Sharpes assassin, p.24
Sharpe's Assassin, page 24
“We can have some artillery too?” Morris asked hopefully.
“You’ve got one of the best battalions in the British army,” Sharpe snarled, “and that’s enough.”
“And if you’re not on time?” Morris persisted with his questions.
“We’ll be on time,” Sharpe said, “and so will you.”
“Of course,” Morris said uncertainly.
“We will be at the house as the clocks strike midnight,” Kippen said, then glanced at Morris. “All of us.”
“Then I suggest you all get some rest this afternoon,” Sharpe finished.
The battalion officers filed out of the room that was some kind of office. Kippen stayed. “Your Major Morris . . .” he began.
“He’s not mine.”
“He is frightened.”
“He’s scared out of his wits, Colonel, but the captains know their duty. So do the sergeants.”
Kippen hesitated. “Perhaps you,” he began.
“Should lead them?” Sharpe finished for him.
“Yes, Colonel.”
And maybe Kippen was right, Sharpe thought. In essence his plan was simple; just assault the house and warehouse, and root out whoever was hiding in the buildings, but Sharpe knew it would not be that simple. Lanier would surely know the assault was coming. The Frenchman was no fool and would certainly have men watching the streets around the vineyard, and by the time Kippen and Morris reached the gate Lanier would have his defenses ready. Sharpe’s only response to that was to encourage the attackers to go fast, and while they swarmed up the vineyard toward the house he would approach from the rear to stab Lanier’s men in the back. Or, if he was unlucky, to confront Lanier’s retreating men with an entirely inadequate force. “Lanier believes we don’t know about the tunnel,” Sharpe explained, hoping he was right, “and I believe that’s where he hid his men two days ago. We have to take the tunnel, Colonel.”
“If you say so.” Kippen sounded unconvinced.
“You still believe there’s no one there?”
“I do.”
“Then your task will be easy and I’ll look like a fool.”
Or he would be dead. Sharpe was still convinced that Lanier’s battalion was concealed in the house and his only explanation for the failure of the Prussians to discover them was to assume that Lanier, forewarned by his sentries, had concealed his men in the tunnel. And if Lanier did the same again, then the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers’ Light Company would find themselves trapped in the tunnel against an overwhelming force. And if Lanier knew the assault was coming, which he surely would, then why wouldn’t he repeat the trick? The tunnel, Sharpe suspected, would be a deathtrap, yet he had to capture it, and he would lead the men who would meet the enemy in that underground darkness. He had thought of giving the task to Harry Price, but suspected that was only because he did not want to risk his own life. That thought had shamed him. He would lead the Light Company into the darkness because that was where the greatest danger lay.
A bellow of rage sounded from the vast halls of the Louvre beyond the office door, followed by a single shot. “For God’s sake . . .” Sharpe snarled and ran to the door.
He went into the gallery where a cloud of powder smoke lingered. “What the hell?” he shouted.
Major Morris had fired the pistol. “I’ll kill it!” the major shouted.
“Kill what?” Sharpe demanded.
“That damned monkey!”
Sharpe looked to his left and saw Private Bee was crouching beside a statue. The monkey, evidently unscathed by the pistol ball, crawled into Bee’s arms and nestled inside his red coat. “I warned you!” Morris shouted at the boy. “You do it on purpose!”
“Do what?” Sharpe shouted. The gallery was full of redcoats who were watching the scene. “Major Morris! Private Bee! Over here, now!”
He took both men back into the office. “Now what the hell is happening?” he demanded.
Bee just looked frightened, as did the monkey, whose small face peered anxiously at Sharpe from inside the red jacket. Bee murmured to the creature and stroked its head. Morris pointed at them. “He encourages the bloody animal to shit on my bed! He does it on purpose!”
“Do you, Bee?”
“No, sir.” Bee’s voice was almost too faint to hear.
“He controls the animal,” Morris spat, “no one else can!”
“Is that true, Bee?”
“I speak to him in Italian, sir,” Bee muttered, “because he understands Italian.”
