Бернард Корнуэлл: Sharpe's Ransom

SERGEANT Challon finished off the last of the goose, patted his belly and leaned back in his chair. Lucille was putting Patrick to bed upstairs and Challon raised his eyes to the ceiling. "She can cook, that one, " the sergeant said appreciatively. "Goose is too much for me, " the lawyer said. "Too rich, too fatty." He had finished with Sharpe's accounts and was wondering why there was no evidence of the stolen gold in the columns. "I could eat another goose, " Challon grunted, then looked at the lawyer. "So what will you do with her when her Englishman gets back?" The lawyer drew a finger across his throat. "It's for the best, " sadly, he said. "I detest violence, but if we let them live they'll only tell the gendarmes. And Major Ducos's will is hardly clear title to the gold, is it? The Government will want it. No, we have to make certain that Major Sharpe and his woman do not talk." "So if the woman's going to die, " Chalon said, "does it matter what happens to her first?" Lorcet frowned. "I find your suggestion distasteful, " Sergeant. Challon laughed. "You can find it what you like, Maitre, but she and I have got some unfinished business." He pushed back his chair. «Madame,» he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling again, "you are about to enter paradise." But before Challon could move there was a sudden rush of feet on the stairs and the man who had been keeping watch from the tower ran into the kitchen. «Sergeant!» "What is it?"

"People! Scores of them! Coming here."

CHALLON swore and hurried after the man towards the tower. Lorcet followed them up the stairs, down the small passage and through the door which led to the circular stairs. Once at the top he could peer through the slits under the tower roof and he saw that a crowd of villagers was walking slowly down the hill towards the chateau. A priest dressed in his full vestments led them through the snow, while behind him a man carried a silver crucifix on a tall pole. Once at the chateau the small crowd split into two, some walking on towards the bridge which led into the gate-tower while the others followed the priest around to the rear of the farm. "Stay here, " Lorcet ordered the man who had been on guard. "Sergeant! Follow me." The two men went back to the kitchen and stared through a window at the priest, who was arranging his followers on the far side of the bridge. "What are they doing?" Lorcet asked. "God knows,»

Challon said. He was still holding Sharpe's rifle, but what was he to do?

Shoot the priest? "Are they going to sing?" the lawyer asked incredulously, for the priest had turned to his flock, raised his hands, and now brought them down. And so the crowd began to sing.

They sang carols in the falling snow. They sang all the beautiful old carols of Christmas, the carols of a baby and a star, of a manger and the shepherds, and of angels' wings beating in the winter snow over Bethlehem. They sang of wise men and of gold, of Mary and her child, and of peace on earth and joy in heaven. They sang lustily, as though the loudness of their voices could stave off the bitter cold of the waning afternoon. "In a moment, " Lucille had come down from the bedrooms, "they will want to come in. I must give them wine, some food." "They can't come in! " Lorcet snapped. "How will you stop them?"

Lucille asked as she folded Patrick's clothes on to the table. "They know we're here. We have lamps shining." "You will tell them to go away, Madame!»

Lorcet insisted. «Me!» Lucille asked, her eyes widening. "I should tell my neighbours that they cannot sing me carols on Christmas Eve? Non, monsieur, I shall not tell them any such thing, " "Then we'll just leave the doors locked,»

Sergeant Challon said, "and they can freeze to death. They'll get tired soon enough. And you, Madame, had better pray that your Englishman is bringing the gold." Lucille went back to the stairs. "I shall pray, Sergeant, " she told Challon, "but not for that." She went up to her child. «Bitch,» Challon said, and followed her. While outside the carollers sang on.

"THERE used to be a third bridge over the moat, " Jacques Malan explained, "and it led to the chapel, but they pulled it down years ago. Only they left the stone pilings, see? Just under the water." Malan had not only fetched his musket, but had put on his old uniform so that now he was glorious in the blue, white and scarlet of Napoleon's old guard. Thus dressed for battle he had led Sharpe on a wide circuit through the woods so that they approached the chateau from the east, hidden from the gate-tower by the farmhouse and the chapel roof. Malan now reversed his musket and stabbed its stock down through the moat's skim of ice. «There,» he said, as the musket butt struck stone. He stepped carefully across so that he was standing in the moat with a few inches of water lapping his boots. He probed for the next piling. "There are five stones, " he told Sharpe, "Miss one, though, and you'll fall in the water."

"But what happens once we're across?" "We climb to the roof, " Malan said.

"There's a stone jutting out, see?" He pointed. "We throw a rope round it and climb." And once they were on the chapel roof, Sharpe thought, there was a window into an old attic that was filled with 800 years of junk, and the only other entrance to the attic was through a hatch high on the end wall of the bedroom and it needed a ladder to reach that hatch. Sharpe had only ever been into the attic once when he had marvelled at the collection of rubbish that Lucille's family had stowed away. There was a suit of armour up there, he remembered, and crates of mouldering clothes, ancient arrows, a crossbow, a weather-cock which had fallen off the chapel, a stuffed pike caught by Lucille's grandfather, and a rocking horse that Sharpe thought he might get down for Patrick, though he hoped the toy would not put the idea of becoming a cavalryman into the boy's head. "I'd never live that down, " he said aloud.

"Live what down?" Malan asked. He was standing on the third hidden piling, and probing for the fourth. "If Patrick becomes a cavalryman." "Mon Dieu! That would be terrible! " Malan agreed, then jumped across the last stones and on to the narrow ledge that edged the chapel. He held out his musket to help Sharpe across the last two pilings. "They sing well! " he said, listening to the two choirs of villagers. "You do this carol singing. in England, too?" "Of course we do." "But my captain said the English did not believe in God." "But they believe in getting free food and drink, " Sharpe said. "So maybe they're not mad after all, " Malan conceded. "And you have brandy in the house, monsieur?

Not that I am a drunk, of course." "I have brandy, " Sharpe said, then watched as Malan fetched a length of rope from a pocket of his guardsman's coat. "I'l1 go first, " Sharpe said. "You'll follow me! " Malan insisted, as he tossed the rope to loop it over the projecting stone. "I have done this before. You hold the musket." Malan was surprisingly nimble for a big man, though he was breathless by the time he reached the chapel roof. "I used to be able to do that in seconds, " he grumbled. "I thought you only did it once?" "Mademoiselle Lucille only saw me once, " Malan confessed. "Give me the musket barrel, monsieur, and I'11 pull you up." He caught hold of the barrel and, with an enviable ease, hauled Sharpe up on to the roof. "Now what?" he asked. "The window, " Sharpe said, pointing to the small, blackened panes of the old attic window that was set into the higher gable next to the roof on which they were precariously perched. "Break it in." "They'll hear us! " "The choirs are singing fit to burst their lungs, " Sharpe said. "Break it in. It'll be something else for you to mend." "And what makes you think I'11 be working for you, Englishman?" "Because I'11 pay you, because you like Lucille and you'd rather work for a soldier than sweat for some bastard who stayed at home while you went to war." Malan grunted, but said nothing in response. Instead he used the musket's butt to push in the window panes, then he snapped out the old rotten mullions and struggled through into the attic. Sharpe followed him, relieved to be out of the snow. "Now follow me, " he whispered, "and go gently!