give a proper appreciation of that admiration.’
Ducos wondered what new financial screw the Cardinal would turn, but bowed his thanks.
‘You seek a house,’ the Cardinal said, ‘upon a hill. A place where an invalid can live in peace, undisturbed by any past acquaintances who might disturb his fragile recovery?’
‘Indeed, your Eminence.’
‘I know such a place,’ the Cardinal said. ‘It has belonged to my family for many years, and it would give me the keenest pleasure, my dear Count, if you were to occupy the house. You will need to give it the merest touch of paint, but otherwise …’ The Cardinal shrugged and smiled.
Ducos realized that the house was a ruin which he would now have to rebuild at his own expense, and all the while he would be paying this fat man an extortionate rent, but in return Ducos was receiving the protection of the Cardinal who, more than any other man, was the real power in the kingdom of Naples. Ducos accordingly offered the Cardinal a very low bow. ‘Your Eminence’s kindness overwhelms me.’
‘It is a very spacious house,’ the Cardinal said, thereby warning Ducos that the rent would be concomitantly large.
‘Your Eminence’s generosity astounds me,’ Ducos said.
‘But a large house,’ the Cardinal said slyly, ‘might be a suitable dwelling for a man who has arrived in our humble country with seven male servants? And all of them armed?’
Ducos spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘As your Eminence so wisely observed, an invalid needs peace, and armed servants are conducive to peace.’ He bowed again. ‘If I might offer your Eminence some rent now?’
‘My dear Count!’ The Cardinal seemed overwhelmed, but recovered sufficiently to accept the second purse which contained a handful of French golden francs.
The Cardinal was quite sure that the Count Poniatowski was neither a Count, nor Polish, but was almost certainly a wealthy French refugee who had fled the wrath of the victorious allies. That did not matter so long as the ‘Count’ lived peaceably in the kingdom, and so long as he was a source of income to the Cardinal who needed a very large income to sustain his household. Thus the Count was made welcome, and the very next day a lugubrious priest with an enormously long nose was instructed to lead the Count northwards to the Villa Lupighi which stood mouldering on a steep bare hill above the coast.
The villa was indeed a ruin; a vast and decaying structure which would cost a fortune to be fully restored, but Ducos had no intention of making a full restoration, only of lying low, in security, until the last question about an Emperor’s missing gold had been asked and answered. He explored his new home that overlooked the astonishingly blue sea, and Ducos saw how no one could approach the villa without being seen, and so he expressed to the long-nosed priest his full and grateful satisfaction.
Ducos had found both a refuge and a powerful protector, and thus, for the first time since he had shot Colonel Maillot, Pierre Ducos felt safe.
Sharpe had to risk letting Frederickson enter the city of Caen, for the Riflemen needed detailed instructions if they were to find the village where Henri Lassan lived.
Frederickson went into the city alone and unarmed, posing as a discharged German veteran of Napoleon’s army who sought his old Chef de battalion. No one challenged his right to be in the city, and thus he indulged himself with a tour of the great church where his namesake, William the Conqueror, lay buried. Frederickson stood for a long time in front of the marble slab, then was accosted by a cheerful priest who merrily recounted how the Conqueror’s body had been so filled with putrefaction at the time of its burial in 1087 that it had exploded under the pressure of the foul-smelling gases. ‘The church emptied!’ The priest laughed as if he had actually been there. ‘Not that our Billy’s down there any more, of course.’
‘He isn’t?’ Frederickson was surprised.
‘Those Revolutionary bastards desecrated the tomb and scattered the bones. We collected a few scraps in ’02, but I doubt if any of them are the real thing. On Judgement Day we’ll likely find a scrofulous beggar coming out of the hole instead of the Conqueror.’
The priest gladly accepted the offer of a glass of wine, and just as gladly told Frederickson how to reach Henri Lassan’s village which lay some forty miles away. ‘But be careful!’ The priest reiterated Father Marin’s warning. ‘The countryside is a dangerous place, my friend. It’s full of villains and murderers! The Emperor would never have allowed such a state.’
‘Indeed not,’ Frederickson agreed, and the two men commiserated with each other over the sad state of France now that the Emperor was gone.
It was dusk before Frederickson rejoined his companions, and night had fallen by the time Sharpe led them away from the city’s environs. The three Riflemen still planned to travel in the dark, for by daylight a man moving across country could prompt a score of telltale signs; a hare running from its lay, a pigeon startled to clatter through leaves, or even the curious gaze of somnolent cattle could alert a suspicious man to surreptitious movement. At night those dangers were lessened, for after sundown the Norman cottages were tight barred. It was easy to avoid the cottages, even in the darkness, for each one had a great manure heap piled against an outer wall and the Riflemen’s sense of smell was sufficient to send them looping far from any wakeful and suspicious villagers.
They travelled west. Sometimes they would walk for miles along deep and rutted lanes like those in England’s west country. At other times they struggled through high-hedged fields, or climbed to some wooded ridge from where they could judge their position by moonlight. It took two nights to find the right district, and another night to discover Lassan’s château in its deep, private valley that was filled with drifts of decaying blossom. Sharpe and Harper spent the last two hours of that night scouting round the château. They saw a youth sitting in the château’s gateway. Behind him, and silhouetted by a lantern, was a crude barricade of barrels. The youth was armed with what looked like an old fowling piece. He had tipped his chair back, and seemed asleep, and Sharpe had been tempted to make his entry there and then. He resisted the urge, for to have entered at that witching hour would have caused a frantic alarm. The boy was clearly posted to guard against the brigands who threatened the countryside, and Sharpe had no wish to be mistaken for such a villain. Instead he and Harper went back to the high wooded spur where Frederickson had found a hiding place.
They spent the whole of the next day on the high ground of the ridge. They were hidden by hornbeams, elms, beeches, and oaks. It was frustrating to be so close to their quarry, and yet be forced to let the daylight hours pass in inactivity, but Sharpe had decided that, in their ragged state, a daylight approach would cause suspicion and might even trigger disaster. He could see from his eyrie that every man in the valley carried a gun; even the two boys in the big orchard who laboriously ringed the trunks of the apple trees with tar carried muskets.
‘We’ll go just after sundown,’ Sharpe decided. The dusk was a time when men were relaxing from a day’s labours.
The Riflemen anticipated their success. One evening’s conversation, Frederickson averred, would be sufficient to persuade Henri Lassan to travel to England. In a week, Sharpe thought, he would be back in London. Within two weeks, at the very most, he would be back with Jane.
‘I’ll take some leave when we’re home,’ Frederickson said.
‘You can visit us in Dorset.’ Sharpe had a homely dream of entertaining old friends in his well-deserved comfort.
Frederickson smiled crookedly. ‘I have a greater yearning to visit Rome. I’d like to stand where the emperors once stood. They say an astonishing amount of the imperial city still stands, though it’s evidently much decayed. Perhaps you’ll come with me?’ he offered to Sharpe.
‘Dorset will do me well enough.’ Sharpe, lying on the high ground and staring down at the moated château, envied Henri Lassan his house. Sharpe might not have rejoiced, as Frederickson did, in the ruins of the ancient world, but he perceived a great calmness in this old Norman farmhouse. He hoped Jane