Patrick Harper, a tinned chicken in one hand, brought Sharpe a leather bag taken from the abandoned carriage. “It’s all Frog scribble, sir.”

Sharpe looked through the papers and suspected they were just the kind of thing Michael Hogan prayed for. Hogan might be dead now, but the papers would be a goldmine to whoever had succeeded to his job.

“Guard them, Patrick.”

Harper had also helped himself to a fine, silver-chased pistol that had been discarded in the carriage.

The sun, paled to a silver disc by new cloud and mist, was low. A cold wind, the first wind since Sharpe had spared Killick’s life, sighed chill over the graves. A scream came from the farm, and a cheer went up from the Marines searching the last waggon as they found wine bottles packed in sawdust. A corporal brought a bottle to Sharpe. “Sir?”

“Thank you, Corporal.” Sharpe held the bottle out to Harper who obligingly struck the neck with the blade of his sword-bayonet. The scream sounded again. A girl’s scream.

Sharpe dropped the wine and put his heels back. Prisoners twisted aside as the horse plunged down the bank, jumped a shallow ditch, then Sharpe reined the beast right, ducked under a bare-branched apple tree, and twisted left. Pounding feet sounded behind him, but all Sharpe could see was a man running away, running towards the river and Sharpe put his heels back again.

The man was a Marine. He was clutching his red jacket loose in one hand and holding up his unbuttoned breeches with his other. He looked over his shoulder, saw Sharpe, and dodged to his right.

“Stop!”

The man did not stop, but ducked through a gap in the thorn hedge that tore his jacket from his grasp. He abandoned it and began running across the field. Sharpe forced his horse at the gap, kicked it through, and drew his sword. The man was stumbling, flailing for balance on the tussocks of the meadow, then the flat of the heavy sword, swept down in a clumsy curve, took him on the side of the head. He fell, uncut by the blade, and Sharpe circled the horse back to the fallen man.

It was all because of the farm girl; the green-eyed, pale, shivering girl whom the man had dragged into the scanty hay-store and attacked. She was now sitting, trembling, with the scraps of her torn clothing drawn around her thin body.

“She asked for it,” the Marine, taken back to the dung-stinking farmyard, said.

“Shut your face!” Harper had appointed himself Master-at-Arms. “She wouldn’t be bloody screaming and you wouldn’t be bloody running, would you?”

“Fetch her some clothes,” Sharpe snarled at one of the Marines who had formed a circle about the prisoner. “Captain Palmer! You warned this man?”

Palmer, pale-faced, nodded.

“Well?” Sharpe insisted on a verbal acknowledgement.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Palmer swallowed. “But the girl wasn’t raped, sir.”

“You mean she screamed too loudly. But you know what the orders are, don’t you?” This question was addressed to all the Marines who stared with undisguised hostility at the Rifle Officer who threatened to hang one of their own comrades. There was silence as Sharpe rammed his sword home. “Now back to your duties! All of you!” He jumped off the horse.

Captain Palmer, a Marine sergeant, Harper and Sharpe stayed with the prisoner. The story came slowly at first, then quickly. It had been attempted rape. The girl, the Marine said, had encouraged him, but her screams and the bruises and scratches on her thin arms told a different story.

“Matthew Robinson’s a steady man, sir.” Palmer walked with Sharpe to the end of the farmyard. Sharpe could see that Minver’s Riflemen had managed to get the first powder waggon to the end of the bridge, but, faced with the slope of the roadway, could get it no further. They were now rolling the powder barrels to the crown of the arch.

“You know what the Standing Orders are,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“It won’t happen again, sir.” Palmer sounded contrite.

“I know damned well it won’t happen again!” Sharpe, hating the necessity of the moment, snapped the words. “That’s why we’re hanging the bastard!”

“I mean we don’t need Robinson’s death as an example, sir,” Palmer pleaded.

“I’m not doing it as an example.” Sharpe turned and gestured towards the farmer and his wife. “I’m doing it for them! If the French people think we’re savages, Palmer, then they’ll fight us. You know what it’s like having guerrilleros up your backside when you fight? Every waggon we send up from the coast will have to be guarded by a Battalion! Every one! That’s how we beat the French out of Spain, Captain, not just by hammering the bastards in battle, but because half their armies were guarding waggons against Spanish peasants. Peasants like them!“ Again he pointed to the French couple.

“The girl wasn’t, harmed, sir,” Palmer said stubbornly. “And we’ve proved by our action here that we can offer protection.”

“And the story is spread about,” Sharpe said, “that a man can rape a girl and his officers will condone it.”

Palmer stood his ground. “If Robinson was one of your men, sir, one of your Riflemen, would you…”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, and knew instantly that if he was Palmer, and Bampfylde was the officer demanding the hanging, then Sharpe would fight just like Palmer for the life of his man. God damn it, but, years before, Sharpe had even defended the most useless man in his Light Company in just this same situation.

Palmer saw Sharpe’s hesitation. “Robinson fought damned well, sir. Doesn’t your Field Marshal mitigate punishment for bravery in the field?”

Wellington had been known to cancel a half-dozen hangings because the prisoners’ Battalions had fought well. Sharpe swore, hating the decision. “Orders are orders, Mr Palmer.”

“Just as I believe we’re ordered to hang privateers and deserters, sir?” Palmer said it bluntly, daring Sharpe’s wrath.

“Damn your insolence.” Sharpe said it without conviction, almost as a sop to the weakness he was showing. “You will apologize to the girl and to her parents. Give them this.” He took two of the forged silver ten-franc pieces from his pouch.

“Thank you, sir.” Palmer beamed as he took the coins.

“I’m not done with him,” Sharpe warned. “RSM Harper!”

Harper pretended not to notice his restoration to Regimental Sergeant Major. “Sir?”

“Take Marine Robinson and the girl’s father round the back of the barn. I want you at the bridge in ten minutes!”

“Do I need a rope, sir?”

“No. But give the father his chance.” God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had broken orders again. First he spared a damned American, now a Marine, and what was the point of orders if sentimentality weakened a man into disregarding them?

“Thank you, sir,” Palmer said again.

“You won’t thank me when you see what Patrick Harper can do to a man. You’ll be carrying Robinson home.”

“Better than burying him, sir.”

The incident put Sharpe into a sour mood, worsened by the feeling that he had shown weakness. Twice now he had backed out of an execution and he wondered if it was because he had taken a respectable wife. Old soldiers claimed that marriage did weaken a man, and Sharpe suspected they were right. His foul mood was not helped by the agonizing slowness with which the powder was being crammed between the bridge’s balustrades. Lieutenant Fytch had ordered the toll-keeper and his wife out of their house and the woman, who had earlier threatened Sharpe with her blunderbuss, was now weeping for the loss of her home. Her husband, stumping on his wooden leg, was dragging belongings out to the road.

The sound of Frederickson’s rifle fire had finished and Sharpe saw the Company marching back towards the bridge. That meant the French had gone altogether, though he knew Sweet William would have left picquets to guard against their return.

Using the Marines to help, the Riflemen hastened the setting of the explosives. The other supplies, destined for Soult’s army, were heaped about the powder barrels. Frederickson sounded his whistle to pull in the picquets, while a squad of Minver’s men pushed the townspeople further away from the bridge. It was getting dark, and Sharpe wanted to be moving.