Sharpe's Revenge

CHAPTER 12

It proved a long journey. Sharpe still feared capture and so he avoided all livery stables, coaching inns and barge quays. They had purchased three good horses with a portion of the money Harper had brought from England, and they coddled the beasts south from Paris. They travelled in civilian clothes, with their uniforms and rifles wrapped inside long cloth bundles. They avoided the larger towns, and spurred off the road whenever they saw a uniformed man ahead. They only felt safe from their shadowy enemies when they crossed the border into Piedmont. From there they faced a choice between the risk of brigands on the Italian roads or the menace of the Barbary pirates off the long coastline. “I’d like to see Rome,” Frederickson opted for the land route, “but not if you’re going to press me to make indecent haste.”

“Which I shall,” Sharpe said, so instead they sold the horses for a dispiriting loss and paid for passage on a small decaying coaster that crawled from harbour to harbour with an ever-changing cargo. They carried untreated hides, raw clay, baulks of black walnut, wine, woven cloth, pigs of lead, and a motley collection of anonymous passengers among whom the three civilian-clothed Riflemen, despite their bundled weapons, went unremarked. Once, when a dirty grey topsail showed in the west, the captain swore it was a North African pirate and made his passengers man the long sweeps which dipped futilely in the limpid water. Two hours later the ‘pirate’ ship turned out to be a Royal Navy sloop which disdainfully ghosted past the exhausted oarsmen. Frederickson stared at his blistered hands, then snarled insults at the merchant-ship’s captain.

Sharpe was impressed by his friend’s command of Italian invective, but his admiration only earned a short-tempered reproof. “I am constantly irritated,” Frederickson said, “by your nai’ve astonishment for the mediocre attainments of a very ordinary education. Of course I speak Italian. Not well, but passably. It is, after all, merely a bastard form of dog-Latin, and even you should be able to master its crudities with a little study. I’m going to sleep. If that fool sees another pirate, don’t trouble to wake me.”

It was a difficult journey, not just because circumspection and Harper’s shrinking store of money had demanded the most frugal means of travel, but because of Lucille Castineau. Frederickson’s questions about the widow had commenced almost as soon as Sharpe rejoined his friend in Paris. Sharpe had answered the questions, but in such a manner as to suggest that he had not found anything specifically remarkable in Madame Castineau’s life, and certainly nothing memorable. Frederickson too had taken care to sound very casual, as though his enquiries sprang from mere politeness, yet Sharpe noted how often the questions came. Sharpe came to dread the interrogations, and knew that he could only end them by confessing a truth he was reluctant to utter. The inevitable moment for that confession came late one evening when their cargo-ship was working its slow way towards the uncertain lights of a small port. “I was thinking,” Frederickson and Sharpe were alone on the lee rail and Frederickson, after a long silence, had broached the dreaded subject, “that perhaps I should go back to the chateau when all this is over. Just to thank Madame, of course.” It was phrased as a benign suggestion, but there was an unmistakable appeal in the words; Frederickson sought Sharpe’s assurance that he would be welcomed by Lucille.

“Is that wise?” Sharpe was staring towards the black loom of the coast. Far inland a sheet of summer lightning flickered pale above jagged mountains.

“I don’t know if wisdom applies to women,” Frederickson said in heavy jest, “but I would appreciate your advice.”

“I really don’t know what to say.” Sharpe tried to shrug the topic away, then, in an attempt to head it off entirely, he asked Frederickson if he had tasted anything odd in the supper served on board that night.

“Everything on this ship tastes odd.” Frederickson was irritated by Sharpe’s change of subject. “Why?”

“They said it was rabbit. But I was in the galley this morning and noted that the paws of the carcasses had been chopped off.”

“You have a sudden taste for rabbit paws?”

“It’s just that I was told that rabbit carcasses sold without paws are almost certainly not rabbit at all, but skinned cats.”

“It’s undoubtedly useful information,” Frederickson said very caustically, “but what in hell has that got to do with my returning to the chateau? I do you the distinct honour of asking for your advice about my marital future, and all you can do is blather on about dead cats! For Christ’s sake, you’ve eaten worse, haven’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said humbly. He still stared at the dark coast rather than at his friend.

“I have been thinking about my behaviour,” Frederickson now adopted a tone of ponderous dignity, “and have decided that I was wrong and you were right. I should have pounced before proposing. My mistake, I believe, lay in treating Madame Castineau with too great a fragility. Women admire a more forthright attitude. Is that so?”

“Sometimes,” Sharpe said awkwardly.

“A very useful reply,” Frederickson said sarcastically, “and I do thank you for it. I am asking your advice and I would be grateful for more substantial answers. I know your feelings about Madame Castineau…”

“I doubt you do…” Sharpe began the feared confession.

“You have a distaste for her,” Frederickson insisted on continuing, “and I can understand that attitude, but I confess that I have found it impossible to exorcise her from my thoughts. I apologise profoundly if I embarrass you by raising the matter, but I would be most grateful if you, could tell me whether, after I had left the chateau, she showed even the slightest attachment to my memory.”

Sharpe knew how very hard it was for Frederickson to reveal these private agonies, but Sharpe also knew it was time for him to make those agonies much worse with the admission that he had himself become Lucille’s lover. He feared that his friendship with Frederickson would be irreparably damaged by such an admission, but it was clearly inescapable. He hesitated for a bleak moment, then seized his courage. “William, there is something that you ought to know, something I should have told you much earlier, indeed, I should have told you in Paris, but

“I don’t wish to hear unwelcome news,” Frederickson, hearing the despondency in Sharpe’s voice, interrupted brusquely and defensively.

“It is important news.”

“You are going to tell me that Madame does not wish to see me again?” Frederickson, anticipating the bad news, was trying to hurry it.

“I’m sure she would be very happy to renew your acquaintance,” Sharpe said feebly, “but that…“

“But that she would not be happy if I was to renew my attentions? I do understand.” Frederickson spoke very stiffly. He had interrupted Sharpe again in a desperate attempt to finish the conversation before his pride was lacerated any further. “Will you oblige me by not mentioning this matter again?”

“I must just say, I insist on saying…”

“I beg you.” Frederickson spoke very loudly. “Let the matter rest. You, of all people, should understand how I feel,” which, oblique though it was, was Frederickson’s first indication that he had learned the truth about Jane from Harper.

Thereafter neither Sharpe nor Frederickson spoke of Madame Castineau. Harper, oblivious to either officer’s interest in Lucille, would sometimes speak of her, but he soon realized that the subject was tender and so ceased to mention the widow, just as he never spoke of Jane. The only safe topic of conversation was the Riflemen’s mutual enthusiasm for the pursuit and punishment of Pierre Ducos.

Which pursuit and punishment at last seemed imminent when, on a hot steamy morning, the merchant ship came to Naples. The first evidence of the city’s proximity arrived before dawn when a southerly wind brought the stench of faecal alleyways across the darkened sea. In the first light Sharpe saw the volcanic smoke smearing a cloudless sky, then there was the hazy outline of hills, and lastly the glory of the city itself, stinking and lovely, heaped on a hill in jumbled confusion. The bay was crowded. Fishing boats, cargo vessels and warships were heading to and from the great harbour into which, creeping against a sulphurous wind, three Riflemen came for vengeance.

Monsieur Roland had silently cursed the widow Castineau. Why had she not written earlier? Now the Englishmen, with all their precious information, had fled, and Roland himself must move with an unaccustomed alacrity.

He wrote an urgent message that was placed in the hollow handle of a sword-hilt. The sword belonged to a Swiss doctor who half killed six horses in his haste to reach the Mediterranean coast where a sympathizer carried him in a fast brigantine to Elba. The Royal Naval frigate, ostensibly guarding Elba’s small harbour at Portoferraio, did not search the brigantine, and if she had her crew would merely have discovered that one of the Emperor’s old doctors had arrived to serve his master.

The message was unrolled in an ante-chamber of an Emperor’s palace that was nothing more than an enlarged gardener’s cottage which stood in a grand position high above the sea. The Emperor himself was somewhere in the island’s interior where he was surveying land that could be used to plant wheat. A messenger was sent to summon him.

That evening the Emperor walked in the small garden behind his palace. A man had been found among his exiled entourage who both knew Pierre Ducos and, by some fluke of good fortune that could hardly be expected to attend a fallen idol like Napoleon, had even met the two English Riflemen. “You’ll sail for Naples tomorrow, and you will take a dozen soldiers with you,” the Emperor ordered. “I doubt that Murat will want to help me, but we have little time, so you will have to seek his aid.” The Emperor stopped and jabbed a finger into the chest of his companion. “But do not, my dear Calvet, tell him that there is money at stake. Murat’s like a dog smelling a bitch on heat when he scents money.”

“Then what should I tell the bastard?”

“You must be clever with him!” The Emperor paced the gravel walk in silence, then, realizing that his companion was not a subtle man, he sighed. “I will tell you what to say.”

Yet, in the event, Joachim Murat, once an imperial Marshal, but now King of Naples, would not receive General Calvet. Instead, in subtle insult, Napoleon’s envoy was sent to the Cardinal who, enthroned in his perfumed grandeur, was annoyed that this squat and battle-scarred Frenchman had not gone on his knees to kiss the Cardinal’s ring. Yet his Eminence was well accustomed to French arrogance, and it was high time, the Cardinal believed, to punish it. “You come on an errand,” the Cardinal spoke in good French, “from the Emperor of Elba?”

“On a mission of goodwill,” Calvet replied very grandly. “The Emperor of Elba is eager to live in peace with all his fellow monarchs.”

“The Emperor always said that,” the Cardinal smiled, “even when he was killing the soldiers of those fellow monarchs.”

“Your Eminence is kind to correct me,” Calvet said, though in truth he felt the insults of this meeting deeply. Napoleon might now be diminished into being the ruler of a small and insignificant island, but even in his sleep the Emperor had been a greater monarch than the gimcrack ruler of this ramshackle statelet. Joachim Murat, King of Naples and the titular master of this fat Cardinal, had been nothing till Napoleon raised him to his toy throne.

The Cardinal shifted himself into comfort on his own throne’s tasselled cushion. “I am minded to expel you from the kingdom, General, unless you can persuade me otherwise. Your master has greatly troubled Europe, and I find it disturbing that he should now send armed men, even so few, to our happy kingdom.”

Calvet doubted the kingdom’s happiness, but had no reason to doubt that the Cardinal would expel him. He made his voice very humble and explained that he and his men had come to Naples to search for an old comrade of the Emperor’s. “His name is Pierre Ducos,” Calvet said, “and the Emperor, mindful of Major Ducos’s past services, only seeks to offer him a post in his private household.”

The Cardinal pondered the request. His spies had not been idle during the months in which the Count Poniatowski had fortified the Villa Lupighi, and the Cardinal had long ago discovered Ducos’s identity, and learned of the existence of the great strongbox with its seemingly inexhaustible supply of precious gems. Whatever General Calvet might claim about Napoleon wishing to offer Ducos an appointment, the Cardinal well knew that it was money which had brought General Calvet to Naples. The Cardinal smiled innocently. “I know of no Pierre Ducos in the kingdom.”

Calvet was too wily to accept the bland statement at its face value. “The Emperor,” he said, “would be most grateful for your Eminence’s assistance.”

The Cardinal smiled. “Elba is a very little island. There are some olives and shellfish, little else. Do mulberries grow there?” He made this enquiry of a long-nosed priest who sat at a side table. The priest offered his master a sycophantic smile. The Cardinal, who was enjoying himself, looked back to Calvet. “What gratitude are we to expect of your master? A cargo of juniper berries, perhaps?”

“The Emperor will show his gratitude with whatever is in his power to give,” Calvet said stubbornly.

“Gratitude,” the Cardinal’s voice hardened, “is a disease of dogs.”

The insult was palpable, but Calvet steeled himself to ignore it. “We merely ask your help, your Eminence.”

The Cardinal was becoming bored with this unsubtle Frenchman. “If this Pierre Ducos is in the kingdom, General, then he has caused us no trouble, and I see no reason why I should help betray him to your master.”

Which was the moment when General Calvet played the Emperor’s card, and played it very well. He feigned a look of astonishment. “Betray, your Eminence? We don’t seek Major Ducos for any reason other than to offer him employment! Though, in truth, we do know that the English seek Major Ducos, and are even sending men here to do him harm. Why they should wish that, I cannot tell, but on my master’s life, it is true. The Englishmen may already be here!” Calvet doubted whether Sharpe had yet reached Naples, for Monsieur Roland had moved with an exemplary speed, but Calvet knew it would not be long before the Riflemen did arrive in the city.

