Sharpe's Regiment (37 page)

No one noticed them, except for the major in charge of the trophies who raised a hand in friendly salute.

They marched. Harper called out the step, his voice loud and confident. One of the militia sergeants turned, looked at them, and wondered why the column of men which, though he did not know it, looked like a French attack formation, approached so menacingly from his rear.

Sharpe was leading them to the centre line of the review ground. The militia were falling back, leaving a few men pretending to be dead on the ground. A militia officer noticed Sharpe.

They were well in view of all the stands now, of all the spectators, but all eyes were on the splendid advance of the British troops, Colours flying, whose bands filled the park with the music of triumph. Only the militia, seeing the column coming to their rear, were glancing nervously behind like troops fearing encirclement on a battlefield.

The marshals suddenly saw them. Sharpe saw two coming, saw the turf flung up behind the galloping hooves, and he called back to Harper to speed the march, to close the half Companies, and this was the challenge, this was the moment he had planned. Now, just as in battle, he had to close his ears to everything that might distract him, ignore everything that was not concerned with his victory. He did this for the men in Pasajes, for the men who lay in graves across Spain, for the girl who watched him.

‘You! Who are you?’ It was a cavalry captain, standing in his stirrups and bellowing the angry challenge.

Sharpe ignored the man. ‘Clear ranks! Clear ranks!’ He shouted the order at the militia ahead of him, using a voice which had been forged on parade grounds and practised on battlefields.

‘Halt!’ A colonel was beside him now. ‘Halt your men! I order it!’

‘Prince’s orders! Out the way!’ Sharpe snarled it. He hefted the Eagle higher, and the colonel, thinking that the metal trophy was about to strike at him, sheered his horse to one side.

‘Who the devil are you?’

‘King Joseph of Spain. Now bugger off!’ Sharpe’s voice was vicious, his face a savage mask. The curse astonished the colonel, then Sharpe forced his horse into the widening gap that the splitting militia men were making for him. ‘Close up, Sergeant! Close up!’

The field was shouts and music, blank muskets peppering the air with smoke, and Sharpe shouted the order again, the commonest order of all on a battlefield when files have been flung down by cannon-fire and men shuffle towards the centre of the line and load their guns. ‘Close up! Close up!’

 

The colonel was spurring after him, but Sharpe was not looking at the man. He was watching the approaching infantry instead, judging how long it would take them to cover the one hundred yards that separated them from the front of his column. ‘Left wheel! Smartly now!’ The colonel tried to grab Sharpe’s rein, but the Eagle swung at the colonel’s horse, striking it over the face so that the beast swerved, reared, and Sharpe was clear. ‘Close ranks! Close ranks!’

He had driven a path of destruction through the carefully reconstructed battle. Instead of the minutely rehearsed defeat, the “enemy” now seemed to be fighting back, bursting through the centre of the line to advance against the astonished victors.

‘Stop!’ the colonel shouted. More marshals were spurring towards the small, ragged column that suddenly, to Sharpe’s bellowed orders, wheeled left to march directly towards the Royal pavilion. ‘March! Heads up! March!’ Sharpe put the Eagle, with the horse’s reins, into his left hand and, with a surge of excitement because he could see his target now, the object of these days of marching and hiding, he drew his great sword. His horse, unused to such commotion, stepped in small, nervous steps, and Sharpe pressed his knees against its flanks to keep it going steadily towards the Prince Regent.

The Royal bodyguard stared in shock at the men who approached them. The right flank of the British advance, loud with cavalry calls, checked because their way was blocked, while the left flank, unobstructed, kept marching forward to throw the whole practised symmetry of the advance into skewed disorder. Four officers now screamed at Sharpe, one shouted at the South Essex to halt, but Harper’s voice was louder than any of the marshals and, despite the nervous glances of their officers, the men marched on. Sharpe was ahead of them. He could see the Prince now, and a man beside him who could only be the Duke of York, and he half turned and shouted the next order at Harper. ‘Deploy!’

They formed line, facing and outflanking the bodyguard, and Sharpe could see the consternation in the Royal stand as men realised that this careful day had been driven into chaos by the dirty, unkempt troops who, with fixed bayonets, now faced the Regent of England, his brother, and the cream of society. The Prince, standing now, was twenty yards from Sharpe, staring at the mounted officer who held the French Eagle high in the air.

