He spent the afternoon laboriously filling in the company books. Each month the Day Book had to be copied into the Ledger, and the Ledger was due for Simmerson’s inspection in a week. He found ink, sharpened a quill, and with his tongue between his teeth began writing the details. He could have delegated the job to the Sergeant who looked after the books, but he preferred to do the job himself and then no one could accuse the Sergeant of favouritism. To Thomas Cresacre, Private, was debited the cost of one new shoe-brush. Fivepence. Sharpe sighed; the entry in the columns hid some small tragedy. Cresacre had hurled the brush at his wife, and the wooden back had split against a stone wall. Sergeant McGivern had seen it happen and reported the man, and so on top of his marital troubles Thomas Cresacre would now lose fivepence from a day’s pay of twelvepence. The next entry in the small Day Book that lived in Sharpe’s pocket was for a pair of shoes for Jedediah Horrell. Sharpe hesitated. Horrell claimed the shoes had been stolen, and Sharpe was inclined to believe him. Horrell was a good man, a sturdy labourer from the Midlands, and Sharpe always found his musket cared for and his equipment orderly. And Horrell had already been punished. For two days he had marched in borrowed boots, and his feet were blistered and burst. Sharpe crossed the entry from his Day Book and wrote in the Ledger ‘Lost in Action’. He had saved Private Horrell six shillings and sixpence. He drew the Accoutrement Book towards him and laboriously copied the information from the ledger into the book. He was amused to see that Lennox had already described every man in the company as having lost a stock ‘in Action’, so officially the stocks, like Horrell’s boots, were now a charge on the government rather than on the individual who had lost them. For an hour he kept copying from Day Book to Ledger to Accoutrement Book, the small change of daily soldiering. When he had finished he drew the Mess Book towards him. This was easier. Sergeant Read, who kept the books, had already crossed out the names of the men who had died at Valdelacasa and written in the new names, Sharpe’s Riflemen and the six men who had been drafted into the Light Company when Wellesley made them the new Battalion of Detachments. Against each of the names Sharpe wrote the figure three shillings and sixpence, the sum that was debited each week for the cost of their food. It was unfair, he knew, because the men were already on half rations, and the word was that the supply situation was worsening. The Commissary officers were scouring the Tagus valley; there were frequent clashes between British and French patrols to decide which side could search a village for hidden food. There were even battles between the British and their Spanish allies, who had failed to deliver a hundredth part of the supplies they had promised, yet they daily drove in herds of pigs, sheep, cattle or goats for their own men. But it was not in Sharpe’s power to reduce the amount the men paid, even if the rations were not delivered in full. Instead he noted at the bottom of the page that the sum was double the food delivered and hoped that he would be ordered to redress the balance later. In the next column he wrote fourpence in each line, the cost of having the men’s clothes washed by the wives on the strength. A man’s washing cost him seventeen shillings and fourpence a year, his rations over eight pounds. Each private earned a shilling a day, seventeen pounds and sixteen shillings a year, but by the time he had been deducted for food, for washing, for pipeclay and blackball, for soling and heeling, and the one day’s pay each year that went to the Military hospitals at Chelsea and Kilmainham, each man was left with the three sevens. Seven pounds, seven shillings and seven pence, and Sharpe knew from bitter experience that they were lucky to get even that. Most men lost further sums to replace missing equipment, and the truth was that each private was paid about fourpence halfpenny a day to fight the French.
As a Captain, Sharpe received ten shillings and sixpence a day. It seemed like a fortune but more than half was deducted for his food and then the officers’ mess demanded a further levy of two shillings and eightpence a day to pay for wine, luxury foods, and the mess servants. He paid more for cleaning, for the hospitals, and he knew the sums backwards. They simply did not add up. And now Josefina was looking to him for money. Hogan had lent him money and, added to the contents of his leather bag, he had enough for the next fortnight, but after that? His only hope was to find a rich corpse on the battlefield. A very rich corpse.
Sharpe finished with the books, shut them, laid the quill on the table and yawned as a clock in the town struck four. He opened the Weekly Mess Book again and looked down at the names, wondering morbidly how many would still be there in a week’s time and how many would have the word ‘deceased’ entered against them. Would his name be crossed out? Would some other officer look at the ledger and wonder who had written fivepence, one shoe-brush‘, against the name Thomas Cresacre? He shut the books again. It was all academic. The army had not been paid for a month, and even then they had not been paid up to date. He would give the books to Sergeant Read, who would store them on the company mule and when, and if, the pay arrived, Read would make the deductions from the books and pay the men their handfuls of coins. There was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?”
“Me, sir.” It was Harper’s voice.
“Come in.”
Harper’s face was bleak, his manner formal. “Well, Sergeant?”
“Trouble, sir. Bad. The men are refusing to parade.”
Sharpe remembered his apprehension. “Which men?”
“Whole bloody Battalion, sir. Even our lads have joined in.” When Patrick Harper spoke of ‘our lads’ he meant the Riflemen. Sharpe stood up and slung on the big sword. “Who knows about this?”
“Colonel does, sir. Men sent him a letter.”
Sharpe swore under his breath. “They sent him a letter? Who signed it?”
Harper shook his head. “No-one signed it, sir. It just tells him that they won’t parade and if he comes near they’ll blow his bloody head off.”
Sharpe picked up the rifle. There was a word for what was happening, and the word was ‘mutiny’. Simmerson’s flogging of one man in ten could easily change into decimation, and instead of being flogged the men would be stood against the trees and shot. He looked at Harper. “What’s happening?”
“Lot of talk, sir. They’re barricading themselves in the timber yard.”
“All of them?”
Harper shook his head. “No, sir. There’s a couple of hundred still in the orchard. Your company’s there, sir, but the lads in the yard are trying to persuade them to join in.”
Sharpe nodded. The Battalion had been bivouacked in an olive grove which the men called an orchard simply because the trees were laid out in neat rows. The grove was behind a timber yard, a walled yard with just one entrance. “Who delivered the letter?”
“Don’t know, sir. It was pushed under the door of Simmerson’s house.”
Sharpe hurried out of the door. The courtyard of the house was shadowed and silent; most officers were taking the chance of looking at the town before they marched the next day to meet the French. “Are there any officers at the timber yard?”
“No, sir.”
“What about the Sergeants?”
Harper’s face was expressionless. Sharpe guessed that many of the Sergeants were sympathetic to the protest but, like the big Irishman, knew better than the men what the result would be if the Battalion refused to parade. “Wait here.”
Sharpe ran back into the house. The rooms lay cool and empty. A woman looked at him from the kitchen, a string of peppers held in her hand, and quickly shut the door when she saw his face. Sharpe took the stairs two at a time and threw open the door of the room where the Light Company’s junior officers were quartered. Ensign Denny was the only occupant, and the sixteen-year-old was lying fast asleep on a straw mattress.