Harper came very quietly into the room, looked at Sharpe, then held his hands towards the feeble fire. “So you told him, sir?”

“I told him.”

“God save Ireland,” Harper said of nothing in particular, then he stooped and shoved at the coals with a poker made from an old French bayonet. “It wouldn’t have worked, of course,” he said after a while, “but I suppose he’d never be convinced of that.”

“What wouldn’t have worked, Patrick?”

“Mr Frederickson and Madame. He doesn’t like the women, you see. I mean he likes them well enough, but he’d never make a woman into a friend now, would he? It isn’t enough to take them to your bed. You have to actually like them, too.”

Sharpe smiled. “Is that so, Mr Harper?”

“It is Mr Harper now, isn’t it?” Harper laughed. In his pocket the Irishman had his discharge papers, signed by the Duke of Wellington himself. Mr Harper was a free man now, going to England where he would catch a fast ship for Spain, after which, with Isabella and the baby, he would go home to Ireland. Home for good, he said, home to where the rain fell on thin fields from which a poor people scratched their daily bread.

Sharpe stood and led the Irishman out to the quayside. There was no sign of Frederickson on the packet’s deck, though his luggage, along with Harper’s heavy pack, lay stacked beside an open hatchway. Sharpe turned away from the gangplank and walked with Harper to where the packet boat’s bowsprit reared tar-black against the sullen clouds. “I don’t know what to say, Patrick.”

“Nor me, sir,” Harper spoke softly, “but we’ve had some good times, sir, so we have.”

“We’ve had some bloody terrible ones, too,” Sharpe laughed. “You remember that day you fought me in the snow?”

“You cheated, sir, or else I’d have split your skull wide open.”

“I’d never have beaten you without cheating.”

They fell silent. A slew of gulls shrieked and tumbled above the fish quay. Rain fell in a sharp stinging slant.

“If you’re ever in Normandy?” Sharpe suggested.

“Of course, sir. And if you ever take yourself to Donegal then you’ll know there’s a rare welcome for you. Go to Derry, keep going west, and someone will know where the big fellow back from the wars will be.”

“Of course I’ll come. You know I’ll come.”

Harper thrust his hand deep into the pocket of his fine civilian greatcoat. “You’re all right for the money, are you now?”

“You know I am.” Sharpe had pocketed some of the gold coins as he had loaded the small grasshopper gun, just as Harper had filched a few handfuls of gems from the big strongbox. “I owe you money anyway,” Sharpe said.

“Pay it when you come to Ireland,” Harper said.

The packet’s bosun shouted for the last passengers. A headsail was already being hoisted, and it was time for Harper to leave. He looked at Sharpe and neither man could find anything to say. They had marched all the soldiers’ miles together, and now their ways parted. They would promise reunion, but such promises were so rarely kept. Sharpe tried to say what he felt, but it would not come, so he gave his friend an embrace instead. “Look after yourself, Patrick.”

“I’ll do that.” Harper paused. “It is the right thing you’re doing, sir?”

“Not for Mr Frederickson, it isn’t.” Sharpe shook his head. “I don’t know, Patrick. I wish I did.” Going back to Normandy was like the roll of a dice, or the whim of an action in battle. There was no rationality to it, but life did not yield to reason, only to instinct. “I think it’s the right thing. I want it very much, if that’s any answer. And I’m not certain I want to live in England. They’ll never accept me there. To them I’m just a bastard upstart who can use a sword, but in peacetime they’ll spit me out like a speck of rotten meat.”

“And if they want your sword again?” Harper asked.

Sharpe shrugged. “We’ll see.” Then the bosun bellowed his impatient summons again, and the last passengers broke from their farewell embraces and hurried towards the gangplank. Sharpe gripped Harper’s hands. „I’ll miss you, Patrick. You were an awkward bugger, but by God I’ll miss you.“

“Aye.” Harper could not find the proper words either, so he just shrugged. “God bless you, sir.”

Sharpe smiled. “God save Ireland.”

Harper laughed at Sharpe’s mimicry. „I’ll come and find you, sir, if you don’t come and find me.“

“I hope you do. Maybe we’ll meet halfway.”

Harper turned and walked away. Sharpe watched the Irishman board the packet, he waved once, but then Sharpe turned away so that the parting would not be prolonged. He heard the flogging sound of the wind catching the great mainsail as it was hoisted.

Sharpe hurried back to the inn and paid his bill. He strapped the saddlebags on to his new horse, paid the ostler, and swung himself into the saddle. He wore a coat of brown homespun over black breeches, but at his side there hung a long trooper’s sword and on his back there hung a rifle. He touched the spurs on his new plain boots to the animal’s flanks. The packet boat was clearing the harbour, but Sharpe did not turn back to watch. He rode away from the sea, away from England, going into the enemy’s country to where a woman watched an empty road. It was there, Sharpe decided, that his future lay; not in Dorset, not in a peacetime army, but with work on a Norman farm and perhaps, one day, there would be a French-speaking son to whom he and Lucille would bequeath an old English sword and a ruby stolen from an Emperor.

He clicked his tongue and urged the horse into a trot. He felt dazed. There was no more war, no more soldiers, no more fear. No more Emperor, no more Harper, no more gunsmoke skeined above a field of blood. No more closing of ranks, no more miles of pain, no more skirmish chain. No more cavalry in the dawn and no more picquets in the dusk. There was only Lucille and what Sharpe thought was a love sufficient for both their lives. He rode on into France, his back turned on all he had fought for, for now it was all gone; the wars, a marriage, a friendship, and an enemy; all gone in Sharpe’s revenge.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Napoleon’s baggage was lost, though not in Bordeaux. The loss of that baggage was just a small part of the chaos that engulfed France after the Emperor’s surrender. The battle of Toulouse was fought after that surrender, but such was the speed of travel that the news did not reach Wellington till two days after he had trounced Soult.

The battle happened much as described in the novel. Today it is chiefly remembered for the tragic Spanish assault which, launched early and unsupported, was bloodily repulsed. The battlefield is now entirely built over, just an anonymous part of the city’s sprawl.

In northern and southern France the Imperial armies were disbanded, ejecting on to the roads of Europe a startling number of vagabonds and highwaymen. The era of the soldiers, it seemed, was over, for the long, long war was finished. Wellington’s army, perhaps the best that Britain has ever possessed, had won the Peninsular Campaign and now, in the spring of 1814, that army was no longer wanted. Its men were dispersed about the globe, while its women, who had so loyally supported their men, were callously sent home to Spain or Portugal. The fate of those abandoned women is accurately recorded here. They disappear from the history books, and their anguish can only be surmised. A few British soldiers did successfully evade the provosts to go back to Spain with their wives, but they were very few.

Wellington, before going to the Congress of Vienna, was appointed Britain’s ambassador in Paris where, on behalf of the government, he bought the house of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline. It remains the British Embassy to this day. Many other British officers resigned their commissions. Doubtless, like Sharpe, they believed they could hang up their swords, and none, surely, could have foreseen that Napoleon’s restless ambition would soon lead to a shallow valley on the road to Brussels; a valley where Wellington would sorely miss his Peninsular veterans. But Waterloo is another story.