Sharpe's Regiment Part 14

He had planned a fire whatever might happen tonight; a diversion to draw men away from Harper. The straw was smoking, small flames creeping up the stems, and to help it he broke apart and scattered more cartridges on the fire. Then, satisfied that the stable was doomed, he climbed clumsily onto the horse's back, leaned forward to unloop the reins, and almost fell from the bareback horse as it started forward under the stable door. Sharpe ducked beneath the lintel, clung to the horse's mane, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the slung musket as it fell down to his elbow.

G.o.d, but it was hard to ride bareback! He slipped left, corrected his balance, and almost fell from the horse's right side. He wrenched the reins, driving it north between two buildings, and he heard the first shout of alarm as a man saw the leaping, fierce flames that now spread among the dry summer straw. No man thought it strange that a uniformed man should ride towards the marsh this night, nor was any man willing to challenge Sharpe, for, in an infantry Battalion, the men who rode horses were usually officers. Sharpe, unmolested and with the chaos about to begin, rode to join the hunt.

'Quiet!' Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood called for silence. The hunters were gathered in a perplexed knot where the two ditches met. 'Sergeant Lynch?'

'Sir!'

'You're sure it was here?'

'Certain, sir.'

Girdwood sent the eight dismounted sergeants westward. 'Form a line there! We'll drive him towards you. Gentlemen!' He beckoned at his hors.e.m.e.n. 'Five yards apart! Go slowly!'

It took a few moments for Girdwood to be satisfied with the alignment of his men, then, dropping his sabre as if he gave a signal on a battlefield, he walked his hors.e.m.e.n forward. 'Search every shadow!'

Captain Finch was the southernmost horseman, the one closest to the camp, and the man whose advance would bring him directly to Harper's hiding place. Finch held his carbine with the reins in his left hand and the sword in his right. He probed with the long blade into every deep shadow and fingered the carbine's trigger in case his sword should roust the fugitive out of hiding.

Harper, when the hunters had gathered to hear Girdwood's orders, had slid a few feet further down the ditch. He waited now, knowing that the line was coming towards him, and knowing, too, that the swords and sabres that stabbed down were his danger. Thirty yards behind Harper, muskets loaded and primed, the sergeants waited.

Captain Finch spurred over a bare patch of gra.s.s and sliced his sword down into a shadow. As he did it, the shadow seemed to flicker and disappear, a new light challenged the moon, and he looked southwards and saw, to his horror, that the stables were exploding into flame. 'Fire!'

Sergeant Bennet almost obeyed, his finger tightening convulsively on the trigger before he saw that the hors.e.m.e.n were staring at the camp and at the roiling smoke that billowed up from the burning wooden stables.

Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, whose evening pleasure was already nightmarish enough, was trapped between his need to find the Irishman and his desperation to extinguish the sudden fire before it spread to the other buildings of his command. 'Stay here, Finch! Come with me, Sergeant Major!'

Finch stared, appalled. He saw a horseman come out of the camp and trot towards the hunters, then the Colonel and Brightwell pa.s.sed Finch, goading their horses into a canter on the treacherous ground. Finch, at the very edge of a small ditch that his sword would explore next, turned to shout orders to the remaining huntsmen when, inexplicably, his horse reared.

Finch leaned forward to soothe the horse, but still it rose, screaming in terror, then lurched sideways. The captain caught a glimpse of a man, black as the night, dripping and huge, who had erupted from the ditch to seize one of the horse's forelegs and now, with ma.s.sive strength, was tipping the beast over. Finch tried to hit the man with his carbine, but his hand was seized and he was pulled with dreadful force to fall at his attacker's feet, while his frightened horse, released by Harper, skittered away.

'Don't move!' Harper, stinking and filthy from the ditch, shouted at the sergeants. 'I'll kill him!' They froze. The huge Irishman, dripping wet, had pulled the sword from Finch's right hand and now held it at the officer's throat.

Harper stripped the carbine from Finch, then pulled the ammunition pouch from the officer's belt, breaking it free with a ma.s.sive tug as if the two leather loops that held it were no stronger than rotted cotton. He looked up at the sergeants. 'Step back! Step back!' Then, from behind him, came the shout he had waited for.

'Patrick! Patrick!'

