upset Marie. The villagers told lies about her mistress, and Marie expected her mistress to share her indignation.
But Lucille would not share Marie’s anger. Instead she calmed the old woman down, then said she had some writing to do and was not to be disturbed. She added that she would be most grateful if the miller’s son could be fetched to take a letter to the village carrier.
The letter went to the carrier that same afternoon. It was addressed to Monsieur Roland, the advocate from the Treasury in Paris, to whom, at long last, Lucille told the whole truth. “The Englishmen did not want you to be told,” she wrote, “for they feared you would not believe either them or me, yet, on my honour, Monsieur, I believe in their innocence. I have not told you this before because, so long as the English were in my house, so long did I honour their fear that you would arrange their arrest if you were to discover their presence here. Now they are gone, and I must tell you that the scoundrel who murdered my family and who stole the Emperor’s gold is none other than the man who accused the Englishmen of his crime; Pierre Ducos. He now lives somewhere near Naples, to which place the Englishmen have gone to gain the proof of their innocence. If you, Monsieur, can help them, then you will earn the gratitude of a poor widow.“
The letter was sent, and Lucille waited. The summer grew oppressively hot, but the countryside was safer now as cavalry patrols from Caen scoured the vagabonds out of the woodlands. Lutille often took her new pony- cart between the neighbouring villages, and the old gossip about her faded because the villagers now saw that the widower doctor frequently served as the pony-cart’s driver. It would be an autumn marriage, the villagers suggested, and quite right too. The doctor might be a good few years older than Madame, but he was a steady and kindly man.
The doctor was indeed a confidant of Lucille, but nothing more. She told the doctor, and only the doctor, about the letter she had sent, and expressed her sadness that she had received no reply. “Not a proper reply, anyway. Monsieur Roland did acknowledge that he had received my letter, but it was only that, an acknowledgement.” She made a gesture of disgust. “Perhaps Major Sharpe was right?”
“In what way?” the doctor asked. He had driven the pony-cart to the top of the ridge where it rolled easily along a dry-rutted road. Every few seconds there were wonderful views to be glimpsed between the thick trees, but Lucille had no eyes for the scenery.
“The Major did not want me to write. He said it would be better if he was to find Ducos himself.” She was silent for a few seconds. “I think perhaps he would be angry if he knew I had written.”
“Then why did you write?”
Lucille shrugged. “Because it is better for the proper authorities to deal with these matters, n’est-ce- pas?”
“Major Sharpe didn’t think so.”
“Major Sharpe is a stubborn man,” Lucille said scornfully, “a fool.”
The doctor smiled. He steered the little cart off the road, bumped it up on to a patch of grass, then curbed the pony in a place from where he and Lucille could stare far to the south. The hills were heavy with foliage and hazed by heat. The doctor gestured at the lovely landscape. “France,” he said with great complacency and love.
“A fool.” Lucille, oblivious of all France, repeated the words angrily. “His pride will make him go to be killed! All he had to do was to speak to the proper authorities! I would have travelled to Paris with him, and I would have spoken for him, but no, he has to carry his sword to his enemy himself. I do not understand men sometimes. They are like children!” She waved irritably at a wasp. “Perhaps he is already dead.”
The doctor looked at his companion. She was staring southwards, and the doctor thought what a fine profile she had, so full of character. “Would it trouble you, Madame,” he asked, “if Major Sharpe was dead?”
For a long time Lucille said nothing, then she shrugged. “I think enough French children have lost their fathers in these last years.” The doctor said nothing, and his silence must have convinced Lucille that he had not understood her words, for she turned a very defiant face on him. “I am carrying the Major’s baby.”
The doctor did not know what to say. He felt a sudden jealousy of the English Major, but his fondness for Lucille would not let him betray that ignoble feeling.
Lucille was again staring at the slumbrous landscape, though it was very doubtful if she was aware of the great view. “I’ve told no one else. I haven’t even dared take communion these last weeks, for fear of my confession.”
A professional curiosity provoked the doctor’s next words. “You’re quite certain you’re pregnant?”
“I’ve been certain these three weeks now. Yes, I am certain.”
Again the doctor was silent, and his silence troubled Lucille who again turned her grey eyes to him. “You think it is a sin?”
The doctor smiled. “I’m not competent to judge sinfulness.”
The bland reply made Lucille frown. “The chateau needs an heir.”
“And that is your justification for carrying the Englishman’s child?”
“I tell myself that is why, but no.” She turned to stare again at the distant hills. “I am carrying the Major’s child because I think I am in love with him, whatever I mean by that, and please do not ask me. I did not want to love him. He has a wife already, but…” she shrugged helplessly.
“But?” the doctor probed.
“But I do not know,” she said firmly. “All I do know is that a bastard child of a bastard English soldier will be born this winter, and I would be very grateful, dear doctor, if you would attend the confinement.”
“Of course.”
“You may tell people of my condition,” Lucille said very matter of factly, “and I would be grateful if you would tell them who the father is.” She had decided that the news was best spread quickly, before her belly swelled, so that the malicious tongues could exhaust themselves long before the baby was born. “I will tell Marie myself,” Lucille added.
The doctor, despite his fondness for the widow, rather relished the prospect of spreading this morsel of scandal. He tried to anticipate the questions that he would be asked about the widow’s lover. “And the Major? Will he return to you?”
“I don’t know,” Lucille said very softly. “I just don’t know.”
“But you would like him to return?”
She nodded, and the doctor saw a gleam in her eye, but then Lucille cuffed the tear away, smiled, and said it was time they went back to the valley.
Lucille made her confession that week, and attended Mass on the Sunday morning. Some of the villagers said they had never seen her looking so happy, but Marie knew that the happiness was a mere pose which she had assumed for the benefit of the church. Marie knew better, for she saw how often Madame would gaze down the Seleglise road as if she hoped to see a scowling horseman coming from the south. Thus the warm weeks of a Norman summer passed, and no horseman came.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 12
It proved a long journey. Sharpe still feared capture and so he avoided all livery stables, coaching inns and barge quays. They had purchased three good horses with a portion of the money Harper had brought from England, and they coddled the beasts south from Paris. They travelled in civilian clothes, with their uniforms and rifles wrapped inside long cloth bundles. They avoided the larger towns, and spurred off the road whenever they saw a uniformed man ahead. They only felt safe from their shadowy enemies when they crossed the border into Piedmont. From there they faced a choice between the risk of brigands on the Italian roads or the menace of the Barbary pirates off the long coastline. “I’d like to see Rome,” Frederickson opted for the land route, “but not if
