Carline gave the smallest nod. ‘I’ve heard the name, sir.’
‘Less than one month ago, Carline, I saw his guts in blood. His belly was slit open. It was not a pretty sight, Captain. It would have spoilt your tea. But I’ll show it to you, Captain Carline. I’ll rip your bloody guts out with my own hands unless you answer me some god-damned questions! I’ll pull your spine out of your throat! You hear me?’
Carline looked as if he might faint. ‘Sir?’
‘Where is the Second Battalion?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’ He said it pleadingly, with naked fear in his eyes, and Sharpe believed him.
‘Then what the hell do you know, Captain Carline?’
Slowly, haltingly, Carline told his story. The Second Battalion, he said, had been stood down six months before, converted into a Holding Battalion. All recruiting had been stopped. Then, abruptly, the Second Battalion had marched away.
‘Just like that?’ Sharpe snarled the question. ‘They simply vanished?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Carline said it plaintively.
‘No explanations?’
Carline shrugged. ‘Colonel Girdwood said they were going to other units, sir.’ He paused. ‘He said the war’s coming to an end, sir, and the army was being pruned. We were to send our last draft out to the First Battalion and then just keep the depot tidy.’ He shrugged again, a gesture of helplessness.
‘The French are pruning the bloody army, Carline, and we need recruits! Are you recruiting for the First Battalion?’
‘No, sir. We were ordered not to!’
Sharpe saw Patrick Harper dressing a feeble Company into ranks on the parade ground. He turned back to Carline. ‘Colonel Girdwood said the men were being taken to other units?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Would it surprise you, Carline, to know that the Second Battalion still draws pay and rations for seven hundred men?’
Carline said nothing. He was doubtless thinking what Sharpe was thinking, that the seven hundred were non-existent and their pay was being appropriated by Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood. It was a scandal as old as the army; drawing the pay of men who did not exist. Sharpe, in a gesture of irritation, swatted a fly with his hand and ground it into the carpet with his boot. ‘So what do you do with the Second Battalion’s mail? Its paperwork? I presume some of it still comes here?’
‘We send it on to the War Office, sir.’
‘The War Office!’ Sharpe’s astonishment made his voice suddenly loud. The War Office was supposed to conduct war, and Sharpe would have expected the paperwork to go to the Horse Guards that administered the army.
‘To Lord Fenner’s secretary, sir.’ Carline spoke with more confidence, as if the mention of the politician’s name would awe Sharpe.
It did. Lord Fenner, the Secretary of State at War, had suggested in his despatch to Wellington that the First Battalion be broken up and now, it seemed, he was the man responsible for the disappearance of the Second Battalion, a disappearance that must obviously have the highest official backing. Or else, and it seemed unthinkable, Lord Fenner was an accomplice with Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood in peculation; stealing money through a forged payroll.
Footsteps were loud in the hallway, and Patrick Harper loomed huge in the doorway of the Mess. He slammed to attention. ‘Men on parade, sir. What there are of them.’
Sharpe turned. ‘Regimental Sergeant Major Harper? This is Captain Carline.’
‘Sir!’ Harper looked at Carline rather as a tiger would look at a goat. Carline, in his dancing shoes and with one hand on the spinet, seemed incapable of speaking. To think of himself as a soldier in the presence of these two tall, implacable men was ridiculous.
‘Sergeant Major,’ Sharpe’s voice was conversational, ‘do you think the war has addled my wits?’
There was a flicker of temptation on the broad face, then a respectful, ‘No, sir!’
‘Then listen to this story, RSM. The South Essex raises a Second Battalion whose job is to find men, train men, then send them to our First Battalion in Spain. Is that correct, Captain Carline?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So it recruits. It did recruit, Captain?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And six months ago, RSM,’ Sharpe swung back, ‘it is made into a Holding Battalion. No more recruiting, of course, it is merely a convenient dung heap for the army’s refuse.’ He stared at Carline. ‘No one knows why. We poor bastards are dying in Spain, but some clodpole decides we don’t need recruits.’ He looked back at Harper. ‘I am told, RSM, that the Holding Battalion has been broken up, it has disappeared, it has vanished! Its mail goes to the War Office, yet it still draws rations for seven hundred men. Sergeant Major Harper?’