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

Sharpe smiled. ‘I’d rather reach home.’

Frederickson uttered a scornful bark of laughter. ‘I hear an echo of a married man’s lust.’

‘I was thinking of Jane, if that’s what you mean.’ Since leaving Bordeaux, Sharpe had taken care not to mention Jane, for he knew with what small sympathy Frederickson regarded the state of marriage, but Sharpe’s worries had only increased with his silence and now, under the storm’s threat, he could not resist articulating those worries. ‘Jane will be fretting.’

‘She’s a soldier’s wife. If she isn’t prepared for long absences and long silences, then she shouldn’t have married you. Besides, d’Alembord will see her soon enough.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And she has money,’ Frederickson continued remorselessly, ‘so I cannot see that she has great cause for concern. Indeed, I rather suspect that you’re more worried about her than she is about you.’

Sharpe hesitated before admitting to that truth, but then, needing his friend’s consolation, he nodded. ‘That’s true.’

‘You’re worried that she’s tired of you?’ Frederickson insisted.

‘Good God, no!’ Sharpe protested vehemently, too vehemently, for in truth that worry was never far from his thoughts. It was a natural concern occasioned by the unhappiness of their parting and by Jane’s subsequent silence, but Sharpe had no taste to discuss such intimacies even with Frederickson. His voice sounded harsh. ‘I’m merely worried because bloody Wigram knew she’d withdrawn that money. It means someone’s investigated my affairs at home. What if they try to confiscate her money?’

‘Then she’ll be poor,’ Frederickson said heartlessly, ‘but doubtless she’ll live until you clear your name. One presumes your wife has friends who won’t allow her to slide into ignominious penury?’

‘She has no friends that I know of.’ Sharpe had snatched Jane from her uncle’s house where she had been forced to live a reclusive life. That life had prevented her from making any close friends and, bereft of such help, Sharpe did not know how Jane would survive poverty and isolation. She was too young and innocent for hardship, he thought, and that realization provoked a surge of affection and pity for Jane. He suddenly wished he had risked the coach journey. Perhaps, by now, they could already have found Lassan and be on their way home with the proof they needed, but instead Sharpe was marooned in this water-lashed storm and he imagined a penniless Jane crouching beneath the same thunderous violence in solitary and abject fear. ‘Maybe she thinks I’m already dead.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Frederickson was disgusted with Sharpe’s self-pity. ‘She can read the casualty lists, can’t she? And she must have received one of your letters. And d’Alembord will be with her soon, and you can be sure he won’t permit her to starve. For God’s sake, man, stop agitating about what can’t be altered! Let’s find Henri Lassan, then worry about the rest of our damned lives.’ Frederickson paused as a shattering explosion of thunder slammed a snake’s tongue of lightning into some woods on a nearby hill. Flames blazed from twisted branches after the lightning strike, but the burning leaves were soon extinguished by the numbing rain. Frederickson drew on his cheroot. ‘I wish I understood love,’ he said in a more conversational tone, ‘it seems a very strange phenomenon.’

‘Does it?’

‘I remember, the last time I was in London, paying sixpence to see the pig-faced woman. Do you remember how celebrated she was for a few months? She was exhibited in most of the larger towns, I recall, and there was even talk that she might be displayed in Germany and Russia. I confess it was a most singular experience. She was very porcine indeed, with a rather snouty face, small eyes, and bristly hairs on her cheeks. It was not quite a sow’s face, but a very close approximation. I rather think her manager had slit her nostrils to increase the illusion.’

Sharpe wondered what the pig-woman had to do with his friend’s scepticism about love. ‘And seeing an ugly woman was worth sixpence?’ he asked instead.

‘One received one’s money’s worth, as I recall. Her manager used to make the wretched creature snuffle chopped apple and cold porridge out of a feeding trough on the floor, and if you paid an extra florin she’d strip to the waist and suckle a rather plump litter of piglets.’ Frederickson chuckled at the memory. ‘She was, in truth, hideously loathsome, but I heard a month later that a gentleman from Tamworth had proposed marriage to her and had been accepted. He paid the manager a hundred guineas for the loss of business, then took the pig-lady away for a life of wedded bliss in Staffordshire. Extraordinary!’ Frederickson shook his head at this evidence of love’s irrationality. ‘Don’t you find it extraordinary?’

‘I’d rather know if you paid the extra florin,’ Sharpe said.

‘Of course I did.’ Frederickson sounded irritated that the question was even asked. ‘I was curious.’

‘And?’

‘She had entirely normal breasts. Do you think the gentleman from Tamworth was in love with her?’

‘How would I know?’

‘One has to assume as much. But whether he was or not it’s entirely inexplicable. It would be like going to bed with Sergeant Harper.’ Frederickson grimaced.

Sharpe smiled. ‘You’ve never been tempted, William?’

‘By Sergeant Harper? Don’t be impertinent.’

‘By marriage, I mean.’

