SHARPE’S REGIMENT

‘You won’t see the filth again.’ Sergeant Lynch, put into d’Alembord’s Company, was surly still, ever ready to preach doom. Slowly, as the punishment he had expected did not materialise, he was regaining his old bumptious confidence. Charlie Weller still stared at him in hatred, remembering the death of Buttons.

Sharpe did not smile. He sensed the mutual hatred between himself and the Irish Sergeant. ‘I am not a gambling man, Sergeant Lynch, but I will wager you one pound a man, which you can well afford, that every man will come back.’

Lynch would not take the bet and every man came back.

Twice Sharpe met senior officers, both riding close to their country estates, and both delighted to meet him. They nodded genially at the marching men. Sharpe said they were on exercise and neither officer thought there was anything odd in it, which meant that there was no hue and cry being made for a half Battalion missing in England.

Sharpe was certain that Lord Fenner would institute a search, but he guessed the search would concentrate on Chelmsford and then, perhaps, on one of the depots, like Chatham, from whence the replacements sailed to Spain. If he was found in the next two days, before he could lay on the display that he planned, then he knew he was doomed.

On the Friday morning, as the half Battalion turned southwards, Sharpe called Lieutenant Mattingley to him. Mattingley, like Smith, wanted to impress Sharpe, wanted forgiveness, and he showed a doglike relief when he saw that Sharpe was smiling. ‘Sir?’

‘It is Friday, Mattingley.’

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘I want chicken for dinner.’

‘Chicken, sir? There’s beef left.’

‘Chicken!’ Sharpe waved to a woman who watched the men pass and who returned ribald comments as good as she got from the marching ranks. ‘White chickens, Mattingley, to the number of sixty.’

‘Sixty white chickens, sir?’

‘White chickens taste better. Buy them. Steal them if we haven’t enough money, but find me sixty white chickens for dinner.’

Mattingley wondered if Sharpe was proving to be just another eccentric officer. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Mattingley?’

‘Sir?’

‘I want a feather mattress. Keep the feathers.’

Mattingley was now convinced that Sharpe, who still wore a fading rose beneath his collar, was touched in the head. Too much fighting, perhaps. ‘A feather mattress. Of course, sir.’

That night, before a dinner of stewed chicken, Sharpe rehearsed his half Battalion in a manoeuvre which had never, so far as he knew, been performed by any Battalion in the history of war or peace, a manoeuvre that made the men laugh, but which, until they performed it to his satisfaction, he insisted on practising. Some, like Sergeant Lynch, thought he was crazy, others just thought that the whole army was mad, while Harper, who bellowed the strange orders, knew that Sharpe’s high spirits meant that they were about to go into action.

And indeed, in the next dawn, which showed the southern sky hazed by a great smoke, Sharpe dressed himself in his old uniform of battle, his scarred, faded, tattered uniform that bore no marks of rank. He made Charlie Weller, who was skilled with a needle, sew the laurel wreath back onto his old sleeve. ‘I wore that jacket when we captured the Eagle, Charlie.’

‘You did, sir?’ Weller watched wide-eyed as Sharpe pulled the green jacket on, and as he strapped the great sword about his waist. ‘Something special today, sir?’

‘Yes, Charlie. It’s Saturday the twenty-first of August.’ Sharpe drew the sword and turned it so that the rising sun ran its pale light up the blade. ‘A very special day.’

Weller grinned. ‘Special, sir?’

‘Special, Charlie, because you’re going to London to meet a Prince.’ Sharpe smiled, slammed the sword into its scabbard, then mounted his horse. He was going to a battle.

CHAPTER 18

The crowds gathered early in Hyde Park. The public enclosure was entered from the old Tyburn Lane, now renamed Park Lane to rid it of the odium of public execution. Once through the Grosvenor Gate there was a generous stretch of grass, defined by rope barriers, in front of the Reservoir where Londoners could walk, watch the proceedings, and buy ale, pies and fruit. The best views of the review and pageant would be had either from the top of the Reservoir bank, or else from one of the many tiers of seats that builders were permitted to erect and then hire out to the public. Behind the roped area, between the public enclosure and the Tyburn Lane, there were sacking screens for lavatories, whose owners sat collecting farthings from the more fastidious of the spectators.

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