“This is the third time it’s happened,” Morris complained.
“Where’s your bed, Major?”
“In a small room down there,” Morris pointed.
“And the door is locked?”
“There’s no lock. I warned him!”
“Warned him of what?”
“That if it happened a third time I would shoot that damned monkey and,” Morris hesitated, then found what small courage he possessed, “flog him.”
“Go, Private,” Sharpe said to Bee, and the boy fled. “Flog him?” Sharpe asked Morris.
“You don’t frighten me, Sharpe,” Morris said, “I talked to General Halkett.”
“Whined to him, did you?”
“If you lay a finger on me, Sharpe, you’ll lose your commission and face punishment.”
“And if you lay a finger on Private Bee or his damned monkey,” Sharpe said, “I’ll flog the skin off your back, Major. And tonight, Major, you lead the attack and you’ll do it as I said. Fast!”
“I know my duty,” Morris said.
“I somehow doubt that,” Sharpe retorted. “I’ve seen you in a fight, Charlie, and you don’t fight. You look for somewhere to hide. But you won’t do that tonight. You get to the house fast and you get inside fast. And there’ll be no flogging! None!”
“And if that Prussian is right,” Morris said, “it will all be a waste of time.”
“Then you’d best hope he is right,” Sharpe said, “because then you’ll be safe. And Private Bee is also safe now, as is his monkey.”
“You know what they call that damned animal?” Morris asked indignantly.
“The damned animal is called Charlie. Now go, Charlie. Go!”
Morris stalked from the room and Sharpe sank into the chair behind the table. The door opened and a grinning Pat Harper came in. “He didn’t look happy.”
“He’s not. Did the boy tell the monkey to shit on his bed?”
“Probably. The wee thing speaks Italian, can you believe it?”
“Tell him to stop it.”
“The men encourage Charlie,” Harper said, “they open the major’s door and give it a slice of apple.”
“Then tell them that the next man to do that will be flogged. By me!”
“And they won’t believe you. But not to worry, I’ll stop them.” Harper looked down at the map spread on the table. “So your man didn’t go back last night?”
“No one did,” Sharpe said. “I told the widow we’d ruined the powder.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think the Duke would be happy if there was a firefight at his mansion in the middle of the night.”
“Aye, true enough. But you think Lanier will try again?”
“Unless we stop him. And the next attempt won’t be so clumsy.”
“What if your Prussian is right? And they’re not there?”
“Then we find them, Pat. They haven’t gone.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Lanier isn’t a man to give up. He’s here and so are his men.”
Harper sank into a chair and laid the volley gun across his knees. “So we’ll need this tonight,” he said, patting the seven barrels.
“You should stay here, Pat.”
“Save your breath, Colonel Sharpe.”
“It could be nasty, Pat.”
“Could be? It will be! It’ll be a bloody horror! That’s why they’re sending us. And I’m coming.”
To face Napoleon’s devils, led by the Emperor’s monster.
The elephant loomed in the moonlight, its pale skin streaked with soot and dirt. Sharpe gazed at the monstrous beast, wondering what madness had demanded its construction. Even as he watched, a lump of plaster fell from the belly and crashed into the thick weeds growing between its vast legs. “They’re mad, so they are,” Pat Harper said.
“Everything’s mad,” Sharpe said curtly. He had paused to let the Light Company gape at the elephant. “Can you imagine that in Dublin? Or London?”
“I think it’s kind of wonderful,” Harper said enthusiastically. “You think they’ll finish the beast?”
“It’s supposed to be made from bronze. God knows where they’ll find it.”
“A pity. Folk would travel miles just to see it!”
“Keep going!” Sharpe called, and headed past the elephant. “The Bastille was here.”
“Their prison, yes?”
“Now it’s got a bloody elephant, and the world has gone mad.”
It was dark, though the moon was bright enough, even if frequent strands of cloud obscured it. The Light Company, forty-three strong, followed Sharpe, their rifles and muskets slung on shoulders. Parisians watched them pass. “Lanier will know we’re coming,” Sharpe said.
