FATHER Defoy finished the Mass with the blessing, then made his few announcements; that tomorrow’s Mass would be an hour earlier, that there would be no catechism class, and lastly a very public appeal to Madame Malan to remind her that her son had promised to deliver fuel to the priest’s house and the promise had not been kept. The priest worried about Jacques Malan. The big man had returned from the war and now did nothing except take his mother’s pension and cause trouble. “You will remind him, Madame?” Father Defoy asked.
“I shall, Father,” Madame Malan answered, then turned in alarm as the church door was thrown hard open. Wind gusted snow into the small church and flickered the candles burning in front of Mary’s statue that had been wreathed in holly in honour of Christmas. Three men, two of them with bloodied faces and all with tied hands, were thrust into the church and behind them came Monsieur Sharpe, the Englishman, carrying a huge pistol. “Monsieur Sharpe!”
Father Defoy remonstrated. “This is the house of God!” “Sorry, Father,” Sharpe said, pushing the pistol into a pocket of his coat and snatching off his snow-crusted hat. “I’ve brought you three sinners who want to make confession,” he said as he kicked Corporal Lebecque up the aisle. “Three miserable sinners, Father, whose souls need shriving before I send them to hell.” “Monsieur Sharpe!” The priest protested again. “You left the door open!” “So I did, father,” Sharpe said. He pushed his three prisoners down to the floor in front of the pulpit. “Wait there, you scum,” he said, then he turned back to the priest. “I stopped at the tavern on the way here, Father, he said, “and invited more of your parishioners to come to church.”
FATHER Defoy watched as a huddle of sheepish men, their coats white with snow, edged into the back of the church. They had been drinking happily enough, content to let their wives and daughters look after God, when Sharpe had kicked the tavern door open and hauled a bloody-faced Corporal Lebecque into view. “I’ve just kicked hell out of three dragoons,” Sharpe had announced belligerently, “and if any of you want to know why, then come to the church now.” He had dragged his prisoner out of the doorway and the men, astonished and curious, had abandoned their drink to follow. Jacques Malan was the last man into the church. He pulled off his hat and made the sign of the cross, but kept good hold of the cudgel he always carried. He gave the priest a surly nod. “The Englishman wants trouble, father,” he growled. “No I do not,” Sharpe said. Father Defoy, fearing that the church was about to witness some unseemly violence, hurried forward to take charge of the situation, but Sharpe gestured the priest to silence. Then he looked at the villagers. “You don’t like me, do you?” He challenged them. “You reckon I’m a stranger, an Englishman who spent most of his life fighting against Frenchmen, and now I’m here and you don’t want me, do you?” “No,” Jacques Malan said, and his cronies grinned. “But I want you,” Sharpe said, “because where I come from neighbours help each other, and you’re my neighbours now and I need help. So I’ve got a story to tell. A story about an Emperor, and about gold, and about greed. So settle down and listen.” Because he had four hours of daylight left, and a family to rescue.
SHARPE told the villagers the story of the Emperor’s gold and how it had been stolen by Pierre Ducos, and how Ducos had arranged matters so that everyone believed Sharpe was the thief, and the villagers, like folk everywhere, liked a good story. Sharpe told how he had come to Lucille’s chateau in search of information, and instead had been shot in the leg. “By Madame!” he said indignantly, and most of them laughed. He told them about Ducos, and how he had been called a Major, but was not really a soldier at all. He had been un foncionnaire, he told them, and they sighed for they had all suffered greatly at the insolent hands of officials, and he had been a secret policeman, Sharpe said, and shawled heads shook in the church, and Ducos might even have been a lawyer. Sharpe embellished his story, and some of the women crossed themselves. Then Sharpe told how he had travelled to Naples and cornered Ducos, and how he had taken the gold back, and that made everyone sit up because if there was one subject that was always close to a peasant’s heart, it was gold. “But I did not travel to Naples alone,” Sharpe said, and he crossed the church and took hold of Corporal Lebecque. The villagers still did not know why Lebecque and his two companions were Sharpe’s prisoners, and they watched wide-eyed as the dragoon was dragged to the front of the aisle. “This man,” Sharpe said, “was one of Ducos’s companions. Isn’t that true, Lebecque?”