‘If that bugger sees us . . .’ Harper did not finish the sentence.
‘I know.’ And how fitting it would be, Sharpe thought, if Sir Henry was among his enemies.
‘Shut your faces! March!’ Sergeant Havercamp cracked his cane on Sharpe’s back. ‘Pick your bloody feet up! You know how!’
They did not go to Sir Henry’s house, for the eagle on the weathervane had convinced Sharpe that the big place was indeed Sir Henry’s, but instead turned southwards onto an even smaller track. They filed along a bank beside a drainage ditch, waded a deep ford that was sticky with mud, and, when Sir Henry’s house was far on the horizon, turned left again onto a larger road rutted by cart tracks.
A bridge was ahead of them, a wooden bridge guarded by soldiers. ‘Break step! That means walk, you bastards, or else you’ll break the bloody bridge!’
A dozen men in the South Essex’s yellow facings guarded the crossing. A sergeant called cheerfully to Havercamp as the recruits straggled over the echoing bridge that crossed a deep, mud-banked creek of the sea.
‘Left! Left!’ The drum tap gave them the beat by which they could regain proper marching step, they were off the bridge, past the picquet, and ahead of them Sharpe saw the place he had come to find.
He did not know where he was, except that this was a lost, empty part of the Essex coast, but ahead of him, in a wet, marshy land, he saw an army camp. There were huts, tents, two brick buildings, and, on a higher swell of land, a great parade ground that was thick with marching men. Buttons, as if as eager as his master to get into the army, ran excitedly ahead.
Sharpe felt the same excitement. He had found the Second Battalion of the South Essex, he had found the men he would lead to France. All that was left to do now was to find out why Lord Fenner had lied and then to take these men, against all his enemies here and in London, out of this hidden place and to the war against the French.
CHAPTER 7
On the mornings of the second and fourth Monday of each month, at eleven o’clock precisely, Lieutenant Colonel Bartholomew Girdwood’s servant brought a small pot of boiling pitch to his master. Then, carefully, he put a thick cloth over the Colonel’s mouth, other cloths on his cheeks and nostrils, and, with a spatula borrowed from the Battalion surgeon, he smeared the boiling tar into the Colonel’s moustache. He worked it in, forcing the thick, steaming mess deep into the wiry hairs, and, though sometimes the Colonel’s face would flicker as a boiling drop reached the skin of his lip, he would stay utterly silent until the servant had finished the task. The cloths would be removed, there would be a pause while the tar set solid, then the servant, with scissors, file and heated spatula, shaped and polished the moustache so that, for another two weeks, it would need no further attention.
‘Thank you, Briggs!’ The Colonel tapped his moustache. It sounded like a nail rapping on ivory. ‘Excellent!’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood stared into the mirror. He liked what he saw. Tarred moustaches had been a fashion for officers of Frederick the Great’s army, a fashion which forced a man’s face into an unsmiling, martial expression that suited Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood’s unsmiling, martial character.
He fancied himself a harsh man. He was unfortunately smaller than he wished, but his thick-soled boots and high shako made up for the lack of inches. He was thin, muscled, and his face could have belonged to no one but a soldier. It was a hard face, clean shaven but for the moustache, with harsh black eyes and black hair trimmed short. He was a man of rigorous routine, his meals taken to the minute, his days governed by a strict timetable that was meticulously charted on the wall of his office.
‘Sword!’
Briggs held out the sword. Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood drew a few inches of the blade from the scabbard, saw that it had been polished, then handed it back to his servant who, with deferential hands, buckled it about his master’s waist.