to suggest that the sergeant need not feel any alarm. The officer had now walked thirty yards away from the brazier. He stopped there, folded his arms, and waited for the Riflemen to reach him. ‘If you haven’t got passes,’ he said in a most superior and disdainful voice, ‘then I’ll have no choice but to arrest you.’

‘Shoot the bugger,’ Sharpe said gleefully to Harper.

But Harper was grinning, the officer was laughing, and Fortune, the soldier’s fickle goddess, was smiling on Sharpe. The tall and disdainful officer was Captain Peter d‘Alembord of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. He was an old friend who had once served under Sharpe and who now commanded Sharpe’s old light company. d’Alembord also knew Frederickson and Harper well, and was delighted to see both men.

‘How are you, Regimental Sergeant Major?’ he asked Harper.

‘I’m just a Rifleman again now, sir.’

‘Quite right, too. You were far too insubordinate to be promoted.’ d’Alembord looked back to Sharpe. ‘Purely out of interest, sir, but do you have a pass?’

‘Of course I don’t have a bloody pass, Dally. The bastards want to arrest us.’

It had been pure good luck that had brought Sharpe to this picquet that was manned by his old battalion. He was close enough now to recognize some of the men about the brazier. He saw Privates Weller and Clayton, both good men, but this was no time to greet old comrades, nor to implicate them in this night’s escapade. ‘Just get us quietly out of the city, Dally, and forget you ever saw us.’ d‘Alembord turned to his picquet. ‘Sergeant! I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

The Sergeant was curious. The picquet duty had been boring, and now some small excitement broke the tedium, but he was too far from the three Riflemen to recognize them. He took a few steps forward. ‘Can I say where you’ll be, sir? If I’m asked.’

‘In a whorehouse, of course.’ d’Alembord sighed. ‘The trouble with Sergeant Huckfield,’ he said to Sharpe, ‘is that he’s so damned moral. A good soldier, but horribly tedious. We’ll go this way.’ He led the three Riflemen into a foetid black alley that reeked with an overwhelming stench of blood. ‘They put me next to a slaughterhouse,’ d’Alembord explained.

‘Is there a safe way out of the city?’ Sharpe asked.

‘There are dozens,’ d’Alembord said. ‘We’re supposed to patrol these alleys, but most of the lads don’t take kindly to arresting women and children. Consequently we tend to do quite a lot of looking the other way these days. The provosts, as you might imagine, are more energetic.’ He led the Riflemen away from the butcher’s stink and into a wider alley. Dogs barked behind closed doors. Once a shutter opened from an upper window and a face peered out, but no one called any alarm or query. The alley twisted incomprehensibly, but eventually emerged into a rutted lane edged with sooty hedges where the smell of open country mingled with the city’s malodorous stench. ‘The main road’s that way,’ Dally pointed southwards across dark fields, ‘but before you go, sir, would you satisfy my curiosity and tell me just what in God’s name is happening?’

‘It’s a long story, Dally,’ Sharpe said.

‘I’ve got all night.’

It did not take that long, merely ten minutes to describe the day’s extraordinary events. Then the sound of hooves on a road to the north forced another delay, and Sharpe used it to discover how his old battalion was managing without him. ‘What’s the new Colonel like?’

‘He’s a rather frightened and fussy little man who quite rightly believes we’re all wondrously expert and that he’s got a lot to learn. His biggest terror is that the army will somehow post you back to the regiment and thus show up his manifold deficiencies. On the other hand he’s not an unkind man, and given time, might even become a decent soldier. I doubt he’s good enough to beat the French yet, but he could probably squash a Luddite riot without killing too many innocents.’

‘Are they sending you to America?’ Sharpe asked.

d’Alembord shook his head. ‘Chelmsford. We’re to recruit up to scratch ready for garrison duty in Ireland. I suppose I shall have the pleasure of knocking your countrymen’s heads together, RSM?’

‘Make sure they don’t knock yours, sir,’ Harper said.

‘I’ll try to avoid that fate.’ d’Alembord cocked his head to the night wind, but the mysterious hoofbeats had faded to the west. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help here, sir?’ he asked Sharpe.

‘When do you go to Chelmsford?’

‘Any day now.’

‘Do you have any leave owing?’

‘My God, do I? They owe me half my life.’

‘So you can deliver a message for me?’

‘With the greatest of pleasure, sir.’

‘Find Mrs Sharpe. The last address I had was in Cork Street, London, but she may have moved to Dorset since then. Tell her everything I’ve told you tonight. Tell her I shall come home when I can, and tell her that I need some influence on my side. Ask her to find Lord Rossendale.’

‘That’s a clever thought, sir.’ d’Alembord recognized Lord Rossendale’s name, for d’Alembord had been with Sharpe during the strange London interlude when Sharpe had been adopted as a favourite of the Prince Regent’s. One result of that favouritism was the naming of Sharpe’s old regiment as the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, and another was a distant but friendly acquaintanceship with one of the Prince’s military aides, Lord John Rossendale. If any man could harness the full power of influence to clear Sharpe’s name, it was Rossendale. Sharpe knew that the best method of establishing his innocence was to discover Lassan or Ducos, but if that search failed then he would need powerful friends in London, and Rossendale was the first and most approachable of those friends.