Читать книгу Sharpe’s Tiger: The Siege of Seringapatam, 1799 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 9

Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill glanced about to see what his men were doing. Just about all of them were plundering, and quite right too. That was a soldier’s privilege. Fight the battle then strip the enemy of anything worth a penny. The officers were not looting, but officers never did, at least not so that anyone noticed them, but Hakeswill did see that Ensign Fitzgerald had somehow managed to get himself a jewelled sabre that he was now flashing around like a shilling whore given a guinea fan. Mister bloody Ensign Fitzgerald was getting above himself in Sergeant Hakeswill’s considered opinion. Ensigns were the lowest of the low, apprentice officers, lads in silver lace, and Mister bloody Fitzgerald had no business countermanding Hakeswill’s orders so Mister bloody Fitzgerald must be taught his place, but the trouble was that Mister Fitzgerald was Irish and Hakeswill was of the opinion that the Irish were only half civilized and never did understand their place. Most of them, anyway. Major Shee was Irish, and he was civilized, at least when he was sober, and Colonel Wellesley, who was from Dublin, was wholly civilized, but the Colonel had possessed the sense to make himself more English than the English, while Mister bloody Fitzgerald made no pretence about his birth.

‘See this, Hakeswill?’ Fitzgerald, sublimely unaware of Hakeswill’s glowering thoughts, stepped across a body to show off his new sabre.

‘See what, sir?’

‘Damned blade is made in Birmingham! Will you credit that? Birmingham! Says so on the blade, see? “Made in Birmingham.”’

Hakeswill dutifully examined the legend on the blade, then fingered the sabre’s pommel which was elegantly set with a ring of seven small rubies. ‘Looks like glass to me, sir,’ he said dismissively, hoping he could somehow persuade Fitzgerald to relinquish the blade.

‘Nonsense!’ Fitzgerald said cheerfully. ‘Best rubies! Bit small, maybe, but I doubt the ladies will mind that. Seven pieces of glitter? That adds up to a week of sin, Sergeant. It was worth killing the rascal for that.’

If you did kill him, Hakeswill thought sourly as he stumped away from the exuberant Ensign. More likely picked it up off the ground. And Fitzgerald was right; seven rubies, even small ones, would buy a lot of Naig’s ladies. ‘Nasty’ Naig was a merchant from Madras, one of the many travelling with the army, and he had brought his brothel with him. It was an expensive brothel, officers only, or at least only those who could pay an officer’s price, and that made Hakeswill think of Mary Bickerstaff. Mrs Mary Bickerstaff. She was a half and half, half Indian and half British, and that made her valuable. Very valuable. Most of the women who followed the army were dark as Hades, and while Obadiah Hakeswill had no distaste for dark skin he did miss the touch of white flesh. So did many of the officers, and there was a guinea or two to be made out of that lust. Naig would pay well for a skin as pale as Mary Bickerstaff’s.

She was a rare beauty, Mary Bickerstaff. A beauty amongst a pack of ugly, rancid women. Hakeswill watched as a group of the battalion’s wives ran to take part in the plundering and almost shuddered as he contemplated their ugliness. About two thirds of the wives were bibbis, Indians, and most of those, Hakeswill knew, were not properly married with the Colonel’s permission, while the rest were those lucky British women who had won the brutal lottery that had taken place on the night before the battalion had sailed from England. The wives had been gathered in a barrack room, their names had been put into ten shakos, one for each company, and the first ten names drawn from each hat were allowed to accompany their husbands. The rest had to stay in Britain, and what happened to them there was anybody’s guess. Most went on the parish, but parishes resented feeding soldiers’ wives, so as like as not they were forced to become whores. Barrack-gate whores, for the most part, because they lacked the looks for anything better. But a few, a precious few, were pretty, and none was prettier than Sergeant Bickerstaff’s half and half widow.

