'We're not animals. We're men.

'No you're not. You're a bloody soldier now. Never look the bugger in the eyes, never argue, and never complain.

Marriott listened, but did not hear. The other recruits did both, for in only a few hours Sharpe had become their unofficial leader and guide within the army. On their very first day Sharpe had calmed Charlie Weller down, gripping the boy's shoulders till it hurt. 'You do nothing, Charlie!

'He killed him!

'You do nothing! You bloody endure, that's all. It gets better, lad.

'I'll kill him! Weller, with all the passion of his seventeen years, could not hold back the tears caused by Buttons' death.

'After Patrick's torn his head off, maybe, Sharpe grinned. He liked Weller. The boy was one of those rare recruits who had joined the army, not out of desperation, but because he wanted to serve his country. Weller, given time, would rise in the army, but Sharpe knew that first the seventeen year old must survive this place.

A place where, to his astonishment, he discovered that there were more than seven hundred men in training. Some were close to finishing, almost ready to take their place in the ranks that must fight the French, others, like his own squad, still learned the basic grammar of the trade. Yet there were more than enough men here to save the First Battalion in Pasajes and to form the core of a properly constituted Second as well.

He discovered too where the camp was. On a rainy, drizzling day he was ordered to the kitchens where he unloaded a cart of half rotted cabbages. A Mess-corporal, leaning in the doorway and staring at the low cloud to the south, grumbled what a godawful bloody place it was.

'What place? Sharpe asked.

The corporal lit a pipe and, when it was drawing to his satisfaction, spat into the mud. 'End of the bleeding world, Called Foulness."

'Foulness?

'Bloody foul too, yes? The corporal laughed. 'Christ knows why they sent us here. Chelmsford was all right, but the buggers want us here.

The corporal was happy to talk. Foulness, he said, was an island, joined by the wooden bridge to the mainland, and on the island there was a single, small, poor village and this army camp. To the south, the corporal said, was the Thames Estuary. At low tide it was a great desert of mud. To the east was the North Sea and to the north and west were the tangling tidal creeks and rivers of the Essex coast.

'It's like a prison, Sharpe said.

The corporal laughed. 'You won't be here long. Six weeks and they ship you out! You should feel sorry for me. Stuck out here!

Sharpe had guessed already that the corporal, like the two senior Companies in the camp that, alone on Foulness, were dressed in red jackets, was one of the men who were here to guard the recruits against escape. It truly was like a prison, with water as its walls and troops as its jailers. Sharpe chopped a cabbage in half. 'Where do they ship us to?

'Wherever the buggers want you. You know that, you're an old soldier.

And being an old soldier was to Sharpe's advantage, for it kept him out of trouble and spared him the punishments that racked the less experienced men. No sergeant wanted to punish Sharpe or Harper, for the simple reason that both men gave the appearance of being able to take any punishment that was handed to them. Instead it was Marriott, always Marriott, who, with his tuppence worth of education, was unable to rid himself of the idea that he was superior to the illiterate men who were his fellow recruits. He argued stubbornly, wept when he was punished, and even at night, in the stillness of the tent lines, when the soft tread of the patrolling sergeants and officers listening for mutiny could be heard outside, Marriott cried.

Harper's view was simple. 'It's his own bloody fault.

'He thinks he's too clever to be sensible. Sharpe was the only man to whom Marriott would listen, but even Sharpe could not drive into the ex-clerk's head that the only route to survival lay in acceptance and submission.

'I'm going to get out. I'll run! Marriott had told him. He had only been in the army a week.

'Don't be a fool. There was a snap in Sharpe's voice that made Marriott's head jerk up, the snap of an officer. 'You're not running away!

'They can't do this to people!

That night, before the bugle called the lights-out, Sharpe told Harper that Marriott wanted to run. Harper shrugged. 'What about us?

'Us?

'Bugger Marriott, it's time we got the hell out of here.

'We don't even know what they're doing here. Sharpe knew that the camp did not exist solely to steal the men's pay. If that was its sole purpose, why were they trained so hard?

'Still time we got out. Harper said it stubbornly.

'Give it another week, Patrick. Just one more week.

The huge Irishman nodded. 'But promise me one thing?

'What?

The big, flat face grinned slowly. 'I'd like to come here as RSM for just one day. Just one day. And one hour with that bastard Lynch.

Sharpe laughed. Above his head, beautiful and crisp against the darkening sky, a skein of geese glided towards the eastern mudflats. 'It's a promise, Sergeant.

A promise he would keep. But first he would discover just why this hidden Battalion of the South Essex trained so hard and were punished so savagely in the lost, wet, secret marshland camp called Foulness.

CHAPTER 8

'Say it, filth!

Patrick Harper, staring stolidly over Sergeant Lynch's shako, bawled out the words that he was required to say at every single parade. 'God save the King!

'Again, filth!

'God save the King!

Sergeant Lynch, in the eight days since he had taken over this squad, had not found fault with Harper once; with Marriott a thousand times, but with the big Irishman, not once. Sergeant Lynch had decided that the big man was broken. He had assured as much to Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood. 'He's just a big, stupid boar, sir. No trouble at all. Indeed, Sergeant Lynch was glad to have Privates O'Keefe and Vaughn in his squad, for the presence of two trained men hastened the training of the other recruits.

'Again, filth!

'God save the King!

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was drying the mudflats and a small breeze brought the smell of salt to the parade ground. Sergeant Lynch, whose moustached face seemed unhappy this splendid day, stepped back from Harper to face his three ranks. 'Filth! Stocks off!

It was an extraordinary relief to unhook the thick, stiff, leather collars that they were then ordered to hand down the ranks to the men in the right file who, in turn, handed them to a corporal. Sergeant Lynch stared at them with his habitual expression of dislike. 'Filth. You have work to do! Ditching work! If just one of you bastards gives me trouble, just one! I'll damage you! I'll damage you! It was evident he disapproved of the fatigue duty, preferring the close order drill in which every mistake was obvious and easily punished. 'Left turn! Quick march!

Each of the squad was issued with either a rake, a billhook, or a shovel. Sharpe assumed that they were to attack another of the island's drainage channels, but, instead, Sergeant Lynch ordered them onto the embanked road which led off the island.

The Sergeant, like his two corporals, was armed with a musket. If this was a prison, then now the squad was under armed guard as they left Foulness, Sharpe noted again the strength of the picquet that stood sentry duty at the wooden bridge. More than a dozen men watched the squad pass, while the presence of a tethered horse beside the wooden guard hut suggested to Sharpe that an officer was on duty there as well.

Sergeant Lynch took them back along the road they had come when they had first arrived at Foulness, then north on the track which led to the big brick house with its eagle weathervane, and Sharpe prayed that they were not being marched to Sir Henry Simmerson's home. They splashed through the ford, climbed to the track on the bank, then, before reaching Sir Henry's house, they turned right onto a narrow path that led, ever more narrowly, into the reeds of the sea-marsh.