Sharpe's Regiment (11 page)

The mail office would think it strange that such a vagabond should pay such a sum for a letter, for Sharpe, like Harper, was in rags and for a purpose. Somewhere in Britain there was a hidden Battalion, and Sharpe did not know how to find it. Yet the Battalion was recruiting, and that meant its recruiting sergeants were on the roads of Britain, and those sergeants, Sharpe knew, would take their men back to wherever the Battalion was concealed.

Sharpe could not find the Battalion, but the Battalion could find him. Major Richard Sharpe and Sergeant Major Patrick Harper, who only the night before had been crowned by the Goddesses of Victory, were going to become recruits again. They had donned the costumes of tramps and must act the parts of the desperate men whose last recourse was to join the ranks. Sharpe and Harper would join the army.

They walked north from London into a countryside that was heavy with summer and lush with flowers, a countryside that, compared to Spain, gave easy living. No gamekeeper in England could compete with a Spanish peasant at protecting his land, and the two Riflemen lived well.

There was only one problem in their first days on the road, and that a real one, which was Harper’s inability to drop the word “sir”. ‘It’s not natural, sir!’

‘What isn’t?’

‘Calling you ...’ he shrugged.

‘Dick?’

‘I can’t!‘ The big Irishman was blushing.

‘You’ve bloody well got to!’

They slept in the open. They trapped their food, stole it, or, despite the money hidden in their rags, begged in village streets. Four times in the first week they were chased out of parishes that did not want such stout looking trouble-makers in their boundaries. They looked villainous, for neither man shaved. Sharpe wanted them to appear to be old soldiers, discharged legally, who had failed to find jobs or homes outside the army. Patrick Harper, who accepted this turn in his fate philosophically, nevertheless worried at the problem of why the Second Battalion was hidden and secret. He constantly thought of the Sergeant who had tried to ambush Sharpe in the rookery. ‘Why would the bugger want to kill you, sir?’

‘Don’t call me ...’

‘I didn’t mean it! But why?’

‘I don’t know.’

Whatever secret was hidden with the Second Battalion stayed hidden, for in those first days they did not see any recruiting parties, let alone one from the South Essex. They stayed clear of the coast, fearing to be scooped up by a naval press-gang, and they wandered from town to town, always hoping to find one of the summer hiring fairs that were such good hunting grounds for a recruiter. They worked one day, hedging along the Great North Road, hoping that a recruiting party would pass. They were paid a shilling apiece, poor wages for country labouring, but suitable pay for a soldier or vagabond. Harper rough hewed the hedge and Sharpe, coming behind, shaped it. At midday the farmer gave them a can of ale and stopped to talk about the weather and the harvest. Sharpe, eating the bread and cheese the farmer had brought, wondered aloud what was happening in Spain.

The farmer laughed, perhaps to hear such a question from a tramp. ‘Don’t fash yourself over that, man. Best place for the army, abroad.’ He stood and arched his back. ‘You’re doing well, lads. You’ll work another day?’

But the traffic on the road was small and their one day’s work had been less enjoyable than their wandering, so they refused. And, indeed, Sharpe enjoyed it all. To be so free, suddenly, of responsibility, to walk apparently aimlessly beneath the warm skies of summer, along hedgerows thick with flowers and berries, to fish country streams and steal from orchards, to poach plump estates and wake each morning without needing to check rifle and sword; all this was oddly pleasant. They went slowly north, indulging their curiosity to leave their track to explore villages or gawp at old, ancient houses where the ivy lay warm on stone walls. Somewhere beyond Grantham they came to a flat, black-drained country, and they hurried their pace across the fens as though eager to discover what lay beyond the seemingly limitless horizon.

‘Perhaps Ted Carew was wrong, sir,’ Harper said.

‘Don’t call me “sir”!’

‘We’ll look a pair of bloody idiots if he’s wrong!’

The thought had occurred to Sharpe, but he stubbornly clung to the old armoury sergeant’s belief that the Second Battalion, which was supposed to exist only on paper, was still looking for recruits. And at Sleaford Sharpe found what he was searching for.

