Still none of the three Riflemen shifted. ‘You expect us to take you to Ducos?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Listen, you Goddamn fool.’ Calvet, who was plainly enjoying himself, walked back and planted himself squarely in front of Sharpe. ‘Why should I send you to the Cardinal? All he wants to do is steal the gold for himself. And the Emperor wants it back, and that’s my task, Major, and to help me fulfil it I’m offering you an alliance. You tell me where Ducos is hiding, and I will let you live. Indeed, I will even offer you the greater privilege of fighting under my command. For a change, Englishman, you and I will be on the same side. We are allies. Except that I am a General of Imperial France and you are a piece of English toadshit, which means that I give the orders and you obey them like a lilywhite-arsed conscript. So stop gawping like a novice nun in a gunners’ bath-house and tell me where we’re going!’
‘I don’t think we have very much choice,’ Frederickson observed drily.
Nor did they. And thus Sharpe was under orders again, back in an army’s discipline, but this time serving a new master: the Emperor of Elba himself, Napoleon.
CHAPTER 14
‘Of course the Cardinal wants the money, he’s nothing but a tub of greed, but what high churchman isn’t?’ General Calvet spoke quietly to Sharpe. The two men were lying at the crest of a steep ridge from where they could observe the Villa Lupighi which lay on yet a higher hill a mile to the west. They were hidden and shaded by a thick growth of ilex and cypress. Frederickson, Harper and the General’s twelve men were resting among the gnarled trunks of an ancient olive grove that grew in a small valley behind the ilex-covered ridge. ‘And like every other churchman,’ Calvet went on, ‘the Cardinal wants someone else to do his dirty work for him. In this case, us.’
The Cardinal had done everything he could to make Calvet’s task easier, except betray Ducos’s hiding place. The Cardinal had provided a house in which Calvet and his men could wait for Sharpe’s arrival in Naples. That arrival had been reported by the customs’ officials who had been warned by the Frenchman to expect a tall, black-haired man and a shorter, one-eyed companion. The house where Calvet waited had been very close to the place where the Frenchman had ambushed the three Riflemen. A messenger had come from the city to warn Calvet that three, not two, Englishmen had left on the northern road, and it had been a simple matter for Calvet to wait at the ravine’s northern end. ‘You’ll notice, though,’ Calvet went on, ‘that the Cardinal has left us alone now.’
‘Why?’
Calvet said nothing for a few seconds, but just stared at the Villa Lupighi through an ancient battered telescope. Finally he grunted. ‘Why? So we conveniently kill Ducos, then the Cardinal can arrest us and keep the money. Which is why, Englishman, we shall have to outguess the bastard.’
Calvet’s idea for outguessing the Cardinal had the virtues of extreme simplicity. The Cardinal must surely plan to waylay Calvet as he withdrew from the villa, and the likeliest places for that ambush would be on any of the roads leading away from the half-ruined house. So Calvet would not leave the villa by road. Instead three of his men would be detached from the assault and sent to the west of the villa where a small village lay on the sea-shore. The three men’s task was to sequester one of the bright-painted and high-prowed fishing boats from the tiny harbour. Two of the three men had been sailors before the collapse of the French Navy had persuaded Napoleon to turn seamen into soldiers, and though their detachment meant sacrificing three precious men from the assault, Calvet was certain the ploy would outwit the Cardinal. ‘We’ll also attack at night,’ Calvet had decided, ‘because if that fat fool has sent troops, then you can be certain they’re almost as useless as you are.’ Raw troops were easily confused by night fighting, which was why, Calvet continued, he had not launched his brigade of conscripts against the Teste de Buch fort during the night. ‘If I’d had my veterans, Englishman, we’d have gobbled you up that very first night.’
‘Many French veterans have tried to kill me,’ Sharpe said mildly, ‘and I’m still here.’
‘That’s just the luck of the devil.’ Calvet spotted some movement at the villa and went silent as he gazed through the glass. ‘How did you learn French?’ he asked after a while.
‘From Madame Castineau.’
‘In her bed?’
‘No,’ Sharpe protested.
‘Is she beautiful?’ Calvet asked greedily.
Sharpe hesitated. He knew he could deflect Calvet’s impudent enquiries by describing Lucille as very plain, but he suddenly found that he could not so betray her. ‘I think so,’ he said very lamely.
