Sharpe's Regiment (32 page)

He said nothing. There were too many uncertainties in her words for Sharpe’s peace of mind and, though his spirit soared that she wished to help him, he feared too for the punishment that she risked.

She bit her lip. ‘But what if I can’t find them?’

‘I’ll have to think of something else.’ He said it lightly, yet without the proof he had nothing. He could perhaps order Captain Smith and the other officers to write their confessions, but then he remembered Lady Camoynes’ words; what hope did such witnesses have against the evidence of peers and politicians and men of high standing? Sharpe, without the account books, needed allies of equal weight, and suddenly that thought, the thought of allies, gave him an outrageous, wonderful, impossible idea. The idea, that rose like a great sheet of flame in the darkness of his head, was so splendid that he smiled and gripped her hands hard. ‘I don’t need them, truly!’

‘You don’t?’

The idea was seething in him, making his words tumble out. ‘It would be wonderful to have them. It would make things easy. But if not? I can manage.’

‘But it would be helpful to have them?’ She said it earnestly and he realised, suddenly, that this girl wanted to help him.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Would you like me to try for you?’

He nodded, ‘Yes.’

‘How do I find you?’

‘Next Saturday.’ He took one hand from hers and pulled some guineas from his pouch that he put on the table. ‘Do you know Hyde Park Gate? Where Piccadilly ends?’ She nodded. He pushed the coins towards her. ‘I’ll be there at midday, and if you have the books then we’ll beat them, but if not? We’ll still win!’

She smiled at the enthusiasm in him, the sheer, sudden hope that had given him energy. She stirred the ten coins with her finger. ‘I’ll be there. I’ll bring the accounts.’

‘And no one will punish you.’ He held her hands tight. ‘I have money, more than enough.’ For a moment he was tempted to tell her about Vitoria, about that battlefield of gold and jewels, of silks and pearls. ‘You can go where you like. You can run away.’

She laughed. Her eyes were bright on his. ‘I’m not very good at running away.’

He stared at her, overwhelmed by her face, by a beauty that was precious and rare, and he thought of all the things he had wanted to say to her, had dreamed over the years of saying, and suddenly knew that now they must be said, or, perhaps, never be said at all. Sharpe had often taken risks, he had often, on the spur of a sudden thought, and without thinking of consequences, done things on a battlefield that had made his name famous in Wellington’s army. He had climbed a breach where hundreds lay dead, acting on the snatched opportunity because the thought led instantly to the deed and, though caution was wise in soldiering, hesitation was fatal. Yet now, when he spoke, listening with astonishment to his words, he thought he was taking a risk greater than any he had chanced in Spain. ‘Then you must marry me.’

She stared at him in frozen silence. He had said it so quickly, so casually, with a friendly tone as though it was a thought that had just settled in his head. She pulled her hands away, despite the pressure of his fingers, and he regretted the words instantly.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, no.’ She shook her head in embarrassment.

A door closed inside the house, a dull click that seemed to echo menacingly about the garden. She turned at once, staring at the windows as if, from their blank sheen, she could tell what happened in those weapon-hung rooms. ‘I have to go! Mrs Grey sometimes comes to my room.’

‘I am sorry, truly.’

‘No.’ She shook her head again and stood. The door sounded again, and this time she shuddered. ‘I must go!’

‘Jane!’

But she ran. She seemed very frail and slim in the moonlight. Sharpe watched her until she went into the shadows at the side of the house and was gone.

He stayed in the pergola, his head in his hands, and cursed his clumsiness. He had dreamed of this girl for four years and, given a chance to talk with her, he had stamped clumsily where only delicacy was needed. His proposal of marriage echoed in his ears to mock him, and he wished with all the vain hope of a fool, that he could take the words back. He had lost her. She would not come to London. The guineas he had given her were still on the table, fool’s gold in the moonlight.

He waited until the last lights were out in the house, and only then did he move. He plucked a single rose from the pergola and, like a shadow in darkness, went down into the creek that was flooded with the high tide. He left the coins behind.

He rode empty-handed to Foulness. He did not have the evidence he needed, nor, he thought, was it likely that it would come. She had wanted to help, and he had frightened her. He would have to do the desperate thing now, the reckless thing; he would use the Battalion itself as a weapon against the crooks and fools. He might still win, but what he had lost tonight would make all the victories to come seem hollow. He was a fool.