He found a real, booming, busy hiring fair, crammed with people from the nearby countryside; a recruiting sergeant’s prayer. There was a giant on display, properly hidden behind a canvas screen, and the giant’s keeper offered Harper a full crown in silver money if he would agree to become the giant’s brother. There were Siamese twins, brought, the barker shouted, at great expense from the mysterious kingdom of Siam. There was a two-headed sheep, a dog that could count, a monkey that drilled like a soldier, and the bearded lady without whom no country fair would be complete. There were whores in the inns, gaitered farmers in the public rooms, and noisy Methodists preaching their gospel in the marketplace. There was a recruiting party from a cavalry regiment, and another from the artillery. There were jugglers, stilt-walkers, faith-healers, a dancing-bear and, close to a Methodist preacher, but giving a different sermon, there was Sergeant Horatio Havercamp.

Sharpe and Harper saw him over the heads of the crowd and, slowly, they worked their way towards him. He was a big-bellied, red-faced, smiling man, with mutton-chop whiskers and twinkling eyes. He was being heckled by a good-natured crowd, but Sergeant Horatio Havercamp was equal to any heckler. He stood on a mounting block and was flanked by two small drummer boys.

‘You, lad!’ He pointed to a thin, tall country boy dressed in an embroidered smock. ‘Where are you sleeping tonight?’

The boy, embarrassed to be picked out, merely blushed.

‘Where, lad? Home, I’ll be bound! Home, eh? All alone, yes? Or are you keeping a milkmaid warm, are you doing that now?’

The crowd laughed at the boy, whose face was now scarlet.

Sergeant Havercamp grinned at the boy. ‘You’ll never sleep alone again in the army, lad. The women? They’ll be dropping off the trees for you! Now look at me, would you call me a handsome man?’ He got the answer he deserved and wanted from the crowd. He raised his hands. ‘Of course not. No one ever called Horatio Havercamp a handsome man, but, lad, let me tell you, there’s many a lass been through these hands, and why? Because of this! This!’ He plucked at his red jacket with its bright yellow facings. ‘A uniform! A soldier’s uniform!’ The drummer boys rattled a quick tattoo with their sticks.

The embarrassed farm boy had wormed his way out of the crowd and now wandered towards the Methodists who offered joys of a different sort. Sergeant Havercamp did not mind. He had the attention of enough young men in the crowd and he looked about for another butt. He could hardly miss Patrick Harper, a full head and shoulders taller than most of the people who pressed towards the inn where the Sergeant had his pitch. ‘Look at him!’ Sergeant Havercamp cried. ‘He could win the war single-handed. You ever thought of being a soldier?’

Harper said nothing. His sandy hair made him look younger than his twenty-eight years. Sergeant Havercamp rubbed his hands in glee. ‘How much money have you got, lad?’

Harper shook his head as though too embarrassed to say anything.

‘Nothing, I’ll be bound! Look at me, now!’ Sergeant Havercamp produced two golden guineas from his pocket and dexterously rolled them between his fingers so that the gold glittered mesmeric ally as he skilfully wove the two coins in and out of his knuckles. ‘Money! Soldier’s money! You heard of the battle at Vitoria, lad? We took treasure there, we took gold, we took jewels, we took more money than you’ll dream of in a lifetime of dreams!’

Harper, who had fought at Vitoria, and taken a king’s ransom from that battlefield, gaped convincingly.

Sergeant Havercamp juggled the two coins with one hand, tossing one up, then catching the other while the first twinkled beside his whiskers. ‘Rich! That’s what you can be as a soldier! Rich! Women, glory, money, and victory, lads!’ The two drummer boys performed another obedient drum-roll, and the young men in the crowd stared bewitched at the gold coins.

‘You’ll never be hungry again! You’ll never be without a woman! You’ll never be poor again! You can walk with your head up and never fear again, because you will be a soldier!’

The drum-roll again, and still the gold coins went up and down beside Sergeant Havercamp’s smiling, confiding, friendly face.

‘You’ve heard of us, lads! You know of us! We’re the South Essex. We’re the lads who tweaked Bonaparte’s nose! That monkey loses sleep because of us. The South Essex! We’ve put fear into the heart of an Emperor, and you can belong to us! Yes! We’ll even pay you!’

The drum-roll once more. The coins stopped in Havercamp’s raised right hand. He took off his shako, revealing red hair, and, holding the inverted shako in his left hand, as the drummer boys struck one sharp blow on their skins, he tossed one of the golden guineas into the hat. A second drumbeat marked the second guinea joining the first and, still without saying a word, Sergeant Havercamp produced more guineas from his pouch and tossed them, one by one, into the shako.

