bucket and had seemed to piss forever. He laughed again now. She loved him. She loved him. She loved him.
He closed his eyes.
Then he jerked his head up, eyes open, and stared at the great red smear in the sky. He knew what it was. It was the camp fires of an army, seen far off, reflected on the clouds that threatened rain. The British were to the north and west, close enough for their fires to be seen on the clouds, close enough to be forcing a further retreat from this French army, this walking brothel. He laughed and drank again.
He threw the empty bottle into the courtyard, hearing it smash on the stones and provoke a shout from a sentry. Sharpe shouted back, ‘mignon! Mignon!’
He picked up the next bottle. ‘You shouldn’t drink it,’ he told himself, then decided that it was a terrible waste if he did not. He thought he might drink it in bed and stood up.
He held onto the wall. It all suddenly seemed clear with the marvellous prescience of the drunk. King Joseph and Montbrun wanted him to escape. Montbrun was a courtier. Montbrun knew more about honour than Sharpe, so it would be all right to break his parole. He would escape. He would go to the British army and he would be rich and he would marry La Marquesa when the war was done because even treacherous bitches had to love someone and he could not bear to think of her loving anyone else. He drank to the thought. Lark pate and honey, he thought, and wine. More wine. Always more wine, and then he pushed himself off the wall, aimed for the bed, and collapsed just short of it. He managed to save the bottle.
He sat by the narrow bed where he had loved her just this day. ‘I love you,’ he said. He pulled the blankets about his shoulders, and drank some more. It was all so easy. Escape and victory, marriage and riches. Luck was with him. It always had been. He smiled and raised the bottle.
He drank more wine, just to prove that he could do it, and then, when he was solemnly thinking he ought to work out a detail or two of the decisions he had made, his head went back onto the bed, the bottle dropped, and he slept the sleep of the drunk.
CHAPTER 17
Morning came like a sad groan. He was still tangled in blankets beside the bed. The dawn light was depressing.
He swore and closed his eyes.
Someone was using a sledgehammer within the castle, the blows were ringing through his skull.
‘Oh God.’
He opened his eyes again. A bottle of wine lay close to him on the floor, the wine trapped by the bottle’s neck dark with sediment. He groaned again.
He leaned his head on the bed and stared up at the whitewashed ceiling. The hammering seemed to be coming from the very walls of the room. He could not believe it was possible to feel this ill. His eyes felt as if they were trying to burst from his head, his mouth was fouler than the cell Ducos had first put him in, his stomach was sour and his bowels were water. ‘Oh God.’
He heard the bolts on his door shoot back, but did not turn round. ‘Bonjour, m’sieul’ It was the cheerful young guard.
Sharpe turned slowly, his neck hurting. ‘Jesus.’
The guard laughed. ’Won, m’sieu. Cest moi.’ He put the bowl on the table and mimed shaving. ‘Oui, m’sieu?’
‘Oui.’
Sharpe stood up. He staggered on aching legs, and wished he had stayed on the floor. He held a hand up to the guard. ‘A minute! Wait!’ He went to the wooden screen, held it, and vomited. ‘Jesus!’
‘Afsieu?’
‘All right! All right! What time is it?’
‘Afsieu?’
Sharpe tried to remember the word. He snapped the fingers of his left hand. ‘L’keure?’
‘Ah! C’est six figures, m’sieu.’
‘Cease?’
The soldier held up six fingers, Sharpe nodded, then spat through the window.
The young guard seemed happy to shave the English officer. He did it skilfully, chatting incomprehensibly and cheerfully as he lathered and scraped and washed and towelled. It occurred to Sharpe that he could elbow the boy in the belly, take his musket, shoot the man outside, and be in the courtyard within ten seconds. There had to be a damned horse there and, with luck, he could be through the gates and away before the guards knew what was happening.
On the other hand he did not feel up to morning mayhem, and it seemed distinctly churlish to attack a cheerful man who was shaving him with such skill. Besides, he needed breakfast. He needed it badly.
The boy patted Sharpe’s face dry and smiled. ‘Bonjourl’ He backed out of the door with the bowl and towel, came back a moment later for the musket he had left beside Sharpe. He waved farewell and shut the door, not bothering to bolt it.
The hammering still echoed in the room. He went to the window and.saw, where the ‘sentries paced their monotonous beats on the ramparts, that the guns which had defied Wellington last year were being destroyed. Their trunnions, the great knobs that held the barrels to the carriages, were being sawn through. When the hacksaws were halfway through, a man would give a great blow with a sledgehammer to shear the bronze clean. The blows rang dolorously through the courtyard. To make sure that the guns were far beyond repair they were being spiked as well, then heaved over the ramparts to fall onto the precipitous rocks below. The noise was shattering. He groaned. ‘Oh God!’
Sharpe lay on the bed. He would never drink again, never. On the other hand, of course, the hair of the dog that bit you was the only specific against rabies. Half the British army went to their rest drunk and could only face the next day by drinking the night’s dregs. He opened one eye and stared gloomily at an unopened bottle of champagne on the table.
He fetched it, frowned at it, then shrugged. He jammed it between his legs, and twisted the cork with his left hand. It popped boomingly. The sheer effort of pulling the cork seemed to have left him weaker then a kitten. The champagne foamed onto his overalls.
He tried it. It took the taste of vomit from his mouth. It even tasted good. He drank some more.
He lay back again, holding the champagne in his left hand, and remembered the parole on the table. He was supposed to sign it, then his escape would be engineered by those people in the French army who did not want peace with Spain. It all seemed so complicated this morning. He only knew that by signing the paper and then escaping he was sacrificing all honour.
The door opened again and he lay still as the breakfast, supplied by courtesy of General Verigny, was put onto the table. He knew what it would be. Hot chocolate, bread, butter, and cheese. ‘Mercy.’ At least, he thought, he was learning some French.
An hour later, with the breakfast and half the champagne inside him, he decided he was feeling distinctly better. The day, he thought, even had promise. He looked at the parole. He could not sign it, he told himself, because it would be unworthy of him. He would have to escape instead. He would have to go to Wellington with this news, but not by sacrificing his honour. Captain d’Alembord had said that honour was merely a word to hide a man’s sins, and La Marquesa had laughed at the word, but Sharpe knew what it meant. It meant he could never live with himself if he signed the paper and let Montbrun engineer his escape. Honour was conscience. He walked away from the table, from the temptation of the parole, and carried the champagne to the barred window.
He stared down, bottle in hand, at the piles of artillery shells that glistened faintly from the rain that had fallen in the night. An officer was checking the fuses. It would be a hell of a bang! Sharpe thought, and he wondered if he would get a view of it from the Great Road.
He could hear womens’ voices. There were an extraordinary number of women with this army. What was it that Verigny had said yesterday? Sharpe frowned, then smiled. This army was a walking brothel.
He turned from the window and crossed to the table where the parple, splashed with red wine stains, still
