Sharpe 21 - Sharpe's Devil Read Online Free PDF

shivered suddenly, though the room was far from cold, then turned his eyes back to Sharpe. “Think of all the soldiers scattered throughout the world! Like embers kicked from a camp-fire. The lawyers and their panders who now rule Europe would like those embers to die down, but such fire is not so easily doused. The embers are men like our friend Calvet, and perhaps like you and your stout Irishman here. They are adventurers and combatants! They do not want peace; they crave excitement, and what the filthy lawyers fear, monsieur, is that one day a man might sweep those embers into a pile, for then they would feed on each other and they would burn so fiercely that they would scorch the whole world!” Bonaparte's voice had become suddenly fierce, but now it dropped again into weariness. “I do so hate lawyers. I do not think there was a single achievement of mine that a lawyer did not try to dessicate. Lawyers are not men. I know men, and I tell you I never met a lawyer who had real courage, a soldier's courage, a man's courage.” The Emperor closed his eyes momentarily and, when he opened them, his expression was kindly again and his voice relaxed. “So you're going to Chile?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Chile.” He spoke the name tentatively, as though seeking a memory on the edge of consciousness. “I well recall the service you did me in Naples,” the Emperor went on after a pause, “Calvet told me of it. Will you do me another service now?”
    “Of course, sir.” Sharpe would later be amazed that he had so readily agreed without even knowing what the favor was, but by that moment he was under the spell of a Corsican magician who had once bewitched whole continents; a magician, moreover, who loved soldiers better than he loved anything else in all the world, and the Emperor had known what Sharpe was the instant the British Rifleman had walked into the room. Sharpe was a soldier, one of the Emperor's beloved mongrels, a man able to march through shit and sleet and cold and hunger to fight like a devil at the end of the day, then fight again the next day and the next, and the Emperor could twist such soldiers about his little finger with the ease of a master.
    “A man wrote to me. A settler in Chile. He is one of your countrymen, and was an officer in your army, but in the years since the wars he has come to hold some small admiration for myself.” The Emperor smiled as though apologizing for such immodesty. “He asked that I would send him a keepsake, and I am minded to agree to his request. Would you deliver the gift for me?”
    “Of course, sir.” Sharpe felt a small relief that the favor was of such a trifling nature, though another part of him was so much under the thrall of the Emperor's genius that he might have agreed to hack a bloody path down Saint Helena's hillside to the sea and freedom. Harper, sitting beside Sharpe, had the same look of adoration on his face.
    “I understand that this man, I can't recall his name, is presently living in the rebel part of the country,” the Emperor elaborated on the favor he was asking, “but he tells me that packages given to the American consul in Valdivia always reach him. I gather they were friends. No one else in Valdivia, just the American consul. You do not mind helping me?”
    “Of course not, sir.”
    The Emperor smiled his thanks. “The gift will take some time to choose, and to prepare, but if you can wait two hours, monsieur?” Sharpe said he could wait and there was a flurry of orders as an aide was dispatched to find the right gift. Then Napoleon turned to Sharpe again. “No doubt, monsieur, you were at Waterloo?”
    “Yes, sir. I was.”
    “So tell me,” the Emperor began, and thus they talked, while the Spaniards waited and the rain fell and the sun sank and the redcoat guards tightened their nighttime ring about the walls of Longwood, while inside those walls, as old soldiers do, old soldiers talked.
    It was almost full dark as Sharpe and