horsemen approached from the northern road that dropped off the wooded ridge and the farmworkers ran to the château’s entrance with loaded muskets and hefted pitchforks.
The strange horsemen approached slowly, with their hands held in clear view. They stopped a good few yards from the moat’s bridge and their leader, a plump man, politely requested an audience with Monsieur the Comte de Lassan.
‘He’s dead.’ It was the miller’s son who answered truculently.
Monsieur Roland, the advocate from Paris, eyed the ancient musket in the boy’s hands and chose his next words very carefully. ‘Then I would like to speak with a member of his family, Monsieur? My name is Roland, and I have the honour to be a lawyer in the service of his Most Christian Majesty.’
The words, gently said, impressed the miller’s son who ran to tell Madame Castineau that yet another gentleman had come to see her.
Roland, whose rump had been made excruciatingly sore by long days in the saddle, walked with Lucille in the orchards. His four men patrolled the edges of the trees with drawn pistols to deter any strangers from intruding on the discussion.
Roland explained that he was charged by the Royal Treasury with the recovery of a sum of gold stolen by the English. The coins had been deposited in the Teste de Buch fort, and Roland had come to Normandy to hear Commandant Lassan’s evidence about the loss of the bullion. He was desolated, Roland repeated the word, desolated, to hear of the Commandant’s death.
‘Murder,’ Lucille corrected him.
‘Murder,’ Roland humbly accepted the correction.
‘The English murdered him,’ Lucille said. ‘The men in green coats. The Riflemen.’
Roland stopped his slow pacing and turned an astonished face on the widow. ‘Are you certain, Madame?’
Lucille, galled that no one believed her, turned in fury on the plump lawyer. ‘Monsieur, I am sure! I am sure! I saw them! They were men in green coats, Englishmen just like those my brother feared, and they murdered my mother and my brother. They are animals, Monsieur, animals! My brother had said they might come, and they did! He even knew the Englishman’s name. Sharpe!’
‘I think you are right, Madame,’ Roland said quietly, and Lucille, who till now had not been taken seriously by a single person, could only stare at the Parisian lawyer. ‘In fact I am sure you are right,’ Roland added.
‘You believe me, Monsieur?’ Lucille said in a very relieved and somewhat surprised voice.
‘I do believe you. These are ruthless men, Madame. Believe me, I have met this Sharpe.’ Roland shuddered. ‘He and his comrade have stolen a fortune that belongs to France, and now they will try to kill the men who can testify to that theft. I should have thought to warn your brother. Alas, dear lady, that I did not think to do so.’
Lucille shook her head in denial of the lawyer’s self accusation. ‘Henri mentioned no gold,’ she said after a while.
‘A soldier should carry secrets well, and the existence of this gold was most secret.’ Roland, sweating profusely in the spring sunshine, turned and walked back towards the château. ‘I do not think the Englishmen will return now,’ he said soothingly.
‘I wish they would return.’ Lucille alarmed the lawyer by revealing an enormous brass-muzzled horse-pistol that lay heavy in the wide pocket of her apron. ‘If they do return, Monsieur, I shall kill at least one of them.’
‘Leave the killing to those who know best how to do it.’ Roland, knowing this visit was wasted, was eager to return to Caen where there was at least a vestige of civilization. He feared that Lucille would invite him to luncheon, and that the château’s evident poverty would provide a most meagre meal, but, to his relief, Lucille made no such offer.
Roland mounted his horse at the château’s entrance. He had given Madame Castineau his address, and begged her to write to him if the Englishmen returned, though he admitted he put small faith in such a thing happening. Nevertheless, looking down at the sad Lucille, he felt a pang of sympathy. ‘May I presume to give Madame advice?’
‘I should be honoured. Monsieur.’
Roland collected his reins. ‘Marry again, Madame. A woman such as yourself should not be alone; not in these troubled times and in this sad country. Permit me to say that I am married, Madame, and that it gives me the greatest peace and happiness.’
Lucille smiled, but said nothing.
Roland turned his horse, then, remembering one last question, turned the animal back again. ‘Madame? Forgive my indelicacy, but did your brother lose two fingers of his right hand?’
‘They cut them off!’ Lucille wailed the words in sudden agony. ‘The Englishmen cut them off!’
Roland, thinking the loss of the two fingers must have happened when Sharpe’s men had captured the Teste de Buch fort, did not ask Lucille to amplify the answer which already seemed to confirm Ducos’s written testimony. Instead the lawyer raised his hat. ‘Thank you, Madame, and I am sorry if I have caused you distress.’
That night, in his comfortable lodgings in Caen, Monsieur Roland wrote two reports. The first would be sent to the King’s Minister of Finance and it respectfully and regretfully reported the murder of Henri Lassan and the consequent lack of any new evidence that might lead to the gold’s recovery. Roland added his suspicions that the two English officers, Sharpe and Frederickson, had been responsible for Lassan’s death. ‘They must certainly be charged with murder,’ he wrote, ‘and the search for them must continue, both in France and in Britain.’
Roland’s second report was far more detailed. It began by saying that Pierre Ducos’s written testimony had been substantially confirmed, and that it now seemed virtually certain that the two English Rifle officers had stolen the Emperor’s gold. They had also killed Lassan, presumably so that he could not testify against them. The death of Lassan prompted Roland to consider the possibility that the two English officers had already murdered Pierre Ducos; how else to account for Ducos’s continued silence? Roland respectfully suggested that the two Englishmen must already have left France, but hoped they might yet be found and brought to vengeance. He added the welcome news that the English Navy had been requested by the new French government to desist from their explorations in and around the Teste de Buch fort, which request had been reluctantly complied with. The English search about the fort had found none of the imperial gold or baggage.
This second report was written on fine India paper which Monsieur Roland took to a calligrapher in Paris. The calligrapher sealed the India paper inside two sheets of thicker paper that were so cleverly pasted together that they appeared to a casual glance to be one thick sheet of paper. Then, on the thicker paper’s creamy surface, the calligrapher inscribed an extremely tedious ode in praise of the Greek Gods.
The ode was briefly read by a French government censor. Two weeks later the poem was delivered to the island of Elba, off the Tuscany coast, where the creamy page was delicately peeled apart to reveal the India paper inside. Within an hour Roland’s longer report was being read by an Emperor in exile, but an Emperor who still retained some sharp claws. Except that the claws could not be unsheathed, for the enemy was hidden, and so, though Monsieur Roland’s report was filed carefully away, it was not forgotten. The report, after all, concerned money, and the exiled Emperor had need of money if his dreams were once again to blazon Europe with his glory. The English Riflemen might have vanished for the moment, but they would reappear, and when they did the Emperor would have them found and have them killed. For glory.
The Saxon Dragoon wished to go home. He told Sergeant Challon as much, and the Sergeant reminded the Saxon of the vow they had all taken when they had waited in the deserted farmhouse. The vow had been an agreement that all the Dragoons would remain with Major Ducos until everything was safe, but if any man did wish to leave then he must forfeit his share of the Emperor’s treasure.
The Saxon shrugged. ‘I just want to go home.’
Challon