Calvet chuckled at the answer. ‘I’ll never understand women. They’ll turn down a score of prinked-up thoroughbreds, then flop on to their backsides when some chewed-up mongrel like you or me hangs out his tongue. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I bedded an Italian duchess once, and thought I’d shock her by telling her I was the son of a ditch-digger, but it only made her drag me back to the sheets.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘It was like being mauled by a troop of Cossacks.’
‘I told you,’ Sharpe lied with fragile dignity, ‘that I didn’t go to Madame Castineau’s bed.’
‘Then why should she try to protect you?’ Calvet demanded. He had already confessed to Sharpe that it was Madame Castineau’s unwitting letter that had alerted Napoleon to Ducos’s treachery, and he now described how that letter had tried to exonerate the Riflemen. ‘She was insistent you were as innocent as a stillborn baby. Why would she say that?’
‘Because we are innocent,’ Sharpe said, but he felt a thrill of gratitude at such evidence of Lucille’s protective care. Then, to change the subject, he asked whether Calvet was married.
‘Christ, yes,’ Calvet spat out a shred of chewing tobacco, ‘but the good thing about war, Englishman, is that it keeps us away from our own wives but very close to other men’s wives.’
Sharpe smiled dutifully, then reached out and took the General’s telescope. He stared at the villa for a long time, then slid the tubes shut. ‘We’ll have to attack from this side.’
‘That’s bloody obvious. A schoolboy with a palsied brain could have worked that one out.’
Sharpe ignored the General’s sarcasm. He was beginning to like Calvet, and he sensed that the Frenchman liked him. They had both marched in the ranks, and both had endured a lifetime of battles. Calvet had risen much higher in rank, but Calvet had a devotion to a cause that Sharpe did not share. Sharpe had never fought for King George in the same fanatic spirit that Calvet offered to the Emperor. Calvet’s devotion to the fallen Napoleon was absolute, and his alliance with Sharpe a mere expedience imposed by that forlorn allegiance. When Calvet attacked the Villa Lupighi he would do it for the Emperor, and Sharpe suspected that Calvet would cheerfully march into hell itself if the Emperor so demanded it.
Not that attacking the Villa Lupighi should be hellish. It had none of the defensive works of even a small redoubt of the late wars. There was no glacis to climb, no ravelins to flank, no embrasures to gout cannon-fire. Instead it was merely a ragged and fading building that decayed on its commanding hilltop. During the night Calvet and Sharpe had circled much of that hill and had seen how the lantern-light glowed in the seaward rooms while the eastern and ruined half of the building was an inky black. That dark tangle of stone offered itself as a hidden route to the enemy’s heart.
The only remaining question was how many of that enemy waited in the rambling and broken villa. During the morning Sharpe and Calvet had seen at least two dozen men around the villa. Some had just lounged against an outer wall, staring to sea. Another group had walked with some women towards the village harbour. Two had exercised large wolf-like dogs. There had been no sight of Pierre Ducos. Calvet was guessing that Ducos had about three dozen men to defend his stolen treasure, while Calvet, less his three boat-snatchers, would be leading just ten. ‘It’ll be a pretty little fight,’ Calvet now grudgingly allowed.
‘It’s the dogs that worry
me.’ Sharpe had seen the size of the two great beasts which had strained against the chains of their handlers.
Calvet sneered. ‘Are you frightened, Englishman?’
‘Yes.’ Sharpe made the simple reply, and he saw how the honesty impressed Calvet. Sharpe shrugged. ‘It used not to be bad, but it seems to get worse. It was awful before Toulouse.’
Calvet laughed. ‘I had too much to do at Toulouse to be frightened. They gave me a brigade of wet-knickered recruits who would have run away from a schoolmistress’s cane if I hadn’t put the fear of God into the bastards. I told them I’d kill them myself if they didn’t get in there and fight.’
‘They fought well,’ Sharpe said. ‘They fought very well.’
‘But they didn’t win, did they?’ Calvet said. ‘You saw to that, you bastard.’
‘It wasn’t my doing. It was a Scotsman called Nairn. Your brigade killed him.’
