As a Captain, Sharpe received ten shillings and sixpence a day. It seemed like a fortune but more than half was deducted for his food and then the officers’ mess demanded a further levy of two shillings and eightpence a day to pay for wine, luxury foods, and the mess servants. He paid more for cleaning, for the hospitals, and he knew the sums backwards. They simply did not add up. And now Josefina was looking to him for money. Hogan had lent him money and, added to the contents of his leather bag, he had enough for the next fortnight, but after that? His only hope was to find a rich corpse on the battlefield. A very rich corpse.

Sharpe finished with the books, shut them, laid the quill on the table and yawned as a clock in the town struck four. He opened the Weekly Mess Book again and looked down at the names, wondering morbidly how many would still be there in a week’s time and how many would have the word ‘deceased’ entered against them. Would his name be crossed out? Would some other officer look at the ledger and wonder who had written fivepence, one shoe-brush‘, against the name Thomas Cresacre? He shut the books again. It was all academic. The army had not been paid for a month, and even then they had not been paid up to date. He would give the books to Sergeant Read, who would store them on the company mule and when, and if, the pay arrived, Read would make the deductions from the books and pay the men their handfuls of coins. There was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Me, sir.” It was Harper’s voice.

“Come in.”

Harper’s face was bleak, his manner formal. “Well, Sergeant?”

“Trouble, sir. Bad. The men are refusing to parade.”

Sharpe remembered his apprehension. “Which men?”

“Whole bloody Battalion, sir. Even our lads have joined in.” When Patrick Harper spoke of ‘our lads’ he meant the Riflemen. Sharpe stood up and slung on the big sword. “Who knows about this?”

“Colonel does, sir. Men sent him a letter.”

Sharpe swore under his breath. “They sent him a letter? Who signed it?”

Harper shook his head. “No-one signed it, sir. It just tells him that they won’t parade and if he comes near they’ll blow his bloody head off.”

Sharpe picked up the rifle. There was a word for what was happening, and the word was ‘mutiny’. Simmerson’s flogging of one man in ten could easily change into decimation, and instead of being flogged the men would be stood against the trees and shot. He looked at Harper. “What’s happening?”

“Lot of talk, sir. They’re barricading themselves in the timber yard.”

“All of them?”

Harper shook his head. “No, sir. There’s a couple of hundred still in the orchard. Your company’s there, sir, but the lads in the yard are trying to persuade them to join in.”

Sharpe nodded. The Battalion had been bivouacked in an olive grove which the men called an orchard simply because the trees were laid out in neat rows. The grove was behind a timber yard, a walled yard with just one entrance. “Who delivered the letter?”

“Don’t know, sir. It was pushed under the door of Simmerson’s house.”

Sharpe hurried out of the door. The courtyard of the house was shadowed and silent; most officers were taking the chance of looking at the town before they marched the next day to meet the French. “Are there any officers at the timber yard?”

“No, sir.”

“What about the Sergeants?”

Harper’s face was expressionless. Sharpe guessed that many of the Sergeants were sympathetic to the protest but, like the big Irishman, knew better than the men what the result would be if the Battalion refused to parade. “Wait here.”

Sharpe ran back into the house. The rooms lay cool and empty. A woman looked at him from the kitchen, a string of peppers held in her hand, and quickly shut the door when she saw his face. Sharpe took the stairs two at a time and threw open the door of the room where the Light Company’s junior officers were quartered. Ensign Denny was the only occupant, and the sixteen-year-old was lying fast asleep on a straw mattress.

“Denny!”

The boy came awake, frightened. “Sir!”

“Where’s Knowles?”

“Don’t know, sir. In town, I think.”

Sharpe thought for a second. The boy stared wide-eyed from the mattress. Sharpe’s hand gripped and regripped the sword hilt. “Join me in the courtyard as soon as you’re dressed. Hurry.”

Harper was waiting in the street, where the heat of the sun had seared the stones so that Sharpe could feel the burning even through the soles of his boots. “Sergeant, I want the Light Company on parade in five minutes in the track behind the orchard. Full kit.”

The Sergeant opened his mouth to ask a question, saw the look on Sharpe’s face, and threw a salute instead. He strode off. Denny came out of the courtyard buckling on his sword, which trailed on the stones beside him. He looked apprehensive as Sharpe turned to him. “Listen carefully. You are to find out for me where Colonel Simmerson is and what he is doing. Understand?” The boy nodded. “And you’re not to let him know that’s what you’re doing. Try the castle. Then come and find me. I’ll either be on the track beside the orchard or on the square in front of the timber yard. If I’m not in either place, then find Sergeant Harper and wait with him. Understand?” Denny nodded again. “Repeat it to me.”

The boy went through his instructions. He desperately wanted to ask Sharpe what the excitement was about but dared not. Sharpe nodded when he finished. “One more thing, Christopher.” He deliberately used Denny’s Christian name to give the lad reassurance. “You are not, in any circumstance, to go in the timber yard. Now, be off. If you see Lieutenant Knowles, or Major Forrest, or Captain Leroy, ask them if they’ll join me. Hurry!”

Denny clutched his sword and ran off. Sharpe liked him. One day he would make a good officer, if he was not first spitted on the bayonet of a French Grenadier. Sharpe turned down the hill towards the timber yard and the billets of the men. There was only one chance of averting a disaster and that was to get the Battalion on parade as soon as possible, before Simmerson had time to react to the threat of mutiny. There was a clatter of hooves behind him and he turned to see a rider waving at him. It was Captain Sterritt, the officer of the day, and he looked understandably nervous.

“Sharpe!”

“Sterritt?”

Sterritt pulled up his horse. “There’s an officers’ call at the Castle. Now. Everyone.”

“What’s happening?”

Sterritt looked frantically round the deserted street as though someone might overhear the further disaster that had overtaken Simmerson’s Battalion. Sharpe had hardly seen Sterritt since the fight at the bridge. The man was patently frightened of Simmerson, of the men, of Sharpe, of everyone, and deliberately made himself insignificant so as to escape notice. He sketched in the events at the timber yard. Sharpe interrupted him. “I know about that. What’s happening at the castle?”

“The Colonel’s asked to see General Hill.”

There was still time. He looked up at the frightened Captain. “Listen. You haven’t seen me. Understand, Sterritt? You have not seen me.”

“But… “

“No buts. Do you want to see those sixty men shot?”

Sterritt’s mouth dropped open. He looked round the street again and back to Sharpe. “The Colonel’s orders are that no-one is to go near the timber yard.”

“You haven’t seen me so how could I have heard the order?”

“Oh.” Sterritt did not know how to react. He watched Sharpe go on down the street and wished again that he had been born four years earlier; then he would have been the eldest and would now be a gentleman farmer. As it was he felt like a rag doll swept away in a flood. He turned sadly away towards the casde and wondered what would become of it all.

In front of the timber yard was a huge open space like an English village green, except that the grass here was bleached yellow and grew thinly on the shallow soil. The space was used for a weekly market but today it was a football ground for soldiers from a dozen Battalions. Sharpe could see troops from the 48th, the 29th, and a company of Royal American Rifles whose green jackets reminded him of happier days. The men cheered and jeered the players; soon, thought Sharpe, they would have a more interesting spectacle to watch.