‘Three!’ A small, weasel-faced man who had wriggled his way close to Sharpe and Harper shouted, ‘Four! Five!’ Another man took up the count and, as the guineas mounted, the crowd called the numbers aloud to drown the thin hymn singing of the Methodists.

‘Fifteen! Sixteen! Seventeen! Eighteen! Nineteen! Twenty! Twenty-one! Twenty-two!’

The count stopped. Sergeant Havercamp grinned at them. He put his hand into his pouch and brought out a half-guinea, held it up to the crowd, then tossed it into the hat. The drummers beat their skins. The Sergeant followed the half-guinea with a quick shower of shillings and pence, raised the hat, then shook it to let the crowd hear the heavy sound of the money inside.

‘Twenty-three pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence! That’s what we’ll pay you! Twenty-three pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence! Just to join the army! We’ll pay you!’ He shook the hat again. ‘Now, lads, I was young once!’ He held up a hand to check the good-natured jeers. ‘True! Even I, Sergeant Horatio Havercamp was young once, and let me tell you something!’ He paused dramatically, looking from face to face in the crowd. ‘I never did meet, not ever will, a pretty girl who could resist the sound of money! Now, lads! If they’ll kiss you for a shilling, what will they do for a guinea, eh?’ He raised one finger, licked it, and laughed. ‘Twenty-three pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence!’

‘I’ll marry you for that!’ a woman called out, provoking laughter, but the young men in the crowd were remembering the golden stream of coins that added up to more than six months’ wages for most of them. Six months’ wages! All at once, and just for signing up!

Sergeant Havercamp shook his head sadly. ‘I know what you’re thinking, lads! I know! You’ve heard stories! You’ve heard the lies they put about!’ He shook his head again in silent sadness at the sinfulness of a world that could tell lies about the army. ‘They say the army’s a harsh place! They say there’s disease and worse but, oh, my lads! Oh, my lads! My own mother begged me. She did! She said “Horatio! Don’t you go for a soldier, don’t you go!” She threatened never to talk to me again. But I did! Ah, I’ll admit I was young and I was headstrong and I was too tempted by the girls and the glory and the money; and my old mother, God bless her grey hairs, she said I’d broken her heart! Broken her very heart!’ He let the enormity of this sink into them, then slowly smiled. ‘But, my friends, my dear mother today lives in her own cottage and with every breath she takes, my friends, she blesses the name of Horatio Havercamp! And why? Why?’ He paused dramatically. ‘Because, my friends, it was I who bought her the cottage and I who planted her wallflowers and I who have given her the rest she so richly deserves.’

He smiled modestly. ‘Only the other day the General passes by her garden gate. “Mother Havercamp,” he said, “I sees your son Horatio has done you bravely!” “He has,” she says, “and all because he went for a soldier.”’

Horatio Havercamp opened his pouch and tipped the money glintingly inside. He put his shako on his head, tapped it down, and drew himself up to his considerable height. ‘Well, lads! The chance is yours! Money! Glory! Riches! Fame! Women! I won’t be here long! There’s a war that has to be fought and there are women that wait for us and if you don’t come to us today then perhaps your chance will never come! You’ll grow old and you’ll rue the day that you let Horatio Havercamp go out of your life! Now, lads, I’ve spoken long enough and I’ve a thirst like a dry dog in a smithy, so I’m spending some of that money the army gives me on some pots of ale in the Green Man! So come and see me! No persuasion, lads, just some free froth on your lips and a wee chat!’

The drummers gave a last, loud roll, and Sergeant Havercamp jumped down to the roadway.

The small, weasel-faced man who had led the chanting as the guineas were thrown, looked up at Patrick Harper. ‘Are you going with him?’

Sharpe guessed the man was a corporal, one of Havercamp’s assistants salted into the crowd to snare the likeliest recruits. He wore a corduroy coat over a moleskin waistcoat, but his grey trousers looked suspiciously like standard issue.

Harper shrugged. ‘Who wants to be a soldier?’

‘You’re Irish?’ The small man said it delightedly as though, all his life, he had nurtured a love for the Irish and had never, before this moment, had a chance to display it. ‘Come on! You must be thirsty!’

‘The ale’s free?’

‘He said so, didn’t he? Besides, what can he do to us?’

Harper looked at Sharpe. ‘You want to go, Dick?’ He blushed like an eight year old as he used Sharpe’s name.