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recruits then there was a Second Battalion, and the seven hundred men did exist, and the Regiment could yet march into France. ‘You saw a recruiting party?’
    ‘With me own eyes, sir! I told the Captain too!’
    ‘What did he say?’
    ‘Told me I was drunk, sir. Told me there were no more recruiting parties, nothing! Told me I was imagining things, but I wasn’t drunk, sir, and sure as you’re standing there and me here I’m telling you I saw Horatio Havercamp with a party of recruits. Now why would they not come here, sir? Can you tell me that?’
    ‘No, Sergeant, I can’t.’ But he would find out, by God he would find out. ‘You’re certain of what you saw, Sergeant?’
    ‘I’m certain, sir.’
    ‘This Sergeant Havercamp wasn’t recruiting for another regiment?’
    Carew laughed. ‘Wore our badge, sir! Drummer boys had your eagle on the drums. No, sir. Something funny happening, that’s what I think.’ He was stumping towards the door, his keys jangling on their iron ring. ‘But no one listens to me, sir, not any more. I mean I was a real soldier, sir, smelled the bloody guns, but they don’t want to know. Too high and bloody mighty.’ Carew swung the massive iron door shut, then turned again to make sure none of the depot officers were near. ‘I’ve been in the bloody army since I was a nipper, sir, and I know when things are wrong.’ He looked eagerly up at Sharpe. ‘Do you believe me, sir?’
    ‘Yes, Ted.’ Sharpe stood in the slanting evening light, and almost wished he did not believe the Sergeant, for, if Ted Carew was right, then a Battalion was not just missing, but deliberately hidden. He went to inspect the stables.
     
    A missing Battalion? Hidden? It sounded to Sharpe like a mad-man’s fantasy, yet nothing in Chelmsford offered a rational explanation. By noon the next day Sharpe and d‘Alembord had searched the paperwork of the depot and found nothing that told them where Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood had gone, or whether the Second Battalion truly existed. Yet Sharpe believed Carew. The Battalion did exist, it was recruiting still, and Sharpe knew he must return to London, though he dreaded the thought.
    He dreaded it because he would have to seek an interview with Lord Fenner, and Sharpe did not feel at home among such exalted reaches of society. He suspected, too, that His Lordship would refuse to answer his questions, telling Sharpe, perhaps rightly, that it was none of his business.
    Yet to have come this far to fail? He walked onto the parade ground and saw Carline, Merrill and Pierce standing indignantly to attention as Patrick Harper minutely inspected their uniforms. All three officers had shadowed, red-rimmed eyes because they had been up all night. Harper, used to broken nights of war, looked keen and fresh.
    ‘Halt!’ The sentry at the gate, eager to impress Major Sharpe, bellowed the challenge.
    Sharpe turned.
    A mounted officer appeared in the archway, glorious and splendid on a superb horse, dazzling in the red, blue and gold uniform of the 1st Life Guards, an officer utterly out of place in this remote, dull barracks square.
    ‘Bit hard to find, aren’t you?’ The officer laughed as he dismounted close to Sharpe. ‘It is Major Sharpe, yes?’
    ‘Yes.’
    The Captain saluted. ‘Lord John Rossendale, sir! Honoured to meet you!’ Lord John was a tall young man, thin as a reed, with a humorous, handsome face and a lazy, friendly voice. ‘First time I’ve been here. I’m told there’s a decent little pack of hounds up the road?’ He pronounced the word hounds as “hinds”.
    ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Sharpe said it ungraciously. ‘You’re looking for me?’
    ‘Rather,’ Rossendale beamed happily. ‘Got something for you, sir. Or I did.’ He dug into his sabretache, failed to find whatever he had brought, clicked his fingers, cursed himself for foolishness, then, with a happy and enlightened burst of memory, found what he was looking for in his