Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil. Bernard Cornwell

war, and Wigram could garner with the best. He bowed to Captain Harcourt, another guest at the dinner, and paid a fulsome tribute to the contribution made by the Royal Navy. Again there was applause.

      Finally Wigram turned to a question he had frequently pondered. ‘I am often asked,’ he said, ‘what qualities are most desirable in a soldier, and I confess to cause astonishment when I reply that it is not a sturdy arm, nor an adventurous spirit which gains an army its victories. Such qualities are necessary, of course, but without leadership they will inevitably fail. No, gentlemen, it is the man who keeps his mental faculties alert who contributes most to the glorious cause. A soldier must be a thinker. He must be a master of detail. He must be a man whose precision of thinking will render him staunch and steady amidst danger and uncertainty.’ It was at that point that Lieutenant-Colonel Wigram paused, his mouth dropped open, and one by one the guests turned to stare with amazement at the apparitions which had appeared in the doorway.

      It was commonly said that most men only joined the British Army for drink. The French scornfully accused the British of fighting drunk, indeed of not being able to fight unless they were drunk, though if the charge was true then it was astonishing that the French did not make their own men drunk because, sober, they could never beat the British. There was, nevertheless, a great deal of truth in the charges. The British Army was notorious for drunkenness, and more than one French unit had escaped capture by leaving tempting bottles and casks to waylay their pursuers.

      So it was hardly astonishing that the three provosts were drunk. Each had consumed close to a pint and a half of brandy, and they were not merely drunk, but gloriously, happily and carelessly oblivious of being drunk. They were, in truth, in a temporary nirvana so pleasant that none of the three had even noticed when a big Irishman rapped them hard on the skull to introduce a temporary unconsciousness. It was during that blank moment that each of the provosts had been stripped stark naked. Then, to make certain they stayed incapable, Sharpe and Frederickson had poured yet more brandy down their spluttering throats.

      Thus it was that Lieutenant-Colonel Wigram’s speech was interrupted by three deliriously drunken men who were as naked as the day on which they were born.

      The Provost Sergeant stared about him in blinking astonishment as he found himself in the brilliantly lit banqueting hall. He hiccupped, bowed to the company, and tried to speak. ‘Fire,’ he at last managed to say, then he slid down a wall to fall asleep.

      Behind him smoke seeped through the open door.

      Wigram stared, aghast.

      ‘Fire!’ This time the voice came from outside, and was a huge roar of warning. Wigram panicked, but so did almost every man in the room. Glasses and plates smashed as men fought to escape the tables and cram themselves through one of the room’s two doors. The naked provosts were trampled underfoot. Smoke was thickening in the corridor and billowing up the stairwell. Wigram fought to escape with the rest. He lost his glasses in his panic, but somehow managed to scramble through the door, across the vestibule, and down into the town square where the dinner guests assembled to watch the promised inferno.

      There was none. A guard sergeant filled a bucket of water and doused the pile of brandy-soaked uniforms which, heavily sprinkled with gunpowder and then piled with loosely stacked, brandy soaked ledgers, had caused the pungent smoke. There was a nasty scorch-mark on the carpet, which hardly mattered for, being embroidered with the imperial initial ‘N’, it was due for destruction anyway. Most of the ledgers were scorched, and a few had burned to ash, but the fire had not spread and so no real harm had been done. The Sergeant ordered the three drunken provosts to be carried to the yard and dumped in a horse-trough, then, pausing only to steal half a dozen bottles of brandy from the table in the banqueting hall, he went to the front door and reported to the officers that all was well.

      Except half an hour later someone thought to look on the top floor of the prefecture and discovered that three Riflemen were missing. Two rifles, a seven-barrelled gun, a bayonet, and six ammunition pouches were also missing from the guardroom.

      Colonel Wigram, panicking like a wet hen, wanted to call out the guard, then send cavalry galloping all over France to discover the fugitives. Captain Harcourt was calmer. ‘There’s no need,’ he said.

      ‘No need?’

      ‘My dear Wigram, there are picquets at every exit from the city, and even if Major Sharpe’s party evades those sentries, we know precisely where they’re going.’

      ‘We do?’

      ‘Naturally. That one-eyed Rifleman was entirely correct in his evidence to the tribunal. No men could have removed six tons of gold under enemy fire. Surely you understood that?’

      Wigram had understood no such thing, but was unwilling to display such ignorance. ‘Of course,’ he said huffily.

      ‘They could never have carried the gold away, so they must have hidden it at the Teste de Buch, and I warrant you that’s where they’ve gone. And that’s where we’ve had a sloop since last week. Might I trouble you for a single messenger to warn the crew that they’ll have to arrest Major Sharpe and his companions?’

      ‘Of course.’ Wigram felt aggrieved that no one had told him about the Navy’s precautions. ‘You’ve had a sloop there for a week?’

      ‘You don’t want the bloody French to get the gold, do you?’

      ‘But by law it belongs to them!’

      ‘I’ve spent the last twenty years killing the bastards, and don’t intend to hand them a pile of gold just because a peace treaty’s been signed. If it’s necessary we’ll tear that damned fort apart to find the bloody stuff!’ Harcourt glanced up at the stars, as if judging the weather, then grinned. ‘There is one consolation in all this, my dear Colonel. By running away, Major Sharpe and Captain Frederickson have proved their guilt, so when the Navy catches them, you shouldn’t have any trouble in convening a court-martial. Shall we send that messenger? And because the roads are likely to be dangerous, perhaps he’d better be given a cavalry troop as escort? Then perhaps you’d care to finish your speech? I must admit to a great fascination in your theory as to the role of the thinking man in gaining victory.’

      But somehow the joy had deserted Wigram’s evening. He did at least find his spectacles, but someone had trampled them in the rush and one lens was broken and an earpiece bent. So he abandoned his speech, cursed all Riflemen, then went to his quarters and slept.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      It had been easy enough to escape the prefecture by causing some small chaos, but leaving the city itself would be a harder task. Every exit was guarded by a picquet of redcoats. The soldiers were not there to guard Bordeaux against the marauding bands of the countryside, but rather to apprehend any deserter who might have evaded the provosts at the quays and be trying to take his woman back to Spain and Portugal.

      Sharpe had used the stars to find a westward road through the city, but now, so close to the open country, he had been forced to stop. He was staring at a picquet of a dozen soldiers who were silhouetted about a brazier. Sharpe was too far away to distinguish their faces or see what regiment they might be from. He silently cursed the lost telescope.

      ‘If we wait much longer,’ Frederickson warned, ‘they’ll have men after us.’

      ‘Surely they won’t stop officers walking past?’ Harper offered.

      ‘Let’s hope not.’ Sharpe decided Harper was right, and that rank alone should suffice to see them past the bored guards. He nevertheless wondered just what he should do if the picquet proved obdurate. It was one thing to strip drunken provosts naked, but quite another to use force against a squad of redcoats. ‘Cock your rifles,’ Sharpe said as they walked forward.

      ‘Are you going to shoot them?’ Frederickson sounded incredulous.

      ‘Threaten them, anyway.’