Sharpe 17 sharpes regi.., p.15
Sharpe 17 - Sharpe's Regiment, page 15
Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood urged his horse closer to Harper. He looked down with hatred, staring at the huge, drenched man as if he saw a foul beast that had lurched up from the mud of the river bank. ‘You thought to hit a Sergeant, did you, filth?’
‘Because he’s a murdering bastard, sir.’ Harper, all caution gone to the wind, said it scornfully. ‘A murdering, traitorous bastard!’
For a second Sharpe thought that Girdwood would strike Harper with the cane, and he feared that Harper would strike back, and Sharpe was planning how to seize the musket from Corporal Mason before Harper was shot. The other recruits stood in frozen fear, the wind lifting their hair and stirring the pale grasses about Marriott’s still body. Girdwood stared down at the huge Irishman, and perhaps it was Harper’s size, or perhaps it was the implacable look of dangerous ferocity on the huge man’s face that made the Lieutenant Colonel tuck the silver-topped cane into his armpit. ‘This filth is under arrest, Sergeant Lynch.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And bury that scum!’ Girdwood tugged at his reins, gave one last malevolent glance at Harper, then spurred his horse after the far figure of Sir Henry Simmerson.
They buried Marriott in the marsh, using the tools with which the squad had half cleared Sir Henry’s creek, burying him without benefit of prayer or clergy, as though he was a criminal. Doubtless, Sharpe thought as they forced the body into the wet, gurgling hole in which Marriott floated obscenely until they had forced mud onto his corpse, Girdwood would claim in his records, that the boy had drowned and been swept to sea. No one knew of the Foulness Camp, no one cared what happened here. No one ever would care unless Sharpe and Harper managed to escape from this place to take their story to the authorities.
Yet escape, that Sharpe had planned for tonight, seemed hopeless now. Harper was under arrest, guarded first by Lynch and his two corporals, and soon by a further squad of redcoats who took the huge Irishman back to the camp where, locked in a foul small building that had once been a pigsty, the Irishman waited for the justice that ruled in Foulness and which had already killed one man this summer’s day.
‘They killed him!’ Charlie Weller still seemed unable to believe that Marriott was dead.
‘Served him right.’ Jenkinson, one of the convicts freed to Sergeant Havercamp by Grantham’s magistrates, was scrubbing at the mud on his trousers. The evening inspection was imminent. ‘He was a whining bastard.’
‘He would have made a good soldier.’ Sharpe said it mildly. Oddly, it was true. If Marriott had been in the Rifles, where the discipline was expected to come from within a man rather than without, the boy might have made a fine skirmisher.
Jenkinson said nothing. He was wary of Sharpe, as he had been of Harper, for the two had early stopped the bullying tactics of the released convicts, who, thinking themselves to have found easy victims in the other recruits, had tried to make them into servants.
Weller slapped at the dried mud on his fatigue jacket. ‘What will they do to Paddy?’
‘Flog him.’ Sharpe looked to the east where, black against the pale dusk, the geese coasted down to the mudflats. He was wondering how, this night, he was to both rescue Harper and escape. If Jane Gibbons - and the thought of her made his heart give a strange, small leap of warmth - put the food and money he needed into the boathouse then it was unlikely, he conceded, that it would remain hidden all the next day. Tonight. He must escape tonight, not just to save Harper from punishment, but because, with the secret of the Foulness camp uncovered, he was impatient to end Girdwood’s crime and return to Spain.
The bugle sounded for inspection. The squad lined up in front of the tent and listened to the shouts of the sergeants and corporals. ‘Christ!’ Charlie Weller muttered. ‘It’s the bloody Colonel tonight.’ Girdwood’s inspections were always more burdensome than those of the other officers.
‘Silence!’ Corporal Mason shouted from behind.
Sharpe stood to attention. He had noticed, as he fetched cleaning water, how a whole block of the tents was empty this evening and he presumed that the two Companies whose auction he had seen on Sir Henry’s lawn had already marched to their new regiments. The thought of his own men, left in Pasajes, being thus denied the reinforcements they needed, made him suddenly angry as Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood paced in front of Sergeant Lynch’s squad.
