it?” Sharpe made no reply and the American looked at his Lieutenant. “Perhaps we ought to become real pirates in peacetime, Liam?”
“If we live that long.” Docherty stared sourly at the Rifleman.
“For an Irishman,” Killick said to Sharpe, “he has an unnatural sense of reality. Are you going to hang us, Major?”
“I’m feeding you.” Sharpe avoided the question.
“But in the morning,” Killick said, “the sailormen will want us, won’t they?”
Sharpe said nothing. Patrick Harper, by the stove, watched Sharpe and took a chance. “In the morning,” he said softly, “we’ll be away from here, so we will, and more’s the pity.”
Sharpe frowned because the sergeant had seen fit to interrupt, yet in truth he had asked for Harper’s presence because the good sense of the huge Ulsterman was something that he valued. Harper’s words had served two purposes; first to warn the Americans that the Riflemen could not control their fate, and secondly to tell Sharpe that the consensus, among the Green Jackets at least, was that a hanging would not be welcome. The Rifles had captured these Americans, had done it without bloodshed to either side, and they felt bitterly that the Navy should so highhandedly decide to execute opponents whose only fault had been to fight with unrealistic hopes.
No one spoke. Harper, his pennyworth contributed, turned back to the stove. Docherty stared at the scarred, stained table, while Killick, a half smile on his bruised face, watched Sharpe and thought that here was another English officer who did not match the image encouraged by the American news-sheets.
Frederickson, still by the door, thought how alike Sharpe and the American were. The American was younger, but both had the same hard, good-looking face and both had the same savage recklessness in their eyes. It would be interesting, Frederickson decided, to see whether such similar men liked or hated each other.
Sharpe seemed embarrassed by the encounter, as if he was uncertain what to do with this exotic and unfamiliar enemy. He turned to Harper instead. “Isn’t that soup ready?”
“Not unless you want it cold, sir.”
“A full belly,” Killick said, “to make us hang heavier?” No one responded.
Sharpe was thinking that in the morning, once the Riflemen were gone, Bampfylde would string these Americans up like sides of beef. Ten minutes ago that thought had not upset Sharpe. Men were hanged in droves every day, and a hanging was prime entertainment in any town with a respectable sized population. Pirates had always been hanged and, besides, these Americans were the enemy. There were good reasons, therefore, to let the Thuella’s crew hang.
Yet to reason thus, in cold blood, was one thing, and it was quite another to look across a table-top and apply that chilling reason to men whose only fault had been to pick a fight with Riflemen. There were French soldiers grown old in war who would have hesitated to take on Green Jackets, so should a seaman hang because of optimism? Besides, and though Sharpe knew this was not a reasonable objection, he found it hard to think of men who spoke his own language as enemies. Sharpe fought Frenchmen.
Yet the law was the law, and in the morning Sharpe’s orders would take him far from this fort, and far from Cornelius Killick who would, abandoned to Bampfylde’s mercies, hang. That, Sharpe decided, was certain and so, unable to offer any reassurance, he poured wine instead. He wished Harper would hurry with the damned soup.
Cornelius Killick, understanding all of Sharpe’s doubts from the troubled look on the Rifleman’s bandaged face, spoke a single word. “Listen.”
Sharpe looked into Killick’s eyes, but the American said nothing more. “Well?” Sharpe frowned.
Killick smiled. “You hear nothing. No wind, Major. There’s not a breath of wind out there, nothing but frost and mist.”
“So?”
“So we have a saying back home, Major,” the American was staring only at Sharpe, “that if you hang a sailorman in still airs, his soul can’t go to hell. So it lingers on earth to take another life as revenge.” The American pointed at Sharpe. “Maybe your life, Major?”
Killick could have said nothing more helpful to his cause. His words made Sharpe think of Jane, shivering in the cold sweat of her fever, and he thought, with sudden self-pity, that if she could not be saved then he would rather catch the fever and die with her than be in this cold, ice-slicked fort where the mist writhed silent about the stones.
Killick, watching the hard face that was slashed by a casual scar, saw a shudder go through the Rifleman. He sensed that Docherty was about to speak and, rather than have their situation jeopardized by Irish hostility, he kicked his lieutenant to silence. Killick, who had spoken lightly enough before, knew that his words had struck a seam of feeling and he pressed his advantage with a gentle voice. “There’s no peace for a man who hangs a sailorman in a calm.”
Their eyes met. Sharpe wondered whether the American’s words were true. Sharpe told himself it was nonsense, a superstition as baseless as any soldier’s talisman, yet the thought was irresistibly lodged. Sharpe had been cursed years before, his name buried on a stone, and his first wife had died within hours of that curse. He frowned. “The deserters must hang. That’s the law.”
No one spoke. Harper waited for the soup to seethe and Frederickson leaned against the door. Docherty licked bloodied lips, then Killick smiled. “All my men are citizens of the United States, Major. What they were before is not your business, nor my President’s business, nor the business of the bloody law. They all have citizens’ papers!” Killick ignored the fact that the certificates had been burned by Bampfylde.
“You give those scraps of paper to anyone who volunteers; anyone!” Sharpe said mockingly. “If a donkey could pull a trigger you’d make it into a citizen of the United States!”
“And what do you give to your volunteers?” Killick retorted with an equal scorn. “Everyone knows a murderer is forgiven his crime if he’ll join your Army! You expect us to be more delicate than your own service?” There was no reply, and Killick smiled. “And I tell you now that none of my men deserted the Royal Navy. Some may have fouled-anchor tattoos, some may have English voices, and some may have scarred backs, but I tell you now that they are all, every last jack of them, free-born citizens of the Republic.”
Sharpe looked into the hard, bright eyes. “You tell me? Or do you swear to me?”
„I’ll swear on every damned Bible in Massachusetts if you demand it.“ Which meant that Killick lied, but that he lied to protect his men, and Sharpe knew that he himself would tell just such a lie for his own men.
“Thomas Taylor is American,” Frederickson observed mildly to Sharpe. “Would you approve of him being hanged if the tables were turned?”
And if he let them go, Sharpe thought, then the Navy-would complain to the Admiralty and the Admiralty would huff and puff to the Horse Guards and the Horse Guards would write a letter to Wellington and all hell would break loose about Major Richard Sharpe’s head. Men like Wigram, the bores who worshipped proper procedure, would demand explanations and decree punishments.
And if he did not let the Americans go, Sharpe thought, then a girl might die, and he would go back to St Jean de Luz to be shown the fresh, damp earth of her grave. Somehow he believed, with the fervour of a man who would cling to any hope, that he could buy Jane’s life by not hanging a sailor-man in still airs. He had lost one wife by a curse; he could not risk it again.
He was silent. The soup boiled and Harper shifted it from the flames. Killick, as if he did not care what the outcome of this meeting was, smiled. “A flat calm, Major, and the ice will mask our dead faces just because we fought like men for our own country.”
„If I were to let you go,“ Sharpe spoke so quietly that, even in this night’s uncanny silence, Killick and Docherty had to lean forward to hear his voice, ”would you give me your word, as American citizens, that neither of you, nor any man in your crew, here or absent, will take up arms against Britain for the rest of this war’s duration?“
Sharpe had expected instant acceptance, even gratitude, but the tall American was wary. “Suppose I’m attacked?”
“Then you run.” Sharpe waited for a reply that did not come, then, to his astonishment, found himself pleading with a man not to choose a hanging. “I can’t stop Bampfylde hanging you, Killick. I don’t have the power. I can’t escort you into captivity; we’re a hundred miles behind enemy lines! So the Navy has to take you away from here and the Navy will string you up, all of you. But give me your word and I’ll release you.“
