But nor would Sharpe. He had a sudden, startlingly clear vision of Jane lying sick; sweating in the cold shivers of the killing fever. The image, so extraordinarily real in the freezing night, made him shiver himself.
He tried to shake the vision away, then told himself that Jane suffered from nothing more than an upset stomach and a winter’s cold, but the superstition of a soldier suddenly gripped Sharpe’s imagination and he knew, with an utter certainty, that he sailed away from a dying wife. He wanted to howl his misery into the snow-dark night, but there was no help there. No help anywhere. She was dying. That knowledge might have been vouchsafed by a dreamlike image, but Sharpe believed it. “Damn your bloody liberty.” Sharpe spoke savagely.
“Major?” The Comte, hearing Sharpe’s voice but no distinct words, edged down the ship’s rail.
Jane would be dead and Sharpe would return to the coldly heaped soil of her grave. He wanted to weep for the loss.
“Did you speak, Monsieur?” the Comte persisted.
Sharpe turned to the Comte then. The Rifleman had been distracted by his thoughts, but now he concentrated on the tall, pale aristocrat. “Why are you here?”
“Here, Monsieur?” de Maquerre was defensive. “For the same reason you are here. To bring liberty to France!”
Sharpe’s instincts were alert now. He was sensing that a new player had entered the game, a player who would confuse the issues of this expedition. “Why?” he persisted.
De Maquerre shrugged. “My family is from Bordeaux, Major, and a letter was smuggled to me in which they claim the citizens are prepared to rebel. I am ordered to discover the truth of the letter.”
God damn it, but his instincts were right. Sharpe was supposed to discover the mood of the French, but Wigram, knowing that Sharpe would return a gloomy answer, had sent this aristocrat at the very last moment. Doubtless de Maquerre would give Wigram the answer he wanted; the answer that would lead to madness. Sharpe laughed sourly. “You think two Companies of Riflemen can provoke Bordeaux into rebellion?”
“No, monsieur,” the Comte de Maquerre paused as a wave lurched the ship sideways. “I think two Companies of Riflemen, with the help of some Marines, can hold the fort at Arcachon until more men are carried north by chasse-maree. Isn’t that why the boats are being collected? To make an invasion? And where better to invade than at Arcachon?”
Sharpe did not reply. Elphinstone had ordered him to scotch Wigram’s desk-born ambitions, but now this foppish Frenchman would make that task difficult. It would be simpler, Sharpe thought, to tip the man overboard now.
“But if the city of Bordeaux is ready for rebellion,” de Maquerre was happily oblivious of Sharpe’s thoughts, “then we can topple the regime now, Major. We can raise insurrection in the streets, we can humble the tyrant. We can end the warf Again Sharpe made no reply, and the Comte stared at the tiny glimmer of light in the cold darkness. ”Of course,“ the Comte continued, ”if I do succeed in raising the city against the ogre I shall expect your troops to come to my aid immediately.“
Startled, Sharpe twisted to look at the pale profile of the Comte de Maquerre. “I have no such orders.”
The Comte also turned, showing Sharpe a pair of the palest, coldest eyes imaginable. “You have orders, Major, to offer me every assistance in your power. I carry a commission from your Prince Regent, and a commission from my King. When ordered, Major, you will obey.”
Sharpe was saved from a reply by the harsh clang of the ship’s bell. He wondered, irritably, why sailors did not just ring the hour like other folk, but insisted on sounding gnomic messages of indeterminate meaning upon their bells. Feet padded on the deck as the watch was changed. The binnacle lantern flared bright as the lid was lifted.
“Your first duty, Major,” the Count ignored the dark figures who came up the poop-deck ladders, “is to safely put my horses ashore.”
Sharpe had taken enough. “My first duty, my Lord, is to my men. If you can’t get your horses ashore then they stay here and I won’t lift a goddamned finger to help you. Good day.” He stalked across the deck, a gesture somewhat spoilt by the need to stagger as the Amelie creaked on to a new course in obedience to lights that flared suddenly from the Vengeance’s poop.
The dawn crept slow from the grey east. The snow stopped and Sharpe could see, in the half-light, that none had settled on the land that proved surprisingly close. A brig was close inshore and signal flags hung bright from her mizzen yard.
“She wasn’t with us yesterday.” Sweet William, looking disgustingly well-rested, nodded towards the signalling brig. He had brought Sharpe a mug of tea. “She must have been poking around the fortress. Sleep sound?”
“No sleep.” Sharpe cradled the mug and sipped the hot, sour liquid. The shore looked barren. Sand dunes were grey behind the flicker of surf and beyond the dunes were the dark shapes of stunted pines. No houses were visible. Far inland there were the low, humped shapes of hills, and to the north there was a promontory of low, shadowed ground that jutted into the bleak waters.
Captain Tremgar pointed to the headland. “Point Arcachon.” He turned away from the two Rifle officers and bellowed orders through a speaking trumpet. Sharpe heard the thumping rumble as the anchor cables snaked and whipped out of the hawse-holes. Sails, that a moment before had been filled with wind, flapped like monstrous bat wings as the topmen furled the stiff canvas on to the yards. The Vengeance, looming vast in the morning light, was already anchored, and already launching her first boats. “Christ on his cross!” Sweet William vented a sudden anger. He was staring at the boats that huddled beside the Vengeance.
Sharpe took his spyglass from the sleeve-pocket on his overalls and extended the ivory barrels. The glass had been a gift from the Emperor of the French to his brother, the King of Spain, but the gift had been lost among the loot of Vitoria and was now carried by an English Rifleman.
“Jesus Christ!” Sharpe echoed Frederickson’s blasphemy. The Vengeance had launched three longboats and each was filling with red-jacketed Marines. “There must be a hundred of them!” He watched the men gingerly descend the tumble-home to step into the rocking boats. The sea, miraculously, was gentle this morning, heaving with the long swells of the ocean, but not broken into whitecaps. Sharpe raised the glass, cursing because the small movements of the Amelie made training the telescope difficult, and he saw yet more red-coated Marines waiting on the Vengeance’s maindeck. “That bastard didn’t need us at all!”
“Not to take the fort, perhaps,” Sweet William lit a cheroot, “but a force of trained Riflemen will be damned useful for the march on Bordeaux.”
“Damn his bloody soul!” Sharpe understood now. Wigram had sent de Maquerre to force a decision, and Bampfylde had secreted the Marines to implement the decision. Come hell or high water Wigram and Bampfylde wanted to take Bordeaux, and Sharpe was caught in the middle. He watched the packed longboats pull towards the breaking surf and he felt a bitter anger at Bampfylde who had lied about a malady so that he could have trained skirmishers for his madcap scheme. Even the sun, showing through the clouds for the first time in weeks, could not alleviate Sharpe’s anger.
“It’s my belief,” Frederickson said, “that he wanted you personally.”
“Me?”
“He probably has an exalted view of your ability,” Frederickson said drily. “If the celebrated Major Sharpe fails, then no reasonable man could expect Captain Bampfylde to succeed. On the other hand, of course, who better than yourself to guarantee success?”
“Bugger Bampfylde,” Sharpe said.
The longboats landed their red-coated troops, then were launched back through the surf. The oarsmen, tugging against wind and tide, jerked like small marionettes to pull the heavy boats free of the shore’s suction. They did not come to the Amelie; instead they went to the Vengeance where still more Marines waited for disembarkation.