Sharpes assassin, p.10
Sharpe's Assassin, page 10
“We do.”
“How?”
“I already told you, I have a man’s name, Colonel, and we start with him.”
They mounted and rode on.
Toward a city of chaos.
Part Two
The City
Chapter 5
Lucille had lived in Paris once and often spoke of the city in wistful tones. It was, she told Sharpe, beautiful, even magnificent. “We had a house there,” she had told him, and she had been happy in the city until her father lost all his money in a foolish investment. “And all we had left was the land in Normandy.” She had met her husband in Paris and had married him there. “Then he gambled his fortune away,” Lucille had said, laughing. “My mother always said I had bad taste in men.”
“Do you?”
“I like men to be interesting,” she had said.
And now Sharpe was seeing Paris, the city he had imagined for so long, the imagination fed by Lucille’s memories and love of the place. He had thought it would be a city of palaces and mansions, but as they approached he could smell the familiar stench of coal smoke and sewage. “Smells like London,” he had remarked sourly to Fox.
But Fox was like Lucille, a lover of Paris, and seemed delighted to be back. He had told Sharpe that the whole city was surrounded by forts. “But they’ll not expect enemies from the south, so we’ll go all the way round.” And that had proved true. They had passed a fort unmolested and, four days after leaving Roye, they came to a city gate. They had been riding through a suburb of small neat houses when they came to the city wall and the gate guarded by men in blue uniforms. “It’s not a proper city wall,” Fox explained when Sharpe expressed surprise at the sight. “It’s not a defense, just a barrier, and those fellows in blue aren’t soldiers, they’re tax collectors.”
“Tax collectors?”
“The wall is to stop smuggling. The duty on wine and other goods is much steeper inside Paris, so every road into the city has a gate and a bunch of tax collectors. They won’t worry us.”
Nor did they. The guards took no notice of the horsemen, even though all had either a musket or rifle slung on their shoulder. Fox called out a cheerful good morning to the sergeant of the guards, who just nodded sourly, then stalked toward a handcart laden with vegetables.
“Welcome to Paris,” Fox said as they rode through the gate into a wide tree-lined street of prosperous houses and small shops. The folk seemed well dressed to Sharpe, though he noted how many beggars lined the avenue, many with a leg or an arm missing. Some had their old shakos in front of them as they called for alms. “It’s the same in London,” Fox said, “from soldiering to beggaring.”
It seemed unnatural to Sharpe. This was Paris! He had been fighting the French for twenty-one years in Flanders, India, Portugal, Spain, then in France itself, and now he was in the first group of British troops to enter the enemy’s capital, and it was nothing like his imagination. He had expected magnificence, but all looked normal, not that different from streets in some parts of London. “They’re still flying the old flag,” he noted. A few houses flew the red, white, and blue flag of the Empire, but Sharpe saw none showing the white flag of the monarchy.
“That’ll change as our armies get nearer,” Fox said.
“Which will be a while yet.”
“At least a week, maybe two?” Their horses clattered across a small square, and Fox led them into a narrower street. “We shouldn’t need the horses,” Fox said. “I’ll stable them.”
“Where?”
“There are places, Sharpe,” Fox said vaguely. “It just takes money.” He patted the pouch where he kept the funds, evidently given him by the Duke. “I won’t lose my horse and you won’t lose that French nag of yours.”
The streets were getting still narrower and the houses older, then they emerged onto a wide street running alongside the River Seine. “We cross the bridge and we’re almost home,” Fox said, turning left along the river’s southern bank. Ahead, over a jumble of roofs and smoking chimneys, Sharpe could see what looked like a cathedral. “Notre Dame, Colonel,” Fox said helpfully, then turned right onto a wide stone bridge. “It’s called the Pont Neuf,” he remarked, “though I think it’s the oldest bridge in Paris.” He nodded to the left. “That’s the Musée Napoléon, and the Tuileries Palace beyond.”
