‘Who’s the senior officer in the depot?’
‘I am, sir,’ Carline said. He could not, Sharpe thought, have been more than twenty-two or three.
‘Where’s Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood?’
There was silence. A fly battered uselessly against a window. Sharpe repeated the question.
Captain Carline licked his lips. ‘Don’t know, sir.’
Sharpe walked to a massive sideboard that was heavy with decanters and ornaments. In the very centre of the display was a silver replica of a French Eagle which he picked up. On its base was a plaque. “This Memento of the French Eagle, Captured at Talavera by the South Essex under the Command of Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson, was Proudly Presented by Him to the Officers of the Regiment in Memory of the Gallant Feat.” Sharpe grimaced. Sir Henry Simmerson had been relieved of the command before Sharpe and Harper had captured the Eagle. He turned to the three officers, the Eagle held in his hands as though it were a weapon. ‘My name is Major Richard Sharpe.’
Sharpe would have needed a soul of stone not to enjoy their reaction. They had been frightened of him from the moment he had walked from the hall shadows, but their fear was almost palpable now. A man they had thought a thousand miles away had come to this plump, soft, lavish place, and each of the three men felt a terrible, quivering fear. Pierce, who had laughed as he ordered Sharpe to about turn, visibly shook. Sharpe let the fear settle into them before speaking in a low voice. ‘You’ve heard of me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Carline answered.
These officers, Sharpe knew, were the rump of the First Battalion, the men who kept its home records and who were supposed to despatch replacements to Spain. Except there were no recruits, there were no replacements, because the depot was dead and empty, and its officers were entertaining young ladies. Sharpe looked at the two Lieutenants, seeing fleshy, spoilt faces above rich uniforms that, well cut though they were, could not hide the spreading waists and fat thighs. Merrill and Pierce, in turn, stared back at the tall, battle-hardened Rifleman as though he was a visitor from some strange, undiscovered island of savages.
Sharpe put the Eagle back on the sideboard. ‘Why was there no guard detail on the gate?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’ Carline, Sharpe saw, was wearing glossy dancing shoes buttoned over silk stockings.
‘What in Christ’s name do you mean? You’re officer of the day, aren’t you?’ The sudden loudness of Sharpe’s voice startled them.
‘Should have been, sir.’ Carline said it helplessly.
Sharpe looked through the window as the file of horsemen, dressed in fatigues, trotted past. ‘Who the hell are they?’
‘Militia, sir. They use the stables here.’
The three young men, standing rigidly at attention, watched Sharpe as he moved about the room, examining ornaments, picking up a newspaper, once pressing a key of the spinet and letting the plucked note die into ominous silence before he again spoke softly. ‘How many men of the First Battalion are here, Carline?’
‘Forty-eight, sir.’
‘Detail them!’
Carline did. There was himself, three Lieutenants, four sergeants, and the rest were all storekeepers or clerks. Sharpe’s face showed nothing, yet he was seething with frustration and anger within. Forty-eight men to revive a wounded First Battalion, and no sign of the Second Battalion!
He stopped by the window and looked at each man in turn. ‘You god-damn bloody astonish me! No guard mounted, but you’ve got time to play blind-man’s buff and have a little tea-party. What do you do when you exert yourselves, arrange flowers?’ All three kept a judicious, embarrassed silence, avoiding his eyes as he looked at them again in turn. ‘Starting at six this evening, and thereafter on the hour, every hour, day and night till I’m bored with you, you will report in full regimentals to Sergeant Major Harper, who, you will be glad to hear, has returned from Spain with me. You!’ Sharpe pointed at Merrill, whose face showed utter horror at the thought of parading in front of an inferior, ‘and you!’ The finger moved to Pierce. ‘You will find Captain d’Alembord outside. You will request him to parade the men and tell him I am making an inspection in ten minutes, and once I have done that I shall inspect the barracks. Move!‘
They moved like hares out of a coursing trap, running out of the room, leaving Carline alone with Sharpe.
Sharpe ate a sandwich. He let the silence stretch. The walls of this comfortable room were bright with hunting pictures, red-coated horsemen in full cry across grass. Sharpe’s sudden question made Carline jump. ‘Where’s Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’ Captain Carline now sounded plaintive, like a small boy hauled up in front of a fearsome headmaster.