‘They did something right, then,’ Calvet said brutally. ‘I thought I was going to die there. I thought you were going to shoot me in the back, and I thought to hell with it. I’m getting too old for it, Major. Like you, I find myself pissing with fright before a battle these days.’ Calvet was returning honesty with honesty. ‘It became bad for me in Russia. I used to love the business before that. I used to think there was nothing finer than to wake in the dawn and see the enemy waiting like lambs for the sword-blades, but in Russia I got scared. It was such a damned big country that I thought I’d never reach France again and that my soul would be lost in all that emptiness.’ He stopped, seemingly embarrassed by his confession of weakness. ‘Still,’ he added, ‘brandy soon put that right.’
‘We use rum.’
‘Brandy and fat bacon,’ Calvet said wistfully, ‘that makes a proper bellyful before a fight.’
‘Rum and beef,’ Sharpe countered.
Calvet grimaced. ‘In Russia, Englishman, I ate one of my own corporals. That put some belly into me, though it was very lean meat.’ Calvet took his telescope back and stared at the villa which now seemed deserted in the afternoon heat. ‘I think we should wait till about two hours after midnight. Don’t you agree?’
Sharpe silently noted how this proud man had asked for his opinion. ‘I agree,’ he said, ‘and we’ll attack in two groups.’
‘We will?’ Calvet growled.
‘We go first,’ Sharpe said.
‘We, Englishman?’
‘The Rifles, General. The three of us. The experts. Us.’
‘Do I give orders, or you?’ Calvet demanded belligerently.
‘We’re Riflemen, best of the best, and we shoot straighter than you.’ Sharpe knew it was only a soldier’s damned pride that had made him insist on leading the assault. He patted the butt of his Baker rifle. ‘If you want our help, General, then we go first. I don’t want a pack of blundering Frenchmen alerting the enemy. Besides, for a night attack, our green coats are darker than yours.’
‘Like your souls,’ Calvet grumbled, but then he grinned. ‘I don’t care if you go first, Englishman, because if the bastard’s alert then you’re the three who’ll get killed.’ He laughed at that prospect, then slid back from the skyline. ‘Time to get some sleep, Englishman, time to get some sleep.’
On the far hill a dog raised its muzzle and howled at the blinding sun. Like the hidden soldiers, it waited for the night.
Calvet’s infantrymen, like the three Riflemen, wore their old uniforms. The twelve Grenadiers were all survivors of Napoleon’s elite corps, the Old Guard; the Imperial Guard.
Just to join the Imperial Guard a man must have endured ten years of fighting service, and Calvet’s dozen Grenadiers must have amassed more than a century and a half of experience between them. Each of the men, like Calvet, had abandoned royal France to follow their beloved Emperor into exile, and they now wore the uniforms which had terrified the Emperor’s enemies across Europe. Their dark blue coats had red turnbacks and tails, and their bearskins were faced with brass and chained with silver. Each man, in addition to his musket, was armed with a short, brass-hilted sabre-briquet. The Grenadiers, as they assembled in the olive grove, made a formidable sight, yet it was also a very noticeable sight for their white breeches reflected very brightly in the moonlight, so brightly that Sharpe’s earlier proposal that the Greenjackets should go first made obvious good sense.
At midnight Calvet led the small force out of the olive grove, across the ilex ridge, and down to the valley at the foot of the villa’s hill. The three men who would secure the fishing boat had already left for the small harbour. Calvet had threatened the three with death if they made even the smallest noise on their journey, and he reiterated the warning now to his own party which thereafter advanced at an agonisingly slow pace. It was thus not till well after two o’clock that they reached a stand of cypress trees that was the last available concealment before they climbed the steep, scraped hillside towards the villa’s eastern ruins. The inconveniently bright moon shone above the sea to silhouette the ragged outline of the high building.
Calvet stood with Sharpe and stared at the silhouette. ‘If they’re awake and ready, my friend, then you’re a dead Englishman.’
Sharpe noted the ‘mon ami’, and smiled. ‘Pray they’re asleep.’
‘Damn prayer, Englishman. Put your faith in gunpowder and the bayonet.’
‘And brandy?’
‘That, too.’ Calvet offered his flask. Sharpe was tempted, but refused. To have accepted, he decided, would be to demonstrate the fear which he had earlier confessed, but which now, on the verge of battle, must be hidden. It was especially important to hide it when he was being observed by these hardened men from Napoleon’s own Guard. Tonight, Sharpe vowed, three Riflemen would prove themselves more than equal to these proud men.