The small houses and shops had given way to grandiose buildings with pillared porticoes and wide entrance steps. Carriages rattled past, and Butler, who had not been comfortable on horseback since leaving Péronne, almost fell as his mare skittishly sidestepped, frightened by a large carriage passing noisily. “Bloody animal,” he complained, earning a surprised look from a pedestrian walking alongside.
“Pity we couldn’t have found a dozen French-speakers,” Fox said to Sharpe.
“You’re lucky to have found twelve who can speak English,” Harper put in.
“You speak any French, Sergeant?” Fox asked.
“God save Ireland, no. Maybe a little Spanish, and Gaelic.”
“So if you’re challenged?”
“As you said, sir, we’re American seamen. All the way from Baltimore!”
As they rode north Fox had stressed to the dozen men that they must pretend to be American sailors who were visiting Paris while their ship was trapped in Cherbourg by the Royal Navy’s blockade. It was a scanty disguise, and made even more unlikely by the weapons they carried, but Harper had embraced the idea. “I have a cousin in Baltimore,” he had told Fox, “and I’ve always had a mind to visit him. It would be a grand journey!”
“We’re near the end of this journey now,” Fox said. They left the bridge and he led them west along the northern bank of the Seine. There were huge anchored barges in the river, some with waterwheels clanking. “Mills, Sharpe, and laundries,” Fox said, then turned north close to the Louvre. “Watch yourselves now!” he called in warning because the narrow street plunged into a slum as bad as any Sharpe had known in London. Behind him were great palaces and formal gardens, and suddenly they were in a stinking street of dark houses. A gutter ran down the street’s center, flowing with filth. The smell was suddenly familiar to Sharpe, who had grown up in the London rookeries, as were the people. The women were thin and dressed in rags, the few men were sullen and menacing. Children watched them pass and called out for coins. Sharpe had to duck beneath a jutting house, and a young woman with dark hollow eyes looked at him from an alley. “Monsieur?” she asked softly.
“This is a quarter of unfortunates,” Fox said.
“It looks like it.”
“It’s a word for whores, Colonel.”
“A word for soldiers too,” Sharpe said. He glanced at the decaying walls and smelled the shit in the street. “It reminds me of St. Giles.”
“In London?”
“Hard by Covent Garden. A nasty place.”
“As is this. They’ll cut your throat for a penny.” Fox twisted through the tiny streets, finally stopping at a great wooden door. “Rue Villedot,” he said, “our new home.”
The door was padlocked, but Fox had a key and dragged the heavy door wide. “Ride in,” he said.
It was a warehouse. Rats scampered as the horses entered. “This will be home,” Fox announced when the big doors were safely closed. He dismounted and paced around the huge room’s edges where wooden racks were stacked with paintings. “I’m amazed no one stole them,” Fox said. “If anyone does try to break in you have my permission to kill them. In this district corpses are not thought unusual.”
“You lived here, sir?” Sharpe asked, surprised that Fox’s lair was in such a district.
“No, I have a place close to the Tuileries Palace, but I imagine that’s been emptied by the men who arrested me. This is my storeroom.”
“And they left it alone?”
“I’m hoping they never learned of this place. And I’ll stay here with you. We need to dispose of the horses and buy food.”
“Some blankets would be good too,” Sharpe said.
“Blankets, food, and wine,” Fox said. “There’s a water pump in the yard out the back, and a small room with a stove. We should be comfortable enough.”
“Smouch!” Butler put in.
“Smouch?” Fox was puzzled.
“Tea,” Sharpe translated.
“I’m sure we can find tea. There’s no coffee, damn it, because of the Royal Navy blockade, but somehow the tea gets through. God knows how. I’ll arrange all that, and perhaps you’d like to explore the district?” Fox suggested to Sharpe. “Turn left out the door and you’re in civilization soon enough.”
Fox left, and Sharpe ordered his men to stay in the warehouse while he and Harper explored the district. They left their rifles behind, and Sharpe put his cavalry sword on one of the racks. Instead he carried a rifle-bayonet at his waist and had a loaded pistol, that had once belonged to Lucille’s husband, in a deep pocket.
“Christ, it’s a shit place,” Harper commented.
