‘That’s kind of you, Patrick. It’s good to see you again.’
‘Good to see you, sir. You’re looking grand, so you are.’
‘I’m going grey.’ Sharpe touched his forelock.
‘Just a badger’s streak, sir.’ Harper had been about to add that it would attract the women, but then he remembered Jane and he bit the comment off just in time.
The two men walked along the stream which fed the mill-race. Sharpe liked to sit by this stream with a horsehair fishing line and some of Henri Lassan’s old lures. He told Harper of Frederickson’s letter. He said they would leave in the morning, bound first for Paris, then for Naples. He said he was feeling almost wholly fit and that his leg was very nearly as strong as ever. He added a lot more entirely inconsequential news, and only after a long time did he ask the question that the Irishman dreaded. Sharpe asked it in a very insouciant voice that did not in the least deceive Harper. ‘Did you manage to see Jane?’
‘So Captain d’Alembord didn’t write to you, sir?’ Harper had continued to hope that d’Alembord might have broken the bad news to Sharpe.
‘No letter reached me. Did he write?’
‘I wouldn’t know, sir. It’s just that he and I saw Mrs Sharpe together, sir, so we did.’ Harper could not bear telling the truth and tried desperately to return the conversation to its former harmless pattern. He muttered that the cows across the stream looked good and fleshy.
‘They don’t give a bad yield, either,’ Sharpe said with a surprising enthusiasm. ‘Madame has her dairymaid rub butterwort on the teats; she says it gives more milk.’
‘I must remember that one, sir.’ Harper stripped a grass stalk of its seeds which he scattered into a drainage ditch. ‘And would that be the sluice gate you rebuilt, sir?’
Sharpe proudly showed Harper how he had stripped the worm-gear of rust and smeared it with goose-fat so that the rebuilt blade would once again rise and fall. ‘See?’ The gear was still stiff, but Sharpe managed to close the gate to cut off the stream water.
‘That’s grand, sir.’ Harper was impressed.
Sharpe wound the gate open again, then sat heavily down on the stream bank. He stared away from Harper, looking across the water towards the beech trees that climbed up the northern spur of the hills. ‘Tell me about Jane.’
Harper still tried to evade telling the truth. ‘I didn’t speak to her, sir.’
Sharpe seemed not to hear the evasion. ‘It isn’t hard to explain, is it?’
‘What’s that, sir?’
Sharpe plucked a leaf of watercress from the stream’s edge. ‘I saw an eel trap once, and I was wondering whether I could put one down by the spillway.’ He pointed downstream towards the mill. ‘But I can’t remember how the damn thing worked exactly.’
Harper sat a pace or two behind Sharpe. ‘It’s like a cage, isn’t it?’
‘Something like that.’ Sharpe spat out a shred of leaf. ‘I suppose she took the money and found herself someone else?’
‘I don’t know what she did with the money, sir,’ Harper said miserably.
Sharpe turned and looked at his friend. ‘But she has found another man?’
Harper was pinned to the truth now. He hesitated for a second, then nodded bleakly. ‘It’s that bugger called Rossendale.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Sharpe turned away so that Harper would not see the pain on his face. For a split second that pain was like a red hot steel whip slashing across his soul. It hurt. He had more than half expected this news, and he had thought himself prepared for it, but it still hurt more than he could ever have dreamed. He was a soldier, and soldiers had such high pride, and no wound hurt more than damaged pride. God, it hurt.
‘Sir?’ Harper’s voice was thick with sympathy.
‘You’d better tell me everything.’ Sharpe was like a wounded man aggravating his injury in the vain hope that it would not prove so bad as he had at first feared.
Harper told how he had tried to deliver the letter, and how Lord Rossendale had scarred him with his whip. He said he was certain Jane had recognized him. His voice tailed away as he described Jane’s whoop of triumph. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Jesus, I’d have killed the bugger myself, but Mr d’Alembord threatened to turn me over to the provosts if I did.’
‘He was quite right, Patrick. It isn’t your quarrel.’ Sharpe pushed his fingers into the soft earth beside a water-rat’s hole. He had watched the otters in this stream, and envied them their playfulness. ‘I didn’t really think she’d do it,’ he said softly.
‘She’ll regret it, sir. So will he!’
‘God!’ Sharpe almost said the word as a burst of laughter, then, after another long pause during which Harper could scarcely even bear to look at him, Sharpe spoke again. ‘Her brother was rotten to his black heart.’
‘So he was, sir.’
‘Not that it really matters, Patrick. Not that it really matters at all,’ Sharpe said in a very odd voice. ‘It’s just sauce for the goose, I suppose.’
Harper did not understand, nor did he like to ask for any explanation. He sensed Sharpe’s hurt, but did not know how to salve it, so he said nothing.
Sharpe stared at the northern hill. ‘Rossendale and Jane must think I’m done for, don’t they?’
‘I suppose so, sir. They think the Crapauds will arrest you for murder and chop your head off.’
‘Perhaps they will.’ Not six months before, Sharpe thought, he had commanded his own battalion, had a wife he loved, and could have called upon the patronage of a prince. Now he wore a cuckold’s horns and would be the laughing stock of his enemies, but there was nothing he could do except bear the agony. He pushed himself upright. ‘We’ll not mention this again, Sergeant.’
‘No, sir.’ Harper was feeling immensely relieved. Sharpe, he thought, had taken the news far better than he had expected.
‘And tomorrow we leave for Paris,’ Sharpe said brusquely. ‘You’ve got money?’
‘I fetched some from London, sir.’
‘We’ll hire horses in Caen. Perhaps, if you’d be kind enough, you’ll lend me some so I can pay Madame Castineau for her services to me? I’ll repay you when I can.’ Sharpe frowned. ‘If I can.’
‘Don’t even think about repaying it, sir.’
‘So let’s go and kill the bugger!’ Sharpe spoke with an extraordinary malevolence, and Harper somehow doubted whether Pierre Ducos was the man Sharpe spoke of.
Next morning they wrapped their weapons and, in a summer rainstorm, left Lucille’s château to find an enemy.
CHAPTER TWELVE
If William Frederickson was in need of solace after his disappointment that Lucille Castineau had rejected his proposal of marriage, then no place was better provided to supply that solace than Paris.
At first he made no efforts to track down Pierre Ducos; instead he simply threw himself into an orgy of distraction to take his mind away from the widow Castineau. He wandered the city streets and admired building after building. He sketched Notre-Dame, the Conciergerie, the Louvre, and his favourite building, the Madeleine. His best drawing, for it was suffused with his own misery, was of the abandoned Arc de Triomphe, intended to be a massive monument to Napoleon’s victories, but now nothing more than the stumps of unfaced