Madame Dubreton smiled at Sharpe. ‘We meet under happier circumstances, Major.’
‘Indeed we do, Ma’am.’
‘The last time I saw Major Sharpe,’ she addressed the table at large and conveniently forgot the meetings they had had in the Convent since her rescue, ‘he was bespattered with blood, holding a very large sword, and was extremely frightening.’ She smiled at him.
‘I apologize for that, Ma’am.’
‘Please don’t. In retrospect it was a wonderful sight.’
‘It was your remembrance of Alexander Pope that made it possible, Ma’am.’
She smiled. The tiredness had gone, her face seemed to be smoother, and she and Dubreton radiated a happiness in each other. ‘I always said poetry would be useful one day. Alexandre never believed me.’
Dubreton laughed, shrugged off the embarrassment of his name, and then conversation died away as a soup was served. Sharpe tasted it. It was a soup so delicious that he feared the second mouthful could not possibly live up to the promise of the first, yet it did, and seemed better, and he took more and then saw Dubreton was watching him with amusement. ‘Good?’
‘Magnificent.’
‘Chestnuts. It’s very simple, Major. Some vegetable stock, crushed chestnuts, butter and parsley. Cooking is so simple! The most difficult thing is to peel the chestnuts, but we have so many prisoners. Voila!’
‘Is that all there is in it?’
A French Dragoon Captain insisted there was cream in the soup, and a German Lancer protested that cooking was never simple because he had never managed to cook anything other than a boiled egg and even then it came out hard as a Cuirasseur’s breastplate, and a Fusilier Captain insisted he had seen men boil eggs by whirling them round and round in a cloth sling, taking forever, and Harold Price insisted on giving the recipe for a ‘tommy’, the British Army pancake, which consisted of nothing but flour and water, but still took Price two minutes to describe. Sir Augustus, feeling left out, said how astonished he was that the Portuguese ate only the leaves of the turnip and Josefina, feeling her country slighted, delicately insulted him by suggesting that only a heathen would eat any other part of a turnip, and then the soup was gone and Sharpe looked wistfully into the empty bowl.
A foot touched his, pressed, and he looked to Josefina on his left. She was speaking to a French Dragoon on her other side, a man who was leaning far forward to eat his soup so he could take glimpses into the neckline of her Empire dress. It had not been what she was wearing when Sharpe had rescued her and he stole a glance at Sir Augustus and realized that he must have brought the dress in his baggage. No wonder he hated any other man sitting next to her. The foot still pressed on his and then she turned to him, gave that hint of a wink. ‘Enjoy it?’
‘Delicious.’
An orderly poured him more wine, and Sharpe saw where the man’s fingernails were torn and stained by loading powder and pulling back flints.
Sir Augustus leaned forward. ‘My dear?’
‘Augustus?’
‘Are you not cold? The draught? May I have your shawl fetched?’
‘Cold, my dear? Not at all.’ She smiled at him, and her foot pushed up and down Sharpe’s ankle.
The door from the kitchen banged open and orderlies seemed to run to the table, each man with a tray of dishes, and on each dish a single bowl. The plates were steaming hot and Dubreton clapped his hands at the table. ‘Eat them quickly! They’re so much better eaten fast from the oven!’
Sharpe adjusted the plate and it scorched him. The bird was sitting on a slice of fried bread, golden beneath the dark brown glaze of the roasted skin.
`Major! Eat!’
Josefina’s right foot pressed hard against Sharpe’s and he peeled a strip of the bird’s flesh away, tried it, and the meat seemed to dissolve in his mouth. It was impossible that anything could taste better than the soup, yet this was far better.
Dubreton smiled. ‘Good? Yes?’
‘Quite magnificent!’
Josefina looked at him. Most of the men at the table were looking at her and in the candlelight she was extraordinarily beautiful, her lips slightly parted, the smallest worry on her face. Her foot pressed almost to the point of hurting. ‘Are you sure you like it, Major?’