Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold (55 page)

One man in ten was to be flogged. Sixty men from the Battalion, six from each company, the Captain of each company to deliver his six men, stripped to the waist, ready to be tied to the flogging triangles that Simmerson was having made by local carpenters. The Colonel had made his announcement, and then he glared with his small red eyes round the assembled officers. Were there any comments?

Sharpe took a breath. To say anything was useless, to say nothing was cowardly.

‘I think it a bad idea, sir.’

‘Captain Sharpe thinks it a bad idea.’ Simmerson dripped acid with every word. ‘Captain Sharpe, gentlemen, can tell us how to command men. Why is it a bad idea, Captain Sharpe?’

‘To shoot two men in the morning and flog sixty in the afternoon seems to me to be doing the work of the French for them, sir.’

‘You do. Well, damn you, Sharpe, and damn your ideas. If the discipline in this Battalion was as strictly enforced by the Captains as I demand, then this punishment would not be necessary. I will have them flogged! And that includes your precious Riflemen, Sharpe! I expect three of them in your six! There’ll be no favouritism.’

There was nothing to be said or done. The Captains told their companies and, like Sharpe, cut straws and drew lots to determine who should be Simmerson’s victims. Three dozen strokes each for sixty men. By two o’clock the victims were scrounging for spirits that might dull their flesh, and their sullen companions began the long afternoon of cleaning and polishing their kit for Simmerson’s inspection. Sharpe left them to their work and went back to the house that served as the Battalion’s headquarters. There was trouble in the air, a mood reminiscent of the heaviness before a thunderstorm; Sharpe’s happiness of the morning was replaced by apprehension, and he found himself wondering what might happen before he went back to the house where Josefina waited for him and dreamed of Madrid.

He spent the afternoon laboriously filling in the company books. Each month the Day Book had to be copied into the Ledger, and the Ledger was due for Simmerson’s inspection in a week. He found ink, sharpened a quill, and with his tongue between his teeth began writing the details. He could have delegated the job to the Sergeant who looked after the books, but he preferred to do the job himself and then no one could accuse the Sergeant of favouritism. To Thomas Cresacre, Private, was debited the cost of one new shoe-brush. Fivepence. Sharpe sighed; the entry in the columns hid some small tragedy. Cresacre had hurled the brush at his wife, and the wooden back had split against a stone wall. Sergeant McGivern had seen it happen and reported the man, and so on top of his marital troubles Thomas Cresacre would now lose fivepence from a day’s pay of twelvepence. The next entry in the small Day Book that lived in Sharpe’s pocket was for a pair of shoes for Jedediah Horrell. Sharpe hesitated. Horrell claimed the shoes had been stolen, and Sharpe was inclined to believe him. Horrell was a good man, a sturdy labourer from the Midlands, and Sharpe always found his musket cared for and his equipment orderly. And Horrell had already been punished. For two days he had marched in borrowed boots, and his feet were blistered and burst. Sharpe crossed the entry from his Day Book and wrote in the Ledger ‘Lost in Action.’ He had saved Private Horrell six shillings and sixpence. He drew the Accoutrement Book towards him and laboriously copied the information from the ledger into the book. He was amused to see that Lennox had already described every man in the company as having lost a stock ‘in Action’, so officially the stocks, like Horrell’s boots, were now a charge on the government rather than on the individual who had lost them. For an hour he kept copying from Day Book to Ledger to Accoutrement Book, the small change of daily soldiering. When he had finished he drew the Mess Book towards him. This was easier. Sergeant Read, who kept the books, had already crossed out the names of the men who had died at Valdelacasa and written in the new names, Sharpe’s Riflemen and the six men who had been drafted into the Light Company when Wellesley made them the new Battalion of Detachments. Against each of the names Sharpe wrote the figure three shillings and sixpence, the sum that was debited each week for the cost of their food. It was unfair, he knew, because the men were already on half rations, and the word was that the supply situation was worsening. The Commissary officers were scouring the Tagus valley; there were frequent clashes between British and French patrols to decide which side could search a village for hidden food. There were even battles between the British and their Spanish allies, who had failed to deliver a hundredth part of the supplies they had promised, yet they daily drove in herds of pigs, sheep, cattle or goats for their own men. But it was not in Sharpe’s power to reduce the amount the men paid, even if the rations were not delivered in full. Instead he noted at the bottom of the page that the sum was double the food delivered and hoped that he would be ordered to redress the balance later. In the next column he wrote fourpence in each line, the cost of having the men’s clothes washed by the wives on the strength. A man’s washing cost him seventeen shillings and fourpence a year, his rations over eight pounds. Each private earned a shilling a day, seventeen pounds and sixteen shillings a year, but by the time he had been deducted for food, for washing, for pipeclay and blackball, for soling and heeling, and the one day’s pay each year that went to the Military hospitals at Chelsea and Kilmainham, each man was left with the three sevens. Seven pounds, seven shillings and seven pence, and Sharpe knew from bitter experience that they were lucky to get even that. Most men lost further sums to replace missing equipment, and the truth was that each private was paid about fourpence halfpenny a day to fight the French.

