'Major Sharpe?'
He jumped, scared by the sudden voice, and then a cloth bundle was pushed at him and he saw, dim in the darkness, a hooded shape. 'Miss Gibbons? Is that you?'
'Yes! I have to talk to you!'
Sharpe climbed onto the ledge. He saw Harper look nervously southwards as he stove in the second punt. Sharpe was holding the bundle while Jane Gibbons' gloved hand, in an unconscious gesture of nervousness, rested on his arm. She was silent now, staring past Sharpe at the huge man who wrestled to turn the third punt over.
He smiled. 'Thank you for this.'
She shook her head. 'I wanted to help. Are the militia out?'
'Yes.'
'They'll come here. They always warn us.' She took her hand from his arm. She was standing on the platform that was built at the end of the tunnel, the stage from which someone could step down into the boats. 'You are going to stop them?'
'The auctions? Yes.'
'What happens to my uncle?'
Somehow the question surprised him; he had thought of her as an ally, a conspirator, but suddenly he saw what he had not seen all day, that the disgrace of her uncle would reflect upon this household. 'I don't know.' It was a feeble answer. He was tempted to tell her of the men who waited in Pasajes, of the disgrace they would suffer if their pride was to be laid up and they were to be denied a victory for which they had suffered and endured these long years.
'And Colonel Girdwood? Will he be finished?'
There was a hollow knocking of wood as Harper tossed two paddles into the punt, then began to drag it towards the far marker that showed where this creek joined the River Crouch. Sharpe nodded. 'He'll be finished. Disgraced.'
'Good!' She hissed the word, revelling in it. For a moment she was silent. The boathouse was in shadow, but her eyes glistened with the pale reflection of moonlight. She stared at Sharpe almost defiantly. They want me to marry him.'
It was like the moment when, on a clear day, a twelve pounder enemy shot thumps the air close by, astonishing and sudden, threatening and unexpected. Sharpe only gaped. They what?'
'We're supposed to marry!'
'Him?'
'My uncle demands it,' she paused, her eyes bright in her shadowed face, 'but if he's in disgrace . . .'
'He'll be finished.' Sharpe heard a clinking sound, the fall of a hoof on the road. At the same moment came the call of a nightjar, soft and insistent. 'Cu-ick, cu-ick, cu-ick.' Sharpe had never heard a nightjar in marshland. It was Harper sounding a warning. 'I have to go!' For a second, a mad second, he wanted to take her with him. 'I shall come back. You understand?'
She nodded, then there was a sudden braying of a trumpet, a whoop like that of a huntsman, and he pulled away from her. 'I'll come back!' The first carbine shots cracked down the creekbed.
The militia was like a second British army, but a privileged one. A man who joined the militia could never be asked to serve abroad and his wife, unlike the wife of a regular soldier, received an allowance while he was away from home. It was a pampered, soft, well-trained, and useless army. It had been raised to resist an invasion that had never come, while now, nine years later, it starved the regular army of good men. Some militia men transferred to the regulars, attracted by the bounty and wanting, after their training, to do some real fighting, but most preferred to avoid the dangers of real soldiering.
The militia cavalry of South Essex, whose honorary Colonel was Sir Henry Simmerson, kept a troop quartered close to Foulness. Their task was to patrol the creeks against smuggling, guard the Foulness Camp, and protect Sir Henry's big brick house. When a man ran from Foulness, the militia cavalry went eagerly into a practised routine, because they had been offered a bounty should they ever succeed in stopping a deserter. Now, like a gift from heaven, the troops saw the big man who hauled the punt north towards the Crouch. Their first bullets drove him into the cover of the reeds.
Sharpe ran from the boathouse, gun, ammunition and bundle all held in his arms, and his shoes slipped in the treacherous mud as he turned towards Harper. A man shouted behind, a bullet cracked and whined off the brickwork to Sharpe's left while another drove a fountain of bright water up to his right. He heard the militia officer order his men forward. Some had dismounted to come down into the creek bed, others spurred their horses to its far bank.
She was to marry Girdwood? She was to be put with that tar-faced fool? A bullet crackled in the reeds to Sharpe's right, he slipped again as yet another shot thumped wetly into a rill of mud by his feet, then he was by the punt. 'Here!' He threw the carbine to Harper, then the ammunition pouch, and tossed Jane's bundle into the punt. ‘Ill drag it! You hold the bastards off! And Patrick!
