Loyalty to her man had brought Lucille to Brussels. She had never been a Bonapartist, yet that distaste had not made it any easier for her to leave France and follow an army that must fight against her countrymen. Lucille had left France because she loved Sharpe, whom she knew was a better man than he thought himself to be. The war, she told herself, would end one day, but love was timeless and she would fight for it, just as she would fight to give her child his father’s company. Lucille had lost one good man; she would not lose a second.
And tonight, surprisingly, she had an opportunity to dance with her good man. Lucille took a last look in the mirror, decided there was nothing that could be done to make herself any more elegant or beautiful, and so picked up her small bag that contained the precious pasteboard ticket. She kissed her child, gave her hair one last despairing pat, and went to a ball.
A tall man waited at the stable entrance of the lodging house where Lucille Castineau had rented two attic rooms. He was a man whose frightening appearance commanded instant respect. His height, four inches over six feet, was formidable enough, yet he also carried the muscles to match his inches and this evening he looked even more threatening for he hefted an oak cudgel and had a long-barrelled horse-pistol thrust into his belt and a British army rifle slung on one shoulder. He had sandy hair and a flat hard face. The man was in civilian clothes, yet, in this city thronged with soldiers, he had a confidence that suggested he might well have worn a uniform in his time.
The tall man had been leaning against the stable’s open gates, but straightened up as Lucille appeared from the house. She looked nervously at the western sky, tumultuous with dark clouds that had so hastened the dusk that the first lamps were already being lit in the city’s archways and windows. ‘Shall I bring an umbrella?’ she asked.
‘It’s not going to rain tonight, ma’am.’ The tall man spoke with the harsh accent of Ulster.
‘You don’t have to walk me, Patrick.’
‘And what else would I be doing tonight? Besides, the Colonel doesn’t want you walking the streets alone after dark.’ Harper took a step back and gave Lucille an appreciative smile. ‘You look just grand, so you do!’
Lucille laughed good-naturedly at the compliment. ‘It’s a very old dress, Patrick.’
In truth Patrick Harper had not really noticed Lucille’s dress, but, being a married man, he knew the importance a woman attached to a compliment. Harper’s own wife would need more than a few such compliments when he reached home, for she had been adamantly opposed to her husband travelling to Brussels. ‘Why do you do this to me?’ Isabella had demanded. ‘You’re not a soldier any more! You have no need to go! Your place is here, with me!’
That place was Dublin, where, at the end of the last war, Harper had gone with a saddlebag full of stolen gold. The treasure had come from the French baggage captured at Vitoria in Spain, a country where Sergeant Patrick Harper had found both wealth and a wife. Discharged from the army, he had intended to return to his beloved Donegal, but he had reached no further than Dublin where he bought a tavern close to the city’s quays. The tavern also did a thriving trade in the sale of stolen horses, an activity that provided Harper with an excuse to travel deep into the Irish countryside. The return of the Emperor to France and the subsequent declaration of war had been good for Harper’s trade; a good hunter stolen from a Protestant plantation in Ireland would fetch a prime price in England where so many officers equipped themselves for the campaign.
Harper had used the excuse of horse-trading to explain his journey to Isabella, but she knew the real truth of his escapade. It was not horses that fetched Harper to Belgium, but Sharpe. Sharpe and Harper were friends. For six years, on battlefields and in sieges, they had fought side by side and Harper, as soon as he heard of the new war, had waited for a word from his old officer. Instead, and to Isabella’s chagrin, Sharpe had come to Dublin himself. At first it had seemed he was only there to sit out the war with his French woman, but then the summons had come from the Dutch army and Isabella had known that her husband would follow Sharpe.
Isabella had tried to dissuade Patrick. She had threatened to leave him and return to Badajoz. She had cursed him. She had wept, but Harper had dismissed her fears. ‘I’m only going to trade a few horses, woman, nothing else.’
‘You won’t be fighting?’
‘Now why in the name of all Ireland would I want to be fighting?’
‘Because of him,’ Isabella knew her man, ‘and because you can’t resist joining a fight.’
‘I’m not in the army, woman. I just want to make a few pennies by selling some horseflesh. Where’s the harm in that?’
