Sharpe's Revenge

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  EPILOGUE

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  FOR THE BEST IN PAPERBACKS, LOOK FOR THE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  SHARPE’S REVENGE

  Sharpe’s Revenge is the tenth volume in Bernard Cornwell’s acclaimed Richard Sharpe series, which takes the hero to the famous battle of Waterloo—and beyond. Several novels in the series have been made into a television mini-series. Bernard Cornwell was born in London and lives in Chatham, Massachusetts.

  THE SHARPE SERIES FROM PENGUIN BOOKS

  1. SHARPE’S RIFLES

  2. SHARPE’S EAGLE

  3. SHARPE’S GOLD

  4. SHARPE’S COMPANY

  5. SHARPE’S SWORD

  6. SHARPE’S ENEMY

  7. SHARPE’S HONOR

  8. SHARPE’S REGIMENT

  9. SHARPE’S SIEGE

  10. SHARPE’S REVENGE

  11. WATERLOO

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1989

  First published in the United States of America by Viking

  Penguin Inc., a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1989

  Published in Penguin Books 1990

  This edition published in 2001

  Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd., 1989

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA:

  Cornwell, Bernard.

  Sharpe’s revenge.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15361-1

  1. Toulouse, Battle of, 1814—Fiction.

  2. Penninsular War, 1807-1814—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PR6053.075S’.914 88-40398

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  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  Major Richard Sharpe had made every preparation for his own death. His horse, Sycorax, and his fine French telescope would go to Captain William Frederickson, his weapons would become the property of Sergeant Patrick Harper, while everything else would belong to his wife Jane. Everything, that was, except for the uniform in which Sharpe always fought. That uniform consisted of knee-high riding boots, French cavalry overalls, and a faded green jacket of the 95th Rifles. Sharpe had asked to be buried in that uniform.

  ‘If you weren’t buried in those rags,’ Frederickson observed disdainfully, ‘they’d be burned anyway.’

  It was true that the leather boots had been deeply scarred by knives, bayonets and sabres, and that the overalls were so patched with brown homespun that they looked more like a ploughman’s cast-off breeches than the plundered uniform of a Chasseur Colonel of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, and that the green jacket was so faded and threadbare that even a moth could not have made a decent meal from it, but the clothes were still those in which Sharpe fought and were therefore dear to him. He might have looked like a scarecrow in the old uniform, but wearing it for battle was one of his obsessive superstitions, which was why, on a cold March morning in 1814, and despite being miles from any enemy soldier, Sharpe wore the old clothes.

  ‘You’ll have to take off the jacket,’ Frederickson, who understood Sharpe’s superstitious attachment to the uniform, warned his friend.

  ‘I know.’ There was no detail of this morning that Sharpe had not rehearsed again and again in his mind. What would happen this morning was called ‘grass before breakfast’. It sounded innocuous, but it could well mean death.

  The two men stood on a low grassy bluff above a grey and sullen Atlantic. A long and heaving swell was running from the west to break against the rocks beneath. To the north of the bluff was the French port of St Jean de Luz that was crammed with merchant shipping and fishing boats, while in the harbour’s outer roads a small Royal Navy flotilla lay at anchor. The flotilla consisted of three sloops, two frigates, and a great chequer-sided battleship, the Vengeance.

  It was a shivering dawn, yet spring was coming and with the spring would come a resurgence of battle. The Emperor Napoleon had refused the peace terms offered by his enemies, so now the French armies would have to fight to defend their homeland. Their enemies were now all Europe. Wellington’s army of Britons, Spaniards and Portuguese had captured the south-western corner of France and would soon strike yet further into the heartland, while, far to the north, the Prussians, Austrians and Russians skirmished across Napoleon’s northern frontiers.

  None of which seemed immediately important to Major Richard Sharpe as he began to pace the frosted grass on the bluffs flat summit. A cold wind was gusting from the ocean and William Frederickson took shelter from it in the lee of some bent and stunted pines. Sharpe, pacing up and down, was oblivious of the wind, obsessed instead with the thought of his own death. The most important thing, he decided, was that Jane was well taken care of. She already had the piece of paper which gave her authority over Sharpe’s money; which money was the profit of the plunder he had taken from the French baggage after the battle at Vitoria. Many soldiers had become rich that day, but few as rich as Major Richard Sharpe or Sergeant Patrick Harper.

  Sharpe paced close to Frederickson. ‘Time?’

  Frederickson fumbled with gloved hands to open his watch’s lid. ‘Twenty minutes past six.’

  Sharpe grunted and turned away. The dawn had made the grey clouds palely luminous, while the sea was so dark that it seemed to be made of a liquid and sluggish slate. A small, high-prowed fishing boat was perilously close to the rocks beneath Sharpe. The fishermen were heaving lobster-pots overboard. Perhaps, Sharpe thought, his enemy would be eating one of those lobsters this very night, while Sharpe would already be as cold as stone and lying six feet under French soil. Grass before breakfast.

