Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Honour - The Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813

‘Your husband wants you back?’

‘You know he does. I’m sure you intercept all his letters. His lust exceeds his patriotism.’

‘Then I want you to write a letter to him.’

She smiled. ‘Is that all? One letter? Do I get to keep my wagons then?’ She asked the question in a small girl’s voice.

He nodded.

She watched him, suspecting a bargain so easily made. Her voice was suddenly hard. ‘You’ll let me move my property to France for one letter?’

‘One letter.’

She shrugged. ‘You’ll give me papers?’

‘Of course.’

She sipped the champagne. ‘What do I write?’

‘Inside.’

He had written the letter and she had only to copy it onto the writing paper that bore the crest of her husband’s family. She admired Ducos’s efficiency in stealing the paper so that it was prepared for her. He gave her the only chair in the room, a freshly cut quill, and ink. ‘Do improve the phrasing, Helene.’

‘That won’t be difficult, Pierre.’

The letter told a harrowing tale. It replied to a letter from the Marqués and said that she wanted nothing more than to join him, that her joy at his return had filled her with longing and expectation, but that she feared to come to him so long as he was under Wellington’s command.

She feared because there was an English officer who had pursued her most vilely, insulted her and her husband, who had heaped every indignity upon her. She had complained, she said, to the English Generalisimo, yet nothing could be done because the offending officer was a friend of Wellington’s. She feared for her virtue, and until the officer was removed from Spain she feared to come to her husband’s side. The officer, she wrote, had already attempted to violate her once, in which attempt he had been defeated only by his drunkenness. She did not feel safe while the vile man, Major Richard Sharpe, lived. She signed the letter, carefully dabbing drops of champagne onto the ink so that the writing appeared tear-stained, then smiled at Ducos. ‘You want them to fight a duel?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed. ‘Richard will slaughter him!’

‘Of course.’

She smiled. ‘Tell me, Pierre. Why do you want Richard to kill my husband?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

If her husband, a Grandee of Spain and a sudden, unlikely hero, was killed by an Englishman, then the fragile alliance between Spain and England would be stretched dangerously. The alliance was one of expedience. The Spanish had no love for the English. They resented that they needed a British army to expel the French. It was true that they had made Wellington the Generalisimo of all their armies, but that was a recognition of his talent, and the necessity of the act had only made their need of him more apparent. She watched Ducos dry the ink with sand. ‘You do know that there won’t be a duel, don’t you?’

‘There won’t?’ He shook the sand onto the floor.

‘Arthur won’t allow them.’ ‘Arthur’ was Wellington. ‘What will you do then, Pierre?’

He ignored the question. ‘You know this could be Major Sharpe’s death warrant?’

‘Yes.’

‘It doesn’t worry you?’

She smiled prettily. ‘Richard can look after himself, Pierre. The gods smile on him. Besides, I’m doing this for France, am I not?’

‘For your wagons, dear Helene.’

‘Ah yes. My wagons. When do I get my pass for them?’

‘For the next convoy north.’

She nodded and stood up. ‘You really believe they’ll fight, Pierre?’

‘Does it matter?’

She smiled. ‘I’d rather like to be a widow. A rich widow. La Viuda Dorada .’

‘Then you must hope Major Sharpe obliges you.’

‘He always has in the past, Pierre.’ She filled the room with her perfume.

He folded the letter. ‘Are you fond of him?’

She put her head to one side and seemed to think about it. ‘Yes. He has the virtue of simplicity, Pierre, and loyalty.’

‘Hardly your tastes, I would have thought?’

‘How little you know my tastes, Pierre. Am I dismissed? May I return to my pleasures?’

‘Your seal?’

‘Ah.’ She took off a ring that she wore above her lace glove and handed it to him. He pressed it into hot wax and gave the signet back to her.

‘Thank you, Helene.’

‘Don’t thank me, Pierre.’ She stared at him with a slight, mocking smile on her face. ‘Do you open the Emperor’s letters to me, Pierre?’

‘Of course not.’ He frowned at such a thought, while inside he was wondering how Napoleon sent such letters so that they avoided his men.

‘I thought not.’ She licked her lips. ‘You know he’s still fond of me.’

‘I believe he stays fond of all his lovers.’

‘You’re so very sweet, Pierre.’ She turned her folded parasol in her hands. ‘You know he thinks of me as quite an expert on Spanish matters? He asks my advice even?’

‘So?’ Ducos stared at her.

‘I must congratulate you, Pierre. I told the Emperor that your idea for the Treaty was magnificent.’ She smiled at the shock on his face. ‘Truly, Pierre! Magnificent. That was the very word I used. Of course, I told him we might beat Wellington first, but if we didn’t? Magnificent!’ She smiled a victor’s smile. ‘So you’re not going to stop my little wagons crossing the border, are you?’

‘I have already made my promise.’

‘But to whom, sweet little Pierre? To whom?’ She said the last two words as she opened the door. She smiled again. ‘Good day, Major. It was such a small pleasure.’

He listened to her heels on the stone of the passage and felt bitterly angry. Napoleon, always a fool for a pair of legs in a bed, had told the Golden Whore about Valençay? And now she dared to threaten him? That if her puny wagons did not reach France then she would betray her country by revealing the Treaty’s existence?

He walked onto the ramparts. The letter she had written was in his hand, and it was the key to the Treaty. Today he would give it to the Inquisitor, and tomorrow the Inquisitor, with his brother, would start the journey westwards. Within three days, he decided, the matter would be irreversible, and within another two weeks he would sew up that pretty mouth for ever.

He watched her greet General Verigny beneath him, watched her climb with the General into her carriage, and he thought with what joy he would see that whore brought low. She dared to threaten him? Then she would live to regret the threat throughout eternity.

He turned back to his office. He would defy her. He would save France, defeat Britain, and dazzle the world with his cleverness. For a few seconds, standing with his back to the magnificent view from Burgos’s ramparts, he imagined himself as the new Richelieu, the new bright star in France’s glory. He could not lose, he knew it, for he had calculated the risks, and he would win.

‘Tents!’ Sharpe spat the word out. ‘Goddamned bloody tents!’

‘For sleeping in, sir.’ Sergeant Patrick Harper kept a rigidly straight face. The watching men of the South Essex grinned.

‘Bloody tents.’

‘Clean tents, sir. Nice and white, sir. We could make flower gardens round them in case the lads get homesick.’

Sharpe kicked one of the enormous canvas bundles. ‘Who needs goddamned tents?’

‘Soldiers, sir, in case they get cold and wet at night.’ Harper’s thick Ulster accent was rich with amusement. ‘I expect they’ll give us beds next, sir, with clean sheets and little girls to tuck us up at night. And chamberpots, sir, with God save the King written on their rims.’