In the end Harper had sworn a sacred oath on the Holy Mother and on all the bleeding wounds of Christ that he would not go into battle, that he would remember he was a husband and a father, and that if he so much as heard a musket shot he would turn tail and run away.
‘Did you hear there was a wee scrap down south today?’ Harper’s voice had a note of relish as he spoke of the fighting to Lucille.
‘A battle?’ Lucille sounded alarmed.
‘Probably just a skirmish, ma’am.’ Harper thrust aside the beggars who shuffled and reached towards Lucille. ‘I expect the Emperor’s getting bored with the waiting and decided to see if anyone was awake on this side of the border.’
‘Perhaps that’s why I haven’t heard from Richard today.’
‘If he’s got a choice between a battle and a dance, ma’am, then begging your presence, he’ll take the battle any day.’ Harper laughed. ‘He’s never been much of a man for dancing, not unless he’s drunk and then he’ll dance with the best of them.’ Harper suddenly realized that he might be betraying some confidences. ‘Not that I’ve ever seen him drunk, ma‘am.’
Lucille smiled. ‘Of course not, Patrick.’
‘But we’ll hear from him soon enough.’ Harper raised the cudgel to drive away the beggars who swarmed ever more threateningly the closer they got to the Duke and Duchess of Richmond’s rented house. There were beggars throughout Europe. Peace had not brought prosperity, but higher prices, and the normal ranks of the indigent had been swollen by discharged soldiers. By day a woman could safely walk Brussels’ streets, but at night the pavements became dangerous. ‘Get back, you bastards! Get back!’ Harper thrust two ragged men aside. Beyond the gutter shouting children pursued the polished carriages that rattled towards the rue de la Blanchisserie, but the coachmem were experts with their long whips which snapped sharply back to drive the urchins off.
A squadron of British Hussars were on duty in the rue de la Blanchisserie to keep the beggars away from the wealthy. A helpful corporal with a drawn sabre rode his horse in front of Harper to help clear Lucille’s passage to the big house.
‘I’ll wait for you, ma’am,’ Harper told Lucille when they were safely in the courtyard.
‘You don’t have to, Patrick. I’m sure Richard will escort me home.’
‘I’ll wait here, ma’am,’ Harper insisted.
Lucille was nervous as she climbed the steps. A gorgeously dressed footman inspected her ticket, then bowed her into the hallway which was brilliant with candles and thronged with people. Lucille already felt dowdy. She glanced about the hall, hoping against hope that Richard would be waiting for her, but there was no sign of Sharpe, nor of any of the Prince of Orange’s staff. Lucille felt friendless in an enemy country, but then was relieved to see the Dowager Countess of Mauberges who, like so many other Belgian aristocracy, thought of herself as French and wanted the world to know it. The old lady was defiantly wearing her dead husband’s Legion d‘honneurabout her neck. ‘Your husband was a member of the Legion, was he not?’ she greeted Lucille.
‘Indeed he was.’
‘Then you should wear his medal.’
Not that the ball needed an extra medal for, to Lucille, it seemed as though a jewel shop had been exploded into extravagant shards of light and colour. The colour came from the men’s uniforms, gorgeous unifo
rms, uniforms of scarlet and gold, royal blue and saffron, silver and black; uniforms of Hussars, Dragoons, Guards, Jaegers and kilted Highlanders. There were plumes, froggings, epaulettes, aigulettes, and gold-furnished scabbards. There were fur-edged dolmans, silk-lined pelisses, and gorgets of pure gold. There were princes, dukes, earls, and counts. There were plenipotentiaries in court uniforms so decked with gold that their coats seemed like sheets of light. There were jewelled stars and enamelled crosses worn on sashes of brilliant silk, and all lit by the glittering chandeliers which had been hoisted to the ceiling with their burdens of fine white candles.
The women wore paler colours; white or washed yellow or delicate blue. Those ladies slim and brave enough to wear the high fashion were ethereal in gauzy dresses that clung to their bodies as they moved. The candlelight glinted from pearls and rubies, diamonds and gold. The room smelt of scents - orange water or eau de cologne, beneath which were the sharper smells of hair powder and sweat. ‘I don’t know’, the Dowager Countess leaned close to Lucille, ‘why some of them bother to dress at all! Look at that creature!’
