Sharpe's Regiment Part 21

'They're only here for the auctions. I write them and my uncle takes them back.'

'You write them?'

'My uncle makes me enter the figures.' She left her hands in his and, in a low voice, told him of the money that had flowed through Foulness. Sir Henry Simmerson had made more than fifteen thousand pounds, Lord Fenner the same, and Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood about half. They had spent three thousand and eight hundred pounds for expenses. She smiled, as if at her own precision. 'They're in two big books, red leather books.'

'Where?'

'In my uncle's town house.'

'Where in his house?' Sharpe was wondering if his ancient skills would have to be put to a sterner test.

'I don't know. I don't go to London often.'

'You don't go to London?'

She heard the astonishment in his voice, as if he had expected her to dazzle London's society and as if that expectation had given him the irrational envy people feel about the undiscovered life of someone they desire. She stared at him. 'You don't understand, Mr Sharpe.'

'I don't understand what?'

She did not answer for a long time. The waves beat at the mudbanks behind Sharpe, water sucked and gurgled in the creek bed, then she pulled her hands free, rubbed her face, and began talking. 'My mother was the younger daughter. She married badly, at least that's what my uncle thinks. You see, my father was in trade. He was a saddler. He was successful, but it's still trade, isn't it? So I'm not well-born enough to go into society, and I'm not rich enough for society to come here.' She gave the smile again, rueful and fast. 'Do you understand?'

'But your brother ..."

She nodded quickly, understanding the question. Her brother had presented the appearance of aristocratic birth and breeding; it had made him into a loud, arrogant, insensitive and elegant lout. 'Christian always wanted to be fashionable. He worked hard at it, Mr Sharpe. He aped the accent, the clothes, everything. And he inherited the money and lost most of it.'

'Lost it?'

'Horses, clothes.' She shrugged. 'But I imagine he made a good soldier.' She could not have been more wrong, though Sharpe said nothing. Jane pushed hair from her forehead. 'He wanted to go into the cavalry, but it was too expensive. We weren't rich. At least, not as rich as Christian would have liked.' She said her parents had died eleven years before, when she had been thirteen, and she and her brother had come to this house where her mother's sister was Sir Henry's wife. Lady Simmerson was ill. Jane shrugged. 'Or so she says.'

'What do you mean?'

The quick smile again, shy and dazzling, and she looked behind her as though worried that a servant might be watching from the moon-glossed windows of the house. 'She doesn't leave her room, hardly her bed. She says she's ill. Do you think a person can be so very unhappy that they think they're ill?'

'I don't know.'

She looked at the table top. She pushed a leaf between two of the rough planks and he saw how the white cuff of her dress was darned with small, neat st.i.tches. 'I don't think she wanted to marry my uncle, but women don't have a choice, really.' She talked very softly, not just because she feared her voice carrying, but because she had never talked like this to anyone. She said she should have been married herself, two years before, but the man had lost his fortune and Sir Henry had called off the wedding.

'Who was he?' Sharpe asked with a stab of jealousy.

'A man from Maldon. It's not far away.' Now she had been told she was to marry Bartholomew Girdwood.

Told?'

She gave her sudden, enchanting, mischievous smile, that always, Sharpe was noticing, left a residue of sadness on her face. 'I ran away when it was arranged. My uncle brought me back.'

Sharpe wondered if that was why she had been in the carriage on the day when he and Harper were being marched as recruits to Foulness. 'Ran away?'

'I have a cousin who married a vicar. Celia said I should come to them, but my uncle knows the man who owns the living, and you can imagine what happened.' Doubtless Sir Henry had threatened the vicar with the loss of his parish and livelihood. She smiled at Sharpe. 'I wasn't much good at running away.'

'Are you frightened of Sir Henry?'

She thought about it, her hands linked on the table top, then nodded. 'Yes. But most of the time he's in London. He's only here for a few days at a time.' She looked out over the moon-washed marshes to where, now at its height, the tide was pushing waves across the drowned mudflats in shimmering, silver sheets that broke in small, bright spurts of foam where they met the river's push. 'So here I am. I'm a companion to my aunt, I talk with the housekeeper, and sometimes, when my uncle's at home, I have to be a hostess for his dinners.' She smiled. 'That means soldier's talk.'

'Girdwood?'

'He's always here.' She said it with a rueful laugh. 'My uncle likes him. They talk for hours and hours about battles and tactics?' She made the last word into a question as though she was not accustomed to using it. 'But I suppose all soldiers do that?'

He shook his head. 'Most of the soldiers I know talk about what they're going to do when the war ends. They want to own a piece of land. I think they dream of never seeing a uniform again.'

'And you?'

He laughed. 'I don't know what I'll do.' He remembered his sad thoughts as he had sat on the pool's parapet in the Vauxhall Gardens, his drab presentiments of a soldier in peacetime.

