The provost sniffed. ‘A Christmas present.’
‘I gave it to him,’ Sharpe said.
‘And you are?’
‘Captain Richard Sharpe. South Essex. You?’
The provost stiffened. ‘Lieutenant Ayres, sir.’ The last word was spoken reluctantly.
‘And where are you going, Lieutenant Ayres?’
Sharpe was annoyed by the man’s suspicions, by the pointless display of his power, and he edged his questions with a touch of venom. Sharpe carried on his back the scars of a flogging that had been caused by just such an officer as this: Captain Morris, a supercilious bully, with his flattering familiar, Sergeant Hakeswill. Sharpe carried the memory along with the scars and a promise that one day he would revenge himself on both men. Morris, he knew, was stationed in Dublin; Hakeswill was God knows where, but one day, Sharpe promised himself, he would find him. But for now it was this young puppy with more power than sense. ‘Where, Lieutenant?’
‘Celorico, sir.’
‘Then have a good journey, Lieutenant.’
Ayres nodded. ‘I’ll look round first, sir. If you don’t mind.’
Sharpe watched the three men ride down the street, the rain beading the wide, black rumps of the horses. ‘I hope you’re right, Sergeant.’
‘Right, sir?’
‘That there’s nothing to loot.’
The thought struck both together, a single instinct for trouble, and they began running. Sharpe pulled his whistle from the small holster on his crossbelt and blew the long blasts that were usually reserved for the battlefield when the Light Company was strung out in a loose skirmish line, the enemy was pressing close, and the officers and Sergeants whistled the men back to rally and re-form under the shelter of the Battalion. The provosts heard the whistle blasts, put spurs to their horses, and swerved between two low cottages to search the yards as Sharpe’s men tumbled from doorways and grumbled into ranks.
Harper pulled up in front of the Company. ‘Packs on!’
There was a shout from behind the cottages. Sharpe turned. Lieutenant Knowles was at his elbow.
‘What’s happening, sir?’
‘Provost trouble. Bastards are throwing their weight around.’
They were determined, he knew, to find something, and as Sharpe’s eyes went down his ranks he had a sinking feeling that Lieutenant Ayres had succeeded. There should have been forty-eight men, three Sergeants, and the two officers, but one man was missing: Private Batten. Private bloody Batten, who was dragged by his hair from between the cottages by a triumphant provost.
‘A looter, sir. Caught in the act.’ Ayres was smiling.
Batten, who grumbled incessantly, who moaned if it rained and made a fuss when it stopped because the sun was in his eyes. Private Batten, a one-man destroyer of flintlocks, who thought the whole world was conspiring to annoy him, and who now stood flinching beneath the grasp of one of Ayres’s men. If there were any one member of the Company whom Sharpe would gladly have hanged, it would be Batten, but he was damned if any provost was going to do it for him.
Sharpe looked up at Ayres. ‘What was he looting, Lieutenant?’
‘This.’
Ayres held up a scrawny chicken as if it were the Crown of England. Its neck had been well wrung, but the legs still jerked and scrabbled at the air. Sharpe felt the anger come inside him, not at the provosts but at Batten.
‘I’ll deal with him, Lieutenant.’ Batten cringed away from his Captain.
Ayres shook his head. ‘You misunderstand, sir.’ He was talking with silky condescension. ‘Looters are hung, sir. On the spot, sir. As an example to others.’
There was a muttering from the Company, broken by Harper’s bellowed order for silence. Batten’s eyes flicked left and right as if looking for an escape from this latest example of the world’s injustice. Sharpe snapped at him. ‘Batten!’
‘Sir?’
‘Where did you find the chicken?’
‘It was in the field, sir. Honest.’ He winced as his hair was pulled. ‘It was a wild chicken, sir.’
There was a rustle of laughter from the ranks that Harper let go. Ayres snorted. ‘A wild chicken. Dangerous beasts, eh, sir? He’s lying. I found him in the cottage.’
Sharpe believed him, but he was not going to give up. ‘Who lives in the cottage, Lieutenant?’
Ayres raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, sir, I have not exchanged cards with every slum in Portugal.’ He turned to his men. ‘String him up.’
‘Lieutenant Ayres.’ The tone of Sharpe’s voice stopped any movement in the street. ‘How do you know the cottage is inhabited?’
