Sharpe said. “Is Patrick asleep?”
“Fast asleep,” Lucille said, then frowned. “Why do you English say ‘fast asleep’? Why not slow asleep? I think your language is mad.” “Fast or slow, who cares? Long as the child’s asleep, eh? So what shall we do tonight?”
Lucille skipped away from his arms. “For a start, we shall eat.” “And after that?” Lucille let herself be caught. “Who knows?” She asked, though she did know, and she closed her eyes and prayed that Sharpe would stay in Normandy, for she worried that the village might yet repel him. A man could not live without friends, and Sharpe’s friends were far away, too far away, and she feared for his happiness. But this was her farm and her house, and she could not bear the thought of leaving. Let us stay, she prayed, please God, let us stay.
SHARPE woke early on the morning of Christmas Eve. He slid from the bed, picked up his clothes fiom the chair beside the door, then tip-toed from the room so as not to wake Lucille. He paused to look at his son who slept in the crib in the next room, then hurried to the kitchen where, still naked, he stooped to riddle the stove and feed it with wood. “Bonjour, monsieur!” Marie, the old woman who was the one house servant left, peered at him from the larder. “You’re up early.” Sharpe said, snatching his shirt to hide his nakedness. “The one who rises early gets to see the best sights,” the old woman said, then closed the larder door to let Sharpe dress. He dressed warmly, knowing that the cold outside would be brutal. He took a shotgun and a full powder horn from the cupboard, filled a coat pocket with loose shot, then added cartridges for the rifle. He doubted he would use the rifle, but he liked to carry it in case a deer crossed his path. He pulled on a woollen hat, unbarred the back door and stepped into the courtyard where the cold hit him like a blast of cannon shot. He pulled the stable door open to let Nosey out.
The dog scampered and jumped until Sharpe growled at him to heel. The moat was skimmed with ice, the reeds were brittle and frost-edged, and a mist hung in the bare trees on the ridge above the farm. The sun was not yet up and the world was grey with the thin light between night and day. Sharpe climbed the ridge, the dog padding behind, and when he reached the top he glanced back and noted that the smoke from the farm’s chimneys was drifting east, which meant he would have to make a circuit about the big wood to keep himself upwind of the valley where he knew the foxes had their lairs. With any luck he would bag a couple. What he should do, he thought, was dig the beasts out, but to do that he would need a dozen men. Father Defoy would offer to help, and so would the doctor, but neither man was fit for hard physical labour, and Jacques Malan made certain that no one else from the village would ever help the Englishman. Damn Malan, he thought. It took him the best part of an hour to reach the upwind side of the small valley where he crept to the wood’s edge with the shotgun already loaded and rammed. The eastern horizon was a sullen red and mist drifted across the valley where a score of rabbits fed. No foxes yet. Sharpe guessed his first intimation of a fox would be the thump of a rabbit’s warning feet, then the scamper as they fled to their burrows. A moment or so later he would see the dark fur slinking along the edge of the trees and he would have one chance of a shot. He reckoned he would bag his second fox lower down, but only after his terrier Nosey had flushed it out. It was just like war, he thought. Set an ambush, bloody the enemy, then attack to finish him off. Except the trouble with bloody foxes was that they never were finished off.