She sighed. 'You need the books badly?'

'Yes. I have to have proof, you see.'

'Yes.' She nodded. 'I want to help you, but it's hard.'

'Hard?' He wanted to take her hands once more, but was uncertain whether the gesture would be welcomed. Her head was lowered, and the moonlight cast the shadows of her eyelashes in long, thin lines down her cheeks that abruptly vanished as she looked up at him.

'I can take the risk, you see. I can try to find them for you. I would like to do that, really. But I shall be punished.'

'Sir Henry?'

'He beats me.' She was not looking at him, but across the marshland to the small waves.

'He beats you?'

'Yes.' She said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world. 'He let Girdwood watch the last time, because he thought the Colonel should know how to treat a wife. He uses a cane. He doesn't do it often; not very often, anyway.' She gave a small laugh, as though indicating that she was not seeking his pity. Sharpe felt inadequate to say anything, and kept silent. She shook her head. 'There are marks on his study walls. He thrashes, you see, and the cane scratches the plaster. He gets very angry.' The last words were said limply, as though she could not truly describe the beatings. In the silence that followed her words Sharpe heard a clock chiming in the house. He counted ten beats and, when they were done, she looked up at him. 'What happens if you don't have the books?'

He did not know. Everything he had planned for these next few days depended on the accounts. He had been so sure that they would be here, that he could ambush Girdwood and take them, and then march the men to Chelmsford where the Battalion would wait. He had planned to send d'Alembord to the Rose Tavern, but without the books he had no proof. He had nothing. He looked into her huge eyes, shining with reflected moonlight, and he let his gaze linger on the shadows beneath her cheekbones and on her neck. He smiled. 'Do you remember that you gave your brother a locket with your picture inside?'

'Yes.' She sounded surprised.

'I wore it after his death.'

She smiled shyly, knowing the message he was giving her, yet not sure what to say in return. She looked down at the table. 'Do you still have it?'

'I was taken prisoner earlier this year. A Frenchman has it now.' Sharpe had worn it as a talisman, as all soldiers have talismans against death. 'I expect he wonders who you are.'

She smiled at the thought, then looked up at him. 'I want you to have the books.' She said it hurriedly. 'But I'm afraid.' She was scared because, once Sharpe had the books and his victory, she would be left to her uncle's revenge.

Sharpe touched her hands again. It seemed, at that moment, as brave an act as climbing the blood-slicked breach at Badajoz. 'Why do you want to help me?'

She gave the quick, mischievous smile. 'I never forgot you.' She said it very softly. 'I sometimes think that it's because my uncle hates you so much. If you were his enemy, you had to be my friend?' She inflected the last word as a question, then gave a low laugh. 'He envies you.'

'Envies?'

'He'd like to be a big, brave soldier!' she said scornfully. 'What did happen to him in Spain?'

'He ran away.'

She laughed. Her hands were still in his, unmoving. 'He always talks about it as if he was a hero. Did Christian take that Eagle?'

'He was close.'

'Meaning he didn't?'

'Not really.'

She shook her head, as if remembering all her uncle's lies. 'I've always wanted to see Spain. There was a girl from Prittlewell who married an artillery Major. She went to Spain with him. Marjory Beller? Do you know her?'

He shook his head. 'No. But there are a lot of officers' wives there.'

She was silent for a long time. She looked down at his hands that were still on her hands. 'I could go to London, but I'd need some money. I know some of the servants in his house because they visit us here. I could perhaps find the books.'

He said nothing. There were too many uncertainties in her words for Sharpe's peace of mind and, though his spirit soared that she wished to help him, he feared too for the punishment that she risked.

She bit her lip. 'But what if I can't find them?'

'I'll have to think of something else.' He said it lightly, yet without the proof he had nothing. He could perhaps order Captain Smith and the other officers to write their confessions, but then he remembered Lady Camoynes' words; what hope did such witnesses have against the evidence of peers and politicians and men of high standing? Sharpe, without the account books, needed allies of equal weight, and suddenly that thought, the thought of allies, gave him an outrageous, wonderful, impossible idea. The idea, that rose like a great sheet of flame in the darkness of his head, was so splendid that he smiled and gripped her hands hard. 'I don't need them, truly!'

'You don't?'

The idea was seething in him, making his words tumble out. 'It would be wonderful to have them. It would make things easy. But if not? I can manage.'

'But it would be helpful to have them?' She said it earnestly and he realised, suddenly, that this girl wanted to help him.

'Yes, of course.'

'Would you like me to try for you?"

He nodded, 'Yes.'

'How do I find you?'

