When he had been a child he had thought it a vast room, big as a cathedral, but now it looked squalid and small. Scarce bigger than a company’s barrack room, he realized. It was supper ana some thirty or more children were sitting on the floor among the oakum and the tar-encrusted fenders that was their daily work. They scooped spoons in wooden bowls while another thirty children queued beside a table that held a cauldron of soup and a bread board. A woman, her red arms massive, stood behind the table while a young man, equipped with a riding crop, lolled on the hall’s low dais above which a biblical text arched across the brown-painted wall. Be sure your sin will find you out.

Sixty pairs of eyes stared at Sharpe in astonishment. None of the children spoke for fear of the riding crop or a blow from the woman’s burly arm. Sharpe did not speak either. He was staring at the room, smelling the tar and fighting against the overwhelming memories. It had been twenty years since he had last been under this roof. Twenty years. It smelt the same, though. It smelt of tar and fear and rotten food. He stepped to the table and sniffed the soup.

“Leek and barley gruel, sir.” The woman, seeing the silver buttons and the black braid and the saber, dropped a clumsy curtsey.

“Looks like lukewarm water to me,” Sharpe said.

“Leek and barley, sir.”

Sharpe picked up a random piece of bread. Hard as brick. Hard as ship’s biscuit.

“Sir?” The woman held out her hand. She was nervous. “The bread is counted, sir, counted.”

Sharpe tossed it down. He was tempted to some extravagant gesture, but what would it do? Upsetting the cauldron merely meant the children would go hungry, while dropping the bread into the soup would achieve nothing. Grace would have known what to do. Her voice would have cracked like a whip and the workhouse servants would have been scurrying to fetch food, clothes and soap. But those things cost money and Sharpe only had a pocketful of copper.