'Sir?' Harper was finding cover as Sharpe hauled the punt on towards the river.
'Don't kill any of them. They're on our side, remember?"
'I don't think they know that, sir.' Harper grinned. If anything he was fractionally faster than Sharpe with a gun. British infantry could fire four shots a minute, while the best of the French could only manage three, yet Sharpe and Harper could both fire five shots in a minute from a clean musket on a dry day. Harper grinned and buckled on the belt with its ammunition pouch. The militia were about to discover what it was to fight against the best.
Sharpe dragged the heavy punt, struggling and cursing, forcing his tired legs to push through the mud, water and clinging roots. A bullet clattered through the reeds beside him, another struck the punt with a thump that ran up Sharpe's arm, then, mercifully, the creek turned, hiding him from his pursuers, and there was enough water in the half cleared bed to ease the punt's progress. Sharpe wondered, with a sudden, terrible fear, whether a stray bullet might have ricocheted into the boathouse. Marry Girdwood? By God he would break that vicious fool!
Patrick Harper knelt at the bend in the creek. He thumbed the cock of Captain Finch's carbine back, saw that the dismounted cavalrymen were closer than their mounted comrades, and fired.
He rolled to one side, clearing his own smoke, and took a cartridge from the captured pouch. He was doing his job now, albeit with a short carbine instead of a rifle, and his second shot hammered down the creek bed within twelve seconds of his first and he saw the cavalrymen, who had never faced an enemy who fired real bullets, dive into cover.
He reloaded again. He saw a mass of men dark in the reeds to the left of the creek and he put a bullet into the ground ahead of them, and then a horseman on the bank was bellowing orders for the dismounted cavalry to spread out, to fire back, and Harper lay down as the volley cut into the reeds about him. 'Forward!' The cavalry officer shouted. 'Forward!' And there was something in that arrogant voice that touched a nerve in Harper. He knelt up, his face grim, and he put a bullet into the man who led the rush up the creek's wet bed. 'That's from Ireland.' He said it under his breath, and already the next cartridge was in his hand, the bullet in his mouth, and the wounded cavalryman was screaming and thrashing and his comrades were stunned because real blood had come into this night, their blood, and Harper was already moving right to snap off his next shot.
He was enjoying himself. It was only an officer like Sharpe, he decided, who would give an Irishman a chance like this, and though his first shots had been aimed only to warn and to wound, and though Sharpe had told him not to kill, the militia officer's voice, and the proximity of the last volley, had got his Irish blood roused. He was talking to himself, muttering in Gaelic, watching for the officer who had stayed safely on the bank and shouted at his men to hurry into danger. 'Forward!' the man shouted. 'Spread left! Hurry now!'
Harper had the gun at his shoulder. He saw the officer waving his sword, urging his muddy troops on, but not dirtying himself with the pursuit, and Harper knew where the bullet would go. He knew precisely where it would go. He smiled, tightened his finger, fired, and saw the officer fall back with the bullet exactly where Harper had aimed it. One dead, one wounded, and he was reloading again, and the militia, who had never seen how Wellington's men fought, were ge
tting a taste of it in this Essex marsh.
'Patrick!'
Grinning, letting them off his hook, Harper slid backwards to the shallow water, turned, and with the carbine and ramrod held in separate hands, ran towards Sharpe. The punt was afloat in a pool among the reeds, and Sharpe gestured at him to get in.
The Irishman's weight momentarily grounded the punt, but Sharpe heaved with a paddle in the mud, and they headed towards the open river that flowed past the marker pole. A bullet snickered through the rushes to their right, another splashed overhead, and Sharpe grabbed a handful of the tough plants at the channel's edge and dragged the punt forward until the bow was suddenly snatched eastwards by the violent current, he gave the boat one last heave with the paddle, and they were out in the wide River Crouch and being swept towards the sea that must be, Sharpe knew, some two miles eastwards.
'Paddle!' Both men, kneeling in the flat craft, dug their blades into the water and drove the punt towards the northern bank.
There was a shout behind them, a yell of anger, and Harper muttered the prayer that all sailors and soldiers said before the enemy fired. 'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful.'
