Sharpe's Honor

by Bernard Cornwell

  He had been brought through the outer courtyard, past walls still scorched from the explosions of British howitzer shells fired in last year’s siege, through the packed, loaded wagons of treasure that crammed the yard, past the roof less, burned out buildings, to the massively walled keep.

  He had been pushed down stairs, down a dank, cold corridor, and into this small, square room with its slimy floor and the incessant drip of water onto stone outside. The only light was a faint glow that come through a small hole carved in the thick door.

  He shouted that he was a British officer, that he wished to be treated accordingly, but there was no reply. He shouted it in Spanish and English, but his voice faded in the cold echoing corridor to silence.

  He touched his temple and winced with the pain. It was swollen where the infantry Sergeant had struck him with a musket butt. The blood was drying to a crust.

  Rats moved in the corridor. The water dripped outside. Once he heard voices far away, and he shouted again, but there was no reply.

  He had been given no chance to escape on the journey south. The lancers had ridden fast, and Sharpe was put in the centre of a whole squadron, the men behind him with their lances ready to thrust. At night he had been locked up, twice in churches, once in a village jail, and guarded by men who stayed wide awake with loaded muskets on their knees. La Marquesa had travelled in a coach that General Verigny had confiscated in the town where he had found her. Once or twice she would catch Sharpe’s eye and shrug. At night she sent him wine, and food cooked for the lancer officers.

  His telescope, his pack, all his belongings except the clothes he wore, had been taken from him. Verigny, who could not understand why Major ‘Vaughn’ was so stubborn, had promised that the belongings would be returned to him. Verigny had kept the promise. When Sharpe was taken up the steep road and into Burgos Castle, his property was given back.

  He had been handed over to the fortress troops. Verigny’s men left him in the courtyard, standing under the guard of two infantrymen as the sun climbed higher.

  Sharpe had stared at the wagons in the yard, trying to see beneath the roped tarpaulins a clue to confirm La Marquesa’s tale that the treasure of the Spanish empire was here. He waited. Men of the garrison passed him, staring curiously at the prisoner, and still no administrative officer arrived to arrange his future. Once, at one of the high windows in the keep, Sharpe saw a man with a telescope. The glass seemed to be aimed directly at himself.

  It had been shortly after he had seen the man with the spyglass that the four infantrymen, led by a Sergeant, had run towards him. He had thought that they were going past him, had stepped back, but one of the men had bellowed at him, swung a fist, and Sharpe had hit back, one punch, two, and then the Sergeant had cracked him on the temple with the musket butt and he had been unceremoniously brought to this cell where he could pace three steps in each direction and where there was no light, no stool, no bed, no hope.

  He was thirsty. His head throbbed. He leaned on the wall for a time, fighting pain, darkness and despair. The hours passed, but what time it was he did not know. No bells penetrated to this room hacked in the rock beneath the old castle.

  He wondered if he had been recognised, but even if he had then it made no sense for him to be treated this way. He thought of La Marquesa, imagining her in the arms of her General, her head on his chest, her hair golden against his skin. He tried to remember the night in the inn, but it seemed unreal. All that seemed real was this cell, his hurts, and the thirst. He found a wet patch of wall and he licked the stone for moisture. The stench in the cell was foul. Night-soil had been thrown in here, or left by other prisoners, and each breath he took was foetid.

  Time passed and passed, measured only by the dripping of water onto stone. They wanted him to despair, to be dragged down by this foul, stinking place, and he fought it by trying to remember the names of every man who had served in his Company since the beginning of the war in Spain, and when he had done that he tried to call aloud the muster-roll of the very first Company he had joined in the army. He paced the cell against the cold, back and forth, his boots splashing on the floor, and sometimes, when the smell was too much, he put his mouth against the spyhole in the door and sucked deep breaths.

  He cursed himself for this capture, for oversleeping in the dawn, for accepting the challenge of a duel.

  He sensed that the day had passed, that night had come, though the glow at the door did not change. He propped himself in a corner, squatting on his heels with his back to the wall, and tried to sleep. Four nights ago he had been in a real bed, between sheets, with La Marquesa warm against him and over him and he tried to sleep, jerked awake, and listened to the rats outside and the drip of water. He shivered.