There was a long silence after Calvet had spoken of the English involvement. The Cardinal might despise the fallen Napoleon, but he disliked the rampantly victorious English far more. He was forced to shelter their Mediterranean fleet and flatter their heretic ambassador, but the Cardinal feared their territorial ambitions. Their troops had taken Malta, and thrown the French from Egypt, and where else would the Redcoats choose to land on the Mediterranean’s shores? Even now, as the Cardinal and the General spoke, there were no less than six British warships in the harbour at Naples. Their fleet used the harbour as if it was their own, and though they claimed they were only present to deter the scum of the Barbary Coast, the Cardinal nevertheless feared the English, though he would not betray those fears to General Calvet. “The English have never expressed any interest in this man,” the Cardinal said instead, though in a much milder tone.

“Nor will they, your Eminence. They are insolent enough to believe they can ignore you. Nevertheless, on my honour, I do assure you that a party of Englishmen is either in your kingdom or on their way here.” Calvet was certainly not going to reveal that there would only be three Englishmen and that, far from being on official business, they were themselves fugitives.

“The Emperor has sent you to kill these Englishmen?” The Cardinal was beginning to wonder whether this bluff Frenchman might not, after all, be of some use to him.

“I am only here to dissuade them, your Eminence. I am not here to use violence, for the Emperor has no wish to disturb the peace of your happy kingdom.”

“But you are a man accustomed to death, General?”

“It’s my only trade.” Calvet could not resist the boast. “I learned it against the Austrians, who are easily killed, then perfected it against the Russians, who die very hard indeed.” Calvet had finished the war as a General of Brigade, but had begun it as a common soldier. Calvet, indeed, was one of Napoleon’s beloved mongrels; a veteran brawler and gutter-fighter who had risen from the ranks because of his ability to ram men into battle. He was not clever, but he was lucky, and he was as tough as a battered musket. In campaign after campaign Calvet had savaged the Emperor’s enemies. He had even brought an intact brigade out of Russia because his men feared the peasant General more than they feared the Cossacks or the Muscovite winter. Indeed, Calvet had only known one personal defeat, and that was when his brigade tried to drive Sharpe’s force of Riflemen and Marines from the Teste de Buch fort. It was Calvet’s memory of that defeat which gave his present pursuit of the Riflemen a special piquancy.

The Cardinal ignored the belligerence. “How will I recognize these Englishmen?”

Calvet had met both Sharpe and Frederickson once, and he had glimpsed Sharpe amidst the smoke of the Toulouse battlefield. He was not certain he would recognize either man again, but Monsieur Roland had also provided a full description of both Rifle officers. Calvet was too canny to give away the small advantage of those descriptions straightaway. “Details of their appearance are being sent to me, your Eminence.”

The Cardinal allowed Calvet the point. “And what do the English plan to do here, General?”

Calvet shrugged. “To kill Major Ducos, but why, I cannot say. Who can explain the spleen of the English?”

Who indeed? the Cardinal thought, or who could not see through the clumsy lies of a French General? Yet, amidst the deception, the Cardinal could perceive a very real profit for himself and the kingdom. Clearly the English were after the Count Poniatowski’s strongbox, as was the Emperor of Elba, but so, too, was the Cardinal. His spies in the Villa Lupighi had reported that Ducos and his men were planning to leave the kingdom at the end of the year and when they left, the strongbox would leave too. There would be no more lavish bribes from the Villa Lupighi and no more extortionate rents. The golden goose would fly north, but in the arrival of General Calvet the Cardinal saw a heaven-sent way of preventing that flight. He smiled on the General. “Help us find the meddling English, General, and perhaps we might then discover that there is, indeed, a Pierre Ducos hiding in the kingdom.”

Calvet hesitated. “And what happens when I do find them?”

“You shall bring them here, and we shall see whether a spell of Neapolitan prison life satisfies their curiosity.”

“And afterwards,” Calvet insisted, “you will direct me to Major Ducos?”

“Yes.” The Cardinal spoke as though to an importunate child. “I promise you that.” He sketched a vague blessing, then watched the short squat Frenchman leave. “Do you think,” the Cardinal asked when the door was closed, “that he believed me?” Father Lippi, the long-nosed priest, shrugged to suggest he could not answer the question. The gesture irritated the Cardinal. “Do you believe the Frenchman’s story then?”

“No, your Eminence.”

“You’re not entirely a fool. So advise me.”

Father Lippi, whose whole career depended on the Cardinal’s favour, shrugged. “The Count Poniatowski is a valuable contributor to your Eminence’s treasury.”

“So?”

Lippi rubbed long thin hands together as he nervously thought the matter through. “So, your Eminence, the Count Poniatowski should be warned of his enemies. He will doubtless be grateful.”

The Cardinal laughed. “You must learn cleverness, Father Lippi. The future strength of Mother Church does not always rest upon doing the obvious. What do you think will happen when General Calvet discovers these Englishmen?”

“He will hand them into our custody?”

“Of course he will not!” The Cardinal was irritated by Lippi’s stupidity. “The General is a man of war, not of diplomacy. He was not sent here to make peace, but to fight, and when he does find these English, if they exist, he’ll endeavour to discover whether they know how to find Pierre Ducos. And if they do know, and tell him, then Calvet will abandon his promise to hand the Englishmen into our custody, but will attack the villa himself. His master is after money, Lippi, money! And when Calvet does attack the villa, what then?”

Father Lippi frowned. “There will be bloodshed.”

“Precisely, and it will be our duty to arrest the malefactors and impound the evidence of their misdeeds. And if, by chance, the Count is killed by these criminals? Why, then, we shall be forced to give his fortune into the safekeeping of the church.” By which the Cardinal meant his own treasury, but it was almost the same thing. “And if, by chance, this General Calvet fails to capture the Count Poniatowski, then we shall still arrest him for affray, which will please the Count and doubtless provoke the gratitude you mentioned. Either way, Father Lippi, the church will be the richer.”

Lippi bowed in acknowledgement of the Cardinal’s subtlety. “And the English? How do we find them?”

“By helping the General, of course. He will give us their description, but we shall still let him deal with them.” There would be the most pompous and threatening protests from London if Naples was to kill Englishmen, so it was better to let the foolish General Calvet run that risk. The Cardinal smiled. “And once Calvet has dealt with the English, our forces will deal with General Calvet.”

Politics were so very simple, the Cardinal thought, just so long as a man believed no one, double-crossed everyone, kept a full treasury, and inveigled others into doing the dirty work. He waddled down from his throne, plucked his cape about him, then went for some supper.

The optician Joliot had betrayed Ducos’s address to Frederickson, but.the location of the Villa Lupighi still had to be found and it took Frederickson two whole days to discover that the building was not in Naples itself, and another full day to find a carrier who, for the last piece of Harper’s gold, grudgingly offered Frederickson directions. The villa lay a day’s march northwards, close to the sea and secure on a steep hill.

“It will be guarded.” Sharpe observed.

“Of course it will be guarded,” Frederickson snapped.

“So we’ll approach by night,” Sharpe ignored his friend’s short temper.

“And we leave when?” Harper hated the bitterness that he detected between the two officers. He spoke mildly, trying to be a peace-maker.

“Tonight,” Sharpe said. It was already evening. “We should arrive at dawn, we can watch all day, then attack tomorrow night. Do you agree, William?” He asked the question only to placate Frederickson.

“It seems an obvious course of action. Yes, I agree.”

They left the tavern at nightfall. There was a nervous moment as they passed the slovenly blue-uniformed guards at the city outskirts, but none of the soldiers gave the three travellers a second’s notice. Nevertheless Sharpe did not feel secure until they had long left the city’s last houses and were alone in a sultry countryside. It was good to be marching again, to feel a flinty road beneath boot-soles and to know that a task awaited at the road’s end. It was not a task confused by the demands of peace, but a soldier’s task; something best done swiftly and brutally. And when the task was over, Sharpe thought, and his enemy was confounded, then he would have the confusing tasks to face. Jane and Lucille. The names echoed in his head to every scrape and crunch of his boots on the road. What if Jane wanted him back? Which woman did he want himself? He had no answers, only questions.

It was a warm night, cloudless and windless. A bright moon rose above Vesuvius. At first the moon was misted by the volcano’s smoke, but soon it sailed clear across the sea to show the northern road as a white twisting strip against the darker fields. A thousand thousand stars pricked the sky, while a small white surf fretted at the beaches and broke bright about the tree-shrouded headlands. An owl passed close above the three men and Sharpe saw Patrick Harper cross himself. The owl was the bird of death.

An hour before midnight they left the road and climbed a hundred paces into the shelter of an ilex grove. There, in silence, they undid the bundles they each carried. At long last, after weeks of hiding, they could strip off their civilian clothes and pull on their green jackets, Sharpe had debated whether to make the change now, or to wait till the very eve of his attack, but wearing the green would force them to move as silently as ghosts through this strange countryside. He buckled on his sword, then scraped its blade free of the scabbard’s wooden throat so that the long steel shone in the moonlight.

“It feels better, does it not?” Frederickson buckled on his own sword.

“It feels much better,” Sharpe said fervently.

Frederickson drew his blade and whipped it back and forth. “I suspect I may have been somewhat fretful lately.”

Sharpe was immediately embarrassed. “Not at all.”

“I do apologize. Upon my soul, I apologize.”

Sharpe felt a pulse of pleasure that the awkwardness between them was ending, but the pleasure was immediately followed by a pang of guilt about Lucille. “My dear William…” Sharpe began, then stopped, because this was certainly not the moment to make the feared confession. He could see the happiness on Harper’s face that the bad blood between the two officers seemed to be drawn, and Sharpe knew he could not spoil the moment. “I am certain my own behaviour has been aggravating,” he said humbly.

Frederickson smiled. “But now we can fight. Our proper task in life, I fear. We’re not meant for peace, so to war, my friends!” He saluted Sharpe by whipping his sword blade upright.

“To war.” And the battle-cry put Sharpe into unexpected high spirits. For a moment he could forget Jane, forget Rossendale, forget Lucille, he could forget everything except the work at hand, which was the oldest kind of work; that of punishing an enemy.

They left the ilex grove. They had to skirt a straggling village, though the village dogs must have caught their scent for the barking snapped loud as the three Riflemen flitted through an olive grove. Beyond the olive grove, in fields that went down to the sea, there were white marble pillars that Frederickson said had fallen in the days of the Roman Empire. Sharpe did not believe him, and the friendly argument took them well past midnight. The road ran through open country, but in the small hours, when the waning moon was almost beyond the western horizon, they came to the mouth of a ravine which was shadowed as black as Hades.

They stopped where the rock walls narrowed. “A perfect place for an ambush.” Frederickson stared into the darkness.

Sharpe grunted. He had no idea how long it might take to go round the ravine. Such a detour would mean climbing the hills and scouting forward over rough ground. He was only sure of one thing, that to make the detour would take hours, and that the dawn would then find them stranded far from the villa. “I say we should go through-„

“Me too,” Harper offered.

“Why not?” Frederickson said.

The rock walls closed on them. The ravine’s slopes were not bare, but thickly covered with small tough shrubs. Sharpe tried to climb one flank to get a glimpse ahead, but gave up when the brambles tore at his hands. He could have saved himself the discomfort for, just around the next bend, a long view showed where the ravine ended two miles ahead. The road emerged from its rock walls to run gently downhill into a wide and empty lowland that was edged by the sweeping curve of a long moonlit beach. The sight of that empty landscape and their evident loneliness on the deserted road gave all three Riflemen a sense of safety. This was not Spain where an ambush might wait, but a sleepy southern country where they could walk in peace. Beyond the lowland, and dark on the northern horizon, were jagged peaks touched by the moon. Sharpe was certain that the Villa Lupighi must lie among the foothills of those peaks, and that thought made him point towards the far mountains. “Journey’s end,” he said.

Somehow the two words plunged all three Riflemen into a wistful mood. Harper, thinking of the ultimate destination of his travels, began to sing some sad lament of Ireland. Frederickson smiled privately to Sharpe. “You think he’ll be happy out of the army?”

“I think Patrick has the great gift of being content almost wherever he is.”

The two officers had fallen a few paces behind the tall Irishman. “Then he’s a fortunate man,” Frederickson said, “because I sometimes doubt whether I’ll ever find real contentment.”

“Oh, come! That can’t be true,” Sharpe protested.

