Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Siege - The Winter Campaign, 1814

‘But …’

‘Not that I care.’ The surgeon wiped his bleeding-cup on the tail of his shirt then tossed it into his bag. ‘If you want the fever, Major, go inside.’ He spat on his wide-bladed scarifying gouge, smeared the blood from it, and shrugged as Sharpe opened the inner door.

Hogan’s room was heated by a huge fire that hissed where its flames met the rain coming down the chimney. Hogan himself was in a bed heaped with blankets. He shivered and sweated at the same time. His face was greyish, his skin slick with sweat, his eyes red-rimmed, and he was muttering about being purged with hyssop.

‘His topsails are gone to the wind,’ the surgeon spoke from behind Sharpe. ‘Feverish, you see. Did you have business with him?’

Sharpe stared at the sick man. ‘He’s my particular friend.’ He turned to look at the surgeon. ‘I’ve been on the Nive for the last month, I knew he was ill, but …’ He ran out of words.

‘Ah,’ the surgeon seemed to soften somewhat. ‘I wish I could offer some hope, Major.’

‘You can’t?’

‘He might last two days. He might last a week.’ The surgeon pulled on his jacket that he had shed before opening one of Hogan’s veins. ‘He’s wrapped in red flannel, bled regular, and we’re feeding him gunpowder and brandy. Can’t do more, Major, except pray for the Lord’s tender mercies.’

The sickroom stank of vomit. The heat of the huge fire pricked sweat on Sharpe’s face and steamed rain-water from his soaking uniform as he stepped closer to the bed, but it was obvious Hogan could not recognize him. The middle-aged Irishman, who was Wellington’s Chief of Intelligence, shivered and sweated and shook and muttered nonsenses in a voice that had so often amused Sharpe with its dry wit.

‘It’s possible,’ the surgeon spoke grudgingly from the outer room, ‘that the next convoy might bring some Jesuit’s bark.’

‘Jesuit’s bark?’ Sharpe turned towards the doorway.

‘A South American tree-bark, Major, sometimes called quinine. Infuse it well and it can perform miracles. But it’s a rare substance, Major, and cruelly expensive!’

Sharpe went closer to the bed. ‘Michael? Michael?’

Hogan said something in Gaelic. His eyes flickered past Sharpe, closed, then opened again.

‘Michael?’

‘Ducos,’ the sick man said distinctly, ‘Ducos.’

‘He’ll not make sense,’ the surgeon said.

‘He just did.’ Sharpe had heard a name, a French name, the name of an enemy, but in what feverish context and from what secret compartment of Hogan’s clever mind the name had come, Sharpe could not tell.

‘The Field Marshal sent me,’ the surgeon seemed eager to explain himself, ‘but I can’t work miracles, Major. Only the Almighty’s providence can do that.’

‘Or Jesuit’s bark.’

‘Which I haven’t seen in six months.’ The surgeon still stood at the door. ‘Might I insist you leave, Major? God spare us a contagion.’

‘Yes.’ Sharpe knew he would never forgive himself if he did not give Hogan some gesture of friendship, however useless, so he stooped and took the sick man’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

‘ Maquereau ,’ Hogan said quite distinctly.

‘Maquereau?’

‘Major!’

Sharpe obeyed the surgeon’s voice. ‘Does maquereau mean anything to you?’

‘It’s a fish. The mackerel. It’s also French slang for pimp, Major. I told you, his wits are wandering.’ The surgeon closed the door on the sickroom. ‘And one other piece of advice, Major.’

‘Yes?’

‘If you want your wife to live, then tell her she must stop visiting Colonel Hogan.’

Sharpe paused by his damp luggage. ‘Jane visits him?’

‘A Mrs Sharpe visits daily,’ the doctor said, ‘but I have not the intimacy of her first name. Good day to you, Major.’

It was winter in France.

The floor was a polished expanse of boxwood, the walls were cliffs of shining marble, and the ceiling a riot of ornate plasterwork and paint. In the very centre of the floor, beneath the dark, cobweb encrusted chandelier and dwarfed by the huge proportions of the vast room, was a malachite table. Six candles, their light too feeble to reach into the corners of the great room, illuminated maps spread on the green stone table.

A man walked from the table to a fire that burned in an intricately carved hearth. He stared at the flames and, when at last he spoke, the marble walls made his voice seem hollow with despair. ‘There are no reserves.’

‘Calvet’s demi-brigade …’

‘Is ordered south without delay.’ The man turned from the fire to look at the table where the candle-glow illuminated two pale faces above dark uniforms. ‘The Emperor will not take it kindly if we …’

‘The Emperor,’ the smallest man at the table interrupted in a voice of surprising harshness, ‘rewards success.’

January rain spattered the tall, east-facing windows. The velvet curtains of this room had been pulled down twenty-one years before, trophies to a revolutionary mob that had stormed triumphant through the streets of Bordeaux, and there had never been the money nor the will to hang new curtains. The consequence, in winters like this, was a draught of malevolent force. The fire scarcely warmed the hearth, let alone the whole huge room, and the general standing before the feeble flames shivered. ‘East or north.’

It was a simple enough problem. The British had invaded a small corner of southern France, nothing but a toe-hold between the southern rivers and the Bay of Biscay, and these men expected the British to attack again. But would Field Marshal the Lord Wellington go east or north?

‘We know it’s north,’ the smallest man said. ‘Why else are they collecting boats?’

‘In that case, my dear Ducos,’ the general paced back towards the table, ‘is it to be a bridge, or a landing?’

The third man, a colonel, dropped a smoked cigar on to the floor and ground it beneath his toe. ‘Perhaps the American can tell us?’

‘The American,’ Pierre Ducos said scathingly, ‘is a flea on the rump of a lion. An adventurer. I use him because no Frenchman can do the task, but I expect small help of him.’

‘Then who can tell us?’ The general came into the aureole of light made by the candles. ‘Isn’t that your job, Ducos?’

It was rare for Major Pierre Ducos’ competency to be so challenged, yet France was assailed and Ducos was almost helpless. When, with the rest of the French Army, he had been ejected from Spain, Ducos had lost his best agents. Now, peering into his enemy’s mind, Ducos saw only a fog. ‘There is one man,’ he spoke softly.

‘Well?’

Ducos’ round, thick spectacle lenses flashed candlelight as he stared at the map. He would have to send a message through the enemy lines, and he risked losing his last agent in British uniform, but perhaps the risk was justified if it brought the French the news they so desperately needed. East, north, a bridge, or a landing? Pierre Ducos nodded. ‘I shall try.’

Which was why, three days later, a French lieutenant stepped gingerly across a frosted plank bridge that spanned a tributary of the Nive. He shouted cheerfully to warn the enemy sentries that he approached.

Two British redcoats, faces swathed in rags against the bitter cold, called for their own officer. The French lieutenant, seeing he was safe, grinned at the picquet. ‘Cold, yes?’

‘Bloody cold.’

‘For you.’ The French lieutenant gave the redcoats a cloth-wrapped bundle that contained a loaf of bread and a length of sausage, the usual gesture on occasions such as this, then greeted his British counterpart with a happy familiarity. ‘I’ve brought the calico for Captain Salmon.’ The Frenchman unbuckled his pack. ‘But I can’t find red silk in Bayonne. Can the colonel’s wife wait?’