  He sensed that the prisoner put in this cell was supposed to lie down. They wanted the prisoner here to soil his clothes and be stained with faeces. He would not oblige them.

  Three men came for him eventually, two armed with bayonet-tipped muskets and the third the same great hulk of a Sergeant who had first struck Sharpe. The man was huge. He appeared to have no neck and his arms bulged the uniform sleeves with muscle. The Sergeant shouted at him in French, then laughed at the smell of the room.

  Sharpe was tired, desperately so, and the thirst had half closed his throat. He stumbled in the sudden light of the flaming torch held by one of his guards and the Sergeant pushed him so he fell, and then hauled him up with a strength that took Sharpe’s weight easily.

  They marched him down the corridor, up the stairs, along a second corridor and up more stairs. There was daylight here, coming through small windows that looked into the keep’s central courtyard, and then the Sergeant pushed Sharpe into a room where a fourth soldier waited.

  It was a room about twelve feet square. One window, high and barred, let a grey, unhappy light onto the stone of the walls and floor. A single table was in the room, behind it a chair. The guards positioned themselves on either side of him. The Sergeant, the only unarmed Frenchman, was one of the two men on Sharpe’s right. Whenever Sharpe tried to lean against the wall he was shouted at, pulled forward, and then there would be silence again.

  They waited. The two men immediately closest to Sharpe faced him with bayonets. Sharpe closed his eyes. He swayed slightly with tiredness. His head throbbed.

  The door opened.

  Sharpe opened his eyes and understood.

  Pierre Ducos stepped into the room. For a second Sharpe did not recognise the small, pock-skinned man with the round spectacles, and then the Christmas meeting in the Gateway of God rushed back to him. Major Pierre Ducos, who had been described to Sharpe as a dangerous man, a clever man, a man whose hands stank with the slime of politics, was responsible for this treatment, for the filthy cell, for what, Sharpe knew, was about to happen.

  Ducos wrinkled his nose then stepped almost delicately behind the table and sat. A soldier followed him and put Sharpe’s sword on the table, then his telescope, then some papers. Not a word was said until the soldier had gone. Ducos fussily aligned the edges of the papers before looking up at the English officer. ‘You slept well?’

  Sharpe ignored the question. ‘I am an officer of His Britannic Majesty’s army, and I demand the treatment proper to my rank.’ His voice came out as a dry croak.

  Ducos frowned. ‘You’re wasting my time.’ His voice was deep, as if it belonged to a much huger man.

  ‘I am an officer in His Britannic ...’

  He stopped because the huge Sergeant, on a nod from Ducos, had turned and planted one vast fist into Sharpe’s stomach, doubling him over, driving the wind from him.

  Ducos waited until Sharpe was upright again, until his breathing was normal, then smiled. ‘I believe, Mr Sharpe, that you are not an officer. By a Court-Martial decision, of which I have a record here,’ he tapped the papers, ‘you were dismissed the army. In brief you are a civilian, though masquerading as a Major Vaughn. Am I right?’

  Sharpe said nothing. Ducos unhooked the
spectacle from his ears, breathed on them, and began to polish their round lenses with a silk handkerchief he took from his sleeve. ‘I believe you are a spy, Mr Sharpe.’

  ‘I am an officer ...’

  ‘Do stop being tedious. We have already ascertained that you were cashiered. You wear a uniform to which you are not entitled, carry a name not your own, and by your own admission to General Verigny you were trying to abduct a woman in the hope that she could provide information.’ He carefully hooked the wire spectacle frames onto his ears and smiled unpleasantly at Sharpe. ‘It sounds like spying to me. Did Wellington think that by faking your execution you would become invisible?’ He laughed at his jest. ‘I will admit, Mr Sharpe, that it fooled me. I could hardly credit it when I saw you in our courtyard!’ He smiled triumphantly, then picked up the top sheet of paper. ‘It seems from what that fool Verigny has told me that you rescued La Marquesa from the convent. Is that true?’

  Sharpe said nothing. Ducos sighed. ‘I know you did, Mr Sharpe. It was inconvenient of you, to say the least. Why did you go to such lengths to rescue her?’

  ‘I wanted to go to bed with her.’

  Ducos leaned back. ‘You’re being tiresome and my time is too valuable to listen to your filth. I ask you again, why did you rescue her?’

