Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil

‘I took no money.’ Sharpe tried to match Frederickson’s calm dignity.

Wigram’s face flickered with a smile, as though he was about to make a very telling point. ‘Yet not a month ago, Major, your wife withdrew more than eighteen thousand pounds …’

‘God damn you!’ For a second the whole tribunal thought that Sharpe was about to draw his big sword, climb the table, and cause carnage. ‘God damn you!’ Sharpe shouted again. ‘You have the temerity to suggest I’d let men die for greed and you have spied on my wife! If you were a man, Wigram, I’d call you out now and I’d fillet you.’ Such was the force of Sharpe’s words, and such the anger evident on his face, that the tribunal was cowed. Monsieur Roland frowned, not with disapproval, but at the thought of facing a man like Sharpe in battle. Frederickson, sitting beside Sharpe, watched the faces of the aghast tribunal and believed that his friend had entirely pricked the ridiculous charges with his blazing anger. Wigram, accustomed to the servility of clerks, could say nothing.

Then the tall gilded door opened.

Captain Salmon, oblivious of the room’s charged atmosphere, carried in a white cloth bag that he laid on the table in front of Colonel Wigram. He whispered something to the Colonel, then, with the obsequious step of a servant, left the room.

Wigram, with hands that almost trembled, opened the white bag. Out of it he drew Sharpe’s telescope. He peered myopically at the engraved plate, then, steeling himself for the confrontation, looked up at the Rifleman. ‘If you are innocent, Major, then how do you explain your possession of this glass?’

‘I’ve owned it for months,’ Sharpe snapped.

‘I can vouch for that,’ Frederickson said.

Wigram handed the telescope to Monsieur Roland. ‘Perhaps, Monsieur, you will translate the inscription for the benefit of the tribunal?’

The Frenchman took the telescope, peered at the plate inset on the outer barrel, then spoke the translation aloud. ‘To Joseph, King of Spain and the Indies, from his brother, Napoleon, Emperor of France.’

There was a murmur in the room. Wigram stilled the sound with a further question. ‘Is this the sort of personal belonging, Monsieur, which the Emperor or his brother might have stored in their baggage?’

‘Indeed,’ Roland said.

Wigram paused, then shrugged. ‘The tribunal should be apprised that the glass was discovered in Major Sharpe’s baggage during an authorized search that was done on my orders during the last hour.’ Wigram, buoyed up by the evidence of the telescope, had regained his former confidence and now stared directly at Sharpe. ‘It is not the business of this tribunal to be a judge of the facts, but merely to decide whether a competent court-martial should be given those facts to judge. The tribunal will now make that decision, and will inform you of its findings at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Until that hour you are forbidden to leave this building. You will discover that Captain Salmon has made adequate billeting arrangements.’

Frederickson collated his sketches and notes. ‘Are we under arrest, sir?’

Wigram paused. ‘Not yet, Captain. But you are under military discipline, and therefore ordered to remain in confinement until your fate is announced tomorrow morning.’

The other officers in the room did not look at either Rifleman. It had been the discovery of the telescope that had plunged their certainty of Sharpe’s innocence into an assurance of the Rifleman’s guilt. Sharpe stared at them one by one, but they would not look back.

Frederickson plucked Sharpe’s arm towards the door. Captain Salmon and a half dozen of his men waited on the landing outside. Sharpe and Frederickson might not be prisoners, but it was clearly only a matter of time before they were formally charged and their swords were taken away.

Salmon was embarrassed. ‘There’s a room set aside for you, sir,’ he said to Sharpe. ‘Your servant’s waiting there.’

‘We’re not under arrest,’ Sharpe challenged him.

‘The room’s upstairs, sir,’ Salmon said doggedly, and the presence of his provosts was enough to persuade the two Riflemen to accompany him to the upper floor and into a room that looked out to the city’s main square. A very indignant Patrick Harper waited there. There was also a chamber pot, two wooden chairs, and a table on which was a loaf of bread, a plate of cheese, and a tin jug of water. There was a pile of blankets and a heap of baggage that Harper had fetched from the quayside. There were three packs, three canteens, but no weapons or ammunition. Salmon hesitated, as though he wanted to stay in the room with the three Riflemen, but a glare from Harper made the Captain back abruptly into the corridor.

