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

was close enough now to see that the picquet’s officer was a tall and dandified man who, like many infantry officers who aspired to high fashion, wore a cavalryman’s fur-edged pelisse over one shoulder. The officer strolled towards the three Riflemen with a languid, almost supercilious, air. The three must have looked strange for, in an army that had swiftly accustomed itself to peace, they were accoutred for war. They had heavy packs, crammed pouches, and were festooned with weapons. The sight of those weapons made the picquet’s sergeant snap an order to his men who unslung their muskets and shuffled into a crude line across the road. The officer calmly waved his hand as if to suggest that the sergeant need not feel any alarm. The officer had now walked thirty yards away from the brazier. He stopped there, folded his arms, and waited for the Riflemen to reach him. ‘If you haven’t got passes,’ he said in a most superior and disdainful voice, ‘then I’ll have no choice but to arrest you.’

      ‘Shoot the bugger,’ Sharpe said gleefully to Harper.

      But Harper was grinning, the officer was laughing, and Fortune, the soldier’s fickle goddess, was smiling on Sharpe. The tall and disdainful officer was Captain Peter d’Alembord of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. He was an old friend who had once served under Sharpe and who now commanded Sharpe’s old light company. D’Alembord also knew Frederickson and Harper well, and was delighted to see both men.

      ‘How are you, Regimental Sergeant Major?’ he asked Harper.

      ‘I’m just a Rifleman again now, sir.’

      ‘Quite right, too. You were far too insubordinate to be promoted.’ D’Alembord looked back to Sharpe. ‘Purely out of interest, sir, but do you have a pass?’

      ‘Of course I don’t have a bloody pass, Dally. The bastards want to arrest us.’

      It had been pure good luck that had brought Sharpe to this picquet that was manned by his old battalion. He was close enough now to recognize some of the men about the brazier. He saw Privates Weller and Clayton, both good men, but this was no time to greet old comrades, nor to implicate them in this night’s escapade. ‘Just get us quietly out of the city, Dally, and forget you ever saw us.’

      D’Alembord turned to his picquet. ‘Sergeant! I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

      The Sergeant was curious. The picquet duty had been boring, and now some small excitement broke the tedium, but he was too far from the three Riflemen to recognize them. He took a few steps forward. ‘Can I say where you’ll be, sir? If I’m asked.’

      ‘In a whorehouse, of course.’ D’Alembord sighed. ‘The trouble with Sergeant Huckfield,’ he said to Sharpe, ‘is that he’s so damned moral. A good soldier, but horribly tedious. We’ll go this way.’ He led the three Riflemen into a foetid black alley that reeked with an overwhelming stench of blood. ‘They put me next to a slaughterhouse,’ d’Alembord explained.

      ‘Is there a safe way out of the city?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘There are dozens,’ d’Alembord said. ‘We’re supposed to patrol these alleys, but most of the lads don’t take kindly to arresting women and children. Consequently we tend to do quite a lot of looking the other way these days. The provosts, as you might imagine, are more energetic.’ He led the Riflemen away from the butcher’s stink and into a wider alley. Dogs barked behind closed doors. Once a shutter opened from an upper window and a face peered out, but no one called any alarm or query. The alley twisted incomprehensibly, but eventually emerged into a rutted lane edged with sooty hedges where the smell of open country mingled with the city’s malodorous stench. ‘The main road’s that way,’ Dally pointed southwards across dark fields, ‘but before you go, sir, would you satisfy my curiosity and tell me just what in God’s name is happening?’

      ‘It’s a long story, Dally,’ Sharpe said.

      ‘I’ve got all night.’

      It did not take that long, merely ten minutes to describe the day’s extraordinary events. Then the sound of hooves on a road to the north forced another delay, and Sharpe used it to discover how his old battalion was managing without him. ‘What’s the new Colonel like?’

      ‘He’s a rather frightened and fussy little man who quite rightly believes we’re all wondrously expert and that he’s got a lot to learn. His biggest terror is that the army will somehow post you back to the regiment and thus show up his manifold deficiencies. On the other hand he’s not an unkind man, and given time, might even become a decent soldier. I doubt he’s good enough to beat the French yet, but he could probably squash a Luddite riot without killing too many innocents.’

      ‘Are they sending you to America?’ Sharpe asked.

      D’Alembord shook his head. ‘Chelmsford. We’re to recruit up to scratch ready for garrison duty in Ireland. I suppose I shall have the pleasure of knocking your countrymen’s heads together, RSM?’

      ‘Make sure they don’t knock yours, sir,’ Harper said.

      ‘I’ll try to avoid that fate.’ D’Alembord cocked his head to the night wind, but the mysterious hoofbeats had faded to the west. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help here, sir?’ he asked Sharpe.

      ‘When do you go to Chelmsford?’

      ‘Any day now.’

      ‘Do you have any leave owing?’

      ‘My God, do I? They owe me half my life.’

      ‘So you can deliver a message for me?’

      ‘With the greatest of pleasure, sir.’

      ‘Find Mrs Sharpe. The last address I had was in Cork Street, London, but she may have moved to Dorset since then. Tell her everything I’ve told you tonight. Tell her I shall come home when I can, and tell her that I need some influence on my side. Ask her to find Lord Rossendale.’

      ‘That’s a clever thought, sir.’ D’Alembord recognized Lord Rossendale’s name, for d’Alembord had been with Sharpe during the strange London interlude when Sharpe had been adopted as a favourite of the Prince Regent’s. One result of that favouritism was the naming of Sharpe’s old regiment as the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, and another was a distant but friendly acquaintanceship with one of the Prince’s military aides, Lord John Rossendale. If any man could harness the full power of influence to clear Sharpe’s name, it was Rossendale. Sharpe knew that the best method of establishing his innocence was to discover Lassan or Ducos, but if that search failed then he would need powerful friends in London, and Rossendale was the first and most approachable of those friends.

      ‘If you can’t find my wife,’ Sharpe added, ‘then try and see Rossendale directly. He can talk to the Prince.’

      ‘I’ll do that gladly, sir. And how do I send messages back to you?’

      Sharpe had not thought of that problem, nor did he want to consider it now. The night was getting cold, and he was impatient to be on his way westwards. ‘We’ll probably be home within a month, Dally. It can’t take much longer than that to find one French officer. But if we fail? Then for God’s sake make sure Rossendale knows we’re innocent. There never was any gold.’

      ‘But if we are delayed,’ Frederickson was more cautious, ‘then perhaps we can send a message to you?’

      ‘Send it to Greenwoods.’ Greenwoods was another firm of Army Agents. ‘And take care, sir.’ D’Alembord shook Sharpe’s hand.

      ‘You haven’t seen us, Dally.’

      ‘I haven’t even smelt you, sir.’

      The three Riflemen crossed a rough piece of pastureland towards the embanked high road. The high road was not the most direct route to Arcachon, for it led more south than west, but it was a road that Sharpe and Frederickson had ambushed not many weeks before and, once they reached the ambush site, they knew they could find their way across country to the Teste de Buch fort.

      ‘I’d