“You think so?”
“Wouldn’t you have sentries watching the roads?”
“I would.”
“Which means they’ll see the battalion approaching.”
“So your bloody man will run into trouble.”
“He will,” Sharpe said grimly. The “bloody man” was Morris, and Sharpe had no faith in him at all.
“The kipper will have to lead them,” Harper said. The whole battalion now called the Prussian “the kipper.”
“If the bloody man lets him.” Sharpe brooded for a few steps. “Men are going to die, Pat, and that makes me angry. The war’s over, for Christ’s sake!”
He ignored the Rue de Montreuil, which led to the Delaunay estate, instead slanting right onto the Rue de Vincennes. He suspected Lanier’s picquets had seen the Light Company, but by turning away from the Delaunay estate he hoped they would be persuaded he was no threat.
Sharpe felt irritable, nervous. There had been a time when he welcomed a fight, but this night’s madness had made him apprehensive. It would be such a stupid time to die. The war was won, the Emperor was defeated, and still Sharpe was marching to battle. It was Lucille, he knew, that made him so nervous. In the past he had little or nothing to lose, but now he had everything to lose; a woman, a son, and a life. He remembered the countless men who had experienced a premonition of death before a fight, and how many of them had fallen, and he touched the brass buttplate of Dan Hagman’s rifle and rubbed the notches in the stock as though it were a talisman against his fear. Lucille! He said the name to himself, and marveled that she was his woman. We’ll marry, he promised himself, and he imagined being in Normandy again, yet somehow that vision would not take shape in his head. This night’s work was all he could see.
He turned and watched a pair of artillerymen pushing a garden cart. “Doing all right, lads?” he asked.
“Much further, sir?”
“Another half hour or so.”
The cart, meant for light loads of cuttings or manure, held three long wooden boxes. The two men pushing the clumsy vehicle were commanded by a lieutenant dressed in a suspiciously clean blue jacket, suspicious because it suggested he had seen little action. His name was Anderson and he came recommended by his commanding officer.
“Waterloo was your first battle, Lieutenant?” Sharpe asked as they headed on down the Rue de Vincennes.
“I was at the fight two days before, sir, and the next day.”
“And you brought me six-pounders?”
“Six of them, sir. Two to a crate.”
“And your watch is working?” Sharpe had requested not just the artillery’s assistance, but a man with an accurate watch too. “It’s a Breguet, sir!” Anderson sounded excited. “Took it off a dead French officer after the battle. It looks brand new, too! It has an eccentric dial!”
“Is that good?”
“It’s amazing, sir! Probably worth more than my commission!”
“We’ll need it,” Sharpe said, “but I’m hoping I won’t need you.”
“And I’m hoping you do,” Anderson said enthusiastically, and Sharpe remembered when he had been just as impatient to join a fight.
“Just stay alive, Lieutenant,” he said, knowing the words were meaningless. But Sharpe feared the tunnel simply because a tunnel, any tunnel, was easy to defend. However inaccurate a musket was, a tunnel would serve to guide the bullets as they ricocheted from its walls, and a group of determined infantry could fill a tunnel with a deadly hail of lead. Lieutenant Anderson was Sharpe’s answer to that fear.
Sharpe had half expected an argument at the city gate that lay at the end of the Rue de Vincennes, but the guard there simply hauled the gate open and sullenly watched them pass. The street beyond had small houses that petered out into scrubby fields where goats and cattle grazed in the moonlight.
They turned north just as the city clocks started a jangled chiming to mark eleven. They were following a paved road. To Sharpe’s right was countryside, to his left he could see houses, beyond which was the city’s wall. Ahead was a sprawling village and Sharpe stopped well short of it. “We wait here,” he said, turning off the road into a small orchard. “The cart goes no further,” he ordered. “Pat? You and I will take a look ahead.”
