Hogan dared hardly use the word. “Dead?”

Curtis shrugged. “I don’t know.” There was not much hope in the old man’s voice.

Hogan insisted on going back over the story, harrying it, as if some detail might emerge that would somehow change the ending, but it was with a harsh expression that he left Curtis’ door and walked, slowly, down the curved staircase. He offered no explanations to Price, but just went back to the surgeons. He bullied them, ordered them, used all the weight of Headquarters, but still no news emerged. One of them had treated an officer with a bullet wound and the man had survived, a Lieutenant in the Portuguese Army, but they were quite sure they had seen no bullet-wounded British officers. “We had a few privates.”

“Ye Gods! A Rifle Officer! Captain Sharpe!”

“Him?” The last surgeon shrugged. “We’d have been told about him. What happened?”

“He was shot.” Hogan kept his patience.

The surgeon shook his head. His breath smelt of the wine he had been drinking through the long afternoon. “If he was shot here, sir, we’d have seen him. The only explanation is that he never got this far.” The man shrugged. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“You mean dead?”

The surgeon shrugged again. “You’ve looked in the wards? He’s not here?” Hogan shook his head. The surgeon gestured over the courtyard with his bloody knife. “Try the body-men.”

At the side of the college was a small yard where the servants had lived in the better times when the Irish College had been full of students training for the English-banned Irish priesthood. In the yard Hogan found the body-men. They were working, nailing up crude coffins, sewing rough shrouds for the French dead, and they did not remember Sharpe. The smell in the small courtyard was overpowering. Bodies lay where they had been dumped, the body-men seemed to live on a diet of rum and Hogan found the soberest man he could discover. “Tell me what you do here.”

“Sir?” The man had only one eye, part of a cheek missing, but he was understandable. He seemed proud that an officer should be interested. “We burys ‘em, sir.”

“I know. I want to know what happens.” If Hogan could at least find Sharpe’s body then the worst question would be answered.

The man sniffed. He had a needle and coarse thread in his hand. “We shrouds the frogs, sir, ’less they’re officers, of course, an‘ they get a coffin. Nice coffin, sir.“

“And the British?”

“Oh, a coffin, sir, of course, sir, if we got enough, if not they get sewn up like this. Unless we ain’t got shrouds, sir, then we just stick ‘em and bury ’em.”

“Stick them?”

The man winked with his good eye, he was warming to his explanation. By his knees was a French soldier, the face already waxen in death, and the shroud was half closed with big, crude stitches. The man took the needle and plunged it through the Frenchman’s nose. “See, sir? Don’t bleed. Means ‘is not alive, if you follow me, sir, and if he were then ’e’d like as not give a twitch. We ‘ad one four days ago.” He looked at one of his ghoulish mates. “Four days ago, Charlie? That Shropshire sat up an’ bloody puked?” He looked back at Hogan. “Not nice to be buried alive, sir.” He gestured at the needle. “Sort of comfort, really, to know we’re ‘ere, sir, looking after you and makin’ sure you’re really gone.”

Hogan’s gratitude seemed less than heartfelt. He pointed at a stack of rough-cut coffins. “Do you bury them?”

“Lord love you, no, sir. The Frenchies, now, we might sling ‘em in the pit, or at least the burial detail does, sir. I mean there’s no point in making a folderol about them, sir, not seein’ as ‘ow they’ve been trying to do us, sir, if you follow me. Their officers, now, they’re different. They might get the…’

Hogan cut him off. “The British, you fool! What happens to them?”

The perfectionist in the body-man was offended. He shrugged. “Their mates get ‘em, don’t they? I mean the Battalion, sir, does ’em a proper service, with a priest. That’s ‘em over there. Waitin’ for their interdment, sir.” He pointed to the stack.

“And if you don’t know who they are?”

“Sling ‘em, sir.”

“What happened to the bodies you got today?”

“Depends, sir. Some ‘ave gone, some are waiting, and some, like this ’ere gent‘, are bein’ attended to.” He invested the phrase with dignity.

Sharpe was in none of the coffins. Sergeant Huckfield levered the lids open, but the faces were all of strangers. Hogan sighed, looked up at the swallows, then down to Price. “He’s probably buried already. I don’t understand it. He’s not here, not in the wards.” Hogan did not believe his own words.

“Sir?” Huckfield was raking through the pile of uniforms that had been slit open, searched, and then tossed into a corner of the small courtyard. He held up Sharpe’s overalls, the distinctive green overalls that Sharpe had taken off a dead French officer of the Imperial Guard. Hogan, like Huckfield, recognised them instantly.

He turned back to the one-eyed man whose stitches, now that an officer was present, were smaller and neater. “Where are those clothes from?”

“The dead, sir.”

“You remember the man who wore those?”

The man squinted with his one eye. “We get ‘em naked, as often as not, an’ the clothes come after.” He sniffed. “Buggers have already searched ‘em. We just burn ’em.” He peered at the overalls. “Must ‘ave been a Frenchie.”

“Do you know which bodies are French?”

“Course we do, sir. Buggers tell us when they bring ‘em.”

Hogan turned to Huckfield and pointed at the pile of shrouded French dead. “Open them, Sergeant.” He noticed, almost for the first time, the huge bloodstain on the overalls.

It was vast. No man could have lived through that.

The body-men protested as Huckfield began slitting at the grey shrouds, but Hogan snapped at them to be quiet, and he and Price watched as face after face was revealed. None were Sharpe. Hogan turned back to the body-man. “Have any been buried yet?”

“Lord, yes. Two cart loads this afternoon, sir.”

So Sharpe was buried in a common grave with his enemies. Hogan felt the beginnings of a sob and he swallowed, stamped his feet as if it were cold, and looked at Price. “It’s your Company now, Lieutenant.”

“No, sir.”

Hogan’s voice was gentle. “Yes. You’d better march in the morning. You’ll find the Battalion at San Christobal. You’ll have to tell Major Forrest.”

Price shook his head obstinately. “Shouldn’t we find him, sir? I mean the least we can do is dig a decent grave.”

“You mean, dig up the French dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hogan shook his head. “Fire a volley over the grave tomorrow morning. That’ll do.”

It was all, Hogan thought as he walked slowly back to the Headquarters, that Sharpe might have wanted. No, that was not right. He did not know what Sharpe wanted, except success, and to prove that a man who came from the gutter could compete with anyone, be as good as the most privileged, and perhaps it was better that he should find peace now rather than strive after that remote dream, and then Hogan dismissed that thought as well. It was not better. Sharpe had been turbulent, ambitious, but one day, Hogan supposed, that restlessness would have found satisfaction. Then, curiously, Hogan found himself resenting Sharpe, resenting him because he had been killed and was thus denying his friendship to those who still lived. Hogan could not imagine being without Sharpe. Just when life seemed to reach an even keel the Rifleman could be relied on to upset things, stir them up, make excitement from dullness, and now it was all gone. A friend was dead.

Hogan wearily climbed the steps of the Headquarters and the officers were coming from the Dining Room as he went into the hallway. Wellington saw Hogan’s face and stopped. “Major?”

“Richard Sharpe’s dead, sir.”

“No.”

Hogan nodded. “I’m sorry, my lord.” He told what he knew.