‘Look for yourself.’
‘Sir.’
Ayres swallowed. ‘Sir.’
Sharpe raised his voice. ‘Are there people there, Lieutenant?’
‘No, sir. But it’s lived in.’
‘How do you know? The village is deserted. You can’t steal a chicken from nobody.’
Ayres thought about his reply. The village was deserted, the inhabitants gone away from the French attack, but absence was not a relinquishing of ownership. He shook his head. ‘The chicken is Portuguese property, sir.’ He turned again. ‘Hang him!’
‘Halt!’ Sharpe bellowed and again movement stopped. ‘You’re not going to hang him, so just go your way.’
Ayres swivelled back to Sharpe. ‘He was caught red-handed and the bastard will hang. Your men are probably a pack of bloody thieves and they need an example and, by God, they will get one!’ He raised himself in his stirrups and shouted at the Company. ‘You will see him hang! And if you steal, then you will hang too!’
A click interrupted him. He looked down and the anger in his face was replaced by astonishment. Sharpe held his Baker rifle, cocked, so that the barrel was pointing at Ayres.
‘Let him go, Lieutenant.’
‘Have you gone mad?’
Ayres had gone white, had sagged back into his saddle. Sergeant Harper, instinctively, came and stood beside Sharpe and ignored the hand that waved him away. Ayres stared at the two men. Both tall, both with hard, fighters’ faces, and a memory tickled at him. He looked at Sharpe, at the face that appeared to have a perpetually mocking expression, caused by the scar that ran down the right cheek, and he suddenly remembered. Wild chickens, bird-catchers! The South Essex Light Company. Were these the two men who had captured the Eagle? Who had hacked their way into a French regiment and come out with the standard? He could believe it.
Sharpe watched the Lieutenant’s eyes waver and knew that he had won, but it was a victory that would cost him dearly. The army did not look kindly on men who held rifles on provosts, even empty rifles.
Ayres pushed Batten forward. ‘Have your thief, Captain. We shall meet again.’
Sharpe lowered the rifle. Ayres waited until Batten was clear of the horses, then wrenched the reins and led his men towards Celorico. ‘You’ll hear from me!’ His words were flung back. Sharpe could sense the trouble like a boiling, black cloud on the horizon. He turned to Batten.
‘Did you steal that bloody hen?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Batten flapped a hand after the provost. ‘He took it, sir.’ He made it sound unfair.
‘I wish he’d bloody taken you. I wish he’d bloody spread your guts across the bloody landscape.’ Batten backed away from Sharpe’s anger. ‘What are the bloody rules, Batten?’
The eyes blinked at Sharpe. ‘Rules, sir?’
‘You know the bloody rules. Tell me.’
The army issued regulations that were inches thick, but Sharpe gave his men three rules. They were simple, they worked, and if broken the men knew they could expect punishment. Batten cleared his throat.
‘To fight well, sir. Not to get drunk without permission, sir. And—’
‘Go on.’
‘Not to steal, sir, except from the enemy or when starving, sir.’
‘Were you starving?’
Batten clearly wanted to say he was, but there were still two days’ rations in
every man’s haversack. ‘No, sir.’
Sharpe hit him, all his frustration pouring into one fist that slammed Batten’s chest, winded him, and knocked him gasping into the wet road. ‘You’re a bloody fool, Batten, a cringing, miserable, whoreson, slimy fool.’ He turned away from the man, whose musket had fallen into the mud. ‘Company! March!’
They marched behind the tall Rifleman as Batten picked himself up, brushed ineffectively at the water that had flowed into the lock of his gun, and then shambled after the Company. He pushed himself into his file and muttered at his silent companions. ‘He’s not supposed to hit me.’
‘Shut your mouth, Batten!’ Harper’s voice was as harsh as his Captain’s. ‘You know the rules. Would you rather be kicking your useless heels now?’
The Sergeant shouted at the Company to pick up their feet, bellowed the steps at them, and all the time he wondered what faced Sharpe now. A complaint from that bloody provost would mean an enquiry and probably a courtmartial. And all for the miserable Batten, a failed horsecoper, whom Harper would gladly have killed himself. Lieutenant Knowles seemed to share Harper’s thoughts, for he fell in step beside the Irishman and looked at him with a troubled face. ‘All for one chicken, Sergeant?’
