Sharpe's Revenge (23 page)

Then, just a week before the betrothal ceremony, the first armed brigands were reported in the château's vicinity.

The report came from a man ditching the top fields above the mill-stream. He had watched as some ragged fugitives, all armed and wearing the vestiges of imperial uniforms, had skulked along the stream-bed. They had been carrying two slaughtered lambs.

That night Henri Lassan slept with a loaded musket beside his bed. He barricaded the bridges over the moat with old cider vats, then released geese into the yard to act as sentries. Geese were more reliable than dogs, but no strangers disturbed the geese, neither that night nor the next, and Henri dared to hope that the vagabonds had merely been passing through the district.

Then, just the very next day, a horrific report came of a farmhouse burned beyond the next village of Seleglise. The smoke of the burning barn could be plainly seen from the château. The farmer, all his family, and both his maid-servants had been killed. The details of the massacre, brought by the miller of Seleglise, were appalling, so much so that Henri did not tell either his mother or Lucille. The miller, an elderly and devout man, shook his head. ‘They were Frenchmen who did this, my Lord.'

‘Or Poles, or Germans, or Italians.' Lassan knew there were desperate men of all those nationalities released from Napoleon's defeated armies. Somehow he did not wish to believe that Frenchmen could do such things to their own kind.

‘All the same,' the miller said, ‘they were once soldiers of France.'

‘True,' and that same day Henri Lassan donned the uniform he had hoped never to wear again, strapped on a sword, and led a party of his neighbours on a hunt for the murderers. The farmers who rode with him were brave men, but even they baulked at riding into the deep forest beyond Seleglise where the murderous vagabonds had doubtless taken shelter. The farmers contented themselves with firing shots blindly into the trees. They scared a lot of pigeons and lacerated many leaves, but no shots were fired back.

Lassan considered postponing the betrothal ceremony, but his mother was adamantly against such a course. It had taken the Dowager the best part of twenty years to persuade her adult son to take a bride, and she was not about to risk that happy eventuality because of a few vagrant scum lurking five miles away. It seemed her faith was rewarded, for there were no further incidents, and every guest travelled in safety to the château.

The betrothal ceremony, though modest, went very well. The weather was fine, Marie Pellemont looked as beautiful as her relieved mother could make her, while Henri Lassan, in a suit of fine blue cloth that had belonged to his father, looked properly noble. The Dowager had brought out the remains of the family's silver, including a great dish, three feet across and a foot deep, which was cast in the form of a scallop shell cradling the de Lassan coat-of-arms. A flautist, violinist and drummer from the village provided the music, there was country dancing, and there was the solemn giving of pledges followed by the exchange of gifts. Mademoiselle Pellemont received a bolt of beautiful pale-blue silk from China; a treasure that the Dowager had possessed for fifty years, always meaning to make it into a gown fit for Versailles itself. Henri received a silver-hilted pistol that had once belonged to Marie's father. The village
curé
muddled the words of his blessing, while the local doctor, a widower, danced so much with Lucille that the tongues wagged happily about the château's courtyard from which the compost heap had been removed in honour of this great day. Soon, the villagers thought, the widow Castineau would also be married, and not before time, because Lucille was nearly thirty, childless, and was a woman of the most excellent kindness and disposition. The doctor, the village thought, could do far far worse, though doubtless the widow Castineau could do far better.

By midnight all the guests had gone, except for three male cousins from Rouen who would spend the night in the château. Henri put his new pistol into a drawer, then went to the kitchen where his three cousins were sousing themselves with good Calvados. Lucille and Marie, the elderly kitchen-maid, were scouring the great scallop dish with handfuls of abrasive straw, while the Dowager was complaining that Madame Pellemont had been insufficiently appreciative of the bolt of silk. ‘I warrant she hasn't seen fabric of that quality since before the revolution.'

‘Marie liked it,' Lucille was ever the peace-maker, ‘and she's promised to make her wedding dress from it, Maman.'

