'Only the guard Companies, sir.

Sharpe looked at the charts on the desk. 'So, not counting the guard Companies, you've got four hundred and eighty-three men?

'Yes, sir.

'Then they'd better get some pay tomorrow, hadn't they? He kicked the Battalion chest. 'Five shillings each. Not much, is it? And that, he thought, would take nearly half of the money in the chest.

'They'll run, sir, Smith said.

'No, they won't. Sharpe said it firmly, though he hardly believed it. These men had been ill-treated, and, given money and the open road, there would be a strong temptation for them to flee at the first opportunity. 'You lead men, Smith, you don't drive them. And if you find yourself on a battlefield with those men, you'll need them. They aren't filth, Smith, they're soldiers, and they make the best god-damned infantry in the world.

'Yes, sir. Smith said it humbly and made Sharpe feel pompous.

'I want a list of the sergeants by morning. Who's good, who's bad, who's useless.

'Yes, sir.

'We just get them safely to Chelmsford where they belong, that's all. It was not all. Sharpe wondered how he was to protect these men if he did not receive written proof that he could send to London. In two or three days, he knew, he might have all hell itself descend on the Chelmsford barracks. He needed the records of the auctions.

The door opened suddenly, without any knock, and Patrick Harper burst into the room with an excited look on his face. He saw Captain Smith and, thinking that Sharpe would not want this news spread about the camp, dropped into Spanish. 'The lad's come back, señor. He's travelling. He grinned.

Sharpe picked up his shako and rifle. It was oddly pleasant to hear Spanish again, and he replied in the same language. 'On foot or horse?

'Horse.

Which all meant that Charlie Weller, placed as a hidden sentry to watch Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood's quarters, had reported that the Colonel had broken his word and fled. Sharpe had expected it.

Sharpe switched back to English. 'I want a guard on this room, Sergeant Major. No one is to enter without my permission. No one.

'I understand, sir.

The officers waited outside, as though they had feared that Captain Smith, left alone with Sharpe, might be eaten alive. Sharpe, as he reloaded his rifle and waited for his horse to be brought, advised them to get some sleep. 'Unless you're leaving us, gentlemen?

No one replied. They watched as he mounted, as he wheeled the horse, and as he rode into the night. Captain Smith, who had left his shako in the office, thought to order the door open, but one look at the huge, respectful Irish RSM, who carried eight loaded bullets in his two guns, persuaded Smith that this night, and perhaps in all the army nights to come, it would be better to obey orders. He walked away.

While Sharpe, sword at his side and rifle on his shoulder, galloped after his enemy who would lead him, he suspected, towards the house with the eagle weathervane, where a girl of mischievous beauty lived, and a house which, as Sharpe had guessed ever since the search of the office had proved barren, would hold the papers he needed to destroy his enemies.

CHAPTER 16

It was a night like the one on which he and Harper had escaped. There was the same sheen of moonlight on the marshes that turned the grasses and reeds into a shimmering, metallic silver. On the flat stretches of water that flooded the mudbanks at the creek mouths, Sharpe could see the black shapes of waterfowl. From far off, where the rising tide raced over the long mudbanks of the shore, there came, like a distant battle dimly heard, the sound of seething water. Once, as he put his horse to an earthern bank that dyked farmland from the marsh, he saw the white, fretting line of waves far to the east, and, beyond it, a dark shape in the night that was a moored ship waiting for the ebb. A tiny spark of light showed at its stern.

Sharpe rode cautiously. He could see the small figure of Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood ahead of him, and Sharpe slowed to make sure that the Colonel did not realise he was being followed. At the place where the track went north Girdwood turned, confirming Sharpe's suspicion that he was going to Sir Henry's house. Sharpe waited until the horseman had melded into the far shadows of the night, then followed.

He splashed through the Roach ford. He seemed alone now in a wet land, but behind him he could see the flicker of lights where the Foulness Camp lay, while, ahead of him, Sir Henry's house was a dark shape spotted with brilliant candlelight. Sharpe paused again beyond the Roach, standing his horse beside a tall bed of reeds and he heard, distinct over the flat, still land, the sound of big iron gates being pulled open. When he heard them close, and knew that Girdwood was safe inside the sheltering garden wall, he put his heels back and went on.

Sharpe rode to the right of the house, following the route he and Harper had taken three nights before. Hidden from the house by its front garden wall he dismounted, led the horse down into the creek bed, hobbled it, then went on foot down the sucking, muddy creek. The rising tide had half-filled the channel, forcing Sharpe to one side. He could smell the rotting vegetation that his squad had grubbed up under Sergeant Lynch's command.

The boathouse was locked again, but it was a simple matter to use the bars of the gate as a ladder. Sharpe, his rifle on his shoulder, pulled himself up to the arch's summit, peered over the top to see the east lawn deserted, then rolled onto the grass. He stayed there, a shadow at the lawn's edge, listening for guard dogs. He could hear none. The tall windows which opened onto the banked terrace above the lawn were lit, their candlelight rivalled by the moon which showed every detail of the house in black and silver.

He wondered if Sir Henry had returned. There would be consternation in London if Lord Fenner, finding Sharpe gone from the Rose Tavern, believed him to have come here, and who better than Sir Henry to come to Foulness to hide all evidence of wrongdoing?

He walked forward, his shadow cast before him, but no one saw him, no one called an alarm, and he crouched in safety at the top of the bank and stared into the rooms.

On his left was an empty dining room, its table showing the litter of dinner. On the wall over the mantelpiece was a huge picture like the one in the entrance hall of the Horse Guards; British infantry lined beneath the battle's smoke.

In the second room, less brightly lit, he saw Girdwood. It was a library, its shelves scantily provided with books, but its walls lavish with weapons. A rosette of swords surmounted the doorway opposite Sharpe, while muskets were racked above the fireplace. Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, his back to Sharpe, was opening the drawers of a bureau. From it he took a brace of pistols, fine-looking weapons with silver handles, then two black leather-bound books with page edges marbled in bright colours.

Sharpe had planned to follow Girdwood from the house, reasoning that he could more easily take the auction records on the lonely marsh road than in a house where Sir Henry's servants could and should resist him. Sharpe was ready to run back across the lawn, jump into the creek bed and find his horse, but, as Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood pushed the books and pistols into a saddlebag and buckled it, so a servant came to the library door and spoke with him. The servant seemed to gesticulate, inviting Girdwood to another room, and Sharpe, rather than running for his horse, waited.

Girdwood buckled the last strap, dropped the bag on the library table, and followed the servant into the hallway. They turned to their right, and Sharpe, still on the slope of the bank beneath the terrace, sidled that way.