As a Captain, Sharpe received ten shillings and sixpence a day. It seemed like a fortune but more than half was deducted for his food and then the officers’ mess demanded a further levy of two shillings and eightpence a day to pay for wine, luxury foods, and the mess servants. He paid more for cleaning, for the hospitals, and he knew the sums backwards. They simply did not add up. And now Josefina was looking to him for money. Hogan had lent him money and, added to the contents of his leather bag, he had enough for the next fortnight, but after that? His only hope was to find a rich corpse on the battlefield. A very rich corpse.

Sharpe finished with the books, shut them, laid the quill on the table and yawned as a clock in the town struck four. He opened the Weekly Mess Book again and looked down at the names, wondering morbidly how many would still be there in a week’s time and how many would have the word ‘deceased’ entered against them. Would his name be crossed out? Would some other officer look at the ledger and wonder who had written ‘Fivepence, one shoe-brush’, against the name Thomas Cresacre? He shut the books again. It was all academic. The army had not been paid for a month, and even then they had not been paid up to date. He would give the books to Sergeant Read, who would store them on the company mule and when, and if, the pay arrived, Read would make the deductions from the books and pay the men their handfuls of coins. There was a knock on the door.

‘Who is it?’

‘Me, sir.’ It was Harper’s voice.

‘Come in.’

Harper’s face was bleak, his manner formal. ‘Well, Sergeant?’

‘Trouble, sir. Bad. The men are refusing to parade.’

Sharpe remembered his apprehension. ‘Which men?’

‘Whole bloody Battalion, sir. Even our lads have joined in.’ When Patrick Harper spoke of ‘our lads’ he meant the Riflemen. Sharpe stood up and slung on the big sword. ‘Who knows about this?’

‘Colonel does, sir. Men sent him a letter.’

Sharpe swore under his breath. ‘They sent him a letter? Who signed it?’

Harper shook his head. ‘No-one signed it, sir. It just tells him that they won’t parade and if he comes near they’ll blow his bloody head off.’

Sharpe picked up the rifle. There was a word for what was happening, and the word was ‘mutiny’. Simmerson’s flogging of one man in ten could easily change into decimation, and instead of being flogged the men would be stood against the trees and shot. He looked at Harper. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Lot of talk, sir. They’re barricading themselves in the timber yard.’

‘All of them?’

Harper shook his head. ‘No, sir. There’s a couple of hundred still in the orchard. Your company’s there, sir, but the lads in the yard are trying to persuade them to join in.’

Sharpe nodded. The Battalion had been bivouacked in an olive grove which the men called an orchard simply because the trees were laid out in neat rows. The grove was behind a timber yard, a walled yard with just one entrance. ‘Who delivered the letter?’

‘Don’t know, sir. It was pushed under the door of Simmerson’s house.’

Sharpe hurried out of the door. The courtyard of the house was shadowed and silent; most officers were taking the chance of looking at the town before they marched the next day to meet the French. ‘Are there any officers at the timber yard?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What about the Sergeants?’

Harper’s face was expressionless. Sharpe guessed that many of the Sergeants were sympathetic to the protest but, like the big Irishman, knew better than the men what the result would be if the Battalion refused to parade. ‘Wait here.’

Sharpe ran back into the house. The rooms lay cool and empty. A woman looked at him from the kitchen, a string of peppers held in her hand, and quickly shut the door when she saw his face. Sharpe took the stairs two at a time and threw open the door of the room where the Light Company’s junior officers were quartered. Ensign Denny was the only occupant, and the sixteen-year-old was lying fast asleep on a straw mattress.

