CHAPTER 9

Sharpe shifted responsibility from himself by claiming that Marriott had left to talk with the corporal.

'Filth! Sergeant Lynch glared at Sharpe. 'You're lying, filth! 'Sarge! He said he wanted to talk to the corporal! Sergeant Lynch stalked around Sharpe, but the Rifleman stood, rigid and unblinking, the very image of a soldier who might know what his superior wants to know, but who will never lose his attitude of dumb, outraged innocence. It was a pose Sergeant Lynch knew well, and it convinced him of the futility of pursuing the charge of complicity. 'So when did you miss him, filth?

Sharpe blinked and frowned. 'Twenty minutes, Sarge? No more. 'And you said nothing! Lynch screamed the words. 'He said he'd gone to the corporal! The two men stood by the entrance of the boathouse. The rest of the squad, terrified, stood in the flooding mud of the incoming tide. Corporal Mason, in whose party Harper worked, watched nervously from further down the creek bed.

'Sergeant Lynch? It was Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood's voice, coming from the top of the wall that raised Sir Henry's garden above the level of the marsh. 'What the devil's this noise about?

'Deserter, sir! Sergeant Lynch's fox-like face was tight with embarrassment and anger. 'One of the filth scrambled, sir!

'How? For God's sake, how, man? Sharpe heard the note of alarm in Girdwood's voice, and he understood it. Girdwood might sell men to other regiments, but there they came under the discipline of men who, by attending the auctions, were thus implicated in the crime and had an interest in keeping its details hidden. A deserter, though, loose in England, might just tell a strange story to the wrong ears. Sharpe kept his back to the wall, hoping that Sir Henry would not come and investigate the sudden alarm. Girdwood did not wait for Lynch to answer his question, instead he ordered the Sergeant to form his work-party into a cordon that should search the marshland eastwards as far as the River Roach. 'You know what to do with the scum, Sergeant Lynch!

'Yes, sir!

The search was intense. Men of the two Companies who were the permanent guards at Foulness were fetched from the camp and formed into a second cordon well to the west of Sir Henry's house. There were also men from the militia cavalry searching; horsemen who rode into the marshland beside the River Crouch and who combed the small yards and barns of the inland farms. Sharpe, looking back from the eastern bogland, could see a group of men armed with telescopes on the leads of Sir Henry's house beneath the proud eagle weathervane. It occurred to Sharpe that this was a practised manoeuvre, a well-rehearsed specific against the danger of men deserting from Foulness.

Sergeant Lynch's squad struggled eastwards across the marshland towards the North Sea, and to Sharpe it seemed an unlikely direction for Marriott to have taken. It was possible, Sharpe supposed, that the young clerk did not know the lie of the land, or that, in the desperation of his lovelorn unhappiness, he had fled into the emptiness of the marsh in search of any refuge, but capture, in this direction, seemed certain. The marsh was water-locked, the going was treacherous, and the boy would have been forced to stay clear of the few tussocky patches of higher ground where the footing was firm, but from which he could have been seen for miles over the flat land.

Sergeant Lynch's squad straggled over the glutinous, sucking ground and through the intricate, shallow creeks that mazed the wetland. A corporal was at either end of the line, while Sergeant Lynch was in its centre, all three men with loaded muskets. Every man, even Sergeant Lynch, was smeared filthy with mud and green slime. The sun baked the squad and seemed to make the smell of the marsh gasses, when they were disturbed by trampling feet, even more noxious than usual.

There was no sign of Marriott. As the afternoon wore on, and as they worked their way even deeper into the marshland, Sharpe guessed their search was pointless. He supposed that Marriott, sensibly, must have gone west towards the firmer, higher ground that lay inland and Sharpe found himself, for the first time ever, wishing a deserter well. He had found Marriott insufferable and pompous, but not even on Marriott would he wish Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood's vengeance.

They came, in the early afternoon, to a deeper, faster running stream that flowed north into the wider Crouch. The water of this small river, that spread itself across the marshland at its banks, was turbulent where the freshwater current met the incoming tide. The clash of waters made swirls of muddy violence and even, as the wind gusted from the north, small explosions of spray as sea fought river. It was the end of their search for, on the far bank, Sharpe could see uniformed men across the marshes and he realised that he stared into Foulness itself. Two miles away he could see the white tents of the camp, and then he saw Marriott.

The fool had fled east. He had crossed this river, presumably when the tide was low, only to find himself on the island from which he had wanted to escape. Now he was clinging to the stark, dark ribs of a boat's skeleton that was grounded on the mud where the smaller River Roach met the larger Crouch.

As Sharpe saw him, so did Sergeant Lynch. The Sergeant fired his musket into the air, startling waterfowl up with flapping, loud wings, and the hammering shot, ranging far over the flat land, brought the attention of the men on the island.

Lynch held the musket above his head, pointing with it, and the corporal at the northern end of the search line, to add urgency to the signal, fired his own musket into the air and the second shot seemed to spur Marriott from his paltry refuge.

He ran.

He did not run further east, perhaps realising at last that only the sea lay in that direction. Instead, half ducking to let the sea-rushes hide him from the men on the island, he ran down the far bank of the River Roach. He was running in front of Sergeant Lynch's squad, trying to escape south.

The river was too deep, and the flowing tide made it too fast for any man to cross. A good swimmer, stripped of his clothes, might have crossed the small channel, but neither Sergeant Lynch, nor his two corporals, attempted it. Instead the Sergeant shouted at the fugitive. 'Stand still, you bastard! Stand still!

Marriott ignored the command. The squad watched him in silence. He was thirty yards from them, running down the far bank towards a bend in the channel that would take him out of their sight. Sergeant Lynch ran opposite him, bellowing at him, splashing through the shallow river margin, screaming at him to halt, yet still Marriott ran.

'Your musket! Lynch shouted to the second corporal, standing beside Harper, and the corporal held out his unfired gun. 'Stop, you bastard! Lynch, with a quick, practised motion, brought the musket into his shoulder, cocked it, and Sharpe, at the far end of the line from Sergeant Lynch, supposed that the Sergeant intended only to put a shot in front of Marriott that would check the deserter's panicked flight.

Sharpe was wrong. He realised it as he saw Lynch leading the musket on the target, he opened his mouth as if he was an officer shouting at a man to hold his fire, but before he could utter a sound, Lynch fired.

The range was forty yards, a long shot for a smooth-bore musket, but the ball went perilously close to Marriott. It must, Sharpe guessed, have missed the small of the boy's back by inches, for he saw the flicker of the rushes beyond as the ball crashed home. It would have been murder, nothing less, for Marriott was already trapped by Girdwood's converging forces.

Lynch swore when he missed, threw the fired musket at the corporal, and shouted at his squad to follow the fugitive. They ran, stumbling in the marsh at the river's edge, and Sharpe saw that the sound of the three shots had attracted horsemen from the direction of Sir Henry's house and he prayed that Sir Henry was not among them.