The women spread out among the dead and dying Mysoreans. If anything they were even more efficient than their men at plundering the dead, for the men tended to hurry and so missed the hiding places where a soldier secreted his money. Hakeswill watched Flora Placket strip the body of a tall tiger-striped corpse whose throat had been slashed to the backbone by the slice of a cavalryman’s sabre. She did not rush her work, but searched carefully, garment by garment, then handed each piece of clothing to one of her two children to fold and stack. Hakeswill approved of Flora Placket for she was a large and steady woman who kept her man in good order and made no fuss about a campaign’s discomforts. She was a good mother too, and that was why Obadiah did not care that Flora Placket was as ugly as a haversack. Mothers were sacred. Mothers were not expected to be pretty. Mothers were Obadiah Hakeswill’s guardian angels, and Flora Placket reminded Obadiah of his own mother who was the only person in all his life who had shown him kindness. Biddy Hakeswill was long dead now, she had died a year before the twelve-year-old Obadiah had dangled on a scaffold for the trumped-up charge of sheep stealing and, to amuse the crowd, the executioner had not let any of that day’s victims drop from the gallows, but had instead hoisted them gently into the air so that they choked slowly as their piss-soaked legs jerked in the death dance of the gibbet. No one had taken much notice of the small boy at the scaffold’s end and, when the heavens had opened and the rain come down in bucketfuls to scatter the crowd, no one had bothered when Biddy Hakeswill’s brother had cut the boy down and set him loose. ‘Did it for your mother,’ his uncle had snarled. ‘God rest her soul. Now be off with you and don’t ever show your face in the dale again.’ Hakeswill had run south, joined the army as a drummer boy, had risen to sergeant and had never forgotten his dying mother’s words. ‘No one will ever get rid of Obadiah,’ she had said, ‘not my Obadiah. Death’s too good for him.’ The gallows had proved that. Touched by God, he was, indestructible!

A groan sounded near Hakeswill and the Sergeant snapped out of his reverie to see a tiger-striped Indian struggling to turn onto his belly. Hakeswill scurried over, forced the man onto his back again and placed his halberd’s spear point at the man’s throat. ‘Money?’ Hakeswill snarled, then held out his left hand and motioned the counting of coins. ‘Money?’

The man blinked slowly, then said something in his own language.

‘I’ll let you live, you bugger,’ Hakeswill promised, leering at the wounded man. ‘Not that you’ll live long. Got a goolie in your belly, see?’ He pointed at the wound in the man’s belly where the bullet had driven home. ‘Now where’s your money? Money! Pice? Dan? Pagodas? Annas? Rupees?’

The man must have understood for his hand fluttered weakly towards his chest.

‘Good boy, now,’ Hakeswill said, smiling again, then his face jerked in its involuntary spasms as he pushed the spear point home, but not too quickly for he liked to see the realization of death on a man’s face. ‘You’re a stupid bugger, too,’ Hakeswill said when the man’s death throes had ended, then he cut open the tunic and found that the man had strapped some coins to his chest with a cotton sash. He undid the sash and pocketed the handful of copper change. Not a big haul, but Hakeswill was not dependent on his own plundering to fill his purse. He would take a cut from whatever the soldiers of the Light Company found. They knew they would have to pay up or else face punishment.

He saw Sharpe kneeling beside a body and hurried across. ‘Got a sword there, Sharpie?’ Hakeswill asked. ‘Stole it, did you?’

‘I killed the man, Sergeant.’ Sharpe looked up.

‘Doesn’t bleeding matter, does it, lad? You ain’t permitted to carry a sword. Officer’s weapon, a sword is. Mustn’t get above your station, Sharpie. Get above yourself, boy, and you’ll be cut down. So I’ll take the blade, I will.’ Hakeswill half expected Sharpe to resist, but the Private did nothing as the Sergeant picked up the silver-hilted blade. ‘Worth a few bob, I dare say,’ Hakeswill said appreciatively, then he laid the sword’s tip against the stock at Sharpe’s neck. ‘Which is more than you’re worth, Sharpie. Too clever for your own good, you are.’

Sharpe edged away from the sword and stood up. ‘I ain’t got a quarrel with you, Sergeant,’ he said.

‘But you do, boy, you do.’ Hakeswill grimaced as his face went into spasm. ‘And you know what the quarrel’s about, don’t you?’

Sharpe backed away from the sword. ‘I ain’t got a quarrel with you,’ he repeated stubbornly.