Frederickson grimaced. “The pig-woman did, so perhaps there’s hope for me.” He walked in silence for a few paces. Harper still sang, and his strong voice echoed eerily from the ravine’s bluffs.

Frederickson shrugged the sling of his rifle into greater comfort on his shoulder. “Harper’s happily married, is he not?”

Sharpe’s heart plunged as he sensed the imminent conversation. “They’re very happy. Isabella’s a tough little creature, despite her pretty face.”

Frederickson found the opening he wanted. “Do you think Madame Castineau is strong?”

“Very.”

“My thoughts, too. It can’t have been an easy life for her.”

“Lots have it harder,” Sharpe said sourly.

“True, but she’s preserved that chateau despite all the deaths in her family. A very strong woman, I’d say.”

Sharpe desperately tried to change the subject. “How far do you reckon till we’re in open country? A mile?”

Frederickson glanced casually at the road ahead. “Just under a mile, I’d say,” then, with much greater enthusiasm, he spoke of his plans for further journeys. “I shall go to London to straighten my career, then, just as soon as I can, I’ll return to Normandy. You don’t abandon a siege just because the first assault fails, do you? I’ve been thinking about that a great deal.” He gave a short embarrassed laugh. “Indeed I confess that is why my temper has not been of the best lately, but I cannot believe that I should fail a second time with Madame. She surely needs some proof of my seriousness? My first proposal was a mere statement of intent, but now I shall reinforce it with an assiduous devotion which must persuade her. Good women, like bad, do yield to siege warfare, do they not?”

“Some do,” Sharpe said drily.

“Then I shall renew my siege. Indeed, I confess that it is only my anticipation of success in that siege which offers me some prospect of future happiness. Perhaps I deceive myself. Lovers are very prone to that failing.”

The moment was inescapable. Sharpe stopped. “William.”

“My dear friend?” Frederickson, euphoric with hope, was in an expansive mood.

“I have to tell you something.” Sharpe paused, overcome with horror at what he was doing. For a second he was tempted to forget his own attachment to Madame Castineau; just to abandon her and to let Frederickson ride to Normandy like Don Quixote trotting towards the windmills, but he could not do it.

“What is it?” Frederickson prompted.

“Women destroy friendships.” Sharpe sought a tactful way into a confession that could never be tactful, not against the high hopes that Frederickson was nurturing.

Frederickson laughed. “You fear we will see less of each other if I am successful? My dear Sharpe, you will always be a welcome guest wherever I-‘ he paused — ’I hope wherever I and Lucille are living.”

“William!” Sharpe blurted out the name. “You must understand that I…”

The gunshot startled them, blasting the night’s peace with an appalling and sudden violence. Sharpe had a glimpse of a muzzle flash high on the ravine’s right flank, then he was rolling to the right of the road. Frederickson had gone left. Harper, his singing so brutally interrupted, had unslung his volley gun and was peering upwards. The bullet had missed all of them.

A man, hidden from the Riflemen, laughed.

“Who’s thqre?” Sharpe called in English. No one answered. “Can you see the bugger, Patrick?”

“Not a bloody thing, sir.”

The hidden man began to whistle a jaunty tune, then, very carelessly, as though he knew he had nothing to fear from the three crouching soldiers, he stepped out from the shadows thirty yards ahead of Harper. The man wore a long cloak and carried a musket in his right hand. Harper immediately aimed the seven-barrelled gun at the stranger, but as he did, so a whole slew of dark shapes moved on the ravine slopes. Sharpe heard the clicks as their musket locks were armed.

“Bandits?” Frederickson suggested to Sharpe. Both officers had their rifles cocked, but each knew that a single shot would provoke an instant and destructive volley. Sharpe could not see exactly how many men opposed them, but there seemed to be at least a dozen.

“Bugger.” Sharpe had forgotten the threat of robbery. He stood upright as if to show that he was not frightened. “Can you talk us out of this one, William?”

“I can try, but at best they’ll still steal our weapons.” Frederickson looked at the single man barring the road and called out in Italian, “Who are you?”

The cloaked man chuckled, then walked slowly towards the three Riflemen. He carried his musket loosely. He walked past Harper, ignoring the threat of the huge gun, and instead approached Sharpe. “Do you remember me, Major?” He spoke in French.

Sharpe could not even see the approaching man properly and, besides, he was too startled by the odd greeting to think coherently, but then the cloaked man suddenly shrugged the swathing cape away to reveal an old blue uniform with shreds of tattered gold lace. „Bonsoir, Major Sharpe.“ The man was short, barrel-squat, with a face as scarred as the backside of a cannon.

“General Calvet,” Sharpe said in astonishment.

“That’s very good! Well done! I am indeed General Calvet, and you are the so-called soldiers who stroll through ravines as casually as whores looking for business. A troop of baboons could have ambushed you!”

Sharpe did not reply, though he knew Calvet was right. He had been careless, and now he must pay the price for that carelessness.

Calvet stepped close to Sharpe. The Frenchman slowly reached out, daring Sharpe to move, and pushed Sharpe’s rifle muzzle to one side. Then, with an extraordinary quickness, Calvet slapped the Rifleman’s face. Sharpe was so stunned by the sudden blow that he did nothing. Calvet sneered. “That, Englishmen, was for the powdered lime.” Calvet was recalling the powdered lime that Sharpe had broadcast from the ramparts of the Teste de Buch fort. The powder had burned the eyes of the attacking Frenchmen, and turned their attack into a panicked retreat. The memory of it evidently still rankled with Calvet. “Only an Englishman would use a bastard trick like that on a pack of soft-arsed lilywhite conscripts. If I’d had my veterans, Englishman, I’d have filleted you.”

Sharpe said nothing. He was still trying to work out how a French General he had last seen on a battlefield in southern France had turned up on this remote Italian road. He looked left and right, trying to count the General’s companions.

Calvet laughed. “You think I need help to kill you, Sharpe? I needed some help to find you, but not to kill you.”

“To find me?” Sharpe found his tongue.

“I was sent to find you. By the Emperor. I stayed loyal, you see. Not like all those other damned Frenchmen who are licking fat King Louis’s bum. But it wasn’t hard to find you, Major. A man in Paris wrote to the Emperor, who sent me to Naples, where a fat Cardinal wants me to arrest you. They’re very clever, these Neapolitans. I told them you were coming and they followed you from the day you landed. And now,” Calvet spread his arms as though he was a host welcoming treasured guests, “here we are!”

“Why did you want to find us?” Frederickson asked.

“The one-eyed monster has a tongue!” Calvet jeered. “I have orders to kill you, that’s why. They are the Emperor’s orders. He wants you dead because you stole his gold.”

“We didn’t steal it,” Sharpe said angrily.

“But you’re going to!” Calvet suddenly laughed. “You haven’t stolen it yet, Major, but as soon as you find Pierre Ducos you will!“ Calvet turned scornfully away from Sharpe and shouted for his men to come out of their hiding places.

The French soldiers pushed their way through the brambles and stamped the cramp out of their legs on the road. They surrounded the three Riflemen, and Sharpe could see, despite the darkness, that all of these grinning men wore the moustaches of the Emperor’s beloved veterans.

Calvet raised his musket so that the barrel was under Sharpe’s chin. “Put your rifle down, Major, and tell your two men to do the same.” He saw Sharpe’s hesitation. “You’d prefer my men to disarm you? It’s all one to me, but if you wish to keep your swords like gentlemen, then I suggest you put down your guns.”

There was perhaps a shade more pride in grounding their own arms than having them forcibly taken away, and so the three Riflemen slowly stooped and ignominiously abandoned their guns on the white roadway. Calvet waited till Sharpe was standing again, then once more put his musket to the Rifleman’s throat. ”Do you know where Pierre Ducos is, Major?“

“Yes,” Sharpe said defiantly.

“But I don’t,” Calvet disarmingly confessed. “So tell me.”

“Go to hell, General.”

“You’re determined to die like a cornered rat, aren’t you? You’ll die snarling, full of defiance. Except I’m under the orders of a fat Cardinal to return you to Naples. Have you seen the prison in Naples? You might survive it, Major, but so crippled with disease and hunger and filth that you’ll wish you’d never been born. But if you tell me what I wish to know, Englishman, then I’ll consider letting you walk away from this miserable kingdom.” Calvet twitched the musket so that the cold barrel knocked against Sharpe’s jawbone. “Where is Pierre Ducos, Major?”

“I should have killed you at Toulouse,” Sharpe said.

“So that was you?” Calvet laughed. “The Englishman who can kill me has not been born, Major, but I will shoot you down like a rabid dog if you don’t tell me where Pierre Ducos is hiding.” He twitched the musket again to jar its foresight against Sharpe’s chin. “Tell me, Englishman.”

Sharpe stared into the Frenchman’s eyes, then, with a speed that equalled Calvet’s earlier quickness, he slapped the General’s face. The blow sounded like a pistol shot.

Calvet’s head was jerked to one side. He stepped back, brought the musket into his shoulder and aimed it between Sharpe’s eyes. “Bastard,” he snarled.

“Bugger off,” Sharpe said in English.

Calvet pulled the trigger.

Sharpe twisted away, reached for his sword hilt, and he had drawn a clear foot of the steel clear of the scabbard before he realized that the musket had not been loaded. Calvet laughed. “You can stop pissing your breeches, Major, the gun wasn’t loaded. So pick up your bloody rifles and take me to Ducos.” He turned away from Sharpe and ordered his men to fall in. The moustached veterans obediently made two ragged ranks, but the three Riflemen did not move. Calvet turned on them with feigned astonishment. “Don’t just stand there! Move!”

Still none of the three Riflemen shifted. “You expect us to take you to Ducos?” Sharpe asked.

“Listen, you Goddamn fool.” Calvet, who was plainly enjoying himself, walked back and planted himself squarely in front of Sharpe. “Why should I send you to the Cardinal? All he wants to do is steal the gold for himself. And the Emperor wants it back, and that’s my task, Major, and to help me fulfil it I’m offering you an alliance. You tell me where Ducos is hiding, and I will let you live. Indeed, I will even offer you the greater privilege of fighting under my command. For a change, Englishman, you and I will be on the same side. We are allies. Except that I am a General of Imperial France and you are a piece of English toadshit, which means that I give the orders and you obey them like a lilywhite-arsed conscript. So stop gawping like a novice nun in a gunners’ bath-house and tell me where we’re going!”

“I don’t think we have very much choice,” Frederickson observed drily.

Nor did they. And thus Sharpe was under orders again, back in an army’s discipline, but this time serving a new master: the Emperor of Elba himself, Napoleon.

CHAPTER 13

“Of course the Cardinal wants the money, he’s nothing but a tub of greed, but what high churchman isn’t?” General Calvet spoke quietly to Sharpe. The two men were lying at the crest of a steep ridge from where they could observe the Villa Lupighi which lay on yet a higher hill a mile to the west. They were hidden and shaded by a thick growth of ilex and cypress. Frederickson, Harper and the General’s twelve men were resting among the gnarled trunks of an ancient olive grove that grew in a small valley behind the ilex-covered ridge. “And like every other churchman,” Calvet went on, “the Cardinal wants someone else to do his dirty work for him. In this case, us.”

The Cardinal had done everything he could to make Calvet’s task easier, except betray Ducos’s hiding place. The Cardinal had provided a house in which Calvet and his men could wait for Sharpe’s arrival in Naples. That arrival had been reported by the customs’ officials who had been warned by the Frenchman to expect a tall, black-haired man and a shorter, one-eyed companion. The house where Calvet waited had been very close to the place where the Frenchman had ambushed the three Riflemen. A messenger had come from the city to warn Calvet that three, not two, Englishmen had left on the northern road, and it had been a simple matter for Calvet to wait at the ravine’s northern end. “You’ll notice, though,” Calvet went on, “that the Cardinal has left us alone now.”

“Why?”

Calvet said nothing for a few seconds, but just stared at the Villa Lupighi through an ancient battered telescope. Finally he grunted. “Why? So we conveniently kill Ducos, then the Cardinal can arrest us and keep the money. Which is why, Englishman, we shall have to outguess the bastard.”