Sharpe stared with distaste at the thin, petulant man. ‘Colonel Girdwood does command the Second Battalion?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So where the hell is he? And where in Christ’s name is the Second Battalion?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Sharpe stepped close to him, close enough to smell the tea on Carline’s breath and the pomade in his carefully waved hair. ‘Captain.’ Sharpe, taller than Carline, looked down into the pale eyes and made his voice conversational. ‘You’ve heard men speak, presumably, of Regimental Sergeant Major MacLaird?’
Carline gave the smallest nod. ‘I’ve heard the name, sir.’
‘Less than one month ago, Carline, I saw his guts in blood. His belly was slit open. It was not a pretty sight, Captain. It would have spoilt your tea. But I’ll show it to you, Captain Carline. I’ll rip your bloody guts out with my own hands unless you answer me some god-damned questions! I’ll pull your spine out of your throat! You hear me?’
Carline looked as if he might faint. ‘Sir?’
‘Where is the Second Battalion?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’ He said it pleadingly, with naked fear in his eyes, and Sharpe believed him.
‘Then what the hell do you know, Captain Carline?’
Slowly, haltingly, Carline told his story. The Second Battalion, he said, had been stood down six months before, converted into a Holding Battalion. All recruiting had been stopped. Then, abruptly, the Second Battalion had marched away.
‘Just like that?’ Sharpe snarled the question. ‘They simply vanished?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Carline said it plaintively.
‘No explanations?’
Carline shrugged. ‘Colonel Girdwood said they were going to other units, sir.’ He paused. ‘He said the war’s coming to an end, sir, and the army was being pruned. We were to send our last draft out to the First Battalion and then just keep the depot tidy.’ He shrugged again, a gesture of helplessness.
‘The French are pruning the bloody army, Carline, and we need recruits! Are you recruiting for the First Battalion?’
‘No, sir. We were ordered not to!’
Sharpe saw Patrick Harper dressing a feeble Company into ranks on the parade ground. He turned back to Carline. ‘Colonel Girdwood said the men were being taken to other units?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Would it surprise you, Carline, to know that the Second Battalion still draws pay and rations for seven hundred men?’
Carline said nothing. He was doubtless thinking what Sharpe was thinking, that the seven hundred were non-existent and their pay was being appropriated by Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood. It was a scandal as old as the army; drawing the pay of men who did not exist. Sharpe, in a gesture of irritation, swatted a fly with his hand and ground it into the carpet with his boot. ‘So what do you do with the Second Battalion’s mail? Its paperwork? I presume some of it still comes here?’
‘We send it on to the War Office, sir.’
‘The War Office!’ Sharpe’s astonishment made his voice suddenly loud. The War Office was supposed to conduct war, and Sharpe would have expected the paperwork to go to the Horse Guards that administered the army.
‘To Lord Fenner’s secretary, sir.’ Carline spoke with more confidence, as if the mention of the politician’s name would awe Sharpe.
It did. Lord Fenner, the Secretary of State at War, had suggested in his despatch to Wellington that the First Battalion be broken up and now, it seemed, he was the man responsible for the disappearance of the Second Battalion, a disappearance that must obviously have the highest official backing. Or else, and it seemed unthinkable, Lord Fenner was an accomplice with Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood in peculation; stealing money through a forged payroll.
Footsteps were loud in the hallway, and Patrick Harper loomed huge in the doorway of the Mess. He slammed to attention. ‘Men on parade, sir. What there are of them.’
Sharpe turned. ‘Regimental Sergeant Major Harper? This is Captain Carline.’
‘Sir!’ Harper looked at Carline rather as a tiger would look at a goat. Carline, in his dancing shoes and with one hand on the spinet, seemed incapable of speaking. To think of himself as a soldier in the presence of these two tall, implacable men was ridiculous.
‘Sergeant Major,’ Sharpe’s voice was conversational, ‘do you think the war has addled my wits?’
There was a flicker of temptation on the broad face, then a respectful, ‘No, sir!’
