Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Gold

‘Sir?’

‘Where did you find the chicken?’

‘It was in the field, sir. Honest.’ He winced as his hair was pulled. ‘It was a wild chicken, sir.’

There was a rustle of laughter from the ranks that Harper let go. Ayres snorted. ‘A wild chicken. Dangerous beasts, eh, sir? He’s lying. I found him in the cottage.’

Sharpe believed him, but he was not going to give up. ‘Who lives in the cottage, Lieutenant?’

Ayres raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, sir, I have not exchanged cards with every slum in Portugal.’ He turned to his men. ‘String him up.’

‘Lieutenant Ayres.’ The tone of Sharpe’s voice stopped any movement in the street. ‘How do you know the cottage is inhabited?’

‘Look for yourself.’

‘Sir.’

Ayres swallowed. ‘Sir.’

Sharpe raised his voice. ‘Are there people there, Lieutenant?’

‘No, sir. But it’s lived in.’

‘How do you know? The village is deserted. You can’t steal a chicken from nobody.’

Ayres thought about his reply. The village was deserted, the inhabitants gone away from the French attack, but absence was not a relinquishing of ownership. He shook his head. ‘The chicken is Portuguese property, sir.’ He turned again. ‘Hang him!’

‘Halt!’ Sharpe bellowed and again movement stopped. ‘You’re not going to hang him, so just go your way.’

Ayres swivelled back to Sharpe. ‘He was caught redhanded and the bastard will hang. Your men are probably a pack of bloody thieves and they need an example and, by God, they will get one!’ He raised himself in his stirrups and shouted at the Company. ‘You will see him hang! And if you steal, then you will hang too!’

A click interrupted him. He looked down and the anger in his face was replaced by astonishment. Sharpe held his Baker rifle, cocked, so that the barrel was pointing at Ayres.

‘Let him go, Lieutenant.’

‘Have you gone mad?’

Ayres had gone white, had sagged back into his saddle. Sergeant Harper, instinctively, came and stood beside Sharpe and ignored the hand that waved him away. Ayres stared at the two men. Both tall, both with hard, fighters’ faces, and a memory tickled at him. He looked at Sharpe, at the face that appeared to have a perpetually mocking expression, caused by the scar that ran down the right cheek, and he suddenly remembered. Wild chickens, bird-catchers! The South Essex Light Company. Were these the two men who had captured the Eagle? Who had hacked their way into a French regiment and come out with the standard? He could believe it.

Sharpe watched the Lieutenant’s eyes waver and knew that he had won, but it was a victory that would cost him dearly. The army did not look kindly on men who held rifles on provosts, even empty rifles.

Ayres pushed Batten forward. ‘Have your thief, Captain. We shall meet again.’

Sharpe lowered the rifle. Ayres waited until Batten was clear of the horses, then wrenched the reins and led his men towards Celorico. ‘You’ll hear from me!’ His words were flung back. Sharpe could sense the trouble like a boiling, black cloud on the horizon. He turned to Batten.

‘Did you steal that bloody hen?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Batten flapped a hand after the provost. ‘He took it, sir.’ He made it sound unfair.

‘I wish he’d bloody taken you. I wish he’d bloody spread your guts across the bloody landscape.’ Batten backed away from Sharpe’s anger. ‘What are the bloody rules, Batten?’

The eyes blinked at Sharpe. ‘Rules, sir?’

‘You know the bloody rules. Tell me.’

The army issued regulations that were inches thick, but Sharpe gave his men three rules. They were simple, they worked, and if broken the men knew they could expect punishment. Batten cleared his throat.

‘To fight well, sir. Not to get drunk without permission, sir. And –’

‘Go on.’

‘Not to steal, sir, except from the enemy or when starving, sir.’

‘Were you starving?’

Batten clearly wanted to say he was, but there were still two days’ rations in every man’s haversack. ‘No, sir.’

Sharpe hit him, all his frustration pouring into one fist that slammed Batten’s chest, winded him, and knocked him gasping into the wet road. ‘You’re a bloody fool, Batten, a cringing, miserable, whoreson, slimy fool.’ He turned away from the man, whose musket had fallen into the mud. ‘Company! March!’

They marched behind the tall Rifleman as Batten picked himself up, brushed ineffectively at the water that had flowed into the lock of his gun, and then shambled after the Company. He pushed himself into his file and muttered at his silent companions. ‘He’s not supposed to hit me.’

‘Shut your mouth, Batten!’ Harper’s voice was as harsh as his Captain’s. ‘You know the rules. Would you rather be kicking your useless heels now?’

The Sergeant shouted at the Company to pick up their feet, bellowed the steps at them, and all the time he wondered what faced Sharpe now. A complaint from that bloody provost would mean an enquiry and probably a court-martial. And all for the miserable Batten, a failed horse-coper, whom Harper would gladly have killed himself. Lieutenant Knowles seemed to share Harper’s thoughts, for he fell in step beside the Irishman and looked at him with a troubled face. ‘All for one chicken, Sergeant?’

Harper looked down at the young Lieutenant. ‘I doubt it, sir.’ He turned to the ranks. ‘Daniel!’

Hagman, one of the Riflemen, broke ranks and fell in beside the Sergeant. He was the oldest man in the Company, in his forties, but the best marksman. A Cheshireman, raised as a poacher, Hagman could shoot the buttons off a French General’s coat at three hundred yards. ‘Sarge?’

‘How many chickens were there?’

Hagman flashed his toothless grin, glanced at the Company, then up at Harper. The Sergeant was a fair man, never demanding more than a fair share. ‘Dozen, Sarge.’

Harper looked at Knowles. ‘There you are, sir. At least sixteen wild chickens there. Probably twenty. God knows what they were doing there, why the owners didn’t take them.’

‘Difficult to catch, sir, chickens.’ Hagman chuckled. ‘That all, Sarge?’

Harper grinned down at the Rifleman. ‘A leg each for the officers, Daniel. And not the stringy ones.’

Hagman glanced at Knowles. ‘Very good, sir. Leg each.’ He went back to the ranks.

Knowles chuckled to himself. A leg each for the officers meant a good breast for the Sergeant, chicken broth for everyone, and nothing for Private Batten. And for Sharpe? Knowles felt his spirits drop. The war was lost, it was still raining, and tomorrow Captain Richard Sharpe would be in provost trouble, real trouble, right up to his sabre-scarred neck.

If anyone needed a symbol of impending defeat, then the Church of São Paolo in Celorico, the temporary headquarters of the South Essex, offered it in full. Sharpe stood in the choir watching the priest whitewash a gorgeous rood-screen. The screen was made of solid silver, ancient and intricate, a gift from some long-forgotten parishioner whose family’s faces were those of the grieving women and disciples who stared up at the crucifix. The priest, standing on a trestle, dripping thick lime paint down his cassock, looked from Sharpe to the screen, and shrugged.

‘It took three months to clean off last time.’

‘Last time?’

‘When the French left.’ The priest sounded bitter and he dabbed angrily with the bristles at the delicate traceries. ‘If they knew it was silver they would carve it into pieces and take it away.’ He splashed the nailed, hanging figure with a slap of paint and then, as if in apology, moved the brush to his left hand so that his right could sketch a perfunctory sign of the cross on his spattered gown.