‘Deserter, sir!’ Sergeant Lynch’s fox-like face was tight with embarrassment and anger. ‘One of the filth scrambled, sir!’
‘How? For God’s sake, how, man?’ Sharpe heard the note of alarm in Girdwood’s voice, and he understood it. Girdwood might sell men to other regiments, but there they came under the discipline of men who, by attending the auctions, were thus implicated in the crime and had an interest in keeping its details hidden. A deserter, though, loose in England, might just tell a strange story to the wrong ears. Sharpe kept his back to the wall, hoping that Sir Henry would not come and investigate the sudden alarm. Girdwood did not wait for Lynch to answer his question, instead he ordered the Sergeant to form his work-party into a cordon that should search the marshland eastwards as far as the River Roach. ‘You know what to do with the scum, Sergeant Lynch!’
‘Yes, sir!’
The search was intense. Men of the two Companies who were the permanent guards at Foulness were fetched from the camp and formed into a second cordon well to the west of Sir Henry’s house. There were also men from the militia cavalry searching; horsemen who rode into the marshland beside the River Crouch and who combed the small yards and barns of the inland farms. Sharpe, looking back from the eastern bogland, could see a group of men armed with telescopes on the leads of Sir Henry’s house beneath the proud eagle weathervane. It occurred to Sharpe that this was a practised manoeuvre, a well-rehearsed specific against the danger of men deserting from Foulness.
Sergeant Lynch’s squad struggled eastwards across the marshland towards the North Sea, and to Sharpe it seemed an unlikely direction for Marriott to have taken. It was possible, Sharpe supposed, that the young clerk did not know the lie of the land, or that, in the desperation of his lovelorn unhappiness, he had fled into the emptiness of the marsh in search of any refuge, but capture, in this direction, seemed certain. The marsh was water-locked, the going was treacherous, and the boy would have been forced to stay clear of the few tussocky patches of higher ground where the footing was firm, but from which he could have been seen for miles over the flat land.
Sergeant Lynch’s squad straggled over the glutinous, sucking ground and through the intricate, shallow creeks that mazed the wetland. A corporal was at either end of the line, while Sergeant Lynch was in its centre, all three men with loaded muskets. Every man, even Sergeant Lynch, was smeared filthy with mud and green slime. The sun baked the squad and seemed to make the smell of the marsh gasses, when they were disturbed by trampling feet, even more noxious than usual.
There was no sign of Marriott. As the afternoon wore on, and as they worked their way even deeper into the marshland, Sharpe guessed their search was pointless. He supposed that Marriott, sensibly, must have gone west towards the firmer, higher ground that lay inland and Sharpe found himself, for the first time ever, wishing a deserter well. He had found Marriott insufferable and pompous, but not even on Marriott would he wish Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood’s vengeance.
They came, in the early afternoon, to a deeper, faster running stream that flowed north into the wider Crouch. The water of this small river, that spread itself across the marshland at its banks, was turbulent where the freshwater current met the incoming tide. The clash of waters made swirls of muddy violence and even, as the wind gusted from the north, small explosions of spray as sea fought river. It was the end of their search for, on the far bank, Sharpe could see uniformed men across the marshes and he realised that he stared into Foulness itself. Two miles away he could see the white tents of the camp, and then he saw Marriott.
The fool had fled east. He had crossed this river, presumably when the tide was low, only to find himself on the island from which he had wanted to escape. Now he was clinging to the stark, dark ribs of a boat’s skeleton that was grounded on the mud where the smaller River Roach met the larger Crouch.