‘Sir?’
‘What do you think of that story?’
Harper frowned. ‘It’s a real bastard, sir, so it is.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps if we break some heads, sir, some bastards will stop lying.’
‘I like that thought, Sergeant Major.’ Sharpe stared at Carline, and his voice was conversational no longer. ‘If you’ve lied to me, Captain, I’ll tear you to tatters.’
‘I haven’t lied, sir.’
Sharpe believed him, but it made no difference. He was in a fog of deception, and the hopelessness of it made him furious as he went into the sunlight to inspect the few men who had been assembled by d’Alembord. Either there were no men in the Second Battalion, in which case there would be no trained replacements for the invasion of France, or, if they did exist, Sharpe would have to find them through Lord Fenner who would, doubtless, not take kindly to an interfering visit from a mere Major.
He stalked through the sleeping huts, wondering how he was to approach the Secretary of State at War, then went to inspect the armoury. The armoury sergeant, a veteran with one leg, was grinning hopefully at him. ‘You remember me, sir?’
Sharpe looked at the leathery, scarred face, and he cursed himself because he could not put a name to it, then Patrick Harper, standing behind him, laughed aloud. ‘Ted Carew!’
‘Carew!’ Sharpe said the name as if he had just remembered it himself. ‘Talavera?’
‘That’s right, sir. Lost the old peg there.’ Carew slapped his right leg that ended in a wooden stump. ‘Good to see you, sir!’
It was good to see Sergeant Carew for, alone in the Chelmsford depot, he knew his job and was doing it well. The weapons were cared for, the armoury tidy, the paperwork exact and depressing. Depressing because, when Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood had marched the Second Battalion away, the records revealed that he had left all their new weapons behind. Those brand new muskets, greased and muzzle-stoppered, were racked beneath oiled and scabbarded bayonets. That fact suggested that the men had been sent to other Battalions who could be expected to provide weapons from their own armouries. ‘He didn’t take any muskets?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Four hundred old ones, sir.’ Sergeant Carew turned the oil-stained pages of his ledger. ‘There, sir.’ He sniffed. ‘Didn’t take no new uniforms neither, sir.’
Non-existent men, Sharpe thought, needed neither weapons nor uniforms, but, just as he was deciding that this quest was hopeless because the Second Battalion had been broken up and scattered throughout the army, Sergeant Carew gave him sudden, extraordinary hope. ‘It’s a funny bloody thing, sir.’ The Sergeant lurched up and down on his wooden leg as he turned to look behind him, fearful that they would be overheard.
‘What’s funny?’
‘We was told, sir, that the Second’s just a Holding Battalion. No more recruits? That’s what they said, sir, but three weeks ago, as I live and breathe, sir, I saw one of our parties with a clutch of recruits! Sergeant Havercamp, it was, Horatio Havercamp, and he was marching ’em this way. I said “hello”, I did, and he tells me to bugger off and mind my own business. Me!’ Carew stared indignantly at Sharpe. ‘So I talks to the Captain here and I asks him what’s happening? I mean the recruits never got here, sir, not a one of them. Haven’t seen a lad in six months!’
Sharpe stared at the Sergeant, and the import of what Carew was saying dawned slowly on him. Holding Battalions did not recruit. If there were recruits then there was a Second Battalion, and the seven hundred men did exist, and the Regiment could yet march into France. ‘You saw a recruiting party?’
‘With me own eyes, sir! I told the Captain too!’
‘What did he say?’
‘Told me I was drunk, sir. Told me there were no more recruiting parties, nothing! Told me I was imagining things, but I wasn’t drunk, sir, and sure as you’re standing there and me here I’m telling you I saw Horatio Havercamp with a party of recruits. Now why would they not come here, sir? Can you tell me that?’
‘No, Sergeant, I can’t.’ But he would find out, by God he would find out. ‘You’re certain of what you saw, Sergeant?’-