The morning was chaos, as Sharpe had known it would be chaos. The men were willing enough, but the Foulness officers and sergeants seemed incapable of solving the smallest difficulty. ‘Sir?’ Sharpe turned to see Lieutenant Mattingley frowning unhappily in the moonlight before dawn.

‘What is it, Lieutenant?’

‘The cauldrons, sir. We haven’t got transport.’ He waved feebly towards the huge iron pots, each of which was large enough to boil a beef carcass whole. ‘We can’t carry them, sir.’

‘Lieutenant Mattingley,’ Sharpe spoke with a patience he did not feel, ‘imagine that within two miles of this place there were ten thousand Frenchmen who wanted nothing more than to blow your skull apart. Further imagine that you had orders to retreat. What would you do with the cauldrons if that was the case?’

Mattingley blinked, thought about it, then looked tentatively at Sharpe. ‘Abandon them, sir?’

‘Exactly.’ Sharpe turned his horse away. ‘Do that.’

He abandoned the tents too. There were no mules to carry them, any more than there was transport for half the equipment that had been fetched to Foulness. The hired carriage became the Battalion office, its interior crammed with papers that would all need to be sorted out in Chelmsford. The Battalion chest, which now held the precious attestation forms as well as the money, was pushed between the carriage seats.

‘Sir?’ Captain Smith saluted Sharpe. Smith saw, by the pale moonlight, that the Major wore a rose in his top button-hole, but Captain Smith was not the kind of man to ask why.

‘Captain?’

‘Lieutenant Ryker’s gone, sir.’ That was one officer who had decided to resign rather than stay with the Battalion. ‘And, sir?’

‘Well?’

‘The Colonel’s gone too, sir!’ Smith sounded shocked.

‘Good! Good!’ Sharpe was forcing himself to sound cheerful. Most mornings, as Harper knew well, Sharpe was in a foul mood until the sun or a good march had warmed him, but today, with the uncertainty and chaos that surrounded him, he had to pretend that all was normal. ‘You’ve found some drovers?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get them moving!’ Sharpe had ordered that men should be found who, before they joined the army, had been herdsmen. A dozen would be needed to drive the Battalion’s ration cattle on the march. ‘And, Captain Smith?’

‘Sir?’

‘Number four Company’s yours!’

‘Thank you, sir!’

He led them, a raggle-taggle Battalion, out of Foulness. As the dawn leeched the dark sky pale they approached a ford across the Crouch, and Harper, marching at the front of the column, was teaching the lead Company the words of “The Drummer Boy.” ‘Sing, you protestant bastards! Sing!’

By the time they had crossed the Crouch, and the first stragglers were limping to catch up, the lead Company knew the first three verses. It was not a song that was heard much on Britain’s roads, where the officers liked to pretend that the only marching songs were patriotic and stern, but the tune was catching, and the drummer boy’s exploits extraordinary, and the men bellowed out the lines about the lad’s pleasuring of the Colonel’s wife with a gusto. Beyond the Crouch, as they approached a small village, Sharpe called a halt. Geese flew overhead. A miller cranked the sails of his mill to catch the wind, and Sharpe looked at the men who collapsed onto the side of the road and he decided that, given a chance, these men could fight as well as any in Spain.

They must be given that chance. He had no proof now, no evidence of the crimping, and Sharpe knew the evidence was lost. If he had been more gentle with Jane, if he had not blundered into a proposal of marriage on just the fourth time he had met her, then she might even now be planning to find the books. Yet he had frightened her away, before he could tell her where she might find lodgings or help, before any of the small, all-important details could be settled. His ten guineas were doubtless lost, scooped up by a servant, and Sharpe rode to a desperate risk.

‘No proof then, sir?’ d‘Alembord rode alongside Sharpe.

‘None, Dally.’

d‘Alembord looked at the red rose in Sharpe’s buttonhole, decided to say nothing, and gave a confident smile instead. ’We’ll just have to get confessions out of these buggers.‘ He waved at the officers and sergeants ahead.

‘Their word against Lord Fenner?’ Sharpe shrugged. ‘I think I’ve got a better idea.’ He told d‘Alembord his thought of the previous night, the outrageous, splendid, desperate idea, and d’Alembord, after hearing it, laughed. Then, realising that Sharpe was serious, he looked appalled. ‘You can’t do it!’

