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 Tcste 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 effacing 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.
“I can vouch for that,” Frederickson said.
Wigram handed the telescope to Monsieur Roland. “Perhaps, Monsieur, you will translate the inscription for the benefit of the tribunal?”
The Frenchman took the telescope, peered at the plate inset on the outer barrel, then spoke the translation aloud. “To Joseph, King of Spain and the Indies, from his brother, Napoleon, Emperor of France.”
There was a murmur in the room. Wigram stilled the sound with a further question. “Is this the sort of personal belonging, Monsieur, which the Emperor or his brother might have stored in their baggage?”
“Indeed,” Roland said.
Wigram paused, then shrugged. “The tribunal should be apprised that the glass was discovered in Major Sharpe’s baggage during an authorized search that was done on my orders during the last hour.” Wigram, buoyed up by the evidence of the telescope, had regained his former confidence and now stared directly at Sharpe. “It is not the business of this tribunal to be a judge of the facts, but merely to decide whether a competent court-martial should be given those facts to judge. The tribunal will now make that decision, and will inform you of its findings at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Until that hour you are forbidden to leave this building. You will discover that Captain Salmon has made adequate billeting arrangements.“
Frederickson collated his sketches and notes. “Are we under arrest, sir?”
Wigram paused. “Not yet, Captain. But you are under military discipline, and therefore ordered to remain in confinement until your fate is announced tomorrow morning.”
The other officers in the room did not look at either Rifleman. It had been the discovery of the telescope that had plunged their certainty of Sharpe’s innocence into an assurance of the Rifleman’s guilt. Sharpe stared at them one by one, but they would not look back.
Frederickson plucked Sharpe’s arm towards the door. Captain Salmon and a half dozen of his men waited on the landing outside. Sharpe and Frederickson might not be prisoners, but it was clearly only a matter of time before they were formally charged and their swords were taken away.
Salmon was embarrassed. “There’s a room set aside for you, sir,” he said to Sharpe. “Your servant’s waiting there.”
“We’re not under arrest,” Sharpe challenged him.
“The room’s upstairs, sir,” Salmon said doggedly, and the presence of his provosts was enough to persuade the two Riflemen to accompany him to the upper floor and into a room that looked out to the city’s main square. A very indignant Patrick Harper waited there. There was also a chamber pot, two wooden chairs, and a table on which was a loaf of bread, a plate of cheese, and a tin jug of water. There was a pile of blankets and a heap of baggage that Harper had fetched from the quayside. There were three packs, three canteens, but no weapons or ammunition. Salmon hesitated, as though he wanted to stay in the room with the three Riflemen, but a glare from Harper made the Captain back abruptly into the corridor.
“That bastard of a provost searched your packs.” Harper was still smarting under that indignity. “I tried to stop him, so I did, but he threatened me with a flogging.”
“They took my rifle?” Sharpe asked.
“It’s in the bloody guardroom downstairs, sir.” Harper was incensed that he, like Sharpe, had been disarmed. “They’ve got my rifle and gun there as well. Even my bayonet!” Sharpe and Frederickson, because they had not been officially placed under arrest, had been allowed to keep their swords, but those were now their only weapons.
“I hate provosts,” Frederickson said mildly.
“So what the hell’s happening, sir?” Harper asked Sharpe.
“We’re only accused of stealing half the bloody gold in France. Jesus Christ! It’s bloody madness!”
“Indeed it is.” Frederickson was placidly cutting the loaf into big chunks.
“I’m sorry, William.”