'Next Sat.u.r.day.' He took one hand from hers and pulled some guineas from his pouch that he put on the table. 'Do you know Hyde Park Gate? Where Piccadilly ends?' She nodded. He pushed the coins towards her. 'I'll be there at midday, and if you have the books then we'll beat them, but if not? We'll still win!'

She smiled at the enthusiasm in him, the sheer, sudden hope that had given him energy. She stirred the ten coins with her finger. 'I'll be there. I'll bring the accounts.'

'And no one will punish you.' He held her hands tight. 'I have money, more than enough.' For a moment he was tempted to tell her about Vitoria, about that battlefield of gold and jewels, of silks and pearls. 'You can go where you like. You can run away.'

She laughed. Her eyes were bright on his. 'I'm not very good at running away.'

He stared at her, overwhelmed by her face, by a beauty that was precious and rare, and he thought of all the things he had wanted to say to her, had dreamed over the years of saying, and suddenly knew that now they must be said, or, perhaps, never be said at all. Sharpe had often taken risks, he had often, on the spur of a sudden thought, and without thinking of consequences, done things on a battlefield that had made his name famous in Wellington's army. He had climbed a breach where hundreds lay dead, acting on the s.n.a.t.c.hed opportunity because the thought led instantly to the deed and, though caution was wise in soldiering, hesitation was fatal. Yet now, when he spoke, listening with astonishment to his words, he thought he was taking a risk greater than any he had chanced in Spain. 'Then you must marry me.'

She stared at him in frozen silence. He had said it so quickly, so casually, with a friendly tone as though it was a thought that had just settled in his head. She pulled her hands away, despite the pressure of his fingers, and he regretted the words instantly.

'I'm sorry.'

'No, no.' She shook her head in embarra.s.sment.

A door closed inside the house, a dull click that seemed to echo menacingly about the garden. She turned at once, staring at the windows as if, from their blank sheen, she could tell what happened in those weapon-hung rooms. 'I have to go! Mrs Grey sometimes comes to my room.'

'I am sorry, truly.'

'No.' She shook her head again and stood. The door sounded again, and this time she shuddered. 'I must go!'

'Jane!'

But she ran. She seemed very frail and slim in the moonlight. Sharpe watched her until she went into the shadows at the side of the house and was gone.

He stayed in the pergola, his head in his hands, and cursed his clumsiness. He had dreamed of this girl for four years and, given a chance to talk with her, he had stamped clumsily where only delicacy was needed. His proposal of marriage echoed in his ears to mock him, and he wished with all the vain hope of a fool, that he could take the words back. He had lost her. She would not come to London. The guineas he had given her were still on the table, fool's gold in the moonlight.

He waited until the last lights were out in the house, and only then did he move. He plucked a single rose from the pergola and, like a shadow in darkness, went down into the creek that was flooded with the high tide. He left the coins behind.

He rode empty-handed to Foulness. He did not have the evidence he needed, nor, he thought, was it likely that it would come. She had wanted to help, and he had frightened her. He would have to do the desperate thing now, the reckless thing; he would use the Battalion itself as a weapon against the crooks and fools. He might still win, but what he had lost tonight would make all the victories to come seem hollow. He was a fool.

CHAPTER 17.

The morning was chaos, as Sharpe had known it would be chaos. The men were willing enough, but the Foulness officers and sergeants seemed incapable of solving the smallest difficulty. 'Sir?' Sharpe turned to see Lieutenant Mattingley frowning unhappily in the moonlight before dawn.

'What is it, Lieutenant?'

'The cauldrons, sir. We haven't got transport.' He waved feebly towards the huge iron pots, each of which was large enough to boil a beef carca.s.s whole. 'We can't carry them, sir.'

'Lieutenant Mattingley,' Sharpe spoke with a patience he did not feel, 'imagine that within two miles of this place there were ten thousand Frenchmen who wanted nothing more than to blow your skull apart. Further imagine that you had orders to retreat. What would you do with the cauldrons if that was the case?'

Mattingley blinked, thought about it, then looked tentatively at Sharpe. 'Abandon them, sir?'

'Exactly.' Sharpe turned his horse away. 'Do that.'

He abandoned the tents too. There were no mules to carry them, any more than there was transport for half the equipment that had been fetched to Foulness. The hired carriage became the Battalion office, its interior crammed with papers that would all need to be sorted out in Chelmsford. The Battalion chest, which now held the precious attestation forms as well as the money, was pushed between the carriage seats.

'Sir?' Captain Smith saluted Sharpe. Smith saw, by the pale moonlight, that the Major wore a rose in his top b.u.t.ton-hole, but Captain Smith was not the kind of man to ask why.

'Captain?'

'Lieutenant Ryker's gone, sir.' That was one officer who had decided to resign rather than stay with the Battalion. 'And, sir?'

'Well?'