Calvet’s idea for outguessing the Cardinal had the virtues of extreme simplicity. The Cardinal must surely plan to waylay Calvet as he withdrew from the villa, and the likeliest places for that ambush would be on any of the roads leading away from the half-ruined house. So Calvet would not leave the villa by road. Instead three of his men would be detached from the assault and sent to the west of the villa where a small village lay on the sea-shore. The three men’s task was to sequester one of the bright-painted and high-prowed fishing boats from the tiny harbour. Two of the three men had been sailors before the collapse of the French Navy had persuaded Napoleon to turn seamen into soldiers, and though their detachment meant sacrificing three precious men from the assault, Calvet was certain the ploy would outwit the Cardinal. “We’ll also attack at night,” Calvet had decided, “because if that fat fool has sent troops, then you can be certain they’re almost as useless as you are.” Raw troops were easily confused by night fighting, which was why, Calvet continued, he had not launched his brigade of conscripts against the Teste de Buch fort during the night. “If I’d had my veterans, Englishman, we’d have gobbled you up that very first night.”

“Many French veterans have tried to kill me,” Sharpe said mildly, “and I’m still here.”

“That’s just the luck of the devil.” Calvet spotted some movement at the villa and went silent as he gazed through the glass. “How did you learn French?” he asked after a while.

“From Madame Castineau.”

“In her bed?”

“No,” Sharpe protested.

“Is she beautiful?” Calvet asked greedily.

Sharpe hesitated. He knew he could deflect Calvet’s impudent enquiries by describing Lucille as very‘ plain, but he suddenly found that he could not so betray her. “I think so,” he said very lamely.

Calvet chuckled at the answer. „I’ll never understand women. They’ll turn down a score of prinked-up thoroughbreds, then flop on to their backsides when some chewed-up mongrel like you or me hangs out his tongue. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I bedded an Italian duchess once, and thought I’d shock her by telling her I was the son of a ditch-digger, but it only made her drag me back to the sheets.“ He shook his head at the memory. ”It was like being mauled by a troop of Cossacks.“

“I told you,” Sharpe lied with fragile dignity, “that I didn’t go to Madame Castineau’s bed.”

“Then why should she try to protect you?” Calvet demanded. He had already confessed to Sharpe that it was Madame Castineau’s unwitting letter that had alerted Napoleon to Ducos’s treachery, and he now described how that letter had tried to exonerate the Riflemen. “She was insistent you were as innocent as a stillborn baby. Why would she say that?”

“Because we are innocent,” Sharpe said, but he felt a thrill of gratitude at such evidence of Lucille’s protective care. Then, to change the subject, he asked whether Calvet was married.

“Christ, yes,” Calvet spat out a shred of chewing tobacco, “but the good thing about war, Englishman, is that it keeps us away from our own wives but very close to other men’s wives.”

Sharpe smiled dutifully, then reached out and took the General’s telescope. He stared at the villa for a long time, then slid the tubes shut. “We’ll have to attack from this side.”

“That’s bloody obvious. A schoolboy with a palsied brain could have worked that one out.”

Sharpe ignored the General’s sarcasm. He was beginning to like Calvet, and he sensed that the Frenchman liked him. They had both marched in the ranks, and both had endured a lifetime of battles. Calvet had risen much higher in rank, but Calvet had a devotion to a cause that Sharpe did not share. Sharpe had never fought for King George in the same fanatic spirit that Calvet offered to the Emperor. Calvet’s devotion to the fallen Napoleon was absolute, and his alliance with Sharpe a mere expedience imposed by that forlorn allegiance. When Calvet attacked the Villa Lupighi he would do it for the Emperor, and Sharpe suspected that Calvet would cheerfully march into hell itself if the Emperor so demanded it.

Not that attacking the Villa Lupighi should be hellish. It had none of the defensive works of even a small redoubt of the late wars. There was no glacis to climb, no ravelins to flank, no embrasures to gout cannon-fire. Instead it was merely a ragged and fading building that decayed on its commanding hilltop. During the night Calvet and Sharpe had circled much of that hill and had seen how the lantern-light glowed in the seaward rooms while the eastern and ruined half of the building was an inky black. That dark tangle of stone offered itself as a hidden route to the enemy’s heart.

The only remaining question was how many of that enemy waited in the rambling and broken villa. During the morning Sharpe and Calvet had seen at least two dozen men around the villa. Some had just lounged against an outer wall, staring to sea. Another group had walked with some women towards the village harbour. Two had exercised large wolf-like dogs. There had been no sight of Pierre Ducos. Calvet was guessing that Ducos had about three dozen men to defend his stolen treasure, while Calvet, less his three boat-snatchers, would be leading just ten. “It’ll be a pretty little fight,” Calvet now grudgingly allowed.

“It’s the dogs that worry me.” Sharpe had seen the size of the two great beasts which had strained against the chains of their handlers.

Calvet sneered. “Are you frightened, Englishman?”

“Yes.” Sharpe made the simple reply, and he saw how the honesty impressed Calvet. Sharpe shrugged. “It used not to be bad, but it seems to get worse. It was awful before Toulouse.”

Calvet laughed. “I had too much to do at Toulouse to be frightened. They gave me a brigade of wet-knickered recruits who would have run away from a schoolmistress’s cane if I hadn’t put the fear of God into the bastards. I told them I’d kill them myself if they didn’t get in there and fight.”

“They fought well,” Sharpe said. “They fought very well.”

“But they didn’t win, did they?” Calvet said. “You saw to that, you bastard.”

“It wasn’t my doing. It was a Scotsman called Nairn. Your brigade killed him.”

“They did something right, then,” Calvet said brutally. “I thought I was going to die there. I thought you were going to shoot me in the back, and I thought to hell with it. I’m getting too old for it, Major. Like you, I find myself pissing with fright before a battle these days.” Calvet was returning honesty with honesty. “It became bad for me in Russia. I used to love the business before that. I used to think there was nothing finer than to wake in the dawn and see the enemy waiting like lambs for the sword-blades, but in Russia I got scared. It was such a damned big country that I thought I’d never reach France again and that my soul would be lost in all that emptiness.” He stopped, seemingly embarrassed by his confession of weakness. “Still,” he added, “brandy soon put that right.”

“We use rum.”

“Brandy and fat bacon,” Calvet said wistfully, “that makes a proper bellyful before a fight.”

“Rum and beef,” Sharpe countered.

Galvet grimaced. “In Russia, Englishman, I ate one of my own corporals. That put some belly into me, though it was very lean meat.” Calvet took his telescope back and stared at the villa which now seemed deserted in the afternoon heat. “I think we should wait till about two hours after midnight. Don’t you agree?”

Sharpe silently noted how this proud man had asked for his opinion. “I agree,” he said, “and we’ll attack in two groups.”

“We will?” Calvet growled.

“We go first,” Sharpe said.

“We, Englishman?”

“The Rifles, General. The three of us. The experts. Us.”

“Do I give orders, or you?” Calvet demanded belligerently.

“We’re Riflemen, best of the best, and we shoot straighter than you.” Sharpe knew it was only a soldier’s damned pride that had made him insist on leading the assault. He patted the butt of his Baker rifle. “If you want our help, General, then we go first. I don’t want a pack of blundering Frenchmen alerting the enemy. Besides, for a night attack, our green coats are darker than yours.”

“Like your souls,” Calvet grumbled, but then he grinned. “I don’t care if you go first, Englishman, because if the bastard’s alert then you’re the three who’ll get killed.” He laughed at that prospect, then slid back from the skyline. “Time to get some sleep, Englishman, time to get some sleep.”

On the far hill a dog raised its muzzle and howled at the blinding sun. Like the hidden soldiers, it waited for the night.

Calvet’s infantrymen, like the three Riflemen, wore their old uniforms. The twelve Grenadiers were all survivors of Napoleon’s elite corps, the Old Guard; the Imperial Guard.

Just to join the Imperial Guard a man must have endured ten years of fighting service, and Calvet’s dozen Grenadiers must have amassed more than a century and a half of experience between them. Each of the men, like Calvet, had abandoned royal France to follow their beloved Emperor into exile, and they now wore the uniforms which had terrified the Emperor’s enemies across Europe. Their dark blue coats had red turnbacks and tails, and their bearskins were faced with brass and chained with silver. Each man, in addition to his musket, was armed with a short, brass-hiked sabre-briquet. The Grenadiers, as they assembled in the olive grove, made a formidable sight, yet it was also a very noticeable sight for their white breeches reflected very brightly in the moonlight, so brightly that Sharpe’s earlier proposal that the Greenjackets should go first made obvious good sense.

At midnight Calvet led the small force out of the olive grove, across the ilex ridge, and down to the valley at the foot of the villa’s hill. The three men who would secure the fishing boat had already left for the small harbour. Calvet had threatened the three with death if they made even the smallest noise on their journey, and he reiterated the warning now to his own party, which thereafter advanced at an agonisingly slow pace. It was thus not till well after two o’clock that they reached a stand of cypress trees that was the last available concealment before they climbed the steep, scraped hillside towards the villa’s eastern ruins. The inconveniently bright moon shone above the sea to silhouette the ragged outline of the high building.

Calvet stood with Sharpe and stared at the silhouette. “If they’re awake and ready, my friend, then you’re a dead Englishman.”

Sharpe noted the ‘mon ami’, and smiled. “Pray they’re asleep.”

“Damn prayer, Englishman. Put your faith in gunpowder and the bayonet.”

“And brandy?”

“That, too.” Calvet offered his flask. Sharpe was tempted, but refused. To have accepted, he decided, would be to demonstrate the fear which he had earlier confessed, but which now, on the verge of battle, must be hidden. It was especially important to hide it when he was being observed by these hardened men from Napoleon’s own Guard. Tonight, Sharpe vowed, three Riflemen would prove themselves more than equal to these proud men.

Calvet had no qualms about displaying a fondness for brandy. He tipped the flask to his mouth, then, to Sharpe’s astonishment, gave the Rifleman a warm embrace. „Vive I’Empereur, mon ami.“

Sharpe grinned, hesitated, then tried the unfamiliar war cry for himself. „Vive I’Empereur, mon General.“

The Imperial Guardsmen smiled, while a delighted Calvet laughed. “You get better, Englishman, you get better, but you’re also late, so go! Go!”

Sharpe paused, stared up the hill and wondered what horrors might wait at its black summit. Then he nodded to Frederickson and Harper, and led the way into the moonlight. The long journey at last was ending.

It was simple at first, merely a tough upwards climb of a weed-strewn hillside that was more trying on the leg-muscles than on the nerves. Once Sharpe stepped on a loose stone that tumbled back in a stream of smaller stones and earth, and he froze, thinking of the scorn Calvet would be venting in the trees below. Harper and Frederickson watched the great building above, but saw no movement except for the bats that flickered about the broken walls. No lights showed. If there were guards in the ruins they were very silent. Sharpe thought of the great wolf-like dogs, but, if the beasts waited, they too were silent. Perhaps, as Frederickson had dared to hope, they were nothing but pets which, at this moment, slept in some deep recess of the silent villa.

The three Riflemen pushed on, angling to their right so that they could take the greatest advantage of the building’s mooncast shadow that spread its blackness a quarter way down the eastern slope. Still no one challenged them. They moved like the skirmishers they were; spread apart with one man always motionless, a rifle at his shoulder, to cover the other two.

It took fifteen minutes to reach the shrouding darkness of the building’s shadow. Once in that deeper darkness they could move faster, though the slope had now become so steep that Sharpe was forced to sling his rifle and use his hands to climb. A small wind had begun to stir the air, travelling from the inland hills and olive groves towards the sea.

“Down!” Harper hissed the word from the left flank and Sharpe and Frederickson obediently flattened themselves. Harper edged his rifle forward, but left his seven-barrelled gun slung across his back. Sharpe pulled his own rifle free, then heard a scraping sound from the hilltop. The sound resolved itself into footsteps, though no one was yet visible. Very slowly Sharpe turned his head to stare down the long slope. He could see no sign of Calvet or his Grenadiers beneath the ink dark cypresses.

“Sir!” Harper’s voice was as soft as the new small wind.

Two men strolled unconcernedly around the corner of the ruined building. The men were talking. Both had muskets slung on their shoulders, and both were smoking. Once they were in the shadow of the eastern wall the only sign of their progress was the intermittent glow of the two cheroots. Sharpe heard a burst of laughter from the two guards. The sound confirmed what the men’s casual attitude had already suggested: that Ducos had not been warned. Men who expected an attack would be far more wary and silent. The two guards were clearly oblivious to any danger, but they posed a danger themselves for they stopped halfway down the eastern flank and seemed to settle themselves at the base of the ruined wall. Then, from somewhere deep inside the black tangle of ruins, a dog growled. One of the two guards shouted to quieten the animal, but in the ensuing silence Sharpe’s fear surged like a great burst of pain in his belly. He feared those dogs.