Harper looked down at the young Lieutenant. ‘I doubt it, sir.’ He turned to the ranks. ‘Daniel!’
Hagman, one of the Riflemen, broke ranks and fell in beside the Sergeant. He was the oldest man in the Company, in his forties, but the best marksman. A Cheshireman, raised as a poacher, Hagman could shoot the buttons off a French General’s coat at three hundred yards. ‘Sarge?’
‘How many chickens were there?’
Hagman flashed his toothless grin, glanced at the Company, then up at Harper. The Sergeant was a fair man, never demanding more than a fair share. ‘Dozen, Sarge.’
Harper looked at Knowles. ‘There you are, sir. At least sixteen wild chickens there. Probably twenty. God knows what they were doing there, why the owners didn’t take them.’
‘Difficult to catch, sir, chickens.’ Hagman chuckled. ‘That all, Sarge?’
Harper grinned down at the Rifleman. ‘A leg each for the officers, Daniel. And not the stringy ones.’
Hagman glanced at Knowles. ‘Very good, sir. Leg each.’ He went back to the ranks.
Knowles chuckled to himself. A leg each for the officers meant a good breast for the Sergeant, chicken broth for everyone, and nothing for Private Batten. And for Sharpe? Knowles felt his spirits drop. The war was lost, it was still raining, and tomorrow Captain Richard Sharpe would be in provost trouble, real trouble, right up to his sabre-scarred neck.
CHAPTER 2
If anyone needed a symbol of impending defeat, then the Church of São Paolo in Celorico, the temporary headquarters of the South Essex, offered it in full. Sharpe stood in the choir watching the priest whitewash a gorgeous roodscreen. The screen was made of solid silver, ancient and intricate, a gift from some long-forgotten parishioner whose family’s faces were those of the grieving women and disciples who stared up at the crucifix. The priest, standing on a trestle, dripping thick lime paint down his cassock, looked from Sharpe to the screen, and shrugged.
‘It took three months to clean off last time.’
‘Last time?’
‘When the French left.’ The priest sounded bitter and he dabbed angrily with the bristles at the delicate traceries. ‘If they knew it was silver they would carve it into pieces and take it away.’ He splashed the nailed, hanging figure with a slap of paint and then, as if in apology, moved the brush to his left hand so that his right could sketch a perfunctory sign of the cross on his spattered gown.
‘Perhaps they won’t get this far.’
It sounded unconvincing, even to Sharpe, and the priest did not bother to reply. He just gave a humourless laugh and dipped the brush into his bucket. They know, thought Sharpe; they all know that the French are coming and the British falling back. The priest made him feel guilty, as if he were personally betraying the town and its inhabitants, and he moved down the church into the darkness by the main door where the Battalion’s commissariat officer was supervising the piling of fresh baked bread for the evening rations.
The door banged open, letting in the late-afternoon sunlight, and Lawford, dressed in his glittering best uniform, beckoned at Sharpe. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Major Forrest was waiting outside and he smiled nervously at Sharpe. ‘Don’t worry, Richard.’
‘Worry?’ Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable William Lawford was angry. ‘He should damned well worry.’ He looked Sharpe up and down. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
Sharpe fingered the tear in his sleeve. ‘It’s all I’ve got, sir.’
‘All? What about that new uniform! Good Lord, Richard, you look like a tramp.’
‘Uniform’s in Lisbon, sir. In store. Light Companies should travel light.’
Lawford snorted. ‘And they shouldn’t threaten provosts with rifles either. Come on, we don’t want to be late.’ He crammed the tricorne hat on to his head and returned the salute of the two sentries who had listened, amused, to his outburst.
Sharpe held up his hand. ‘One moment, sir.’ He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the gold regimental badge that the Colonel wore on his white diagonal sash. It was a new badge, commissioned by Lawford after Talavera, and showed an eagle in chains—a message to the world that the South Essex was the only regiment in the Peninsula that had captured a French standard. Sharpe stood back satisfied. ‘That’s better, sir.’
Lawford took the hint, and smiled. ‘You’re a bastard, Sharpe. Just because you captured an Eagle doesn’t mean you can do what you like.’
