and older like this château which slumbered in its deep valley.
‘I’ll be back in Donegal,’ Harper said wistfully. ‘I’ll buy some Protestant acres, so I will.’
‘You’ll be a farmer?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Aye, sir, and I’ll have a grand house, so I will. Somewhere where the children can grow in peace.’ Harper fell silent, perhaps thinking of how close that coveted heaven had become.
‘Soldiers’ dreams,’ Frederickson said dismissively, ‘just soldiers’ dreams.’ He rolled on to his belly, parted the leaves in front of him, and stared down the barrel of his rifle towards the distant château. Six cows were being driven to the byre for milking. He could just see a man standing in the farmyard, beyond the moat, and he wondered if that solitary figure was Henri Lassan, and Frederickson thought how many soldiers’ dreams were fixed on that one man’s honesty. A farm in Ireland, a house in Dorset, and a sketchbook in the Roman Forum; all would come true if only one honest man would tell the truth. He let the leaves fall slowly back, then slept, waiting for the dusk.
An hour after the sun had sunk, and when the light was still thick and gold about the lengthening shadows, the three Riflemen crept from the woods and stalked down a deep hedgerow which led to the laneway which edged the moat at the front of Lassan’s château.
Sharpe reached the laneway first and saw the same young man standing guard in the château’s archway. The youth was clearly bored. He thought himself unobserved and so was practising a crude arms drill of his own invention. He shouldered his fowling piece, presented it, grounded it, then thrust it forward as though it was tipped with a bayonet. After a while, and tiring of his military dreams, the boy sidled past the crude barricade of barrels and disappeared into the château’s yard.
Frederickson crouched beside Sharpe. ‘Shall we go now?’ he asked.
Sharpe stared at the crenellated tower above the gatehouse. He could not imagine why Lassan had not thought to post a sentry on that high commanding platform, but no man watched from that eyrie so Sharpe decided it was safe to go. Sharpe had decreed that just he and Frederickson would approach the château, and that neither man would carry weapons. Two unarmed men in the twilight posed no great threat. Harper would wait with all the weapons in the hedgerow, and only join the officers once Lassan had been safely reached.
The boy was still hidden inside the yard as Sharpe and Frederickson scrambled through the hedge and walked down the lane’s grass verge. No one called an alarm. This façade of the château, hard on the moat and facing the village, was an almost featureless wall, betraying that the building had once been a small fortress.
‘It’s a very pretty house,’ Frederickson murmured.
‘Monsieur Lassan’s a very lucky man,’ Sharpe agreed.
They had to step off the verge to approach the bridge across the moat. Once on the roadbed their boots crunched on loose stone, but still no one challenged them, not even when they reached the moat and stepped on to the mossedged planks of the ancient drawbridge. They hurried into the shelter of the archway, then edged silently by the crude barricade of empty barrels. Sharpe saw a flock of geese cropping at a thin patch of grass at the far side of the château’s yard.
‘Back!’ Frederickson hissed. He had glimpsed the boy coming back towards the arch. The lad had evidently gone to the kitchen to collect his supper that he was now carefully carrying in both hands. His long-barrelled fowling piece was slung on his shoulder.
The two Riflemen pressed themselves against the wall of the arch. The boy, intent on not spilling a drop of his soup, did not even look up as he turned into the thick shadow of the gateway.
Frederickson pounced.
The boy, in sudden terror, let the bowl fall as he twisted violently away. He was too slow. The wooden bowl spilt its contents across the cobbles as a knife jarred cold against his throat. An arm went round the boy’s face, muzzling his mouth.
‘Not a word!’ Frederickson hissed in French. He was holding the flat of a clasp-knife’s blade against the boy’s adam’s apple. ‘Be very quiet, my lad, very quiet. You’re not going to be hurt.’
Sharpe took the old fowling piece from the boy’s shoulder. He opened the lock’s frizzen and blew the priming powder away to make the gun safe. The boy was wide-eyed and shivering.
‘We mean no harm,’ Frederickson spoke very slowly and softly to the boy. ‘We don’t even have guns, you see? We’ve simply come here to talk to your master.’ He took his hand from the boy’s mouth.
The boy, clearly terrified out of his wits by the two scarred and ragged men, tried to speak, but the events of the last few seconds had struck him dumb. Frederickson gripped the nape of the boy’s jerkin. ‘Come with us, lad, and don’t be frightened. We’re not going to hurt you.’
Sharpe propped the fowling piece against the wall, then led the way out of the shadowed arch. He could see a lit window across the château’s yard, and the shadow of a person moving behind the small panes of glass. He hurried. Frederickson kept hold of the frightened boy. Two of the geese stretched their necks towards the Riflemen.
The geese began their cackling too late, for Sharpe had already reached the kitchen door which, because the boy had to return his soup bowl, was still unlocked. Sharpe did not wait on ceremony, but just pushed open the heavy door.
Frederickson thrust the boy away from him, then ducked under the lintel behind Sharpe.
Two women were in the candle-lit kitchen. One, an elderly woman with work-reddened hands, was stirring a great vat that hung on a pothook above the fire. The other, a much younger and thinner woman who was dressed all in black, was sitting at the table with an account book. The two women stared in frozen horror at the intruders.
‘Madame?’ Frederickson said from behind Sharpe who had stopped just inside the door.
‘Who are you?’ It was the thin woman in black who asked the question.
‘We’re British officers, Madame, and we apologize for thus disturbing you.’
The thin woman stood. Sharpe had an impression of a long and bitter face. She turned away from the intruders to where two water vats stood in an alcove. ‘Haven’t you done enough already?’ she asked over her shoulder.
‘Madame,’ Frederickson said gently, ‘I think you misunderstand us. We are only here …’
‘William!’ Sharpe, understanding none of what was being said, turned and pushed Frederickson out of the kitchen. He had seen the thin black-dressed woman turn back from the vats, and in her hands was a great brassmuzzled horse-pistol. Her grey eyes held nothing but a bitter hatred and Sharpe knew, with the certainty of the doomed, that everything had gone wrong. He pushed Frederickson desperately into the yard and he tried to throw himself out of the door, but he knew he was too late. His body flinched from the terrible pain to come. He had already begun to scream in anticipation of that pain when Lucille Castineau pulled the trigger and Sharpe’s world turned to thunder and agony. He felt the bullets strike like massive blows, and he saw a sear of flame flash its light above him, and then, blessedly, as the gun’s stunning echo died away, there was just nothing.
CHAPTER TEN
Captain Peter d’Alembord sat in the drawing-room of the Cork Street house and felt acutely uncomfortable. It was not that d’Alembord was unused to luxury, indeed he had been raised in an affluent family of the most exquisite tastes, but his very familiarity with civilized living told him that there was something exceedingly vulgar about this high-ceilinged room. There was, he considered, simply too much of everything. A great chandelier, much too large for the room, hung from a plaster finial, while a dozen crystal sconces crowded the walls. The sconces, like