SHARPE’S REGIMENT

‘Us?’

‘Bugger Marriott, it’s time we got the hell out of here.’

‘We don’t even know what they’re doing here.’ Sharpe knew that the camp did not exist solely to steal the men’s pay. If that was its sole purpose, why were they trained so hard?

‘Still time we got out.’ Harper said it stubbornly.

‘Give it another week, Patrick. Just one more week.’

The huge Irishman nodded. ‘But promise me one thing?’

‘What?’

The big, flat face grinned slowly. ‘I’d like to come here as RSM for just one day. Just one day. And one hour with that bastard Lynch.’

Sharpe laughed. Above his head, beautiful and crisp against the darkening sky, a skein of geese glided towards the eastern mudflats. ‘It’s a promise, Sergeant.’

A promise he would keep. But first he would discover just why this hidden Battalion of the South Essex trained so hard and were punished so savagely in the lost, wet, secret marshland camp called Foulness.

CHAPTER 8

‘Say it, filth!’

Patrick Harper, staring stolidly over Sergeant Lynch’s shako, bawled out the words that he was required to say at every single parade. ‘God save the King!’

‘Again, filth!’

‘God save the King!’

Sergeant Lynch, in the eight days since he had taken over this squad, had not found fault with Harper once; with Marriott a thousand times, but with the big Irishman, not once. Sergeant Lynch had decided that the big man was broken. He had assured as much to Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood. ‘He’s just a big, stupid boar, sir. No trouble at all.’ Indeed, Sergeant Lynch was glad to have Privates O’Keefe and Vaughn in his squad, for the presence of two trained men hastened the training of the other recruits.

‘Again, filth!’

‘God save the King!’

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was drying the mudflats and a small breeze brought the smell of salt to the parade ground. Sergeant Lynch, whose moustached face seemed unhappy this splendid day, stepped back from Harper to face his three ranks. ‘Filth! Stocks off!’

It was an extraordinary relief to unhook the thick, stiff, leather collars that they were then ordered to hand down the ranks to the men in the right file who, in turn, handed them to a corporal. Sergeant Lynch stared at them with his habitual expression of dislike. ‘Filth. You have work to do! Ditching work! If just one of you bastards gives me trouble, just one! I’ll damage you! I’ll damage you!’ It was evident he disapproved of the fatigue duty, preferring the close order drill in which every mistake was obvious and easily punished. ‘Left turn! Quick march!’

Each of the squad was issued with either a rake, a billhook, or a shovel. Sharpe assumed that they were to attack another of the island’s drainage channels, but, instead, Sergeant Lynch ordered them onto the embanked road which led off the island.

The Sergeant, like his two corporals, was armed with a musket. If this was a prison, then now the squad was under armed guard as they left Foulness, Sharpe noted again the strength of the picquet that stood sentry duty at the wooden bridge. More than a dozen men watched the squad pass, while the presence of a tethered horse beside the wooden guard hut suggested to Sharpe that an officer was on duty there as well.

Sergeant Lynch took them back along the road they had come when they had first arrived at Foulness, then north on the track which led to the big brick house with its eagle weathervane, and Sharpe prayed that they were not being marched to Sir Henry Simmerson’s home. They splashed through the ford, climbed to the track on the bank, then, before reaching Sir Henry’s house, they turned right onto a narrow path that led, ever more narrowly, into the reeds of the sea-marsh.

It seemed to Sharpe that they must be skirting Sir Henry’s estate. They worked their way east, then north, and Sharpe was glad to see a creek between themselves and the house of the one man who might recognise him in this corner of Essex. Nevertheless his worry increased as, pace by pace, Sergeant Lynch led them closer and closer to the big, splendid house.