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

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      Ducos, though, was delighted, and for a week the landscape echoed with the dull blows of the gun’s firing. It took less than a half pound of powder for its charge, yet still it succeeded in blasting a two and a half pound ball over six hundred yards. For a week, solaced by his new toy, Ducos could forget his fears, but when the novelty wore off his terror returned and a green man again began to haunt his dreams. Yet he was fiercely armed, he had loyal men, and he could only wait.

      On the day Sharpe left the château Lucille Castineau discovered a piece of paper behind the mirror on the chest of drawers in her room. Sharpe had scrawled Lucille’s name on the paper which, when unfolded, proved to contain twelve English golden guineas.

      Lucille Castineau did not wish to accept the coins. The gold pieces somehow smacked of charity, and thus offended her aristocratic sense of propriety. She supposed that the big Irishman had brought the money. Her instinct was to return the guineas, but she had no address to which she could send any draft of money. Sharpe had written a brief message in hurried and atrocious French on the sheet of paper which had enclosed the coins, but the message only contained a fulsome thanks for Madame Castineau’s kindnesses, a hope that this small donation would cover the expenses of Sharpe’s convalescence, and a promise that he would inform Madame Castineau of what had happened in Naples.

      Lucille fingered the thick gold coins. Twelve English guineas amounted to a small fortune. The château’s dairy urgently required two new roof beams, there were hundreds of cuttings needed if the cider orchard was to be replenished, and Lucille had a nagging desire to own a small two-wheeled cart that could be drawn by a docile pony. The coins would buy all those things, and there would still be enough money left over to pay for a proper grave-slab for her mother and brother. So, putting aristocratic propriety to one side, Lucille swept the coins into the pocket of her apron.

      ‘Life will be better now,’ Marie, the elderly kitchenmaid, who had elected herself as a surrogate mother to the widow Castineau, said to Lucille.

      ‘Better?’

      ‘No Englishmen.’ The maid was skinning a rabbit which Harper and Sharpe had snared the previous evening.

      ‘You didn’t like the Major, Marie?’ Lucille sounded surprised.

      Marie shrugged. ‘The Major’s a proper man, Madame, and I liked him well enough, but I did not like the wicked tongues in the village.’

      ‘Ah.’ Lucille sounded very calm, though she knew well enough what had offended the loyal Marie. Inevitably the villagers had gossiped about the Englishman’s long stay in the château and more than one ignorant person had confidently suggested that Madame and the Major had to be lovers. ‘Tongues will be tongues,’ Lucille said vaguely. ‘A lie cannot hurt the truth.’

      Marie had a peasant’s firm belief that a lie could sully the truth. The villagers would say there was no smoke without fire, and mud on a kitchen floor spoke of dirty boots, and those snidely sniggering suggestions upset Marie. The villagers told lies about her mistress, and Marie expected her mistress to share her indignation.

      But Lucille would not share Marie’s anger. Instead she calmed the old woman down, then said she had some writing to do and was not to be disturbed. She added that she would be most grateful if the miller’s son could be fetched to take a letter to the village carrier.

      The letter went to the carrier that same afternoon. It was addressed to Monsieur Roland, the advocate from the Treasury in Paris, to whom, at long last, Lucille told the whole truth. ‘The Englishmen did not want you to be told,’ she wrote, ‘for they feared you would not believe either them or me, yet, on my honour, Monsieur, I believe in their innocence. I have not told you this before because, so long as the English were in my house, so long did I honour their fear that you would arrange their arrest if you were to discover their presence here. Now they are gone, and I must tell you that the scoundrel who murdered my family and who stole the Emperor’s gold is none other than the man who accused the Englishmen of his crime; Pierre Ducos. He now lives somewhere near Naples, to which place the Englishmen have gone to gain the proof of their innocence. If you, Monsieur, can help them, then you will earn the gratitude of a poor widow.’

      The letter was sent, and Lucille waited. The summer grew oppressively hot, but the countryside was safer now as cavalry patrols from Caen scoured the vagabonds out of the woodlands. Lucille often took her new pony-cart between the neighbouring villages, and the old gossip about her faded because the villagers now saw that the widower doctor frequently served as the pony-cart’s driver. It would be an autumn marriage, the villagers suggested, and quite right too. The doctor might be a good few years older than Madame, but he was a steady and kindly man.

      The doctor was indeed a confidant of Lucille, but nothing more. She told the doctor, and only the doctor, about the letter she had sent, and expressed her sadness that she had received no reply. ‘Not a proper reply, anyway. Monsieur Roland did acknowledge that he had received my letter, but it was only that, an acknowledgement.’ She made a gesture of disgust. ‘Perhaps Major Sharpe was right?’

      ‘In what way?’ the doctor asked. He had driven the pony-cart to the top of the ridge where it rolled easily along a dry-rutted road. Every few seconds there were wonderful views to be glimpsed between the thick trees, but Lucille had no eyes for the scenery.

      ‘The Major did not want me to write. He said it would be better if he was to find Ducos himself.’ She was silent for a few seconds. ‘I think perhaps he would be angry if he knew I had written.’

      ‘Then why did you write?’

      Lucille shrugged. ‘Because it is better for the proper authorities to deal with these matters, n’est-ce-pas?’

      ‘Major Sharpe didn’t think so.’

      ‘Major Sharpe is a stubborn man,’ Lucille said scornfully, ‘a fool.’

      The doctor smiled. He steered the little cart off the road, bumped it up on to a patch of grass, then curbed the pony in a place from where he and Lucille could stare far to the south. The hills were heavy with foliage and hazed by heat. The doctor gestured at the lovely landscape. ‘France,’ he said with great complacency and love.

      ‘A fool.’ Lucille, oblivious of all France, repeated the words angrily. ‘His pride will make him go to be killed! All he had to do was to speak to the proper authorities! I would have travelled to Paris with him, and I would have spoken for him, but no, he has to carry his sword to his enemy himself. I do not understand men sometimes. They are like children!’ She waved irritably at a wasp. ‘Perhaps he is already dead.’

      The doctor looked at his companion. She was staring southwards, and the doctor thought what a fine profile she had, so full of character. ‘Would it trouble you, Madame,’ he asked, ‘if Major Sharpe was dead?’

      For a long time Lucille said nothing, then she shrugged. ‘I think enough French children have lost their fathers in these last years.’ The doctor said nothing, and his silence must have convinced Lucille that he had not understood her words, for she turned a very defiant face on him. ‘I am carrying the Major’s baby.’

      The doctor did not know what to say. He felt a sudden jealousy of the English Major, but his fondness for Lucille would not let him betray that ignoble feeling.

      Lucille was again staring at the slumbrous landscape, though it was very doubtful if she was aware of the great view. ‘I’ve told no one else. I haven’t even dared take communion these last weeks, for fear of my confession.’

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