Sharpe's Revenge (16 page)

‘The Emperor,' Roland hooked his thumbs behind his coat's lapels, ‘decided that, should he be defeated, he might perhaps sail to the United States where he was assured of a warm welcome. I cannot say that he was enthusiastic about such a plan, but it was nevertheless urged upon him by his brother who alarmed the Emperor by tales of the ignominy that the family would suffer if they were forced to surrender to their enemies. Happily the generosity of those enemies has made such prophecies worthless,' again Roland had flattered his hosts, ‘and it is now evident that the Emperor may confidently rely on his victors to treat him with a proper dignity.'

‘Indeed.' Wigram could not forbear the pompous interruption.

Frederickson, who had always had a great facility at sketching, was now surrounding his two Rifle officers with a battery of field artillery. All the guns faced the two Greenjackets.

Roland paused to drink water. ‘Nevertheless,' he began again, ‘at Joseph's instigation, preparations were made for an emergency flight from France. Thus, at all times, a travelling coach stood prepared for the Emperor. In its baggage were clothes, uniforms, and decorations. However, the Emperor understood that the carriage could not be too heavily burdened, or else its weight would impede his flight. He therefore arranged, and in the most solemn secrecy, to have his heavy baggage stored at a coastal fort where, in the event of flight, it could be swiftly loaded on board a ship and carried to the United States of America. The officer chosen to convey that baggage to the Atlantic coast was a Colonel Maillot. I have here copies of his orders, signed by the Emperor himself.' Roland picked up the sheets of paper and carried them to the three members of the tribunal.

‘Where is this Colonel now?' the English lawyer asked sharply. Despite his unfriendly face, the lawyer seemed assiduous to ask any question that might help Sharpe and Frederickson.

‘Colonel Maillot is being sought,' Roland replied suavely. ‘Sadly the present confusion in France makes his whereabouts a mystery. It is even possible, alas, that Colonel Maillot was killed in the last few weeks of the fighting.'

There was silence as the tribunal scanned the papers. Frederickson, abandoning his gloomy drawing, wrote a quick question. ‘Have you heard of Maillot?'

‘No,' Sharpe scrawled in reply.

Roland had returned to his own table and picked up another sheet of paper. ‘Colonel Maillot delivered the baggage to a trusted officer here in Bordeaux. That officer was a Major named Pierre Ducos.'

Sharpe hissed a curse under his breath. Now he understood why he was in this room. He did not know how Ducos had worked this, but Sharpe knew who his enemies were, and none was more remorseless than Pierre Ducos. Sharpe felt ambushed. He had been prepared to fight down the clumsy and untruthful attack of the disgraced Captain Bampfylde, and all the time it had been the far more dangerous, and far more cunning, Pierre Ducos who had been working for his downfall. ‘I know Ducos,' he wrote.

‘Major Ducos,' Roland went blandly on, ‘conveyed the baggage in great secrecy to the Teste de Buch fort which covers the seaward entrance of the Bassin d'Arcachon.'

‘He's lying!' Sharpe interrupted.

‘Quiet!' Wigram slapped the table.

‘It was that fortress, of course,' Roland was quite unmoved by Sharpe's interruption, ‘which, thanks to the great gallantry of Major Sharpe,' here Roland bowed slightly towards the angry Sharpe, ‘was captured shortly after the baggage had been conveyed thither. The baggage consisted of four large wooden crates that had been concealed inside the fortress.'

‘How were the crates concealed?' Frederickson asked, but in such a respectful tone that no one reprimanded him for interrupting.

‘I have here Major Ducos's report,' Roland held up the sheets of paper, ‘which reveals that the four wooden crates were bricked up in the fort's main magazine. The work was done by men entirely loyal to the Emperor. None of the fort's garrison was present when the work was done, and only the fort's commandant was apprised of the existence of the baggage. The tribunal already has copies of the commandant's report, and that of Major Ducos, but I now submit those officers' original documents.'

The papers were duly handed across, and again there was silence as the tribunal perused them. It was the Adjutant-General's lawyer who broke the silence with a petulant complaint that the Commandant's handwriting was almost illegible.