‘Denny!’

The boy came awake, frightened. ‘Sir!’

‘Where’s Knowles?’

‘Don’t know, sir. In town, I think.’

Sharpe thought for a second. The boy stared wide-eyed from the mattress. Sharpe’s hand gripped and regripped the sword hilt. ‘Join me in the courtyard as soon as you’re dressed. Hurry.’

Harper was waiting in the street, where the heat of the sun had seared the stones so that Sharpe could feel the burning even through the soles of his boots. ‘Sergeant, I want the Light Company on parade in five minutes in the track behind the orchard. Full kit.’

The Sergeant opened his mouth to ask a question, saw the look on Sharpe’s face, and threw a salute instead. He strode off. Denny came out of the courtyard buckling on his sword, which trailed on the stones beside him. He looked apprehensive as Sharpe turned to him. ‘Listen carefully. You are to find out for me where Colonel Simmerson is and what he is doing. Understand?’ The boy nodded. ‘And you’re not to let him know that’s what you’re doing. Try the castle. Then come and find me. I’ll either be on the track beside the orchard or on the square in front of the timber yard. If I’m not in either place, then find Sergeant Harper and wait with him. Understand?’ Denny nodded again. ‘Repeat it to me.’

The boy went through his instructions. He desperately wanted to ask Sharpe what the excitement was about but dared not. Sharpe nodded when he finished. ‘One more thing, Christopher.’ He deliberately used Denny’s Christian name to give the lad reassurance. ‘You are not, in any circumstance, to go in the timber yard. Now, be off. If you see Lieutenant Knowles, or Major Forrest, or Captain Leroy, ask them if they’ll join me. Hurry!’

Denny clutched his sword and ran off. Sharpe liked him. One day he would make a good officer, if he was not first spitted on the bayonet of a French Grenadier. Sharpe turned down the hill towards the timber yard and the billets of the men. There was only one chance of averting a disaster and that was to get the Battalion on parade as soon as possible, before Simmerson had time to react to the threat of mutiny. There was a clatter of hooves behind him and he turned to see a rider waving at him. It was Captain Sterritt, the officer of the day, and he looked understandably nervous.

‘Sharpe!’

‘Sterritt?’

Sterritt pulled up his horse. ‘There’s an officers’ call at the Castle. Now. Everyone.’

‘What’s happening?’

Sterritt looked frantically round the deserted street as though someone might overhear the further disaster that had overtaken Simmerson’s Battalion. Sharpe had hardly seen Sterritt since the fight at the bridge. The man was patently frightened of Simmerson, of the men, of Sharpe, of everyone, and deliberately made himself insignificant so as to escape notice. He sketched in the events at the timber yard. Sharpe interrupted him. ‘I know about that. What’s happening at the castle?’

‘The Colonel’s asked to see General Hill.’

There was still time. He looked up at the frightened Captain. ‘Listen. You haven’t seen me. Understand, Sterritt? You have not seen me.’

‘But…’

‘No buts. Do you want to see those sixty men shot?’

Sterritt’s mouth dropped open. He looked round the street again and back to Sharpe. ‘The Colonel’s orders are that no-one is to go near the timber yard.’

‘You haven’t seen me so how could I have heard the order?’

‘Oh.’ Sterritt did not know how to react. He watched Sharpe go on down the street and wished again that he had been born four years earlier; then he would have been the eldest and would now be a gentleman farmer. As it was he felt like a rag doll swept away in a flood. He turned sadly away towards the castle and wondered what would become of it all.

In front of the timber yard was a huge open space like an English village green, except that the grass here was bleached yellow and grew thinly on the shallow soil. The space was used for a weekly market but today it was a football ground for soldiers from a dozen Battalions. Sharpe could see troops from the 48th, the 29th, and a company of Royal American Rifles whose green jackets reminded him of happier days. The men cheered and jeered the players; soon, thought Sharpe, they would have a more interesting spectacle to watch.

He turned left, beside the wall of the timber yard, and down toward the orchard. No-one was on the track as he had expected, but as he drew nearer he shouted for Harper and was rewarded by hearing a flurry of commands as the Light Company Sergeants ordered the men onto the track. He assumed the men would be reluctant to parade but doubted if they would dare oppose him, and he stopped and watched as Harper paraded the company in four ranks.