The volley made the water dance about them, small spouts of white that rose and fell, and the two men pumped their arms and drove the punt through the ripples of the gunshots, out into midstream, and Sharpe heard the rattle of ramrods behind him.
'They're slow,' Harper said scornfully. 'We'd have had two shots off by now.'
‘They can still kill us. Paddle!'
Harper paddled, his strength driving his side of the punt faster than Sharpe's. Water splashed cold on them from their clumsy strokes. 'I'm afraid I killed one of the buggers, sir!'
'You what?'
'I killed one, sir! It was an accident, of course. Didn't mean to.'
Sharpe did not seem to care. 'Bugger them. They shouldn't try and kill us.' He said it angrily and dug his paddle in the water just as the second volley came from the southern bank.
The second volley was more ragged, the splashes wider spaced because the punt was now more than a hundred paces away from the shore, but one bullet struck a thwart, drove splinters up, then whined into the darkness. Harper laughed. 'Lucky bloody shot.'
'Paddle!'
They had been carried down river and were now opposite Foulness, and Sharpe could see, dark on the southern bank, the shapes of men and a single horseman. He saw, too, the sudden sparkle of muskets, muzzle flashes that were reflected in long, shimmering lights on the water, but again the volley went wide, fired at hopeless range, then the bow of the punt bumped on the northern shore and Harper, carbine in his hand, jumped onto the bank and hauled the boat up.
Sharpe, carrying the bundle, followed and found Harper kneeling on the sea-dyke, aiming the carbine.
'Don't waste the shot,' Sharpe said.
‘This one won't be wasted, sir!' Harper aimed at a horseman on the southern bank, and pulled the trigger. The bullet whipped away over the Crouch, then Harper, standing to his full height, filled his lungs and gave a yell that filled the night above the moon-silvered river and marsh. ‘That's from Ireland, you bugger!'
There was a yelp from Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, though whether from wounded pride or flesh, Sharpe could not tell. Then, laughing because of Harper's challenge, he turned and led the big Sergeant inland.
They had escaped Foulness, but not Colonel Girdwood's pursuit. Sharpe knew that even now horsemen would be riding towards the first ford or bridge over the Crouch and that he and Harper must move and move fast.
They went north in the moon-drenched night. They slanted westwards to where they could see hills and trees, the cover sought by all infantrymen in trouble. They walked fast, pushing away from the Crouch, away from the country that an enraged militia would search in the dawn. Always they watched the west, looking for horsemen, looking for the flash of moonlight on a sabre or badge, but they seemed to be alone in a rich, deep-planted country of sleeping farms, gentle hills, wide pastures, and dark woods.
Dawn ended the exhilaration of their escape. They had reached a hill that showed them the view northwards and it was depressing; worse, it could mean defeat, for, stretching from west to east, bright in the rising sun, was another river. It was a river far wider and deeper than the Crouch. This was a great, shining barrier that blocked their northern escape, just as the sea and the River Crouch blocked them to the east and south. They could only go west and there, Sharpe knew, the cavalry would be waiting. By dawn that cordon of cavalry would start combing this land between the rivers.
He unwrapped the bundle that Jane Gibbons had given him. She was to marry Girdwood? The thought stunned him. Sir Henry would marry her off to that posturing idiot? He remembered her hand on his arm, the sheen of moonlight on her eyes, and he wished, against all his better judgment, that she could share this journey of danger. It would take her from the fate that she feared, which offended Sharpe so horribly and deeply, because he had plans of his own, ridiculous, unfounded plans, marriage plans.
A shabby black cloak wrapped the bundle. Inside was a package of waxed paper that held a great chunk of pale and crumbling cheese, a half-cut loaf and, wrapped in more waxed paper, a strange piece of jellied meat.
'What is it?' Harper stared at the meat.
'Don't know.' Sharpe sliced it with the bayonet he had taken from the sentry in Foulness, then ate some. 'Bloody delicious!'
Beside the cheese was a leather purse that he opened to find, God bless the girl, three guineas in gold.
Harper helped himself to some of the meat. 'Would you mind me asking you a question, sir?'
'What?'
'Did you persuade Sir Henry to leave this for us?' he grinned.