The Colonel looked each man up and down. There had not been time to clean all the mud from their uniforms and Girdwood’s eyes showed his disgust. ‘Filthy! Filthy! You’re supposed to be soldiers, not pigs! What’s that?’ He pointed with his cane at a forlorn pile of kit that lay at the tent door.
Sergeant Lynch, immaculate once more, stiffened. ‘Private Marriott’s Necessaries, sir!’
‘Marriott?’ Girdwood frowned. ‘Who’s Marriott?’
‘The deserter, sir!’ Lynch’s eyes flickered towards the kit, then back to the Colonel. ‘Being returned to stores tonight, sir!’
‘You can add the Irishman’s too.’ Girdwood said it with a smile, as though the thought had suddenly cheered him.
‘Sir! Private Vaughn! Fetch the Irish filth’s Necessaries!’
Sharpe frowned, as though not understanding. ‘Sergeant?’
Lynch took one crisp pace forward and pushed his moustached face up to Sharpe’s. ‘Fetch O’Keefe’s kit, Vaughn, and do it now!‘
Sharpe obeyed, rolling Harper’s few spare clothes into the blanket, then carrying them outside.
‘Put them there, filth!’ Lynch pointed with his pacing stick at Marriott’s pile. ‘Smartly!’
Sharpe knew he should say nothing, but the thought that Harper might be, like Marriott, dead, or might be dead before the night was done, was too much to keep him silent. He dropped the blanket roll, stood to attention, and looked respectfully towards the Lieutenant Colonel. ‘Is he not coming back, sir?’
Girdwood straightened. He had been rapping the guy ropes of the tent, ensuring they were taut, for in Foulness no guy ropes were allowed to be slack, even in rain. It meant broken tents, but ensured the neatness that Girdwood loved. The Colonel looked towards Sergeant Lynch. ‘Did the filth speak, Sergeant?’
‘He spoke, sir!’
Girdwood stood in front of Sharpe. ‘You spoke?’
Sharpe looked into the white face. The Colonel’s moustache was breaking through its mould of tar; small hairs struggling free between the cracked pitch. Sharpe made his voice as military and toneless as he could. ‘Private O’Keefe, sir. I wondered if he’d gone, sir.‘
‘Does it matter?’ Girdwood smiled.
‘Friend, sir!’ Sharpe was staring now at the brilliantly polished badge on Girdwood’s shako, a badge which showed the chained Eagle that Sharpe and Harper had captured.
‘You do not, filth, speak unless you are spoken to. You do not, filth, address yourself to an officer!’ Girdwood’s voice was rising, the only sound in the great camp. ‘You do not, filth, concern yourself with matters beyond your competence. You are insolent!’ This last was almost screamed. It was followed by a silence in which Girdwood, who could not remember a man daring to ask him a question during an inspection, drew back his cane. ‘Filth!’ The cane whistled savagely, striking Sharpe’s left cheek. ‘Filth!’ Girdwood back-handed the weapon, drawing blood on Sharpe’s right cheek. ‘What are you?’
Sharpe could feel the blood on his face. He dropped his eyes to Girdwood‘s, meeting the Colonel’s gaze. He was tempted to smile, to show that the blows had not hurt, but this was not a time to mire himself in further difficulties. ’Filth, sir. Sorry, sir.‘
Girdwood stepped back, his eyes fascinated by the blood that was trickling down to Sharpe’s jawbone. He gained a strange pleasure from so hurting and humiliating a taller, stronger man whose sudden, dark gaze had given him a second’s alarm. ‘You will watch this man, Sergeant Lynch!’
‘I always do, sir!’
The blows seemed to have vented an anger in the Colonel so that he did not care, suddenly, that the squad’s uniforms still showed the effects of their day in the marsh. He straightened his shoulders, tucked the cane beneath his arm, returned Lynch’s salute, and walked on to the next squad.
‘Stand still!’ Sergeant Lynch shouted as he saw the infinitesimal slackening of shoulders as the Colonel left. Sharpe obeyed, his back erect, his gaze going through the tents to the darkening east where, pale still in the dying sunlight, a great moon hung low on the horizon. He waited for the night, an inconveniently bright moonlit night, but a night in which he would run this place ragged and show these little men, these petty, moustachioed fools, these murderous, bullying bastards, what real soldiers were and how they fought.
