LITMIR.BIZ

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glared at Fitzgerald. ‘Not much to say, Ensign, I trust?’

      ‘Whatever it might take, sir, to prevent a miscarriage of justice.’ Fitzgerald, young and confident, stood and smiled at his commanding officer and fellow Irishman. ‘I doubt we’ve a better soldier in the regiment, sir, and I suspect Private Sharpe was given provocation.’

      ‘Captain Morris says not,’ Shee insisted, ‘and so does Ensign Hicks.’

      ‘I cannot contradict the Captain, sir,’ Fitzgerald said blandly, ‘but I was drinking with Timothy Hicks earlier that evening, sir, and if his eyes weren’t crossed by midnight then he must possess a belly like a Flanders cauldron.’

      Shee looked dangerously belligerent. ‘Are you accusing a fellow officer of being under the influence of liquor?’

      Fitzgerald reckoned that most of the 33rd’s mess was ever under the influence of arrack, rum or brandy, but he also knew better than to say as much. ‘I’m just agreeing with Captain Fillmore, sir, that we should give Private Sharpe the benefit of the doubt.’

      ‘Doubt?’ Shee spat. ‘There is no doubt! Open and shut!’ He gestured at Sharpe who stood hatless in front of his escort. Flies crawled on Sharpe’s face, but he was not allowed to brush them away. Shee seemed to shudder at the thought of Sharpe’s villainy. ‘He struck a sergeant in full view of two officers, and you think there’s doubt about what happened?’

      ‘I do, sir,’ Fitzgerald declared forcibly. ‘Indeed I do.’

      Sergeant Hakeswill’s face twitched. He watched Fitzgerald with loathing. Major Shee stared at Fitzgerald for a few seconds, then shook his head as though questioning the Ensign’s sanity.

      Captain Fillmore tried one last time. Fillmore doubted the evidence of Morris and Hicks, and he had never trusted Hakeswill, but he knew Shee could never be persuaded to take the word of a private against that of two officers and a sergeant. ‘Might I beg the court,’ Fillmore said respectfully, ‘to suspend judgment until Lieutenant Lawford can speak for the prisoner?’

      ‘What can Lawford say, in the name of God?’ Shee demanded. There was a flask of arrack waiting in his baggage and he wanted to get these proceedings over and done. He had a brief, muttered conversation with his two fellow judges, both of them field officers from other regiments, then glared at the prisoner. ‘You’re a damned villain, Sharpe, and the army has no need of villains. If you can’t respect authority, then don’t expect authority to respect you. Two thousand lashes.’ He ignored the shudder of astonishment and horror that some of the onlookers gave and looked instead at the Sergeant Major. ‘How soon can it be done?’

      ‘This afternoon’s as good a time as any, sir,’ Bywaters answered stolidly. He had expected a flogging verdict, though not as severe as this, and he had already made the necessary arrangements.

      Shee nodded. ‘Parade the battalion in two hours. These proceedings are over.’ He gave Sharpe one foul glance, then pushed his chair back. He would need some arrack, Shee thought, if he was to sit his horse in the sun through two thousand lashes. Maybe he should have only given one thousand, for a thousand lashes were as liable to kill as two, but it was too late now, the verdict was given, and Shee’s only hope of respite from the dreadful heat was his hope that the prisoner would die long before the awful punishment was finished.

      Sharpe was kept under guard. His sentinels were not men from his own battalion, but six men from the King’s 12th who did not know him and who could therefore be trusted not to connive in his escape. They kept him in a makeshift pen behind Shee’s tent and no one spoke to Sharpe there until Sergeant Green arrived. ‘I’m sorry about this, Sharpie,’ Green said, stepping over the ammunition boxes that formed the crude walls of the pen.

      Sharpe was sitting with his back against the boxes. He shrugged. ‘I’ve been whipped before, Sergeant.’

      ‘Not in the army, lad, not in the army. Here.’ Green held out a canteen. ‘It’s rum.’

      Sharpe uncorked the canteen and drank a good slug of the liquor. ‘I didn’t do nothing anyway,’ he said sullenly.

      ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Green said, ‘but the more you drink the less you’ll feel. Finish it, lad.’

      ‘Tomkins says you don’t feel a damn thing after the first thirty,’ Sharpe said.

      ‘I hope he’s right, lad, I hope he’s right, but you drink that rum anyway.’ Green took off his shako and wiped the sweat from his bald head with a scrap of rag.

      Sharpe tipped the canteen again. ‘And where was Mister Lawford?’ he asked bitterly.

      ‘You heard, son. He was called off to see the General.’ Green hesitated. ‘But what could he have said anyway?’ he added.

      Sharpe leaned his head against the box-built wall. ‘He could have said that Morris is a lying bastard and that Hicks will say anything to please him.’

      ‘No, he couldn’t say that, lad, and you know it.’ Green filled a clay pipe with tobacco and lit it with his tinderbox. He sat on the ground opposite Sharpe and saw the fear in the younger man’s eyes. Sharpe was doing his best to hide it, but it was plainly there and so it should be, for only a fool did not fear two thousand lashes and only a lucky man came away alive. No man had ever actually walked away from such a punishment, but a handful had recovered after a month in the sick tent. ‘Your Mary’s all right,’ Green told Sharpe.

      Sharpe gave a sullen grimace. ‘You know what Hakeswill told me? That he was going to sell her as a whore.’

      Green frowned. ‘He won’t, lad. He won’t.’

      ‘And how will you stop him?’ Sharpe asked bitterly.

      ‘She’s being looked after now,’ Green reassured him. ‘The lads are making sure of that, and the women are all protecting her.’

      ‘But for how long?’ Sharpe asked. He drank more of the rum which seemed to be having no effect that he could sense. He momentarily closed his eyes. He knew he had been given an effective death sentence, but there was always hope. Some men had survived. Their ribs might have been bared to the sun and their skin and flesh be hanging from their backs in bloody ribbons, yet they had lived, but how was he to look after Mary when he was bandaged in a bed? If he was even lucky enough to reach a sick bed instead of a grave. He felt tears pricking at his eyes, not for the punishment he faced, but for Mary. ‘How long can they protect her?’ he asked gruffly, cursing himself for being so near to weeping.

      ‘I tell you she’ll be all right,’ Green insisted.

      ‘You don’t know Hakeswill,’ Sharpe said.

      ‘Oh, but I do, lad, I do,’ Green said feelingly, then paused. For a second or two he looked embarrassed, then glanced up at Sharpe. ‘The bastard can’t touch her if she’s married. Married proper, I mean, with the Colonel’s blessing.’

      ‘That’s what I thought.’

      Green drew on the pipe. ‘If the worst does happen, Sharpie …’ he said, then stopped in embarrassment again.

      ‘Aye?’ Sharpe prompted him.

      ‘Not that it will, of course,’ Green said hurriedly. ‘Billy Nixon survived a couple of thousand tickles, but you probably don’t remember him, do you? Little fellow, with a wall eye. He survived all right. He was never quite the same afterwards, of course, but you’re a tough lad, Sharpie. Tougher than Billy.’

      ‘But if the worst does happen?’ Sharpe reminded the Sergeant.

      ‘Well,’ Green said, colouring, but then at last he summoned the courage to say what he had come to say. ‘I mean if it don’t offend you, lad, and only if the worst does happen, which of course it won’t, and I pray it won’t, but if it does then I thought I might ask for Mrs Bickerstaff’s hand myself, if you follow my meaning.’

      Sharpe almost laughed, but then the

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