“Just like where I grew up,” Sharpe said, “and you must have slums in Dublin?”
“We do, God save them, and the sooner I get back to them the better.”
“You can go back now,” Sharpe said. “You’ve no need to be here.”
Harper grinned. “We’ve been together a long time, sir. You wouldn’t want me to miss the end of the story, now would you?”
“This isn’t the end,” Sharpe said, “this is a bleeding mess. We’re supposed to find these killers. How?”
“Mister Fox will know.”
Sharpe growled, but said nothing. They were retracing their steps through the fetid streets and alleys where Harper’s sheer size and Sharpe’s scarred face were more than enough to deter the men who watched them pass.
“Has he told you anything?” Harper asked.
“He says he has a man’s name,” Sharpe answered unhappily, “but beyond that?”
They emerged from the slum into a wide and elegant street hard by a great palatial building. They turned eastward, just wandering, and Sharpe again noted the beggars who sat by every doorway. It would be the same in London, and he had a sudden yearning to be back in Normandy.
“God save Ireland, but will you look at that?” Harper interrupted his thoughts, and Sharpe looked up to see they had entered a great open square in the center of which was an enormous pillar crowned with a statue.
“Who the hell is that?”
“Has to be your man!” Harper said. “Napoleon!”
Sharpe grimaced. “They’ll have him down from that.”
“Up against a wall and a firing squad. Where are we going?”
“Nowhere.”
“A drink might help that ambition?”
They found a small tavern down a side street and Sharpe ordered beer, which Harper condemned as horse piss, but happily drank. A legless man, still wearing his blue uniform jacket, swung himself to their table on two short crutches and held out a battered tin mug. “Where were you wounded?” Sharpe asked him.
“Spain, monsieur.”
“Where?”
“Salamanca.”
“I was there,” Sharpe said.
“We should have won!”
“We did,” Sharpe answered, and gave the man a coin.
“What was that about?” Harper asked as the man shuffled away on his short crutches.
“Poor bastard was at Salamanca.”
“Christ, that was a miserable fight.”
They left after Sharpe asked the barkeeper for directions, which took him farther east and north past the Élysée Palace. “I’m told that’s where Napoleon lived,” Sharpe said. They could see into a courtyard where men in the uniform of the Imperial Guard lounged, then Sharpe turned onto the Champs-Élysées, where he again asked directions. “This way,” he told Harper, leading him to the gates of an imposing mansion. A brass plate on the gatepost announced it as the Hôtel Mauberges. “Lucille will be coming here,” Sharpe said.
“Her friend the Dowager Countess?”
“It’s her house.”
“The old girl must have money,” Harper said, “and maybe we can move here instead of that shit place in the Rue Villedot?”
“Mister Fox won’t agree to that.”
“Why would he care?”
“He doesn’t want Lucille to know what we’re doing. Thinks she might betray us.”
“He thinks what?”
“I told her anyway,” Sharpe said, “but we’ve got a problem here.”
“That’s a surprise.”
“The old girl says some deserters have occupied the house. Wants me to get rid of them.” Sharpe stared at the big house, but could see nothing untoward, but then he would not have expected to. “I’d like to help the old girl, she’s been good to Lucille.”
“We can fillet the buggers,” Harper said, then grinned, “just you and me?”
“Christ, no. We don’t know how many are there. We’ll bring the lads and do the job properly.” Sharpe turned to watch a half-dozen cavalrymen coming slowly down the road, heading into the city. All were cuirassiers, still wearing their steel breastplates, their tired horses smeared with mud.
“Poor bastards,” Harper said, “they’ve ridden those poor horses close to death.”
Sharpe saw the crusted blood at the horses’ nostrils and saw the blood matted in their coats where musket balls had struck. Some people called out questions to the riders, but they were all too tired, too dispirited to offer answers. They had been defeated. “They’re lucky to be alive,” Sharpe said, remembering the vast cavalry charges that had surged up the slope at Mont-Saint-Jean to be slaughtered by the Duke’s squares. The horses limped past.
Sharpe followed the horsemen, feeling a sudden fierce anger. “Twenty-one years,” he snarled at Harper.