'He's gone to London.' Sharpe remembered Sir Henry saying as much over Marriott's body. He cut the cheese. 'You remember that bugger you killed at Talavera? Christian Gibbons?'
'Aye.'
'Remember his sister?'
Harper had met Jane Gibbons in the porch of the church on that day, nearly four years before, when Sharpe had spoken to her by her brother's memorial. Harper stared at Sharpe with suspicion and amusement. 'She left this for us?'
'Yes.' Sharpe said it as though it was the most normal thing in the world for young ladies to help men desert from army camps. 'Good cheese, isn't it?'
'Grand.' Harper still stared at him. 'I seem to remember, sir, that she was a pretty wee thing?'
'I seem to remember that, too,' Sharpe said. Harper laughed, as if unsure what to say, then shook his head as though there was nothing to say. He whistled instead, a sound as insolent as it was amused, and Sharpe laughed. 'Shall we now forget Miss Gibbons, Sergeant Major?'
'I will, sir.'
'And how the devil do we get out of here?'
'There,' Harper was pointing north, down to the bank of the wide river, and Sharpe saw, by a huddle of small houses, a line of great barges that lifted their masts high over the shingle roofs of the small village. 'One of them must be going somewhere, sir.'
'Let's find out.'
They walked the mile to the river's bank, going gently and cautiously, watching always for the cavalrymen whom Sharpe knew must come from the west. No horsemen had appeared yet. Dogs barked as they approached the small hamlet, and Sharpe gestured Harper into the cover of a ditch and gave him the carbine and bayonet. 'Wait for my signal.'
Sharpe walked on into the tiny village. A dog snapped at him and, outside a shuttered inn, a woman grabbed a child and held it against her skirts until the mud-smeared vagabond had passed. He went down to a small, wooden pier that jutted into the wide river, a pier to which the huge, tall-masted barges were moored.
The barges were loaded with hay, great cargoes that were netted and roped down beneath heavy booms wrapped in swathes of red sail. The bargemen looked suspiciously at him. One told him to make himself scarce, but Sharpe tossed one of his three guineas into the air, caught it again, and the sight of the gold quieted
them. He picked one man who looked less surly than the others. 'Where are you going?'
The man said nothing at first. He stared Sharpe up and down before, slowly and reluctantly, giving an answer. 'London.'
'You take passengers?'
'Don't like vagrants.' He had the broad Essex accent that Sharpe had heard so often in the battle line of his regiment.
Sharpe tossed the guinea in his hand. 'Do you take passengers?'
'How many?'
Behind Sharpe, a cock challenged the morning. He was listening for hooves, but he dared not show any fear to this man. 'Two of us.'
'One each.' It was sheer robbery, but the man, recognising the tattered fatigue jacket beneath the mud, must have guessed at Sharpe's desperation.
Sharpe gave him the guinea and showed him a second. 'It's yours when we get there.'
The man nodded towards the boats. 'It's the Amelia. I'm casting off in five minutes.'
Sharpe put two fingers into his mouth, whistled, and the vast figure of Harper with his gun came into sight. The man watched them in silence as they went aboard, then, with only a boy to help him, and eschewing any assistance from the two soldiers, he hoisted three huge red sails. The barge crept away from the jetty, into the river that he said was called the Blackwater, and they glided, with a gentle land breeze, out towards the sea.
A half hour later, as they cleared the land and headed out to make the wide turn about the sandbanks of the Essex coast, Harper nodded back towards the shore. The bargeman looked and saw nothing, but Sharpe, whose life and health in Spain depended on spotting cavalry at a distance, saw the horsemen on one of the low hills.
They leaned back on the small deck beside the cargo. Before they reached London Sharpe knew he must throw the carbine and bayonet overboard, but for now the weapons were a small insurance against the temptation for the bargeman to turn them in as deserters. The water slapped and ran down the boat's side, the wind bellied the sails, the sun was hot, and Harper slept. Sharpe dozed, the carbine on his knees, and dreamed of a shadowed, hooded girl who had been waiting for him in a damp tunnel. Thanks to Jane Gibbons, they had escaped Foulness, but she, engaged on her uncle's orders, was still trapped in the marshland. He day-dreamed of revenge, and let the boat carry him towards safety.