“There she is, sir.” The sergeant pointed through the sleeting rain.

Lassan looked over the narrow Arcachon channel where the tide raced across the shoals. Beyond the sandbanks the surging grey waves were torn by wind into a maelstrom of broken white water amidst which, beating southwards, was a little ship.

The ship was a British brig-sloop with two tall masts and a vast driver-sail at her stern. Her black and white banded hull hid, Lassan knew, eighteen guns. Her sails were reefed, but even so she seemed to plunge through the waves and Lassan saw how high the spray fountained from the brig’s stem. “Our enemies,” he said mildly, “are having a disturbed breakfast.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant laughed.

Lassan cradled his coffee mug. There was something vulnerable about his face, a drawn and frightened look that made his men protective of him. They knew Commandant Lassan wished to become a priest when this war ended and they liked him for it, but they also knew that he would fight as a soldier until the last shot of the war had been fired. Now he stared at the British brig. “You saw her last night?”

“At sundown, sir,” the sergeant was certain. “And there were lights out there at night.”

“He’s watching us, isn’t he?” Lassan smiled. “He’s seeing what we’re made of.”

The sergeant slapped the gun as a reply.

Lassan turned to stare thoughtfully into the fort’s courtyard. A warning had come from Bordeaux that he was to prepare for a British attack, but Bordeaux had sent him no men to reinforce his shrunken garrison. Lassan could man his big guns, or he could protect the landward walls, but he could not do both. If the British landed troops, and sent warships into the channel, then Lassan would be trapped between the hammer and the anvil. He turned back to stare at the British brig. If Bordeaux was right, that inquisitive craft was making a reconnaissance, and Lassan must deceive the watchers. He must make them think the fort was so thinly defended that a landing by troops would be unnecessary.

Lieutenant Gerard came yawning from the green-painted door of the officers’ quarters. Lassan hailed him. “Lieutenant!”

“Sir?”

“No flag today! And no washing hung to dry on the barracks’ roof!” Not that anyone was likely to dry washing in this weather.

Gerard, his blue jacket unbuttoned above his braces, frowned. “No flag, sir?”

“You heard me, Lieutenant! And no men in the embrasures, you hear? Sentries in the citadels only.”

“I hear you, sir.”

Lassan turned back to see the brig-sloop tack into the rain-sodden wind. He saw a shiver of sails, a spume of foam, and he imagined the cloaked officers, their braid tarnished by salt, staring at the grey, crouching fort through their spyglasses. He knew that such little ships, sent to spy on the French coast, often stopped the fishing boats that worked close inshore. Today then, and every day for the next week, only those fishermen whom Henri Lassan trusted would be allowed past the guns of the Teste de Buch. They would be encouraged to take English gold, and encouraged to drink a glass of dark rum in English cabins, and encouraged to sell lobsters to blue-coated Englishmen, and in return they would tell a plausible lie or two on behalf of Henri Lassan.

Then, with a roar from these great, passive guns that waited for employment, Henri Lassan would strike a blow for France.

He smiled, pleased with his notion, and went to breakfast.

Before dinner Sharpe faced a miserable and unhappy few moments. “The answer,” he repeated, “is no.”

Regimental Sergeant Major Patrick Harper stood in the small parlour of Jane’s lodgings and twisted his wet shako in thick, strong fingers. “I talked with Mr d’Alembord, sir, so I did, and he said I could come. I mean we’re only sitting around like washer-women in a bloody drought, so we are.”

“There’s a new colonel coming, Patrick. He needs his RSM.”

Harper frowned. “Needs his major, too.”

“He can’t lose both of us.” Sharpe did not have the power to deny the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers the services of this massive Irishman. “And if you come, Patrick, the new man will only appoint a new RSM. You wouldn’t want that.”

Harper frowned. “I’d rather be in a scrap if one’s going, sir, and Mr Frederickson wouldn’t take me amiss, nor would he.”

Sharpe could not be persuaded. “No.”

The huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, grinned. “I could take sick leave, sir, so I could.”

“You have to be sick first.”

“But I am!” Harper pointed to his mouth. “I’ve got a toothache something desperate, sir. Here!” He opened his mouth, jabbed with his finger, and Sharpe saw that Harper did indeed have a reddened and swollen upper gum.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s dreadful, so it is!” Harper, sensing a chink in Sharpe’s armour, became enthusiastic about his pain. “It’s more of a throb, sir. On and off, on and off, like a great drumbeat in your skull. Desperate, it is!”

“Then see a surgeon tonight,” Sharpe said unsympathetically, “and have it pulled. Then get back to Battalion where you belong.”

Harper’s face dropped. “Truly, sir? I can’t come?”

Sharpe sighed. “I’d rather have you along, RSM, than any dozen other men.” That was true a thousand times over. Sharpe knew of no man he would rather fight beside, but it could not be at Arcachon. “I’m sorry, Patrick. Besides you’re a father now. You should take care.” Harper’s Spanish wife, just a month before, had given birth to a son that had been christened Richard Patricio Augustine Harper. Sharpe had found the choice of Richard an embarrassment, but Jane had been delighted when Harper sought permission to use the name. “And I’m doing you a favour, RSM,” Sharpe went on.

“How would that be, sir?”

“Because your son will still have a father in two weeks.” Sharpe was seeing that black, sheer, wet wall and the image of it made his voice savage. Then he turned as the door opened. “My dear.”

Jane, beautiful in a blue silken dress, smiled delightedly at Harper. “Sergeant Major! How’s the baby?”

“Just grand, ma’am!” Harper had formed a firm alliance with Mrs Sharpe that seemed aimed at subverting Major Sharpe’s authority. “And Isabella thanks you for the linen.”

“You’ve got toothache!” Jane frowned with concern. “Your cheek’s swollen.”

Harper blushed. “It’s only a wee ache, ma’am, nothing at all!”

“You must have oil of cloves! There’s some in the kitchen. Come along!”

The oil of cloves was discovered and Harper sent, disconsolate, into the night.

“He can’t come,” Sharpe said after dinner, when he and Jane walked back alone through the town.

“Poor Patrick.” Jane insisted on stopping at Hogan’s lodgings, but there was no news. She had visited earlier in the day and thought the sick man was looking better.

“I wish you wouldn’t risk yourself,” Sharpe said.

“You’ve said so a dozen times, Richard, and I promise I heard you each time.”

They went to bed and, just four hours later, the landlady hammered on their door. It was pitch dark outside and bitterly cold inside the bedroom. Frost had etched patterns on the small windowpanes, patterns that were reluctant to melt even though Sharpe revived the fire in the tiny grate. The landlady had brought candles and hot water. Sharpe shaved, then pulled on his old and faded Rifleman’s uniform. It was the uniform in which he fought, stained with blood and torn by bullet and blade. He would not go into action in any other uniform.

He oiled his rifle’s lock. He always carried a long-arm into battle, even though it had been ten years since he had been made into an officer. He drew his Heavy Cavalry sword from its scabbard and tested the fore-edge. It seemed odd to be going to war from his wife’s bed, odder still not to be marching with his own men or with Harper, and that thought gave him a flicker of unrest for he was not used to fighting without Harper beside him.