Yet, despite the fear, he made himself squirm up the hill. He was on the right flank of the three Riflemen, furthest from the two guards, so he possessed the best chance of reaching the ruins unseen. He inched forwards, dragging himself painfully with his elbows. He estimated he was forty yards from the closest ruins, and perhaps sixty from where the two men crouched among fallen masonry. He ignored the two men, instead trying to see a route into the tangle of broken stone above. If he could work his way round behind the two guards then he might yet be able to silence them without the need to fire a shot. He had sharpened the big sword so that its edge was bright and deadly. The scabbard was wrapped in rags so that the metal did not chink on stone. He listened for the dogs, but heard nothing. His left shoulder was a mass of pain as it took the weight from his elbows. The joint had never healed properly, but he had to ignore the pain. He sensed that Frederickson and Harper were motionless. They would be hearing the tiny noises of Sharpe’s stealthy movements, would have guessed what he planned to do, and would now be waiting with their rifles trained on the two glowing cheroots.

Sharpe could feel his heart thumping. The two guards were still talking softly. He pulled up his right leg, found a foothold, and gingerly pushed himself up. In two minutes, he estimated, he would be inside the ruins. Add ten minutes to stalk the two men, then Calvet could be summoned with the agreed signal of a nightjar’s harsh call. He eased himself another foot up the slope, but then all his hopes of surprise, and all the pent-up fears of the night exploded in a lethal burst of noise.

The two dogs had caught the strangers’ scent on the freshening breeze.

One second there had been silence on the hilltop except for the muttering of the two guards, then, with a horrid abruptness, two dogs howled their cries at the moon as they came scrabbling and desperate over the ruined walls. Sharpe had time for one foul glimpse of their ragged silhouettes as they leaped against the sky.

“Fire!” He shouted the order in panic.

Harper and Frederickson fired at the two sentries. The rifles’ noise was startlingly loud; so loud that thousands of roosting birds shattered up from the ruined masonry. A guard shouted with pain.

The dogs were scenting their closest enemy: Sharpe.

He had just had enough time after his first glimpse of the beasts to rise to one knee and draw the big sword. He could not see the beasts in the dark shadows, but he could hear and smell them. He screamed as he swung the heavy blade. He felt the steel thump into a pelt, jar on bone, then slide free. The animal he had struck howled like a soul in torment. Sharpe knew he must have hurt it badly for it slewed sideways, but then the second animal came straight for him with its teeth bared. Sharpe’s sword arm was unbalanced so he swung his left arm to ward of the attack. The dog’s teeth closed on the green cloth of his old jacket, then the animal swung all its weight on the fragile cloth that ripped, but not before the impact of the attack had sent Sharpe tumbling down the slope. He was nerveless with fear. He knew how to fight men, but this feral violence was something he could neither anticipate nor understand. He lost both sword and rifle as he fell. The second dog had also lost its balance and spilt sideways on the slope. The first dog, bleeding from its flank and with a broken foreleg, lunged at Sharpe. He scrambled away from it and, in his desperation, sprawled on to his back, but then the second dog, with shreds of green cloth hanging from its teeth, sprang on to his belly. Sharpe smelt its rancid breath and knew the dog was about to rip his windpipe open.

Sharpe desperately lunged up with his right hand, caught the dog’s throat, and squeezed. A musket fired from the hilltop and the dog’s eyes reflected sudden and red in the muzzle’s flash. Calvet was shouting orders at the foot of the hill. Saliva dripped on to Sharpe’s face. The dog was a heavy mass of bone and muscle; nothing but a killing beast. It scrabbled for a foothold on Sharpe’s chest and belly, shook its head to loosen the terrible grip on its sinewy throat, and thrust its weight down so that its teeth could flense the skin from Sharpe’s face. Somewhere on the hilltop a man screamed. Another musket fired, but nowhere near Sharpe. He wanted to shout for help, but he needed all his strength to hold off the dog’s lunges.

Sharpe twisted, heaved, and rolled the dog over on to its wounded companion. He still had his right hand hooked and clawed into the animal’s throat. He screamed at it in impotent rage, then wrenched his grip as if he would tear the windpipe clean out. The wounded dog snarled at him. Another musket fired and in its burst of flame Sharpe saw the sheen of dark-light on his fallen sword blade. He picked up the weapon in his left hand, holding it by the blade, and stabbed it down. The force of the blow rammed his hand down the edge, slicing his palm open, but he hurt one of the dogs badly for it whined and Sharpe felt the steel jerk as the beast tried to twist free of the blade. He let go of the dog’s throat with his right hand, seized the sword hilt, and stood up. Both dogs wrenched towards him, but he hacked down as if the sword was an axe, then went on hacking till there was nothing but bloodied pelts and butchered flesh.

“Sir!” Harper shouted from the ruins. “Where are you, sir?”

“What’s happening, for Christ’s sake?”

“Two dead ‘uns here, sir.”

“Get into the ruins!” Sharpe clenched his slashed left hand to stem the blood that poured from his palm. His right leg and left shoulder were hurting like the devil. Beneath him he could see Calvet’s men desperately climbing towards the ruins. Sharpe could not see his rifle. He knelt again and felt around the slope, finally discovering the weapon’s stock beneath the still warm gobbets of dogflesh. He dragged the blood-sticky weapon free, then limped up to the hilltop.

Frederickson found him there. “Harper shot one man, I killed the other. Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not. Bloody dogs.” Sharpe still shivered with the remembered fear of the dogs. He ripped a scrap of torn cloth from his left sleeve and wrapped it round his cut hand. A man shouted from the villa’s corner, telling Sharpe that other picquets had come to join the fight. He would ignore them. Calvet’s Imperial Guardsmen could suffer and deal with their threat because the important thing, the only thing, was to get deep inside the building. “Come on!”

Harper had already found a way across the outer broken wall and now waited for Sharpe in the crumbling remains of an old courtyard. In some places the ancient masonry reached up two storeys, while in others it was just a few weed-grown feet high.

“Quick! Move!” Sharpe was hissing with pain, but it had to be suppressed. Surprise was gone, so now the attack must lunge like a blade as fast and deep as it could before the enemy rallied. He led the two Riflemen into a maze of broken walls and collapsed arches, dodging from shadow to shadow, always heading west towards the intact part of the house. At every step Sharpe expected a musket’s muzzle blast as greeting, but each corner turned and each wall jumped revealed nothing but silence and motionless ruin. Stone columns lay fallen over roofless corridors, and beams were half buried in fallen walls. It was a place for birds, lizards, snakes and silence.

“This way!” Harper called. He had found an undamaged cloister that seemed to offer a way through to the western end of the building. Sharpe followed the Irishman. One of Calvet’s men shouted from behind, but Sharpe ignored the call. Muskets suddenly crashed from the eastern face of the ruins. Sharpe stumbled on a broken piece of masonry, then fell into the deep shadow of the intact cloister. Frederickson followed and the three Riflemen, temporarily hidden, stopped to draw breath.

“Is everyone loaded?” Sharpe asked.

All three rifles were charged. Sharpe sheathed his sword and cocked his own rifle. His left arm and hand were ripped with pain, but he had to forget that agony if the night was not to end in ignominious defeat. The cloister was pitch dark. It led west to where, surely, Ducos must be waiting. Sharpe expected Ducos’s men to appear at any moment and pointed his rifle towards the threatening dark shadows.

“Major!” Calvet roared from the eastern wall. “Where the hell are you, you bastard?”

Sharpe was about to reply, but any sound he might have made was drowned by a new explosion of musketry. It seemed to come from the sky, and Sharpe sidled to the cloister’s edge and looked up to see a dark mass of men crowning the intact wall which marked the edge of the ruined part of the building and the beginning of the living quarters. They were firing down at Calvet’s men who now sought desperate shelter among the broken stones.

Sharpe raised his rifle.

“No!” Frederickson hissed.

“No?”

“The bastards probably don’t know we’re this deep in the building! Come on!” Frederickson felt his way down the black cloister. Calvet’s men were returning the fire now, but the musketry duel was dreadfully one sided. Ducos’s men were hidden by the roofs parapet and could plunge their fire down into the ruins, while Calvet’s men could only fire blindly upwards.

“Major!” Calvet bellowed again. “Where in Christ’s name are you?”

Sharpe had reached the cloister’s end, and found it blocked by a heavy timber door. Frederickson, crouching at the door’s foot, calmly produced his tinder box, struck flint to steel, and blew on the charred linen to make a tiny flame. The small light revealed ancient blackened timber. The door was constructed from five vertical baulks, studded with iron nails, but the long years and the desiccating heat had shrunk the wood to leave finger wide gaps between the heavy timbers. There was a rusted latch which, try as he might, Frederickson could not shift. “Bastard’s locked.”

“Give me room.” Harper pushed the two officers aside, then rammed his bayonet’s stout blade into one of the gaps. He levered the steel, grunting with the effort, and Sharpe was certain that the thick blade would snap before the ancient wood gave way. The noise of the muskets drowned any sounds Harper made.

Frederickson blew on the tinder’s flame to keep it alight as Sharpe drew his sword and rammed the blade alongside Harper’s. He twisted the sword so that the strain would be taken from edge to edge, then added his weight to the Irishman’s. The feeble flame went out, then, with a crash and a gout of dust, the timber cracked and split. Harper ripped the board away, then used Sharpe’s sword to attack the next heavy timber. The fire from the rooftop was persistent while that from the eastern ruins was sporadic, suggesting that Calvet’s men were trapped among the fallen stones.

“We’re through!” Harper had made the hole large enough, and now pushed the sword back to Sharpe. The Irishman went first through the gap, Frederickson followed, and Sharpe went last. They went into an utter darkness, bereft of stars, and it seemed to Sharpe as though they had stumbled into some capacious dungeon with a smooth stone floor, sheer stone walls, and a high echoing ceiling. Sharpe groped his way forward. The sound of the musketry was muffled now. The villa’s defenders doubtless believed they were winning the battle, but were still unaware that one tiny group of attackers had managed to reach deep into the huge building.

“Door!” Frederickson had found the way out of the dark room and, miraculously, the new door was unlocked. It grated and squealed as Frederickson thrust it ajar. It led into a passage that was suffused with the faintest pre-dawn light from north-facing windows. No enemy waited in the passage, only a black cat which hissed at them, then fled.

A winding stairway climbed from a jet black arch in the passage’s left wall. Sharpe knew this was no moment to be cautious, speed was all, and so he hefted his bloodied sword and climbed. He did not try to be silent, but just blundered up the winding stair two steps at a time. The stairway opened into a stone-walled room where a flickering tallow candle revealed two terrified girls clutching each other in the remnants of their beds. Men’s clothes were on the floor, though doubtless the men themselves were among the defenders on the roof. One of the girls opened her mouth to scream and Sharpe instinctively threatened her with the sword. She went very still.

Harper pushed past Sharpe, saw the girls, and aimed his rifle on which his bayonet was now locked. The girls shook their heads, as if to show that they would not make any noise. Frederickson appeared in the room. He had prepared for battle in his usual way by stowing his eyepatch and false teeth in his ammunition pouch, and he thus presented a fearsome sight which made one of the girls draw breath to scream. Harper rapped the side of her head with the edge of his blade. She froze. The blanket dropped away to show that she was naked.

“Kill the bitches.” Frederickson came into the room last.

“Tell them that if they make a noise we’ll kill them both,” Sharpe ordered. Frederickson seemed disgusted at this display of weakness, but obeyed. One of the two girls nodded to show that she understood, and Sharpe plucked a blanket from the floor and tossed it over their heads. “Come on!”

A second winding stairway led from the room. Sharpe again climbed it first. The sound of musketry was much louder now, betraying that the Riflemen were close to Ducos’s men. At the top of the stairway was a half-open door which Sharpe knew would lead on to the flat roof from which Ducos’s men poured their fire down on to Calvet’s soldiers. Sharpe remembered a moment like this on the Portuguese border when he and Harper had climbed just such a stair in the certain knowledge that the enemy waited at its top. He felt like a rat in a barrel, and the fear slowed his step. Through the half open door he could see the sky. There was a high wisp of cloud, lit silver grey against the dark.

“Move yourself, sir.” Harper unceremoniously pushed Sharpe aside to take the lead. He had slung his rifle and bayonet on his left shoulder so he could use his favourite weapon; the big seven-barrelled gun. The Irishman licked his lips, crossed himself, then pushed the door fully open.

Harper froze. He could see the enemy and Sharpe could not. Frederickson tried to push on, but he could not get past Sharpe.

“God save Ireland,” Harper whispered, and Sharpe knew that the big man, like himself, was scared. There was a hard knot in Sharpe’s belly, put there by the certainty that death waited beyond the open door.