‘Commandant Lassan explains in the final paragraph of his report that he lost two fingers of his right hand during the defence of the fort,' Roland excused the almost indecipherable scrawl, ‘but you will nevertheless discover that your copy is an exact transcription of his words.'

‘I assume,' the Adjutant-General's lawyer aligned the edges of the papers in front of him, ‘that, if it should prove necessary, these officers can give evidence?'

‘Indeed,' Roland bowed acknowledgement of the point, ‘but they were unwilling to travel into British-held territory at this moment.'

‘We are fortunate,' Wigram said fulsomely, ‘that you yourself showed no such reluctance, Monsieur Roland.'

Roland bowed at the compliment, then explained that he had travelled with a party of British officers to London where he had taken this matter to the Judge Advocate General in Whitehall. That official had ordered the Adjutant-General to establish an investigative tribunal, and ordered the Royal Navy to bring Monsieur Roland to Bordeaux. The Frenchman picked up his papers again. ‘You will notice, gentlemen, that on the final page of Commandant Lassan's account, he states that when the fortress was finally reoccupied by the French, the baggage was gone.' Roland paused to look at his copy of the report. ‘You will further note from Commandant Lassan's testimony that before the fort was evacuated by the British he saw heavy objects being transported from the seaward bastions to the American's vessel.'

The Adjutant-General's lawyer frowned. ‘Do we have any other evidence which confirms that the baggage was hidden in the fortress? What about this General,' he leafed through his papers, ‘Calvet. He eventually reoccupied the fort, so wouldn't he have known about it?'

‘General Calvet was never informed of its presence,' Roland said, ‘the Emperor's instructions were adamant that as few men as possible were to know of his preparations for exile. France was still fighting, gentlemen, and it would not have served the Emperor well if men had thought he was already contemplating defeat and flight.'

‘But Calvet's evidence would be instructive,' the English lawyer insisted. ‘He could, for instance, confirm whether baggage was indeed removed to the American's ship?'

Roland paused, then shrugged. ‘General Calvet, gentlemen, has proclaimed an unswerving loyalty to the deposed Emperor. I doubt whether he would co-operate with this tribunal.'

‘I would have thought we had quite sufficient evidence anyway,' Wigram said.

Roland smiled his thanks for Wigram's help, then continued. ‘The inference of Commandant Lassan's report, gentlemen, is that the Emperor's baggage was taken by the British forces under Major Sharpe's command. They had every right to do so, of course, for the baggage was properly a seizure of war.'

‘Then why are you here?' the Provost officer asked in a pained voice.

Roland smiled. ‘Permit me to remind you that I am here on behalf of his Most Christian Majesty, Louis XVIII. It is the opinion of His Majesty's legal advisers, myself among them, that if the seizure of the imperial baggage was a legitimate act of war, and as such was duly reported to the proper authorities, then it now belongs to the government of Great Britain. If, however,' and here Roland turned to look at the two Riflemen, ‘the seizure was for private gain, and was never so reported, then our opinion holds that the said baggage is now the property of the Emperor's political successor, which is the French Crown, and that the French Crown would be justified in any attempts to recover it.'

Lieutenant-Colonel Wigram dipped a quill in ink. ‘Perhaps it would help the tribunal, Monsieur Roland, if you were to tell us the contents of the Emperor's baggage?'

‘With the greatest pleasure, Colonel.' Roland picked up another sheet of paper. ‘There were some personal items. These were not inventoried properly, for they were packed in great haste, but we know there were some uniforms, decorations, portraits, snuff boxes, swords, candlesticks, and other keepsakes of a sentimental nature. There was also a valise of monogrammed small clothes.' He mentioned the last item with a deprecating smile, and was rewarded with appreciative laughter. Roland was making his revelations with a lawyer's innate skill, though in truth the clumsiest of speakers could have held the room spellbound. For years the Emperor Napoleon had been an apparently superhuman enemy endowed with an exotic and fascinating evil, yet now, in this magnificent room, the tribunal was hearing from a man who could provide them with an intimate glimpse of that extraordinary being. ‘Some of these possessions,' Roland went on, ‘belonged to Joseph Bonaparte, but the bulk of the baggage belonged to the Emperor, and the greatest part of that baggage was coin. There were twenty wooden boxes, five in each crate, and each box contained ten thousand gold francs.'

