The boy was still hidden inside the yard as Sharpe and Frederickson scrambled through the hedge and walked down the lane’s grass verge. No one called an alarm. This facade of the chateau, hard on the moat and facing the village, was an almost featureless wall, betraying that the building had once been a small fortress.
“It’s a very pretty house,” Frederickson murmured.
“Monsieur Lassan’s a very lucky man,” Sharpe agreed.
They had to step off the verge to approach the bridge across the moat. Once on the roadbed their boots crunched on loose stone, but still no one challenged them, not even when they reached the moat and stepped on to the moss-edged planks of the ancient drawbridge. They hurried into the shelter of the archway, then edged silently by the crude barricade of empty barrels. Sharpe saw a flock of geese cropping at a thin patch of grass at the far side of the chateau’s yard.
“Back!” Frederickson hissed. He had glimpsed the boy coming back towards the arch. The lad had evidently gone to the kitchen to collect his supper that he was now carefully carrying in both hands. His long-barrelled fowling piece was slung on his shoulder.
The two Riflemen pressed themselves against the wall of the arch. The boy, intent on not spilling a drop of his soup, did not even look up as he turned into the thick shadow of the gateway.
Frederickson pounced.
The boy, in sudden terror, let the bowl fall as he twisted violently away. He was too slow. The wooden bowl spilt its contents across the cobbles as a knife jarred cold against his throat. An arm went round the boy’s face, muzzling his mouth.
“Not a word!” Frederickson hissed in French. He was holding the flat of a clasp-knife’s blade against the boy’s adam’s apple. “Be very quiet, my lad, very quiet. You’re not going to be hurt.”
Sharpe took the old fowling piece from the boy’s shoulder. He opened the lock’s frizzen and blew the priming powder away to make the gun safe. The boy was wide-eyed and shivering.
“We mean no harm,” Frederickson spoke very slowly and softly to the boy. “We don’t even have guns, you see? We’ve simply come here to talk to your master.” He took his hand from the boy’s mouth.
The boy, cleariy terrified out of his wits by the two scarred and ragged men, tried to speak, but the events of the last few seconds had struck him dumb. Frederickson gripped the nape of the boy’s jerkin. “Come with us, lad, and don’t be frightened. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Sharpe propped the fowling piece against the wall, then led the way out of the shadowed arch. He could see a lit window across the chateau’s yard, and the shadow of a person moving behind the small panes of glass. He hurried. Frederickson kept hold of the frightened boy. Two of the geese stretched their necks towards the Riflemen.
The geese began their cackling too late, for Sharpe had already reached the kitchen door which, because the boy had to return his soup bowl, was still unlocked. Sharpe did not wait on ceremony, but just pushed open the heavy door.
Frederickson thrust the boy away from him, then ducked under the lintel behind Sharpe.
Two women were in the candle-lit kitchen. One, an elderly woman with work-reddened hands, was stirring a great vat that hung on a pothook above the fire. The other, a much younger and thinner woman who was dressed all in black, was sitting at the table with an account book. The two women stared in frozen horror at the intruders.
“Madame?” Frederickson said from behind Sharpe who had stopped just inside the door.
“Who are you?” It was the thin woman in black who asked the question.
“We’re British officers, Madame, and we apologize for thus disturbing you.”
The thin woman stood. Sharpe had an impression of a long and bitter face. She turned away from the intruders to where two water vats stood in an alcove. “Haven’t you done enough already?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Madame,” Frederickson said gently, “I think you misunderstand us. We are only here…”
“William!” Sharpe, understanding none of what was being said, turned and pushed Frederickson out of the kitchen. He had seen the thin black-dressed woman turn back from the vats, and in her hands was a great brass-muzzled horse-pistol. Her grey eyes held nothing but a bitter hatred and Sharpe knew, with the certainty of the doomed, that everything had gone wrong. He pushed Frederickson desperately into the yard and he tried to throw himself out of the door, but he knew he was too late. His body flinched from the terrible pain to come. He had already begun to scream in anticipation of that pain when Lucille Castineau pulled the trigger and Sharpe’s world turned to thunder and agony. He felt the bullets strike like massive blows, and he saw a sear of flame flash its light above him, and then, blessedly, as the gun’s stunning echo died away, there was just nothing.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 9
Captain Peter d’Alembord sat in the drawing-room of the Cork Street house and felt acutely uncomfortable. It was not that d’Alembord was unused to luxury, indeed he had been raised in an affluent family of the most exquisite tastes, but his very familiarity with civilized living told him that there was something exceedingly vulgar about this high-ceilinged room. There was, he considered, simply too much of everything. A great chandelier, much too large for the room, hung from a plaster finial, while a dozen crystal sconces crowded the walls. The sconces, like the chandelier, dripped with candle wax that should long have been scraped away. The furniture was mostly lacquered black in the fake Egyptian style that had been fashionable ten years earlier. There were three chaise-longues, two footstools, and a scattering of small lion-footed tables. The gilt-framed pictures seemed to have been bought as a job lot; they all showed rather unlikely shepherdesses dallying with very ethereal young men. A box of candied cherries lay gathering dust on one table, and a bowl of almonds on another.
Dust was everywhere and d’Alembord doubted whether the room had been cleaned for days, perhaps even weeks. The grate was piled with ashes, and the room smelt overwhelmingly of powder and stale perfume. A maid had curtseyed when d’Alembord had handed in his card at the door, but there was little evidence that the girl did any cleaning. d’Alembord could only suppose that Jane Sharpe was merely lodging in the house, for he could not believe that she would allow such slovenliness in her own home.
d’Alembord waited patiently. He could find only one book in the room. It was the first of a three volume romance which told the story of a clergyman’s daughter who, snatched from the bosom of her family by brigands in Italy, was sold to the Barbary pirates of Algiers where she became the plaything of a terrible Muslim chief. By the last page of the book, to which d’Alembord had hastily turned, she was still preserving her maidenly virtue, which seemed a most unlikely outcome considering the reputed behaviour of the Barbary pirates, but then unlikely things properly belonged in books. d’Alembord doubted if he would seek out the remaining volumes.
A black and gilt clock on the mantel whirred, then sounded midday. d’Alembord wondered if he dared pull aside the carefully looped velvet curtains and open a window, then decided that such an act might be thought presumptuous. Instead he watched a spider spin a delicate web between the tassels of a table-cloth on which a vase of flowers wilted.
The clock struck the quarter, then the half, then the hour’s third quarter. d’Alembord had come unannounced to the house, and had thus expected to wait, but he had never anticipated being kept waiting as long as this. If he was ignored till one o’clock, he promised himself, he would leave.