‘A looter, sir. Caught in the act.’ Ayres was smiling.
Batten, who grumbled incessantly, who moaned if it rained and made a fuss when it stopped because the sun was in his eyes. Private Batten, a one-man destroyer of flintlocks, who thought the whole world was conspiring to annoy him, and who now stood flinching beneath the grasp of one of Ayres’s men. If there were any one member of the Company whom Sharpe would gladly have hanged, it would be Batten, but he was damned if any provost was going to do it for him.
Sharpe looked up at Ayres. ‘What was he looting, Lieutenant?’
‘This.’
Ayres held up a scrawny chicken as if it were the Crown of England. Its neck had been well wrung, but the legs still jerked and scrabbled at the air. Sharpe felt the anger come inside him, not at the provosts but at Batten.
‘I’ll deal with him, Lieutenant.’
Batten cringed away from his Captain.
Ayres shook his head. ‘You misunderstand, sir.’ He was talking with silky condescension. ‘Looters are hung, sir. On the spot, sir. As an example to others.’
There was a muttering from the Company, broken by Harper’s bellowed order for silence. Batten’s eyes flicked left and right as if looking for an escape from this latest example of the world’s injustice. Sharpe snapped at him. ‘Batten!’
‘Sir?’
‘Where did you find the chicken?”
‘It was in the field, sir. Honest.’ He winced as his hair was pulled. ‘It was a wild chicken, sir.’
There was a rustle of laughter from the ranks that Harper let go. Ayres snorted. ‘A wild chicken. Dangerous beasts, eh, sir? He’s lying. I found him in the cottage.’
Sharpe believed him, but he was not going to give up. ‘Who lives in the cottage, Lieutenant?’
Ayres raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, sir, I have not exchanged cards with every slum in Portugal.’ He turned to his men. ‘String him up.’
‘Lieutenant Ayres.’ The tone of Sharpe’s voice stopped any movement in the street. ‘How do you know the cottage is inhabited?’
‘Look for yourself.’
‘Sir.’
Ayres swallowed. ‘Sir.’
Sharpe raised his voice. ‘Are there people there, Lieutenant?’
‘No, sir. But it’s lived in.’
‘How do you know? The village is deserted. You can’t steal a chicken from nobody.’
Ayres thought about his reply. The village was deserted, the inhabitants gone away from the French attack, but absence was not a relinquishing of ownership. He shook his head. ‘The chicken is Portuguese property, sir.’ He turned again. ‘Hang him!’
‘Halt!’ Sharpe bellowed and again movement stopped. ‘You’re not going to hang him, so just go your way.’
Ayres swivelled back to Sharpe. ‘He was caught red-handed and the bastard will hang. Your men are probably a pack of bloody thieves and they need an example and, by God, they will get one!’ He raised himself in his stirrups and shouted at the Company. ‘You will see him hang! And if you steal, then you will hang too!’
A click interrupted him. He looked down and the anger in his face was replaced by astonishment. Sharpe held his Baker rifle, cocked, so that the barrel was pointing at Ayres.
‘Let him go, Lieutenant.’
‘Have you gone mad?’
Ayres had gone white, had sagged back into his saddle.
Sergeant Harper, instinctively, came and stood beside Sharpe and ignored the hand that waved him away. Ayres stared at the two men. Both tall, both with hard, fighters’ faces, and a memory tickled at him. He looked at Sharpe, at the face that appeared to have a perpetually mocking expression, caused by the scar that ran down the right cheek, and he suddenly remembered. Wild chickens, bird-catchers! The South Essex Light Company. Were these the two men who had captured the Eagle? Who had hacked their way into a French regiment and come out with the standard? He could believe it.
Sharpe watched the Lieutenant’s eyes waver and knew that he had won, but it was a victory that would cost him dearly. The army did not look kindly on men who held rifles on provosts, even empty rifles.
Ayres pushed Batten forward. ‘Have your thief, Captain. We shall meet again.’