‘Have your thief, Captain. We shall meet again.’
Sharpe lowered the rifle. Ayres waited until Batten was clear of the horses, then wrenched the reins and led his men towards Celorico. ‘You’ll hear from me!’ His words were flung back. Sharpe could sense the trouble like a boiling, black cloud on the horizon. He turned to Batten.
‘Did you steal that bloody hen?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Batten flapped a hand after the provost. ‘He took it, sir.’ He made it sound unfair.
‘I wish he’d bloody taken you. I wish he’d bloody spread your guts across the bloody landscape.’ Batten backed away from Sharpe’s anger. ‘What are the bloody rules, Batten?’
The eyes blinked at Sharpe. ‘Rules, sir?’
‘You know the bloody rules. Tell me.’
The army issued regulations that were inches thick, but Sharpe gave his men three rules. They were simple, they worked, and if broken the men knew they could expect punishment. Batten cleared his throat.
‘To fight well, sir. Not to get drunk without permission, sir. And –’
‘Go on.’
‘Not to steal, sir, except from the enemy or when starving, sir.’
‘Were you starving?’
Batten clearly wanted to say he was, but there were still two days’ rations in every man’s haversack. ‘No, sir.’
Sharpe hit him, all his frustration pouring into one fist that slammed Batten’s chest, winded him, and knocked him gasping into the wet road. ‘You’re a bloody fool, Batten, a cringing, miserable, whoreson, slimy fool.’ He turned away from the man, whose musket had fallen into the mud. ‘Company! March!’
They marched behind the tall Rifleman as Batten picked himself up, brushed ineffectively at the water that had flowed into the lock of his gun, and then shambled after the Company. He pushed himself into his file and muttered at his silent companions. ‘He’s not supposed to hit me.’
‘Shut your mouth, Batten!’ Harper’s voice was as harsh as his Captain’s. ‘You know the rules. Would you rather be kicking your useless heels now?’
The Sergeant shouted at the Company to pick up their feet, bellowed the steps at them, and all the time he wondered what faced Sharpe now. A complaint from that bloody provost would mean an enquiry and probably a court-martial. And all for the miserable Batten, a failed horse-coper, whom Harper would gladly have killed himself. Lieutenant Knowles seemed to share Harper’s thoughts, for he fell in step beside the Irishman and looked at him with a troubled face. ‘All for one chicken, Sergeant?’
Harper looked down at the young Lieutenant. ‘I doubt it, sir.’ He turned to the ranks. ‘Daniel!’
Hagman, one of the Riflemen, broke ranks and fell in beside the Sergeant. He was the oldest man in the Company, in his forties, but the best marksman. A Cheshireman, raised as a poacher, Hagman could shoot the buttons off a French General’s coat at three hundred yards. ‘Sarge?’
‘How many chickens were there?’
Hagman flashed his toothless grin, glanced at the Company, then up at Harper. The Sergeant was a fair man, never demanding more than a fair share. ‘Dozen, Sarge.’
Harper looked at Knowles. ‘There you are, sir. At least sixteen wild chickens there. Probably twenty. God knows what they were doing there, why the owners didn’t take them.’
‘Difficult to catch, sir, chickens.’ Hagman chuckled. ‘That all, Sarge?’
Harper grinned down at the Rifleman. ‘A leg each for the officers, Daniel. And not the stringy ones.’
Hagman glanced at Knowles. ‘Very good, sir. Leg each.’ He went back to the ranks.
Knowles chuckled to himself. A leg each for the officers meant a good breast for the Sergeant, chicken broth for everyone, and nothing for Private Batten. And for Sharpe? Knowles felt his spirits drop. The war was lost, it was still raining, and tomorrow Captain Richard Sharpe would be in provost trouble, real trouble, right up to his sabre-scarred neck.
CHAPTER TWO
If anyone needed a symbol of impending defeat, then the Church of São Paolo in Celorico, the temporary headquarters of the South Essex, offered it in full. Sharpe stood in the choir watching the priest whitewash a gorgeous rood-screen. The screen was made of solid silver, ancient and intricate, a gift from some long-forgotten parishioner whose family’s faces were those of the grieving women and disciples who stared up at the crucifix. The priest, standing on a trestle, dripping thick lime paint down his cassock, looked from Sharpe to the screen, and shrugged.
‘It took three months to clean off last time.’
‘Last time?’
‘When the French left.’ The priest sounded bitter and he dabbed angrily with the bristles at the delicate traceries. ‘If they knew it was silver they would carve it into pieces and take it away.’ He splashed the nailed, hanging figure with a slap of paint and then, as if in apology, moved the brush to his left hand so that his right could sketch a perfunctory sign of the cross on his spattered gown.
‘Perhaps they won’t get this far.’
It sounded unconvincing, even to Sharpe, and the priest did not bother to reply. He just gave a humourless laugh and dipped the brush into his bucket. They know, thought Sharpe; they all know that the French are coming and the British falling back. The priest made him feel guilty, as if he were personally betraying the town and its inhabitants, and he moved down the church into the darkness by the main door where the Battalion’s commissariat officer was supervising the piling of fresh baked bread for the evening rations.
The door banged open, letting in the late-afternoon sunlight, and Lawford, dressed in his glittering best uniform, beckoned at Sharpe. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Major Forrest was waiting outside and he smiled nervously at Sharpe. ‘Don’t worry, Richard.’
‘Worry?’ Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable William Lawford was angry. ‘He should damned well worry.’ He looked Sharpe up and down. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
Sharpe fingered the tear in his sleeve. ‘It’s all I’ve got, sir.’
‘All? What about that new uniform! Good Lord, Richard, you look like a tramp.’
‘Uniform’s in Lisbon, sir. In store. Light Companies should travel light.’
Lawford snorted. ‘And they shouldn’t threaten provosts with rifles either. Come on, we don’t want to be late.’ He crammed the tricorne hat on to his head and returned the salute of the two sentries who had listened, amused, to his outburst.
Sharpe held up his hand. ‘One moment, sir.’ He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the gold regimental badge that
