‘Don’t be a fool!’ Lynch snarled, but, unbidden and unwelcome, he was remembering his mother’s stories of the magicians and ghosts of Ireland’s great bogs. He even had an instinct to cross himself that he fiercely thrust back. ‘Forward now! Gently!’ He probed with his bayonet-tipped musket at a patch of shadow then, keeping to the higher tussocks, went slowly forward. He saw nothing. Behind him Bennet reloaded the musket.
‘Sergeant Major?’ Girdwood said impatiently. ‘See what they’re doing.’
‘Sir!’ Brightwell spurred forward. A horseman’s greater height gave him an advantage in this bleak landscape of low tangled shadows, yet when, minutes later, he reached the line of sergeants, he could see no sign of the Irishman. ‘Jesus Christ!’ Brightwell, suddenly fearing the worst, looked westward. ‘The bastard’s gone!’
‘He can’t!’ Lynch protested.
‘Then find him!’ Brightwell snarled and turned his horse. ‘Sir?’ He stood in his saddle to shout. ‘Bastard’s gone, sir!’
Girdwood heard and did not believe, but he had been schooled well in one thing by Sir Henry, and that was to apprehend any man who might escape from the island. He could not credit that the huge prisoner had truly evaded the searchers, but he would take no chances. He swore. ‘Lieutenant Mattingley!’
‘Sir?’
‘Alert the bridge! And Sir Henry’s household! Tell Captain Prior!’
‘Sir!’ Mattingley spurred towards the road. What Girdwood had done was put into motion the elaborate, careful procedure that would trap a deserter. The only dry way from the island was by the bridge, which was now alert to the danger, while Captain Prior’s militia cavalry, billeted on the mainland, would guard the banks of the waterways. The precautions, Girdwood reflected, were almost certainly unnecessary, but essential and, the order given, he spurred forward. ‘Come on! Hunt him! Find him!’
Harper, just yards to the west of the line of sergeants, listened. He had dropped into one of the larger ditches, knowing that he had two or three precious minutes before the hunters reached the place where he had disappeared and, once in the shadow of the tall grasses of the banks, he had, like a berserk child, smeared himself in the slime of the ditch bed, covering his face, hands, shirt and trousers with the slippery, slick mud that was dark as night. He had stuffed handfuls of uprooted marsh grass into his waist and collar, hiding his shape, doing the things that any Rifleman, isolated in a skirmish line and closer to the French than to his own lines, would have done. Then, keeping low, and like some massive, dark, killing beast of the wetlands, he had slithered west. The danger, he had known, was the patch of mud between the larger and smaller ditches, but his trained eye had seen that it was inches lower than the land about it, and with his clothes now the colour of the marsh he pulled himself over it, head low so that his nose scraped in the mud, slithering by pulling with his hands so that, undetected, he slid, head first, into the stinking slime of the smaller ditch. Then, completely hidden again, and twelve yards from the place he had dropped out of sight, he pulled himself through the smaller ditch, gaining yet more precious yards, not freezing into immobility until he heard the first squelching footsteps come close. Then he had drawn himself into a tight ball and hunched his body against the ditch’s side. The sergeants did not look at him once. They began their search to the east of him, not guessing for a second that their prey was already beyond their cordon, a prey that crouched in a wet, stinking ditch and listened to them.
Harper waited, scarcely breathing, his head tucked low so that his nostrils were almost touching the foul water. He wished the bastards would move further east, but instead, uncertain and beginning to panic, they clung stubbornly to the place where they were certain he had disappeared. Then, to Harper’s annoyance, he heard Girdwood’s voice and the chink of curb chains and the thump of hooves. He was undetected, but all the hunters were close, and he stayed still, utterly still, eyes closed, ears alert to the smallest night sound of the marsh, and prayed that Sharpe would strike soon.