Sharpes Eagle   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

“Sir!”

Sharpe turned. Sergeant Harper was running towards him; another man, one of the South Essex’s Light Company, with him. “Sir!”

“What is it?” Sharpe noticed that Harper was looking agitated and worried, an unusual sight, but he felt a twinge of impatience as he returned their salutes. Damn them! He wanted to be with Josefina. “Well?”

“It’s the deserters, sir.” Harper was almost wriggling in embarrassment.

“Deserters?”

“You know, sir. The ones who escaped at Castelo?”

The day they had met up with the South Essex. Sharpe remembered the men being flogged because four deserters had slipped past the guard at night. He looked hard at Harper. “How do you know?”

“Kirby’s a mate of theirs, sir.” He pointed to the man standing next to him. Sharpe looked at him. He was a small man who had lost most of his teeth. “Well, Kirby?”

“Dunno, sir.”

“You want to be flogged, Kirby?”

The man’s eyes jerked up to his, astonished. “What, sir?”

“If you don’t tell me I’ll have to presume you are helping them to escape.”

Harper and Kirby were silent. Finally the Sergeant looked at Sharpe. “Kirby saw one of them in the street, sir. He went back with him. Two of them are wounded, sir. Kirby came to see me.”

“And in turn you came to see me.” Sharpe kept his voice harsh. “And what do you expect me to do?”

Again they said nothing. Sharpe knew that they hoped he could work a miracle; that somehow lucky Captain Sharpe could find a way to save the four men from the savage punishment the army gave to deserters. He felt an unreasonable anger mount inside him, alloyed with impatience. What did they think he was? “Fetch six men, Sergeant. Three Riflemen and three others. Meet me here in five minutes. Kirby, stay here.”

Harper stood to attention. “But, sir… „

“Go!”

There was a translucent quality to the air, that quality of light just before dusk when the sun seems suspended in coloured liquid. A gnat buzzed irritatingly round Sharpe’s face, and he slapped at it. The church bells rang the Angélus, a woman hurrying down the street crossed herself, and Sharpe cursed inside because he had promised Josefina to join her just after six o’clock. Damn the deserters! Damn Harper for expecting a miracle! Did the Sergeant really think that Sharpe would condone desertion? Behind him, frightened and nervous, Kirby fidgeted in the roadway, and Sharpe thought gloomily of what this could mean to the Battalion.