“Harper. There was a Docherty,” Harper said, “who had a smithy in Meencrumlin.”

“My uncle.”

“God save Ireland.” Harper stared in wonder at the lieutenant. “And you from America? Do you hear that, sir? He has an uncle that used to tinker my ma’s pans.”

“I heard,” Sharpe spoke sourly. He was thinking that he had stuck his neck out and to small avail. He had saved these men for twelve hours, no more, and there were times, he thought, when a soldier should know when not to fight. Then he remembered how Ducos, the Frenchman, had treated him in Burgos and how a French officer had risked his career to save Sharpe, and Sharpe knew he could not have lived with his conscience if he had simply allowed Bampfylde to continue his savagery. These men might well be pirates, they probably did deserve the rope, but Frederickson had pledged his word. Sharpe walked to the table. “How are your wounds?”

“I lost a tooth,” Killick grinned to show the bloody

“That’s a fashion these days,” Harper said equably from the range.

Sharpe pulled a bottle of wine towards him and knocked the neck off against the table. “Are you pirates?”

“Privateer,” Killick said it proudly, “and legally licensed.”

Frederickson, shivering from the cold in the yard, came through the door. “I’ve put the rest of the Jonathons in the guardroom. Ressner’s watching them.” He looked towards the seated Americans. “I’m sorry, Mr Killick.”

“Captain Killick,” Killick said without rancour, “and thank you for what you did. Both of you.” He held out a tin mug for wine. “When they dangle us at a rope’s end I’ll say that not every Britisher is a bastard.”

Sharpe poured wine into Killick’s cup. “I saw you,” he said, “at St Jean de Luz.”

Killick gave a great, hoarse whoop of a laugh that reminded Sharpe of Wellington’s strange merriment. “That was a splendid day!” Killick said. “We had them wetting their breeches, right enough!”

Sharpe nodded, remembering Bampfylde’s fury in the dining-room as the naval captain had watched the American. “You did.”

Killick felt in his pocket, realized he had no cigars, and shrugged. “Nothing in peace will offer such joy, will it?” Sharpe made no reply and the American looked at his Lieutenant. “Perhaps we ought to become real pirates in peacetime, Liam?”

“If we live that long.” Docherty stared sourly at the Rifleman.

“For an Irishman,” Killick said to Sharpe, “he has an unnatural sense of reality. Are you going to hang us, Major?”

“I’m feeding you.” Sharpe avoided the question.

“But in the morning,” Killick said, “the sailormen will want us, won’t they?”

Sharpe said nothing. Patrick Harper, by the stove, watched Sharpe and took a chance. “In the morning,” he said softly, “we’ll be away from here, so we will, and more’s the pity.”

Sharpe frowned because the sergeant had seen fit to interrupt, yet in truth he had asked for Harper’s presence because the good sense of the huge Ulsterman was something that he valued. Harper’s words had served two purposes; first to warn the Americans that the Riflemen could not control their fate, and secondly to tell Sharpe that the consensus, among the Green Jackets at least, was that a hanging would not be welcome. The Rifles had captured these Americans, had done it without bloodshed to either side, and they felt bitterly that the Navy should so highhandedly decide to execute opponents whose only fault had been to fight with unrealistic hopes.

No one spoke. Harper, his pennyworth contributed, turned back to the stove. Docherty stared at the scarred, stained table, while Killick, a half smile on his bruised face, watched Sharpe and thought that here was another English officer who did not match the image encouraged by the American news-sheets.

Frederickson, still by the door, thought how alike Sharpe and the American were. The American was younger, but both had the same hard, good-looking face and both had the same savage recklessness in their eyes. It would be interesting, Frederickson decided, to see whether such similar men liked or hated each other.

Sharpe seemed embarrassed by the encounter, as if he was uncertain what to do with this exotic and unfamiliar enemy. He turned to Harper instead. “Isn’t that soup ready?”

“Not unless you want it cold, sir.”

“A full belly,” Killick said, “to make us hang heavier?” No one responded.

Sharpe was thinking that in the morning, once the Riflemen were gone, Bampfylde would string these Americans up like sides of beef. Ten minutes ago that thought had not upset Sharpe. Men were hanged in droves every day, and a hanging was prime entertainment in any town with a respectable sized population. Pirates had always been hanged and, besides, these Americans were the enemy. There were good reasons, therefore, to let the Thuella’s crew hang.

Yet to reason thus, in cold blood, was one thing, and it was quite another to look across a table-top and apply that chilling reason to men whose only fault had been to pick a fight with Riflemen. There were French soldiers grown old in war who would have hesitated to take on Green Jackets, so should a seaman hang because of optimism? Besides, and though Sharpe knew this was not a reasonable objection, he found it hard to think of men who spoke his own language as enemies. Sharpe fought Frenchmen.

Yet the law was the law, and in the morning Sharpe’s orders would take him far from this fort, and far from Cornelius Killick who would, abandoned to Bampfylde’s mercies, hang. That, Sharpe decided, was certain and so, unable to offer any reassurance, he poured wine instead. He wished Harper would hurry with the damned soup.

Cornelius Killick, understanding all of Sharpe’s doubts from the troubled look on the Rifleman’s bandaged face, spoke a single word. “Listen.”

Sharpe looked into Killick’s eyes, but the American said nothing more. “Well?” Sharpe frowned.

Killick smiled. “You hear nothing. No wind, Major. There’s not a breath of wind out there, nothing but frost and mist.”

“So?”

“So we have a saying back home, Major,” the American was staring only at Sharpe, “that if you hang a sailorman in still airs, his soul can’t go to hell. So it lingers on earth to take another life as revenge.” The American pointed at Sharpe. “Maybe your life, Major?”

Killick could have said nothing more helpful to his cause. His words made Sharpe think of Jane, shivering in the cold sweat of her fever, and he thought, with sudden self-pity, that if she could not be saved then he would rather catch the fever and die with her than be in this cold, ice-slicked fort where the mist writhed silent about the stones.

Killick, watching the hard face that was slashed by a casual scar, saw a shudder go through the Rifleman. He sensed that Docherty was about to speak and, rather than have their situation jeopardized by Irish hostility, he kicked his lieutenant to silence. Killick, who had spoken lightly enough before, knew that his words had struck a seam of feeling and he pressed his advantage with a gentle voice. “There’s no peace for a man who hangs a sailorman in a calm.”

Their eyes met. Sharpe wondered whether the American’s words were true. Sharpe told himself it was nonsense, a superstition as baseless as any soldier’s talisman, yet the thought was irresistibly lodged. Sharpe had been cursed years before, his name buried on a stone, and his first wife had died within hours of that curse. He frowned. “The deserters must hang. That’s the law.”

No one spoke. Harper waited for the soup to seethe and Frederickson leaned against the door. Docherty licked bloodied lips, then Killick smiled. “All my men are citizens of the United States, Major. What they were before is not your business, nor my President’s business, nor the business of the bloody law. They all have citizens’ papers!” Killick ignored the fact that the certificates had been burned by Bampfylde.