Бернард Корнуэлл: Sharpe's Revenge

“Good morning, sir.” Lieutenant Ford was Bampfylde’s second. He carried a wooden case in his right hand. “I apologise that we’re late.”

“We’re just pleased that you’ve arrived.” Frederickson glanced towards Captain Bampfylde who still paced nervously behind the three horses. “Is your principal prepared to make an apology, Lieutenant?”

The question was asked dutifully, and just as dutifully answered. “Of course not, sir.”

“Which is regrettable.” Frederickson, whose company had suffered at the Teste de Buch fort because of Bampfylde’s cowardice, did not sound in the least regretful. Indeed his voice was positively gleeful in anticipation of Bampfylde’s death. “Shall we let the proceedings begin, Lieutenant?” Without waiting for an answer he beckoned to Sharpe as Ford signalled to Bampfylde.

The two principals faced each other without speaking. Bampfylde looked deathly pale to Sharpe, but quite sober. He was certainly not shaking. He looked angry, but any man who had been accused of gross cowardice should look angry.

Ford opened the wooden case and produced two duelling pistols. Bampfylde, because he had been challenged, had been offered the choice of weapons, and he had chosen a pair of long-barrelled French-made percussion pistols. Frederickson weighed them in his hands, inspected their hammers, then pulled the ramrod from one of the guns and probed both barrels. He was checking that neither pistol had concealed rifling in the rear part of their barrels. Both were smooth-bore. They were, so far as a craftsman’s high skill could make them, identical weapons.

The doctor was leaning forward in the carriage to watch the careful preparations. His coachman, swathed in a cloak, stood by the horses’ heads. Harper waited by the pine trees.

Ford loaded both pistols, carefully watched by Frederickson. The Lieutenant used fine black powder that was dispensed from a small measuring cup. Ford was nervous, his hand quivered, and some of the powder was wisped away by the wind, but he carefully took an extra pinch to compensate for the loss. The powder was tamped down with the ramrod, then each lead ball was wrapped in an oiled leather patch. Bullets, however carefully cast, were never quite of a perfect calibre, but the leather patch made the fit as true as was possible, and thus gave the pistols added accuracy. Greater accuracy would have been achieved if the weapons’ barrels had been rifled, but that was thought to be unsporting. The balls were rammed down the barrels, then the ramrod was struck with a brass hammer to make sure that the missiles were sitting hard against the powder charge.

Once the barrels were charged Ford opened a small tin case which contained the percussion caps. Each cap was a wafer of paper-thin copper enclosing a tiny charge of black powder. When the pistol’s hammer struck the copper wafer the hidden powder exploded to lance a tiny jet of flame down the touch-hole to the compacted charge in the barrel. Such guns were finicky, expensive, and much more reliable than the old-fashioned flintlock that was so prone to dampness. Ford carefully pressed the caps into the tiny recesses beneath the two hammers, then gently lowered the hammers so the guns were safe. Then, with a curiously diffident air, he offered both butts to Frederickson.

Frederickson, thus given the choice, looked at Sharpe.

“Either,” Sharpe said curtly. It was the first word either principal had spoken since they had met. Bampfylde glanced at Sharpe as the Rifleman spoke, then quickly looked away. The Naval officer was a plump young man with a smooth face, while Sharpe had a tanned, scarred skin and angular bones. A scar on the Rifleman’s left cheek distorted his mouth to give his face an unwitting look of mockery that only disappeared when he smiled.

Frederickson chose the right-hand gun. “Coats and hats, gentlemen, please,” he said solemnly.

Sharpe had anticipated this ritual, yet it still seemed strange and clumsy as he threw down his shako, then as he took off the threadbare rifleman’s jacket. On the jacket’s sleeve was a dirty cloth badge; a wreath of oak leaves that proved he had once led a Forlorn Hope into a breach that had been savage with fire and steel. He gave the coat to Frederickson who, in return, handed the loaded pistol to Sharpe. The wind stirred Sharpe’s black hair that he irritably pushed away from his eyes.

Bampfylde shrugged off his boat-cloak, then undid the buttons of his blue and white jacket. Beneath it he wore a white silk shirt that was tucked into a sash about the waistband of his white uniform breeches. It was said to be easier, and thus much safer, to remove shreds of silk from a bullet wound, which was why many officers insisted on wearing silk into battle. Sharpe’s shirt was of stained linen.

Ford took Captain Bampfylde’s hat, cloak and jacket, then cleared his throat. “You will take ten paces, gentlemen, to my count — „Ford was very nervous; he swallowed phlegm, then cleared his throat once more — „after which you will turn and fire. If satisfaction is not given with the first exchange, then you may insist on firing a second time, and so forth.”

“You’re happy with your station?” Frederickson asked Bampfylde who gave a start at being thus addressed, then looked around the bluff as if seeking a safer place to fight.

“I am content,” he said after a pause.

“Major?” Frederickson asked Sharpe.

“Content.” The butt of the pistol was made of cross-hatched walnut. The gun felt heavy and unbalanced in Sharpe’s hand, but that was only because he was not used to such weapons. It was undoubtedly a gun of great precision.

“If you’ll turn, gentlemen?” Ford’s voice was shaking.

Sharpe turned so that he was staring out to sea. The freshening wind had begun to fleck the slaty swell with rills of white foam. The wind, he noted, was coming straight into his face so he would not have to aim the pistol off to compensate for a cross-breeze.

“You may cock your weapons,” Frederickson said. Sharpe pulled back the hammer and felt it click into place. He was besieged by a sudden worry that the percussion cap would fall out of its recess, but when he looked he saw that the wafer’s copper edges were so crimped by the tight fit that the cap was effectively wedged tight.

“Ten paces, gentlemen,” Ford announced. “One. Two…”

Sharpe walked his normal paces. He held the gun low. He did not think he had shown any fear to Bampfylde, but his belly was like knotted ice and a muscle was trembling in his left thigh. His throat was dry as dust. He could see Harper out of the corner of his eye.

“Seven. Eight.” Ford had raised his voice so it would carry above the sound of the sea wind. Sharpe was close enough to the bluffs edge to sec the French lobstermen pulling on long oars to escape the sucking undertow at the cliffs ragged base.

“Nine,” Ford shouted, then a perceptible and nervous pause before the last word, “ten.”

Sharpe took the last pace, then turned his back to the Atlantic wind. Bampfylde was already raising his pistol. He looked very near to Sharpe who suddenly seemed unable to raise his right arm. He was thinking of Jane who he knew was waiting in horrid suspense, then he jerked his arm into motion because Bampfylde’s pistol was already nothing but a round black hole pointing straight between Sharpe’s eyes.

He watched the black hole and suddenly felt the warm calm of battle. The reassurance was so unexpected, yet so familiar, that he smiled.

And Bampfylde fired.

Flame pierced at Sharpe through the billowing smoke, but he had already heard the ball go past his head with a crack like a leather whip snapped hard. The bullet could not have been more than six inches from his left ear, and