“Two weeks,” he said. “I should be back in two weeks. Maybe less.”

“It will seem like eternity,” Jane said loyally, then, with an exaggerated shudder, she threw the bedclothes back and snatched up the clothes that Sharpe had hung to warm before the fire. Her small dog, grateful for the chance, leaped into the warm pit of the bed.

“You don’t have to come,” Sharpe said.

“Of course I’ll come. It’s every woman’s duty to watch her husband sail to the wars.” Jane shivered suddenly, then sneezed.

A half hour later they went into the fish-smelling lane and the wind was like a knife in their faces. Torches flared on the quayside where the Amelie rose on the incoming tide.

A dark line of men, weapons gleaming softly, filed aboard the merchantman that was to be Sharpe’s transport. The Amelie was no jewel of Britain’s trading fleet. She had begun life as a collier, taking coal from the Tyne to the smoke thick Thames, and her dark timbers still stank thickly of coal-dust.

Casks and crates and nets of supplies were slung on board in the pre-dawn darkness. Boxes of rifle ammunition were piled on the quayside and with them were barrels of vilely salted and freshly-killed beef. Twice baked bread was wrapped in canvas and boxed in resinous pine. There were casks of water for the voyage, spare flints for the fighting, and whetstones for the sword-bayonets. Rope ladders were coiled in the Amelie’s scuppers so that the Riflemen, reaching the beach where they must disembark, could scramble down to the longboats sent from the Vengeance.

A smear of silver-grey marked the dawn and flooded slowly to show the filthy, littered water of the harbour. Aboard the Scylla, a frigate moored in the harbour roads, yellow lights showed from the stern cabin where doubtless the frigate’s captain took his breakfast.

“I’ve wrapped you a cheese.” Jane’s voice sounded small and frightened. “It’s in your pack.”

“Thank you.” Sharpe bent to kiss her and wished suddenly that he was not going. A wife, General Craufurd used to say, weakens a soldier. Sharpe held his wife an instant, feeling her ribs beneath the layers of wool and silk, then, suddenly, her slim body jerked as she sneezed again.

“I’m catching a cold.” She was shivering. Sharpe touched her forehead and it was oddly hot.

“You’re not well.”

“I hate rising early.” Jane tried to smile, but her teeth were chattering and she shivered again. “And I’m not certain the fish was entirely to my taste last night.”

“Go home!”

“When you’re gone.”

Sharpe, even though a hundred men watched him, kissed his wife again. “Jane…”

“My dear, you must go.”

“But…“

“It’s only a cold. Everyone gets a cold in winter.”

“Sir!” Sweet William saluted Sharpe and bowed to Jane. “Good morning, ma’am! Somewhat brisk!”

“Indeed, Mr Frederickson.” Jane shivered again.

“Everyone’s aboard, sir.” Frederickson turned to Sharpe.

Sharpe wanted to linger with Jane, he wanted to reassure himself that she had not caught Hogan’s fever, but Frederickson was waiting for him, men were holding the ropes that would swing the gangplank away, and he could not stay. He gave Jane a last kiss, and her forehead was like fire. “Go home to bed.”

“I will.” She was shaking now, hunched and clenched against the bitter wind.

Sharpe paused, wanting to say something memorable, something that would encompass the inchoate, extraordinary love he felt for her, but there were no words. He smiled, then turned to follow Frederickson on to the Amelias deck.

The daylight was thin now, seeping through the hilly landscape behind the port and making the streaked, bubbling, heaving water of the harbour silver. The gangplank crashed on to the stones of the quay.

Far out to sea, like some impossible mountain forming on the face of the waters, an airy structure of dirty grey sails caught the morning daylight. It was the Vengeance getting under way. She looked formidably huge; a great floating weapon that could make the air tremble and the sea shake when she launched her full broadside, but she would be useless in the shoal waters by the Teste de Buch fort. That would have to be taken by men and by hand-held weapons.

“He’s signalling.” Tremgar, master of the Amelie, spat over the side. “Means they’ll be moving us off. Stand by, forrard!” He bellowed the last words.

A topsail dropped from the nearby Scylla’s yards and the movement, suggesting an imminent departure, made Sharpe turn to the quay. Jane, swathed in her powder-blue cloak, was still there. Sharpe could see her shivering. “Go home!”

A voice shouted. “Wait! Wait!” The accent was French and the speaker a dully-dressed man, evidently a servant, who rode a small horse and led a packhorse on a leading rein. ‘Amelie! Wait!“

“Bloody hell.” Tremgar had been packing a pipe with dark tobacco that he now pushed into a pocket of his filthy coat.

Behind the servant and packhorse and, stately as a bishop in procession, rode a tall, elegant man on a tall, elegant horse. The man had a delicate, sensitive face, a white cloak clasped with silver, and a bicorne hat shielded with oiled-cloth against the rain.

The gangplank was rigged again and the man, with a faint shudder as though the stench of the Amelie was too much for a gentleman of his fastidious tastes, came aboard. “I seek Major Sharpe,” he announced in a French accent to the assembled officers who had gathered in the ship’s waist.

“I’m Sharpe.” Sharpe spoke from the poop deck.

The newcomer turned in a movement that would have been elegant on a dance-floor, but seemed somewhat ludicrous on the battered deck of an erstwhile collier. He took a quizzing glass from his sleeve and, with its help, inspected the tattered uniform of Major Richard Sharpe. He bowed, somehow suggesting that he should have been the recipient of such an honour himself, then took off his waterproofed hat to reveal sleek, silver hair that was brushed back to a black velvet bow. He held out a sealed envelope. “Orders.”

Sharpe had jumped down from the poop and now tore open the envelope. “To Major Sharpe. The bearer of this note is the Comte de Maquerre. You will render him every assistance within your power. Bertram Wigram, Colonel.”

Sharpe looked into the narrow face that had been powdered pale. He suddenly remembered that Hogan, in his sick ramblings, had mentioned the name Maquereau, meaning ‘pimp’, and he wondered if the insult was a nickname for this elegant, fastidious man. “You’re the Comte de Maquerre?”

!I have that honour, Monsieur, and I travel to Arcachon with you.“ De Maquerre’s cloak had fallen open to reveal the uniform of the Chasseurs Britannique. Sharpe knew that regiment’s reputation. The officers were Frenchmen loyal to the ancien regime, while its men were deserters from the French Army and all unmitigated scoundrels. They could fight when the mood took them, but it was not a regiment Sharpe would want on his flank in battle.

“Captain Frederickson! Four men to get the Frenchman’s baggage on board! Quick now!”

De Maquerre tugged at his buttoned, kidskin gloves. “You have quarters for my horse? And the packhorse.”

“No horses,” Sharpe said sourly, which only tossed the Comte de Maquerre into a sulky fit of protests in which the name of the Due d’Angouleme, Louis XVIII, and the Lord Wellington featured prominently. In the meantime an angry message came from the Scylla demanding to know why the Amelie had not slipped her moorings at the flood tide, and finally Sharpe had to give way.

Which meant another delay as the Comte’s two horses were coaxed aboard and a section of Frederickson’s Riflemen were moved out of the forward hold to make way for the beasts. Trunks and cases were carried up the gangplank.

“I cannot, of course,” the Comte de Maquerre said, “travel in this ship.”

“Why not?” Sharpe asked.