‘Nonsense. I’ll chop the bastard into mincemeat.’
‘You seem to forget that he has handled a sword before.’
‘He’s old, he’s fat, and I’ll slaughter him.’
‘He’s not yet fifty,’ d’Alembord said mildly, ‘and don’t be fooled by that waist. The fastest swordsman I ever saw was fatter than a hogshead. Why didn’t you choose pistols? Or twelve-pounder cannons?’
Sharpe laughed and hefted his big, straight sword. ‘This is a lucky blade.’
‘One sincerely hopes so. On the other hand, finesse is usually more useful than luck in a duel.’
‘You’ve fought a duel?’
D’Alembord nodded. ‘Rather why I’m here, Sharpe. Life got a little difficult.’ He said it lightly, though Sharpe could guess the ruin that the duel had meant for d’Alembord. Sharpe had been curious as to why the tall, elegant, foppish man had joined a mere line regiment like the South Essex. D’Alembord, with his spotless lace cuffs, his silver cutlery and crystal wine glasses that were carefully transported by his servant from camp ground to camp ground, would have been more at home in a Guards regiment or a smart cavalry uniform.
Instead he was in the South Essex, seeking obscurity in an unfashionable regiment while the scandal blew itself out in England, and an example to Sharpe of how a duel could blight a career. Sharpe smiled. ‘I suppose you killed your man?’
‘Didn’t mean to. Meant to wing him, but he moved into the blade. Very messy.’ He sighed. ‘If you would deign to hold that thing more like a sword and less like a cleaving instrument, one might hold out a morsel of hope. Part of the object of the exercise is to defend one’s body. Mind you, it’s quite possible that he’ll faint with horror when he sees it. It’s positively medieval. It’s hardly an instrument for fencing.’
Sharpe smiled. ‘I don’t fence, d’Alembord. I fight.’
‘I’m sure it’s vastly unpleasant for your opponent. I shall insist on coming as your second.’
‘No seconds.’
D’Alembord shrugged. ‘No gentleman fights without a second. I shall come. Besides, I might be able to persuade you not to go through with this.’
Sharpe was sheathing his sword on which Harper had put a wicked cutting edge. ‘Not to go through with it?’
D’Alembord pushed open the door of the stable yard where, to the amusement of the officers’ servants and grooms, they had been practising. ‘You’ll be sent home in disgrace, Sharpe. The Peer will have your guts for breakfast tomorrow.’
‘Wellington won’t know about it.’
D’Alembord looked pityingly on his superior officer. ‘Half the bloody army knows, my dear Sharpe. I can’t think why you accepted! Is it because the man struck you?’
Sharpe said nothing. The truth was that his pride had been offended, but it was more than that. It was his stubborn superstition that Fate, the soldier’s goddess, demanded that he accept. Besides, he did it for the Marquesa.
D’Alembord sighed. ‘A woman, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
The Light Company Captain smoothed a wrinkle in his sleeve. ‘When I fought my duel, Sharpe, I later discovered that the woman had put us up to it. She was watching, it turned out.’
‘What happened?’
The elegant shoulders shrugged. ‘After I skewered him she went back to her husband. It was all rather tedious and unnecessary. Just as I’m sure this duel is unnecessary. Do you really insist on this duel, Sharpe?’
‘Yes.’ Sharpe would not explain, was not even sure he could explain the tangle of guilt, just, pride and superstition that drove him to folly. Instead he sat and shouted for the Mess servant to bring tea. The servant was a Spaniard who brewed tea foully.
‘I’ll have rum. Has it occurred to you,’ and d’Alembord leaned forward with a small frown of embarrassment on his face, ‘that some people are joining this regiment simply because you’re in it?’
Sharpe frowned at the words. ‘Nonsense.’
‘If you insist, my dear Sharpe, but it is true. There’s at least two or three young fire-eaters who think you’ll lead them to glory, such is your reputation. They’ll be very sad if they discover your paths of glory lead but to a lady’s bedchamber.’ He said the last words with a wry inflexion that hinted to Sharpe that it was a quotation that he ought to know. Yet Sharpe had not learned to read till he was well into his twenties; he had read few books, and none of them poetry.
‘Shakespeare?’ he guessed.
‘Thomas Gray, dear Sharpe. “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” I hope it’s not true, for you.’ He smiled. What his smile did not tell Sharpe was that Captain d’Alembord, who was an efficient, sensible man, had already tried to make sure that this folly did not lead Sharpe either to a grave or to disgrace. D’Alembord had sent Lieutenant Harry Price on one of his own fastest horses to find Colonel Leroy, fetch him back to Battalion, and order Sharpe not to fight the Spaniard. If Major Richard Sharpe was idiotic enough to will his own destruction by fighting a duel against Wellington’s express orders, then Captain d’Alembord would stop him. He prayed that Harry Price would reach Brigade in time, then took his glass of rum from the steward and raised it to Richard Sharpe. ‘To your cleaver, Sharpe, may it hew mightily.’
‘May it kill the bastard!’ Sharpe sipped his tea. ‘And I hope it hurts.’
They went on horseback to the cemetery to outdistance the curious troops of the South Essex who wanted to follow and watch their Major skewer the Spanish aristocrat. D’Alembord, a natural horseman, led Sharpe on a circuitous route. Sharpe, once again mounted on one of d’Alembord’s spare horses, wondered whether he should accept the younger man’s advice and turn back.
He was behaving stupidly and he knew it. He was thirty-six years of age, a Major at last, and he was throwing it all away for mere superstition. He had joined the army twenty years before, straggling with a group of hungry recruits to escape a murder charge. From that inauspicious beginning he had joined that tiny band of men who were promoted from Sergeant into the Officers’ Mess. He had done more. Most men promoted from the ranks ended their days as Lieutenants, supervising the Battalion stores or in charge of the drill-square. Most such men, Wellington claimed, ended as drunkards. Yet Sharpe had gone on rising. From Ensign to Lieutenant, Lieutenant to Captain, and Captain to Major, and men looked at him as one of the few, the very very few, who might rise from the ranks to lead a Battalion.
He could lead a Battalion, and he knew it. The war was not over yet. The French might be retreating throughout Europe, but no enemy army had yet pierced the French frontier. Even if this year’s campaign was as successful as last year’s, and pushed the French back to the Pyrenees, then there would be hard fighting if, unlike last year, the British were to force their way through those cold, high mountains. Fighting in which Lieutenant Colonels would die and leave their Battalions to new commanders.
Yet he risked it all. He twisted his horse through bright-leaved ash trees on a hill top that overlooked their destination, and he thought of the Marquesa,
