Harper reappeared with his men, all of them armed, all of them looking apprehensively at Sharpe. One of them asked nervously if the deserters would be shot.
“I don’t know,” Sharpe snapped. “Lead on, Kirby.”
They walked down the hill into the poorest section of the town, into a tangle of alleyways where half-dressed children played in the filth that was hurled from the night-buckets into the roadway. Washing hung between the high balconies, obscuring the light, and the closeness of the walls seemed to heighten the stench. It was a smell the men had first encountered in Lisbon, and they had become accustomed to it even though its source made walking through the streets after dark a risky and nauseat-ing business. The men were silent and resentful, following Sharpe reluctantly to a duty they had no wish to perform.
“Here, sir.” Kirby pointed to a building that was little more than a hovel. It had partly collapsed, and the rest looked as if it could fall at any moment. Sharpe turned to the men. “You wait here. Sergeant, Peters, come with me.”
Peters was from the South Essex. Sharpe had noted him as a sensible man, older than most, and he needed someone from the deserters’ own Battalion so that no-one could think that the green-jacketed Riflemen had ganged up on the South Essex.
He pushed open the door. He had half expected someone to be waiting with a gun but instead he found himself looking at a room of unimaginable squalor. The four men were on the floor, two of them lying, the others sitting by the dead embers of a fire. Light filtered thickly through holes that had once been windows and through the broken roof and upper floors. The men were dressed in rags.
Sharpe crossed to the two sick men. He crouched and looked at their faces; they were white and shivering, the pulse beat almost gone. He turned to the others.
“Who are you?”
“Corporal Moss, sir.” The man had a fortnight’s growth of beard and his cheeks were sunken. They had obviously not been eating. “This is Private Ibbotson.” He pointed to his companion. “And those are Privates Campbell and Trap-per, sir.” Moss was being punctilious and polite, as though it could save him from his fate. Dust lay heavy in the air; the room was filled with the stench of illness and ordure.
“Why are you in Oropesa?”
“Came to rejoin the Regiment, sir,” Moss said, but it was said too quickly. There was silence. Ibbotson sat by the dead fire and stared at the ground between his knees. He was the only one with a weapon, a bayonet held in his left hand, and Sharpe guessed that he did not approve of what was happening.
“Where are your weapons?”
“Lost `em, sir. And the uniforms.” Moss was eager to please.
“You mean you sold them.”
Moss shrugged. “Yes, sir.”
“And you drank away the money?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a sudden noise in the next room, and Sharpe whirled to face the doorway. There was nothing there. Moss shook his head. “Rats, sir. Bloody armies of them.”
Sharpe looked back to the deserters. Ibbotson was now staring at him, the frightening stare of a crazed fanatic. For a moment Sharpe wondered if he was planning to use the bayonet.
“What are you doing here, Ibbotson? You don’t want to rejoin the Regiment.”
The man said nothing. Instead he lifted his right arm that had been hidden behind his body. There was no hand, just a stump wrapped in blood-soaked rags.
“Ibbs got in a fight, sir,” Moss said. “Lost `is ‘and. He’s no use to anyone no more, sir. “E’s right-handed, you see,” he added lamely.
“You mean he’s no use to the French.”
There was silence. The dust hung thick in the air. “That’s right.” Ibbotson had spoken. He had an educated voice. Moss tried to quieten him but Ibbotson ignored the Corporal. “We would have been with the French a week ago but these fools decided to drink.”
Sharpe stared at him. It was strange to hear a cultured voice coming from the rags, stubble and blood-soaked bandages. The man was ill, he probably had gangrene, but it hardly mattered now. By admitting they were running towards the enemy Ibbotson had condemned all four. If they had been caught trying to get to a neutral country they might have been sent, as Sharpe might be, to the garrison in the West Indies, where the fever would kill them anyway, but there was only one punishment for men who deserted to the enemy. Corporal Moss knew it. He looked up at Sharpe and pleaded. “Honest, sir, we didn’t know what we was doing. We waited `ere, sir. ,