CHAPTER 10
Twelve sergeants and four officers were ready for the night’s sport. They had taken precautions against the prisoner escaping by sending a patrol to the northern sea-wall, a patrol that had orders to herd the fugitive, should he try to flee into the estuary’s mudflats, back towards the hunters in the island’s marsh.
Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood called for attention. ‘You know the rules, gentlemen! Sabres or swords only! You hunt in pairs! Firearms will be used only to head the man off or in self-defence!’ All of the officers and four of the sergeants were on horseback and had cavalry carbines sheathed in their saddle holsters. The other sergeants carried muskets, but their job this night was merely to beat the prey towards the hunters. Girdwood spoke to his mounted men. ‘I want to see clean cuts, gentlemen, approved strokes!’ He meant that he wanted to see his men wielding their sabres and swords according to the diagrams in the cavalry training manuals. The officers and sergeants knew, too, that it was tactful to leave the killing stroke to the Colonel who was proud of his sabre-work. They might draw blood, but Girdwood liked to finish the sport. The Lieutenant Colonel smiled at them. ‘He’s an old soldier, so keep your wits! Don’t lose him!’ He pulled a great turnip watch from his pocket as Sergeant Lynch pushed the prisoner onto the embanked road north of the camp. ‘Thank you, Sergeant!’
Girdwood could have flogged Harper, but Sergeant Lynch had tactfully pointed out that the huge man had been flogged before. ‘Incorrigible, sir!’ It was a word Lynch had learned from Girdwood and used frequently of his fellow-countrymen.
‘How true.’ Girdwood had sat in his office, turning over in his head the options of punishment.
‘The Navy?’ Captain Smith had asked. Often the camp had rid itself of hardened troublemakers by sending them under escort to the North Sea fleet that was ever grateful for men. Girdwood gave a brief smile.
‘I doubt our sea-going brethren would be grateful for this one. He’s scum, Hamish, scum. I know them, you forget that!’
Captain Hamish Smith, who, like all Girdwood’s officers, had been growing old, seeing himself passed over for promotion and getting ever deeper into debt until the Colonel offered him this chance of redemption and wealth, said nothing. He guessed what the outcome would be, for he had seen before, and with some shame, how the boredom and brutality of Foulness increasingly encouraged its officers and sergeants to the foulest licence that even encompassed murder. This camp was secret, protected by the powerful, and looked only to Girdwood for its laws and justice.
Sergeant Major Brightwell, a great bull of a man with small, hard eyes and a face like pounded steak, grunted his opinion. ‘We could exercise ourselves, sir? Hunt the bastard.’
‘A hunt.’ Girdwood said it slowly, as though he had not been thinking of just that idea. ‘A hunt!’
It was not the first time that, on a moonlit night, the officers and sergeants had hunted a man through the waste that was the northern half of Foulness. The marsh offered little cover, except the ditches, and it was easily surrounded so that the victim could not escape. Girdwood had drunkenly claimed one night that such an exercise sharpened their military skills as if that excuse, in some obscure way, justified the enjoyment. Now, in the pale moonlight, the hunt was about to begin. Girdwood’s voice was crisp and sure, as though this night’s excitement was a normal military exercise.
‘Prepare him, Sergeant Major!’
Brightwell swung himself from his borrowed horse. The prisoner did not need much preparation, for he wore nothing but shoes, trousers and shirt, and the purpose of Brightwell’s attentions was only to ensure that the victim carried nothing that could be used as a weapon. The Sergeant Major saw the glint of metal at Harper’s neck and tore the shirt aside.
‘Sir?’ Brightwell had seized the chain, pulled so that it broke, and now handed the crucifix to Girdwood.
Harper wore the crucifix because, like many another married man, his wife was eager that he should show more devotion to his faith. A better reason, in Harper’s eyes, was that the symbol convinced Spanish villagers that its wearer was a true Catholic, not a heathen protestant, thus persuading them to more generosity with food, tobacco or wine.
To Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, an officer of a country that still denied public office to Catholics, the crucifix added a patriotic spice to the night’s events. He looked at the symbol, sneered, and tossed it into the ditch beside the road. He urged his horse forward and Harper, in the brilliant moonlight that was silvering the marsh, could see every detail of the Colonel’s uniform and weapons. Girdwood looked down on the Irishman.