‘While just because some idiot is dressed up as a provost, I suppose, means that he can?’
‘Yes,’ Lawford said. ‘It does. Come on.’
It was strange, Sharpe thought, how Lawford was the sum of all he disliked about privilege and wealth, yet he liked Lawford and was content to serve him. They were the same age, thirty-three, but Lawford had always been an officer, had never worried about promotion, because he could afford the next step, and never concerned himself where the next year’s money would come from. Seven years ago, Lawford had been a Lieutenant and Richard Sharpe his Sergeant, both fighting the Mahrattas in India, and the Sergeant had kept the officer alive in the dungeons of the Tippoo Sultan. In return, Lawford taught the Sergeant to read and write and thus qualified him for a commission if ever he were foolish enough to perform some act of bravery on a battlefield that could hoist a man from the ranks into the officers’ exalted company.
Sharpe followed Lawford through the crowded streets towards Wellington’s headquarters, and seeing the Colonel’s exquisite uniform and expensive accoutrements, he wondered where they would be in another seven years. Lawford was ambitious, as was Sharpe, but the Colonel had the birth and the money for great things. He’ll be a general, Sharpe thought, and he grinned because he knew that Lawford would still need him or someone like him. Sharpe was Lawford’s eyes and his ears, his professional soldier, the man who could read the faces of the failed criminals, drunks, and desperate men who had somehow become the best infantry in the world. And more than that, Sharpe could read the ground, could read the enemy, and Lawford, for whom the army was a means to a glorious and exalted end, relied on his ex-Sergeant’s instinct and talent. Lawford, Sharpe decided, had done well in the last year. He had taken over an embittered, brutalized, and frightened Regiment and turned them into a unit as good as any battalion in the line. Sharpe’s Eagle had helped. It had wiped out the stain of Valdelacasa, where the South Essex, under Sir Henry Simmerson, had lost a colour and their pride; but it was not just the Eagle. Lawford, with his politician’s instincts, had trusted the men while he worked them hard, had given them back their confidence. And the badge, which every man wore on his shako, shared the glory of Talavera with every soldier in the Regiment.
Lawford led them through the press of officers a
nd townspeople. Major Forrest kept glancing at Sharpe with an avuncular smile that made him look, more than ever, like a kindly country vicar dressed as a soldier for the village pageant. He tried to reassure Sharpe. ‘It won’t come to a court-martial, Richard; it can’t! You’ll probably have to apologize, or something, and it will all blow over.’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘I won’t bloody apologize, sir.’
Lawford stopped and turned round, his finger pushed into Sharpe’s chest. ‘If you are ordered to apologize, Richard Sharpe, you will damned well apologize. You will grovel, squirm, cringe and toady to order. Do you understand?’
Sharpe clicked the heels of his tall French boots. ‘Sir!’
Lawford exploded in rare anger. ‘Christ Almighty, Richard, don’t you bloody understand? This is a general-court-martial offence. Ayres has screamed his head off to the Provost Marshal and the Provost Marshal has screamed to the General that the authority of the provost must not be undermined. And the General, Mr Sharpe, is rather sympathetic to that point of view.’ Lawford’s passion had attracted a small crowd of interested spectators. His anger faded as suddenly as it had erupted, but he still jabbed his finger into Sharpe’s chest. ‘The General wants more provosts, not fewer, and he is understandably not happy with the thought that Captain Richard Sharpe is declaring open season on them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Lawford was not placated by Sharpe’s crestfallen expression, which the Colonel suspected was not motivated by true regret. ‘And do not think, Captain Sharpe, that just because the General ordered us here he will look kindly on your action. He’s saved your miserable skin often enough in the past and he may not be of a mind to do it again. Understand?’
There was a burst of applause from a group of cavalry officers standing by a wine shop. Lawford shot them a withering look and strode on, followed by someone’s ironic mimicry of the bugle call for the full charge. Sharpe followed. Lawford could be right. The General had summoned the South Essex, no one knew why, and Sharpe had hoped that it was for some special task, something to wipe out the memory of the winter’s boredom. But the scene with Lieutenant Ayres could change that for Sharpe, condemn him to a court-martial, to a future far more dreary even than patrol work on an empty border.