Calvet had no qualms about displaying a fondness for brandy. He tipped the flask to his mouth, then, to Sharpe’s astonishment, gave the Rifleman a warm embrace. ‘Vive l’Empereur, mon ami.’
Sharpe grinned, hesitated, then tried the unfamiliar war cry for himself. ‘Vive l’Empereur, mon General.’
The Imperial Guardsmen smiled, while a delighted Calvet laughed. ‘You get better, Englishman, you get better, but you’re also late, so go! Go!’
Sharpe paused, stared up the hill and wondered what horrors might wait at its black summit. Then he nodded to Frederickson and Harper, and led the way into the moonlight. The long journey at last was ending.
It was simple at first, merely a tough upwards climb of a weed-strewn hillside that was more trying on the leg-muscles than on the nerves. Once Sharpe stepped on a loose stone that tumbled back in a stream of smaller stones and earth, and he froze, thinking of the scorn Calvet would be venting in the trees below. Harper and Frederickson watched the great building above, but saw no movement except for the bats that flickered about the broken walls. No lights showed. If there were guards in the ruins they were very silent. Sharpe thought of the great wolf-like dogs, but, if the beasts waited, they too were silent. Perhaps, as Frederickson had dared to hope, they were nothing but pets which, at this moment, slept in some deep recess of the silent villa.
The three Riflemen pushed on, angling to their right so that they could take the greatest advantage of the building’s mooncast shadow that spread its blackness a quarter way down the eastern slope. Still no one challenged them. They moved like the skirmishers they were; spread apart with one man always motionless, a rifle at his shoulder, to cover the other two.
It took fifteen minutes to reach the shrouding darkness of the building’s shadow. Once in that deeper darkness they could move faster, though the slope had now become so steep that Sharpe was forced to sling his rifle and use his hands to climb. A small wind had begun to stir the air, travelling from the inland hills and olive groves towards the sea.
‘Down!’ Harper hissed the word from the left flank and Sharpe and Frederickson obediently flattened themselves, Harper edged his rifle forward, but left his seven-barrelled gun slung across his back. Sharpe
pulled his own rifle free, then heard a scraping sound from the hilltop. The sound resolved itself into footsteps, though no one was yet visible. Very slowly Sharpe turned his head to stare down the long slope. He could see no sign of Calvet or his Grenadiers beneath the ink dark cypresses.
‘Sir!’ Harper’s voice was as soft as the new small wind.
Two men strolled unconcernedly around the corner of the ruined building. The men were talking. Both had muskets slung on their shoulders, and both were smoking. Once they were in the shadow of the eastern wall the only sign of their progress was the intermittent glow of the two cheroots. Sharpe heard a burst of laughter from the two guards. The sound confirmed what the men’s casual attitude had already suggested: that Ducos had not been warned. Men who expected an attack would be far more wary and silent. The two guards were clearly oblivious to any danger, but they posed a danger themselves for they stopped halfway down the eastern flank and seemed to settle themselves at the base of the ruined wall. Then, from somewhere deep inside the black tangle of ruins, a dog growled. One of the two guards shouted to quieten the animal, but in the ensuing silence Sharpe’s fear surged like a great burst of pain in his belly. He feared those dogs.
Yet, despite the fear, he made himself squirm up the hill. He was on the right flank of the three Riflemen, furthest from the two guards, so he possessed the best chance of reaching the ruins unseen. He inched forwards, dragging himself painfully with his elbows. He estimated he was forty yards from the closest ruins, and perhaps sixty from where the two men crouched among fallen masonry. He ignored the two men, instead trying to see a route into the tangle of broken stone above. If he could work his way round behind the two guards then he might yet be able to silence them without the need to fire a shot. He had sharpened the big sword so that its edge was bright and deadly. The scabbard was wrapped in rags so that the metal did not chink on stone. He listened for the dogs, but heard nothing. His left shoulder was a mass of pain as it took the weight from his elbows. The joint had never healed properly, but he had to ignore the pain. He sensed that Frederickson and Harper were motionless. They would be hearing the tiny noises of Sharpe’s stealthy movements, would have guessed what he planned to do, and would now be waiting with their rifles trained on the two glowing cheroots.
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