‘Ah, marriage.’ Frederickson was silent for a while and Sharpe thought his friend would not answer. Then Frederickson shrugged. ‘I was jilted.’

Sharpe immediately wished he had not asked the question. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I can’t see why you should be.’ Frederickson sounded angry at having revealed this aspect of his past. ‘I now regard it as a most fortunate escape. I have observed my married friends, and I don’t exclude present company, and all I can say, with the greatest of respect, is that most wives prove to be expensive aggravations. Their prime attraction can be most conveniently hired by the hour, so there seems little reason to incur the expense of keeping one for years. Still, I doubt you’ll agree with me. Married men seldom do.’ He twisted back into the byre to find Harper’s sword-bayonet that he drew from its scabbard and tested against his thumb. ‘I have a fancy for a breakfast of mutton.’

‘I had the very same wish.’

‘Or would you prefer lamb?’ Frederickson asked solicitously.

‘I think mutton. Shall I go?’

‘I need the exertion.’ Frederickson carefully extinguished his cheroot, then stored it in his shako. He stood, peered for a moment into the slashing rain, then plunged into the night.

Harper snored behind Sharpe. At the hilltop the great branches of foliage heaved and bucked in the sodden wind. Lightning sliced the sky, and Sharpe wondered what malevolent fate had brought his career to this extremity, and then he prayed that the weather would clear so that this journey could be done and an honest Frenchman found.

Henri Lassan had struggled with his conscience. He had even gone so far as to consult with the Bishop, he had prayed, until at last he had made his decision. One night at the supper table he informed his mother of that decision. The family was eating sorrel soup and black bread. They drank red wine which was so bad that Lucille had put some grated ginger in the bottle to improve its taste.

Henri sat at the head of the table. ‘Maman?’

‘Henri?’

Henri paused with a spoonful of soup just inches above his plate. ‘I will marry Mademoiselle Pellemont, as you wish.’

‘I am very pleased, Henri.’ The old lady was not going to revel in her victory, but offered her response very gravely and with the smallest inclination of her head.

Lucille showed more pleasure. ‘I think that’s wonderful news.’

‘She has excellent hips,’ the Dowager said. ‘Her mother had sixteen children, and her grandmother twelve, so it’s a good choice.’

‘A very solid choice,’ Henri Lassan said with a trace of a smile.

‘She has a very lovely nature,’ Lucille said warmly, and it was true. There might be those who thought Marie Pellemont to have the placidity and attractiveness of a gentle and not very energetic cow, but Lucille had always liked Marie who was her own age, and who would now become the new Comtesse de Lassan.

A betrothal ceremony was fixed for a fortnight’s time and, even though the château had fallen on lean times, the family tried hard to make apt provision for the occasion. All but one of the château’s saddle horses were sold so that the guests could receive their traditional gifts, sword knots for the men and nosegays for the women, and so there would be lavish food and decent wine for the guests of quality. The villagers and tenantry must also be fed, and provided with great vats of cider. Lucille found herself busy baking apple-cakes, and pressing great trays of nettle-wrapped cheese. She made sure that the hams hanging in the château’s chimneys were not too nibbled by bats. She cut away the worst of the ravages, then rubbed pepper into the dark hams to keep the animals at bay. It was a happy time. The days were lengthening and growing warmer.

Then, just a week before the betrothal ceremony, the first armed brigands were reported in the château’s vicinity.

The report came from a man ditching the top fields above the mill-stream. He had watched as some ragged fugitives, all armed and wearing the vestiges of imperial uniforms, had skulked along the stream-bed. They had been carrying two slaughtered lambs.

That night Henri Lassan slept with a loaded musket beside his bed. He barricaded the bridges over the moat with old cider vats, then released geese into the yard to act as sentries. Geese were more reliable than dogs, but no strangers disturbed the geese, neither that night nor the next, and Henri dared to hope that the vagabonds had merely been passing through the district.

Then, just the very next day, a horrific report came of a farmhouse burned beyond the next village of Seleglise. The smoke of the burning barn could be plainly seen from the château. The farmer, all his family, and both his maid-servants had been killed. The details of the massacre, brought by the miller of Seleglise, were appalling, so much so that Henri did not tell either his mother or Lucille. The miller, an elderly and devout man, shook his head. ‘They were Frenchmen who did this, my Lord.’

‘Or Poles, or Germans, or Italians.’ Lassan knew there were desperate men of all those nationalities released from Napoleon’s defeated armies. Somehow he did not wish to believe that Frenchmen could do such things to their own kind.

‘All the same,’ the miller said, ‘they were once soldiers of France.’

‘True,’ and that same day Henri Lassan donned the uniform he had hoped never to wear again, strapped on a sword, and led a party of his neighbours on a hunt for the murderers. The farmers who rode with him were brave men, but even they baulked at riding into the deep forest beyond Seleglise where the murderous vagabonds had doubtless taken shelter. The farmers contented themselves with firing shots blindly into the trees. They scared a lot of pigeons and lacerated many leaves, but no shots were fired back.