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.
Wellington listened in silence. He remembered Sharpe as a Sergeant. They had covered many miles together and much time. He saw the distress on Hogan’s face, understood it, but did not know what words to say. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hogan. I’m sorry.”
“Yes, sir.” It suddenly struck Hogan that life hereafter would seem anti-climactic, inadequate, and dull. Richard Sharpe was dead.
CHAPTER 14
The surgeons had not lied to Major Hogan. They remembered Patrick Harper, stunned cold by the fall, and they had probed and palpated and found nothing broken and so he had been put into a ward where he could snore until he recovered consciousness.
There was another man involved in the fight on the upper cloister. When he reached the surgeon he was still breathing, but shallowly, and unconsciousness had blessedly released him from his pain. An orderly had stripped off the empty scabbard and sword belt, slit the shirt from the man’s back, and seen the old flogging scars. The body was lifted onto the stained table.
The surgeon, spattered with fresh blood that gleamed over the clotted, coagulated stains from the week’s operations, caught at Sharpe’s overalls, split them down with huge shears, and saw the wound low and right in Sharpe’s abdomen. He shook his head and swore. The blood welled up in the small bullet hole, spilt and pulsed onto the wounded man’s thigh and waist, and the surgeon did not even bother to pick up a knife. He leaned close to the muscled chest and noted that the breathing was shallow, so shallow as to be almost inaudible, and then he picked up the wrist. For a moment he could not find the pulse, was about to give up, and then he felt it; a thready, weak throb of a tiny heartbeat. He nodded at the orderly, then at the wound. “Close it.”
There was not much he could do, except stop the man bleeding to death and sometimes he thought that would be a mercy with this kind of wound. One orderly grasped Sharpe’s feet, held them tight, the second pinched the skin over the wound, pushing the flesh, blood and driven uniform threads together, and keeping his fingers clear of the welling hole. The surgeon crossed to the brazier, took out the poker, and cauterized the puncture. The wounded man jerked, gasped and moaned, but unconsciousness held him, and the bleeding stopped. Smoke hung over the bloody abdomen, the stink of burned flesh was in the surgeon’s nostrils. „put a bandage on. Take him away.“
The orderly who had closed the wound nodded. “No hope, sir?”
“No.” The bullet was inside. The surgeon could take a leg off in ninety seconds, he could probe for a bullet and pluck it from next to a thighbone in sixty, he could set broken limbs, he could even take a bullet from a man’s chest if it had not pierced a lung, but no one on earth, not even Napoleon’s famous Surgeon-General Larrey, could take out a bullet that had lodged in the lower right abdomen. This was a dead man. Already the breathing was shallow, the skin palloring, and the pulse going. The sooner he died, the better, for the rest of his life would be pain. It would be a short life. The wound would abscess, the rot would set in, and he would be buried within the week. The surgeon, irritated with himself for his thoroughness, heaved up Sharpe’s side and saw that there was no exit wound. Instead he saw the flogging scars. A troublemaker come to a bad end. “Take him downstairs. Next!”