Lord John quivered and shook his head as Sharpe reached towards him, but the Rifleman just took hold of Lord John’s sword hilt then, quite slowly, scraped the polished and engraved blade free. Sharpe looked up, thrust the narrow blade into the fork of a branch, and snapped the precious sword with one brutally violent jerk. Nine inches of steel was left with the handle, the rest of the blade slid down to the ground.
“You’re not worth fighting.” Sharpe still held the broken sword hilt.
“I-,
“Shut your bloody mouth.”
,I-,
Sharpe’s left hand slapped hard across Lord John’s face. “I’ll tell you when to speak,” Sharpe said, “and it isn’t now. You listen. I don’t care about Jane. She’s your whore now. But I’ve got a farm in Normandy and it needs new apple trees and the barn needs a new roof, and the bloody Emperor took all our horses and cattle for his Goddamned army, and the taxes in France are bloody evil, and you’ve got my money. So where is it?”
Lord John seemed unable to speak. His eyes were wet, perhaps from the rain or else from the shame of this meeting under the trees.
“Has the whore spent it all?” Sharpe asked.
“Not all,” Lord John managed to say.
“Then how much is left?”
Lord John did not know, because Jane would not tell him, but he guessed that there might be five thousand pounds left. He stammered out the figure, fearing that Sharpe would be angered when he realized how much Jane had squandered.
Sharpe did not seem to care. Five hundred pounds was a fortune that would have restored Lucille’s chateau. “Give me a note now,” he told Lord John.
Lord John seriously doubted whether a promissory note with his signature had the legal force to produce the money, but if it satisfied Sharpe then Lord John was happy to write a thousand such notes. He snatched open the gilded flap of his sabretache and took out a leather-bound notebook and a pencil. He scribbled the words fast, the pencil’s point tearing the paper where the rainwater dripped from his helmet’s visor onto the page. He ripped the page out and handed it wordlessly to his tormentor.
Sharpe glanced at the words, then folded the paper. “Where I come from,” he said in a conversational tone, “men still sell their wives. Have you ever seen it done?”
Lord John shook his head warily.
“Because the poor can’t afford a divorce, you see,” Sharpe continued, “but if everyone agrees, then the woman can be sold. It has to be done in the market place. You put a rope round her neck, lead her there, and offer her to the highest bidder. The price and the buyer are always fixed in advance, of course, but making it an auction adds a bit of spice. I suppose you prinked up aristocratic bastards don’t do that to your women?”
Lord John shook his head. “We don’t,” he managed to say. He was beginning to realize that Sharpe was not going to hurt him, and the realization was calming his nerves.
“I’m not a prinked up bastard,” Sharpe said. “I’m the real thing, m’y lord. I’m a whore’s bastard out of a gutter, so I’m allowed to sell my wife. She’s yours. I’ve got your money,” Sharpe pushed the promissory note into his pocket, “so all you need is this.” He fumbled in a saddlebag then drew out the scruffy piece of rope that was Nosey’s usual leash. He tossed the dirty scrap of sisal across Lord John’s saddle. “Put the noose round her neck and tell her that you bought her. Among the people I come from, my lord, such a divorce is as good as an act of Parliament. The lawyers and the Church don’t reckon it is, but who gives a turd about what those greedy bastards think? She’s yours now. You’ve bought her, so you can marry her, and I won’t interfere. Do you understand me?”
Lord John tentatively touched the rope. He knew he was being mocked. The poor might sell their wives, but no respectable man would ever so contract into a woman’s second marriage. “I understand you,” he said bitterly.