Sharpe's Sword Part 26

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, G.o.d." 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 G.o.ds! 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 coa.r.s.e 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 st.i.tches. 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 Shrops.h.i.+re sat up an' b.l.o.o.d.y 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 grat.i.tude 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 st.i.tches, 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. "b.u.g.g.e.rs 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. b.u.g.g.e.rs 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?"