‘Guards!’ An officer on the flank of the bodyguard who feared that a volley of musketry was about to soak the Royal stand in blood, shouted at his men to load their weapons.

Sharpe ignored the threat. He rested the sword on his saddle, took off his shako, and stared at the Prince who, recognition dawning, smiled with sudden delight. Sharpe looked down to Harper. ‘RSM? Now!’

This was the manoeuvre they had practised, the manoeuvre never before seen on a battlefield or parade ground, and Sharpe’s men did it before the astonished eyes of the Foot Guards whose ramrods were still thrusting down the unnecessary bullets. The Royal stand, Lord Fenner, the whole bright array of the disordered parade watched as the strange, scruffy troops grounded muskets and, to the orders of a massive sergeant, removed their shakos.

Sixty white chickens had given the men a splendid meal and a fine flock of feathers. Each man had been issued with three white feathers, which now, like Sharpe, they pushed behind the badges of their shakos so that, after a few seconds, when the shakos were back on the mens’ heads, each wore the badge of the Prince of Wales white against their black headgear.

The Prince was charmed by the feathers. The Duke of York stared in fury. Sergeant Harper shouted the command for the general salute.

Sharpe had no proof that this Battalion had been stolen, that its masters were criminals, so now he was trying to put these men under the protection of the Prince Regent, of the fat man who nodded with pleasure as Sharpe lowered the Eagle in submissive homage. Sharpe, who could prove nothing against Lord Fenner, would harness the immense patronage and influence of the Regent of Britain and, even though the Prince Regent had no formal power over the army or the War Office, Sharpe could not see how his enemies could prevail over the Prince’s wishes. Sharpe was presenting these men to the Prince in the hope that the Prince would become their ally and protector, and the Prince was delighted. ‘What Battalion is it, Rossendale?’

Lord John Rossendale saw the yellow facings. He trained the Prince’s spyglass on one of the shakos so that he could see the badge of the chained eagle. ‘South Essex, sir.’ He said it with some astonishment, remembering that Lord Fenner had denied the Battalion’s corporeal existence.

‘Mine now, eh? Mine! Splendid!’ Sharpe, his sword held vertically in the salute, could not hear the Prince. Jane Gibbons, sharing the telescope with Charlie Weller, clapped as she saw the feathers on the shakos.

“Talion!‘ Sergeant Harper’s voice rode over the protests of the massing marshals. ’Three cheers for His Royal Highness! Hip, hip, hip!‘

They cheered. Some of the feathers drooped or fell, but it did not matter, the Prince was charmed. ‘Major Sharpe!’

Sharpe knew his victory was not complete. He must talk to the Prince. He saw the beckoning fat hand and tried to push his horse forward to lay the Eagle before his Prince, but other orders were being shouted, and mounted men were pressing about his horse. A colonel of the Blues snatched the Eagle from him and a major wrestled for his sword. Another hand seized his bridle and pulled him away from the Royal pavilion.

‘Major Sharpe!’ The Prince called again, but the Rifleman was surrounded by marshals and officers, angry mounted men who jostled him away.

‘Your Royal Highness?’ Lord Fenner had hurried along the tier of seats. ‘Your Royal Highness?’

‘Fenner!’

‘I trust your Royal Highness liked our small display.’ Lord Fenner, seeing the Prince’s happiness, was thinking fast.

‘Monstrous good, Fenner! I like it! The men who took the Eagle, eh? Dressed as they were that day. I do like it, indeed, yes. Thank you, Fenner! I like it very much! Rossendale!’

‘Sir?’

The Prince was trying to see Sharpe in the confusion, but there were too many mounted men. ‘Tell Major Sharpe I expect him at our reception this night.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The Duke of York, appalled at the shambles that had been made of his display, ignored his elder brother’s delight. ‘He’s under arrest! Maxwell!’

A full General of the Guards came close.

‘Take him to the Horse Guards now! I’ll have his damned head for this, by God I will!’ He turned to Fenner. ‘What the devil’s going on, Fenner?’

‘I think I can explain, your Royal Highness.’ Lord Fenner smiled pacifically. He watched General Maxwell ordering an escort for Sharpe and, Lord Fenner, seeing the arrest, knew that Sharpe had gambled and lost.

‘What is happening, Freddy?’ the Prince asked plaintively.

