Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Devil - Napoleon and South America, 1820–1821

Bonaparte, never much interested in sailors, turned his attention back to Colonel Ruiz who formally presented the officers of his regiment of artillery who, in turn, bowed elegantly to the small man in the gilded chair. Bonaparte had a kindly word for each man, then turned his attention back to Ruiz. He wanted to know what impulse had brought Ruiz to St Helena. The Colonel explained that the Espiritu Santo , thanks to the superior skills of the Spanish Navy, had made excellent time on its southward journey and, being within a few days’ sailing of St Helena, the officers on board the Espiritu Santo had thought it only proper to pay their respects to his Majesty the Emperor.

In other words they could not resist making a detour to stare at the defanged beast chained to its rock, but Bonaparte took Ruiz’s flowery compliment at its face value. ‘Then I trust you will also pay your respects to Sir Hudson Lowe,’ he said drily. ‘Sir Hudson is my jailer. He, with five thousand men, seven ships, eight batteries of artillery, and the ocean which you gentlemen have crossed to do me this great honour.’

While the Spanish-speaking Frenchman translated the Emperor’s mixture of scorn for his jailers and insincere flattery for his visitors, Bonaparte’s eyes turned towards Sharpe and Harper who, alone in the room, had not been introduced. For a second Rifleman and Emperor stared into each other’s eyes, then Bonaparte looked back to Colonel Ruiz. ‘So you are reinforcements for the Spanish army in Chile?’

‘Indeed, your Majesty,’ the Colonel replied.

‘So your ship is also carrying your guns? And your gunners?’ Bonaparte asked.

‘Just the regiment’s officers,’ Ruiz replied. ‘Captain Ardiles’s vessel has been especially adapted to carry passengers, but alas she cannot accommodate a whole regiment. Especially of artillery.’

‘So the rest of your men are where?’ the Emperor asked.

‘They’re following on two transport ships,’ Ruiz said airily, ‘with their guns.’

‘Ah!’ The Emperor’s response was apparently a polite acknowledgement of the trivial answer, yet the silence which followed, and the fixity of his smile, were a sudden reproof to these Spaniards who had chosen the comfort of Ardiles’s fast frigate while leaving their men to the stinking hulks that would take at least a month longer than the Espiritu Santo to make the long, savage voyage around South America to where Spanish troops tried to reconquer Chile from the rebel government. ‘Let us hope the rest of your regiment doesn’t decide to pay me their respects.’ Bonaparte broke the slightly uncomfortable air that his unspoken criticism had caused. ‘Or else Sir Hudson will fear they have come to rescue me!’

Ruiz laughed, the other army officers smiled and Ardiles, perhaps hearing in the Emperor’s voice an edge of longing that the other Spaniards had missed, scowled.

‘So tell me,’ Bonaparte still spoke to Ruiz, ‘what are your expectations in Chile?’

Colonel Ruiz bristled with confidence as he expressed his eager conviction that the rebel Chilean forces and government would soon collapse, as would all the other insurgents in the Spanish colonies of South America, and that the rightful government of His Majesty King Ferdinand VII would thus be restored throughout Spain’s American dominions. The coming of his own regiment, the Colonel asserted, could only hasten that royal victory.

‘Indeed,’ the Emperor agreed politely, then moved the conversation to the subject of Europe, and specifically to the troubles of Spain. Bonaparte politely affected to believe the Colonel’s assurance that the liberals would not dare to revolt openly against the King, and his denial that the army, sickened by the waste of blood in South America, was close to mutiny. Indeed, Colonel Ruiz expressed himself full of hope for Spain’s future, relishing a monarchy growing ever more powerful, and fed ever more riches by its colonial possessions. The other artillery officers, keen to please their bombastic Colonel, nodded sycophantic agreement, though Captain Ardiles looked disgusted at Ruiz’s bland optimism and showed his scepticism by pointedly staring out of the window as he fanned himself with a mildewed cocked hat.

Sharpe, like all the other visitors, was sweating foully. The room was steamy and close, and none of its windows was open. The rain had at last begun to fall and a zinc bucket, placed close to the Emperor’s chair, suddenly rang as a drip fell from the leaking ceiling. The Emperor frowned at the noise, then returned his polite attention to Colonel Ruiz who had reverted to his favourite subject of how the rebels in Chile, Peru and Venezuela had overextended themselves and must inevitably collapse.

Sharpe, who had spent too many shipboard hours listening to the Colonel’s boasting, studied the Emperor instead of paying any attention to Ruiz’s long-winded bragging. By now Sharpe had recovered his presence of mind, no longer feeling dizzy just to be in the same small room as Bonaparte, and so he made himself examine the seated figure as though he could commit the man to memory for ever. Bonaparte was far fatter than Sharpe had expected. He was not as fat as Harper, who was fat like a bull or a prize boar is fat, but instead the Emperor was unhealthily bloated like a dead beast that was swollen with noxious vapours. His monstrous pot belly, waistcoated in white, rested on his spread thighs. His face was sallow and his fine hair was lank. Sweat pricked at his forehead. His nose was thin and straight, his chin dimpled, his mouth firm and his eyes extraordinary. Sharpe knew Bonaparte was fifty years old, yet the Emperor’s face looked much younger than fifty. His body, though, was that of an old sick man. It had to be the climate, Sharpe supposed, for surely no white man could keep healthy in such a steamy and oppressive heat. The rain was falling harder now, pattering on the yellow stucco wall and on the window, and dripping annoyingly into the zinc bucket. It would be a wet ride back to the harbour where the longboats waited to row the sixteen men back to Ardiles’s ship.

Sharpe gazed attentively about the room, knowing that when he was back home Lucille would demand to hear a thousand details. He noted how low the ceiling was, and how the plaster of the ceiling was yellowed and sagging, as if, at any moment, the roof might fall in. He heard the scrabble of rats again, and marked other signs of decay like the mildew on the green velvet curtains, the tarnish in the silvering of a looking glass, and the flaking of the gilt on its frame. Under the mirror a pack of worn playing cards lay carelessly strewn on a small round table beside a silver-framed portrait of a child dressed in an elaborate uniform. A torn cloak, lined with a check pattern, hung from a hook on the door. ‘And you, monsieur , you are no Spaniard, what is your business here?’

The Emperor’s question, in French, had been addressed to Sharpe who, taken aback and not concentrating, said nothing. The interpreter, assuming that Sharpe had misunderstood the Emperor’s accent, began to translate, but then Sharpe, suddenly dry-mouthed and horribly nervous, found his tongue. ‘I am a passenger on the Espiritu Santo , your Majesty. Travelling to Chile with my friend from Ireland, Mister Patrick Harper.’

The Emperor smiled. ‘Your very substantial friend?’

‘When he was my Regimental Sergeant Major he was somewhat less substantial, but just as impressive.’ Sharpe could feel his right leg twitching with fear. Why, for God’s sake? Bonaparte was just another man, and a defeated one at that. Moreover, the Emperor was a man, Sharpe tried to convince himself, of no account any more. The prefect of a small French département had more power than Bonaparte now, yet still Sharpe felt dreadfully nervous.