Sharpe's Revenge (30 page)

Yet he was not comfortable now. He should have been for he was sitting in a tavern with a pot of ale and a steak and oyster pie, yet a very unhappy Captain d'Alembord was threatening to capsize Harper's well-ordered world.

‘I think I can understand why it has happened,' d‘Alembord said painfully, ‘I just don't want to believe that it's true.'

‘It's not true, sir,' Harper said stoutly, and in utter defiance of all Captain d‘Alembord's evidence. ‘Mrs Sharpe's good as gold, so she is. Take me round there, sir, and she'll be as happy as a child to see me.'

d‘Alembord shrugged. ‘She quite refused to receive me again, and Lord Rossendale has ignored all my letters. I finally went to see Sir William Lawford. Do you remember him?'

‘Of course I remember One-armed Willy, sir.' Sir William Lawford, now a member of Parliament, had commanded the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers until the French had removed one of his arms at Ciudad Rodrigo.

d‘Alembord shook his head sadly. ‘Sir William assured me that Mrs Sharpe and Lord Rossendale are,' d'Alembord paused, then said the damning word, ‘intimate. It could just be ill-natured gossip, of course.'

‘It must be nothing but gossip.' Harper's world was bounded by certainties, one of which was that a pledge of love was entirely unbreakable, which was why, though he was made very uncomfortable by these speculations about Jane Sharpe, he still refused to give them any credit. ‘I expect they're just trying to help Mr Sharpe, sir, so it stands to reason that they have to spend a bit of time together. And you know how tongues start flapping when a man and woman spend time together. So why don't we just walk round there and I'll give her the Major's letter, and I'll warrant she'll be as happy as a hog in butter when she reads it. I'll just finish the pie first, if I might. Are you sure you wouldn't want a bite of it yourself?'

‘You finish it, Sergeant-Major.'

‘I'm not a soldier any more, sir,' Harper said proudly, then plucked at the hem of his new coat as proof. He had discarded the old clothes Madame Castineau had given him, and replaced them with a suit of thickly woven wool, stout boots, gaiters, and a neckcloth which he had purchased with part of the money he had left in London where, like Sharpe, he had sold his Vitoria jewels. He was clearly pleased with his purchases, which made him look like a prosperous farmer come to town. His only weapon now was a thick and ungainly cudgel. ‘I haven't got my papers yet,' he admitted to d‘Alembord, ‘but once Mr Sharpe's off the hook then I dare say he'll get them.'

‘Be careful you're not arrested.'

‘Who'd dare?' Harper grinned and gestured towards the cudgel.

The pie finished and the ale drunk, the two men walked slowly westwards. It was a lovely spring evening. The sky was delicately veined with thin cloud beyond the gauzy pall of London's smoke, and the new leaves in the squares and wider streets had still not been darkened by soot and so looked spring-bright and full of hope. The beauty of the evening infused Harper with a quite unwarranted optimism. ‘It's going to be all right, sir, so it is,' he insisted. ‘Just wait till Mrs Sharpe sees me! It'll be grand to see the lass again!' He dropped a coin into the upturned shako of a legless beggar. d‘Alembord did not have the heart to tell Harper that the vast majority of wounded indigents were not, despite their remnants of army uniforms, veterans of the war, but were merely taking advantage of the generosity of officers home from France. ‘Have you thought,' Harper went on, ‘of writing to Nosey?'

‘Nosey' was the newly created Duke of Wellington who, for lack of any better government appointment in London, had just been made Ambassador to Paris. ‘I've written to him,' d'Alembord said, ‘though I've had no reply.'

‘Nosey won't let Mr Sharpe down, sir.'

‘He won't defend him if he thinks he's a murderer.'

‘We'll just have to prove he isn't.' Harper tossed another penny, this time to a man with empty eye-sockets.

They turned into Cork Street where Harper sniffed his disapproval for the elegant houses. ‘Mr Sharpe will never live here, sir. She'll have to change her tune a bit smartish, I can tell you! He's set on the countryside, so he is.'

