Sharpe’s Regiment: The Invasion of France, June to November 1813. Bernard Cornwell

can’t!’ The big Irishman was blushing.

      ‘You’ve bloody well got to!’

      They slept in the open. They trapped their food, stole it, or, despite the money hidden in their rags, begged in village streets. Four times in the first week they were chased out of parishes that did not want such stout looking troublemakers in their boundaries. They looked villainous, for neither man shaved. Sharpe wanted them to appear to be old soldiers, discharged legally, who had failed to find jobs or homes outside the army. Patrick Harper, who accepted this turn in his fate philosophically, nevertheless worried at the problem of why the Second Battalion was hidden and secret. He constantly thought of the Sergeant who had tried to ambush Sharpe in the rookery. ‘Why would the bugger want to kill you, sir?’

      ‘Don’t call me …’

      ‘I didn’t mean it! But why?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      Whatever secret was hidden with the Second Battalion stayed hidden, for in those first days they did not see any recruiting parties, let alone one from the South Essex. They stayed clear of the coast, fearing to be scooped up by a naval press-gang, and they wandered from town to town, always hoping to find one of the summer hiring fairs that were such good hunting grounds for a recruiter. They worked one day, hedging along the Great North Road, hoping that a recruiting party would pass. They were paid a shilling apiece, poor wages for country labouring, but suitable pay for a soldier or vagabond. Harper rough-hewed the hedge and Sharpe, coming behind, shaped it. At midday the farmer gave them a can of ale and stopped to talk about the weather and the harvest. Sharpe, eating the bread and cheese the farmer had brought, wondered aloud what was happening in Spain.

      The farmer laughed, perhaps to hear such a question from a tramp. ‘Don’t fash yourself over that, man. Best place for the army, abroad.’ He stood and arched his back. ‘You’re doing well, lads. You’ll work another day?’

      But the traffic on the road was small and their one day’s work had been less enjoyable than their wandering, so they refused. And, indeed, Sharpe enjoyed it all. To be so free, suddenly, of responsibility, to walk apparently aimlessly beneath the warm skies of summer, along hedgerows thick with flowers and berries, to fish country streams and steal from orchards, to poach plump estates and wake each morning without needing to check rifle and sword; all this was oddly pleasant. They went slowly north, indulging their curiosity to leave their track to explore villages or gawp at old, ancient houses where the ivy lay warm on stone walls. Somewhere beyond Grantham they came to a flat, black-drained country, and they hurried their pace across the fens as though eager to discover what lay beyond the seemingly limitless horizon.

      ‘Perhaps Ted Carew was wrong, sir,’ Harper said.

      ‘Don’t call me “sir”!’

      ‘We’ll look a pair of bloody idiots if he’s wrong!’

      The thought had occurred to Sharpe, but he stubbornly clung to the old armoury sergeant’s belief that the Second Battalion, which was supposed to exist only on paper, was still looking for recruits. And at Sleaford Sharpe found what he was searching for.

      He found a real, booming, busy hiring fair, crammed with people from the nearby countryside; a recruiting sergeant’s prayer. There was a giant on display, properly hidden behind a canvas screen, and the giant’s keeper offered Harper a full crown in silver money if he would agree to become the giant’s brother. There were Siamese twins, brought, the barker shouted, at great expense from the mysterious kingdom of Siam. There was a two-headed sheep, a dog that could count, a monkey that drilled like a soldier, and the bearded lady without whom no country fair would be complete. There were whores in the inns, gaitered farmers in the public rooms, and noisy Methodists preaching their gospel in the marketplace. There was a recruiting party from a cavalry regiment, and another from the artillery. There were jugglers, stilt-walkers, faith-healers, a dancing bear and, close to a Methodist preacher, but giving a different sermon, there was Sergeant Horatio Havercamp.

      Sharpe and Harper saw him over the heads of the crowd and, slowly, they worked their way towards him. He was a big-bellied, red-faced, smiling man, with mutton-chop whiskers and twinkling eyes. He was being heckled by a good-natured crowd, but Sergeant Horatio Havercamp was equal to any heckler. He stood on a mounting block and was flanked by two small drummer boys.

      ‘You, lad!’ He pointed to a thin, tall country boy dressed in an embroidered smock. ‘Where are you sleeping tonight?’

      The boy, embarrassed to be picked out, merely blushed.

      ‘Where, lad? Home, I’ll be bound! Home, eh? All alone, yes? Or are you keeping a milkmaid warm, are you doing that now?’

      The crowd laughed at the boy, whose face was now scarlet.

      Sergeant Havercamp grinned at the boy. ‘You’ll never sleep alone again in the army, lad. The women? They’ll be dropping off the trees for you! Now look at me, would you call me a handsome man?’ He got the answer he deserved and wanted from the crowd. He raised his hands. ‘Of course not. No one ever called Horatio Havercamp a handsome man, but, lad, let me tell you, there’s many a lass been through these hands, and why? Because of this! This!’ He plucked at his red jacket with its bright yellow facings. ‘A uniform! A soldier’s uniform!’ The drummer boys rattled a quick tattoo with their sticks.

      The embarrassed farm boy had wormed his way out of the crowd and now wandered towards the Methodists who offered joys of a different sort. Sergeant Havercamp did not mind. He had the attention of enough young men in the crowd and he looked about for another butt. He could hardly miss Patrick Harper, a full head and shoulders taller than most of the people who pressed towards the inn where the Sergeant had his pitch. ‘Look at him!’ Sergeant Havercamp cried. ‘He could win the war single-handed. You ever thought of being a soldier?’

      Harper said nothing. His sandy hair made him look younger than his twenty-eight years. Sergeant Havercamp rubbed his hands in glee. ‘How much money have you got, lad?’

      Harper shook his head as though too embarrassed to say anything.

      ‘Nothing, I’ll be bound! Look at me, now!’ Sergeant Havercamp produced two golden guineas from his pocket and dexterously rolled them between his fingers so that the gold glittered mesmerically as he skilfully wove the two coins in and out of his knuckles. ‘Money! Soldier’s money! You heard of the battle at Vitoria, lad? We took treasure there, we took gold, we took jewels, we took more money than you’ll dream of in a lifetime of dreams!’

      Harper, who had fought at Vitoria, and taken a king’s ransom from that battlefield, gaped convincingly.

      Sergeant Havercamp juggled the two coins with one hand, tossing one up, then catching the other while the first twinkled beside his whiskers. ‘Rich! That’s what you can be as a soldier! Rich! Women, glory, money, and victory, lads!’ The two drummer boys performed another obedient drum-roll, and the young men in the crowd stared bewitched at the gold coins.

      ‘You’ll never be hungry again! You’ll never be without a woman! You’ll never be poor again! You can walk with your head up and never fear again, because you will be a soldier!’

      The drum-roll again, and still the gold coins went up and down beside Sergeant Havercamp’s smiling, confiding, friendly face.