'You want this.' At her waist was a belt and, hanging from the leather, a hook. It was an old device for hiding stolen goods, but now the girl had the huge horse pistol hooked by its trigger guard. It was a fearful weapon with a splayed bra.s.s muzzle that, like a blunderbuss, would spray its charge of metal fragments in a widening fan. An ideal weapon, Sharpe supposed, with which the guard cowed Maggie Joyce's gin rooms. The barrel, Sharpe saw, was stuffed with rags to keep the missiles in place, and he pulled them out, then tapped the b.u.t.t on the ground to tamp the stones and nails back onto the charge. He thumbed the heavy c.o.c.k back. It was stiff, but clicked into place.

'Who are they?'

'One's called Jem Lippett, she doesn't know the other. Jemmy's a topper.' She gave the news that one of the men was a professional killer without any tone of alarm. This was a rookery.

Sharpe drew his long battle-sword. 'Get behind me.'

She crouched low. Sharpe guessed she was fifteen, perhaps fourteen, and he supposed she wh.o.r.ed for her living. Few girls escaped the rookery, unless they were startlingly beautiful, and then their men would hawk them further west where the prices were higher. 'How do you know Maggie?' He spoke softly, not worrying about silence, because the men, if they were following him, would expect to hear voices from the entranceway.

'I work for her.'

'She was beautiful once.'

'Yes?' The girl sounded disinterested. 'She says you grew up here.'

'Yes.'

'Born here?'

'No.' He was watching the dark shape of the gate. His sword was beside him on the ground. 'Born in Cat Lane. I came here from a foundling home.'

'Maggie said you killed a man?'

'Yes.' He turned to look at her thin face. 'What's your name?'

'Belle.'

He was silent. He had killed a man who was beating the living daylights out of Maggie. Sharpe had cut the man's throat, and the blood had soaked into Maggie's hair and she had laughed and cuffed Sharpe round the head for messing her up. She had sent Sharpe out of the rookery, knowing that the murdered man's friends would look for revenge, for Sharpe had killed one of the kings of St Giles, one of the leaders of the criminals who lived in such safe squalor in the dark maze. Maggie had saved Sharpe's life then, and she was doing it again now, even though she could have left him unwarned, hoped for his death, and kept the jewels of Vitoria for herself.

Or perhaps she was not saving his life, for he could neither see nor hear anything untoward. Somewhere a dog barked, fierce and urgent, and then there was a yelp as it was silenced with a blow. A voice sang in an alleyway, there was laughter from a gin shop, and always the cries of babies and the shouts of anger and the screaming of men and women who lived and fought together in the tight filth of the small rooms where two families could share one room with a third in the hallway outside.

The girl coughed, a racking, hollow, dreadful sawing that would kill her before two winters had pa.s.sed, and Sharpe knew the sound would bring the men into the alley if, indeed, they looked for him.

A bottle broke nearby. The gate of the entranceway creaked open an inch, stopped, and creaked again.

The girl's hands were on his back as if his nearness gave her comfort. He held the gun with both hands, its b.u.t.t on the ground, its muzzle facing upwards so that the loose charge of killing fragments would not trickle down the barrel. He waited. The gate had opened only a few inches.

The gate was the only entrance into this place. It did not move again. Sharpe wondered if the two men waited for him to come out, preferring to ambush him as he came through the gateway rather than come themselves into the dark cul-de-sac where he might be waiting. He knew he must tempt them inside, make them think he was defenceless here, and he felt the crawling excitement that he had thought he would only get on a battlefield where he faced the French. At this moment, just as he did on a battlefield, he must dictate the enemy's move for them. He smiled. The two men who pursued him, if indeed they came to kill him, had found themselves an enemy. 'Belle?' He spoke in a whisper.

'What?'

'Make a noise!'

She knew what he meant. She began to moan, to give small gasps, and her hands rubbed up and down his back as the noises grew louder. 'Come on,' she said. 'Come on, my love, come on!' The two men obeyed her.

Two men, and moving so swiftly and silently that at first Sharpe was hardly aware that they had slunk past the door, then he saw the gleam of a knife and he pressed back with his spine to keep Belle moaning and the noise drew the two men towards the dark s.p.a.ce beside the stairs.

Sharpe pulled the trigger. He half expected the old gun not to work, but the priming flashed; he had already closed one eye to keep his night vision; and the huge pistol bucked in his hands as the charge exploded and the barrel tried to leap upwards.

It was a nasty weapon. Its effect, in the tight entranceway, was as if a canister had been fired from a field gun. The sc.r.a.ps of stone and metal sprayed out from the stubby, splayed barrel and ricocheted from the walls to throw the two men backwards in blood and smoke and, even as they fell, Sharpe was moving. He dropped the empty gun, picked up the long, heavy, killing sword, and shouted the war-shout that put fear into his enemies.

One of the men, the one dressed in the greatcoat and in whose hand was a pistol, was dead. Half his head was missing, smeared in blood that fanned up the alley's wall, but the second man, cursing and sobbing, was trying to stand and in his right hand was a long knife.

The sword knocked the knife out of the bloodstained hand and Sharpe dropped his knee onto the wounded man's belly. He put the huge sword against the man's throat. 'Who are you?'

The man's answer was short.

Sharpe drew the sword an inch to one side and the man, struck in the shoulder, waist, and thigh by the horse-pistol's sc.r.a.ps, gasped as the edge cut into his throat.

'Who are you?'

'Jemmy Lippett!'

'Who sent you?' Sharpe let the sword slip another fraction.

'No one sent me. I came with him!' Lippett's eyes, their whites bright in the gloom, looked towards the dead man. The smoke from the pistol still lingered in the entranceway. Sharpe heard the girl move behind him. He pushed the blade down, making the man gasp.

