Instead, as always in the rookery, there was a strange silence while people waited to hear if the trouble was coming their way. He picked up the pistol that had been carried by the soldier and pushed it into his belt, then took two golden coins from his pouch. 'Belle?
'Christ! She stared at them.
'Those are for Maggie, these are for you. He gave her two more. 'You've seen nothing, heard nothing, know nothing.
She ran, one hand holding the gun through her skirts, and Sharpe waited till the sound of her bare feet faded to nothing, then, in the odd silence, he walked back to Drury Lane.
'You've seen nothing, nor have you, until you've seen it! Even at half past three in the morning the huge Ulsterman was talking happily. 'More men that the Lord God killed in Sodom and Gomorrah. They cover the earth like locusts, and at their centre, at the very heart of them, there are the drummers. Harper began to bang his palms on the table. 'A great, solid mass of men! They're coming and the very earth is shaking, so it is, and they're coming at you! His hands still beat the table, rattling the bottles that he had made good use of.
A crowd listened.
'And the guns! The guns. I tell you. If you can imagine it, if you can imagine all the powder in all the earth crammed into the barrels, and the gunners working themselves into a slather, and the sound of it is like the end of the world! The drums, the guns, and the Frenchies with their bayonets, and there's just you and a few comrades. Not many, but you're there! You're waiting, so you are, and every mother's son of you knows that the bastards are coming for you, just you!
Sharpe stood at the door, the dead Sergeant's civilian greatcoat covering his uniform. He grinned, then whistled a few, brief, apparently tuneless notes.
Patrick Harper held his hands up as though he was pushing on a great door. 'They're coming towards you, so they are, and you can't see the sky for the smoke itself, and you can't hear a thing but the guns and the screams, and you're thinking that it's a long wee step from Donegal to Sallymanker, and you're wondering if you'll ever see your mother again! He shook his head dramatically.
Sharpe whistled the notes once more, a Rifleman's battlefield call that meant 'close on me'. He repeated it.
The Sergeant looked about the faces. 'You'll not go away?
More than a dozen people were left, listening enthralled, and Sharpe almost wished they had come here to recruit, for he and Harper could have walked out of the taproom with a dozen prime youngsters.
The Sergeant pushed his chair away from the table and grinned at his audience. 'Time for a dribble, lads. Just you wait! He came to the door, took in the dark coat and the blood that was still on Sharpe's face. 'Sir?
'Get my rifle, all my kit, everything! And yours! Fetch Isabella. We're going. Back alley in ten minutes.
'Aye, sir.
Sharpe went outside. No one had seen him, no landlord or tavern servant would be able to say that he had seen Major Sharpe alive. Now he and Harper must take Isabella back to the Southwark house and then, with the inspiration he had gained from watching the actors, they would go to find the Second Battalion of the South Essex.
It was dawn before Isabella was safely restored to the Southwark house. She accepted the sudden panic gracefully, though even she was curious as Sharpe and Harper stripped themselves of their uniforms and gave their weapons to Harper's cousin. 'You keep them for us! Harper said.
‘They'll be safe.
Mrs Reilly brought them old, ragged clothes, and Sharpe exchanged his comfortable French boots for a pair of broken, gaping shoes. Each man hid a few coins in their rags.
'How do I look? Harper asked, laughing.
'Awful, Sharpe laughed with him.
When Harper had come from the Rose Tavern, gripping Isabella in one hand and Sharpe's belongings in the other, he had brought orders that had been delivered to the tavern during the evening. Sharpe had read them. Lord Fenner ordered him to report instantly to the Chatham depot for transport to Spain. If Lord Fenner had also been behind the murder attempt then these orders, Sharpe surmised, were merely a disguise, or perhaps a precaution against Sharpe's survival.
The Reillys had a pen, some ink and old, yellowed paper. Sharpe wrote his own orders on the paper, addressed to d'Alembord, which told that officer and Lieutenant Price, to make themselves scarce, to get out of Chelmsford, and to hide in London. 'Wait for messages at the Rose Tavern. Do not wear your uniforms and do not report to the Horse Guards.' They would be mystified, but they would obey. Sharpe, thinking ahead, knew he would need d'Alembord and Price, and he dared not run the risk that Lord Fenner would order those two officers, like himself, back to Spain. Sharpe would post the letter express this morning, paying the extra for it to be carried by a horseman.
The mail office would think it strange that such a vagabond should pay such a sum for a letter, for Sharpe, like Harper, was in rags and for a purpose. Somewhere in Britain there was a hidden Battalion, and Sharpe did not know how to find it. Yet the Battalion was recruiting, and that meant its recruiting sergeants were on the roads of Britain, and those sergeants, Sharpe knew, would take their men back to wherever the Battalion was concealed.
Sharpe could not find the Battalion, but the Battalion could find him. Major Richard Sharpe and Sergeant Major Patrick Harper, who only the night before had been crowned by the Goddesses of Victory, were going to become recruits again. They had donned the costumes of tramps and must act the parts of the desperate men whose last recourse was to join the ranks. Sharpe and Harper would join the army.
CHAPTER 5
They walked north from London into a countryside that was heavy with summer and lush with flowers, a countryside that, compared to Spain, gave easy living. No gamekeeper in England could compete with a Spanish peasant at protecting his land, and the two Riflemen lived well.
There was only one problem in their first days on the road, and that a real one, which was Harper's inability to drop the word «sir». 'It's not natural, sir!
'What isn't?
'Calling you. . he shrugged.
'Dick?
'I can't! The big Irishman was blushing.
'You've bloody well got to!
They slept in the open. They trapped their food, stole it, or, despite the money hidden in their rags, begged in village streets. Four times in the first week they were chased out of parishes that did not want such stout looking trouble-makers in their boundaries. They looked villainous, for neither man shaved. Sharpe wanted them to appear to be old soldiers, discharged legally, who had failed to find jobs or homes outside the army. Patrick Harper, who accepted this turn in his fate philosophically, nevertheless worried at the problem of why the Second Battalion was hidden and secret. He constantly thought of the Sergeant who had tried to ambush Sharpe in the rookery. 'Why would the bugger want to kill you, sir?
'Don't call me. .
'I didn't mean it! But why?
'I don't know.
Whatever secret was hidden with the Second Battalion stayed hidden, for in those first days they did not see any recruiting parties, let alone one from the South Essex. They stayed clear of the coast, fearing to be scooped up by a naval press-gang, and they wandered from town to town, always hoping to find one of the summer hiring fairs that were such good hunting grounds for a recruiter. They worked one day, hedging along the Great North Road, hoping that a recruiting party would pass. They were paid a shilling apiece, poor wages for country labouring, but suitable pay for a soldier or vagabond. Harper rough hewed the hedge and Sharpe, coming behind,