‘And I tell you she's set her heart on London.'

‘But she's the woman, isn't she? So she'll have to do what he wants.' That was another of Harper's unshakeable certainties.

‘Hold hard.' d‘Alembord put a hand on Harper's arm. ‘That's the house, see?' He pointed to the far end of the street where a varnish-gleaming phaeton was drawn up outside Jane's house. A pair of matching chestnuts were in the carriage shafts and an urchin was earning a few coins by holding the horses' heads. ‘See her?' d'Alembord was unable to hide the disgust he felt.

Jane was being handed down the steps by a very tall and very thin young man in the glittering uniform of a cavalry Colonel. He wore pale blue breeches, a dark blue jacket, and had a fur lined pelisse hanging from one shoulder. Jane was in a white dress covered by a dark blue cloak. The cavalryman helped her climb into the high, perilous seat of the phaeton which was an open sporting carriage much favoured by the rich and reckless.

‘That's Lord Rossendale,' d'Alembord said grimly.

For the first time since meeting d'Alembord, Harper looked troubled. There was something about Jane's gaiety which contradicted his pet theory that, at worst, she and Rossendale were mere allies in their attempt to help Sharpe. Nevertheless it was for this meeting with Jane that Harper had come to London, and so he took Sharpe's letter from a pocket of his new coat and stepped confidently into the roadway to intercept the carriage.

Lord Rossendale was driving the phaeton himself. Like many young aristocrats, he held the professional carriage-drivers in great awe, and loved to emulate their skills. Rossendale tossed the urchin a coin, climbed up beside Jane, and unshipped his long whip. He cracked the thong above the horses' heads and Jane whooped with feigned and flattering alarm as the well-trained and spirited pair started away. The carriage wheels blurred above the cobbles.

Harper, standing in the roadway, raised his right hand to attract Jane's attention. He held Sharpe's letter aloft.

Jane saw him. For a second she was incredulous, then she assumed that if Harper was in Cork Street, her husband could not be far away. And if her husband was in London then her lover was threatened with a duel. That prospect made her scream with genuine fright. ‘John! Stop him!'

Lord Rossendale saw a huge man holding a cudgel. It was early in the day for a footpad to be on London's more fashionable streets, but Rossendale nevertheless assumed that the big man was attempting a clumsy ambush. He flicked the reins with his left hand and shouted at the horses to encourage them to greater speed.

‘Mrs Sharpe! Ma'am! It's me!' Harper was shouting and waving. The carriage was twenty yards away and accelerating fast towards him.

‘John!' Jane screamed with fright.

Lord Rossendale stood. It was a dangerous thing to do in so precarious a vehicle, but he braced himself against the seat, then slashed the whip forward so that its thong curled above the horses' heads.

‘Sergeant!' d'Alembord shouted from the pavement.

The whip's thong cracked, and its tip raked Harper's cheek. If it had struck him one inch higher it would have slashed his right eye into blindness, but instead it merely cut his tanned face to the bone. He fell sideways as the horses' hooves crashed past him. Harper rolled desperately away, yet even so the phaeton's wheels were so close that he saw their metal rims flicking sparks up from the flint in the cobbles. He heard a whoop of joy.

It was Jane who had made the triumphant sound. Harper sat up in the road and saw her looking back, and he saw, too, the excitement in her eyes. Blood was streaming down Harper's face and soaking his new neckcloth and coat. Lord Rossendale had sat again while Jane, her face turned back towards Harper and still registering a mixture of relief and joy, was gripping her lover's arm.

Harper stood up and brushed the roadway's horsedung off his trousers. ‘God save Ireland.' He was disappointed and astonished, rather than angry.

‘I did warn you.' d'Alembord picked up Harper's cudgel and restored it to the Irishman.

‘Sweet Mother of God.' Harper stared after the carriage until it slewed into Burlington Gardens. Then, still with an expression of incredulity, he stooped to pick up the fallen letter that was spattered with his blood.

‘I'm sorry, Sergeant-Major,' d'Alembord said unhappily.

