only a flesh wound, sir.’
‘He’s broken my back!’ Bampfylde hissed the words as evidence of his pain.
‘He’s creased your arse.’ Frederickson was grinning.
Ford looked up at Frederickson. ‘You agree honour is served, sir?’
Frederickson was finding it hard not to laugh. ‘Eminently served, Lieutenant. I bid you good day.’
The doctor knelt beside the Naval Captain. ‘A flesh wound, nothing more. It will only need a bandage. There’ll be some bruising and soreness. You’re a lucky man.’
Ford translated for the distraught Bampfylde, but the Naval Captain was not listening. Instead he was staring through angry and shameful tears at the black-haired Rifleman who had come to stand over him. Sharpe said nothing, but just tossed down the smoking pistol and walked away. He had failed to kill the man, which angered him, but honour had been served on the dead of the Teste de Buch. He had eaten his grass before breakfast, and now Sharpe must cement his fragile peace with Jane, send her away with his love, then go back to the place he knew the best and feared the most: the battlefield.
Bordeaux still belonged to the Emperor, though for how long no one could tell. The river wharfs were empty, the warehouses bare and the city’s coffers dry. A few men still proclaimed their loyalty to Napoleon, but most longed for the peace that would revive trade and, as a symbol of that longing, they made themselves white cockades that were the badge of France’s royal house. At first the cockades were kept hidden, but as each day passed more were worn in open defiance of the Bonapartist troops that remained. Those imperial defenders were few, and pitifully weak. Some crippled veterans and pensioners manned the river forts, and a half battalion of young infantrymen guarded the prefecture, but all the good troops had marched south and east to reinforce Marshal Soult and, encouraged by their absence, the hungry city grumbled with disaffection and rebellion.
On a March morning, brisk with a cold wind and wet with rain that swept from the Atlantic, a single wagon arrived at the city’s prefecture. The wagon held four heavy crates and was escorted by a troop of cavalrymen who, oddly, were commanded by an infantry Colonel. The wagon stopped in the prefecture’s yard and its Dragoon escort, on weary and muddied horses, slouched empty-eyed in their saddles. They wore their hair in cadenettes; small pigtails which hung beside their cheeks and were a mark of their élite status.
The infantry Colonel, elderly and scarred, climbed slowly from his saddle and walked to the porticoed entrance where a sentry presented his musket. The Colonel was too weary to acknowledge the sentry’s salute, but just pushed through the heavy door. The cavalry escort was left under the command of a Dragoon Sergeant who had a face that was the texture of knife-slashed leather. He sat with his heavy straight-bladed sword resting across his saddle bow and the nervous sentry, trying not to catch the Sergeant’s hostile eyes, could see that the edge of the dulled blade was brightly nicked from recent battle.
‘Hey! Pigface!’ The Sergeant had noted the sentry’s surreptitious interest.
‘Sergeant?’
‘Water. Fetch some water for my horse.’
The sentry, who was under orders not to stir from his post, tried to ignore the command.
‘Hey! Pigface! I said get some water.’
‘I’m supposed to stay …’
The sentry went silent because the Sergeant had drawn a battered pistol from a saddle holster.
The Sergeant thumbed back the pistol’s heavy cock. ‘Pigface?’
The sentry stared into the pistol’s black muzzle, then fled to get a bucket of water while, upstairs, the infantry Colonel had been directed into a cavernous room that had once been gracious with marble walls, a moulded plaster ceiling, and a polished boxwood floor, but which was now dirty, untidy and chill despite the small fire that burned in the wide hearth. A small bespectacled man was the room’s only occupant. He sat hunched over a green malachite table on which a slew of papers curled between the wax-thick stumps of dead candles. ‘You’re Ducos?’ the infantryman demanded without any other greeting.
‘I am Major Pierre Ducos.’ Ducos did not look up from his work.
‘My name is Colonel Maillot.’ Maillot seemed almost too tired to speak as he opened his sabretache and took out a sealed dispatch that he placed on the table. Maillot deliberately placed the dispatch on top of the paper upon which Ducos was writing.
Pierre Ducos ignored the insult. Instead he lifted the dispatch and noted the red seal that bore the insignia of a bee. Other men might have shown astonishment at receiving a missive with the Emperor’s private seal, but Ducos’s attitude seemed to express irritation that the Emperor should aggravate him with further work. Nor, as other men would have done, did Ducos immediately open the dispatch, but instead he insisted on finishing the work that the Colonel had interrupted. ‘Tell me, Colonel,’ Ducos had an extraordinarily deep voice for such a puny man, ‘what would your judgement be on a General of Brigade who allows his command to be defeated by a handful of vagabonds?’
Maillot was too tired to express any judgement, so said nothing. Ducos, who was writing his confidential report to the Emperor on the events at the Teste de Buch fort, dipped his nib in ink and wrote on. It was a full five minutes before Ducos deigned to close his inkwell and slit open the Emperor’s dispatch. It contained two sheets of paper that he read in silence, and afterwards, in obedience to an instruction contained on one of the sheets, he threw the other on to the fire. ‘It’s taken you long enough to reach me.’
The words were ungracious, but Maillot showed no resentment as he walked to the fire and held chilled hands to the small warmth generated by the burning page. ‘I’d have been here sooner, but the roads are hardly safe, Major. Even with a cavalry escort one has to beware bandits.’ He said the last word mockingly for both men knew that the ‘bandits’ were either deserters from Napoleon’s armies or young men who had fled into the countryside to avoid conscription. What Maillot did not say was that his wagon had been attacked by such bandits. Six of the Dragoons had died, including Maillot’s second-in-command, but Maillot had counter-attacked, then released the surviving Dragoons to pursue and punish the brigands. Maillot was a veteran of the Emperor’s wars and he would not be insulted by mere vagabonds.
Ducos unhooked the spectacles from his ears and wiped the round lenses on a corner of his blue jacket. ‘The consignment is safe?’
‘Downstairs. It’s in an artillery wagon that’s parked in the yard. The escort need food and water, and so do their horses.’
Ducos frowned to show that he was above dealing with such humdrum requirements as food and water. ‘Do the escort know what is in the wagon?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What do they think it is?’
Maillot shrugged. ‘Does it matter? They simply know they have fetched four unmarked crates to Bordeaux.’
Ducos lifted the dispatch’s remaining sheet of paper. ‘This gives me authority over the escort, and I insist upon knowing whether they can be trusted.’
Maillot sat in a chair and stretched out his long, weary and mud-spattered legs. ‘They’re commanded by a good man, Sergeant Challon, and they’ll do nothing to cross him. But can they be trusted? Who knows? They’ve probably guessed what’s in the crates by now, but so far they’ve stayed loyal.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘What they’re more concerned about now is food and water.’
‘And you, Colonel?’ Ducos asked.
‘I need food and water, too.’
Ducos grimaced to show that his question had been misunderstood. ‘What do you do now, Colonel?’
‘I return to the Emperor, of course. The consignment is your responsibility. And if you’ll forgive me, I’m damned glad to be shot of it. A soldier should be fighting now, not acting as a baggage-master.’
Ducos,