“How many?” he whispered to Harper.

“At least a dozen of the bastards.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Frederickson sounded angry. “Calvet’s being crucified!”

“Vive I’Empereur!” Sharpe said fatuously, and the erstwhile enemy’s battle cry seemed to propel Harper through the open door.

“Bastards!” The Irishman screamed the word as his own battle cry. Men turned to stare at him, astonishment on their faces, then Harper pulled the trigger and the flint sparked fire into the chamber behind the seven barrels. The gun hammered like a small cannon and two of Ducos’s men were snatched clean off their feet to tumble, screaming, to the broken stones below.

Sharpe had followed Harper on to the smoke-wreathed roof. He carried the rifle in his clumsily bandaged left hand, fired it, did not wait to see if his bullet hit, but just ran forward with the sword in his right hand. The blade was matted thick with dog blood and hair. Frederickson flanked Harper’s right. A musket hammered at them, but the three Riflemen were moving too quickly and the ball whined harmlessly between Sharpe and Harper.

The surprise of their small attack was absolute. One second Sergeant Challon’s men had been firing down in comparative safety, and the next they were being violently assaulted from their left flank. Those men nearest to the Riflemen had no time to escape. One man tried to twist out of Sharpe’s way, but the big sword caught him on the backswing to flay his throat back to the spine. Sharpe’s scream of triumph would have curdled a devil’s blood. Harper was using the butt of the big gun like a club. Frederickson shot a man, discarded his rifle, then elegantly skewered another with his sword. Sharpe was past his first victim, hunting another. The fear had gone now, washed away by the old exaltation of battle. The enemy was running. They were desperately jostling towards a doorway on the roofs far side. These men had no belly for this fight, all except one man who had the tough face of an old soldier.

The moustached face was framed with the pigtails of the elite Napoleonic Dragoons. The man wore the remnants of his green uniform on which was the single stripe of a Sergeant. He lifted his straight sword towards Sharpe, feinted, then lunged at Harper. He did not finish the lunge, but stepped back and swung the blade towards Frederickson. The man was cornered, his companions had abandoned him, but he was making a professional cold fight out of his desperate position.

“Give up,” Sharpe said in English, then corrected himself by giving the command in French.

The only response was a sudden and savage attack. Sharpe parried so that the two swords ran like a bell. The other enemy had disappeared down the far stairway, and now the French Sergeant retreated after them, but never turned his back on his three opponents. Frederickson edged round to threaten his right flank and the Dragoon Sergeant’s sword slithered towards the new threat, but Harper was even faster. He moved to the Sergeant’s left, reached out, and seized his belt to pull him off balance. The Sergeant tried to reverse his blade, but Harper contemptuously ripped it from his hand and sent it spinning over the parapet. He then hit the French Sergeant on the head so that the man slumped down in dazed agony. “You were told to give up,” Harper said patiently, then hit the man again. “You stubborn bloody bastard.”

“Major!” General Calvet was standing in the ruins below.

“Go right!” Sharpe pointed to where they had broken through into the passage. “Hurry!”

“Englishman! Well done!”

Sharpe laughed at the compliment, then essayed an elaborate bow to the Frenchman. As he bowed, so’Harper screamed a sudden warning, and Sharpe abandoned his courtesy to fall ignominiously on his face as a small cannon split the dawn apart with its sudden noise. The ball thumped over Sharpe’s head.

“Ducos!” Frederickson had spotted the enemy.

Sharpe looked where Frederickson was pointing. Beyond this roof was another courtyard, this one intact, and on its far side Sharpe saw an open full-length window on an upper floor. The room had a balcony that billowed with smoke. Men moved in the lantern light behind the balcony, then the small wind shifted the obscuring smoke and Sharpe at last saw his enemy. He recognized the round lenses of the spectacles first, then he saw the thin face and he saw, too, with astonishment, that Ducqs was in the uniform of a French Marshal. For a second Ducos looked straight into Sharpe’s eyes, then he twisted away. Two other men took his place. Between them they carried a strange brass object which they stood in the window. For a second Sharpe thought it was a small misshapen table, but then Frederickson recognized the four-legged gun. “A bloody grasshopper!” he said scornfully, but he still dropped flat as the linstock touched fire to the charge. This time the small gun had been loaded with multiple shot that whistled harmlessly overhead.

A scream sounded below, and Sharpe knew Calvet’s men must have entered the second courtyard. The sound of musketry began again, rising in a snapping crescendo, but this time the deadly sound came from deep inside Ducos’s fastness. The dawn was already lightening the eastern sky with a pale silver wash and Sharpe knew this battle was half won, but still not complete. An enemy had to be trapped and taken alive. He loaded his rifle, wiped blood off his blade, and went back to the fight.

CHAPTER 14

Sergeant Challon lay disarmed and unconscious on the roof, but Pierre Ducos could not know of his loyal Sergeant’s predicament. Instead he cursed the Sergeant for abandoning him, just as he cursed the hired men who now scrambled desperately from the villa to run away into the night’s remnant. Only a handful of Dragoons had stayed with Ducos, not out of loyalty, but with the demand that Ducos now open the great strongbox and let them flee with their plunder.

Their greed was interrupted by Calvet’s men who began storming the lower corridors. Women and children screamed as they tried to escape the vengeful Guardsmen, and the screams served to remind Ducos’s Dragoons of their predicament. They slammed doors shut to cut the strongbox off from the attackers, then axed loopholes in the doors so they could keep Calvet’s men at bay. The grasshopper gun fired once more at the far roof, but the three green uniformed men seemed to have gone and the gun was brought down into the curtained archway that faced towards the sea. From that position it could slaughter any enemy who tried to outflank the loopholed doors by crossing the paved and balustraded terrace. “If we just hold long enough,” Ducos urged his six remaining men, “I promise we’ll get help.”

Ducos loaded two gilt-chased pistols that had been gifts from the Czar of Russia to the Emperor of France before the two nations fell into enmity. He carried the pistols to the window facing the courtyard and fired them both at the place where he believed he had seen, Sharpe. No one could be seen on that far roof now, so Ducos merely shot at phantoms. He was trying to persuade himself that Sharpe’s appearance had been just that; a phantom sprung on him by his over-heated fears and made more palpable by the dawn’s bad light. Yet he could hear that the men in the corridors outside the locked doors were no phantoms; they were fellow Frenchmen, come for a treasure that Ducos would not surrender.

Some of the products of that treasure were now used to barricade the archway where the grasshopper gun stood. A celestial globe was heaped on top of a japanned chest of drawers. A green silk covered chaise-longue made a breastwork, while beneath it an ebony table with a surface of inlaid silver and ivory was stacked as a shield for enemy bullets. Cushions, curtains, rugs and bedclothes were crammed between chairs to make the barricade yet more formidable. Only the heavy green curtain which shielded the deep alcove where the strongbox was hidden was left in its place. Two men crewed the grasshopper gun in its cushioned embrasure, while the other four Dragoons took it in turns to fire through the two loopholed doors. Ducos, his gaudy uniform hanging from him like finery draped on a scarecrow, paced between the three positions and spun a fantasy of imminent Neapolitan rescue.

The two loopholed doors were old and tough. A musket bullet could not penetrate the wood. At first the fire from the corridors was frightening in its intensity, but the Dragoons soon learned they were safe, and soon discovered they could drive the attackers away by firing from the loopholes. They had made a fortress within the villa, and the only entrances into the fortress were through the two doors or across the terrace that would prove a killing ground for the small brass gun. The Dragoons missed Sergeant Challon’s reassuring presence, but they felt safe enough now and even found a grim enjoyment in their successful defiance. Ducos made himself useful by loading every spare musket, carbine and pistol so that any determined attack could be met by an unrelenting fire.

“Pity about the women,” one Dragoon muttered.

“They’ll come back.” His companion fired through one of the splintered loopholes and his bullet ricocheted down the dark corridor. The attackers had taken cover from the fire, and their answering shots were as ill-aimed as they were infrequent. The man who had fired stepped back and glanced scornfully at Ducos. “First time I’ve seen a Marshal of France loading a musket.”

“We’ll drive these bastards off,” his companion muttered, “then we’ll kill the little runt and take the money home.” It had only been Sergeant Challon’s stubborn loyalty that had prevented such a desirable solution before, but Challon was now gone. The man fired through the door again, stepped back, then glanced up as an odd sound attracted his attention. He gaped at the high ceiling, then grabbed a loaded musket which he pointed directly overhead and fired. The fortress within a fortress was not quite as safe as it might have seemed.

The musket bullet buried itself in a floorboard beneath Harper’s feet, but struck with such force that the heavy board seemed to quiver beneath him. Dust jarred up along the timber’s formidable length. Harper wrenched at a crack between the boards with his bayonet. “I need a bloody axe.”

“We haven’t got a bloody axe,” Frederickson said curtly, then jumped back as three more gunshots thumped into the floor. “Why don’t we just set the bloody place on fire?”

Neither Sharpe nor Harper answered. Both had stouter blades than Frederickson’s slim sword, and both were levering at the old thick timbers. They had made their way around the villa’s roof to find this dusty attic directly over the enemy’s inner sanctuary. Sharpe had knocked tiles from the roof to get into the dusty space where bat droppings lay thick on the floor.

“It’s moving!” Harper alerted Sharpe who went to the other side of the heavy floorboard. Sharpe slid his sword under the wood and levered. Both men were crouching back from their work. Bullets were slamming noisily into the underside of the floor, and Sharpe feared that one would strike the tip of his sword and break the steel. He stood upright, put his foot on the hilt, and shoved downwards so that the timber creaked and heaved along its whole length. The far end of the board was still held fast by ancient nails and the consequent tension threatened to snap the timber back like a spring until Frederickson jammed his rifle beneath to hold the raised end firm. Ducos’s men were shouting below. One musket bullet found the gap and smashed a tile not a foot from Frederickson’s head.

Harper found his seven-barrelled gun, poked it under the raised timber, and fired blindly down. The noise was huge in the confined space, but even so the Riflemen could hear a scream from the room below as the seven bullets ricocheted wildly from its stone walls and floor. Sharpe fired his rifle into the gap, then both men stepped back to reload. Frederickson crouched to fire Harper’s rifle into Ducos’s lair. “Like shooting rats in a barrel,” he said grimly, then suddenly all the Riflemen were deafened and Frederickson, the rifle still unfired, fell back.

The raised board seemed to have exploded and jumped up at him. The attic was filled with a rending and splintering crash, beneath which sound and mixed with it, was the vast echoing report of the small grasshopper cannon. The gun had been placed upright, balanced on its hind legs and breech, then fired upwards. Its roundshot had mangled one of the attic’s floor timbers, then splintered on up through the tiles. Frederickson lay motionless. His face was bleeding from a score of splinters, but Sharpe could find no other wounds. The closeness of the cannonball’s passage must have literally knocked him out. Sharpe had seen men similarly felled by a buffet of a roundshot’s air. Frederickson would live, but within a few hours his face would be one huge bruise.

“He’ll live,” Sharpe told Harper, then, vengefully, he picked up the unfired rifle and fired it down through the hole torn by the roundshot. Harper was grimly loading his seven-barrelled gun and, at the same time, counting the seconds it would take for the men below to reload the small cannon. Frederickson groaned woefully. One of the splinters had lodged in his empty eye-socket that was now filling with blood.

“Mind yourself, sir,” Harper warned. He was guessing that the grasshopper gun was reloaded. The two Riflemen went very still. If the men below had any wit they would not fire at the same place, but would blast the shot into an unbroken part of the ceiling. Sharpe felt the fear of utter helplessness, knowing that at any second a cannonball could drive up beneath his feet.

“Fire, you bastards!” he muttered.

The gun fired. The men below had guessed wrong and the shot smashed through the attic’s far end. Dust and noise billowed about the confined space while broken tiles clattered down the roof and smashed themselves in the courtyard.

As the cannon’s noise still echoed in the attic, Harper moved with the speed of a scalded cat to the first hole. He peered down, rammed the seven barrels through the ragged gap, then pulled the trigger. He had only had time to charge five of the barrels, so much of the gun’s force was wasted through the two empty muzzles, but the grasshopper’s crew was only fifteen feet below him and the five bullets had enough force to kill both men. Sharpe fired his own reloaded rifle through the newer hole, then went to help Harper who was levering at the tensioned floorboard. Frederickson moaned, rolled on to his side, then lay still. The floorboard, weakened by the cannonball’s strike, snapped, and Sharpe and Harper could at last peer down at their enemy.