Roland paused to let each man work out the fabulous sum. ‘As I said earlier,' he went on blandly, ‘His Most Christian Majesty will have no claim upon this property if it should transpire that it was a seizure of war. If, however, the baggage is still unaccounted for, we shall take a most strenuous interest in its recovery.'

‘Jesus Christ,' Frederickson hissed. He had written the sum of two hundred thousand francs under his drawing of the beleaguered Riflemen, and now, beside it, he wrote its crude equivalent in English pounds, £89,000, os, od. It was a fabulous sum, even dwarfing Sharpe's fortune. Frederickson seemed dissatisfied with that simple total, for he went on feverishly totting up other figures.

Wigram's twin lenses turned on Sharpe. ‘I believe I am correct in saying that you reported no capture of money on your return from the Teste de Buch expedition, Major?'

‘I did not, because there was none.'

‘If there had been,' the provost Lieutenant-Colonel broke in, ‘you would agree that it would have been your duty to hand it over to the competent authorities?'

‘Of course,' Sharpe said, though he had never known a single soldier actually to surrender such windfalls of enemy gold. Neither Sharpe nor Harper had declared the fortunes they had taken from the French baggage at Vitoria.

‘But you are insisting that you did not discover any money in the fort?' the provost pressed Sharpe.

‘We found no money,' Sharpe said firmly.

‘And you would deny,' the Lieutenant-Colonel's tone was sharper now, ‘that you divided such a spoil with the American, Killick, and that, indeed, your only motive for delaying your departure from the fort, which delay, I must say, occasioned many deaths among your men, was solely so that you could make arrangements to remove the gold?'

‘That's a lie.' Sharpe was standing now.

Frederickson touched a hand to Sharpe's arm, as if to calm him. ‘By my reckonings,' Frederickson said calmly, ‘that amount of gold would weigh somewhat over six tons. Are you suggesting that two companies of Riflemen and a handful of Marines somehow managed to remove six tons of gold, their own wounded men, and all their personal baggage while they were under enemy fire?'

‘That is precisely what is being suggested,' the provost said icily.

‘Have you ever been under fire?' Frederickson enquired just as icily.

Wigram, disliking the twist that the questions were taking, slapped the table and stared at Frederickson. ‘Did you enrich yourself with captured gold at the Teste de Buch fort, Captain?'

‘I emphatically deny doing any such thing, sir,' Frederickson spoke with dignity, ‘and can state with certain knowledge that Major Sharpe is equally innocent.'

‘Are you, Major?' Wigram asked Sharpe.

‘I took no money.' Sharpe tried to match Frederickson's calm dignity.

Wigram's face flickered with a smile, as though he was about to make a very telling point. ‘Yet not a month ago, Major, your wife withdrew more than eighteen thousand pounds...'

‘God damn you!' For a second the whole tribunal thought that Sharpe was about to draw his big sword, climb the table, and cause carnage. ‘God damn you!' Sharpe shouted again. ‘You have the temerity to suggest I'd let men die for greed and you have spied on my wife! If you were a man, Wigram, I'd call you out now and I'd fillet you.' Such was the force of Sharpe's words, and such the anger evident on his face, that the tribunal was cowed. Monsieur Roland frowned, not with disapproval, but at the thought of facing a man like Sharpe in battle. Frederickson, sitting beside Sharpe, watched the faces of the aghast tribunal and believed that his friend had entirely pricked the ridiculous charges with his blazing anger. Wigram, accustomed to the servility of clerks, could say nothing.

Then the tall gilded door opened.

Captain Salmon, oblivious of the room's charged atmosphere, carried in a white cloth bag that he laid on the table in front of Colonel Wigram. He whispered something to the Colonel, then, with the obsequious step of a servant, left the room.

Wigram, with hands that almost trembled, opened the white bag. Out of it he drew Sharpe's telescope. He peered myopically at the engraved plate, then, steeling himself for the confrontation, looked up at the Rifleman. ‘If you are innocent, Major, then how do you explain your possession of this glass?'

‘I've owned it for months,' Sharpe snapped.