  ‘God damn it,’ he said in sudden irritation, ‘why can’t we fight with s
words?’

  ‘Because Bampfylde chose pistols.’ Frederickson had just lit a cheroot and the wind whirled its smoke quickly away.

  ‘God damn it.’ Sharpe turned away again. He was nervous, and he did not mind showing his nervousness to Frederickson. The Rifle Captain was one of Sharpe’s closest friends and a man who understood how nerves could make the belly into a tight cold knot before a fight. Frederickson, half English and half German, was a fearsome looking man who had given up most of his teeth and one of his eyes on Spanish battlefields. His men, with clumsy affection, called him after a homely flower, Sweet William, though on a battlefield he was anything but sweet. He was a soldier, as tough as any in the army, and tough enough to understand how a brave man could be almost paralysed by fear.

  Sharpe understood that too, yet even so he was surprised by the fear he felt in this cold morning. He had been a soldier ever since he had joined the 33rd as a sixteen-year-old recruit. In the twenty-one years since, he had clawed his way through defended breaches, he had stood in the musket line and traded death with an enemy not forty paces away, he had shattered cavalry charges with volley fire, he had fought the lonely fight of a skirmisher ahead of the battle line, he had watched the enemy’s artillery tear his men to red ruin, and he had done all of those things more often than he could remember. He had fought in Flanders, India, Portugal, Spain and France. He had risen from the red-coated ranks to become one of His Majesty’s officers. He had taken an enemy standard, and been captured himself. He had been wounded. He had killed. Other men had spent their lives mastering the skills of peace, but Richard Sharpe had become a master of war. Few men had fought so often, few men had fought so well, and now, Sharpe thought, the lumpen memories of those many fights were gnawing at his confidence. He knew the luck of the long bloody years could not hold, or perhaps it was that now, better than most men, he understood the danger and therefore feared it. That a man who had fought across the foulest battlefields could be killed by grass before breakfast seemed an appropriate twist of fortune. ‘Why do they call it “grass before breakfast”?’ he demanded of Frederickson who, knowing that Sharpe already knew the answer and that the question had sprung only from his friend’s irritation, did not bother to answer.

  ‘It’s a ridiculous name,’ Jane had said two weeks before, ‘a stupid, stupid name.’ ‘Grass before breakfast’ simply meant a duel which, traditionally, was fought at dawn and usually on some sward of lawn which gave the pistols or swords room for their work. ‘If you insist on fighting this stupid duel,’ Jane had continued, ‘I shall return home. I won’t permit you to destroy yourself, Richard.’

  ‘Then you had better go home,’ Sharpe had said, ‘because I’m fighting it.’

  The disagreement had started as a skirmish, but developed into a scaring, exhausting argument that had soured the last two weeks. Jane’s reasons for not wanting Sharpe to eat grass before breakfast were entirely good. For a start he might very well be killed, which would leave Jane a widow, but even if he won, he would still be a loser. Duelling had been banned in the army, and if Sharpe insisted on fighting, then his career could be undone in a single moment. Her husband’s career was precious to Jane and she did not want it risked; neither by a duel, nor even by the skirmishes of a war’s ending. Jane said it was time for Sharpe to go back to England and take the plaudits for his achievements. In England, she said, he would be a hero and he could take a hero’s reward. Had he not been given an audience by the Prince of Wales, and would not that Prince now make certain that Major Sharpe became Sir Richard? Jane wanted Sharpe to abandon the army, to forget the duel, and to sail home, but instead, like the stubborn fool he was, he would stay to eat grass before breakfast and Jane could see all that future eminence, and all those princely rewards, fading like pistol smoke in a wind. Thus she had tried her ultimatum: that if Sharpe insisted on fighting, she would publicly shame him by going home. Sharpe had successfully called her bluff, but at the price of a fortnight’s cold and silent misery.

  Frederickson fumbled with his watch again. ‘Half past six.’

  ‘It’s cold.’ Sharpe seemed to notice the temperature for the first time.

  ‘In an hour,’ Frederickson said, ‘we’ll be breakfasting on chops and pease pudding.’

  ‘You might be.’

  ‘We will be,’ Frederickson insisted patiently, then turned to watch a small black carriage which appeared at the foot of the low hill. The coachman whipped the horses up the rutted earth track, then steered towards the bent pine trees where he stopped with a clatter of trace chains and squealing brake blocks. Sergeant Harper, looking indecently cheerful, unfolded himself from the cramped interior and offered Sharpe a confident grin. ‘Good morning, sir! A bit chilly.’

  ‘Morning, Sergeant.’