‘Then listen to this story, RSM. The South Essex raises a Second Battalion whose job is to find men, train men, then send them to our First Battalion in Spain. Is that correct, Captain Carline?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So it recruits. It did recruit, Captain?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And six months ago, RSM,’ Sharpe swung back, ‘it is made into a Holding Battalion. No more recruiting, of course, it is merely a convenient dung heap for the army’s refuse.’ He stared at Carline. ‘No one knows why. We poor bastards are dying in Spain, but some clodpole decides we don’t need recruits.’ He looked back at Harper. ‘I am told, RSM, that the Holding Battalion has been broken up, it has disappeared, it has vanished! Its mail goes to the War Office, yet it still draws rations for seven hundred men. Sergeant Major Harper?’
‘Sir?’
‘What do you think of that story?’
Harper frowned. ‘It’s a real bastard, sir, so it is.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps if we break some heads, sir, some bastards will stop lying.’
‘I like that thought, Sergeant Major.’ Sharpe stared at Carline, and his voice was conversational no longer. ‘If you’ve lied to me, Captain, I’ll tear you to tatters.’
‘I haven’t lied, sir.’
Sharpe believed him, but it made no difference. He was in a fog of deception, and the hopelessness of it made him furious as he went into the sunlight to inspect the few men who had been assembled by d‘Alembord. Either there were no men in the Second Battalion, in which case there would be no trained replacements for the invasion of France, or, if they did exist, Sharpe would have to find them through Lord Fenner who would, doubtless, not take kindly to an interfering visit from a mere Major.
He stalked through the sleeping huts, wondering how he was to approach the Secretary of State at War, then went to inspect the armoury. The armoury sergeant, a veteran with one leg, was grinning hopefully at him. ‘You remember me, sir?’
Sharpe looked at the leathery, scarred face, and he cursed himself because he could not put a name to it, then Patrick Harper, standing behind him, laughed aloud. ‘Ted Carew!’
‘Carew!’ Sharpe said the name as if he had just remembered it himself. ‘Talavera?’
‘That’s right, sir. Lost the old peg there.’ Carew slapped his right leg that ended in a wooden stump. ‘Good to see you, sir!’
It was good to see Sergeant Carew for, alone in the Chelmsford depot, he knew his job and was doing it well. The weapons were cared for, the armoury tidy, the paperwork exact and depressing. Depressing because, when Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood had marched the Second Battalion away, the records revealed that he had left all their new weapons behind. Those brand new muskets, greased and muzzle-stoppered, were racked beneath oiled and scabbarded bayonets. That fact suggested that the men had been sent to other Battalions who could be expected to provide weapons from their own armouries. ‘He didn’t take any muskets?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Four hundred old ones, sir.’ Sergeant Carew turned the oil-stained pages of his ledger. ‘There, sir.’ He sniffed. ‘Didn’t take no new uniforms neither, sir.’
Non-existent men, Sharpe thought, needed neither weapons nor uniforms, but, just as he was deciding that this quest was hopeless because the Second Battalion had been broken up and scattered throughout the army, Sergeant Carew gave him sudden, extraordinary hope. ‘It’s a funny bloody thing, sir.’ The Sergeant lurched up and down on his wooden leg as he turned to look behind him, fearful that they would be overheard.
‘What’s funny?’
‘We was told, sir, that the Second’s just a Holding Battalion. No more recruits? That’s what they said, sir, but three weeks ago, as I live and breathe, sir, I saw one of our parties with a clutch of recruits! Sergeant Havercamp, it was, Horatio Havercamp, and he was marching ’em this way. I said “hello”, I did, and he tells me to bugger off and mind my own business. Me!‘ Carew stared indignantly at Sharpe. ’So I talks to the Captain here and I asks him what’s happening? I mean the recruits never got here, sir, not a one of them. Haven’t seen a lad in six months!‘
Sharpe stared at the Sergeant, and the import of what Carew was saying dawned slowly on him. Holding Battalions did not recruit. If there were recruits then there was a Second Battalion, and the seven hundred men did exist, and the Regiment could yet march into France. ‘You saw a recruiting party?’
‘With me own eyes, sir! I told the Captain too!’
‘What did he say?’
‘Told me I was drunk, sir. Told me there were no more recruiting parties, nothing! Told me I was imagining things, but I wasn’t drunk, sir, and sure as you’re standing there and me here I’m telling you I saw Horatio Havercamp with a party of recruits. Now why would they not come here, sir? Can you tell me that?’
‘No, Sergeant, I can’t.’ But he would find out, by God he would find out. ‘You’re certain of what you saw, Sergeant?’