“Sir?”
“Twenty-one years since I first fired a shot in battle,” he said, “and we’ve won, Pat! We shouldn’t be here. We should be in some bloody tavern with the lads. We’ve earned it! Instead we’re expected to kill some more, and I’m tired of it. Bloody tired of it. And I need a file.”
“A file?”
“It’s Dan’s rifle,” Sharpe explained. “It’s got notches filed in the stock. I counted them. One hundred and twenty-three. And I killed that bastard in the field outside Valenciennes, so I’ll add a notch. Dan would like that.”
“Aye, he would. Why don’t you just use a knife?”
“Dan must have used a file because the notches are smooth. Pity to change it. I’ll file it, then I’ll go home to Normandy and hang Dan’s rifle over the kitchen hearth, and by God I hope I never take it down again.”
“Farmer Sharpe?” Harper grinned.
“Why not? Worse things to be, Pat.”
“Aye, that’s God’s truth. Hard to imagine it, though. What do you know about farming?”
“Bugger all, but I’ll take Charlie Weller with me. He knows farming. You’d be welcome too.”
“I’m not leaving Ireland again. Not ever. Maybe we’ll visit you, though.”
They retraced their steps, stopping only to buy bread and cheese to carry back to the warehouse, where they discovered that Alan Fox had sent men to take away the horses. Their authorization had been a note addressed to Sharpe that Charlie Weller had deciphered. “I didn’t know you could read, Charlie,” Sharpe said.
“I learned my letters long ago, Mister Sharpe, I still remember some of them. Did I do right?”
“You did right.” The brief note said the horses were going to a livery stable, and added that Fox would return as soon as possible. “So we wait,” Sharpe said.
It was nightfall before Alan Fox came back. “You,” he pointed at Sharpe, “and me. We’re going out.” He was full of energy.
“Just the two of us?”
“Just the two of us.”
“Where are we going?”
“Place called Champ de l’Alouette. The lark field!”
“And why?” Sharpe demanded.
“Because I say so, Colonel.”
“Now would you look at that,” Harper intervened. He had picked up Sharpe’s rifle and opened the small cavity in the stock where riflemen stored the leather patches in which their bullets were wrapped. He showed Sharpe a small round file, evidently snapped from a much longer rat-tail file. “Dan was always careful.”
“We should leave now, Colonel,” Fox insisted.
“Do I need this?” Sharpe took the rifle from Harper.
“The man we’re going to visit is a royalist and a friend to Britain. You need no weapons.”
“I’ll follow you,” Harper said softly, “and bring some lads.”
Sharpe strapped on his sword belt. Fox might believe no weapons were needed, but Sharpe reckoned it would be dark before they returned, and only a fool walked unarmed through cities after dark. “Bit dramatic, Colonel?” Fox commented when he saw the massive sword.
“My job is to keep you alive,” Sharpe said, and covered the scabbard with the long black oilcloth coat. He pushed the pistol into the coat’s deep pocket, then followed Fox into the street.
It was a long walk in the gathering dusk. They used the Pont Neuf to cross the river, then Fox led him into a tangle of streets going ever south and east. “The fellow we’re going to see,” Fox explained as he walked briskly, “has been helpful in the past. He’s a royalist, though he worked for Bonaparte in the Ministère de la Guerre.”
“Ministry of war,” Sharpe offered the translation.
“Indeed! And this fellow controlled the records of officers. Who serves where and in what rank. Much the same as those inky fellows do in the Horse Guards.”
“How did you meet him?” Sharpe asked.
“He wanted to sell me a portrait. It was a rather ugly daub of his grandfather that he insisted was by Boucher, but it plainly wasn’t. But once he told me about his job I strung him along. Ended up paying him twenty guineas for a wretched painting that isn’t worth tuppence.”
“And he’s expecting us?”
“I sent word this afternoon, so yes. And he’ll be pleased to see us, I’ve no doubt. He likes our money, Sharpe. The horsemen of Saint George!” He meant guineas, the golden coin that showed St. George mounted on a horse.