The Countess jabbed her walking cane in the direction of a girl with bright gold ringlets and eyes as radiant as sapphires. The girl was undeniably beautiful, and clearly knew it for she was wearing no petticoat and a diaphanous dress of pale gold that did little to hide her body. ‘She might as well be stark naked!’ the Countess said.
‘It’s the fashion.’ Lucille felt very drab.
‘When I was a girl it took twelve yards of cloth just to make an underskirt for a ball gown. Now they simply unfold some cheesecloth and throw it over their shoulders!’ Hardly that even, for most of the womens’ shoulders were bared, just as most bosoms were almost naked. ‘And see how they walk! Just like men.’ In the Countess’s childhood, before the Revolution, and before Belgium had been liberated from Austrian rule by the French, women had been taught to glide along a floor, their feet hidden by wide skirts and their slippers barely leaving the polished boards. The effect was graceful, suggesting effortless motion, while now the girls seemed not to care. The Countess shook her head with disgust. ‘You can tell they’re Protestants! No manners, no grace, no breeding.’
Lucille diverted the old lady by showing her the supper room which, like the ballroom, had been draped with the Belgian colours of black, gold and scarlet. Beneath the silk hangings the long tables were covered in white linen and were thick with silver and fine china.
‘They’ll lose all the spoons tonight!’ the Countess said with undisguised satisfaction, then turned as applause greeted the stately polonaise which had progressed from the far side of the house, advanced through the entrance hall and now entered the ballroom to open the dancing formally. Lucille and the Countess sat by the supper room entrance. The uniformed officers and their ladies stepped delicately in the dancing line, they bowed and curtseyed. The music rang sweetly. A child, allowed to stay up and watch the ball’s beginning, stared wide-eyed from a balcony, while the Countess tapped her stick on the parquet floor in time to the music.
After the polonaise, the first waltz brightened the room with its jaunty rhythm. The windows were black with night, but sheeted with the reflections of a thousand candles sparkling on ten thousand jewels. Champagne and laughter ruled the room, while the dancers whirled in glittering joy.
Lucille watched the pretty girl in the diaphanous golden dress who danced with a tall and handsome officer in British cavalry uniform. Lucille noted how the girl refused all partners but that one man and she felt a surge of sympathy because she knew the girl must be in love, just as she herself was in love. Lucille thought the girl and the cavalry officer made a very fine couple, but she wished the girl would smile rather than hold her face in such a cold and supercilious expression.
Then Lucille forgot the girl as the ballroom was swamped by a sudden and prolonged applause, which forced the orchestra to pause.
The Duke of Wellington had appeared with his staff. He stood in the ballroom entrance and acknowledged the applause with a small bow. He was not a tall man, but something about his confidence and reputation gave him an impressive stature. He was dressed in the scarlet and gold of a British field marshal with a tactful Netherlands decoration worn on an orange sash.
Lucille, politely applauding with the rest of the room, wondered whether this man truly was the greatest soldier of his time. Many, including Sharpe, insisted that he was. No one, not even the Emperor, had fought so many battles, and no other General had won all the battles he had ever fought, though the Duke, as every person in the ballroom was aware, had never fought the Emperor. In Vienna, where the Duke had travelled as Britain’s ambassador to the Congress, society had greeted him with outrageous flattery, calling him ‘le vainqueur du vainqueur du monde’, but Lucille guessed that Bonaparte might have other ideas of the Duke’s military stature.
Now the conqueror of the world’s conqueror gestured to stop the applause. ‘He has a good leg,’ the Dowager Countess confided in Lucille.
‘He’s a handsome man,’ Lucille agreed.
‘And he’s not in a corset. You can tell that by the way they bow. My husband never wore a corset, not like some here tonight.’ The Countess cast a scathing eye at the dancers who were beginning yet another waltz, then looked back to the Duke. ‘He’s a young man.’
‘Forty-six,’ Lucille told her, ‘the same age as the Emperor.’
‘Generals are getting younger. I’m sure the soldiers don’t like it. How can a man have confidence in a stripling?’