Henri, reminded of that ordeal which he faced in a month's time, said he was going outside to release the geese. He did so, then, wondering whether he had made the right choice by agreeing to marry, he leaned against the château's wall and stared up at the full moon. It was a warm night, even muggy, and the moon was surrounded by a gauzy halo. He could hear music coming from the village and he supposed that the revelry was continuing in the wineshop by the church.

‘It's going to rain tomorrow.' The Dowager came out from the kitchen door and looked up at the hazed moon.

‘We need some rain.'

‘It's a warm night.' The Dowager offered her arm to her son. ‘Perhaps it will be a hot summer. I do hope so. I notice that I feel the cold more keenly than I used to.'

Henri walked his mother to the bridge which led to the dairy. They stopped on the bridge's planks, just short of the new barricade, and stared down into the still, black and moon-reflecting water of the moat.

‘I see you're wearing your father's sword,' the Dowager suddenly said.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm glad.' The Dowager lifted her head to listen to the music which still sounded from the village. ‘It's almost like the old days.'

‘Is it?'

‘We used to dance a great deal before the revolution. Your father was a great dancer, and had a fine voice.'

‘I know.'

The Dowager smiled. ‘Thank you for agreeing to marry, Henri.'

Henri smiled, but said nothing.

‘You'll find Mademoiselle Pellemont is a most agreeable girl,' the Dowager said.

‘She won't be a difficult wife,' Henri agreed.

‘She's like your sister, in some ways. She's not given to vapours or airs. I don't like women who have vaporous souls; they aren't to be trusted.'

‘Indeed not.' Henri leaned on the bridge's balustrade, then jerked upright as the geese suddenly hissed behind him.

The Dowager gripped her son's arm. ‘Henri!'

The Dowager had been alarmed by footsteps which had suddenly sounded by the dairy where flagstones provided a firm footing in the sea of hoof-churned mud. There were dark shapes moving among the mooncast shadows. ‘Who is it?' Henri called.

‘My Lord?' It was a deep voice that replied. The tone of the voice was respectful, even friendly.

‘Who is it?' Henri called again, then gently pushed his mother towards the lit door of the kitchen.

But, before the Dowager could take a single pace, two smiling men appeared from the shadows. They were both tall, long-haired men who wore green uniform jackets. They walked on to the far end of the bridge with their hands held wide to show that they meant no harm. Both men wore swords and both had muskets slung on their shoulders.

‘Who are you?' Lassan challenged the strangers.

‘You're Henri, Comte de Lassan?' the taller of the two men asked politely.

‘I am,' Lassan replied. ‘And who are you?'

‘We have a message for you, my Lord.'

The Dowager, reassured by the respect in the stranger's voice, stood beside her son.

‘Well?' Lassan demanded.

The two uniformed men were standing very close to the barricade, not two paces from Lassan. They still smiled as, with a practised speed, they unslung the heavy weapons from their shoulders.

‘Run, Maman!' Henri pushed his mother towards the château. ‘Lucille! The bell! Ring the bell!' He turned after his mother and tried to shield her with his body.

The tallest of the two men fired first and his bullet entered Lassan's back between two of his lower ribs. The bullet was deflected upwards, exploding his heart into bloody shreds, then flattened itself on the inside of his breastbone. As he fell he pushed his mother in the small of her back, making her stumble down to her knees.

The Dowager turned to see the second man's gun pointed at her. She stared defiantly. ‘Animal!'

The second man fired and his bullet smacked through the Dowager's right eye and into her brain.

Mother and son were dead.

Lucille came to the kitchen door and screamed.

The two men climbed the barricade and walked into the château's yard. There were other shapes in the darkness behind them.

