Sharpe’s Regiment: The Invasion of France, June to November 1813. Bernard Cornwell

all the god-damned bloody nonsense in this god-damned bloody world!’ Sharpe flung open the theatre door and stormed into Drury Lane. ‘God in his heaven!’

      ‘They didn’t mean harm, sir.’

      ‘Making a bloody monkey out of me!’ Last night it had been the Royal Court, stinking like a whore’s armpit, and now this! ‘There wasn’t a bloody castle at Vitoria!’ Sharpe said irrelevantly. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ The audience was coming into the light of the lanterns hung beneath the theatre’s canopy and some were clapping the two soldiers.

      ‘Sir!’ Harper shouted at Sharpe who had plunged into an alleyway. ‘You’re going the wrong way!’

      ‘I’m not going near the bloody tavern!’

      Harper smiled. Sharpe in a temper was a fearsome thing, but the huge Irishman had been long enough with the officer not to be worried. ‘Sir.’ He said it patiently, as though he spoke to a fool.

      ‘What?’

      ‘They’re not meaning any harm, sir. It’s a few free drinks, eh?’ He said the last as if it was an irrefutable argument.

      Sharpe stared at him belligerently. Isabella clung to the big Sergeant, her dark eyes staring fearfully at Sharpe. He cleared his throat, growled, and shrugged. ‘You go.’

      ‘Sir! They’ll want to see you.’

      ‘I’ll be there later. One hour!’

      Harper nodded, knowing he would do no better. ‘One hour, sir.’

      ‘Maybe.’ Sharpe crammed his shako onto his head, hitched his sword into place, and walked into the alley.

      ‘Where’s he going?’ Isabella asked.

      ‘Christ knows.’ The big Sergeant shrugged. ‘Back to the woman he was with last night, I suppose.’

      ‘He said he was walking!’ Isabella said indignantly.

      Harper laughed. He turned to the crowd, bowed to them and, like a monstrous pied piper, led his public towards the taproom where they could buy him drink and listen to the tales, the loving, long, splendidly told tales of an Irish soldier.

      Anne, the Dowager Countess Camoynes, listened for a few moments to the orchestra playing in the great marbled hall where, this evening, an Earl entertained a few close friends. The friends, numbering some four or five hundred, were vastly impressed by the Earl’s largesse. He had built, in his garden, a mock waterfall that led to a plethora of small pools in which, lit by paper lanterns, jewels gleamed. The guests could fish for the jewels with small, ivory handled nets. The Prince Regent, who had fished for half an hour, had declared the entertainment to be capital.

      Lady Camoynes, sheathed in purple silk, fanned her face with a lace fan. She smiled at acquaintances, then went to the open air to stand on the garden steps. More than most guests here she needed to fish in the fake pools for the emeralds and rubies that glinted beneath the small golden fish, but she dared not do it for fear of the hidden laughter. All society knew of her debts, and all wondered how she clung onto the perquisites of her rank like the carriage and liveried servants. It was rumoured, in the fashionable houses of the quality, that she must be exchanging her slim body for a bare income, and she could do nothing to fight the rumours for she was too poor to afford that pride and, besides, there was truth in the sniggering whispers.

      She sipped from a glass of champagne and watched the Prince Regent make his stately progress about the tables set on the lawn’s edge. He was dressed this night in a coat of silver cloth, edged with gold lace. Lady Camoynes thought with malicious delight of the people of England who, in their good sense, hated this Royal family with its mad King and fat, gaudy, wastrel Princes.

      ‘My dear Anne.’ She turned. Lord Fenner stood behind her on the steps of the house. He watched the Prince, then put a pinch of snuff on the back of his hand. ‘I have to thank you.’

      ‘For what, Simon?’

      Lord Fenner stepped down to her level. He sniffed the powdered tobacco into his hooked nose, arched his eyebrows as he fought the sneeze, then snapped the box shut. ‘For your little tête-à-tête with Major Sharpe. I trust it was as satisfying to you as it was to me.’ He smiled maliciously. Lady Camoynes said nothing. Her green eyes looked at the waterfall, ignoring Lord Fenner, who laughed. ‘I trust you didn’t bed him.’ She was amused at his jealousy. Lord Fenner had once asked Anne Camoynes to marry him, she had refused, and he had retaliated by buying her dead husband’s debts. Still she had refused to be his wife, even though his hold over her forced her to his bed. Now familiarity had bred contempt in Fenner. He no longer wanted her in marriage, just in thrall. ‘Well, Anne? Did you bed your peasant hero?’

      ‘Don’t be absurd.’

      ‘I just worry what strange pox he might have fetched from Spain. I think you owe me an answer, Anne. Is he poxed?’

      ‘I would have no way of knowing.’ She stared at the laughing people who dipped their nets into the jewelled pools.

      ‘If I find I need a physician’s services I shall charge it to your account.’ Fenner laughed and pushed the snuffbox into a pocket of his waistcoat. ‘But thank you for your note.’

      Lady Camoynes had written, in the early afternoon, that Sharpe intended to search for the Second Battalion. She sensed how important this matter was to Fenner and she suddenly wondered how she could turn that concern to her own profit. She looked at Fenner. ‘What are you going to do with Major Sharpe, Simon?’

      ‘Do? Nothing! My Lord!’ He bowed to a man who climbed the steps, then glanced into Lady Camoynes’ startling green eyes. ‘I’ve sent him orders that will pack him off to Spain. Tomorrow.’

      ‘That’s all?’

      He stared at her speculatively. ‘Would it concern you if there was more? Would you warn him, Anne?’ There was a shriek of laughter at the end of the garden as a choice ruby was fished up from a pool. Lord Fenner stared at the man who had found the ruby and who now placed it, to much laughter, in the cleavage of a young woman who was one of the actresses so loved by the Prince and his circle. ‘Would it worry you, Anne, if I said that Major Sharpe will be dead by morning?’

      ‘Will he?’

      He looked at her, his eyes shamelessly staring at her body beneath its sheath of silk. ‘Did you know, Anne, that there was a report that he was hanged this summer?’

      ‘Hanged?’

      ‘It turned out to be false. So his death is overdue. Does it worry you? Did you like him?’

      ‘I talked to him, that was all.’

      ‘And no doubt he was flattered.’ Fenner stared into her eyes. ‘Don’t try and warn him, Anne. Not unless you want me to foreclose on the Gloucester estate.’ He smiled, knowing he had his victory over her, then dropped a bag at her feet. ‘I’ll let you stoop for that, Anne. It’s your payment for talking to the peasant.’ He gave her the merest hint of a bow. ‘If both my lanterns are lit when you go home, do come to see me.’ He walked away from her, going towards the revellers about the waterfall.

      Anne, Dowager Countess Camoynes, moved so that the hem of her dress hid the bag, then, when no one seemed to be watching, she bent quickly and picked it up. It was damp. It must, she thought, contain jewels from the garden pools, jewels that would help her pay off the debt that her husband’s death had bequeathed to her and which she paid in Fenner’s bed. She paid so that her only son, away at school, could inherit his father’s estates. She hated Fenner and she despised herself, and she could see no escape from the trap that her dead husband’s profligacy had made for her. No man would marry her, despite her beauty, for her widow’s jointure was the monstrous, hateful debt.

      She turned back into the house, unable to watch the jewels fetched from the water any longer, and she thought of the Rifleman. She had not meant to take Sharpe to her bed, she had not wanted to show any weakness to the