Harper dropped the sword and dragged Finch backwards. He stumbled over the ditch, still watching the sergeants who, in turn, stared appalled as their prey, who had appeared from nowhere like an embodied shadow, dragged his hostage towards the lone horseman who came over the marsh.

Girdwood checked and turned his horse. He saw the Irishman dragging Finch backwards. He saw, too, the horseman who approached Harper's rear and the Colonel supposed that the rider must be one of his own men. 'Kill him! Kill him!' But instead the rider dismounted beside the huge Irishman and Girdwood, frozen in indecision between the calamities on either hand, called out to his sergeants. 'Kill them!'

One of the sergeants raised his musket, but Harper hauled Finch to his feet and held the sword at the officer's throat. 'One bullet and he's a dead man! Now step back!'

Sharpe jumped down from the horse. He knew that Harper, who had been reared to ride the wild ponies of the Donegal Moors, was a much better horseman than himself. 'You take the horse, Patrick! Hold onto that b.a.s.t.a.r.d!' Sharpe threw away the useless musket and took the carbine from Harper. He checked that the carbine was of the Heavy Dragoon pattern that took the same calibre bullet as those in his captured pouch, then, seeing that Harper was mounted with the unfortunate Finch draped over the horse in front of him, he started westwards.

Girdwood watched in horror. 'Fire!' He shouted it to the sergeants who were closest to Sharpe and Harper, but none dared fire for fear of hitting Captain Finch. Girdwood stood in his stirrups. 'Stop them!'

Yet not one of Girdwood's men wanted to be a hero this night, not in such an ign.o.ble cause and not when they knew that the two fugitives merely fled towards the waiting picquet at the bridge. Beyond the bridge the militia cavalry waited, and so Girdwood's men, happy that others should rescue Captain Finch and apprehend the armed deserters, followed the fugitives without enthusiasm. Girdwood spurred his horse towards the laggard sergeants. 'Go on! Go on! Go on!'

Sharpe heard the shout, turned, and brought the carbine into his shoulder. Girdwood could just spur these men into action and Sharpe knew they must be discouraged. He aimed at Girdwood's horse, closed his eye against the flash of powder, and fired.

Girdwood's horse swerved away, startled by the bullet, and Sharpe heard the sergeants swear. He reloaded, his hands swift in the old actions, and he astonished his pursuers by sending a second bullet to flutter the air just seconds after the first. He turned and sprinted after Harper and heard a single musket fire in reply. The ball went wide. No one now, not Girdwood, not his officers, and not one of the sergeants, wanted to hurry the pursuit into the face of such deadly skill. They let Sharpe and Harper stretch their lead and were confident that the militia or the picquet at the bridge would end this nonsense.

Sharpe caught up with Harper. 'All well?'

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d's quiet, sir!' Harper had found a pistol in Finch's belt and had rapped the captain on the skull with its b.u.t.t. 'Where to?'

'This way!' Sharpe, running hard, turned off the road and led Harper back to the marsh. They were still on Foulness, still pursued, and there were enemies ahead, but they were Riflemen, hardened by war, and they would use their skills in this night of moons.h.i.+ne and madness. They would fight.

CHAPTER 11.

That morning, when Sergeant Lynch had marched them off the island, Sharpe had noted a drainage ditch that angled north west from the road and pointed, like a straight line on a map, towards Sir Henry's house. It was beside that ditch that he and Harper now went. 'We're going to the creek! You go ahead!' Sharpe reloaded the carbine, watching to see if the pursuers pressed close, but his earlier shots had taken what small courage they had and destroyed it. He felt a moment's shame that these men wore the uniform of the South Ess.e.x, then turned and ran after Harper.

The Sergeant had stopped beside the creek which edged the island. 'Can we lose this b.a.s.t.a.r.d, sir?' He plucked at Finch's jacket tails.

'Drop him!' The pursuit was too far behind for them to need a hostage now, and Harper hit Finch again, to keep him quiet, then tipped the officer into the mud. He coaxed the horse forward to the water. 'Give me the gun, sir!'

Sharpe handed up the carbine and his belt with its ammunition pouch. The tide was low, the water scarcely up to his knees, but if he tripped and soaked the cartridges they would be defenceless. The horse, nervous in the water, eagerly climbed up to the great reed bed that banked the creek. Sharpe followed, his shoes sticking in the thick mud.