He left Harry Price in charge of the company with orders to lie quiet while he and Harper made their way through the rough fields to the east of the village, which was dominated by a church and, next to it, a big building with two high gables. Sharpe settled into a ditch and nodded at the big building. “That’s the tavern,” Sharpe said.
“Whorehouse too, sir.”
“Probably.”
“And it’s busy enough,” Harper grunted. They could see lamplight showing through the big building’s windows. They could also see moonlight glinting from the bayonets of two sentries posted on the firestep of the city’s wall.
“Busy drinking and whoring,” Sharpe said.
“Lucky people, then. Do we go look at them?”
“No, let them drink. We’ll move a few minutes before midnight. Lieutenant Anderson claims his watch is accurate enough.”
Sharpe watched the tavern for a few more minutes, unable to shift the dread from his thoughts. He tried to think of Lucille, tried to imagine a wedding service in the château’s old chapel that he had done his best to restore, but the more he thought of that hoped-for day, the worse his anticipation of this night’s madness. He was fairly sure the battalion could get into the house, and he was equally sure that Lanier’s battalion was there, but once the firing started there was a good chance of chaos, and a fight inside a large house would be difficult to control. Lanier must be warned already of a battalion of British troops moving through the city, but had he detected Sharpe’s presence behind him? And if so, would the tunnel be barricaded? Dear God, he thought, but I should have led the battalion in the main assault, because this was madness. “Let’s fetch the others, Pat,” he said, and then, after a pause, “and thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“For everything. From Portugal onward.”
Harper was silent for a moment. “Is that how you’re feeling?”
“Terrified, Pat.”
“Then let me lead.”
“Christ, no. It’s just nerves, Pat. I was the same before Toulouse.”
“And we won that.”
“We always win,” Sharpe said, hoping he spoke the truth.
He waited until Lieutenant Anderson’s watch said it was a quarter hour short of midnight, then he led the Light Company and the artillerymen back through the fields to the ditch at the edge of the village. He dared not use the road because they would be seen by the sentries on the wall’s firestep, but trees and hedgerows hid their approach. An owl hooted somewhere to the east as Sharpe crouched behind a thorn bush. “Time, Lieutenant?”
Anderson tilted the watch to catch the moonlight. “Eight minutes to midnight, sir.”
“We wait,” Sharpe said. Beyond the tavern he could see the loom of the city wall and the roof of the Delaunay buildings beyond. There were at least two sentries on that wall, the pale moonlight still reflecting from their fixed bayonets, but Sharpe was confident his men had not been seen. “Tell me when it’s three minutes to midnight,” he told Anderson.
Because then he would go where every instinct told him not to go.
Damn it, the war was over! And Sharpe was going to war.
There was singing in the tavern as Sharpe approached, a raucous singing by men who had plainly been drinking, and the sound persuaded Sharpe not to use the big door at the building’s front. The last thing he wanted was a drunken brawl, and so he swerved to the right and found a smaller door at the building’s side. It opened into a lantern-lit kitchen where a big man was stirring a pot on a stove and two women were sitting at a table jointing chicken carcasses. The big man just gaped as Sharpe’s men filed into the steamy room. “Where’s the tunnel?” Sharpe demanded of the man.
“Monsieur?”
“The tunnel,” Sharpe snarled. “Le tunnel. Où est-il?”
The man looked from Sharpe’s scarred face to Harper’s eyes and seemed to shiver. “In the cellar, monsieur.”
“And where’s that?”
The man was holding a big ladle that he dumbly pointed at a door. Sharpe wrenched it open and found himself in a hallway where a second door opened onto a dark flight of stairs leading down. “This way!” he called, and ran down the steps. “Harry!”
Captain Price caught up with Sharpe in the cellar that was stacked with barrels and with racks of wine bottles. “Sir?”
“Three men, Harry, stay here and make sure the bastards upstairs don’t follow us.”
“Sir,” Price said.
The cellar was dimly lit by lanterns, and in their light Sharpe could see a big wooden door on the far side. He dragged it open and there were more steps going down into darkness. “Time, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“A minute to midnight, sir,” Anderson answered after a pause.
