Second day on the march

Perkins nodded. He glanced at the doctor and replied quietly, "That's Dr. Maturin. He's a physician. He's the one loaned me them shoes," he added with a faint smile.

Carty remembered the funny little shoes, made from rope and canvas. "He did? Why him?"

"Because he's a doctor. He's going to look at the-- the bodies."

"Perkins!" Not being sure what the doctor wanted, Harris became concerned that the lad was being too informative. It would be like him to blurt out all he knew in front of the colonel, who clearly should be kept in the dark. "Show the doctor what we found. Carty and I will watch out for the lieutenant."

Stephen looked over at the young riflemen, whispering together and watching him closely. "Poor creatures." He followed Harris to the first body, and managed not to react. He had seen this before, in Spain. He thought he might recognise the man from the shape of his jaw, but he could not give a name. He pulled a small notebook from his pocket, and noted a quick description; of the man, not the wounds, so that he could be identified by his captain. Brown hair, muscular, no moustache, eye colour- Scar on the back of right hand - probably ended above the second proximal, but the fingers had been removed.

And most importantly of all, amid all the gore, a long, jagged wound on the calf. Stephen bent over, and looked closely. Red swelling on either side of the cut; received not even two days before death, then. That is what he would tell Edrington. He knew the wound, for he had treated it himself the morning of the mutiny.

He looked up at Perkins. "How many of them are there? And where is the next one?"

Perkins jumped, feeling startled for some reason. "Sir? Oh... there's another over this way. I'm not sure how many. Maybe - I didn't take a good - Some of them were hard to count," he finished, feeling a little ashamed. But he hoped the doctor wouldn't need him to stand close by while he examined the carcasses.

Stephen patted Perkins' shoulder. "Do not worry, now. You have done very well. "Would you show me where the next is, please? You need not stand too close if you do not wish to."

Uncanny the way the doctor could read minds like that! Was everything really written on Perkins' face? Probably. Perkins had seen Carty's shocked and sickened face and realized that his own probably looked the same.

"Over this way, sir, it's the one Mícheál - Rifleman Carty - the first one we found. That's Rifleman Carty. He was just walking and he tripped. We were looking at the vultures and he just tripped. We saw the vultures circling." Perkins shut his mouth, realizing that he had no idea what he was saying any more.

Stephen listened carefully to Perkins rushed, repetitive explanation, and squeezed his shoulder. The boy was very shaken, and his friend looked no better. "Stay here then - you look a little green."

Stephen walked over to the body on the thorns, and even he could not hold back the hissed "Mother of God!" that escaped him. Covered in blood, absolutely covered. "Perkins!" he called, limping back. "Might I borrow your canteen? I need to wash some of this blood away."

Perkins nodded silently and handed it to him, unable to look away.

Stephen followed Perkins' gaze, and stepped in front of the corpse. "Rifleman Perkins, I have a job for you. You will see to your friend now - ask him if he is well, and then you will run back to Lieutenant Sharpe and see where he has got to. Can you do that for me?" he asked, not at all unkindly.

He could see the colonel ride up the slope to the head of the valley, leaving Mr Sharpe slightly in his wake. You couldn't stop a colonel who wanted a glimpse of life in the raw. Well, this was in the raw, but death, not life. He saw the colonel's jaw tighten as he took in the scene from his vantage point. Two of the birds flapped into the air as the doctor and Perkins moved across to the second body, and the colonel's horse shifted uneasily - at the birds and at the smell of blood.

Hearing the horse, Stephen looked up. "Ah, here he is now." Seeing Perkins' face, still that pale pale green the Greeks associated with death, he asked him, "What is your friend's name? Where is he from?"

Perkins cleared his throat before replying to the doctor. "Of course, sir. I'll go get him." He was mightily glad of the excuse, in spite of feeling a slight sense of shame that the doctor thought him unfit.

But here was Mister Sharpe now, and gone was Perkins' excuse to leave! "My friend? Oh, Mícheál Carty, he's from Ireland, sir."

Perfect - a Gaelic name too. "In that case, ask him, 'An bhfuil tú ceart go leor?'. An hwill too kyart go lyore. Chant it while you run down, so you won't forget it - he looks in a bad way."

Perkins stared at the doctor in mild alarm. "What? I mean - sorry, sir?"

"It means, 'are you all right?' in the Irish." Stephen noted with satisfaction that Perkins was concentrating wholly on him now - his eyes were no longer drifting back to the corpse on the brambles. "An bhfuil tú ceart go leor? Repeat it back to me."

After a moment more of staring in shock but finally realizing that the doctor had not gone mad, Perkins said haltingly, "Ann will two kyarr go yore."

Inwardly, Stephen sighed at the English as a people. "Very good - good man. Run down and ask your friend that."

Concentrating as much as he could on the nonsense syllables, Perkins ran back down the path to where Carty was sitting on a rock. The colonel and Harris and Sharpe had moved on. "Mícheál, the doctor said to say something - Ann will kyarr... Ann will two kyarr go... yore." He blinked, and then frowned. What a strange errand.

Bauer was nervous, and he had good reason. From his back, Edrington could see two bodies, and ravens or something similar gathering further down the valley where bushes hid whatever they were interested in. The doctor was examining one of the bodies. The older rifleman was watching him with that blank expression that he must have picked up from the Lieutenant. A younger one, almost a boy, was sitting on the ground.

Edrington dismounted, and fastened the reins to one of the stumpy trees - he was not prepared to trust that the horse would stay. Sharpe had arrived and spoke briefly to the Rifleman, but Edrington moved down to where the doctor examined one of the bodies. And then wished that he had not.

Finally alone, Stephen went to examine the body. He washed the blood from the torso, and read what was incised into the man's chest. He covered his eyes with his hands for a moment, took a deep breath, and then continued. Cold, relaxed, and a pale green at the lower abdomen, and not just limited to the right hand side. He leant over the body and sniffed it, confirming his suspicion - dead for between two and three days. Brissac must have abandoned the wounded very early - this man may have been dead by the time Stephen arrived in Lisbon. He jotted down the man's description in his notebook, able this time to include an eye colour, and knelt to examine the man's impaled hands.

A shadow fell across the body - too broad-shouldered to be Sharpe. "Colonel."

Carty looked up, jerked from his horrendous thoughts. "Ann will...?" He frowned, puzzled, but then light dawned, and the corners of his mouth twitched. "Ben, your Irish is bad," he said, but he gripped his friend's sleeve in gratitude.

"Doctor." He looked at the body, its wounds, and the terror of the man's death. "This is the work of the Portuguese, I suppose. Our allies."

"I presume so - 'Padre' is the Portuguese word for 'father'," he said, pointing at the man's chest. "Secondary laxity and algor mortis, and the beginning of putrefaction: the man was killed between two and three days ago. You see this wound on the left side of his chest? Caused by a bullet, I would guess - the red and swollen edges to the wound demonstrate that this wound, not lethal, was received a day or less before death."