But Harper was grinning, the officer was laughing, and Fortune, the soldier’s fickle goddess, was smiling on Sharpe. The tall and disdainful officer was Captain Peter d‘Alembord of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. He was an old friend who had once served under Sharpe and who now commanded Sharpe’s old light company. d’Alembord also knew Frederickson and Harper well, and was delighted to see both men.
‘How are you, Regimental Sergeant Major?’ he asked Harper.
‘I’m just a Rifleman again now, sir.’
‘Quite right, too. You were far too insubordinate to be promoted.’ d’Alembord looked back to Sharpe. ‘Purely out of interest, sir, but do you have a pass?’
‘Of course I don’t have a bloody pass, Dally. The bastards want to arrest us.’
It had been pure good luck that had brought Sharpe to this picquet that was manned by his old battalion. He was close enough now to recognize some of the men about the brazier. He saw Privates Weller and Clayton, both good men, but this was no time to greet old comrades, nor to implicate them in this night’s escapade. ‘Just get us quietly out of the city, Dally, and forget you ever saw us.’ d‘Alembord turned to his picquet. ‘Sergeant! I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
The Sergeant was curious. The picquet duty had been boring, and now some small excitement broke the tedium, but he was too far from the three Riflemen to recognize them. He took a few steps forward. ‘Can I say where you’ll be, sir? If I’m asked.’
‘In a whorehouse, of course.’ d’Alembord sighed. ‘The trouble with Sergeant Huckfield,’ he said to Sharpe, ‘is that he’s so damned moral. A good soldier, but horribly tedious. We’ll go this way.’ He led the three Riflemen into a foetid black alley that reeked with an overwhelming stench of blood. ‘They put me next to a slaughterhouse,’ d’Alembord explained.
‘Is there a safe way out of the city?’ Sharpe asked.
‘There are dozens,’ d’Alembord said. ‘We’re supposed to patrol these alleys, but most of the lads don’t take kindly to arresting women and children. Consequently we tend to do quite a lot of looking the other way these days. The provosts, as you might imagine, are more energetic.’ He led the Riflemen away from the butcher’s stink and into a wider alley. Dogs barked 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 E
ssex, 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 once been presented to the Prince Regent, and convinced that the presentation had sprung from the Prince’s genuine interest in her husband, opined that there were a multitude of peacetime jobs that were in the gift of Royalty, and that such jobs, filled by military men, were not demanding of time, yet were generous in their pay, promotion, and prestige. ‘He cannot retire as a Major,’ Lady Spindacre said scathingly.
‘And only a brevet Major, indeed,’ Jane confessed.
‘At the very least he should secure his Colonelcy. He could take a sinecure at the Tower, or at Windsor. My dear Jane, he should insist on a knighthood! Look how many other men, with much lesser achievements, are being deluged with rewards! All your husband needs do, my dearest, is to cultivate those high attachments. He must present himself at Court, he must persist in his acquaintances there, and he will succeed.’
This was all sweet and sensible music to Jane who, newly released from a stultifying youth, saw the world as a great and exciting place in which she could soar. Sharpe, she knew, had already had his adventures, but surely he would not deny her the opportunities of social advancement?
And Juliet, Lady Spindacre, was ideally placed to advise on such advancement. She was no older than Jane, just twenty-five, yet she had cleverly married a middle-aged Major-General who had died of the fever in southern France. Jane met the newly widowed Lady Juliet on the boat which returned them both to England, and the two girls had made an immediate friendship. ‘You must not keep calling me Lady Spindacre,’ Juliet had said, and Jane had revelled in the intimacy that was cemented by the similarities between the two girls. They were both women who attracted lascivious glances from the ship’s officers, they shared a fascination in the feminine accoutrements of clothes and cosmetics, men and intrigue, and they were both ambitious to succeed in society. ‘Of course,’ the Lady Spindacre explained, ‘I shall have to be reticent for a while, because of dear Harold’s death, but it will only be for a short while.’ Lady Spindacre was not wearing mourning for, she said, her dear Sir Harold would not have wanted it. ‘He only ever wanted me to be a spirit at liberty, to enjoy myself.’
Juliet Spindacre’s enjoyment of life was nevertheless threatened by her health, which was fragile, and by her constant worries about the dead Sir Harold’s will. ‘He had children by his first wife,’ Juliet told Jane, ‘and they are monsters! They will doubtless attempt to purloin the inheritance, and till the case is settled I am quite penniless.’
This penury was no immediate problem, for Jane Sharpe had the resources of her husband’s great fortune that had been taken from the enemy at Vitoria. ‘At the very least,’ Lady Spindacre advised, ‘you should establish yourself in London until the Major returns. That way, dearest one, you can at least attempt to assist his career, and if he should be so ungrateful on his return as to insist on a country home, then you can rest in the assurance that you did your best.’
