Fillmore shrugged. ‘Ensign Fitzgerald would also like to say something.’
Shee glared at Fitzgerald. ‘Not much to say, Ensign, I trust?’
‘Whatever it might take, sir, to prevent a miscarriage of
justice.’ Fitzgerald, young and confident, stood and smiled at his commanding officer and fellow Irishman. ‘I doubt we’ve a better soldier in the regiment, sir, and I suspect Private Sharpe was given provocation.’
‘Captain Morris says not,’ Shee insisted, ‘and so does Ensign Hicks.’
‘I cannot contradict the Captain, sir,’ Fitzgerald said blandly, ‘but I was drinking with Timothy Hicks earlier that evening, sir, and if his eyes weren’t crossed by midnight then he must possess a belly like a Flanders cauldron.’
Shee looked dangerously belligerent. ‘Are you accusing a fellow officer of being under the influence of liquor?’
Fitzgerald reckoned that most of the 33rd’s mess was ever under the influence of arrack, rum or brandy, but he also knew better than to say as much. ‘I’m just agreeing with Captain Fillmore, sir, that we should give Private Sharpe the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Doubt?’ Shee spat. ‘There is no doubt! Open and shut!’ He gestured at Sharpe who stood hatless in front of his escort. Flies crawled on Sharpe’s face, but he was not allowed to brush them away. Shee seemed to shudder at the thought of Sharpe’s villainy. ‘He struck a sergeant in full view of two officers, and you think there’s doubt about what happened?’
‘I do, sir,’ Fitzgerald declared forcibly. ‘Indeed I do.’
Sergeant Hakeswill’s face twitched. He watched Fitzgerald with loathing. Major Shee stared at Fitzgerald for a few seconds, then shook his head as though questioning the Ensign’s sanity.
Captain Fillmore tried one last time. Fillmore doubted the evidence of Morris and Hicks, and he had never trusted Hakeswill, but he knew Shee could never be persuaded to take the word of a private against that of two officers and a sergeant. ‘Might I beg the court,’ Fillmore said respectfully, ‘to suspend judgment until Lieutenant Lawford can speak for the prisoner?’
‘What can Lawford say, in the name of God?’ Shee demanded. There was a flask of arrack waiting in his baggage and he wanted to get these proceedings over and done. He had a brief, muttered conversation with his two fellow judges, both of them field officers from other regiments, then glared at the prisoner. ‘You’re a damned villain, Sharpe, and the army has no need of villains. If you can’t respect audiority, then don’t expect authority to respect you. Two thousand lashes.’ He ignored the shudder of astonishment and horror that some of the onlookers gave and looked instead at the Sergeant Major. ‘How soon can it be done?’
‘This afternoon’s as good a time as any, sir,’ Bywaters answered stolidly. He had expected a flogging verdict, though not as severe as this, and he had already made the necessary arrangements.
Shee nodded. ‘Parade the battalion in two hours. These proceedings are over.’ He gave Sharpe one foul glance, then pushed his chair back. He would need some arrack, Shee thought, if he was to sit his horse in the sun through two thousand lashes. Maybe he should have only given one thousand, for a thousand lashes were as liable to kill as two, but it was too late now, the verdict was given, and Shee’s only hope of respite from the dreadful heat was his hope that the prisoner would die long before the awful punishment was finished.
Sharpe was kept under guard. His sentinels were not men from his own battalion, but six men from the King’s iath who did not know him and who could therefore be trusted not to connive in his escape. They kept him in a makeshift pen behind Shee’s tent and no one spoke to Sharpe there until Sergeant Green arrived. ‘I’m sorry about this, Sharpie,’ Green said, stepping over the ammunition boxes that formed the crude walls of the pen.
Sharpe was sitting with his back against the boxes. He shrugged. ‘I’ve been whipped before, Sergeant.’
‘Not in the army, lad, not in the army. Here.’ Green held out a canteen. ‘It’s rum.’
Sharpe uncorked the canteen and drank a good slug of the liquor. ‘I didn’t do nothing anyway,’ he said sullenly.