The half-wit was next, grabbing the shilling eagerly, and laughing as he bit it and pushed it into his rags. The young man in the broadcloth coat took his without any fuss, resigned to it, taking it as though he was bored.

'Now, Paddy! What about you?

Harper laughed. 'You think I'm a fool, eh? Just because I'm Irish?

One of the drummer boys, sitting on his drum, snored in a corner. Sergeant Havercamp watched as his two corporals, both of whom had taken their shillings obediently as they still pretended to be recruits, poured rum for the three boys in their smocks. He looked up at the big Irishman. 'What's the problem, Paddy? Tell me, eh?

Harper traced patterns on the wooden table with spilt beer. 'It's nothing.

'Come on, tell me!

'Nothing!

Havercamp rolled a shilling into the spilt beer. It fell onto its side. 'Tell me why you won't take it.

Harper frowned. He bit his lip, shrugged, and looked at the Sergeant. 'Do I get a bed?

'What?

'A bed? Do I get one? A bed?

Havercamp stared at him, saw the intensity on the big face, and nodded. 'Fit for a King, Paddy. You'll get a bed with satin sheets and pillows big as bloody cows!

'That's grand! Harper picked up the shilling. 'I'm all yours!

Sergeant Havercamp failed with the three farm boys. Charlie Weller was desperate to join up, but would not take the shilling unless his two friends joined with him, and they were reluctant. Sharpe watched Havercamp try all the tricks, even the old one of slipping the shillings into their beer so they would pick them out of the dregs in astonishment, but the three lads were wise to that one. They became drunker and drunker, so drunk that Sharpe was sure that one of them would take the preferred, glittering coin, yet at the very moment when it seemed that Charlie Weller would take his anyway, even without his friends, the door to the snug banged open and a woman stood there, screaming in rage, shouting at Havercamp and hitting with her fist at Charlie. 'You little bastard!

'Ma! he shouted. 'Ma! Stop it!

'Out! And you, Horace and James! Out! Disgrace, you are, disgrace to your families! Playing at soldiers! You think I brought you into this world to see you throw yourself away? She cuffed Charlie Weller about the ears. 'Only a fool joins the army, you fool!

'Aye, you're right, Harper said drunkenly.

Havercamp surrendered the three boys gracefully. He had, to console his loss, twenty-eight men in a barn outside town, he had scooped up four today, and he had high hopes of the whores who were working the inns for him. He would have a tidy enough number to take back to Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood. He smiled reassuringly at his recruits as Mrs Weller left, drained his last ale, and ordered them to their feet.

They had taken the King's Shilling, but they were not quite yet the King's men. Sharpe lay that night in the broken-down stable behind the Green Man and he stared at the stars through the gaping thatch. He smiled. Six weeks before, in the nights after the battle of Vitoria, he had slept in a great bedroom with the whore of gold, the Marquesa, the woman who was a spy and who had been his lover. He had lain with an aristocrat and now he lay in old, filthy straw. What would she think if she could see him now?

The other recruits snored. In the next stable a horse whinnied softly. Beside Sharpe the straw rustled.

'You awake? Harper whispered.

'Yes.

'What are you thinking of?

'Women. Helene.

'They come and go, eh? Harper chuckled, then pointed at the broken roof. 'We could go now. Bugger off, eh?

'I know.

But they did not. They were in England, recruited, and going to battle.

In the morning Sergeant Horatio Havercamp had thirty-four men, the last few brought in by the whores whom he had brought from London and who were paid to dazzle young men with unfamiliar spirits and flesh. Twenty-eight of his men were guarded in the barn outside of town, while the nine new recruits were in the Green Man's stable.

'On your feet, lads! On your feet! Sergeant Havercamp was still genial, for none of these nine recruits were in the bag yet, even though they did have the King's Shilling. 'Come on, lads! Up!

A man in a long, brown, woollen coat and with a tall, brown hat stood next to the Sergeant. His nose dripped. He coughed with a cavernous, retching cough that, each time it exploded in his chest, made him groan afterwards with a hopeless, dying moan. He went round the stable, peering at each man, sometimes asking them to lift up a leg. It was the quickest medical inspection Sharpe had ever seen, and when it was done the doctor was given a handful of coins. Sergeant Havercamp clapped his hands as the doctor left. 'Right, lads! Follow me! Breakfast!

The two corporals, magically transformed into redcoats with tall, black shakoes, helped hustle the nine men towards the inn. It was not fully light yet. A cock crowed in the yard and a maid carried a clanking pail from the pump.

'In here, lads!

It was not for breakfast. Instead, a magistrate waited in the public room, a grey-haired, savage faced, irascible man with pinched cheeks and a red nose. A clerk sat next to him with a stack of papers, a pot of ink, a quill, and a pile of bank notes.

'Right! Let's see you lively! Sergeant Havercamp whisked them forward one by one, chivvied them to the table, and stood over them as they were sworn in. Only three of the recruits, one of them the quiet young man in his broadcloth coat, could write.

The others, like Sharpe and Harper, made crosses on the paper. Sharpe noticed that the doctor had already signed the forms, presumably before he came out to the stable to glance at the recruits. He noticed, too, that no one offered the recruits the chance of a seven-year engagement; it was simply not mentioned. The form, that he pretended he could not read, was headed "Unlimited Service".

He put his cross in the place the clerk showed him. "I, Dick Vaughn" the paper read, "do make Oath that I am or have been —-----", Sharpe declared no occupation and the clerk left it a blank, "and to the best of my Knowledge and Belief was born in the Parish of Shoreditch in the County of Middlesex and that I am the age of 32 Years". Sharpe decided he would take four years off his age. "That I do not belong to the Militia, or to any other Regiment, or to His Majesty's Navy or Marines, and that I will serve His Majesty, until I shall be legally discharged. Witness my Hand. X. Dick Vaughn, his mark.

The magistrate took the paper and scribbled his own name on it. "I, Charles Meredith Harvey, one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace of the borough of Sleaford do hereby certify, that Dick Vaughn appeared to be 32 years old, six feet — inches high, Dark Complexion, Blue Eyes, Black Hair, came before me at Sleaford on the Fourth Day of August One thousand Eight Hundred and Thirteen and stated himself to be of the Age of Thirty-Two years, and that he had no Rupture, and was not troubled with Fits, and was no ways disabled by Lameness, Deafness, or otherwise, but had the perfect Use of his Limbs and Hearing, and was not an Apprentice; and acknowledged that he had voluntarily inlisted himself, for the Bounty of Twenty-Three pounds Seventeen shillings and Sixpence to serve His Majesty King George III, in the —----- Regiment of —----- commanded by —----- until he should be legally discharged."

Sharpe noticed that, although the clerk filled in the personal details of each man as they stood at the table, and though the magistrate's blanks were all filled, strangely the South Essex's name did not appear in its proper place. At the end of the document there was an attestation that he had received one guinea of his bounty which was pressed into his hand by the clerk. 'Next!