Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Revenge

The words were ungracious, but Maillot showed no resentment as he walked to the fire and held chilled hands to the small warmth generated by the burning page. “I’d have been here sooner, but the roads are hardly safe, Major. Even with a cavalry escort one has to beware bandits.” He said the last word mockingly for both men knew that the ‘bandits’ were either deserters from Napoleon’s armies or young men who had fled into the countryside to avoid conscription. What Maillot did not say was that his wagon had been attacked by such bandits. Six of the Dragoons had died, including Maillot’s second-in-command, but Maillot had counter-attacked, then released the surviving Dragoons to pursue and punish the brigands. Maillot was a veteran of the Emperor’s wars and he would not be insulted by mere vagabonds.

Ducos unhooked the spectacles from his ears and wiped the round lenses on a corner of his blue jacket. “The consignment is safe?”

“Downstairs. It’s in an artillery wagon that’s parked in the yard. The escort need food and water, and so do their horses.”

Ducos frowned to show that he was above dealing with such humdrum requirements as food and water. “Do the escort know what is in the wagon?”

“Of course not.”

“What do they think it is?”

Maillot shrugged. “Does it matter? They simply know they have fetched four unmarked crates to Bordeaux.”

Ducos lifted the dispatch’s remaining sheet of paper. “This gives me authority over the escort, and I insist upon knowing whether they can be trusted.”

Maillot sat in a chair and stretched out his long, weary and mud-spattered legs. “They’re commanded by a good man, Sergeant Challon, and they’ll do nothing to cross him. But can they be trusted? Who knows? They’ve probably guessed what’s in the crates by now, but so far they’ve stayed loyal.” He stifled a yawn. “What they’re more concerned about now is food and water.”

“And you, Colonel?” Ducos asked.

“I need food and water, too.”

Ducos grimaced to show that his question had been misunderstood. “What do you do now, Colonel?”

“I return to the Emperor, of course. The consignment is your responsibility. And if you’ll forgive me, I’m damned glad to be shot of it. A soldier should be fighting now, not acting as a baggage-master.”

Ducos, who had just been given the responsibilities of a baggage-master, restored the polished spectacles to his face. “The Emperor does me great honour.”

“He trusts you,” Maillot said simply.

“As he trusts you,” Ducos returned the compliment.

“I’ve been with him many years.”

Ducos glanced at the grey-haired Maillot. Doubtless Maillot had been with the Emperor for many years, but he had never been promoted above the rank of Colonel. Other Frenchmen had risen from the ranks to command whole armies, but not this tall, scarred veteran with his doggedly trustworthy face. In brief, Ducos decided, this Maillot was a fool; one of the Emperor’s loyal mastiffs; a man for errands; a man without imagination. “Bordeaux is not a safe place,” Ducos said softly, almost as if he was speaking to himself, “the mayor has sent a message to the English, asking them to come here. He thinks I don’t know of the message, but I have a copy on this table.”

“Then arrest him,” Maillot said casually.

“With what? Half the town guard wears the white cockade now, and so would the other half if they had the guts.” Ducos stood and crossed to a window from which he stared at the rain which swept in great swathes across the Place St Julien. “The wagon will be safe here tonight,” he said, “and your men can take some of the empty billets.” Ducos turned, suddenly smiling. “But you, Colonel, will do me the honour of taking supper at my lodgings?”

All Maillot wished to do was sleep, but he knew in what favour the Emperor held this small bespectacled man and so, out of courtesy and because Ducos pressed the invitation so warmly, the Colonel reluctantly accepted.

Yet, to Maillot’s surprise, Ducos proved a surprisingly entertaining host, and Maillot, who had snatched two hours’ exhausted sleep in the afternoon, found himself warming to the small man who talked so frankly of his services to the Emperor. “I was never a natural soldier like yourself, Colonel,” Ducos said modestly. “My talents were used to corrupt, outguess and cheat the enemy.” Ducos did not talk of his past failures that night, but of his successes such as the time when he had lured some Spanish guerrilla leaders to truce talks, and how they had all been slaughtered when they trustingly arrived. Ducos smiled at the memory. “I sometimes miss Spain.”

“I never fought there,” Maillot helped himself to more brandy, “but I was told about the guerilleros. How can you fight men who don’t wear uniforms?”

“By killing as many civilians as you can, of course,” Ducos said, then, wistfully, “I do miss the warm climate.”

Maillot laughed at that. “You were evidently not in Russia.”

“I was not.” Ducos shivered at the very thought, then twisted in his chair to peer into the night. “It’s stopped raining, my dear Maillot. You’ll take a turn in the garden?”

The two men walked the sodden lawn and their cigar smoke drifted up through the branches of the pear-trees. Maillot must still have been remembering the Russian Campaign, for he suddenly uttered a short laugh then commented how very clever the Emperor had been in Moscow.

“Clever?” Ducos sounded surprised. “It didn’t seem very clever to those of us who weren’t there.”

“That’s my point,” Maillot said. “We heard about the unrest at home, so what did the Emperor do? He sent orders that the female dancers of the Paris ballet were to perform without skirts or stockings!” Maillot laughed at the memory, then turned to the garden’s high brick wall and unbuttoned his breeches. He went on talking as he pissed. “We heard later that Paris forgot all about the deaths in Russia, because all they could talk about was Mademoiselle Rossillier’s naked thighs. Were you in Paris at the time?”

“I was in Spain.” Ducos was standing directly behind Maillot. As the older man had talked, Ducos had drawn a small pistol from his tail pocket and silently eased back its oiled cock. Now he aimed the pistol at the base of Maillot’s neck. “I was in Spain,” Ducos said again, and he screwed his eyes tight shut as he pulled the trigger. The ball shattered one of Maillot’s vertebrae, throwing the grey head back in a bloody paroxysm. The Colonel seemed to give a remorseful sigh as he collapsed. His head jerked forward to thump against the brickwork, then the body twitched once and was quite still. The foul-smelling pistol smoke lingered beneath the pear branches.

Ducos retched, gagged, and managed to control himself.

A voice shouted from a neighbouring house, wanting an explanation for the gunshot, but when Ducos made no reply there was no further question.

By dawn the body was hidden under compost.

Ducos had not slept. It was not conscience, nor disgust at Maillot’s death that had kept him awake, but the enormity of what that death represented. Ducos, by pulling the trigger, had abandoned all that had once been most dear to him. He had been raised to believe in the sanctity of the Revolutionary ideals, then had learned that Napoleon’s imperial ambitions were really the same ideals, but transmuted by one man’s genius into a unique and irreplaceable glory. Now, as Napoleon’s glory crumbled, the ideals must live on, only now Ducos recognized that France itself was the embodiment of that greatness.

Ducos had thus persuaded himself in that damp night that the irrelevant trappings of Imperial France could be sacrificed. A new France would rise, and Ducos would serve that new France from a position of powerful responsibility. For the moment, though, a time of waiting and safety was needed. So, in the morning, he summoned the Dragoon Sergeant Challon to the prefecture where he sat the grizzled sergeant down at the green malachite table across which Ducos pushed the one remaining sheet of the Emperor’s dispatch. “Read that, Sergeant.”