SHARPE’S REGIMENT

Sharpe knew that desperation. He had felt it himself. He had struggled to be made a Captain, and only fortuitous interference by the Prince of Wales had afterwards made him a Major. For a man without money, promotion was hard, and if that same man, like Smith, was not serving in a fighting Battalion where dead mens’ shoes created vacancies, it was virtually impossible. Bartholomew Girdwood had offered another way, offered all these men a rise in rank so that their pensions would be higher and their futures more secure.

Smith dropped his eyes. ‘What does happen to us, sir?’

‘Nothing. Not if you do as I tell you.’ Sharpe wondered what Smith would think if he knew that Sharpe had no orders to be here, that every order from now on was unsanctioned by the army, that Sharpe was, quite literally, stealing this Battalion. ‘So where are the records, Smith?’

‘Don’t know, sir. The Colonel kept them.’

‘He’s getting married, I hear?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Captain Smith smiled shyly. ‘He doesn’t like her dog.’

‘Perhaps he won’t have to live with it now. After this.’

Smith nodded slowly. ‘No, sir. I suppose not.’

Sharpe wondered if Jane Gibbons had given, even reluctantly and under duress, her approval to the marriage. Perhaps, unless Girdwood was disgraced, she thought the marriage inescapable, and again Sharpe wondered where the proof for that disgrace would be found. ‘He writes poetry, does he?’

‘About war, sir. When he’s drunk he reads it aloud.’

‘Christ,’ Sharpe laughed. ‘So what did you do with the bounty money?’

Smith, who had been relaxing as Sharpe’s mood turned affable, suddenly frowned. ‘That was ours, sir, and the sergeants’.’

‘And I suppose no man ever got paid here?’

‘Only the guard Companies, sir.’

Sharpe looked at the charts on the desk. ‘So, not counting the guard Companies, you’ve got four hundred and eighty-three men?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then they’d better get some pay tomorrow, hadn’t they?’ He kicked the Battalion chest. ‘Five shillings each. Not much, is it?’ And that, he thought, would take nearly half of the money in the chest.

‘They’ll run, sir,’ Smith said.

‘No, they won’t.’ Sharpe said it firmly, though he hardly believed it. These men had been ill-treated, and, given money and the open road, there would be a strong temptation for them to flee at the first opportunity. ‘You lead men, Smith, you don’t drive them. And if you find yourself on a battlefield with those men, you’ll need them. They aren’t filth, Smith, they’re soldiers, and they make the best god-damned infantry in the world.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Smith said it humbly and made Sharpe feel pompous.

‘I want a list of the sergeants by morning. Who’s good, who’s bad, who’s useless.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We just get them safely to Chelmsford where they belong, that’s all.’ It was not all. Sharpe wondered how he was to protect these men if he did not receive written proof that he could send to London. In two or three days, he knew, he might have all hell itself descend on the Chelmsford barracks. He needed the records of the auctions.

The door opened suddenly, without any knock, and Patrick Harper burst into the room with an excited look on his face. He saw Captain Smith and, thinking that Sharpe would not want this news spread about the camp, dropped into Spanish. ‘The lad’s come back, señor. He’s travelling.’ He grinned.

Sharpe picked up his shako and rifle. It was oddly pleasant to hear Spanish again, and he replied in the same language. ‘On foot or horse?’

‘Horse.’

Which all meant that Charlie Weller, placed as a hidden sentry to watch Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood’s quarters, had reported that the Colonel had broken his word and fled. Sharpe had expected it.

Sharpe switched back to English. ‘I want a guard on this room, Sergeant Major. No one is to enter without my permission. No one.’

‘I understand, sir.’

The officers waited outside, as though they had feared that Captain Smith, left alone with Sharpe, might be eaten alive. Sharpe, as he reloaded his rifle and waited for his horse to be brought, advised them to get some sleep. ‘Unless you’re leaving us, gentlemen?’

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