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

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СКАЧАТЬ behind closed doors. Once a shutter opened from an upper window and a face peered out, but no one called any alarm or query. The alley twisted incomprehensibly, but eventually emerged into a rutted lane edged with sooty hedges where the smell of open country mingled with the city’s malodorous stench. ‘The main road’s that way,’ Dally pointed southwards across dark fields, ‘but before you go, sir, would you satisfy my curiosity and tell me just what in God’s name is happening?’

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

      ‘I’ve got all night.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘When do you go to Chelmsford?’

      ‘Any day now.’

      ‘Do you have any leave owing?’

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

      ‘So you can deliver a message for me?’

      ‘With the greatest of pleasure, sir.’

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

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

      ‘If you can’t find my wife,’ Sharpe added, ‘then try and see Rossendale directly. He can talk to the Prince.’

      ‘I’ll do that gladly, sir. And how do I send messages back to you?’

      Sharpe had not thought of that problem, nor did he want to consider it now. The night was getting cold, and he was impatient to be on his way westwards. ‘We’ll probably be home within a month, Dally. It can’t take much longer than that to find one French officer. But if we fail? Then for God’s sake make sure Rossendale knows we’re innocent. There never was any gold.’

      ‘But if we are delayed,’ Frederickson was more cautious, ‘then perhaps we can send a message to you?’

      ‘Send it to Greenwoods.’ Greenwoods was another firm of Army Agents. ‘And take care, sir.’ D’Alembord shook Sharpe’s hand.

      ‘You haven’t seen us, Dally.’

      ‘I haven’t even smelt you, sir.’

      The three Riflemen crossed a rough piece of pastureland towards the embanked high road. The high road was not the most direct route to Arcachon, for it led more south than west, but it was a road that Sharpe and Frederickson had ambushed not many weeks before and, once they reached the ambush site, they knew they could find their way across country to the Teste de Buch fort.

      ‘I’d forgotten you had such high connections,’ Frederickson said with amusement.

      ‘You mean Lord Rossendale?’

      ‘I mean the Prince Regent. Do you think he’ll help?’

      ‘I’m sure he’ll help.’ Sharpe spoke with a fervent confidence, for he remembered the Prince’s assiduous kindnesses in London. ‘Just so long as Jane can reach Lord Rossendale.’

      ‘Then I wish your wife Godspeed.’ Frederickson climbed the turf bank and stamped his feet on the flint roadbed. He waited for his two companions to climb the embankment, then all three turned southwest. Thus, on a night road, Sharpe walked away from the army. He was a fugitive now, sought by the British authorities, by the French, and doubtless by his old enemy, Ducos. The Riflemen had become rogues, ejected from their own society, and gone to vengeance.

      Jane Sharpe felt aggrieved.

      Her grievance had come with the arrival of peace and her slow realization that her husband was a man who was entirely bereft of the ambitions of peace. Jane had never doubted his resolve in war, when Private Richard Sharpe had risen high by his own merits and energy, but Jane knew that her husband had no wish to transmute that wartime reputation into peacetime success. He only wanted to bury himself in the depths of rural England, there to farm and vegetate. Jane had spent most of her life in rural England, out on the cold clay marshland of Essex, and she had no wish to return to those bare comforts. She could understand that her husband might enjoy such an existence, but Jane dreaded the prospect of rural exile and foresaw that the only visitors to their country house would be old army comrades like Sergeant Harper.

      Jane liked Harper, but she did not think she should mention that liking to Lady Spindacre, for it was quite clear that the Lady Spindacre would not approve of a Major’s wife being fond of a mere Sergeant, and an Irish Sergeant at that. Lady Spindacre moved in altogether more exalted circles, and Jane’s grievance was fuelled when she realized that those circles were now open to her, but only if Sharpe would be willing to forsake the country and use the high friendships he had made in London.

      ‘But he won’t,’ she bemoaned to the Lady Spindacre.

      ‘You must force him, dearest. He has instructed you to buy a house, so buy one in London! You say he has given you power of the money?’

      The memory of that trusting gesture touched Jane with a few seconds’ remorse, but then the remorse was overborne by her new and certain realization that she alone knew what was best for Richard Sharpe’s career. The war had ended, yet there was still promotion to be had, but not if he resigned from the service and buried himself in some Dorsetshire hamlet. The Lady Spindacre, impressed that Jane had СКАЧАТЬ