Sharpe's Fury - 11 by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-01-29T16:00:00+00:00

THE NOTE came well after dark. Sharpe was waiting with his men in an empty stall of the embassy stables. His five men were all in cheap civilian clothes and looked subtly different. Hagman, who was thin anyway, looked like a beggar. Perkins resembled an unappealing street rat, one of the London boys who swept horse shit out of the way of pedestrians in hope of a coin. Slattery appeared menacing, a footpad who could turn violent at the slightest show of resistance. Harris looked like a man down on his luck, perhaps a drunken schoolmaster turned onto the streets, while Harper was like a countryman come to town, big and placid and out of place in his shabby broadcloth coat. “Sergeant Harper comes with me,” Sharpe told them, “and the rest of you wait here. Don’t get drunk! I might need you later tonight.” He suspected this night’s adventure would go sour. Lord Pumphrey might be optimistic about the outcome, but Sharpe wanted to be ready for the worst, and the riflemen were his reinforcements.

“If we’re not to get drunk, sir,” Harris asked, “why the brandy?”

Sharpe had brought four bottles of brandy from the ambassador’s own supply and now he uncorked the bottles and poured their contents into a stable bucket. Then he added a jug full of lamp oil. “Mix all that up,” he told Harris, “then put it back in the bottles.”

“You’re setting a fire, sir?”

“I don’t know what the hell we’re doing. Maybe we’re doing nothing. But stay sober, wait, and we’ll see what happens.”

Sharpe had thought about taking all his men, but the priest had been insistent that Pumphrey only bring two companions, and if His Lordship arrived with more, then probably nothing would happen. There was a chance, Sharpe allowed, that Montseny was dealing honestly, and so Sharpe would give the priest that small chance in hope that the letters would be handed over. He doubted it. He cleaned the two sea-service pistols he had taken from the embassy’s small arsenal, oiled their locks, then loaded them.

The clocks in the embassy struck eleven before Lord Pumphrey came to the stables. His Lordship was in a black cloak and carried a leather bag. “It’s the cathedral, Sharpe,” Lord Pumphrey said. “The crypt again. After midnight.”

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said. He splashed water on his face and buckled his sword belt. “Are you armed?” he asked Pumphrey, and His Lordship opened his cloak to show a pair of dueling pistols stuck in his belt. “Good,” Sharpe said, “because the bastards are planning murder. Is it still raining?”

“No, sir,” Hagman answered. “Windy, though.”

“Pat, volley gun and rifle?”

“And a pistol, sir,” Harper said.

“And these,” Sharpe said. He crossed to the wall where the French haversack hung and took out four of the smoke balls. He was remembering the engineer lieutenant describing how the balls could be nasty in tight places. “Anyone got a tinderbox?”

Harris had one. He gave it to Harper. “Maybe we should all come, sir?” Slattery suggested.

“They’re

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