Sharpe’s Devil: Napoleon and South America, 1820–1821. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ Emperor for the implied compliment.

      ‘Not that you’d have been a Rifleman in my army,’ the Emperor provoked Sharpe. ‘I never had time for rifles. Too delicate a weapon, too fussy, too temperamental. Just like a woman!’

      ‘But soldiers like women, sir, don’t they?’

      The Emperor laughed. The aide-de-camp, disapproving that Sharpe so often forgot to use the royal honorific, scowled, but the Emperor seemed relaxed. He teased Harper about his belly, ordered another bottle of the South African wine, then asked Sharpe just who it was that he sought in South America.

      ‘His name is Blas Vivar, sir. He is a Spanish officer, and a good one, but he has disappeared. I fought alongside him once, many years ago, and we became friends. His wife asked me to search for him.’ Sharpe paused, then shrugged. ‘She is paying me to search for him. She has received no help from her own government, and no news from the Spanish army.’

      ‘It was always a bad army. Too many officers, but good troops, if you could make them fight.’ The Emperor stood and walked stiffly to the window from where he stared glumly at the pelting rain. Sharpe stood as well, out of politeness, but Bonaparte waved him down. ‘So you know Calvet?’ The Emperor turned at last from the rain.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Do you know his Christian name?’

      Sharpe supposed the question was a test to determine if he was telling the truth. He nodded. ‘Jean.’

      ‘Jean!’ The Emperor laughed. ‘He tells people his name is Jean, but in truth he was christened Jean-Baptiste! Ha! The belligerent Calvet is named for the original head-wetter!’ Bonaparte gave a brief chuckle at the thought as he returned to his chair. ‘He’s living in Louisiana now.’

      ‘Louisiana?’ Sharpe could not imagine Calvet in America.

      ‘Many of my soldiers live there.’ Bonaparte sounded wistful. ‘They cannot stomach that fat man who calls himself the King of France, so they live in the New World instead.’ The Emperor shivered suddenly, though the room was far from cold, then turned his eyes back to Sharpe. ‘Think of all the soldiers scattered throughout the world! Like embers kicked from a camp fire. The lawyers and their panders who now rule Europe would like those embers to die down, but such fire is not so easily doused. The embers are men like our friend Calvet, and perhaps like you and your stout Irishman here. They are adventurers and combatants! They do not want peace; they crave excitement, and what the filthy lawyers fear, monsieur, is that one day a man might sweep those embers into a pile, for then their heat would feed on each other and they would burn so fiercely that they would scorch the whole world!’ Bonaparte’s voice had become suddenly fierce, but now it dropped again into weariness. ‘I do so hate lawyers. I do not think there was a single achievement of mine that a lawyer did not try to desiccate. Lawyers are not men. I know men, and I tell you I never met a lawyer who had real courage, a soldier’s courage, a man’s courage.’ The Emperor closed his eyes momentarily and, when he opened them, his expression was kindly again and his voice relaxed. ‘So you’re going to Chile?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Chile.’ He spoke the name tentatively, as though seeking a memory on the edge of consciousness. ‘I well recall the service you did me in Naples,’ the Emperor went on after a pause. ‘Calvet told me of it. Will you do me another service now?’

      ‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe would later be amazed that he had so readily agreed without even knowing what the favour was, but by that moment he was under the spell of a Corsican magician who had once bewitched whole continents; a magician, moreover, who loved soldiers better than he loved anything else in all the world, and the Emperor had known what Sharpe was the instant the British Rifleman had walked into the room. Sharpe was a soldier, one of the Emperor’s beloved mongrels, a man able to march through shit and sleet and cold and hunger only to fight like a devil at the end of the day, then fight again the next day and the next, and the Emperor could twist such soldiers about his little finger with the ease of a master.

      ‘A man wrote to me. A settler in Chile. He is one of your countrymen, and was an officer in your army, but in the years since the wars he has come to hold some small admiration for myself.’ The Emperor smiled as though apologizing for such immodesty. ‘He asked that I would send him a keepsake, and I am minded to agree to his request. Would you deliver the gift for me?’

      ‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe felt a small relief that the favour was of such a trifling nature, though another part of him was so much under the thrall of the Emperor’s genius that he might have agreed to hack a bloody path down St Helena’s hillside to the sea and freedom. Harper, sitting beside Sharpe, had the same look of adoration on his face.

      ‘I understand that this man, I can’t recall his name, is presently living in the rebel part of the country,’ the Emperor elaborated on the favour he was asking, ‘but he tells me that packages given to the American consul in Valdivia always reach him. I gather they were friends. No one else in Valdivia, just the American consul. You do not mind helping me?’

      ‘Of course not, sir.’

      The Emperor smiled his thanks. ‘The gift will take some time to choose, and to prepare, but if you can wait two hours, monsieur?’ Sharpe said he could wait and there was a flurry of orders as an aide was despatched to find the right gift. Then Napoleon turned to Sharpe again. ‘No doubt, monsieur, you were at Waterloo?’

      ‘Yes, sir. I was.’

      ‘So tell me,’ the Emperor began, and thus they talked, while the Spaniards waited and the rain fell and the sun sank and the redcoat guards tightened their night-time ring about the walls of Longwood, while inside those walls, as old soldiers do, old soldiers talked.

      It was almost full dark as Sharpe and Harper, soaked to the skin, reached the quayside in Jamestown where the Espiritu Santo’s longboats waited to take the passengers back to Ardiles’s ship.

      At the quayside a British officer waited in the rain. ‘Mister Sharpe?’ He stepped up to Sharpe as soon as the Rifleman dismounted from his mule.

      ‘Lieutenant Colonel Sharpe.’ Sharpe had been irritated by the man’s tone.

      ‘Of course, sir. And a moment of your time, if you would be so very kind?’ The man, a tall and thin Major, smiled and guided Sharpe a few paces away from the curious Spanish officers. ‘Is it true, sir, that General Bonaparte favoured you with a gift?’

      ‘He favoured each of us with a gift.’ Each of the Spaniards, except for Ardiles who had received nothing, had been given a silver teaspoon engraved with Napoleon’s cipher, while Harper had received a silver thimble inscribed with Napoleon’s symbol of a honey bee.

      Sharpe, having struck an evident note of affection in the Emperor, had been privileged with a silver locket which contained a curl of the Emperor’s hair.

      ‘But you, sir, forgive me, have a particular gift?’ the Major insisted.

      ‘Do I?’ Sharpe challenged the Major, and wondered which of the Emperor’s servants was the spy.

      ‘Sir Hudson Lowe, sir, would appreciate it mightily if you were to allow him to see the gift.’ Behind the Major stood an impassive file of redcoats.

      Sharpe took the locket from out of his pocket and pressed the button that snapped open the silver lid. He showed the Major the lock of hair. ‘Tell Sir Hudson СКАЧАТЬ