‘Mr Sharpe will kill the bastard.' Harper stared in the direction the carriage had taken. ‘Mr Sharpe will crucify him! As for her?' He shook his head in wonderment. ‘Has the woman lost her wits?'

‘It all makes me believe,' d‘Alembord steered Harper towards the pavement, ‘that the two of them are hoping the Major never does come home. It would suit them very well if he was arrested and executed for murder in France.'

‘I would never have believed it!' Harper was still thinking of Jane's parting cry of triumph. ‘She was always kind to me! She was as good as gold, so she was! She never gave herself airs, not that I saw!'

‘These things happen, Sergeant-Major.'

‘Oh, Christ!' Harper leaned on an area railing. ‘Who in heaven's name is to tell Mr Sharpe?'

‘Not me,' d‘Alembord said fervently, ‘I don't even know where he is!'

‘You do now, sir.' Harper tore open Sharpe's letter and gave it to the officer. ‘The address is bound to be written there, sir.'

But d'Alembord would not take the letter. ‘You write to him, Sergeant-Major. He's much fonder of you than he is of me.'

‘Jesus. I'm just a numbskull Irishman from Donegal, sir, and I couldn't write a letter to save my own soul. Besides, I'm going to Spain to fetch my own wife home.' d‘Alembord reluctantly took the letter. ‘I can't write to him. I wouldn't know what to say.'

‘You're an officer, sir. You'll think of something, so you will.' Harper turned again to stare at the empty street corner. ‘Why is she doing it? In the name of God, why?' d‘Alembord had pondered that question himself. He shrugged. ‘She's like a caged singing bird given freedom. The Major took her out of that awful house, gave her wings, and now she wants to fly free.'

Harper scorned that sympathetic analysis. ‘She's rotten to the bloody core, sir, just like her brother.' Jane's brother had been an officer in Harper's battalion. Harper had killed him, though no one but he and Sharpe knew the truth of that killing. ‘Christ, sir.' A foul thought had struck Harper. ‘It'll kill Mr Sharpe when he finds out. He thinks the sun never sets on her!'

‘Which is why I don't want to write the news to him, Sergeant-Major.' d'Alembord pushed the letter into his coat's tail pocket. ‘So perhaps it's better for him to live in ignorant bliss?'

‘Christ on His cross.' Harper brushed at the blood on his cheek. ‘I don't want to be the one who has to tell him, sir.'

‘But you're his friend.'

‘God help me, that I am.' Harper walked slowly down the street and dreaded the moment when he would go back to France and be forced to break the news. ‘It'll be like stabbing him to his heart, so it will, to his very heart.'

By the end of May Sharpe could walk to the château's mill and back. He had made himself a crutch, yet still he insisted on putting his weight on to his right leg. His left arm was stiff and could not be fully raised. Doggedly he persisted in exercising it, forcing the joint a fraction further each day. The exercise was horribly painful, so much so that it brought tears to his eyes, but he would not give up.

Nor did he give up hope of Jane's arrival. He liked to sit in the château's archway and stare up the village street. One day an impressive carriage did appear there, and Sharpe's hopes soared, but it was only a church dignitary visiting the priest. No message came from Harper, nor from d'Alembord who surely must have learned of Sharpe's whereabouts from the Irishman. ‘Perhaps Harper was arrested?' Sharpe suggested to Frederickson.

‘He's a very hard man to arrest.'

‘Then why...' Sharpe began.

‘There'll be an explanation,' Frederickson interrupted curtly. Sharpe frowned at his friend's tone. In these last weeks Frederickson had seemed very content and happy, undoubtedly immersed in his courtship of Lucille Castineau. Sharpe had watched the two of them walking in the orchards, or strolling beside the stream, and he had seen how each seemed to enjoy the other's company. Sharpe, though he was besieged by worry over Jane, had been glad for his friend. But now, in the evening light, as the two Riflemen lingered in the château's archway, there was a troublesome echo of Frederickson's old asperity. ‘There'll be a perfectly simple explanation,' Frederickson reiterated, ‘but for now I'm more worried about Ducos.'