‘I think our quarrel is called Mrs Bickerstaff,’ Hakeswill said, and grinned when Sharpe said nothing. ‘I almost got you with that flint, didn’t I? Would have had you flogged raw, boy, and you’d have died of a fever within a week. A flogging does that in this climate. Wears a man down, a flogging does. But you got a friendly officer, don’t you? Mister Lawford. He likes you, does he?’ He prodded Sharpe’s chest with the sword’s tip. ‘Is that what it is? Officer’s pet, are you?’

‘Mister Lawford ain’t nothing to me,’ Sharpe said.

‘That’s what you say, but my eyes tell different.’ Hakeswill giggled. ‘Sweet on each other, are you? You and Mister Lawford? Ain’t that nice, Sharpie, but it don’t make you much use to Mrs Bickerstaff, does it? Reckon she’d be better off with a real man.’

‘She ain’t your business,’ Sharpe said.

‘Ain’t my business! Oh, listen to it!’ Hakeswill sneered, then prodded the sword forward again. He wanted to provoke Sharpe into resisting, for then he could charge him with attacking a superior, but the tall young man just backed away from the blade. ‘You listen, Sharpie,’ Hakeswill said, ‘and you listen well. She’s a sergeant’s wife, not the whore of some common ranker like you.’

‘Sergeant Bickerstaff’s dead,’ Sharpe protested.

‘So she needs a man!’ Hakeswill said. ‘And a sergeant’s widow doesn’t get rogered by a stinking bit of dirt like you. It ain’t right. Ain’t natural. It’s beneath her station, Sharpie, and it can’t be allowed. Says so in the scriptures.’

‘She can choose who she wants,’ Sharpe insisted.

‘Choose, Sharpie? Choose?’ Hakeswill laughed. ‘Women don’t choose, you soft bugger. Women get taken by the strongest. Says so in the scriptures, and if you stand in my way, Sharpie’ – he pushed the sword hard forward – ‘then I’ll have your spine laid open to the daylight. A lost flint? That would have been two hundred lashes, lad, but next time? A thousand. And laid on hard! Real hard! Be blood and bones, boy, bones and blood, and who’ll look after your Mrs Bickerstaff then? Eh? Tell me that. So you takes your filthy hands off her. Leave her to me, Sharpie.’ He leered at Sharpe, but still the younger man refused to be provoked and Hakeswill at last abandoned the attempt. ‘Worth a few guineas, this sword,’ the Sergeant said again as he backed away. ‘Obliged to you, Sharpie.’

Sharpe swore uselessly at Hakeswill’s back, then turned as a woman hailed him from among the heaped bodies that had been the leading ranks of the Tippoo’s column. Those bodies were now being dragged apart to be searched and Mary Bickerstaff was helping the work along.

He walked towards her and, as ever, was struck by the beauty of the girl. She had black hair, a thin face and dark big eyes that could spark with mischief. Now, though, she looked worried. ‘What did Hakeswill want?’ she asked.

‘You.’

She spat, then crouched again to the body she was searching. ‘He can’t touch you, Richard,’ she said, ‘not if you do your duty.’

‘The army’s not like that. And you know it.’

‘You’ve just got to be clever,’ Mary insisted. She was a soldier’s daughter who had grown up in the Calcutta barrack lines. She had inherited her dark Indian beauty from her mother and learned the ways of soldiers from her father who had been an engineer sergeant in the Old Fort’s garrison before an outbreak of cholera had killed him and his native wife. Mary’s father had always claimed she was pretty enough to marry an officer and so rise in the world, but no officer would marry a half-caste, at least no officer who cared about advancement, and so after her parents’ death Mary had married Sergeant Jem Bickerstaff of the 33rd, a good man, but Bickerstaff had died of the fever shortly after the army had left Madras to climb to the Mysore plateau and Mary, at twenty-two, was now an orphan and a widow. She was also wise to the army’s ways. ‘If you’re made up to sergeant, Richard,’ she told Sharpe now, ‘then Hakeswill can’t touch you.’

Sharpe laughed. ‘Me? A sergeant? That’ll be the day, lass. I made corporal once, but that didn’t last.’

‘You can be a sergeant,’ she insisted, ‘and you should be a sergeant. And Hakeswill couldn’t touch you if you were.’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘It ain’t me he wants to touch, lass, but you.’

