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

you’ll go home without any of the money?’ Challon asked enticingly. The two men were in the stableyard of a tavern in Leghorn. Challon had gone to the stables to make certain the horses were being fed, and the Saxon had followed the Sergeant in hope of finding some privacy for this conversation.

      Herman shrugged. ‘I deserve something, Sergeant, and you know it.’ It had been the Saxon who had been slightly wounded when he crossed the wooden bridge with Sergeant Challon to kill Henri Lassan, and it had been the Saxon who had made such havoc in the Seleglise farmhouse which Ducos had ordered attacked so that the local people would believe the subsequent attack on Lassan the work of casual brigands.

      ‘You deserve something,’ Challon said soothingly. ‘I’ll talk to Major Ducos. He won’t like it, but I’ll try and persuade him to be generous. I’ll tell him how loyal you’ve been.’ Challon had smiled, begun to walk away, but then whipped back as he drew his long straight sword. The Saxon’s own blade was only half out of its scabbard as Challon’s sword ripped into his throat. Twenty minutes later the Saxon’s naked body was left in the street outside the tavern yard where it was reckoned to be just another dead sailor.

      Ducos sold the Dragoons’ horses in Leghorn, then paid the captain of a barca-longa to take himself and the seven remaining Dragoons southwards to Naples. It was a nervous voyage, for the coast was infested by Barbary pirates, but the occasional presence of a British naval squadron cheered Ducos. Despite that naval protection, the barca-longa, a two-masted coastal cargo vessel, put into a safe haven each night and the consequent delays meant that the voyage to Naples took eight days.

      Sergeant Challon, in a rare outburst of disagreement with Pierre Ducos, had argued against seeking refuge in Naples. The city was the capital of the Kingdom of Naples, and its King was a Frenchman who had once been a Marshal in Napoleon’s armies. Surely, Challon argued, Marshal Murat would not offer shelter to men who had betrayed Napoleon, but Ducos patiently explained that Murat had broken with his erstwhile master. Napoleon might have put Murat on the throne of Naples, but Murat could only keep that throne if he was now seen to be an enemy of the broken Emperor, to which end he was busy cultivating new alliances and his Neapolitan troops had even marched north to expel the remnants of the Imperial French Army from Rome. ‘So you see,’ Ducos patiently continued, ‘an enemy of the Emperor’s will be a friend to the Marshal.’

      Not that Ducos had any intention of seeking an audience with Murat, yet he knew he must somehow secure the help of the authorities. Strangers were suspect in a place like Naples, so Ducos must not be a stranger.

      Ducos established his men in a small harbour tavern, then used his old skills, and not a little money, to discover who, besides Murat, was the power in this filthy and ramshackle city beneath its smoking volcano. It took Ducos ten days, but then he found himself kneeling before an elaborate throne and kissing the plump ring of a very fat Cardinal. ‘My name,’ Ducos said humbly, ‘is Count Poniatowski.’

      ‘You are Polish?’ The Cardinal was so fat that his breath rasped in his throat if he even waddled the short distance from his throne’s dais to the door of his audience chamber. The throne itself was supposed to face the wall, unused, except during the short period between the death of one Pope and the election of the next, but the Cardinal liked to sit in its cushioned magnificence and look down on the humble petitioners who knelt before its dais.

      ‘I am Polish, your Eminence,’ Ducos confirmed.

      ‘Perhaps you would prefer it if we spoke in Polish?’ the Cardinal asked in French.

      ‘Your Eminence is too kind,’ Ducos replied in heavily accented Polish.

      The Cardinal, who spoke Italian, Latin and French, but not a word of any other language, smiled as if he had understood. It was possible, he allowed to himself, that this scrawny little man was truly a Polish aristocrat, but the Cardinal doubted it. Most refugees these days were from France, but the Cardinal’s first very simple trap had failed to embarrass this petitioner, so his Eminence graciously suggested that perhaps they should continue their conversation in Italian so that the Count Poniatowski could practise that language. ‘And allow me to ask, my dear Count, why you have come to our humble country?’

      The country might be humble, Ducos reflected, but not this monstrous Prince of the Church who employed more than a hundred and twenty servants in his own household and whose private chapel had more eunuchs in its choir than had ever sung at any one time in St Peter’s. On either side of the cardinal young boys wielded paper fans to cool the great man’s brow. At the foot of the dais were guards in yellow and black, armed with ancient halberds which, despite their age, could still cleave a man from skull to balls in the time it would take to cock a pistol. The room itself seemed a fantasy of decorated stone, carved into adoring angels and archangels. In truth the decorations were of scagliola, a false stone made of plaster and glue, but Ducos recognized the skill of the craftsmen who had made the dazzling objects. ‘I have come, your Eminence, for the sake of my health.’

      ‘You are a consumptive, my son?’

      ‘I have a breathing problem, your Eminence, which is aggravated by cold weather.’

      The Cardinal suspected that the Count’s breathing problem was more likely to be aggravated by an enemy’s sword, but it would be impolite to say as much. ‘The city,’ he said instead, and with a wave of his plump hand about his splendid audience chamber, ‘will be hard on your lungs, my dear Count. There is much smoke in Naples.’

      ‘I would prefer to live in the countryside, your Eminence, on a hilltop where the fresh air is untainted by smoke.’

      And where, the Cardinal thought, enemies could be perceived at a good distance, which explained why the Count Poniatowski had so generously presented a large ruby to the Cardinal’s funds as an inducement for this audience. The Cardinal shifted himself on his cushioned throne and stared over the Count’s head. ‘It is my experience, my dear Count, that invalids such as yourself live longer if they are undisturbed.’

      ‘Your Eminence understands my paltry needs only too well,’ Ducos said.

      ‘His Majesty,’ it was the first time the Cardinal had acknowledged the existence of a higher power in the state than himself, ‘insists upon the prudent policy that our wealthier citizens, those who pay the land taxes, you understand, should live in peace.’

      ‘It is well known,’ Ducos said, ‘that his Majesty pays the closest attention to your Eminence’s wise advice.’ Ducos doubted whether any wealthy person in the kingdom paid any tax at all, but doubtless the Cardinal was merely using the word to describe the gifts he would expect, and now was the time to make it clear that the Count Poniatowski was a man who had gifts to give. Ducos took a purse from his pocket and, closely watched by the Cardinal, poured some gems into his palm. Ducos, knowing that the sheer weight of the boxed gold would prove too heavy to carry across an embattled continent, had bought diamonds, rubies, sapphires and pearls in Bordeaux. He had purchased the gems for a very low price, for the starving merchants in Bordeaux had been desperate for trade, and especially for gold. ‘I was hoping, your Eminence,’ Ducos began, but then let his voice tail away.

      ‘My dear Count?’ The Cardinal waved away the small boys whose job was to fan him in the sultry months.

      ‘It takes time for a man to settle in a foreign country, your Eminence,’ Ducos still held the handful of precious stones, ‘and under the pressures of strange circumstances, and due to the necessities of establishing a home, a man might forget some civic duties like the payment of his land tax. If I were to offer you a payment of that tax now, perhaps your Eminence can persuade the authorities to take a kindly view of my convalescence?’

      The Cardinal reached out a fat palm which was duly filled with some very fine gems. ‘Your responsibility does credit to your nation, my dear Count.’

      ‘Your Eminence’s kindness is only exceeded by your Eminence’s wisdom.’

      The Cardinal pushed the gems into a pocket that was concealed beneath his red, fur-trimmed Cappa Magna. ‘I have a mind, my dear Count, to help you further.