In the distance, threading its way through the crowds of British and Spanish spectators, the Provost-Marshal’s party appeared, prisoners and guard. Forrest walked his horse forward of Simmerson.
“Talion! Fix Bayonets!”
Blades scraped out of scabbards and steel rippled round the ranks of the companies. The men must die with due ceremony. Sharpe watched Gibbons bend down to talk to the sixteen-year-old Ensign Denny.
“Your first execution, Mr Denny?”
The youngster nodded. He was pale and apprehensive, like the younger soldiers in the ranks. Gibbons chuckled. “Best target practice the men can have!”
“Quiet!” Sharpe glared at his officers. Gibbons smiled secretly.
“Talion!” Forrest’s horse edged sideways. The Major calmed it. “Shoulder arms!”
The lines of men became tipped with bayonets. There was silence. The prisoners wore trousers and shirts, no jackets, and Sharpe supposed them to be half full of rough brandy or rum. A Chaplain walked with them, the mumble of his words just carrying to Sharpe, but the prisoners seemed to take no notice of him as they were marched to the trees. The drama moved inexorably forward. Moss and Ibbotson were tied to the trunks, blindfolded, and Forrest stood the firing squad to attention. Ibbotson, the son of the vicarage, was nearest to Sharpe, and he could see the man’s lips moving frenetically. Was he praying? Sharpe could not hear the words.
Forrest gave no commands. The firing party had been rehearsed to obey signals rather than orders, and they presented and aimed to jerks of the Major’s sword. Suddenly Ibbotson’s voice came clear and loud, the educated tones filled with desperation, and Sharpe recognised the words. “We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep… „Forrest dropped the sword, the muskets banged, the bodies jerked maniacally, and a flock of birds burst screeching from the branches. Two Lieutenants ran forward with drawn pistols, but the musket balls had done their work and the bodies hung with crushed and bloodied chests in front of the lingering white musket smoke.
A murmur, barely audible, went through the ranks of the Battalion. Sharpe turned on his men.
“Quiet!”
The Light Company stood silent. The smoke from the firing party smelt pungent in the air. The murmur became louder. Officers and Sergeants screamed orders, but the men of the South Essex had found their protest and the humming became more insistent. Sharpe kept his own company quiet by sheer force, by standing glaring at them with drawn sword, but he could do nothing about the contempt that they showed on their faces. It was not aimed at him, it was for Simmerson, and the Colonel twitched his reins in the center of the square and bellowed for silence. The noise increased. Sergeants ran into the ranks and struck at men they suspected of making any sound, officers screamed at companies, adding to the din, and from beyond the Battalion came the jeers of the British soldiers from other units who had drifted out of the town to watch the execution.
Gradually the moaning and humming died away, as slowly as the executioners’ smoke thinned into the air, and the Battalion stood silent and motionless. ’Daddy‘ Hill had not moved or spoken but now he motioned to his aides-decamp and the small group trotted delicately away, past the firing squad who now lifted the bodies into the coffins, and off towards Oropesa. Hill’s face was expressionless. Sharpe had never met ’Daddy‘ Hill but he knew, as did the rest of the army, that the General had a reputation as a kind and considerate officer and Sharpe wondered what he thought of Simmerson and his methods. Rowland Hill commanded six Battalions but Sharpe was certain none would offer him as many problems as the South Essex.
Simmerson rode his horse to the graves, wrenched the beast round, and stood in his stirrups. His face was suffused with blood, his rage obvious and throbbing, his voice shrill in the silence. “There will be a parade for punishment at six o’clock this evening. Full equipment! You will pay for that display!” The men stood silent. Simmerson lowered his rump onto the saddle. “Major Forrest! Carry on!”
Company by company, the Battalion marched past the open coffins, and the men were made to stare at the mangled bodies waiting by their graves. There, said the army, is what will happen to you if you run away; and more than that, because the names of the dead men would be sent home to be posted on their parish notice boards so that shame could descend on their families as well. The companies marched past in silence.
When the Battalion was gone and the other spectators had gawped at the remains, a working party lowered the coffins into the graves. Earth was shovelled into the holes, the grass turves carefully replaced so that to a casual eye there were no visible signs of the burials. They were deliberately left unmarked, the final insult, but when all the soldiers had gone Spanish peasants found the graves and hammered wooden crosses into the turf. It was no measure of respect, just the precaution of sensible men. The dead were Protestants, buried in unhallowed ground, and the crude crosses were there to keep the unquiet spirits firmly underground. The people of Spain had enough problems with the war; the armies of France, Spain, and now Britain crossed and recrossed their land. There was little a peasant could do about that, or about the men who fought the Guerilla, the little war. But the ghosts of heathen Englishmen were another matter. Who needed them to scare the cattle and stalk the fields by night? They hammered the crosses deep and slept easy.
CHAPTER 15
One man in ten was to be flogged. Sixty men from the Battalion, six from each company, the Captain of each company to deliver his six men, stripped to the waist, ready to be tied to the flogging triangles that Simmerson was having made by local carpenters. The Colonel had made his announcement, and then he glared with his small red eyes round the assembled officers. Were there any comments?
Sharpe took a breath. To say anything was useless, to say nothing was cowardly.
“I think it a bad idea, sir.”
“Captain Sharpe thinks it a bad idea.” Simmerson dripped acid with every word. “Captain Sharpe, gentlemen, can tell us how to command men. Why is it a bad idea, Captain Sharpe?”
“To shoot two men in the morning and flog sixty in the afternoon seems to me to be doing the work of the French for them, sir.”
“You do. Well, damn you, Sharpe, and damn your ideas. If the discipline in this Battalion was as strictly enforced by the Captains as I demand, then this punishment would not be necessary. I will have them flogged! And that includes your precious Riflemen, Sharpe! I expect three of them in your six! There’ll be no favouritism.”
There was nothing to be said or done. The Captains told their companies and, like Sharpe, cut straws and drew lots to determine who should be Simmerson’s victims. Three dozen strokes each for sixty men. By two o’clock the victims were scrounging for spirits that might dull their flesh, and their sullen companions began the long afternoon of cleaning and polishing their kit for Simmerson’s inspection. Sharpe left them to their work and went back to the house that served as the Battalion’s headquarters. There was trouble in the air, a mood reminiscent of the heaviness before a thunderstorm; Sharpe’s happiness of the morning was replaced by apprehension, and he found himself wondering what might happen before he went back to the house where Josefina waited for him and dreamed of Madrid.