  ‘I’ve got the bugger, sir.’ Harper gestured at a black-dressed man who had shared the coach.

  ‘Good morning, Doctor,’ Sharpe said politely.

  The doctor ignored the greeting. He was a thin elderly Frenchman who stayed inside the small carriage. He had a black bag which doubtless contained knives, bonesaws, gouges and clamps. The doctor had been reluctant to come to this dawn slaughter, which was why Frederickson had charged Harper with the duty of making sure the man was up and ready. No British doctor, either of the Navy or Army, had been willing to serve at this illegal ceremony which could well lead to courts-martial for everyone involved.

  ‘He was drunk last night, sir.’ Harper, wearing a Rifleman’s green jacket as faded as either Sharpe’s or Frederickson’s, confided to Sharpe.

  ‘Who was drunk? The doctor?’

  ‘No, sir. Captain Bampfylde was drunk. He stayed ashore, you see, and I saw him in the yard of that big inn back of the ropewalk.’ Harper laughed with a scornful pleasure. ‘Pissed as a bishop, he was. He’s as twitchy as a cat, I reckon.’

  ‘I’m nervous, too,’ Sharpe snapped. ‘I hardly slept last night.’ Or the night before, because the anticipation of this duel had kept him awake as he tried to foresee what might happen in this cold morning. Now he would discover what was ordained, and the closeness of the discovery only added to the fear. He confessed as much to Harper, and was glad to make the confession, for the big Irishman was Sharpe’s closest friend and a man who had shared all of the battles since Wellington’s army had first landed in Portugal.

  ‘But you weren’t drunk, sir. Bampfylde’s going to have the bloody shakes this morning. They’ll be pouring eggs into him, they will.’ Harper, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, seemed amused at the impending confrontation. Harper had no doubt that Sharpe would despatch Captain Bampfylde’s loathsome soul to eternal damnation.

  And Sharpe had no doubt that Bampfylde deserved such a fate. Bampfylde was a Naval officer, Captain of the great Vengeance which was anchored in the outer roads, and, just weeks before, he had led an expedition north to capture a French coastal fort. Sharpe had been the senior land officer and, once the fort was captured, Sharpe had marched inland to ambush the French supply road. He had returned to the captured Teste de Buch fort to find Bampfylde gone. Sharpe, with two companies of Riflemen and a force of Marines, had been stranded in the fort, where he had been besieged by a French brigade led by a General called Calvet. By the grace of God, the luck of the Rifles, and the help of an American privateer, Sharpe had saved his men. But not all of them; too many had died in the fort, and Bampfylde was to blame. Sharpe, returning from the savagery of the battle against Calvet, and lethal with indignation, had challenged the Naval officer to this confrontation. ‘I wish we were fighting with swords.’

  ‘Swords or guns, who cares?’ Harper said blithely.

  ‘I care.’

  ‘He’s a dead bastard either way.’

  ‘He’s a late bastard.’ Frederickson swung his arms to generate warmth, then, apparently oblivious to the gnawing tensions in Sharpe, asked Harper if the company was ready to march.

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ For as soon as this duel w
as fought, Frederickson would take his prime company of the 60th Rifles eastwards to join the army. Sergeant Harper would go with Frederickson for, just like Sharpe, he had become detached from his old battalion. That battalion, the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, had a new Colonel who had appointed his own Majors and a new Regimental Sergeant-Major, which had left Sharpe and Harper adrift.

  Harper had been eagerly recruited by Frederickson who, in turn, had been just as eagerly snapped up by Major-General Nairn, a Scotsman who at long last had been given his own fighting brigade and wanted Frederickson’s men to add a lethal sting to his skirmish line. Nairn also wanted Sharpe, not for the skirmish line, but to be his chief of staff.

  ‘But I’ve never been a staff officer,’ Sharpe had protested.

  ‘I’ve never commanded a brigade before,’ Nairn had replied cheerfully.

  ‘I must talk with Jane,’ Sharpe had said, and had then gone back to his lodgings where he broke a week’s chill silence, but their discussion about Nairn’s offer had been no happier than the tearful, rage-shredding arguments about the duel. Jane still insisted that they go home, and this time added a new reason for Sharpe to desert the army. Once peace came, she averred, the price of property in England would rise steeply, which made it all the more sensible to sail home now and find a London house. Sharpe had violently protested at such a notion, claiming that he would never live in London; that it was a vile, dirty, crowded and corrupt city, and while he was not averse to buying a house, that house should be in the country. For no very good reason he wanted to live in Dorset. Someone had once extolled that county, and the idea had lodged irreversibly in his head.

  In the end, exhausted by the arguments, a reluctant compromise had been agreed. Jane would go home to take advantage of the existing prices of property, but she would seek a country house in Dorset. In the meantime, and if he survived the duel, Sharpe would serve Major-General Nairn.