Mary had been cutting a tiger-striped tunic from a dead man, but now she paused and looked quizzically up at Sharpe. She had not been in love with Jem Bickerstaff, but she had recognized that the Sergeant was a good, kind man, and she saw the same decency in Sharpe. It was not exactly the same decency, for Sharpe, she reckoned, had ten times Jem Bickerstaff’s fire and he could be as cunning as a snake when it suited him, but Mary still trusted Sharpe. She was also attracted to him. There was something very striking about Sharpe’s lean good looks, something dangerous, she acknowledged, but very exciting. She looked at him for a few seconds, then shrugged. ‘Maybe he won’t dare touch me if we’re married,’ she said. ‘I mean proper married, with the Colonel’s permission.’

‘Married!’ Sharpe said, flustered by the word.

Mary stood. ‘It ain’t easy being a widow in the army, Richard. Every man reckons you’re loot.’

‘Aye, I know it’s hard,’ Sharpe said, frowning. He stared at her as he thought about the idea of getting married. Till now he had only been thinking of desertion, but maybe marriage was not such a bad idea. At least it would make it much harder for Hakeswill to get his hands on Mary’s skin. And a married man, Sharpe reckoned, was more likely to be promoted. But what was the point of rising an inch or two in the dunghill? Even a sergeant was still at the bottom of the heap. It was better to be out of the army altogether and Mary, Sharpe decided, would be more likely to desert with him if she was properly married to him. That thought made him nod slowly. ‘I reckon I might like to be married,’ he said shyly.

‘Me too.’ She smiled and, awkwardly, Sharpe smiled back. For a moment neither had anything to say, then Mary excitedly fished in the pocket of her apron to produce a jewel she had taken from a dead man. ‘Look what I found!’ She handed Sharpe a red stone, half the size of a hen’s egg. ‘You reckon it’s a ruby?’ Mary asked eagerly.

Sharpe tossed the stone up and down. ‘I reckon it’s glass, lass,’ he said gently, ‘just glass. But I’ll get you a ruby for a wedding gift, just you watch me.’

‘I’ll more than watch you, Dick Sharpe,’ she said happily and put her arm into his. Sergeant Hakeswill, a hundred paces away, watched them and his face twitched.

While on the edges of the killing place, where the looted and naked bodies lay scattered, the vultures came down, sidled forward and began to tear at the dead.

The allied armies camped a quarter of a mile short of the place where the dead lay. The camp sprawled across the plain: an instant town where fifty thousand soldiers and thousands of camp followers would spend the night. Tents went up for officers well away from the places where the vast herds of cattle were guarded for the night. Some of the cattle were beeves, being herded and slaughtered for food, some were oxen that carried panniers filled with the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounder cannonballs that would be needed to blast a hole through the walls of Seringapatam, while yet others were bullocks that hauled the wagons and guns, and the heaviest guns, the big siege pieces, needed sixty bullocks apiece. There were more than two hundred thousand cattle with the army, but all were now scrawny for the Tippoo’s cavalry was stripping the land of fodder as the British and Hyderabad armies advanced.

The common soldiers had no tents. They would sleep on the ground close to their fires, but first they ate and this night the feeding was good, at least for the men of the King’s 33rd who had coins taken from the enemy dead to spend with the bhinjarries, the merchant clans that travelled with the army and had their own private guards to protect their goods. The bhinjarries all sold chickens, rice, flour, beans and, best of all, the throat-burning skins of arrack which could make a man drunk even faster than rum. Some of the bhinjarries also hired out whores and the 33rd gave those men good business that night.

Captain Morris expected to visit the famous green tents of Naig, the bhinjarrie whose stock in trade was the most expensive whores of Madras, but for now he was stuck in his own tent where, under the feeble light of a candle that flickered on his table, he disposed of the company’s business. Or rather Sergeant Hakeswill disposed of it while Morris, his coat unbuttoned and silk stock loosened, sprawled in a camp chair. Sweat dripped down his face. There was a small wind, but the muslin screen hanging at the entrance to the tent took away its cooling effects, and if the screen was discarded the tent would fill with savagely huge moths. Morris hated moths, hated the heat, hated India. ‘Guard rosters, sir,’ Hakeswill said, offering the papers.

