you’re going to press me to make indecent haste.”
“Which I shall,” Sharpe said, so instead they sold the horses for a dispiriting loss and paid for passage on a small decaying coaster that crawled from harbour to harbour with an ever-changing cargo. They carried untreated hides, raw clay, baulks of black walnut, wine, woven cloth, pigs of lead, and a motley collection of anonymous passengers among whom the three civilian-clothed Riflemen, despite their bundled weapons, went unremarked. Once, when a dirty grey topsail showed in the west, the captain swore it was a North African pirate and made his passengers man the long sweeps which dipped futilely in the limpid water. Two hours later the ‘pirate’ ship turned out to be a Royal Navy sloop which disdainfully ghosted past the exhausted oarsmen. Frederickson stared at his blistered hands, then snarled insults at the merchant-ship’s captain.
Sharpe was impressed by his friend’s command of Italian invective, but his admiration only earned a short- tempered reproof. “I am constantly irritated,” Frederickson said, “by your nai’ve astonishment for the mediocre attainments of a very ordinary education. Of course I speak Italian. Not well, but passably. It is, after all, merely a bastard form of dog-Latin, and even you should be able to master its crudities with a little study. I’m going to sleep. If that fool sees another pirate, don’t trouble to wake me.”
It was a difficult journey, not just because circumspection and Harper’s shrinking store of money had demanded the most frugal means of travel, but because of Lucille Castineau. Frederickson’s questions about the widow had commenced almost as soon as Sharpe rejoined his friend in Paris. Sharpe had answered the questions, but in such a manner as to suggest that he had not found anything specifically remarkable in Madame Castineau’s life, and certainly nothing memorable. Frederickson too had taken care to sound very casual, as though his enquiries sprang from mere politeness, yet Sharpe noted how often the questions came. Sharpe came to dread the interrogations, and knew that he could only end them by confessing a truth he was reluctant to utter. The inevitable moment for that confession came late one evening when their cargo-ship was working its slow way towards the uncertain lights of a small port. “I was thinking,” Frederickson and Sharpe were alone on the lee rail and Frederickson, after a long silence, had broached the dreaded subject, “that perhaps I should go back to the chateau when all this is over. Just to thank Madame, of course.” It was phrased as a benign suggestion, but there was an unmistakable appeal in the words; Frederickson sought Sharpe’s assurance that he would be welcomed by Lucille.
“Is that wise?” Sharpe was staring towards the black loom of the coast. Far inland a sheet of summer lightning flickered pale above jagged mountains.
“I don’t know if wisdom applies to women,” Frederickson said in heavy jest, “but I would appreciate your advice.”
“I really don’t know what to say.” Sharpe tried to shrug the topic away, then, in an attempt to head it off entirely, he asked Frederickson if he had tasted anything odd in the supper served on board that night.
“Everything on this ship tastes odd.” Frederickson was irritated by Sharpe’s change of subject. “Why?”
“They said it was rabbit. But I was in the galley this morning and noted that the paws of the carcasses had been chopped off.”
“You have a sudden taste for rabbit paws?”
“It’s just that I was told that rabbit carcasses sold without paws are almost certainly not rabbit at all, but skinned cats.”
“It’s undoubtedly useful information,” Frederickson said very caustically, “but what in hell has that got to do with my returning to the chateau? I do you the distinct honour of asking for your advice about my marital future, and all you can do is blather on about dead cats! For Christ’s sake, you’ve eaten worse, haven’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said humbly. He still stared at the dark coast rather than at his friend.
“I have been thinking about my behaviour,” Frederickson now adopted a tone of ponderous dignity, “and have decided that I was wrong and you were right. I should have pounced before proposing. My mistake, I believe, lay in treating Madame Castineau with too great a fragility. Women admire a more forthright attitude. Is that so?”
“Sometimes,” Sharpe said awkwardly.
“A very useful reply,” Frederickson said sarcastically, “and I do thank you for it. I am asking your advice and I would be grateful for more substantial answers. I know your feelings about Madame Castineau…”
“I doubt you do…” Sharpe began the feared confession.
“You have a distaste for her,” Frederickson insisted on continuing, “and I can understand that attitude, but I confess that I have found it impossible to exorcise her from my thoughts. I apologise profoundly if I embarrass you by raising the matter, but I would be most grateful if you, could tell me whether, after I had left the chateau, she showed even the slightest attachment to my memory.”
Sharpe knew how very hard it was for Frederickson to reveal these private agonies, but Sharpe also knew it was time for him to make those agonies much worse with the admission that he had himself become Lucille’s lover. He feared that his friendship with Frederickson would be irreparably damaged by such an admission, but it was clearly inescapable. He hesitated for a bleak moment, then seized his courage. “William, there is something that you ought to know, something I should have told you much earlier, indeed, I should have told you in Paris, but
“I don’t wish to hear unwelcome news,” Frederickson, hearing the despondency in Sharpe’s voice, interrupted brusquely and defensively.
“It is important news.”
“You are going to tell me that Madame does not wish to see me again?” Frederickson, anticipating the bad news, was trying to hurry it.
“I’m sure she would be very happy to renew your acquaintance,” Sharpe said feebly, “but that…“
“But that she would not be happy if I was to renew my attentions? I do understand.” Frederickson spoke very stiffly. He had interrupted Sharpe again in a desperate attempt to finish the conversation before his pride was lacerated any further. “Will you oblige me by not mentioning this matter again?”
“I must just say, I insist on saying…”
“I beg you.” Frederickson spoke very loudly. “Let the matter rest. You, of all people, should understand how I feel,” which, oblique though it was, was Frederickson’s first indication that he had learned the truth about Jane from Harper.
Thereafter neither Sharpe nor Frederickson spoke of Madame Castineau. Harper, oblivious to either officer’s interest in Lucille, would sometimes speak of her, but he soon realized that the subject was tender and so ceased to mention the widow, just as he never spoke of Jane. The only safe topic of conversation was the Riflemen’s mutual enthusiasm for the pursuit and punishment of Pierre Ducos.
Which pursuit and punishment at last seemed imminent when, on a hot steamy morning, the merchant ship came to Naples. The first evidence of the city’s proximity arrived before dawn when a southerly wind brought the stench of faecal alleyways across the darkened sea. In the first light Sharpe saw the volcanic smoke smearing a cloudless sky, then there was the hazy outline of hills, and lastly the glory of the city itself, stinking and lovely, heaped on a hill in jumbled confusion. The bay was crowded. Fishing boats, cargo vessels and warships were heading to and from the great harbour into which, creeping against a sulphurous wind, three Riflemen came for vengeance.
Monsieur Roland had silently cursed the widow Castineau. Why had she not written earlier? Now the Englishmen, with all their precious information, had fled, and Roland himself must move with an unaccustomed alacrity.
He wrote an urgent message that was placed in the hollow handle of a sword-hilt. The sword belonged to a Swiss doctor who half killed six horses in his haste to reach the Mediterranean coast where a sympathizer carried him in a fast brigantine to Elba. The Royal Naval frigate, ostensibly guarding Elba’s small harbour at Portoferraio, did not search the brigantine, and if she had her crew would merely have discovered that one of the Emperor’s old doctors had arrived to serve his master.
The message was unrolled in an ante-chamber of an Emperor’s palace that was nothing more than an enlarged gardener’s cottage which stood in a grand position high above the sea. The Emperor himself was somewhere in the island’s interior where he was surveying land that could be used to plant wheat. A messenger was sent to summon him.
That evening the Emperor walked in the small garden behind his palace. A man had been found among his exiled entourage who both knew Pierre Ducos and, by some fluke of good fortune that could hardly be expected to
