LITMIR.BIZ

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that could be expected in the next few weeks. At the end of the list was the South Essex, against whose name was written; ‘2nd Batt now Hold’g Batt. No Draft available.’ That was all and, if it was true, it meant that the South Essex’s Second Battalion had become a mere Holding Battalion; a place where boys of thirteen and fourteen, too young to fight, waited for their birthdays, or where men in transit or wounded men were put to wait for new postings. A rag-tag Battalion, without pride and of small purpose.

      ‘It can’t be true! There are recruits! We had eight recruiting parties!’

      Nairn grunted. ‘In a covering letter, Sharpe, dictated by His bloody Lordship himself, but which I won’t offend you by showing to you, he recommends that your Battalion be broken up.’

      For a few seconds Sharpe thought he had misheard Nairn. A Spanish muleteer shouted outside the window, from the harbour came the cranking sound of a windlass, and in Sharpe’s head echoed the words ‘broken up’.

      ‘Broken up, sir?’ Sharpe felt a chill in this warm room.

      ‘Lord Fenner suggests, Sharpe, that your men be given to other Battalions, that your Colours be sent home, that your officers either exchange into other regiments, sell their commissions, or make themselves available for our disposal.’

      Sharpe was incredulous. ‘They can’t do it!’

      Nairn gave a sour laugh. ‘Sharpe! They’re politicians! You can’t expect sense from the bastards!’ He leaned forward. ‘We’re going to need all the experienced units we can scrape together; all of them, but don’t expect Lord Fenner to understand that! He’s the Secretary of State at War and he wouldn’t know a bayonet from a ramrod. He’s a civilian! He controls the army’s money, which is why there isn’t any.’

      Sharpe said nothing. He was thinking of the Battalion’s Colours laid up in some English church, hanging high in a dusty chancel while the men who had fought for them were scattered in penny-packets around the army. He was feeling anger, bitter anger, that his men, who had fought for those flags, who had suffered, whose comrades were in unmarked graves on a dozen battlefields would be broken up, disbanded. He was thinking of a Battalion that, like a family, had its quarrels and laughter, its warmth and pride, all to be sacrificed!

      ‘Breaking you up.’ Nairn said it brutally. ‘Bloody shame. Busaco, Talavera, Fuentes d’Onoro, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vitoria, hell of a way to finish! Like sending a pack of hounds to the shambles, eh?’

      ‘But we had eight recruiting sergeants out!’

      ‘It’s no good telling me, Sharpe, I’m just a dogsbody.’ Nairn sniffed. ‘And even if we make you into a provisional Battalion you’ll go on losing men. You need a draft of replacements!’ It was true. If the South Essex was joined to another Battalion they would still take casualties, until the joint Battalion was shrunken and diluted again. Instead of being broken up, the South Essex would simply wither and die, its Colours forgotten, its morale wasted.

      ‘No!’ Sharpe almost howled the word in agonised protest. ‘They can’t do it!’

      ‘Let us hope not,’ Nairn smiled. ‘The Peer is not happy. He is damned crusty about it, Sharpe.’ Nairn spoke of Wellington. ‘He has this strange idea that the South Essex could be useful to him in France.’ The compliment was truthful. A veteran Battalion like the South Essex, even if its ranks were half-filled with raw replacements, had a morale and knowledge that doubled its fighting value. The South Essex had become a killing machine that could be guaranteed to face anything the French threw against it, while a fresh Battalion, however well trained in England, could take months to reach the same efficiency. Nairn splashed more brandy into the two glasses. ‘The Peer, Sharpe, does not trust those bastards in London. War Office! Horse Guards! Foreign Office! Ordnance Department! We’ve got more damned offices running this damned war than we’ve got Battalions! They’ve made a mess of it, they’ve lost their paperwork, they’ve got their breeches round their ankles and they can’t find mother to pull them up. Who’s in charge at Chelmsford?’

      Sharpe had to think. His brain was in a turmoil of anger and astonishment that his Battalion could be broken up! ‘In Chelmsford, sir? Man called Girdwood. Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood.’

      ‘Ever met him?’

      ‘Never set eyes on him.’

      ‘He’s got men! He just doesn’t want to lose them! Happens all the time, Sharpe! Man has a Second Battalion, trains them, makes them into toy soldiers, and he can’t bear sending them abroad where the First Battalion will make them dirty! So go and see this Girdwood.’ Nairn said the name with mocking relish. ‘Persuade Girdwood to give you some men from this so-called Holding Battalion! Lick Girdwood’s boots! Get Girdwood drunk! Offer to pleasure Girdwood’s wife! You’ll find some men in Chelmsford!’ Nairn laughed at Sharpe’s expression, then tossed a sealed packet of orders to him. ‘Authorisation for you and three others to go to England to select replacements. Be back by October. That gives you nearly four months.’

      Sharpe stared at the Scotsman. ‘Go to England?’

      ‘I know it’s a grim thought, Sharpe,’ Nairn grinned, ‘but nothing’s going to happen here, nothing! Boody politicians won’t let us invade France until Prussia makes up its mind whether to join the dance again. All we’re going to do is take San Sebastian and Pamplona then sit on our backsides doing nothing! You might as well go home, you’ll miss nothing. Go to Chelmsford.’

      ‘I can’t go home!’ He meant he could not leave his men.

      ‘You bloody well have to! You want the South Essex to die? You want to be a storekeeper?’ Nairn drank his brandy. ‘The Peer doesn’t want to break you up. He’ll make you into a Provisional Battalion if he must, but he’d rather you brought yourself up to strength. Go to Chelmsford, find men! If there are none there, then find other men!’

      ‘And if there aren’t any men?’

      The Scotsman drew his finger across his throat. ‘Death of a regiment. Damned shame.’

      And now of all times? Now, when the army gathered its strength at the edge of Napoleon’s heartland, on the border of France? Soon, perhaps this autumn or next spring, the men who had first landed at Lisbon would march into France and the South Essex should march with them. They had earned that privilege. On the day when the enemy’s empire was finally brought down, the flags of the South Essex should be flying in victory. Sharpe gestured at Lord Fenner’s letter. ‘How do I oppose that?’

      Nairn shook his head. ‘It’s a mistake, Sharpe! Has to be! But you can’t put mistakes right by sending letters! We’ve written to the useless bastards, but letters to the Horse Guards are put in a drawer marked Urgent Business to be Ignored. But they can’t ignore you. You’re a hero!’ He said it with friendly mockery. ‘Go to Chelmsford, find your men, and bring them back. It will take half the time of doing it by letter.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe sounded dazed. Go to England?

      ‘And bring me back some whisky, that is a direct order! There’s a shop on Cornhill that gets the stuff from Scotland.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe spoke distractedly. Going home? England? He did not want to go, but if the alternative was to watch a Battalion die that had earned its right to tramp the roads of France, then he would go through hell itself. For his Regiment, and for its Colours that had flown through the cannon smoke of half a continent, he would go to England so that he could march into France. He would go home.

PART ONE

      CHAPTER ONE

      Sharpe, arriving in Chelmsford, could not remember the way to the South Essex’s depot. He had only visited the barracks once, a brief visit in ’09, and he was forced to ask directions from a vicar who was watering his horse

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