‘I’m giving you a sporting chance. More than you deserve. You see that post?’ He pointed to a stake that was thrust into the far side of the marsh. ‘You have twenty minutes to reach its safety. If you do it successfully I shall overlook your mutiny of today. If not? I shall punish you. You have two minutes lead over us and I wish you good luck.’ The mounted men smiled at the lie. Girdwood snapped the watch-lid open. ‘Go!’
For a second Harper did not move, so astonished was he by the turn the night had taken. He had expected a formal charge, a military court, and then, almost certainly, a beating. Instead he was to be hunted in the wetland. Then, knowing that every second counted, he ran northwards.
Girdwood watched him. ‘Going straight for the- mark. They always do.’ He spoke to Captain Finch, the second Captain at Foulness, who was Girdwood’s partner for the hunt. Captain Smith, as officer of the day, was not with the hunters. This was not a sport Smith relished, though to protest was to open himself to Girdwood’s scorn or worse.
Corporals stood on the embanked road that was raised two feet above the lowland. Their job was to cut off the southwards escape of the fugitive as well as to watch his every movement. Harper was dressed in a white shirt and light grey trousers which, though filthy, showed easily in the bright moonlight.
‘One minute!’ Girdwood called out. Next to him Captain Finch drew his sword, the steel scraping on the scabbard’s throat with a soft, sinister hiss.
In the marsh Harper ran desperately, stumbling on the soft patches, tripping on tussocks, going towards the tall pole that was his mark. He had counted sixteen hunters, could see, far off on the island’s northern rim, the shapes of more men, but already, as a good Rifleman should, he was planning his battle. He ran as fast as he could, needing space in which to manoeuvre, but watching the ditches and tussocks like a hawk. He jumped the water clumsily, stumbled on a soft patch, then looked behind to see if his pursuers yet moved.
Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood laughed when the big man stumbled. ‘He won’t put up much of a fight, Finch.’
‘We can hope, sir.’ Finch, of an age with Girdwood, had the face of a drunkard. There was rum on his breath, but most of the men who would hunt the marsh this night carried liquor in their canteens.
‘No.’ Girdwood was in high spirits. ‘I know the Irish, Finch. They’re cowards. They’re happy to brawl, but they can’t fight.’ Girdwood looked at his watch, snapped the lid shut, and thrust it into a pocket. ‘Time, gentlemen! Good hunting!’ The horsemen whooped and spurred forward, while the Sergeants on foot, muskets loaded, went in a line to the west of the marsh. The hunt had started.
* * *
Harper heard the cries of the hunters and broke to his left. He knew he would not be friendless this night, but he knew, too, that his survival did not depend on Sharpe. Nor did Harper believe that, if he should reach the stake in the marsh, his life would be spared. These men smelt of death, but he grinned as he thought that they fought a Rifleman from Donegal. The bastards would suffer.
He saw the horsemen making a line to the east, the sergeants on foot going west, and he saw how they would make a great rectangle in the marsh, its other two sides formed by the guards to north and south. He turned abruptly back, aiming at a place he had spotted a moment before, and, reaching it, he fell flat.
‘Mark him!’ Girdwood shouted. The big Irishman, three hundred yards from his nearest pursuers, had disappeared in the deep, moon-cast shadows. ‘Watch that place! Drive him! Drive him!’
The shout was to the sergeants who, on foot, must now flush the fugitive from his hiding place towards the horsemen. The sergeants stared at the place where Harper had disappeared, hurried to flank it, then, in pairs for protection and with their muskets held ready, they cautiously advanced.
‘It was near here.’ Sergeant Bennet spoke to Lynch as both men stepped over one of the smaller ditches.
‘Careful now. He’s a big bugger.’
Two larger ditches met here, forming a V in the wetland that almost, but not quite, pierced to the smaller ditch and was separated from it by a gleaming patch of bare mud on which the two sergeants now stood. The water of the angled ditches was slickly silvered beneath the high grasses at their banks. The sergeants stared at the ground inch by inch, knowing that it was just yards beyond the V’s apex that the big man had gone to cover, but they could see no sign of him.
‘Come on! Hurry!’ Girdwood’s petulant voice carried far over the flatland.
Lynch, in charge of the beaters this night, licked his lips. Extraordinarily he could see no sign of the big man. The marsh, lit silver and black by the moon in the cloudless night, seemed empty and innocent.