  Sharpe repeated the answer.

  Ducos looked at the Sergeant and nodded.

  The Sergeant turned stolidly, his face expressionless, glanced up and down Sharpe and then brought his right fist hard again at the Rifleman’s stomach. Sharpe moved from the blow, his own hand going for the Sergeant’s eyes, but a bayonet chopped down on his arm and the Sergeant’s left fist crashed into his face, banging his head back on the stone wall, then the right fist was in his belly, doubling him over, and suddenly the Sergeant, as woodenly as he had turned to Sharpe, turned away and slammed to attention.

  Ducos was frowning. He watched Sharpe straighten up. Blood was coming from the Rifleman’s nose. Sharpe leaned on the wall and this time no one stopped him. The Frenchman shook his head. ‘I do dislike violence, Major, it upsets me. It has its uses, I fear, and I think you now understand that. Why did you rescue La Marquesa?’

  Sharpe gave the same answer.

  This time he let himself be hit. He had only one weapon, and he used it. He pretended to be weaker than he was. He fell to the floor, groaning, and the Sergeant disdainfully pulled him up by his jacket collar and threw him against the wall. The Sergeant smiled in victory as he turned back to Ducos.

  ‘Why did you rescue La Marquesa?’

  ‘I needed a woman.’

  This time Ducos did not nod to the Sergeant. He seemed to sigh. He took off his spectacles again, frowned, polished them with his handkerchief, then, with a small wince, hooked the wires back on his ears. ‘I believe you, Major. Your appetite would run to women like Helene, and doubtless you rut her capably. Tell me, did she ask the British for help?’

  ‘Only for a rut. It seems the French don’t do it well enough for her.’

  Sharpe braced himself for the blow, but again Ducos did not give the signal. He sighed again. ‘I should tell you, Mr Sharpe, that Sergeant Lavin is remarkably efficient at exacting words from reluctant talkers. He usually practises his art on the Spanish, but he has long wanted an Englishman.’ Ducos’ spectacles flashed two circles of grey light. ‘Indeed, he has wanted an Englishman for a long, long time.’

  Sergeant Lavin, hearing his name, turned his squat, hard-eyed head and looked at Sharpe with disdain.

  Ducos stood up and walked round the table, picking up Sharpe’s telescope as he came. ‘Before you are in no state to appreciate it, Major, I have a score to settle with you. You broke my spectacles. You put me to a deal of trouble!’ Suddenly, astonishingly, Ducos sounded angry. He seemed to control it, straightening his small body and frowning. ‘You deliberately broke my spectacles!’

  Sharpe said nothing. It was true. He had smashed Ducos’ glasses in the Gateway of God. He had done it after Ducos had insulted Teresa, Sharpe’s wife. Now Ducos held Sharpe’s telescope. ‘A very fine instrument, Major.’ He peered at the brass plate. ‘September 23rd, 1803. We called it Vendemiaire Second, Year Ten.’ Ducos, Sharpe knew, regretted the abolition of the revolutionary calendar.

  Sharpe pushed himself up from the wall. ‘Take it, Ducos, your army’s stolen everything else in Spain.’

  ‘Take it! Of course not. You think I’m a thief?’ He looked back at the brass plate. ‘The reward for one of your acts of bravery, no doubt.’ He pulled the telescope open, revealing the polished inner brass tubes. ‘No, Major Sharpe. I’m not going to take it. I’m simply going to pay back the insult you offered me.’

  With gritted teeth and sudden frenzy, Ducos swung the telescope by its eyepiece, slamming it on the stone floor and then swinging it again and again. A fortune in finely ground glass was being smashed by the small man who went on beating it, bending the tubes, scattering thick glass fragments on the stone floor. He dropped the telescope and stamped on it, splitting the brass tubes apart, then he kicked at them viciously, skittering them about the floor until, nothing left to kick at, he stood panting. He straightened his jacket and looked with a smile of pitiful triumph at the Rifleman. ‘You have paid me your personal debt, Mr Sharpe. An eye for an eye, so to speak.’

  Sharpe had watched the destruction of his telescope, his valued telescope that had been a gift from Wellington, with mounting anger and frustration. He could do nothing. Sergeant Lavin had watched him and the bayonets had been in his ribs. He forced his anger down and nodded at the sword. ‘Do it to that, Ducos.’