Two men lay dead beside the fallen grasshopper gun which, because it had been placed on its butt to fire upwards, now had two bent back legs. A third wounded man lay in a puddle of blood by the far door. The other Dragoons had taken shelter in the corners of the room. One of them raised a carbine and both Sharpe and Harper ducked back.

Sharpe reloaded his rifle. Frederickson was breathing hoarsely now. There was silence from below. Ducos and the remaining Dragoons feared the awesome destructive power of the seven-barrelled gun and none of them dared step into the room’s centre to retrieve their small cannon, and so they shrank back into corners and stared in fear at the broken ceiling. They were still staring as Calvet’s men came to the loopholed doors and thrust their muskets through.

„Non! Non!“ one of the Dragoons shouted.

Sharpe took one of the rifles and worked at the board beside the broken one. It had been loosened by the two cannon blows and came up with surprising ease. He saw the Dragoons with their hands up, and he saw the muskets protruding from the doors, but he could not see Ducos. “General!” he shouted.

“Major?” Calvet’s voice was muffled.

“Wait there! I’ll open up!”

Harper tried to stop Sharpe. “You’ll break your bloody legs, sir!”

But Sharpe wanted Ducos alive. Sharpe wanted to capture the small cunning enemy who had dogged his footsteps from the Portuguese border to this broken house in Italy, and Sharpe, this close to his old enemy, would not be denied. He lowered himself through the gaping hole, hung for a second by his hands, then dropped.

The height from ceiling to floor was fifteen feet. Sharpe had shrunk that distance by hanging from the broken boards, but he still dropped the best part of nine feet. The fall jarred him. He spilt sideways on the stone floor and a pain shrieked up from his right ankle to his newly mended thigh. He screamed with the pain, rolled to the right, and snarled at the Dragoons to stay still. He expected a bullet at any second. Harper was above him, threatening the room with his rifle. None of the Dragoons fired. They just stared at the blood-streaked, savagely scarred man who had dropped from the roof and who now struggled to stand upright. There was no sign of Ducos. The room was lit by the pale grey wash of the lightening sky. Sharpe drew his sword and the sound of the scraping blade made one of the Dragoons whimper and shake his head.

“Where’s Ducos?” Sharpe asked in French.

One of the Dragoons gestured towards a heavy green curtain.

Sharpe knew he should have unlocked the doors to let Calvet’s men into the room, but he was too close to his enemy now, and he had travelled too far and suffered too much to let this man escape him. He limped towards the curtain, flinching each time the weight went on to his right leg. He stopped a half dozen paces from the heavy green cloth. “Ducos! You bastard? It’s Major Sharpe!”

A pistol exploded beyond the curtain and a bullet plucked at the green cloth. The pistol ball tore a ragged hole, went a foot to Sharpe’s right, then buried itself in the ebony and silver inlaid table.

Sharpe stepped two paces closer to the curtain. “Ducos! You missed!”

Another bullet twitched the heavy curtain. This one went to Sharpe’s left. The curtain quivered from the bullet’s passing. The new ragged hole had scorched edges. The Dragoons stared at the limping madman who was playing this insane game with death.

Sharpe stepped so close that he could have reached out a hand and touched the green curtain. “You missed again!” He could hear the Frenchman breathing hoarsely beyond the curtain, then he heard the click as another weapon was cocked. Sharpe sensed from the sound that Ducos.was standing well back from the green material and must be firing in blind panic at its heavy folds. “Ducos? Try again!” he called.

The third bullet jerked the cloth. It went to Sharpe’s right, but so close that it could not have missed by more than a sword blade’s thickness. Dust sprang from the curtain’s thick weave to drift in the silvery dawn light. Sharpe laughed. “You missed!”

“Open the door!” Calvet roared angrily through one of the loopholes.

“Ducos?” Sharpe called again, and once again the hidden Frenchman fired one of his stock of pistols, but this time the shot was not greeted by Sharpe’s mockery. Instead the Rifleman screamed foully, gasped in awful pain, then moaned like a soul in sobbing torment.

Ducos shouted his triumph aloud. He ran to the curtain and snatched the heavy cloth aside. And there, at the moment of his personal victory, he stopped short.

He stopped because a sword blade flashed up to dig its point into the skin of his throat.

An unwounded Sharpe, with dog-blood lining the scars on his powder-stained face, stared into Ducos’s eyes.

The Frenchman held a last unfired pistol, but the huge sword was sharp in his throat and the eyes that stared into his were like dark ice. ‘Non, non, non.“ Ducos moaned the words, then his gun dropped on to the floor as his bladder gave way and a stain spread on the white silk of his French Marshal’s breeches.

„Oui, oui, oui,“ Sharpe said, then brought up his left knee in a single, savage kick. The force of it jarred Ducos’s spectacles free, they fell and smashed, and then the Frenchman, clutching the warm stain on his breeches, fell after them and screamed a terrible moaning scream.

And the long chase was done.

Sharpe limped to the door to let in an irate General Calvet. The dawn was full now, flooding the limpid sea with a glitter of silver and gold. The villa was thick with smoke, but oddly silent now that the muskets had stopped firing. It was the silence after battle; the unexpected and oddly disappointing silence when the body still craved excitement and there was nothing now to do but clear up the wounded and dead, and find the plunder. Calvet’s men tramped into the room and disarmed the broken Dragoons. Harper carried Frederickson downstairs and tenderly laid the officer on to a chaise-longue taken from the dismantled barricade. Two of Calvet’s men had been wounded, one of them badly, but none had been killed. The wounded Grenadiers were laid beside Frederickson whose wits were slowly coming back. His face was already blackening and swelling in a vast bruise, but he managed a wry smile when he saw the ludicrously uniformed Pierre Ducos. The Frenchman still gasped from the pain of Sharpe’s kick as Harper tied his wrists and ankles, then pushed him scornfully into a corner of the room to join the captured Dragoons.

General Calvet ripped down the alcove’s curtain. Beyond it, and deep shadowed at the end of an otherwise empty recess, was a great iron box. The keys for the box were found in a pocket of Pierre Ducos’s gaudy uniform. The locks were snapped open, and the lid was lifted on an Emperor’s fortune. Calvet’s men stared in an awed silence. The gems were so bright in the shadowed alcove that it seemed as if they generated their own dazzling light. Sharpe edged past a Grenadier and gazed down at the splendour.

“It all belongs to the Emperor,” Calvet warned.

“I know, but Ducos is mine.”

“You can have him.” Calvet stooped to pick up a handful of pearls. He let them trickle through his stubby fingers so that they glittered like scraps of starlight.

“Sir?” Patrick Harper’s voice was oddly subdued. He had not gone to see the treasure, but had instead cleared a passage through the barricade and now stood on the terrace, staring southwards. “Sir?” he called more loudly. “I think there’s something you should see here, sir.”

Calvet crossed to the terrace with Sharpe. ‘Merde,“ Calvet said.

A battalion of infantry was approaching the villa. Behind them, and still shadowed by a stand of trees, was a squadron of cavalry. The head of the small column was half a mile away, still on the coastal plain, but only a few minutes from the hill on which the captured villa stood. The battalion’s shadow stretched towards the sea, and the dawn’s clear light showed that its marching was. a shambles, its demeanour unprepossessing, but it was nevertheless a complete battalion of infantry with at least six hundred muskets, and its arrival explained why the Cardinal had given Calvet his free rein.

Because Calvet and Sharpe had done the Cardinal’s dirty work, and now the Neapolitans had arrived to reap the work’s reward.

„Merde,“ Sharpe said.

Ducos overcame his pain to crow a vengeful triumph. His friends had come to rescue him, he said, and Sharpe and Calvet would now suffer for their temerity. Harper slapped him to silence.

“We can escape,” Calvet said glumly, “but not with the fortune.”

“We can take a good deal of it,” Sharpe suggested.

“The Emperor wants it all.” Calvet scowled at the Neapolitan battalion which now spread itself into a line of three ranks at the foot of the villa’s hill. The cavalrymen behind the battalion spurred their horses past the infantry. Clearly the Neapolitans planned to surround the hill. There would be a few minutes before that manoeuvre was completed, and Calvet had rightly guessed that those moments would just be sufficient for his small band to scramble northwards into the hills, but they would be forced to travel light and they would doubtless be pursued mercilessly through all the long hot day. They would be weighed down by the treasure they carried, by their wounded, and by their prisoner.

The battalion of Neapolitan infantry waited on the parched grass. So far they had ignored the small village where Calvet’s three men should be guarding a boat, but that did not signify, for the Italian infantry now lay between the villa and Calvet’s seaborne escape. Three of the Neapolitan officers stood their horses a few yards in front of the resting infantry and Sharpe guessed that an envoy would soon be sent up the hill to demand the surrender of the villa’s occupants.

“Ignore the bastards.” Calvet, seeing no solution, turned away and ordered his men to fill their packs, cushion covers and any other receptacle they could find with the Emperor’s treasure. Harper joined the Frenchmen and marvelled at the slew of rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls. There were a few bags of gold heaped at one end of the iron chest, and a tangle of candlesticks at the other, but most of the great box was bright with gems. They lay a foot deep in the box, which was itself three feet high, suggesting that much of the treasure had already been squandered. “How much did you waste?” Calvet snapped at Ducos, but the thin-faced Frenchman said nothing. He was waiting for his salvation.

Which salvation appeared to be in the hands of the three Neapolitan officers who spurred their horses up the hill’s steep southern flank. Dust drifted from their hooves towards the sea.

“Bloody hell,” Harper had rejoined Sharpe on the terrace, “the buggers look as if they’re going to their first communion.” The Irishman spat over the balustrade. His disgust was at the uniforms that the officers wore. Neither he nor Sharpe had ever seen uniforms so splendid or so impractical. All three officers were in pristine and dazzling white. Their elegant cutaway coats were faced with cloth of brightest gold, while their cuffs and epaulettes were similarly arrayed with gold cloth that was dangling with gold chain. They wore black riding boots topped with gold turnovers, and on their heads were tall snow-white bearskins with gold chains looped from the crests to the blood-red plumes. “What are we supposed to do,” Harper said, “fight the buggers or kiss them?”

Sharpe did not reply. Instead he limped to that part of the balustrade closest to the approaching officers. All three were sweating because of the weight and constriction of their white fur hats. Their leader, whose rank Sharpe could not recognize, curbed his horse and gave the Rifleman a curt nod. “Are you French?” the man asked in that language.

“My name is Richard Sharpe, and I am a Major in His Brittanic Majesty’s army,” Sharpe said in English.

“My name is Colonel Pannizi.” Pannizi must have understood Sharpe’s reply, though he still spoke in French. He waited, as though expecting Sharpe to offer him a salute, but the filthy, bloodstained Englishman did not move. Pannizi sighed. “And what is an English officer doing in the Kingdom of Naples?”

“Visiting a friend.”

Pannizi was a slim, handsome man. He wore a razor-thin moustache that curled up into sharp waxed tips. Gold tassels hung from his bearskin’s plume, while a tiny gold and silver cuirass hung beneath the high stiff lapels of his white and gold coat. He momentarily closed his eyes in apparent exasperation at Sharpe’s insolent answer. “Is General Calvet with you?”

“I am General Calvet. Who the devil are you?”

Pannizi bowed in his saddle towards the stocky Frenchman who now stumped on to the terrace. “My name is Colonel Pannizi.”

“Good morning, Colonel, and goodbye.” Calvet had clearly decided that defiance was the best course of action.

Pannizi touched a white-gloved finger to a tip of his moustache. His two companions, both much younger, sat with impassive faces. Pannizi quietened his horse that jarred away from an insistent fly. “You are trespassing upon the property of a prince of the Church.”

“I couldn’t give a bucket of cowshit whose house it is,” Calvet said.

“The house and all its contents.” Pannizi went on with remarkable equanimity, “are hereby placed under the protection of the Kingdom of Naples, whose warrant I hold. I therefore request that you leave the villa immediately.”

“And if I don’t?” Calvet challenged.

Pannizi shrugged. “I shall be forced to arrest you, which will cause me extreme pain. The bravery of General Calvet is legendary.”

The flowery compliment plainly pleased Calvet, but could not persuade him. There was a fortune at stake, and even if Calvet himself did not receive a groat of the treasure, he was determined that his master would be denied none of it. “To arrest me,” he said, “you will have to fight me. Not many men have lived to say they fought General Calvet.”