‘That bastard of a provost searched your packs.’ Harper was still smarting under that indignity. ‘I tried to stop him, so I did, but he threatened me with a flogging.’

‘They took my rifle?’ Sharpe asked.

‘It’s in the bloody guardroom downstairs, sir.’ Harper was incensed that he, like Sharpe, had been disarmed. ‘They’ve got my rifle and gun there as well. Even my bayonet!’ Sharpe and Frederickson, because they had not been officially placed under arrest, had been allowed to keep their swords, but those were now their only weapons.

‘I hate provosts,’ Frederickson said mildly.

‘So what the hell’s happening, sir?’ Harper asked Sharpe.

‘We’re only accused of stealing half the bloody gold in France. Jesus Christ! It’s bloody madness!’

‘Indeed it is.’ Frederickson was placidly cutting the loaf into big chunks.

‘I’m sorry, William.’

‘Why should you apologize to me?’

‘Because this is my battle. Goddamn bloody Ducos!’

Frederickson shrugged. ‘They could hardly ignore me. They must have known I’d testify to your ignorance, which would be embarrassing for the authorities, so it’s much simpler to implicate me in the crime as well. Besides, if there had been that much gold in the fort, I’d have undoubtedly helped you to steal it.’ He cut the cheese with his knife. ‘Pity about the telescope, though. It’s just the corroborative evidence they needed.’

‘They need the gold,’ Sharpe said, ‘and it never existed!’

‘It existed all right, but not in the fort.’ Frederickson frowned. ‘I’ve no doubt there’ll be a battle-royal between Paris and London as to who the money really belongs to, but the one thing they’ll agree on is that we’ve got a damned good share of it. And who’s to disprove that?’

‘Killick?’ Sharpe suggested.

Frederickson shook his head. ‘The word of a confessed American pirate against a French government lawyer?’

‘Ducos, then,’ Sharpe said savagely, ‘and I’ll rip his damned bowels out.’

‘Either Ducos,’ Frederickson agreed, ‘or the Commandant,’ he looked at his notes to find the Commandant’s name, ‘Lassan. The problem is that it will be very difficult to find either man if we’re under arrest, and I would suggest to you that we will very soon be placed under arrest.’

Sharpe went to the window and stared at the ships’ masts which showed above the rooftops. ‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here.’

‘Getting the hell out of here,’ Frederickson spoke very mildly, ‘is called desertion.’ Both officers stared at each other, appalled at the enormity of what they proposed. Desertion would invite a court-martial, loss of rank, and imprisonment, but exactly the same fate would attend them if they were found guilty of stealing the Emperor’s gold and concealing it from their masters. ‘And there is rather a lot of gold at stake,’ Frederickson added gently, ‘and unlike you, I’m a poor man.’

‘You can’t come.’ Sharpe turned on Harper.

‘Mary, Mother of God, and why not?’

‘Because if you desert, and are caught, they’ll shoot you. They’ll only cashier us, because we’re officers, but they’ll shoot you.’

‘I’m coming anyway.’

‘For God’s sake, Patrick! I don’t mind taking the risk for myself, and Mr Frederickson’s in the same boat as I am, but I won’t have you …’

‘And why don’t you just save your bloody breath?’ Harper asked, then, after a pause, ‘sir?’

Frederickson smiled. ‘I wasn’t enjoying peace much anyway. So let’s go back to war, shall we?’

‘War?’ Sharpe stared back at the ships’ masts. He should have been on board one of those vessels, ready for the voyage up the Garonne estuary, across Biscay, around Ushant, and so home to Jane.

‘Because if we’re to escape this problem,’ Frederickson said softly, ‘then we’ll have to fight, and we’re rather better at fighting when we’re armed and free. So let’s get the hell out of here, find Ducos or Lassan, and make some mischief. And some money.’

Sharpe stared west. Somewhere out there, beneath the sinking sun, was an enemy who still skulked and schemed. So his reunion with Jane must wait, and peace must wait, for a last fight must still be fought. But after that, he prayed, he would find his peace in the English countryside. ‘We’ll go tonight,’ he said, but he suddenly wished to the depths of his heart that he was sailing home instead. But an enemy had decreed otherwise, so Sharpe’s war was not yet done.

CHAPTER SIX