‘Anything I should know?’

‘Not a thing, sir. Just like last week’s, sir. Ensign Hicks made up the roster, sir. A good man, sir, Ensign Hicks. Knows his place.’

‘You mean he does what you tell him to do?’ Morris asked drily.

‘Learning his trade, sir, learning his trade, just like a good little ensign should. Unlike some as I could mention.’

Morris ignored the sly reference to Fitzgerald and instead dipped his quill in ink and scrawled his name at the foot of the rosters. ‘I assume Ensign Fitzgerald and Sergeant Green have been assigned all the night duty?’ he asked.

‘They needs the practice, sir.’

‘And you need your sleep, Sergeant?’

‘Punishment book, sir,’ Hakeswill said, offering the leather-bound ledger and taking back the guard roster without acknowledging Morris’s last comment.

Morris leafed through the book. ‘No floggings this week?’

‘Will be soon, sir, will be soon.’

‘Private Sharpe escaped you today, eh?’ Morris laughed. ‘Losing your touch, Obadiah.’ There was no friendliness in his use of the Christian name, just scorn, but Sergeant Hakeswill took no offence. Officers were officers, at least those above ensigns were proper officers in Hakeswill’s opinion, and such gentlemen had every right to be scornful of lesser ranks.

‘I ain’t losing nothing, sir,’ Hakeswill answered equably. ‘If the rat don’t die first shake, sir, then you puts the dog in again. That’s how it’s done, sir. Says so in the scriptures. Sick report, sir. Nothing new, except that Sears has the fever, so he won’t be with us long, but he won’t be no loss, sir. No good to man or beast, Private Sears. Better off dead, he is.’

‘Are we done?’ Morris asked when he had signed the sick report, but then a tactful cough sounded at the tent’s opening and Lieutenant Lawford ducked under the flap and pushed through the muslin screen.

‘Busy, Charles?’ Lawford asked Morris.

‘Always pleased to see you, William,’ Morris said sarcastically, ‘but I was about to go for a stroll.’

‘There’s a soldier to see you,’ Lawford explained. ‘Man’s got a request, sir.’

Morris sighed as though he was too busy to be bothered with such trifles, but then he shrugged and waved a hand as if to suggest he was making a great and generous gesture by giving the man a moment of his precious time. ‘Who?’ he asked.

‘Private Sharpe, sir.’

‘Troublemaker, sir,’ Hakeswill put in.

‘He’s a good man,’ Lawford insisted hotly, but then decided his small experience of the army hardly qualified him to make such judgements and so, diffidently, he added that it was only his opinion. ‘But he seems like a good man, sir,’ he finished.

‘Let him in,’ Morris said. He sipped from a tin mug of arrack while Sharpe negotiated the muslin screen and then stood to attention beneath the ridge pole. ‘Hat off, boy!’ Hakeswill snapped. ‘Don’t you know to take your hat off in the presence of an officer?’

Sharpe snatched off his shako.

‘Well?’ Morris asked.

For a second it seemed that Sharpe did not know what to say, but then he cleared his throat and, staring at the tent wall a few inches above Captain Morris’s head, he at last found his voice. ‘Permission to marry, sir.’

Morris grinned. ‘Marry! Found yourself a bibbi, have you?’ He sipped more arrack, then looked at Hakeswill. ‘How many wives are on the company strength now, Sergeant?’

‘Full complement, sir! No room for more, sir! Full up, sir. Not a vacancy to be had. Shall I dismiss Private Sharpe, sir?’

‘This girl’s on the complement,’ Lieutenant Lawford intervened. ‘She’s Sergeant Bickerstaff’s widow.’

Morris stared up at Sharpe. ‘Bickerstaff,’ he said vaguely as though the name was strange to him. ‘Bickerstaff. Fellow who died of a fever on the march, is that right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hakeswill answered.

‘Didn’t know the man was even married,’ Morris said. ‘Official wife, was she?’

‘Very official, sir,’ Hakeswill answered. ‘On the company strength, sir. Colonel’s signature on the certificate, sir. Proper married before God and the army, sir.’

Morris sniffed and looked up at Sharpe again. ‘Why on earth do you want to marry, Sharpe?’