  ‘No, Mr Sharpe.’ Ducos was behind the table, sitting again. ‘When they ask me how you died, I shall say that I offered you parole, you accepted, and that you then attacked me with the sword I had politely returned to you. My life will be saved by Sergeant Lavin.’ The Frenchman smiled. ‘But I truly hate violence, Mr Sharpe. Would you believe me if I said I do not wish you dead?’

  ‘No.’

  Ducos shrugged. ‘It’s true. You can live. You can walk out of here with your sword. We won’t exchange you, of course, you’ll spend the rest of the war in France. We might even civilise you.’ Ducos smiled at his joke and looked down at the papers. ‘So tell me, Mr Sharpe, or even Major Sharpe if it makes you feel better, did Helene seek British help?’

  Sharpe swore at him.

  Ducos sighed and nodded. Lavin turned, stolid and unstoppable, and this time he punched Sharpe’s face, cutting his lips open and slashing a bloody line over his forehead with a ring he wore. Sharpe fell again, deliberately, and this time boots slammed into his back. He cried out, also deliberately, scrabbled with his hands, and suddenly knew hope.

  A twisted, bent tube of brass from his telescope was by the wall. He shouted again as a boot landed, grabbed the tube, and concealed it in his fist. A hand grasped his collar, hauled him up, turned him, and pushed him back to the wall.

  It was the smallest tube in his hand. He could feel the torn, knurled rim that had held the small lens of the eyepiece. The tube was six inches in length and one end was split and jagged where Ducos had stamped on it.

  Ducos waited for Sharpe’s breathing to slow, for the battered, bleeding face to face him again. ‘It may help you to know, Major, that I will ask you a number of questions to which I already have the answers. You will, therefore, suffer pain unnecessarily. Eventually you will understand the futility of that course. You were accused of murdering Helene’s husband, true?’

  ‘You know I was.’

  Ducos smiled. ‘I arranged it, Mr Sharpe. Did you know that?’ Ducos was pleased by the jerk of Sharpe’s head, the sudden surprise in the bruised eyes. Ducos liked his victims to know who was responsible for their misfortune. ‘Why did Wellington fake your death?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sharpe’s lips were swelling. He was swallowing blood. He made his breathing ragged. He was judging distances, planning not the first death, but the second.

  Ducos was enjoying the specta
cle of his enemy trampled and broken. It was not the physical beating that gave Ducos pleasure, but Sharpe’s realisation that he had been outmanoeuvred. ‘You were sent to rescue Helene?’

  Sharpe’s voice came out thickened and slurred by his bleeding lips. ‘I wanted to know why she lied in her letter.’

  The answer checked Ducos, who frowned. ‘The rescue was your own idea?’

  ‘My idea.’ Sharpe spat a gob of blood onto the floor.

  ‘How did you know where she was?’

  ‘Everyone knew. Half of bloody Spain knew.’

  Ducos accepted that truth. Her fate was supposed to have been a secret, but nothing was secret that happened in Spain. Even Verigny, a gaudy fool, had eventually discovered where his lover was held. None of that worried Ducos. All that worried Ducos was the security of the treaty. ‘So you rescued her five days ago?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And General Verigny discovered you the next day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you sleep with her, Mr Sharpe?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you said that’s why you wanted to rescue her.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have me.’ Sharpe shut his eyes and leaned his head on the wall. The last two times he had been attacked the armed soldiers had not bothered to use their bayonets to stop him retaliating. They could see he was beaten and defenceless. They were wrong, but he must wait for his moment and he was planning it carefully. He had fallen to his right the last time and the man there had stepped back and away to give Lavin room. He must be made to do it again.

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she tell you why she was in the convent?’

  ‘She wanted a rest.“

  Ducos shook his head. ‘You are a stubborn fool, Mr Sharpe.’

  ‘And you’re a filthy little bastard.’

  ‘Mr Sharpe,’ Ducos leaned back in his chair, ‘tell me what explanation she offered to you. She must have offered you some reason for her arrest?’

  Sharpe shook his head as though he was having difficulty with his senses. ‘She said she had a dream about you. She was ordered to marry you by the Emperor and she saw you naked and it was the most horrid thing she’d ever ...’