Jubilation exploded in the boy. 'Thank you, sir!
'But don't get killed in your first battle, Charlie.
He wished all the problems were that simple to solve. There were camp kettles to find, billhooks to issue, mules to steal from the militia stable, and all had to be done in a hurry because Sharpe knew he must be away from this place before any orders arrived from London. He split the sergeants between the two units, leaving Sergeant Havercamp to recruit from Chelmsford. He left Brightwell too, as Sergeant Major here beneath Captain Finch. Sharpe was not happy with the arrangement, but if he was successful in the next few days, then Finch and Brightwell would soon be relieved by better men. Sharpe kept Sergeant Lynch with his trained men. Sharpe wanted to have the renegade, vicious Irishman under his own eye.
The ration cattle had not arrived yet, and the coachman claimed that the carriage's splinter-bar was breaking, but relented when Sharpe promised him a gold coin if the wood stayed whole. Captain Carline, appalled by the sudden energy that was infusing the quiet barracks, went pale when Sharpe told him to prepare to march.
'We are coming back this evening, aren't we, sir?
'Why?
'I had dinner arranged. . His voice trailed away.
'Hurry, Captain!
There were still more problems. Half the men's shoes had broken down on the day's brief march, and there were not enough new shoes to be issued. Price went in search of men who had been cobblers before they joined the army. Most of the papers from Foulness were put into the offices, but Sharpe kept the attestation forms. These forms, all now saying that the men were in the First Battalion of the South Essex, would be embarrassing to Sharpe's enemies. They proved no wrong-doing, but the absence of the forms, in an army that thrived on paperwork, would make it almost impossible for Lord Fenner to scatter the men left in Chelmsford to other barracks. The attestation form was a man's passport in this army. Without it, he did not exist. Sharpe kept them in the carriage.
And at last, at seven o'clock, when the midges were dancing in the evening air over the gatehouse and the swallows darting above the Mess roof, the four Companies were ready. They paraded in full marching order, their equipment and weapons heavy on their shoulders. They believed that Sharpe, as an unwelcome exercise, was doing no more than marching them to the outskirts of the town and back. It was a belief that all but his three closest comrades shared.
'Talion! By the front! Harper's voice was huge. 'Quick march!
The four Companies, followed by the coach, went under the archway and turned west towards Chelmsford. Sharpe skirted the town, going north, and it was not until the tallest spire of Chelmsford had disappeared that he allowed himself a small measure of hope. He still kept them marching at a cracking pace, taking them down narrow, thick-grown lanes, losing them in a scented, soft country of orchards, hedges, and gentle hills. He marched them until the sun, huge and glorious, almost touched the western horizon. Then, where a meadow lay by a great covert of oak and beech, he stopped the exhausted column and called the officers to him. 'This, gentlemen, is where we sleep.
Captain Carline, whose elegant breeches had been chafed thin by the ride, gaped at him. 'Sleep, sir? But we haven't got tents!
'Good.
They slept.
For two days he marched them westward. They slept rough, as they would in Spain, and Sharpe spared the men the parades and drills which had plagued them at Foulness. Not that he made it easy, but he tried, so far as it was possible in this plump, easy country, to give them a taste of what a campaign march was like.
At night they set picquets. To two of his Captains, Smith and Carline, a picquet was a smart group of men who stood to attention at the boundary of a camp and had no purpose other than to salute officers.
On the first night that Smith set the picquets, Regimental Sergeant Major Harper, hidden in a thicket of blackberries, put a bullet into a tree trunk beside the Captain. Smith jumped a foot in the air. 'Sir! Sir!
Sharpe beckoned Smith to one side. 'If that was the French and not the RSM, you'd be dead. Hide the buggers.
'Hide them?
'If you were French, Captain, how would you approach this place?
Smith frowned, then pointed to where the lane disappeared over the hill by a stand of elms. 'There, sir?
'So guard it. And tell them I'll come looking for them.
That night and the subsequent nights, about the officers' fire, Sharpe talked of battles. He did not do it boastfully, but because none of these men, except for d'Alembord and Price, knew what it was to face the French. He told them how to smell unseen cavalry, how to clean a musket on a battlefield, how to face a charging horse, how to make a billet out of nothing, and sometimes Sharpe would wander about the other camp-fires and tell the same stories to the men. Harper did it too, working his Irish magic so that, within two days, he could swear at them foully and they still grinned and tried to impress him with their endurance.
'They're good lads, sir, Harper said.
They were, too, and they were beginning to want to go to Spain, but Sharpe sometimes feared in the night that their hopes would be dashed by his temerity. His idea, that might mean no proof would be needed, was a desperate gamble. He tried not to contemplate failure, and marched his hidden Battalion onwards.
The men were not spared all drills. Where they could, on common land or on the patches of heath that they discovered as they went further west, Sharpe would suddenly bellow at them to form square, or line, or a column of half Companies, and he had Lieutenant Mattingley at his side to time the manoeuvre. They got better each day, even began to enjoy the experience, and they were blessed with little rain, warm sun, and some back pay from the Battalion chest that was still kept in the hired coach. The money dwindled fast. It was used to pay millers for flour, farmers for beer, and innkeepers for ration ale.
On the third day Sharpe stopped the march. The men were harder than they had ever been, as dirty and ragged as any soldiers in Spain, and happier than he had dared hope. He made it a day of exercises, two Companies against two, games in which men tried to surprise picquets or conceal themselves in woodland; stalking games that would not be of great use to any of them unless they joined the Light Company, but which were a rest from the hard slog of marching. That evening, to the concern of the sergeants and officers, he let them go to the tavern in a nearby village, promising to flog any man who made trouble or who could not walk back to the bivouac.
'You won't see the filth again. Sergeant Lynch, put into d'Alembord's Company, was surly still, ever ready to preach doom. Slowly, as the punishment he had expected did not materialise, he was regaining his old bumptious confidence. Charlie Weller still stared at him in hatred, remembering the death of Buttons.
Sharpe did not smile. He sensed the mutual hatred between himself and the Irish Sergeant. 'I am not a gambling man, Sergeant Lynch, but I will wager you one pound a man, which you can well afford, that every man will come back.
Lynch would not take the bet and every man came back.
Twice Sharpe met senior officers, both riding close to their country estates, and both delighted to meet him. They nodded genially at the marching men. Sharpe said they were on exercise and neither officer thought there was anything odd in it, which meant that there was no hue and cry being made for a half Battalion missing in England.
Sharpe was certain that Lord Fenner would institute a search, but he guessed the search would concentrate on Chelmsford and then, perhaps, on one of the depots, like Chatham, from whence the replacements sailed to Spain. If he was found in the next two days, before he could lay on the display that he planned, then he knew he was doomed.
On the Friday morning, as the half Battalion turned southwards, Sharpe called Lieutenant Mattingley to him. Mattingley, like Smith, wanted to impress Sharpe, wanted forgiveness, and he showed a doglike relief when he saw that Sharpe was smiling. 'Sir?
'It is Friday, Mattingley.
