‘Sergeant Hakeswill was a good soldier …’
‘Hakeswill was a piece of shit, like you, and I had the pleasure of watching him die.’ Morris backed against the brick wall. A door opened and a grey-haired man peered out to discover the cause of the noise. He took one look at Sharpe’s face and retreated swiftly, shutting and bolting the door. ‘Hakeswill was a lying piece of shit, and you knew it.’ Sharpe took a step nearer Morris.
‘I didn’t …’ Morris began, then his voice faltered.
‘Let me tell you, Charlie,’ Sharpe said, ‘I’ve been wounded more times than I can remember. Musket balls, shell fragments, swords and bayonets, but none of those wounds was as painful as that flogging. And you knew I didn’t deserve it.’
‘I didn’t …’ Morris began again, and again faltered.
‘And ever since, Charlie, I’ve dreamed of finding you again. Dreamed of retaliation.’
Morris took a deep breath, calming himself. ‘Retaliation? I see that promotion has increased your vocabulary, Sharpe.’
Sharpe hit him. He buried his fist into Morris’s plump belly, folding the Major over. ‘Don’t patronise me, Charlie. I’m a Colonel now, and you call me sir. And for the moment you command my battalion, and it’s a good one.’ He waited for Morris to straighten. ‘So let me tell you the rules, Charlie. Are you listening?’
Morris managed to nod. There were tears in his eyes and his face wore a grimace of pain.
‘Then listen well, Charlie. You always were a flogger because you’re weak. But I won’t flog men, you understand? So if I hear that one man in my battalion has been flogged on your orders I’ll find you, I’ll strip you to the waist, and I’ll flog the skin off your back. Do you understand me?’
Morris nodded again.
‘Do you understand me?’ Sharpe almost shouted the question.
‘I do,’ Morris managed to say and, after a pause, ‘sir.’
‘They’re good men,’ Sharpe said, ‘and they fight well. Something you never knew how to do. One flogging, Charlie, and I’ll lay your ribs bare.’ He took a pace back just as Patrick Harper appeared from the alley.
‘Mister Sharpe,’ Harper said, taking in the cowed figure of Morris, ‘Mister Fox is wondering where you are, sir.’
‘He can wonder, Pat. Remember me telling you about Major Charles Morris?’
‘Oh I do, sir.’
‘Last I heard he was in Dublin. Now he’s here.’
‘So that’s him, sir?’
‘Miserable piece of shit that he is, yes.’
‘He had you flogged, sir? Is he the one?’
‘He did, Pat.’ Sharpe reached out and patted Morris’s cheek. ‘I want you to meet Regimental Sergeant Major Patrick Harper, Charlie. He and I captured an Eagle together, and if you flog one man in my battalion then Patrick Harper will wield the whip that flogs you.’
‘It’ll be a real pleasure, Mister Sharpe,’ Harper said, grinning.
‘Now back to my battalion, Charlie,’ Sharpe said, ‘and don’t forget my promise.’
Morris hesitated, as if unwilling to reappear in the town square before he had composed himself, but a threatening fist from Sharpe persuaded him to move. Sharpe followed him. ‘What did you do to the fellow?’ Harper asked.
‘Thumped him once, that’s all.’
‘He’s not a happy man.’ Harper grinned. The blow to the belly had winded Morris and he staggered slightly as he left the alley, and then had trouble mounting his horse. The Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers watched, then recognised some of their own men among the horsemen who followed Sharpe, and jeered good-naturedly. Sharpe, mounted again, waved to them and the jeers turned to cheers, which followed Sharpe as he rode west.
Alan Fox spurred to ride beside Sharpe. ‘What was that about?’ he asked.
‘Years ago,’ Sharpe said, ‘I was a Private in the 33rd and that piece of crap was my company officer. He had me flogged for something I didn’t do. That was in India, Mister Fox.’
‘And now he commands your battalion?’
‘So I just put the fear of God into him.’
Fox laughed. ‘He looked as if he’d seen the devil!’
‘Maybe he did.’
They left the city through an ancient gate, now guarded by redcoats, then passed the hornwork that the light companies of the British Guards had captured, a victory which had persuaded the city’s garrison to surrender. Once turned southwards, Sharpe turned again to Alan Fox. ‘How many miles to Paris?’ he asked.
‘I reckon about ninety,’ Fox said. ‘Three or four days?’
‘And how many troops in Paris?’ Sharpe went on.
‘The Duke told me there are about a hundred and twenty thousand men.’
Sharpe turned and gestured at his dozen troops. ‘We’re a small force, sir.’
Fox smiled. ‘We will be an invisible force, Sharpe.’
‘Red coats and green jackets?’
‘You know Colquhoun Grant, Colonel?’
‘I met him once, sir.’ Colquhoun Grant was the most famous of Wellington’s exploring officers, the men who rode in full uniform behind the French lines to estimate the enemy’s strength.
‘Poor Grant was captured by the French.’
‘I remember, sir.’
‘But what you may not know is that he escaped. He went to Paris and lived there for some weeks and never once took off his red coat. When challenged he claimed it was the uniform of the United States, and he was believed.’
‘So we’re Americans now, sir?’ Sharpe asked sourly.
‘No, Colonel. This afternoon we should reach Roye, and there’s bound to be a clothing store there. Probably not the height of fashion if that worries you?’
Sharpe plucked at his faded and stained green jacket. ‘Terrifies me.’ He paused. ‘Because if they capture us they’ll claim we’re spies and then shoot us.’
‘Indeed they will,’ Fox said, ‘but your job, Sharpe, is to make sure I’m not captured.’
They stopped just north of Roye and Fox declared he would shop for civilian clothing. Harper was already in civilian clothing, though his green Rifleman’s jacket was in the pack he wore, and he accompanied Fox into the small town, leaving Sharpe with his men in a grove of trees beside the road.
‘Sergeant Harps doesn’t speak Crapaud, does he, sir?’ Butler asked.
‘Not a word,’ Sharpe said, ‘but he’s Irish. He could talk himself out of the devil’s lockbox.’
Which turned out to be true when Fox and Harper returned with a pile of nondescript clothing. ‘They believed we’re deserters from the Emperor’s army,’ Fox explained, ‘and we’re evidently not the first such men to buy clothes.’
There was the inevitable hilarity as red or green jackets were discarded and replaced by homespun coats. Fox handed Sharpe a long black coat. ‘I’m told it belonged to a doctor. It fits too!’
‘So we’re deserters now?’
‘I think everyone who sees us will assume that.’
‘And try to arrest us?’
‘Once we reach Paris? Possibly. But I suspect the city will be full of deserters. The defeat at Waterloo has thrown the whole country into chaos.’ Fox had an insouciance that irritated Sharpe. The man dismissed all difficulties as though they did not exist, which left Sharpe to worry about them.
‘And in that chaos,’ Sharpe said, ‘we have to find these assassins?’