‘We do.’
‘How?’
‘I already told you, I have a man’s name, Colonel, and we start with him.’
They mounted and rode on.
Towards a city of chaos.
PART TWO
The City
CHAPTER 5
Lucille had lived in Paris once and often spoke of the city in wistful tones. It was, she told Sharpe, beautiful, even magnificent. ‘We had a house there,’ she had told him, and she had been happy in the city until her father lost all his money in a foolish investment. ‘And all we had left was the land in Normandy.’ She had met her husband in Paris and had married him there. ‘Then he gambled his fortune away,’ Lucille had said, laughing. ‘My mother always said I had bad taste in men.’
‘Do you?’
‘I like men to be interesting,’ she had said.
And now Sharpe was seeing Paris, the city he had imagined for so long, the imagination fed by Lucille’s memories and love of the place. He had thought it would be a city of palaces and mansions, but as they approached he could smell the familiar stench of coal smoke and sewage. ‘Smells like London,’ he had remarked sourly to Fox.
But Fox was like Lucille, a lover of Paris, and seemed delighted to be back. He had told Sharpe that the whole city was surrounded by forts. ‘But they’ll not expect enemies from the south, so we’ll go all the way round.’ And that had proved true. They had passed a fort unmolested and, four days after leaving Roye, they came to a city gate. They had been riding through a suburb of small neat houses when they came to the city wall and the gate guarded by men in blue uniforms. ‘It’s not a proper city wall,’ Fox explained when Sharpe expressed surprise at the sight. ‘It’s not a defence, just a barrier, and those fellows in blue aren’t soldiers, they’re tax collectors.’
‘Tax collectors?’
‘The wall is to stop smuggling. The duty on wine and other goods is much steeper inside Paris, so every road into the city has a gate and a bunch of tax collectors. They won’t worry us.’
Nor did they. The guards took no notice of the horsemen, even though all had either a musket or rifle slung on their shoulder. Fox called out a cheerful good morning to the Sergeant of the guards who just nodded sourly, then stalked towards a handcart laden with vegetables.
‘Welcome to Paris,’ Fox said as they rode through the gate into a wide tree-lined street of prosperous houses and small shops. The folk seemed well-dressed to Sharpe, though he noted how many beggars lined the avenue, many with a leg or an arm missing. Some had their old shakos in front of them as they called for alms. ‘It’s the same in London,’ Fox said, ‘from soldiering to beggaring.’
It seemed unnatural to Sharpe. This was Paris! He had been fighting the French for twenty-one years in Flanders, India, Portugal, Spain, then in France itself, and now he was in the first group of British troops to enter the enemy’s capital, and it was nothing like his imagination. He had expected magnificence, but all looked normal, not that different from streets in some parts of London. ‘They’re still flying the old flag,’ he noted. A few houses flew the red, white and blue flag of the Empire, but Sharpe saw none showing the white flag of the monarchy.
‘That’ll change as our armies get nearer,’ Fox said.
‘Which will be a while yet.’
‘At least a week, maybe two?’ Their horses clattered across a small square, and Fox led them into a narrower street. ‘We shouldn’t need the horses,’ Fox said. ‘I’ll stable them.’
‘Where?’
‘There are places, Sharpe,’ Fox said vaguely. ‘It just takes money.’ He patted the pouch where he kept the funds, evidently given him by the Duke. ‘I won’t lose my horse and you won’t lose that French nag of yours.’
The streets were getting still narrower and the houses older, then they emerged onto a wide street running alongside the River Seine. ‘We cross the bridge and we’re almost home,’ Fox said, turning left along the river’s southern bank. Ahead, over a jumble of roofs and smoking chimneys, Sharpe could see what looked like a cathedral. ‘Notre Dame, Colonel,’ Fox said helpfully, then turned right onto a wide stone bridge. ‘It’s called the Pont Neuf,’ he remarked, ‘though I think it’s the oldest bridge in Paris.’ He nodded to the left. ‘That’s the Musée Napoléon, and the Tuileries Palace beyond.’
The small houses and shops had given way to grandiose buildings with pillared porticoes and wide entrance steps. Carriages rattled past, and Butler, who had not been comfortable on horseback since leaving Péronne, almost fell as his mare skittishly side-stepped, frightened by a large carriage passing noisily. ‘Bloody animal,’ he complained, earning a surprised look from a pedestrian walking alongside.
‘Pity we couldn’t have found a dozen French-speakers,’ Fox said to Sharpe.
‘You’re lucky to have found twelve who can speak English,’ Harper put in.
‘You speak any French, Sergeant?’ Fox asked.
‘God save Ireland, no. Maybe a little Spanish, and Gaelic.’
‘So if you’re challenged?’
‘As you said, sir, we’re American seamen. All the way from Baltimore!’
As they rode north Fox had stressed to the dozen men that they must pretend to be American sailors who were visiting Paris while their ship was trapped in Cherbourg by the Royal Navy’s blockade. It was a scanty disguise, and made even more unlikely by the weapons they carried, but Harper had embraced the idea. ‘I have a cousin in Baltimore,’ he had told Fox, ‘and I’ve always had a mind to visit him. It would be a grand journey!’
‘We’re near the end of this journey now,’ Fox said. They left the bridge and he led them west along the northern bank of the Seine. There were huge anchored barges in the river, some with waterwheels clanking. ‘Mills, Sharpe, and laundries,’ Fox said, then turned north close to the Louvre. ‘Watch yourselves now!’ he called in warning because the narrow street plunged into a slum as bad as any Sharpe had known in London. Behind him were great palaces and formal gardens, and suddenly they were in a stinking street of dark houses. A gutter ran down the street’s centre, flowing with filth. The smell was suddenly familiar to Sharpe, who had grown up in the London rookeries, as were the people. The women were thin and dressed in rags, the few men were sullen and menacing. Children watched them pass and called out for coins. Sharpe had to duck beneath a jutting house, and a young woman with dark hollow eyes looked at him from an alley. ‘Monsieur?’ she asked softly.
‘This is a quarter of unfortunates,’ Fox said.
‘It looks like it.’
‘It’s a word for whores, Colonel.’
‘A word for soldiers too,’ Sharpe said. He glanced at the decaying walls and smelt the shit in the street. ‘It reminds me of St Giles.’
‘In London?’
‘Hard by Covent Garden. A nasty place.’