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

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СКАЧАТЬ or guns, who cares?’ Harper said blithely.

      ‘I care.’

      ‘He’s a dead bastard either way.’

      ‘He’s a late bastard.’ Frederickson swung his arms to generate warmth, then, apparently oblivious to the gnawing tensions in Sharpe, asked Harper if the company was ready to march.

      ‘Aye, sir.’

      ‘Good.’ For as soon as this duel was fought, Frederickson would take his prime company of the 60th Rifles eastwards to join the army. Sergeant Harper would go with Frederickson for, just like Sharpe, he had become detached from his old battalion. That battalion, the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, had a new Colonel who had appointed his own Majors and a new Regimental Sergeant-Major, which had left Sharpe and Harper adrift.

      Harper had been eagerly recruited by Frederickson who, in turn, had been just as eagerly snapped up by Major-General Nairn, a Scotsman who at long last had been given his own fighting brigade and wanted Frederickson’s men to add a lethal sting to his skirmish line. Nairn also wanted Sharpe, not for the skirmish line, but to be his chief of staff.

      ‘But I’ve never been a staff officer,’ Sharpe had protested.

      ‘I’ve never commanded a brigade before,’ Nairn had replied cheerfully.

      ‘I must talk with Jane,’ Sharpe had said, and had then gone back to his lodgings where he broke a week’s chill silence, but their discussion about Nairn’s offer had been no happier than the tearful, rage-shredding arguments about the duel. Jane still insisted that they go home, and this time added a new reason for Sharpe to desert the army. Once peace came, she averred, the price of property in England would rise steeply, which made it all the more sensible to sail home now and find a London house. Sharpe had violently protested at such a notion, claiming that he would never live in London; that it was a vile, dirty, crowded and corrupt city, and while he was not averse to buying a house, that house should be in the country. For no very good reason he wanted to live in Dorset. Someone had once extolled that county, and the idea had lodged irreversibly in his head.

      In the end, exhausted by the arguments, a reluctant compromise had been agreed, Jane would go home to take advantage of the existing prices of property, but she would seek a country house in Dorset. In the meantime, and if he survived the duel, Sharpe would serve Major-General Nairn.

      ‘But why?’ Jane had pleaded tearfully. ‘You said yourself you feared fighting more battles. You can’t fight and live for ever!’ But Sharpe could not really tell her why he refused to go home before the war’s ending. He certainly did not want to be a staff officer, and he readily acknowledged his reluctance to face more battles, but there was a deeper reason that fought those urges and which tugged at his soul like a dark and torrential current. His friends would be in Nairn’s brigade; Nairn himself, Frederickson, and Harper. So many friends had died, and so few were left, and Sharpe knew he would never forgive himself if he deserted those good friends in the last weeks of a long war. So he would stay and fight. But first he would kill a Naval officer, or else be killed himself.

      ‘I spy the bastards,’ Frederickson said happily.

      Three horsemen were spurring along the road from the town. All wore dark blue naval cloaks and had fore-and-aft cocked hats. Sharpe looked past the three Naval officers to see if any mounted provosts were riding from the town to stop the duel and arrest the participants. The duel was not exactly a secret, indeed half the depot officers in St Jean de Luz had wished Sharpe luck, so he could only assume that the provosts had chosen to be deaf and blind to the duel’s illegality.

      The Naval officers walked their horses up the hill and, without an apparent glance at Sharpe, dismounted fifty yards away. One of the officers held the horses’ reins, one paced nervously, while the third walked towards the three Riflemen.

      Frederickson, who was Sharpe’s second, went to meet the approaching Naval officer. ‘Good morning, Lieutenant!’

      ‘Good morning, sir.’ Lieutenant Ford was Bampfylde’s second. He carried a wooden case in his right hand. ‘I apologise that we’re late.’

      ‘We’re just pleased that you’ve arrived.’ Frederickson glanced towards Captain Bampfylde who still paced nervously behind the three horses. ‘Is your principal prepared to make an apology, Lieutenant?’

      The question was asked dutifully, and just as dutifully answered. ‘Of course not, sir.’

      ‘Which is regrettable.’ Frederickson, whose company had suffered at the Teste de Buch fort because of Bampfylde’s cowardice, did not sound in the least regretful. Indeed his voice was positively gleeful in anticipation of Bampfylde’s death. ‘Shall we let the proceedings begin, Lieutenant?’ Without waiting for an answer he beckoned to Sharpe as Ford signalled to Bampfylde.

      The two principals faced each other without speaking. Bampfylde looked deathly pale to Sharpe, but quite sober. He was certainly not shaking. He looked angry, but any man who had been accused of gross cowardice should look angry.

      Ford opened the wooden case and produced two duelling pistols. Bampfylde, because he had been challenged, had been offered the choice of weapons, and he had chosen a pair of long-barrelled French-made percussion pistols. Frederickson weighed them in his hands, inspected their hammers, then pulled the ramrod from one of the guns and probed both barrels. He was checking that neither pistol had concealed rifling in the rear part of their barrels. Both were smooth-bore. They were, so far as a craftsman’s high skill could make them, identical weapons.

      The doctor was leaning forward in the carriage to watch the careful preparations. His coachman, swathed in a cloak, stood by the horses’ heads. Harper waited by the pine trees.

      Ford loaded both pistols, carefully watched by Frederickson. The Lieutenant used fine black powder that was dispensed from a small measuring cup. Ford was nervous, his hand quivered, and some of the powder was wisped away by the wind, but he carefully took an extra pinch to compensate for the loss. The powder was tamped down with the ramrod, then each lead ball was wrapped in an oiled leather patch. Bullets, however carefully cast, were never quite of a perfect calibre, but the leather patch made the fit as true as was possible, and thus gave the pistols added accuracy. Greater accuracy would have been achieved if the weapons’ barrels had been rifled, but that was thought to be unsporting. The balls were rammed down the barrels, then the ramrod was struck with a brass hammer to make sure that the missiles were sitting hard against the powder charge.

      Once the barrels were charged Ford opened a small tin case which contained the percussion caps. Each cap was a wafer of paper-thin copper enclosing a tiny charge of black powder. When the pistol’s hammer struck the copper wafer the hidden powder exploded to lance a tiny jet of flame down the touch-hole to the compacted charge in the barrel. Such guns were finicky, expensive, and much more reliable than the old-fashioned flintlock that was so prone to dampness. Ford carefully pressed the caps into the tiny recesses beneath the two hammers, then gently lowered the hammers so the guns were safe. Then, with a curiously diffident air, he offered both butts to Frederickson.

      Frederickson, thus given the choice, looked at Sharpe.

      ‘Either,’ Sharpe said curtly. It was the first word either principal had spoken since they had met. Bampfylde glanced at Sharpe as the Rifleman spoke, then quickly looked away. The Naval officer was a plump young man with a smooth face, while Sharpe had a tanned, scarred skin and angular bones. A scar on the Rifleman’s left cheek distorted his mouth to give his face an unwitting look of mockery that only disappeared when he smiled.

      Frederickson СКАЧАТЬ