'Of course it varied. Smith was rubbing his hands together, twining his fingers, fidgeting unhappily. 'Some auctions were more profitable.
'Who bought them?
'Foreign postings, Smith shrugged. 'West Indies mostly, some in Africa.
That made sense. The regiments posted to the West Indies lost far more men than the regiments in Spain, most of them to the dreaded yellow fever. Recruits were hard, almost impossible to find, and by selling men to such regiments Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood had made sure that the evidence of his peculation was carried far away to an early grave.
Smith looked sheepishly up at Sharpe. 'I'm sorry, sir.
'You're sorry! Christ Almighty! What about the men you've sent abroad! There was no answer. 'Why did you do it?
Smith paused, then the words tumbled out. He had been a Lieutenant, passed over for promotion, in debt, unable to buy a Captaincy, and, seemingly like a gift from heaven, Girdwood had offered this chance. Smith, like Finch, had bought his Captaincy and paid off the debt with the crimping profits. He looked up at Sharpe. 'I've been a soldier for twenty-four years, sir!
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?
No one replied. They watched as he mounted, as he wheeled the horse, and as he rode into the night. Captain Smith, who had left his shako in the office, thought to order the door open, but one look at the huge, respectful Irish RSM, who carried eight loaded bullets in his two guns, persuaded Smith that this night, and perhaps in all the army nights to come, it would be better to obey orders. He walked away.
While Sharpe, sword at his side and rifle on his shoulder, galloped after his enemy who would lead him, he suspected, towards the house with the eagle weathervane, where a girl of mischievous beauty lived, and a house which, as Sharpe had guessed ever since the search of the office had proved barren, would hold the papers he needed to destroy his enemies.
CHAPTER 16
It was a night like the one on which he and Harper had escaped. There was the same sheen of moonlight on the marshes that turned the grasses and reeds into a shimmering, metallic silver. On the flat stretches of water that flooded the mudbanks at the creek mouths, Sharpe could see the black shapes of waterfowl. From far off, where the rising tide raced over the long mudbanks of the shore, there came, like a distant battle dimly heard, the sound of seething water. Once, as he put his horse to an earthern bank that dyked farmland from the marsh, he saw the white, fretting line of waves far to the east, and, beyond it, a dark shape in the night that was a moored ship waiting for the ebb. A tiny spark of light showed at its stern.
Sharpe rode cautiously. He could see the small figure of Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood ahead of him, and Sharpe slowed to make sure that the Colonel did not realise he was being followed. At the place where the track went north Girdwood turned, confirming Sharpe's suspicion that he was going to Sir Henry's house. Sharpe waited until the horseman had melded into the far shadows of the night, then followed.
He splashed through the Roach ford. He seemed alone now in a wet land, but behind him he could see the flicker of lights where the Foulness Camp lay, while, ahead of him, Sir Henry's house was a dark shape spotted with brilliant candlelight. Sharpe paused again beyond the Roach, standing his horse beside a tall bed of reeds and he heard, distinct over the flat, still land, the sound of big iron gates being pulled open. When he heard them close, and knew that Girdwood was safe inside the sheltering garden wall, he put his heels back and went on.