'Another river, sir!' Harper called out and Sharpe, to his consternation, saw that they had succeeded in leaving Foulness only to gain the dubious refuge of this smaller island, scarcely more than a great stand of reeds among the water. This next crossing was wider and looked deeper, the moon-sheened water swirling menacingly as it swept seawards. 'Take the bridle for me, sir!'

Sharpe led the horse into the deeper water and the current s.n.a.t.c.hed at him. He supposed this must be the Roach, where Marriott had so nearly drowned him, and then he was half swimming, half being dragged by the panicked horse, until, with relief, he felt the beast heaving itself up the far bank and dragging him with it. He let go of the bridle, shook the water from his hair, then saw Sir Henry's house and, running straight towards it, the path on the sea wall that they had trodden that morning.

'Sir!'

'What is it?'

'Cavalry.' It was odd, suddenly, but it felt like Spain. Harper slid from the horse, his right hand feeling in the carbine pan to check that it was loaded. 'Skirmish line of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, sir. Half a mile.' He pointed west. 'Haven't seen us yet, but they will if we're mounted.'

'Moving?'

'No.' Harper grinned in the moonlight. 'Dozy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

It was a fine decision that had to be made. If Sharpe or Harper rode the horse, and the other ran alongside grasping the stirrup to keep up, they would be seen in this flat land by the searching cavalry. Their journey would be faster, but the militia, unenc.u.mbered by double-mounting or stirruping, would be faster still. If they went on foot they would be hidden, but the journey from here to the creek would take twice as long; twice as much time in which they might be found. It was visibility and speed against deception. Sharpe looked back the way they had come, but he could see no one and hear nothing. Finch must still be stunned by the blow Harper had given him.

Sharpe took the gun and ammunition. 'Hobble the horse. We walk.'

'We b.l.o.o.d.y run.' Harper was unbuckling the bridle. He tied the horse's front feet together. It whinnied nervously, and the Irishman soothed it. 'I'm ready.'

They crouched low. The embankment, on which the path ran so clear and straight towards Sir Henry's house, gave them cover. They were bent over, tripping sometimes on the tussocks, cursing as they stumbled, but always pus.h.i.+ng on in the bank's shadow. Sharpe stopped only once to peer through the gra.s.s at the embankment's top. He could see the moonlight s.h.i.+ning on the sabres and helmets of the cavalry, who, strung in a long line, searched the shadows and reed beds a quarter mile away. Sharpe caught Harper up. 'The b.u.g.g.e.rs are closer, but they won't catch us.

'Where are we going anyway?'

'We're stealing one of Sir Henry's punts. We'll cross the river.' He stopped, crouching by nettles that bordered the road before Sir Henry's house. The road was white in the moonlight, as was the pointing of the bricks in the high wall that fronted the garden. Sharpe tapped Harper's shoulder. 'You first.'

The big Irishman slithered over the road, showing the scarcest profile, and moved fast into the ditch at the far side. No cavalry trumpet sounded, no shout echoed on the flat land. 'Patrick!'

Sharpe threw the carbine across the road, then the ammunition. He looked behind once, saw the cavalry still far away, then half ran, half rolled over the dry road into the ditch. 'Come on!'

It was simple now to slip into the shadows of the half-cleared creek bed. The three duck-shooting punts, that Sharpe and Marriott had hauled onto the eastern bank just that morning, still lay in their tangle of awnings and hoops. 'Break the bottoms of two of them, Patrick, get paddles, take the third to the river. I'll join you.'

'Sir!'

Mercifully the barred gate of the boathouse was still unlocked. If Jane Gibbons had left the food and money then it could only take an instant to find them, and Sharpe groped along the brick ledge that ran the length of the tunnel. It was pitch black under the arched roof. His hands explored the empty walkway, finding nothing. There was no bundle, no food, no money. He heard the splinter of boards behind him as Harper pushed his foot through the bottom of one of the punts.

'Major Sharpe?'

He jumped, scared by the sudden voice, and then a cloth bundle was pushed at him and he saw, dim in the darkness, a hooded shape. 'Miss Gibbons? Is that you?'

'Yes! I have to talk to you!'

Sharpe climbed onto the ledge. He saw Harper look nervously southwards as he stove in the second punt. Sharpe was holding the bundle while Jane Gibbons' gloved hand, in an unconscious gesture of nervousness, rested on his arm. She was silent now, staring past Sharpe at the huge man who wrestled to turn the third punt over.

