Sharpes Siege   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

The exultation in that thought made Ducos pace to the window. A few lights flickered in the city that the Major so despised. The merchants of Bordeaux were suffering from the British blockade, their warehouses and quays were empty, and doubtless they would welcome a British victory if it swelled their bellies again and filled their strongboxes. “You’ve done well, Gomte.”

De Maquerre acknowledged the praise with a shrug.

Ducos turned. “You leave tomorrow. Find Sharpe. I’ll teil you where, and order him to Bordeaux.”

“If he obeys,” de Maquerre sounded dubious.

Ducos laughed; a strange, sudden yelp of a sound. “We’ll entice him! We’ll entice him! Then go to Arcachon and give the very opposite message. You understand?”

De Maquerre, huddled by the fire, smiled slowly. By telling Bampfylde that there would be no rebellion in Bordeaux he would spike the British hopes for a landing, while, at the same time, he could maroon Sharpe in France. De Maquerre nodded. “I understand.”

Ducos repeated his odd. laugh. General Calvet’s demi-brigade was billeted in Bordeaux on their journey south to Soult’s Army. One half Battalion had already left with the cumbersome supplies, but Calvet must have at least two thousand men remaining who could destroy Sharpe at Arcachon. Ducos would ruin the British hopes for a march on Bordeaux and he would also hunt his own enemy, his own most hated enemy, to death on the marshes of France. Revenge, the Spanish said, was a dish best eaten cold, and this revenge, in this winter, would be as cold and thorough as any man, even the implacable Pierre Ducos, could wish.



CHAPTER 10

There was small sleep to be had that night for either Riflemen or Marines. The dawn was cold; bitter cold. Wraiths of mist drifted above the meadows frosted crisply white.

Sharpe woke with a stinging headache behind his bandaged forehead. He sat with his back against a pollarded willow and felt a louse in his armpit that must have come from the Amelie, but he was too tired and too cold to hunt for it.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Frederickson, teeth chattering with the cold, crouched by Sharpe. “Nothing passed yesterday.”

Dim in the mist, a hundred yards upstream, a handsome stone bridge with carved urns marking the limits of its balustrades, arched over the Leyre. Next to the bridge, and on the western bank down which Sharpe and his small force had marched last night, there stood a stone-built house from which a trickle of chimney smoke tantalized the senses with its promise of a warm fire.