'What? Marriott's face was pale with worry.
'Just remember that all the officers and a good few of the sergeants are bloody terrified of you.
'All the officers? Sharpe said indignantly.
'Well, almost all, Harper laughed. He was enjoying himself. He picked Buttons up, fondled the dog, and grinned at Sharpe. 'Isn't that right, Dick?
'You're full of bloody Irish wind, you are, Paddy.
Harper laughed. 'It's the English air.
'On your feet! Sergeant Havercamp shouted. 'Come on, you bastards! Get on your plates of meat! Move!
Sharpe was wondering whether he and Harper would have to jump. It could be done, he knew, simply by overpowering the slack guard that watched them each night. He feared it would be necessary because every southwards step seemed to be taking them towards Chelmsford and he could not imagine the ignominy of being delivered to Captain Carline and his plump Lieutenants. Sharpe had embarked on this deception in the belief that they would be taken to wherever the Second Battalion was hidden, yet Sergeant Havercamp was inexorably leading them towards the Chelmsford barracks.
Then, at a large village called Witham, and to Sharpe's relief, Sergeant Havercamp took them off the Chelmsford road. The Sergeant was in high spirits. He made them march in step, putting Sharpe and Harper at the front and the corporals at the back. ‘Ill teach you buggers to be soldiers. Left! Left! One of the drummer boys tapped the pace with his stick.
They spent their last night of travel in a half empty barn. Havercamp had them up early, and they marched in the dawn into a landscape like none Sharpe had seen before in England.
It was a country of intricate rivers, streams, marshes, a country loud with the cry of gulls telling Sharpe they were close to the sea. There was a smell of salt in the air. The grass was coarse. Once, far off to his left, he saw the wind whipping a grey sea white towards a great expanse of mud, then the view disappeared as Sergeant Havercamp turned them inland once more.
They marched through flat farmlands where the few trees had been bent westwards by the wind from the sea. They crossed the fords of sluggish rivers that ran in wide, muddy beds to meet the salt tide. The houses, low and squat, had weatherboards painted a malevolent black, while the churches were visible far over the flat land.
'Where are we? Harper asked. He and Sharpe still led the small procession as Havercamp turned them eastwards again, into the wind with its smell of salt and its lonely sounds of seabirds.
'Somewhere in Essex. Sharpe shrugged. No milestones marked the road they now walked, and no fingerboards pointed to a village or town. The only landmark now was a great house, brick built, with spreading, elegant wings on either side of its three-storeyed main block. On the house's roof was an intricate weather-vane. The house was two miles away, a lonely place, and Sharpe wondered, as they marched along the deserted road towards the great, isolated building, whether the house was their destination.
'Fall out! Fast now! Fall out! Sergeant Havercamp was suddenly bawling from the back of the line. 'Into the ditch! Come on! Hurry, hurry, hurry, you bastards! Into the ditch! Fall out!
Corporal Clissot pushed Sharpe, who stumbled into Harper so that both of them fell into the ditch that was stinking with green slime. They sat up to their waists in the foul water, and watched as a carriage and four came towards them. Giles Marriott, who had shown in the last two days a distressing urge to stand up for what he saw as his rights, protested at having to stand in the ditch, but Havercamp unceremoniously kicked him into the foul sludge, then jumped the obstacle, turned smartly in a turnip field, and stood to attention with his right hand saluting the carriage.
Two coachmen sat on the carriage's box, and three passengers sat within its cushioned interior. The leather hoods had been folded back, and one of the passengers, a girl, held a parasol against the sun.
'Christ! Harper said.
'Quiet! Sharpe put a hand on the Irishman's arm.
Sir Henry Simmerson, riding in the open carriage, raised a fat hand towards Sergeant Havercamp, while his small, angry eyes flicked over the muddy, gawping recruits in the ditch. Sharpe saw the jug ears, the porcine face, then he stared down at the green scum on the water so that Sir Henry would not notice him.
'That's. . Harper began.
'I know who the hell it is! Sharpe hissed.
And next to Sir Henry Simmerson, opposite a stern, grey-haired woman, and beneath a parasol of white lace, was a girl whom Sharpe had last seen in a parish church four years before. Jane Gibbons, Simmerson's niece, and the sister of the man who had tried to kill Sharpe at Talavera.
'On your feet! Hurry! Come on!
The dust from the carriage wheels was gritty in the air as Sharpe and Harper climbed from the ditch and dripped water onto the dry road. 'Form up! In twos!
Sharpe stared at the receding carriage. He could see the passengers sitting stiffly apart and he tried to tell himself that Jane Gibbons was hating to be beside her uncle.
'By the front! Quick march!
Sharpe had held the Eagle in Carlton House before the admiring gaze of the courtiers, and now another remembrance of that far-off day had come back. Sir Henry Simmerson had been the first Lieutenant Colonel of the South Essex, an angry, arrogant fool who had believed the battle lost and had taken the Battalion from the battle line in panic. He had been relieved of his command, and the South Essex, who had been shamed by his leadership, recovered their honour that day by capturing the French standard.
And afterwards, when Sharpe and Harper had been alone in the battle-smoke, amidst the litter of death and victory, Lieutenant Christian Gibbons, Sir Henry's nephew, had tried to take the Eagle from them.
Gibbons had died, stabbed by Harper with a French bayonet, yet the inscription on his marble memorial, undoubtedly composed by Sir Henry, claimed that he had died taking the Eagle. And on Sharpe's last visit to England, in a small parish church which must, he knew now, be close to this flat, marshy place, he had met Jane Gibbons.
In all the years since, on battlefields and in foul, smoky, flea-ridden billets, in the palaces of Spain where he had met La Marquesa, in his own marriage bed, he had not forgotten her. Sharpe's wife, before she died, had laughed because he carried a locket with Jane Gibbons' picture inside, a locket Sharpe had taken from her dead brother. The locket was lost now, yet he had not forgotten her.
Perhaps because she was the image of the England that soldiers remembered when they fought in a harsh, hot country. She had golden hair, soft cheeks, and eyes the same colour as the bright blue gowns that draped the Virgins of all Spanish churches. Sharpe had lied to her, telling her that her brother had died a hero's death, and he had been nervous before her grateful smile. She had seemed to him, in that cool, dark church, where she had come to place a pot of gilliflowers beneath her brother's memorial, to be a creature of another world; gentle, with a vein of quick life, too beautiful and precious for his harsh hands or battle-scarred face.
She must, he thought as they followed the carriage's tracks, be married by now. Even in an England where, as Captain d'Alembord often said, there were not enough well-washed men for wellborn girls, Surely such a beautiful, smiling creature would not be left unwed. And seeing her again, this suddenly, on this desolate track in the marshes at the edge of England, he felt the old attraction, the old, hopeless attraction for a girl so lovely. He felt, too, the old temptation to believe that no girl, come from so foul and treacherous a family, could be worthy of love.