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 she tell you why she was in the convent?’
`She wanted a rest.’
Ducos shook his head. `You are a stubborn fool, Mr Sharpe.’
`And you’re a filthy little bastard.’
`Mr Sharpe,’ Ducos leaned back in his chair, `tell me what explanation she offered to you. She must have offered you some reason for her arrest?’
Sharpe shook his head as though he was having difficulty with his senses. `She said she had a dream about you. She was ordered to marry you by the Emperor and she saw you naked and it was the most horrid thing she’d ever.’
`Sergeant!’
The first blow landed on Sharpe’s skull, a glancing blow, but then there was a pile-driving thump in his belly and the air rushed out of him. He forced himself to the right, was helped by a blow to his head, and then he was on the ground. `Stop!’