He smiled. 'Thank you for this.'

She shook her head. 'I wanted to help. Are the militia out?'

'Yes.'

'They'll come here. They always warn us.' She took her hand from his arm. She was standing on the platform that was built at the end of the tunnel, the stage from which someone could step down into the boats. 'You are going to stop them?'

'The auctions? Yes.'

'What happens to my uncle?'

Somehow the question surprised him; he had thought of her as an ally, a conspirator, but suddenly he saw what he had not seen all day, that the disgrace of her uncle would reflect upon this household. 'I don't know.' It was a feeble answer. He was tempted to tell her of the men who waited in Pasajes, of the disgrace they would suffer if their pride was to be laid up and they were to be denied a victory for which they had suffered and endured these long years.

'And Colonel Girdwood? Will he be finished?'

There was a hollow knocking of wood as Harper tossed two paddles into the punt, then began to drag it towards the far marker that showed where this creek joined the River Crouch. Sharpe nodded. 'He'll be finished. Disgraced.'

'Good!' She hissed the word, revelling in it. For a moment she was silent. The boathouse was in shadow, but her eyes glistened with the pale reflection of moonlight. She stared at Sharpe almost defiantly. They want me to marry him.'

It was like the moment when, on a clear day, a twelve pounder enemy shot thumps the air close by, astonis.h.i.+ng and sudden, threatening and unexpected. Sharpe only gaped. They what?'

'We're supposed to marry!'

'Him?'

'My uncle demands it,' she paused, her eyes bright in her shadowed face, 'but if he's in disgrace . . .'

'He'll be finished.' Sharpe heard a clinking sound, the fall of a hoof on the road. At the same moment came the call of a nightjar, soft and insistent. 'Cu-ick, cu-ick, cu-ick.' Sharpe had never heard a nightjar in marshland. It was Harper sounding a warning. 'I have to go!' For a second, a mad second, he wanted to take her with him. 'I shall come back. You understand?'

She nodded, then there was a sudden braying of a trumpet, a whoop like that of a huntsman, and he pulled away from her. 'I'll come back!' The first carbine shots cracked down the creekbed.

The militia was like a second British army, but a privileged one. A man who joined the militia could never be asked to serve abroad and his wife, unlike the wife of a regular soldier, received an allowance while he was away from home. It was a pampered, soft, well-trained, and useless army. It had been raised to resist an invasion that had never come, while now, nine years later, it starved the regular army of good men. Some militia men transferred to the regulars, attracted by the bounty and wanting, after their training, to do some real fighting, but most preferred to avoid the dangers of real soldiering.

The militia cavalry of South Ess.e.x, whose honorary Colonel was Sir Henry Simmerson, kept a troop quartered close to Foulness. Their task was to patrol the creeks against smuggling, guard the Foulness Camp, and protect Sir Henry's big brick house. When a man ran from Foulness, the militia cavalry went eagerly into a practised routine, because they had been offered a bounty should they ever succeed in stopping a deserter. Now, like a gift from heaven, the troops saw the big man who hauled the punt north towards the Crouch. Their first bullets drove him into the cover of the reeds.

Sharpe ran from the boathouse, gun, ammunition and bundle all held in his arms, and his shoes slipped in the treacherous mud as he turned towards Harper. A man shouted behind, a bullet cracked and whined off the brickwork to Sharpe's left while another drove a fountain of bright water up to his right. He heard the militia officer order his men forward. Some had dismounted to come down into the creek bed, others spurred their horses to its far bank.

She was to marry Girdwood? She was to be put with that tar-faced fool? A bullet crackled in the reeds to Sharpe's right, he slipped again as yet another shot thumped wetly into a rill of mud by his feet, then he was by the punt. 'Here!' He threw the carbine to Harper, then the ammunition pouch, and tossed Jane's bundle into the punt. 'Ill drag it! You hold the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds off! And Patrick!

'Sir?' Harper was finding cover as Sharpe hauled the punt on towards the river.

'Don't kill any of them. They're on our side, remember?"

'I don't think they know that, sir.' Harper grinned. If anything he was fractionally faster than Sharpe with a gun. British infantry could fire four shots a minute, while the best of the French could only manage three, yet Sharpe and Harper could both fire five shots in a minute from a clean musket on a dry day. Harper grinned and buckled on the belt with its ammunition pouch. The militia were about to discover what it was to fight against the best.

