Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Ransom

RICHARD SHARPE tugged off his boots, put his hands in the small of his back, arched his spine and grunted with pain. "Bloody cog-wheels, " he said. Lucille asked, "What is wrong with the bloody cogwheels?" "Rusted up, " Sharpe said as he tipped a cat off a kitchen chair. "No one" s greased those wheels in years."

He groaned as he sat down. "I'11 have to chip the things down to bare metal, then clear the leat." "The leat?" Lucille asked. She was still learning English. "The channel that takes the water to the mill, love. It's full of rubbish." Sharpe poured himself some red wine. "It'll take me all week to clear that." "It's Christmas in two days, " said Lucille. "So?" "So at Christmas you rest, " Lucille declared, "and the leat can rest. It is a holiday. I shall cook you a goose." "You cooked my goose long ago, girl,»

Sharpe said. Lucille made a dismissive noise, collected a pile of washing from the table, then walked down the scullery passage. Sharpe tipped his chair back to watch her, and Lucille, knowing she was being observed, deliberately swayed her hips. "Cooked it proper, you did! " Sharpe shouted. "If you want supper, she called back, "the stove needs wood."

Sharpe glanced up as a gust of wind howled at the farm's high gables. A year before, when he had returned after the Waterloo campaign, the gable roof had leaked and every door and window had let in killing draughts, but the house was snug and tight now. It had cost a penny or two, and all of it had come from the half-pay Sharpe received as a retired British officer, because the farm was not making any profit. Not yet, anyway, and whether it ever would was dubious. "Bloody frog taxes, " Sharpe grumbled as he tossed wood into the stove. He closed the firebox door, then hung his wet boots from the mantel so they would dry. A battered British rifle hung above the hearth and he looked up at it, half smiled, then reached to touch the weapon's lock. "You miss it?"

Lucille had come back to the kitchen. "I wasn't thinking about the army,»

Sharpe said, "but of shooting some foxes at dawn tomorrow. Lambing's not far off. Then it's back to that bloody mill. Christmas or not, I've got to chip those wheels, clear the leat, then rebuild the paddles. God knows how long it'll all take." "In the old days, " Lucille said, "we would have the whole village to help, and when the work was done we would give them a feast."

"Those were the good old days, " Sharpe said, "and they were too good to last.

And it wouldn't do me much bloody good asking the village for help, would it?

They'd as soon shoot me as help me." "You must give them time, " Lucille said.

"They are peasants. If you live here 20 years they will begin to recognise you." "Oh, they recognise me, " Sharpe said. "Cross the street, they do, so they don't have to breathe the same air as me. It's that bloody Malan. Hates me, he does."

LUCILLE shrugged. "Jacques is still loyal to Bonaparte. What do you expect?

And besides, " she hesitated. "Besides what?" Sharpe prompted her. "A long time ago, when I was a girl, Jacques Malan thought he was in love with me. He pursued me. One night he was even on the roof! " She sounded indignant at the memory. "He was peering through my bedroom window! " "Get an eyeful, did he?"

"More than he should have! " said Lucille. "My father was furious that Jacques should even think about me. Jacques-Malan was a peasant, and my father was the Vicomte de Seleglise." She laughed. "But Jacques's not such a bad man. Just disappointed."

"He's a lazy bastard, that's what he is, " Sharpe said. "I cut that timber for the priest and Jacques was supposed to collect it, but has he? Hell! He does nothing but drink his mother's pension away." The thought of Jacques Malan always made Sharpe angry, for Malan seemed determined to drive Sharpe from the village by sheer unfriendliness. The big man had returned defeated from Waterloo and ever since had sat around the village in a sulk. He did no work, he earned no money, he just sat glowering at the passing world and dreaming of the days when the Emperor's soldiers had strutted though Europe. The rest of the village feared to cross him, for though he had neither land nor money, Jacques Malan possessed an undeniable force of character. "He was a sergeant, wasn't he?" Sharpe asked. "A sergeant in the Imperial Guard, " Lucille confirmed, "the Old Guard, no less." "And I'm the only enemy he's got left now, so there's not much hope of him helping me clear out the leat. Sod him,»

Sharpe said. "Is Patrick asleep?"

"Fast asleep, " Lucille said, then frowned. "Why do you English say 'fast asleep'? Why not slow asleep? I think your language is mad." "Fast or slow, who cares? Long as the child's asleep, eh? So what shall we do tonight?"

Lucille skipped away from his arms. "For a start, we shall eat." "And after that?" Lucille let herself be caught. "Who knows?" She asked, though she did know, and she closed her eyes and prayed that Sharpe would stay in Normandy, for she worried that the village might yet repel him. A man could not live without friends, and Sharpe's friends were far away, too far away, and she feared for his happiness. But this was her farm and her house, and she could not bear the thought of leaving. Let us stay, she prayed, please God, let us stay.

SHARPE woke early on the morning of Christmas Eve. He slid from the bed, picked up his clothes fiom the chair beside the door, then tip-toed from the room so as not to wake Lucille. He paused to look at his son who slept in the crib in the next room, then hurried to the kitchen where, still naked, he stooped to riddle the stove and feed it with wood. "Bonjour, monsieur! " Marie, the old woman who was the one house servant left, peered at him from the larder. "You're up early." Sharpe said, snatching his shirt to hide his nakedness. "The one who rises early gets to see the best sights, " the old woman said, then closed the larder door to let Sharpe dress. He dressed warmly, knowing that the cold outside would be brutal. He took a shotgun and a full powder horn from the cupboard, filled a coat pocket with loose shot, then added cartridges for the rifle. He doubted he would use the rifle, but he liked to carry it in case a deer crossed his path. He pulled on a woollen hat, unbarred the back door and stepped into the courtyard where the cold hit him like a blast of cannon shot. He pulled the stable door open to let Nosey out.

The dog scampered and jumped until Sharpe growled at him to heel. The moat was skimmed with ice, the reeds were brittle and frost-edged, and a mist hung in the bare trees on the ridge above the farm. The sun was not yet up and the world was grey with the thin light between night and day. Sharpe climbed the ridge, the dog padding behind, and when he reached the top he glanced back and noted that the smoke from the farm's chimneys was drifting east, which meant he would have to make a circuit about the big wood to keep himself upwind of the valley where he knew the foxes had their lairs. With any luck he would bag a couple. What he should do, he thought, was dig the beasts out, but to do that he would need a dozen men. Father Defoy would offer to help, and so would the doctor, but neither man was fit for hard physical labour, and Jacques Malan made certain that no one else from the village would ever help the Englishman. Damn Malan, he thought. It took him the best part of an hour to reach the upwind side of the small valley where he crept to the wood's edge with the shotgun already loaded and rammed. The eastern horizon was a sullen red and mist drifted across the valley where a score of rabbits fed. No foxes yet. Sharpe guessed his first intimation of a fox would be the thump of a rabbit's warning feet, then the scamper as they fled to their burrows. A moment or so later he would see the dark fur slinking along the edge of the trees and he would have one chance of a shot. He reckoned he would bag his second fox lower down, but only after his terrier Nosey had flushed it out. It was just like war, he thought. Set an ambush, bloody the enemy, then attack to finish him off. Except the trouble with bloody foxes was that they never were finished off.