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time?’
    â€˜I was in Spain.’ Ducos was standing directly behind Maillot. As the older man had talked, Ducos had drawn a small pistol from his tail pocket and silently eased back its oiled cock. Now he aimed the pistol at the base of Maillot’s neck. ‘I was in Spain,’ Ducos said again, and he screwed his eyes tight shut as he pulled the trigger. The ball shattered one of Maillot’s vertebrae, throwing the grey head back in a bloody paroxysm. The Colonel seemed to give a remorseful sigh as he collapsed. His head jerked forward to thump against the brickwork, then the body twitched once and was quite still. The foul-smelling pistol smoke lingered beneath the pear branches.
    Ducos retched, gagged, and managed to control himself. A voice shouted from a neighbouring house, wanting an
    explanation for the gunshot, but when Ducos made no reply there was no further question.
    By dawn the body was hidden under compost.
    Ducos had not slept. It was not conscience, nor disgust at Maillot’s death that had kept him awake, but the enormity of what that death represented. Ducos, by pulling the trigger, had abandoned all that had once been most dear to him. He had been raised to believe in the sanctity of the Revolutionary ideals, then had learned that Napoleon’s imperial ambitions were really the same ideals, but transmuted by one man’s genius into a unique and irreplaceable glory. Now, as Napoleon’s glory crumbled, the ideals must live on, only now Ducos recognized that France itself was the embodiment of that greatness.
    Ducos had thus persuaded himself in that damp night that the irrelevant trappings of Imperial France could be sacrificed. A new France would rise, and Ducos would serve that new France from a position of powerful responsibility. For the moment, though, a time of waiting and safety was needed. So, in the morning, he summoned the Dragoon Sergeant Challon to the prefecture where he sat the grizzled sergeant down at the green malachite table across which Ducos pushed the one remaining sheet of the Emperor’s dispatch. ‘Read that, Sergeant.’
    Challon confidently picked up the paper, then, realizing that he could not bluff the bespectacled officer, dropped it again. ‘I don’t read, sir.’
    Ducos stared into the bloodshot eyes. ‘That piece of paper gives you to me, Sergeant. It’s signed by the Emperor himself.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’ Challon’s voice was toneless.
    â€˜It means you obey me.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Ducos then took a risk. Spread on the table was a newspaper which he ordered Challon to throw to the floor. The Sergeant was puzzled at the order, but obeyed. Then he went very still. The newspaper had hidden two white cockades; two big cockades of flamboyant white silk.
    Challon stared at the symbols of Napoleon’s enemies, and Ducos watched the pigtailed Sergeant. Challon was not a subtle man, and his leathery scarred face betrayed his thoughts as openly as though he spoke them aloud. The first thing the face betrayed to Ducos was that Sergeant Challon knew what was concealed in the four crates. Ducos would have been astonished if Challon had not known. The second thing that the Sergeant betrayed was that he, just like Ducos, desired those contents.
    Challon looked up at the small Major. ‘Might I ask where Colonel Maillot is, sir?’
    â€˜Colonel Maillot contracted a sudden fever which my physician thinks will prove fatal.’
    â€˜I’m sorry to hear that, sir,’ Challon’s voice was very wooden, ‘as some of the lads liked the Colonel, sir.’ For a second, as he looked into those hard eyes, Ducos thought he had wildly miscalculated. Then Challon glanced at the incriminating cockades. ‘But some of the lads will learn to live with their grief.’
    The relief washed through Ducos, though he was far too clever to reveal either that relief or the fear which had preceded it.