Sharpe dragged the heavy punt, struggling and cursing, forcing his tired legs to push through the mud, water and clinging roots. A bullet clattered through the reeds beside him, another struck the punt with a thump that ran up Sharpe's arm, then, mercifully, the creek turned, hiding him from his pursuers, and there was enough water in the half cleared bed to ease the punt's progress. Sharpe wondered, with a sudden, terrible fear, whether a stray bullet might have ricocheted into the boathouse. Marry Girdwood? By G.o.d he would break that vicious fool!

Patrick Harper knelt at the bend in the creek. He thumbed the c.o.c.k of Captain Finch's carbine back, saw that the dismounted cavalrymen were closer than their mounted comrades, and fired.

He rolled to one side, clearing his own smoke, and took a cartridge from the captured pouch. He was doing his job now, albeit with a short carbine instead of a rifle, and his second shot hammered down the creek bed within twelve seconds of his first and he saw the cavalrymen, who had never faced an enemy who fired real bullets, dive into cover.

He reloaded again. He saw a ma.s.s of men dark in the reeds to the left of the creek and he put a bullet into the ground ahead of them, and then a horseman on the bank was bellowing orders for the dismounted cavalry to spread out, to fire back, and Harper lay down as the volley cut into the reeds about him. 'Forward!' The cavalry officer shouted. 'Forward!' And there was something in that arrogant voice that touched a nerve in Harper. He knelt up, his face grim, and he put a bullet into the man who led the rush up the creek's wet bed. 'That's from Ireland.' He said it under his breath, and already the next cartridge was in his hand, the bullet in his mouth, and the wounded cavalryman was screaming and thras.h.i.+ng and his comrades were stunned because real blood had come into this night, their blood, and Harper was already moving right to snap off his next shot.

He was enjoying himself. It was only an officer like Sharpe, he decided, who would give an Irishman a chance like this, and though his first shots had been aimed only to warn and to wound, and though Sharpe had told him not to kill, the militia officer's voice, and the proximity of the last volley, had got his Irish blood roused. He was talking to himself, muttering in Gaelic, watching for the officer who had stayed safely on the bank and shouted at his men to hurry into danger. 'Forward!' the man shouted. 'Spread left! Hurry now!'

Harper had the gun at his shoulder. He saw the officer waving his sword, urging his muddy troops on, but not dirtying himself with the pursuit, and Harper knew where the bullet would go. He knew precisely where it would go. He smiled, tightened his finger, fired, and saw the officer fall back with the bullet exactly where Harper had aimed it. One dead, one wounded, and he was reloading again, and the militia, who had never seen how Wellington's men fought, were getting a taste of it in this Ess.e.x marsh.

'Patrick!'

Grinning, letting them off his hook, Harper slid backwards to the shallow water, turned, and with the carbine and ramrod held in separate hands, ran towards Sharpe. The punt was afloat in a pool among the reeds, and Sharpe gestured at him to get in.

The Irishman's weight momentarily grounded the punt, but Sharpe heaved with a paddle in the mud, and they headed towards the open river that flowed past the marker pole. A bullet snickered through the rushes to their right, another splashed overhead, and Sharpe grabbed a handful of the tough plants at the channel's edge and dragged the punt forward until the bow was suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed eastwards by the violent current, he gave the boat one last heave with the paddle, and they were out in the wide River Crouch and being swept towards the sea that must be, Sharpe knew, some two miles eastwards.

'Paddle!' Both men, kneeling in the flat craft, dug their blades into the water and drove the punt towards the northern bank.

There was a shout behind them, a yell of anger, and Harper muttered the prayer that all sailors and soldiers said before the enemy fired. 'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful.'

The volley made the water dance about them, small spouts of white that rose and fell, and the two men pumped their arms and drove the punt through the ripples of the gunshots, out into midstream, and Sharpe heard the rattle of ramrods behind him.

'They're slow,' Harper said scornfully. 'We'd have had two shots off by now.'

'They can still kill us. Paddle!'

Harper paddled, his strength driving his side of the punt faster than Sharpe's. Water splashed cold on them from their clumsy strokes. 'I'm afraid I killed one of the b.u.g.g.e.rs, sir!'

'You what?'