‘Not a god-damn thing.’ The Duke of York signalled the marshals to extricate the parade from its sudden chaos and carry on with the battle. He turned and waved his fat hands at the spectators in the Royal stand who, alarmed for their safety, stood in confused worry. ‘Nothing to worry you, nothing to worry you at all! Sit!’ He plumped himself down, face outraged, as an example to the spectators.

Sharpe had marched a flank march, surprised the enemy, and lost. His escort closed about him and hurried from the field. He had not reached the Prince, he had failed.

While across the park, puzzled and hot, the Reverend and Mrs Octavius Godolphin agreed what a pickle the regular army had made of the afternoon! Not nearly so smart as the local Fencibles on parade! And to come all this way just to see muddle and shambolic chaos? Thank God for the Navy, the Reverend Godolphin fervently thought, then took his wife to Mrs Paul’s for tea.

The room was upstairs in the Horse Guards. It was a large room, comfortably furnished, its papered walls hung with maps of fortresses and its chairs upholstered in fine leather. Expensive white candles burned pure, still flames above tables and desks.

Lord Fenner, papers spread before him, sat in the place of honour. At his side stood General Sir Barstan Maxwell, his round face still scarlet with fury at this upstart Rifleman who had destroyed the carefully rehearsed celebrations. At a side table, well lit by the tall candles, a clerk scratched down the records of the proceedings. Behind them all, in a deep, comfortable window, sat Sir Henry Simmerson whose joy at this humiliation of Richard Sharpe was complete. Downstairs, in the courtyard of the Horse Guards, Girdwood guarded Sir Henry’s niece who had been found stranded in the park with a common soldier. This night, Sir Henry had promised her, she would be
flogged
till her bones were chalk.

Major Richard Sharpe stood in the room’s centre. His sword, rifle and telescope lay on the wide table before Lord Fenner.

He had gained, though it was very cold comfort to him, a partial victory. He had saved the Battalion. He had
produced
it before the Commander in Chief, indelibly impressed its existence upon the Prince Regent, and there could be no denials now that it was merely a holding Battalion, a paper convenience for the administration. Within the last hour, together with a formal invitation for Major Sharpe to attend Carlton House this evening, there had come a paper, magnificently sealed, which said it was His Royal Highness the Prince Regent’s pleasure that, henceforth, the South Essex Regiment should be known as the Prince of Wales’ Own Volunteers. An accompanying letter thanked Lord Fenner for the moment of pleasure that the donning of the feathers had given to His Royal Highness, and reminded Lord Fenner of the reception that would be held that night at Carlton House. Fenner intended to be present, but, before leaving the Horse Guards, he would destroy this impudent man who had defied him. ‘You had orders to return to Spain, Major Sharpe.’ His nasal, precise voice was quiet. ‘You disobeyed.’

‘You know why.’

Fenner’s long white fingers tapped the papers on his desk. ‘Your insolence is noted.’ The clerk’s pen scratched ominously as Fenner looked at his own notes. ‘You failed to obey an order, Major, that directed you to our army in Spain. That is tantamount to desertion.’

‘And you’re a bloody crimp, and that’s robbery.’

‘Silence!’ General Sir Barstan Maxwell thumped the table with his fist, shaking the tall candles so that their flames shivered. ‘You are an officer! Try to behave like a gentleman!’

Sharpe looked at the General, a Guardsman. ‘These gentlemen, sir, have been disguising a Battalion as a holding unit, crimping the men to their own profit, and stealing their wages.’

Lord Fenner gave an easy, soft laugh. He leaned back in his chair and waved at the clerk who, frightened by the sudden thump on the table, had stopped writing. ‘Write it down, man, write it all down! Write that Major Sharpe is formally accusing His Majesty’s Secretary of State at War of “crimping” - is that the right word, Major?’

‘Thievery will do.’

‘Write that as well! You can, of course, substantiate these accusations, Major?’ Fenner smiled, Sir Henry snorted, and General Sir Barstan Maxwell glared at Sharpe.

Sharpe could not. He had thought that by putting himself under the Prince of Wales’ protection he would be safe from any proceedings such as these, but he had misjudged the situation. He had misjudged it terribly, and he knew that in this lavish, expensive room his career had come to an ignoble end. Not just his career, but that great bubble of happiness that he had experienced with Jane. There could be no marriage now. Sir Henry had crowed that she was in his carriage, that she would return home, that she was not for him. Sharpe, who had worked to disgrace these men so that Girdwood could not marry Jane Gibbons, was to be broken instead.