‘I can,’ Sharpe said mildly. ‘You don’t have to come.’

‘Of course I’ll come! The worst they can do is hang us, isn’t it?’

Sharpe laughed, grateful for the support. He was finding this morning, this day, this march, a trial. Not just because of the foolhardy action he planned, but because he was bitterly regretting his stupid, impulsive proposal of marriage. He had shocked her. He felt a fool. He felt as if he had been given a chance to approach something precious and wonderful, and, with crass clumsiness, he had spoilt it. He tried to convince himself that he was fortunate she had not accepted him on the spot, but instead he felt only regret for his tactlessness.

Jane Gibbons haunted his thoughts to embarrass him, and his enemies haunted them to make him fearful. As soon as Girdwood reached London, the orders would be written for Sharpe’s arrest. Doubtless Fenner would send to Foulness first, then to Chelmsford, and Sharpe watched the road behind his columns as though he expected to see the messengers galloping towards him. His lead over his enemies was slight, and each hour that passed as the unwieldy column trudged along the dusty road, brought failure closer to him.

Sharpe knew he must not show his fears. He found Horatio Havercamp and called him to one side so that the Sergeant walked beside Sharpe’s horse in an interval between Companies. ‘Sir?’

‘How much did you make, Horatio?’

‘Make, sir?’

‘Horatio Havercamp, I started in this army where you did. I know all the bloody tricks and a few even you haven’t bloody learned. How much did you make?’

Havercamp grinned. ‘We got the poor buggers’ wages, sir.’

No wonder, Sharpe thought, the sergeants had been so keen to discover any small fault with a man’s kit that would deserve a deduction from the pay. Those deductions made up the sergeants’ extra income. ‘So how much did you make?’

‘Three pound a week? Varied a bit, of course.’

‘Five pounds a week, maybe?’

‘Say four, sir,’ Havercamp grinned cheerfully. ‘But it was all official like! Above board, sir. Orders.’

Sharpe looked at the sly face. ‘You knew it bloody wasn’t.’

‘Didn’t do any harm, sir, did it? The army needs men; they’ve always paid for crimping, so why not us?’

‘But didn’t you ever wonder what would happen when someone found out?’

The Sergeant still had his look of sly enjoyment. ‘If you was going to arrest us, sir, you’d have done it. You haven’t, which makes me think that you need us. Besides, have you ever seen a better recruiting sergeant than me, sir?‘ He grinned at Sharpe and took from his pocket the two golden guineas which, with his marvellous dexterity, he made come and go between his knuckles. ’It ain’t every sergeant who can say he recruited Major Sharpe, is it?‘

Sharpe smiled. ‘Suppose that I think you’d be more useful to me in Spain?’

‘I always heard you were a sensible man, sir. You find recruits here, sir, not there!’

‘But there are no profits in it any more, Sergeant.’

‘No, sir.’ Sergeant Havercamp smiled happily. He knew the profits were still there, not perhaps of the same magnitude, but recruiters had to carry government cash, and if he organised just two fictional jumpers a week then that was two guineas to be split between himself and his corporals. Sergeant Havercamp knew he would do very nicely, even if, as was the usual practice, officers were sent with each party. Horatio knew how to fix an officer’s purse as well as any man’s. ‘Anything else, sir?’

‘One thing. Is there a Mother Havercamp? You know, the one the General chats to over the garden gate?’

Havercamp laughed. ‘Haven’t seen the old maggot in years, sir. Don’t want to, neither.’

Sharpe laughed.

They came to Chelmsford in the middle of the afternoon, flooding the sleepy depot with men, and the problems that had plagued Sharpe before dawn were now magnified a hundred times. It was here that his real work had to begin.

He had been thinking of this moment ever since the idea had come to him across the table from Jane Gibbons. He had tried to anticipate the problems, but even so there were a thousand details he had not thought of, and, outside of d‘Alembord, Price, and Harper, he had no capable men to cope with the chaos.

He did not have the proof he needed to shield these men from Lord Fenner, nor, he thought now, would that evidence come. If Jane Gibbons did help him, if she brought the accounts even at the very last moment, then he would be spared the desperate risk he planned, but without such proof he must do what his enemies had already done; he must hide the Battalion.