'Who was he?'

'I don't know!'

'Who wanted me dead?'

'Don't know!'

Sharpe drew the blade another half inch. 'Who?'

'I don't know!' The man felt the pressure of the steel and he whimpered. 'Just a bleeding soldier! Honest! He knew my da!'

Sharpe jerked his head towards the dead man. 'He's a soldier?'

'Yes!' Lippett's eyes, staring up at Sharpe's face, suddenly moved. Belle had come to Sharpe's shoulder, was looking down at Lippett, and the recognition in his eyes was his death warrant. If he lived he might call for revenge on the girl, even on her mistress, and besides, if he lived he would be able to say that Sharpe lived too.

Sharpe jerked his knee. 'Listen!'

'I'm listening!'

'You tell your da . . .' But there were no more words to be said because the sword, with sudden skill, had sliced down into the man's throat, driven by Sharpe's right hand on the handle and his left hand on the backblade, so now the man could not betray Maggie. His blood spurted up, striking Sharpe in the face, but the Rifleman kept the blade moving until it hit bone.

Sharpe had long known one thing, that if a man's death is sought, then it is good for that man to pretend to be dead. Earlier this very summer he had fooled the French because they believed him hanged, and now he would do the same to whoever had sought his death. No one would come into this rookery to search for bodies. By morning both the dead men would be stripped of their clothes, and their naked corpses would be tipped into an open sewer. By killing both men, Sharpe had guaranteed a mystery of his own.

Nor would he go back to Spain, at least not yet. If nothing had happened tonight, if he had gone back to the tavern, slept, and woken with a hangover, then perhaps he might have decided that discretion was the better part of valour. But not now, for someone had declared war on Sharpe, someone wanted him dead, and Sharpe did not run from his enemies.

'Christ!' Belle was running swift hands over the first dead man, searching for coins. 'Look!'

She had pulled open the dark greatcoat. Beneath it was a uniform; a red uniform with yellow facings, and with b.u.t.tons that bore the badge of a chained eagle. Sharpe had killed a man of the South Ess.e.x, and he pulled the greatcoat away from the b.l.o.o.d.y uniform and saw on the man's sleeve the chevrons of a Sergeant.

'He's a b.l.o.o.d.y soldier!' Belle said.

Sharpe retrieved the rag that had stopped the pistol muzzle, wiped his face with it, then his sword blade. The blade sc.r.a.ped as he pushed it into the scabbard. He picked up the gun and gave it to the girl who hoisted her skirts and hung it on the hook, then she knelt awkwardly down to rummage through the clothes of the second dead man. She found some coins and smiled.

Sharpe peered out of the alley. No one waited for him, no one came to see why a shot had been fired. 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 G.o.d 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 ma.s.s 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 Ess.e.x.

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 G.o.ddesses 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.

'd.i.c.k?'

'I can't!' The big Irishman was blushing.

'You've b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.u.g.g.e.r 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 Ess.e.x. 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 pa.s.s. 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, shaped it. At midday the farmer gave them a can of ale and stopped to talk about the weather and the harvest. Sharpe, eating the bread and cheese the farmer had brought, wondered aloud what was happening in Spain.

The farmer laughed, perhaps to hear such a question from a tramp. 'Don't fash yourself over that, man. Best place for the army, abroad.' He stood and arched his back. 'You're doing well, lads. You'll work another day?'

But the traffic on the road was small and their one day's work had been less enjoyable than their wandering, so they refused. And, indeed, Sharpe enjoyed it all. To be so free, suddenly, of responsibility, to walk apparently aimlessly beneath the warm skies of summer, along hedgerows thick with flowers and berries, to fish country streams and steal from orchards, to poach plump estates and wake each morning without needing to check rifle and sword; all this was oddly pleasant. They went slowly north, indulging their curiosity to leave their track to explore villages or gawp at old, ancient houses where the ivy lay warm on stone walls. Somewhere beyond Grantham they came to a flat, black-drained country, and they hurried their pace across the fens as though eager to discover what lay beyond the seemingly limitless horizon.

'Perhaps Ted Carew was wrong, sir,' Harper said.

'Don't call me "sir"!'

'We'll look a pair of b.l.o.o.d.y idiots if he's wrong!'

The thought had occurred to Sharpe, but he stubbornly clung to the old armoury sergeant's belief that the Second Battalion, which was supposed to exist only on paper, was still looking for recruits. And at Sleaford Sharpe found what he was searching for.

He found a real, booming, busy hiring fair, crammed with people from the nearby countryside; a recruiting sergeant's prayer. There was a giant on display, properly hidden behind a canvas screen, and the giant's keeper offered Harper a full crown in silver money if he would agree to become the giant's brother. There were Siamese twins, brought, the barker shouted, at great expense from the mysterious kingdom of Siam. There was a two-headed sheep, a dog that could count, a monkey that drilled like a soldier, and the bearded lady without whom no country fair would be complete. There were wh.o.r.es in the inns, gaitered farmers in the public rooms, and noisy Methodists preaching their gospel in the marketplace. There was a recruiting party from a cavalry regiment, and another from the artillery. There were jugglers, stilt-walkers, faith-healers, a dancing-bear and, close to a Methodist preacher, but giving a different sermon, there was Sergeant Horatio Havercamp.

Sharpe and Harper saw him over the heads of the crowd and, slowly, they worked their way towards him. He was a big-bellied, red-faced, smiling man, with mutton-chop whiskers and twinkling eyes. He was being heckled by a good-natured crowd, but Sergeant Horatio Havercamp was equal to any heckler. He stood on a mounting block and was flanked by two small drummer boys.