‘Twenty-seven!’
Harper turned his head to face the Light Company. He was not moving at all as the blows hit him. He spat out the leather gag, grinned at them.
‘Twenty-eight! Harder!’
A drummer boy used all his strength. Harper grinned even wider.
‘Stop it!’ Collett stepped his horse forward. ‘Put the gag in!’
They pushed the leather back in Harper’s mouth, but he spat it out again, and grinned through the punishment. There was an appreciative murmur from the Light Company, almost a laugh, and they saw that Harper was chatting to the drummer boys. The bastard had beaten the punishment! Sharpe knew it was hurting him, but knew that Harper’s pride would not let it show, would only let him pretend a total unconcern.
The punishment finished, made almost farcical by Harper’s unbelievable bravery. ‘Cut him down!’
Sharpe had seen men crumple to the ground after just two dozen strokes, but Harper stepped away from the cut thongs, still grinning, and did nothing more than massage his wrists. The doctor asked him a question and the Irishman laughed, refused the offer of a blanket to be draped over his bleeding back, and turned to follow his escort off the parade.
‘Private Harper!’ Windham had spurred his horse forward.
‘Sir?’ There was almost a contempt in Harper’s voice.
‘You’re a brave man. Here.’ Windham tossed a gold coin towards the Ulsterman. For a brief fraction of a second it seemed as if Harper might ignore the coin, then a huge hand whipped up, snatched it from the air, and he gave the Colonel his big, infectious grin. ‘Thank you, sir.’
The Battalion gave a low, collective sigh of relief. Windham must have realized, even as the punishment was happening, that he was flogging the most popular man in the Battalion. There had been hostility in the parade, an unusual hostility. Soldiers did not object to a flogging, why should they? If a man deserved punishment then a battalion would line up and watch punishment done. But soldiers also had a keen sense of injustice and Sharpe, watching Windham, knew that the Colonel had sensed the Battalion’s outrage. A mistake had been made. It could not be admitted or reversed, not without proof, but the gold coin had been a clever touch. Windham, for all his pretence at being a simple country squire, was a clever man.
And Hakeswill a cunning man. The Sergeant kept his face expressionless as the parade was dismissed. Hakeswill was triumphant. Harper had been defeated, demoted, and the Company was at Hakeswill’s mercy. He now wanted one thing more, and would get it, Sharpe’s misery; and thanks to Company rumor, the Sergeant knew where that misery could be accomplished, at the house behind the Cathedral with its two orange trees.
Sharpe found Harper in a shelter, two of the wives putting grease on his back and bandaging the wounds. ‘Well?’
Harper grinned. ‘Hurt like hell, sir. I couldn’t have taken much more. ‘ He held up the golden guinea. ‘What do I do with this?’
‘Spend it?’
‘No.’ The Irishman stared past Sharpe into the sea of mud that was swept by great curtains of grey rain. ‘I’ll keep it, sir, until I’ve killed the bastard.’
‘Or until I kill him?’
‘One of us, sir. But make it soon. Before we leave this place.’
If ever they would leave Badajoz, Sharpe thought. That afternoon he took a working party east, towards the Portuguese border. They found the precious pontoons aground in the flood and stripped naked to manhandle the great boats to where oxen could haul them back. The siege was bogged down, in rain, mud and misery. Badajoz was like a great castle in mid-ocean. The rain had flooded the fields to the south, the west, and the north, and still the wind shrieked at them, brought more water, and though it was a time for effort, the effort could not be made. The trenches were flooded, the sides collapsed, and when gabions were used to shore the batteries, the water dissolved their earth filling into liquid sludge that flowed out leaving a hollow, useless wicker shell.
Everything was fouled with mud. Carts, supplies, forage, food, uniforms, weapons and men. The camp was foul, the only movement the slow flapping of wet canvas in the wind, and fever killed as many as the ceaseless French guns. The time that the French had hoped to gain by their attack on the parallel was given to them by the weather. Morale slumped. The first Monday of the siege was the worst. It had rained for a week, and it still rained, and darkness fell on an army that could scarce even light a fire any more. Nothing was dry, nothing was warm, and a man from a Welsh Regiment, a fusilier, went mad. There were shouts in the night, a terrifying scream as he carved his wife with a bayonet, and then hundreds of men were fumbling in the darkness, thinking it was a French attack, while the madman ran through the camp, slashing left and right with his weapon. He screamed that the resurrection of the dead was here and now, that he was the new Messiah, and finally his Sergeant cornered him and, sensible that no one wanted a court-martial and execution, killed the man with one neat stab.