“Christ, yes,” Calvet spat out a shred of chewing tobacco, “but the good thing about war, Englishman, is that it keeps us away from our own wives but very close to other men’s wives.”
Sharpe smiled dutifully, then reached out and took the General’s telescope. He stared at the villa for a long time, then slid the tubes shut. “We’ll have to attack from this side.”
“That’s bloody obvious. A schoolboy with a palsied brain could have worked that one out.”
Sharpe ignored the General’s sarcasm. He was beginning to like Calvet, and he sensed that the Frenchman liked him. They had both marched in the ranks, and both had endured a lifetime of battles. Calvet had risen much higher in rank, but Calvet had a devotion to a cause that Sharpe did not share. Sharpe had never fought for King George in the same fanatic spirit that Calvet offered to the Emperor. Calvet’s devotion to the fallen Napoleon was absolute, and his alliance with Sharpe a mere expedience imposed by that forlorn allegiance. When Calvet attacked the Villa Lupighi he would do it for the Emperor, and Sharpe suspected that Calvet would cheerfully march into hell itself if the Emperor so demanded it.
Not that attacking the Villa Lupighi should be hellish. It had none of the defensive works of even a small redoubt of the late wars. There was no glacis to climb, no ravelins to flank, no embrasures to gout cannon-fire. Instead it was merely a ragged and fading building that decayed on its commanding hilltop. During the night Calvet and Sharpe had circled much of that hill and had seen how the lantern-light glowed in the seaward rooms while the eastern and ruined half of the building was an inky black. That dark tangle of stone offered itself as a hidden route to the enemy’s heart.
The only remaining question was how many of that enemy waited in the rambling and broken villa. During the morning Sharpe and Calvet had seen at least two dozen men around the villa. Some had just lounged against an outer wall, staring to sea. Another group had walked with some women towards the village harbour. Two had exercised large wolf-like dogs. There had been no sight of Pierre Ducos. Calvet was guessing that Ducos had about three dozen men to defend his stolen treasure, while Calvet, less his three boat-snatchers, would be leading just ten. “It’ll be a pretty little fight,” Calvet now grudgingly allowed.
“It’s the dogs that worry me.” Sharpe had seen the size of the two great beasts which had strained against the chains of their handlers.
Calvet sneered. “Are you frightened, Englishman?”
“Yes.” Sharpe made the simple reply, and he saw how the honesty impressed Calvet. Sharpe shrugged. “It used not to be bad, but it seems to get worse. It was awful before Toulouse.”
Calvet laughed. “I had too much to do at Toulouse to be frightened. They gave me a brigade of wet-knickered recruits who would have run away from a schoolmistress’s cane if I hadn’t put the fear of God into the bastards. I told them I’d kill them myself if they didn’t get in there and fight.”
“They fought well,” Sharpe said. “They fought very well.”
“But they didn’t win, did they?” Calvet said. “You saw to that, you bastard.”
“It wasn’t my doing. It was a Scotsman called Nairn. Your brigade killed him.”
“They did something right, then,” Calvet said brutally. “I thought I was going to die there. I thought you were going to shoot me in the back, and I thought to hell with it. I’m getting too old for it, Major. Like you, I find myself pissing with fright before a battle these days.” Calvet was returning honesty with honesty. “It became bad for me in Russia. I used to love the business before that. I used to think there was nothing finer than to wake in the dawn and see the enemy waiting like lambs for the sword-blades, but in Russia I got scared. It was such a damned big country that I thought I’d never reach France again and that my soul would be lost in all that emptiness.” He stopped, seemingly embarrassed by his confession of weakness. “Still,” he added, “brandy soon put that right.”
“We use rum.”
“Brandy and fat bacon,” Calvet said wistfully, “that makes a proper bellyful before a fight.”
“Rum and beef,” Sharpe countered.
Galvet grimaced. “In Russia, Englishman, I ate one of my own corporals. That put some belly into me, though it was very lean meat.” Calvet took his telescope back and stared at the villa which now seemed deserted in the afternoon heat. “I think we should wait till about two hours after midnight. Don’t you agree?”
Sharpe silently noted how this proud man had asked for his opinion. “I agree,” he said, “and we’ll attack in two groups.”
“We will?” Calvet growled.
“We go first,” Sharpe said.
“We, Englishman?”
“The Rifles, General. The three of us. The experts. Us.”
“Do I give orders, or you?” Calvet demanded belligerently.
“We’re Riflemen, best of the best, and we shoot straighter than you.” Sharpe knew it was only a soldier’s damned pride that had made him insist on leading the assault. He patted the butt of his Baker rifle. “If you want our help, General, then we go first. I don’t want a pack of blundering Frenchmen alerting the enemy. Besides, for a night attack, our green coats are darker than yours.”
“Like your souls,” Calvet grumbled, but then he grinned. “I don’t care if you go first, Englishman, because if the bastard’s alert then you’re the three who’ll get killed.” He laughed at that prospect, then slid back from the skyline. “Time to get some sleep, Englishman, time to get some sleep.”
On the far hill a dog raised its muzzle and howled at the blinding sun. Like the hidden soldiers, it waited for the night.
Calvet’s infantrymen, like the three Riflemen, wore their old uniforms. The twelve Grenadiers were all survivors of Napoleon’s elite corps, the Old Guard; the Imperial Guard.
Just to join the Imperial Guard a man must have endured ten years of fighting service, and Calvet’s dozen Grenadiers must have amassed more than a century and a half of experience between them. Each of the men, like Calvet, had abandoned royal France to follow their beloved Emperor into exile, and they now wore the uniforms which had terrified the Emperor’s enemies across Europe. Their dark blue coats had red turnbacks and tails, and their bearskins were faced with brass and chained with silver. Each man, in addition to his musket, was armed with a short, brass-hiked sabre-briquet. The Grenadiers, as they assembled in the olive grove, made a formidable sight, yet it was also a very noticeable sight for their white breeches reflected very brightly in the moonlight, so brightly that Sharpe’s earlier proposal that the Greenjackets should go first made obvious good sense.
At midnight Calvet led the small force out of the olive grove, across the ilex ridge, and down to the valley at the foot of the villa’s hill. The three men who would secure the fishing boat had already left for the small harbour. Calvet had threatened the three with death if they made even the smallest noise on their journey, and he reiterated the warning now to his own party, which thereafter advanced at an agonisingly slow pace. It was thus not till well after two o’clock that they reached a stand of cypress trees that was the last available concealment before they climbed the steep, scraped hillside towards the villa’s eastern ruins. The inconveniently bright moon shone above the sea to silhouette the ragged outline of the high building.
Calvet stood with Sharpe and stared at the silhouette. “If they’re awake and ready, my friend, then you’re a dead Englishman.”
Sharpe noted the ‘mon ami’, and smiled. “Pray they’re asleep.”
“Damn prayer, Englishman. Put your faith in gunpowder and the bayonet.”
“And brandy?”
“That, too.” Calvet offered his flask. Sharpe was tempted, but refused. To have accepted, he decided, would be to demonstrate the fear which he had earlier confessed, but which now, on the verge of battle, must be hidden. It was especially important to hide it when he was being observed by these hardened men from Napoleon’s own Guard. Tonight, Sharpe vowed, three Riflemen would prove themselves more than equal to these proud men.