Which all seemed eminently sensible to Jane who, on reaching London, and advised by the dear Lady Spindacre, withdrew all her husband’s money. She disliked Messrs Hopkinson of St Alban’s Street who, when she first approached them, had tried by every means possible to prevent her from closing Major Sharpe’s account. They questioned his signature, doubted her authority, and it was only a visit from Lady Spindacre’s lawyer that eventually persuaded them to make over a letter of credit which Jane sensibly lodged in a proper banking house where a young and elegant man seemed delighted to make her acquaintance.
Not all the money was so sensibly secured. The Lady Spindacre had much to teach Jane about the ways of society, and such lessons were expensive. There was a house in fashionable Cork Street to buy, new servants to find, and furniture to buy. The servants had to be uniformed, and then there were the necessary dresses for Jane and Lady Spindacre. They needed dresses for morning wear, for receiving, for dinners, for luncheons, for suppers, and such were the strictures of Jane’s new busy life that no single dress could be worn more than once, at least, Lady Spindacre averred, not in front of the people the two friends intended to court. There were calling cards to engrave, carriages to hire, and connections to make, and Jane persuaded herself that she did it all in her husband’s best interests.
Thus Jane was busy and, in her business, happy. Then, just two weeks after the bells of London had rung their joyous message of peace, the thunderbolt had struck.
The thunderbolt arrived in the form of two dark-suited men who claimed to bear the authority of the Judge Advocate General’s office. Jane had refused to receive them in her new drawing-room in Cork Street, but the two men forced their way past the maid and firmly, though courteously, insisted on speaking with Mrs Jane Sharpe. They asked first whether she was the wife of Major Richard Sharpe.
Jane, pressed in terror against the Chinese wallpaper that the dear Juliet had insisted on buying, confirmed that she was.
And was it true, the two men asked, that Mrs Sharpe had recently withdrawn eighteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-four pounds, fourteen shillings and eightpence from Messrs Hopkinson and Sons, Army Agents, of St Alban’s Street?
And what if she had? Jane asked.
Would Mrs Sharpe care to explain how her husband came to have so much money in his possession?
Mrs Sharpe did not care to explain. Jane was frightened, but she found the courage to brazen out her defiance. Besides, she saw how both men were attracted to her, and she had the wit to know that such men would not be personally unkind to a young lady.
The two dark-suited men nevertheless respectfully informed Mrs Sharpe that His Majesty’s Government, pending an investigation into the behaviour of her husband, would seek the return of the monies. All the monies, which, Jane knew, meant all the monies spent on powder and lace and hair-pieces and satin and champagne and the house; even the house! Her house!
She panicked when the men were gone, but dear Lady Spindacre, who had been in bed with a mild fever, rallied swiftly and declared that no dark-suited men from the Judge Advocate General’s office had the right to persecute a lady. ‘The Judge Advocate General is a nonentity, dearest one. Merely a tiresome civilian who needs to be slapped down.’
‘But how?’ Jane no longer appeared as a sophisticated and elegant beauty, but rather resembled the timid and innocent girl she had been just a year before.
‘How?’ The Lady Spindacre, seeing the threat to the source of Jane’s money, which was also the only source of the Lady Spindacre’s present wealth, was ready for battle.
‘We use those connections, of course. What else is society for? What was the name of the Prince Regent’s aide de camp? The one who was so solicitous of your husband?’
‘Lord Rossendale,’ Jane said, ‘Lord John Rossend
ale.’ So far she had been too scared to try and profit from that tenuous connection; it seemed too ambitious and too remote, but now an emergency had happened, and Jane well understood that Carlton House, where the Prince’s court resided, far outranked the drab offices of the Judge Advocate General. ‘But I only met Lord Rossendale once,’ she said timidly.
‘Was he rude to you?’
‘Far from it. He was most kind.’
‘Then write to him. You will have to send him some small trifle, of course.’
‘What could I possibly send such a man?’
‘A snuff-box is usual,’ Lady Spindacre said casually.
‘For a respectable favour, he’d expect one costing at least a hundred pounds. Would you like me to buy one, dearest? I am not feeling so poorly that I cannot reach Bond Street.’
A jewelled snuff-box was duly bought and, that same evening, Jane wrote her letter. She wrote it a dozen times until she was satisfied with her words then, as carefully as a child under the stern eye of a tutor, she copied those words on to a sheet of her new perfumed writing-paper.
Next morning a servant delivered the letter and the precious snuff-box to Carlton House.
And Jane waited.
The curé of Arcachon was hearing confessions when the ugly foreign soldier came into his church. The soldier came silently out of the night and, though he carried no weapons, other than the sword which any gentleman might wear, his eye-patch and scarred face caused a shiver of horror to go through the parishioners who waited their turn for the confessional. One of the parishioners, an elderly spinster, whispered the news to Father Marin through the muslin which served as a screen in the confessional box. ‘He has only one eye, Father, and a horrid face.’
‘Is he armed?’
‘He has a sword.’
‘What is he doing?’
‘Sitting at the back of the church, Father, near the statue of St Genevieve.’
‘Then he’s doing no harm, and you are not to worry yourself.’
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