“How are they supposed to get home?” Harper asked.

“Walk,” Frederickson said harshly.

“God save Ireland,” Harper said, “but I hate this damned army.”

On the morning that Frederickson’s Riflemen joined the chaos on the quays three men from redcoat battalions tried to desert to join their wives. One successfully swam upstream, his dark head constantly surrounded by the splashes of musket-balls. Men already on the ships cheered him. A Naval gig, ordered to cut him off, somehow managed to tangle her oars and Sharpe guessed that the sailors had no stomach for their job and had deliberately made a nonsense of the attempt. Two other redcoats, trying to climb a wall of the docks, were caught and charged with attempted desertion.

Frederickson was busy scribbling pieces of paper which would serve as marriage certificates for the six men of his company who might otherwise lose their women. Sharpe, as the more senior officer, gladly added his own signature, then glossed his name with the description of Temporary Brigade Commander. He doubted if the papers would work, but they had to be tried.

Sharpe and Frederickson carried the papers, along with all the company’s other musters, returns and order books, to an office that was guarded by provosts and administered by civilian officials of the Transport Board. Sharpe wanted to challenge their authority with his reputation, but when he reached the office the city’s multitude of church clocks successively pealed midday in a cacophony of time that sounded like a celebration of victory. It was also the signal for the Transport Board officials to close their ledgers for luncheon. They would return, they said, at three o’clock. Till then the Riflemen must wait, though if the officers wished to take luncheon in the city, then they were permitted to pass the picquet-line of provosts.

Sharpe and Frederickson left the company under Rifleman Harper’s command and, out of curiosity, went to find their luncheon in the city. Yet, just as soon as the two officers were beyond the barrier, they were besieged by crying women. One held up a baby as though the infant’s mute appeal would be sufficient to change the heartless decision of the authorities. Sharpe tried to explain that he had no standing in the matter. This group of women were Spanish. They had no money, they were not permitted to see their men, they were just expected to walk home. No one cared about them. Some had spent five years with the British army, carrying packs and muskets like their men, but now they were to be discarded. “Are we to be whores?” one screamed at Sharpe. “He wants us to be a whore!” The woman pointed at a civilian who was standing a few yards away. It appeared he was a Frenchman who had come to the docks to recruit women for his house. The man, seeing Sharpe look at him, smiled and bowed.

“I don’t like that man,” Frederickson said mildly.

“Nor me.” Sharpe gazed at the well-dressed Frenchman who, under the scrutiny, feigned boredom. “Shall we let him know how much we dislike him?”

“It would probably make both of us feel a great deal better if we did. You’ll cut off his retreat?”

Sharpe gently extricated himself from the women, then sauntered past the Frenchman who was content to wait until the Spanish women had finished their importuning of the Riflemen. The Frenchman had watched every British officer so besieged, and knew that the women must soon abandon their hopeless appeals and that afterwards the prettiest among them would be glad of his offer of employment. He lit himself a cigar, blew smoke towards the gulls that screamed about the ships’ topmasts, and thought that never before, and perhaps never again, would whores be no so cheap. Then, suddenly, he saw a one-eyed and toothless Rifleman moving fast towards him. The Frenchman twisted to run away.

He twisted to find himself facing another scarred Rifleman. “Good afternoon,” Sharpe said.

The Frenchman tried to swerve round Sharpe, but the Rifleman reached out a hand, checked the Frenchman, then turned him and pushed him towards Frederickson. Frederickson, who had removed his eyepatch and false teeth in honour of the occasion, let the Frenchman come, then kicked him massively between the legs.

The man collapsed. Frederickson stooped and retrieved the man’s fallen cigar.

The Frenchman was breathless on the cobbles, his hands clutching a pain that was like a thousand red-hot musket balls exploding outwards from his groin. For a few seconds he could not draw breath, then he gasped and afterwards screamed so loud that even the gulls seemed to be silenced. The provosts twitched towards the sound, then decided that the two Rifle officers were best left in peace.

“Shut your bloody face, you pimp.” Sharpe slapped the man’s cheek hard enough to loosen teeth, then began cutting open his pockets and seams much as if the Frenchman was a battlefield corpse. He found a few coins that he distributed to the women. It was a small gesture, and one that was shrunk to nothing in the face of the women’s plight. It was also a gesture that could not be repeated for the sake of every woman who accosted the two Riflemen as they crossed the city’s bridge.

To escape the hopeless appeals they ducked into a wineshop where Frederickson, who spoke good French, ordered ham, cheese, bread and wine. Outside the wineshop a legless man swung himself into the gutter where he held out a French infantry shako as a begging bowl.

The weeping women, and the sight of the beggar who had once marched proudly beneath his regiment’s eagle, had depressed Sharpe. Nor did the pathetic paper signs pinned to the wineshop’s walls help his mood. Frederickson translated the small, handwritten notices. “Jean Blanchard, of the hundred and sixth of the line, seeks his wife, Marie, who used to live in the Fishmongers Street. If anyone knows of her please to tell the landlord.” The next was a plea from a mother to anyone who could inform her where her son might be. He had been a Sergeant of the Artillery, and had not been seen or heard of in three years. Another family, moved to Argentan, had left a notice for their three sons in case any should ever come back from the wars. Sharpe tried to count the small notices, but abandoned the effort at a hundred. He supposed the inns and church porches of Britain would be just as thick with such small appeals. Back on the battlefield Sharpe had never somehow thought that a rifle shot could ricochet so far.

“I suspect we shouldn’t have come into the city.” Frederickson pushed his plate aside. The cheese was stale and the wine sour, but it was the stench of a city’s despair that had blunted his hunger. “Let’s hope they give us an early ship.”

At three o’clock Sharpe and Frederickson returned to the Transport Board offices. They gave their names to a clerk who asked them to wait in an empty counting-house where dust lay thick on the tall desks. Beneath the window one of the two men who had been caught trying to join his wife was being strapped to a triangle for a flogging. Sharpe, remembering the day when he had been flogged, turned away, only to see that a tall, thin, and pale-eyed Provost Captain was staring at him from the counting house doorway.

“You’re Major Sharpe, aren’t you, sir?” the Captain asked.

“Yes.”

“And you’re Frederickson?”

“Captain Frederickson,” Frederickson insisted.

“My name is Salmon.” Captain Salmon took a piece of paper from his pocket. “I’m ordered to escort you both to the prefecture.”

“Escort us?” Sharpe reached for the piece of paper which was nothing more than a written confirmation of what Salmon had just said. The signature meant nothing to Sharpe.

“Those are my orders, sir.” Salmon spoke woodenly, but there was something in his tone of voice which sent a small shiver down Sharpe’s spine. Or perhaps it was the realization that in the corridoooutside the empty counting-house Salmon had a squad of provosts armed with muskets and bayonets.