The Countess fell into a disapproving silence as a young and handsome British officer offered Lucille a low and evidently uncorseted bow. ‘My dear Lucille!’ Captain Peter d’Alembord was resplendent in scarlet coat and white breeches.
‘Captain!’ Lucille responded with a genuine pleasure. ‘How nice to see a friendly face.’
‘My Colonel received an invitation, didn’t know what to do with such a thing, so gave it to me. I can’t believe you’ve persuaded Sharpe to attend, or have you turned him into a dancing man?’
‘He’s supposed to be accompanying the Prince.’ Lucille named d’Alembord to the Dowager Countess of Mauberges who gave the officer a very suspicious examination.
‘Your name is French!’ the Countess accused him.
‘My family were Huguenots, my lady, and therefore unwanted in la belle France.’ D‘Alembord’s contemptuous scorn for France made the Countess bridle, but he had already turned back to Lucille. ‘You’ll do me the honour of dancing?’
Lucille would. D‘Alembord was an old friend who had dined frequently with Sharpe and Lucille since they had come to the Netherlands. Both men had served in the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers where d’Alembord had succeeded Sharpe to the command of the first battalion’s light company. That battalion was now bivouacked in a village to the west of Brussels where d‘Alembord had heard no news of any skirmishes on the frontier. Instead his day had been spent indulging the Colonel’s passion for cricket. ‘I think he plans to kill us all with boredom,’ d’Alembord told Lucille as they took the floor.
‘Poor Peter.’
‘Not at all, I am the most fortunate of men. Except for Sharpe, of course.’
Lucille smiled at the dutiful but pleasing compliment. ‘Of course. And how is Anne?’
‘Very well. She writes to tell me that her father has found a house that will be suitable for us. Not too large, but with adequate stabling and a few acres of grazing.’
‘I’m glad for you.’
D‘Alembord smiled. ‘I’m rather glad for me, too.’
‘So stay alive to enjoy it, Peter!’
‘Don’t even tempt fate to suggest I won’t.’ D’Alembord was newly engaged, and filled with a touching happiness at the prospect of his marriage. Lucille rather envied him, wishing that she could marry Sharpe. That admission made her smile to herself. Who would ever have believed that Lucille, Vicomtesse de Seleglise and widow of Colonel Xavier Castineau, would be mother to a half-En
glish bastard?
She turned lithely to the music and saw that the blue-eyed girl in the golden dress was watching her very coldly. Was it the dowdy grey dress that had earned the girl’s scorn? Lucille suddenly felt very shabby and uncomfortable. She turned her back to the girl.
‘Good God!’ D‘Alembord, who was a very good dancer, suddenly faltered. His eyes were fixed on someone or something at the room’s edge and Lucille, turning to see what had caught his astonished attention, saw the golden girl returning d’Alembord’s gaze with what seemed to be pure poison.
‘Who is she?’ Lucille asked.
D‘Alembord had quite given up any attempt to dance. Instead he offered Lucille his arm and walked her off the floor. ‘Don’t you know?’
Lucille stopped, turned to look at the girl once more then, intuitively, she knew the answer and looked for confirmation into d‘Alembord’s worried face. ‘That’s Richard’s wife?’ She could not hide her astonishment.
‘God only knows what she’s doing here! And with her damned lover!’ D‘Alembord steered Lucille firmly away from Jane and Lord John Rossendale. ‘Richard will kill him!’
Lucille could not resist turning one more time. ‘She’s very beautiful,’ she said sadly, then she lost sight of Jane as the Duke of Wellington’s party moved across the ballroom floor.
The Duke was offering bland reassurance about the scanty news of the day’s skirmishes. Brussels was full of rumours about a French attack, rumours that the Duke was scarcely able to correct or deny. He knew there had been fighting about Charleroi, and he had heard of some skirmishes being fought in the villages south of the Prince of Orange’s headquarters, but whether the French had invaded in force, or whether there was an attack coming in the direction of Mons, the Duke still did not know. Some of his staff had urged that he abandon the Duchess’s ball, but such an act, he knew, would only have offered encouragement to the Emperor’s many supporters in Brussels and could even have prompted the wholesale desertion of Belgian troops. The Duke had to appear confident of victory or else every waverer in his army would run to be with the Emperor and the winning side.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil Page 41