Pannizi gave a flicker of a smile. He drew his sword, but very slowly so as to demonstrate that he meant no threat. He pointed the shining blade down the hill to where his men sat slumped on the grass, then sheathed the blade again. The gesture was eloquent. Pannizi controlled six hundred bayonets, and must have known that Calvet had scarcely more than a dozen. “Your bravery, as I said, is legendary.” Pannizi was hoping to flatter Calvet into surrender.

Calvet glanced at the Neapolitan battalion. Their colours had been unfurled, though the wind was not strong enough to lift the heavy fringed silk. Beneath the two flags the men appeared dispirited and flaccid. “You have the stomach for a fight, Colonel?” Calvet challenged Pannizi.

“I have the orders for a fight, General, and I am a soldier.”

“A good answer.” Calvet scowled down the hill. He knew better than anyone how hopeless this fight was, yet he was a soldier too, and he also had his orders. “And if we surrender to you now?” he asked with evident distaste for the question.

Pannizi looked shocked. “My dear General, there is no question of your surrendering! You are invited to be the guests of the Cardinal, the most honoured guests. Consider my regiment to be nothing more than an escort sent to conduct you with due honour into the city.”

Calvet had the grace to smile at the outrageous description. “And if we choose not to be the Cardinal’s guests?”

“You are free to leave the kingdom, all of you.”

“Free?” Calvet probed.

Pannizi nodded. “Entirely free. And you may take with you your uniforms and personal weapons,” he paused, “but nothing more.”

The threat was in those last three words. Pannizi knew what treasure lay in the villa, and he did not care what became of Calvet, Sharpe, or their men, so long as the treasure became his.

Calvet turned abruptly to stare north. The Neapolitan horsemen had cut off that escape route. He turned back. “You will give us fifteen minutes to consider our position, Colonel?”

“Ten,” Pannizi said, then drew his sword again. He saluted Calvet with the shining blade. “And you will do the honour of breakfasting with my officers, General?”

“Only if you have bacon,” Calvet said. “I have a great liking for fat bacon.”

Pannizi smiled. “Bacon will be found for you, General. You have ten minutes to anticipate its taste.” The Neapolitan Colonel sheathed his sword, nodded a summons to his two companions, then galloped back down the hill.

!Merde, merde, merde,“ Calvet said.

“Lime!” Calvet snarled at Sharpe. “I had you trapped in a fort and you escaped with powdered lime. So tell me what foul trick you have this time?”

Sharpe did not reply immediately. He was staring downhill at the dispirited Neapolitan infantrymen who, in anticipation of the ten minutes’ expiry, were being ordered to their feet. “Will they fight?”

“Of course they’ll bloody fight,” Calvet said. “That bastard Pannizi is telling them that there’s a battalion of whores and a king’s ransom in this place! Any minute now and they’ll be raring to fight! They smell plunder.”

“So give it to them,” Sharpe said abruptly.

“What?”

“Give them the damned gold! It weighs too much anyway. Take the stones and give them the bags of gold.”

Calvet stared at the Rifleman. “You’re mad.”

“On the contrary, General. We haven’t got lime, but we can blind them with gold. Showers of gold! Gold dropping from the heavens!” Sharpe was suddenly enthusiastic. “For God’s sake, General, how much is this treasure worth to you? Would you rather crawl back to your Emperor with nothing? Or would you rather buy your way out of this trap with a little gold?”

Calvet turned to look at the somnolent battalion. “So what do I do, Englishman? Go down there and haggle like a shoemaker? Don’t be a fool. If we offer a little gold they’ll want it all, and once they have it all, they’ll want the stones, and once they have the stones, we have nothing.”

“We don’t offer it to them,” Sharpe said, “but we give it. How good do you think their discipline is?”

Calvet snorted. “They’re a shambles! I’ve seen men reeking with drink who made a better show than that.”

“So we test their discipline by appealing to their greed.” Sharpe grinned at Harper. “I want the grasshopper. And some powder.”

Harper carried the brass gun, a powder keg and a bag of quick-fuse on to the terrace. Sharpe placed the weapon butt down, balanced by its bent rear legs, so that it could fire high into the air like a mortar. Sharpe did not want to blow a swathe of death through the Neapolitan battalion which waited a quarter mile away, he only wanted to swamp it with greed, and so he would literally make the gold of heaven rain from the sky.

Two of Calvet’s men fetched the bags of gold coins while Sharpe ladled a minuscule amount of powder into the gun. He tamped it down. He dared not charge the gun fully, or else the coins would be blasted across empty miles of countryside. He poured a small fortune of gold into the brass barrel, then pushed a length of quick-fuse into the touch-hole. “General?”

Calvet had been sulking at the prospect of losing even a small amount of his master’s treasure, but now he brightened at the prospect of firing the first golden volley. The gun was aimed so that the golden shower would fall to the east, away from the sea. Before he fired, Calvet glanced to make certain that his men were ready to make their bid for escape.

Harper was supporting the still dazed Frederickson, and had Ducos tied to a length of rope. He had cut the Frenchman’s ankles free so Ducos could run. Calvet’s men, all but for the two wounded Grenadiers, were laden with their bags and packs of gems. The prisoners, all but Ducos, would be abandoned. “We’re ready,” Calvet said, then gleefully touched the glowing end of a cheroot to the stub of quick-fuse.

There was a brief hiss, a coughing dull explosion, and a spew of dark smoke. The gun jarred backwards, then toppled, as Sharpe had an impression, nothing more, of a gouting of bright gold that glittered almost straight into the air through the acrid billow of smoke. Then, a second later, it seemed that a patch of the sky twinkled as though fragments of the sun itself were shattering in the upper air. Sharpe knew he watched the coins at the top of their arcing flight, but then they disappeared. He waited, and suddenly Harper whooped as the shards of light bounced and scattered and winked on the ground just beyond the Neapolitan battalion’s right flank.

Sharpe righted the fallen gun, ladled in another scoop of powder, then rammed yet more coins on to the charge. He glanced downhill and saw the movement as men turned in the infantry’s ranks. He rammed another length of quick-fuse home, then touched Calvet’s cheroot to its tip.

Another shower of gold sparkled high, then fell to earth in a glitter of greed.

“They’re trying to hold the buggers!” Harper reported gleefully.

A third charge, then a fourth, and now Sharpe was adding a half ounce to the charge so that the gold was spreading itself in a bright swathe that led away from the sea. He touched the cheroot on the fifth charge and this time, as the gold shattered the dawn sky into a thousand bright sparks, the battalion below broke their ranks, cheered, and stormed the empty fields to make their fortunes. The three Neapolitan ranks had dissolved like men hit by canister. Their sergeants and officers could not hold them and the men scattered like a chaotic mob to the countryside. They threw away their packs, muskets and shakoes as they fought and scrambled for the coins. They plucked the golden harvest and constantly watched the sky for yet more of the wonderful goldfall.

Sharpe gave them a last heavy blast of gold, this one from a barrel almost fully charged so that the thick coins glittered a full half mile inland as they fell. For the last time he watched the brightness tumble, then he turned and hobbled after Calvet’s men.

It was a race now. The infantry had been taken from the equation, but there were still the cavalry and Pannizi’s mounted officers. Calvet’s men, weighed with their prize of precious gems and their two wounded comrades, stumbled down the steep hill. Harper forced Ducos on, while Sharpe helped Frederickson. “I’m all right,” Frederickson protested, but as soon as Sharpe let him go, he stumbled as if drunk.

“Ware left!” Harper warned.

Pannizi and three officers were spurring to cut off their retreat. Sharpe dropped to one knee, aimed, and put a bullet across their path. The crack of the Baker Rifle sounded very purposeful and the spurt of dust in front of Pannizi’s small group was more than enough to check their ardour.

Sharpe ran on. One of Calvet’s men was watching the right flank, from where the cavalry might appear, but the hill had hidden those horsemen from the fall of gold and they were still ignorant of what happened to their south. Far off to Sharpe’s left a rabble of infantrymen still rooted through the grass, olive groves and stubble. Some officers and sergeants tried to whip the men back to their duty, but the lure of the gold had turned the battalion into a mob. Some of the lucky Neapolitans were finding more money in five minutes than they could have expected to make in a lifetime.

Sharpe stumbled through a dry watercourse, scrambled up its far bank, and half carried Frederickson through patches of tall, thick leaved plants that had saw-like edges. The village lay to their left, its harbour just beyond. Lieutenant Herguet, who had led Calvet’s small band down to the harbour, jumped up and down on the quay. The cavalry had still not appeared, and Pannizi’s infantry were scattered to uselessness. Sharpe was limping badly, but Frederickson, his one good eye almost closed by the swelling dark bruise, found new strength. Harper kicked Ducos on. Calvet was suddenly enjoying himself; he whooped his men through the village, past the barking dogs, and on to the sharp flinty quay. They ran past drying nets and wicker pots, down to where Herguet guarded a bright-painted boat on which two disconsolate crewmen cowered beneath his men’s two guns.

“Cavalry!” Calvet’s man warned. But the cavalry was too late. They burst over the hill’s shoulder, they drew their swords, they spread out in fine array, but Calvet’s men were already aboard the fishing boat, Harper was slashing at the stern line with his bayonet, and the dirty sail was already catching the dawn’s land breeze to drive the high-prowed craft out into the bay.

Ducos, with his hands still tied, was pushed to the bottom of the fish hold. He stared myopic hatred at Sharpe, but then Sharpe closed the hatch to leave his enemy in a stinking darkness. The Grenadiers were laughing with the pleasure of victory. It might not have been Jena or Wagram or Austerlitz, but it was still a victory for an Emperor who all the world thought was past winning victories.

Calvet embraced Harper, then the foully bruised Frederickson, and lastly Sharpe. “I forgive you for the lime, Englishman, and I will say that, for a man who is not French, you fight with a reasonable skill.”

Sharpe laughed. “Be glad, General, that you will not have to fight me again.”

“Who knows?” Calvet’s voice was mischievous. “If I can bring the Emperor enough gold then perhaps he can raise an army again?”

The mischievous remark reminded Sharpe of Major-General Nairn’s wistful dream of one last great battle, one climactic killing in which the Emperor would be arrayed against the world, but Nairn was dead, his old bones flensing in a French grave. Sharpe smiled. “No, General, there’ll be no more battles.”

“You’re right.” Calvet sounded miserable as he made the admission. “You and I are finished, my riend. The world’s at peace and we’re useless now. We’re the hunting dogs, but rabbits rule the earth now.” Calvet turned to watch the Neapolitan cavalry curb their horses on the far quay. “But I tell you, my friend, that within a year, you and I will be wishing for battle again.”

“I won’t,” Sharpe said fervently.

“You wait.” Calvet turned away from the land, and stared out to sea where two sails showed on the hazy horizon. “So what will you do now, my friend?” he asked Sharpe.

“Take Ducos to Paris and present him to Wellington. After that he will be given to the authorities.”

“Which authorities?”

“The ones who will execute him for the murder of Henri Lassan.”

Calvet offered Sharpe a mocking smile. “That small crime worries you?”

“It worries Madame Castineau.”

Calvet still smiled. “And why should Madame Castineau’s concerns be of any interest to you?”

Sharpe turned away because one of the Neapolitan cavalrymen had fired a carbine at the fishing boat. The ball splashed uselessly a hundred yards astern. None of the boat’s occupants even bothered to raise a weapon in reply.

Calvet fished in his pouch and brought out a handful of gems. He sorted through them with a grimy finger, then selected one flawless, blood-red ruby. “Give that to Madame Castineau, for, even if unwittingly, by writing her letter she did a great service for France.”

Sharpe hesitantly took the jewel. “For France, General? Or for Elba?”

“Napoleon is France, my friend. If you tied him in chains and dropped him to the ocean’s deepest pit, he would still be France.” Calvet folded Sharpe’s hand over the precious jewel. “I will give you nothing more, Englishman. Does that hurt? That you must go empty-handed from a fight where we filled a morning sky with gold?”

“I lived,” Sharpe said simply.

“And you left empty-handed.” Calvet smiled. “So you see, Englishman, the French won after all!”

„Vive I’Empereur, mon General.“

„Vive I’Empereur, mon ami.“

An hour later they accosted a Piedmontese merchant ship which, for a handful of imperial gold and under the threat of a dozen muskets, agreed to take the soldiers on board. Calvet would go to Elba and Sharpe, with his prisoner, would seek a Royal Naval ship. Thereafter they would be unwanted hounds in a kingdom of rabbits, but they had lived when so many had died, and that, at least, was something. Thus, in their separate ways, they sailed towards peace.