“Yes, sir.”
Major Hogan had waited for Sharpe, first at the ravine’s head, then at Headquarters, but the fate of Colonel Leroux was not the Irishman’s only concern. Wellington, now that the forts were taken, was eager to be out of the city. He wanted reports from the north, from the east, and Hogan worked late through the afternoon.
It was not till half past six that Lieutenant Price, awed by approaching Headquarters on his own responsibility, entered Hogan’s room. The Major looked up, smelt trouble, and frowned. “Lieutenant?”
“It’s Sharpe, sir.”
“Captain Sharpe?”
Price nodded miserably. “We’ve lost him, sir.”
“No Leroux?” Hogan had almost forgotten Leroux. He had assumed that it was now Sharpe’s problem while he could concentrate on discovering what fresh levies of troops were joining Marmont. Price shook his head.
“No Leroux, sir.” Price sketched in the afternoon’s events.
“What have you done since?”
It did not add up to much. Lieutenant Price had searched the San Cayetano again, then La Merced, and afterwards taken the Company back to their billets in the hope that Sharpe might have turned up. There was no Sharpe, no Harper, just a lost Lieutenant Price. Hogan looked at his watch. “Good God! You’ve lost him for four hours?” Price nodded. Hogan shouted. “Corporal!”
A head came round the door. “Sir?”
“Daily reports, are they in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything odd, apart from the forts. Quick, man!”
It did not take long. A shooting and a fight at the hospital, one Frenchman had escaped and the town guard had been alerted, but there was no sign of the fugitive.
“Come on, man!” Hogan pulled on his jacket, snatched his hat, and led Lieutenant Price down to the Irish College.
Sergeant Huckfield, who had gone with Price as far as Headquarter’s front door, joined them and it was he who pounded on the gate that was still shut against the revenge of the townspeople. It did not take long to hear the story from the guards in the gate-lodge. There had been a chase. One man was wounded, probably in the wards, as to the other? The guards shrugged. “Dunno, sir.”
Hogan pointed at Price. “Officers’ wards. Search them. Sergeant?”
Huckfield stiffened. “Sir?”
“Other ranks’ wards. Find Sergeant Harper. Go!”
Leroux at liberty. The thought haunted Hogan. He could not believe that Sharpe had failed, he needed to find the Rifleman because, he thought, surely Sharpe could throw light on the episode. It was impossible that Leroux was free!
The surgeons were still at work, dealing now with the less wounded men, taking out scraps of stone that the bombardment had splintered and driven into French defenders. Hogan went from room to room and none could remember a Rifle Captain. One remembered Sergeant Harper. “Out of his senses, sir.”
“You mean mad?”
“No. In a faint. God knows when he’ll recover.”
“And his officer?”
“I didn’t see an officer, sir.”
Was Sharpe still on Leroux’s trail? It was a hope, at least, and Hogan clung to it. Sergeant Huckfield had found Harper, had shaken the huge Irishman’s shoulder, but Harper was still dead to the world, still snoring, still unable to say a thing.
Lieutenant Price came down the curving stairs. He was blinking, almost unable to speak. Hogan was impatient. “What is it?”
“He’s not there, sir.”
“You’re sure?”
Price nodded, took a deep breath. “But he was shot, sir. Really bad, sir.”
Hogan felt a chill spread through him. There was a silence for a few seconds. “Shot?”
“Bad, sir. And he’s not in the wards.”
“Oh, God.” Huckfield shook his head, unwilling to believe it.
Hogan had held to a live Sharpe, a Sharpe chasing Leroux, a Sharpe who could help him, and he could not adjust to the new information. If Sharpe had been shot, and was not in the officers’ wards, then he was… „Who saw it?“
“A dozen French wounded, sir. They told the British officers. And the priest.”
“Priest?”
“Upstairs, sir.”
Hogan ran, the same path that Sharpe had run, and he took the stairs two at a time, his sword rapping the stone, and he ran to Curtis’ rooms. It seemed to Price and Huckfield, left outside, that he was in the rooms a long time.
Curtis told his story, what there was of it, of how he had opened the door and found a French officer. “Terribly wounded, he looked. Blood from top to toe. He pushed me in, turned and fired, and then he closed the door. He went out the window.” He gestured to the tall window that opened onto the back street. “There was a man there, with a spare horse, and a cloak.”
“So he’s gone.”
“Clean away.”
“And Sharpe?”
Curtis clasped his hands, then extended the fingers as if in prayer. “He screamed, screamed terribly. Then he stopped. I opened the door again.” He shrugged.
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.”