polished them with his handkerchief, then, with a small wince, hooked the wires back on his ears. ‘I believe you, Major. Your appetite would run to women like Helene, and doubtless you rut her capably. Tell me, did she ask the British for help?’
‘Only for a rut. It seems the French don’t do it well enough for her.’
Sharpe braced himself for the blow, but again Ducos did not give the signal. He sighed again. ‘I should tell you, Mr Sharpe, that Sergeant Lavin is remarkably efficient at exacting words from reluctant talkers. He usually practises his art on the Spanish, but he has long wanted an Englishman.’ Ducos’s spectacles flashed two circles of grey light. ‘Indeed, he has wanted an Englishman for a long, long time.’
Sergeant Lavin, hearing his name, turned his squat, hard-eyed head and looked at Sharpe with disdain.
Ducos stood up and walked round the table, picking up Sharpe’s telescope as he came. ‘Before you are in no state to appreciate it, Major, I have a score to settle with you. You broke my spectacles. You put me to a deal of trouble!’ Suddenly, astonishingly, Ducos sounded angry. He seemed to control it, straightening his small body and frowning. ‘You deliberately broke my spectacles!’
Sharpe said nothing. It was true. He had smashed Ducos’s glasses in the Gateway of God. He had done it after Ducos had insulted Teresa, Sharpe’s wife. Now Ducos held Sharpe’s telescope. ‘A very fine instrument, Major.’ He peered at the brass plate. ‘September 23rd, 1803. We called it Vendémiaire Second, Year Ten.’ Ducos, Sharpe knew, regretted the abolition of the revolutionary calendar.
Sharpe pushed himself up from the wall. ‘Take it, Ducos, your army’s stolen everything else in Spain.’
‘Take it! Of course not. You think I’m a thief?’ He looked back at the brass plate. ‘The reward for one of your acts of bravery, no doubt.’ He pulled the telescope open, revealing the polished inner brass tubes. ‘No, Major Sharpe. I’m not going to take it. I’m simply going to pay back the insult you offered me.’
With gritted teeth and sudden frenzy, Ducos swung the telescope by its eyepiece, slamming it on the stone floor and then swinging it again and again. A fortune in finely ground glass was being smashed by the small man who went on beating it, bending the tubes, scattering thick glass fragments on the stone floor. He dropped the telescope and stamped on it, splitting the brass tubes apart, then he kicked at them viciously, skittering them about the floor until, nothing left to kick at, he stood panting. He straightened his jacket and looked with a smile of pitiful triumph at the Rifleman. ‘You have paid me your personal debt, Mr Sharpe. An eye for an eye, so to speak.’
Sharpe had watched the destruction of his telescope, his valued telescope that had been a gift from Wellington, with mounting anger and frustration. He could do nothing. Sergeant Lavin had watched him and the bayonets had been in his ribs. He forced his anger down and nodded at the sword. ‘Do it to that, Ducos.’
‘No, Mr Sharpe.’ Ducos was behind the table, sitting again. ‘When they ask me how you died, I shall say that I offered you parole, you accepted, and that you then attacked me with the sword I had politely returned to you. My life will be saved by Sergeant Lavin.’ The Frenchman smiled. ‘But I truly hate violence, Mr Sharpe. Would you believe me if I said I do not wish you dead?’
‘No.’
Ducos shrugged. ‘It’s true. You can live. You can walk out of here with your sword. We won’t exchange you, of course, you’ll spend the rest of the war in France. We might even civilise you.’ Ducos smiled at his joke and looked down at the papers. ‘So tell me, Mr Sharpe, or even Major Sharpe if it makes you feel better, did Helene seek British help?’
Sharpe swore at him.
Ducos sighed and nodded. Lavin turned, stolid and unstoppable, and this time he punched Sharpe’s face, cutting his lips open and slashing a bloody line over his forehead with a ring he wore. Sharpe fell again, deliberately, and this time boots slammed into his back. He cried out, also deliberately, scrabbled with his hands, and suddenly knew hope.
A twisted, bent tube of brass from his telescope was by the wall. He shouted again as a boot landed, grabbed the tube, and concealed it in his fist. A hand grasped his collar, hauled him up, turned him, and pushed him back to the wall.
It was the smallest tube in his hand. He could feel the torn, knurled rim that had held the small lens of the eyepiece. The tube was six inches in length and one end was split and jagged where Ducos had stamped on it.
Ducos waited for Sharpe’s breathing to slow, for the battered, bleeding face to face him again. ‘It may help you to know, Major, that I will ask you a number of questions to which I already have the answers. You will, therefore, suffer pain unnecessarily. Eventually you will understand the futility of that course. You were accused of murdering Helene’s husband, true?’
‘You know I was.’
Ducos smiled. ‘I arranged it, Mr Sharpe. Did you know that?’ Ducos was pleased by the jerk of Sharpe’s head, the sudden surprise in the bruised eyes. Ducos liked his victims to know who was responsible for their misfortune. ‘Why did Wellington fake your death?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sharpe’s lips were swelling. He was swallowing blood. He made his breathing ragged. He was judging distances, planning not the first death, but the second.
Ducos was enjoying the spectacle of his enemy trampled and broken. It was not the physical beating that gave Ducos pleasure, but Sharpe’s realisation that he had been outmanoeuvred. ‘You were sent to rescue Helene?’
Sharpe’s voice came out thickened and slurred by his bleeding lips. ‘I wanted to know why she lied in her letter.’
The answer checked Ducos, who frowned. ‘The rescue was your own idea?’
‘My idea.’ Sharpe spat a gob of blood onto the floor.
‘How did you know where she was?’
‘Everyone knew. Half of bloody Spain knew.’
Ducos accepted that truth. Her fate was supposed to have been a secret, but nothing was secret that happened in Spain. Even Verigny, a gaudy fool, had eventually discovered where his lover was held. None of that worried Ducos. All that worried Ducos was the security of the treaty. ‘So you rescued her five days ago?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And General Verigny discovered you the next day?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you sleep with her, Mr Sharpe?’
‘No.’
‘But you said that’s why you wanted to rescue her.’
‘She wouldn’t have me.’ Sharpe shut his eyes and leaned his head on the wall. The last two times he had been attacked the armed soldiers had not bothered to use their bayonets to stop him retaliating. They could see he was beaten and defenceless. They were wrong, but he must wait for his moment and he was planning it carefully. He had fallen to his right the last time and the man there had stepped back and away to give Lavin room. He must be made to do it again.
‘Did you sleep with her?’
‘No.’
‘Did