Lucille ran back into the kitchen where her cousins were struggling to their feet. One of the cousins, less drunk than his companions, drew his pistol, cocked it, and went to the door from where he saw the dark shapes at the far side of the yard. He fired. Lucille pushed him aside and raised the great blunderbuss that was kept loaded and ready above the soap vats. She cocked it, then fired it at the murderers. The butt hammered with brutal pain into her shoulder. One of the two killers shouted with agony as he was hit. The other two cousins pushed past Lucille and ran into the darkness, but a fusillade of gunfire from beyond the moat made them drop to the cobblestones. The bullets smacked into the château's ancient stone wall. Marie, the kitchen-maid, was screaming. The geese were hissing and stretching their necks. The dogs in the barn were barking fit to wake the dead.

Lucille snatched up an ancient battered horse-pistol, dragged back its cock, and ran towards the dark shapes that crouched over the bodies of her mother and brother. ‘Stop her!' a deep voice called in French from beyond the moat, and one of her cousins, as if obeying the voice, stood up and caught Lucille about the waist and dragged her down on to the cobbles just as three more weapons fired from beyond the moat. The bullets whiplashed over Lucille and her cousin. She raised her head to see the two men who had killed her family climbing back over the barricade. She had wounded one of them, but not badly. Lucille was crying, screaming for her mother, but she saw in the moonlight that the men who escaped her vengeance wore green coats. The men in green! The English devils who had haunted her brother had come back in an evil night to finish their foul work. She howled like a dog at their retreating shapes, then fired the pistol at the retreating killers. Scraps of exploding powder from the pistol's pan burned her face, and the flash dazzled her.

The dogs in the barn were scrabbling at the door. Marie was sobbing. A servant ran to the chapel bell and began to toll the alarm. Villagers, alerted by the gunfire and harried by the bell's frantic noise, swarmed through the château's main arch. Some carried lanterns, all carried weapons. Those with guns blazed to the east where the attackers had long disappeared. The villagers' gunfire did more damage to the dairy and the château's orchards than to the murderers.

Lucille, weeping helplessly, pushed through the villagers to where her mother and brother lay in a pool of lantern-light. The village priest had covered the Dowager's face with a handkerchief. The old woman's black dress was soaked with blood that shone in the yellow light.

Henri Lassan lay on his back. His fine suit of clothes had been cut with knives, almost as if his murderers had thought that he kept coins in his coat seams. His old engraved sword had been stolen. Strangest of all was the presence of a short-handled axe beside his body. The cheap axe had been used to hack off two fingers from Henri Lassan's right hand. The job had been done clumsily, so that his thumb and third finger were half severed as well. There was no sign of the two missing fingers.

The priest thought the disfigurement must have been done in the cause of Satanism. There had been an outbreak of devil worship in the Norman hills not many years before, and the Bishop had warned against a revival of the foul practice. The priest crossed himself, but kept his opinion to himself. Sufficient unto the night was the evil already done.

Lucille, already widowed, and now orphaned and denied her good brother's life, wept like an inconsolable child while the chapel bell still tolled its useless message to an empty night.

For three days Lucille Castineau wept and would not be comforted. The
curé
tried, the local doctor tried, and her cousins tried. It was all in vain. Only after the funeral did she show some of her old spirit when she saddled her brother's horse, took his new pistol from his study, and rode to the far side of Seleglise where she fired shot after shot into the thick woodland.

Then she went home where she ordered both wooden bridges over the moat to be dismantled. It was a horrific job, for the timbers were massive, and it was even a pointless job, for the damage had already been done, but the farm workers, with help from the villagers, sawed through the great pieces of wood that were taken away to strengthen barns, byres, and cottages. Then Lucille had a notice posted on the church door, and another posted on the door of the church at Seleglise, which promised a reward of two hundred francs for information which would lead to the capture and death of the Englishmen who had murdered her family.

The villagers believed that the widow Castineau was distraught to temporary madness, for there was no evidence that the killers had been English and, indeed, the kitchen-maid swore she had heard a voice call out in French. A very deep voice, Marie remembered distinctly, a real devil's voice, she said, but Lucille insisted that it had been Englishmen who had committed the murders, and so the reward notices faded in the sunlight and curled in the night's dew. Lucille had sworn she would sell the upper orchards to raise the reward money if someone would just lead her to revenge.