Sharpe looked embarrassed. ‘Just do, sir,’ he said lamely.

‘Can’t say I disapprove of marriage,’ Morris said. ‘Steadies a man does marriage, but a fellow like you, Sharpe, can do better than a soldier’s widow, can’t you? Dreadful creatures, soldiers’ widows! Used goods, Private. Fat and greasy, like lumps of lard wrapped up in linen. Get yourself a sweet little bibbi, man, something that ain’t yet run to seed.’

‘Very good advice, sir,’ Hakeswill said, his face twitching. ‘Words of wisdom, sir. Shall I dismiss him, sir?’

‘Mary Bickerstaff is a good woman, sir,’ Lieutenant Lawford said. The Lieutenant, whom Sharpe had first approached with his request, was eager to do his best. ‘Sharpe could do a lot worse than marry Mary Bickerstaff, sir.’

Morris cut a cigar and lit it from the guttering candle that burned on his camp table. ‘White, is she?’ he asked negligently.

‘Half bibbi and half Christian, sir,’ Hakeswill said, ‘but she had a good man for her husband.’ He sniffed, pretending that he was suddenly overcome with emotion. ‘And Jem Bickerstaff ain’t this month in his grave, sir. Too soon for the trollop to marry again. It ain’t right, sir. Says so in the scriptures.’

Morris offered Hakeswill a cynical glance. ‘Don’t be absurd, Sergeant. Most army widows marry the next day! The ranks are hardly high society, you know.’

‘But Jem Bickerstaff was a friend of mine, sir,’ Hakeswill said, sniffing again and even cuffing at an invisible tear. ‘Friend of mine, sir,’ he repeated more hoarsely, ‘and on his dying bed, sir, he begged me to look after his little wife, sir. I know she ain’t through and through white, he told me, but she deserves to be looked after. His very dying words, sir.’

‘He bloody hated you!’ Sharpe could not resist the words.

‘Quiet in front of an officer!’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Speak when you’re spoken to, boy, and otherwise keep your filthy mouth buttoned like God wanted it.’

Morris frowned as though Hakeswill’s loud voice was giving him a headache. Then he looked up at Sharpe. ‘I’ll talk to Major Shee about it, Sharpe. If the woman is on the strength and wants to marry you, then I don’t suppose we can stop her. I’ll talk to the Major. You’re dismissed.’

Sharpe hesitated, wondering whether he should thank the Captain for the laconic words, but before he could say anything, Hakeswill was bawling in his ear. ‘About turn! Smartly now! Hat on! Quick march! One two one two, smartly now. Mind the bleeding curtain, boy! This ain’t a pig sty like what you grew up in, but an officer’s quarters!’

Morris waited till Sharpe was gone, then looked up at Lawford. ‘Nothing more, Lieutenant?’

Lawford guessed that he too was dismissed. ‘You will talk to Major Shee, Charles?’ he pressed Morris.

‘I just said so, didn’t I?’ Morris glared up at the Lieutenant.

Lawford hesitated, then nodded. ‘Good night, sir,’ he said and ducked under the muslin screen.

Morris waited until he was certain that both men were out of earshot. ‘Now what do we do?’ he asked Hakeswill.

‘Tell the silly bugger that Major Shee refused permission, sir.’

‘And Willie Lawford will talk to the Major and find that he didn’t. Or else he’ll go straight to Wellesley. Lawford’s uncle is on the staff, or had you forgotten that? Use your wits, man!’ Morris slapped at a moth that had managed to slip through the screen. ‘What do we do?’ he asked again.

Hakeswill sat on a stool opposite the camp table. He scratched his head, glanced into the night, then looked back to Morris. ‘He’s a sharp one, Sharpie, he is. Slippery. But I’ll do him.’ He paused. ‘Of course, sir, if you helped, it’d be quicker. Much quicker.’

Morris looked dubious. ‘The girl will only find herself another protector,’ he said. ‘I think you’re wasting my time, Sergeant.’

‘What me, sir? No, sir. Not at all, sir. I’ll have the girl, sir, just you watch, and Nasty Naig says you can have all you want of her. Free and gratis, sir, like you ought to.’

Morris stood, pulled on his jacket and picked up his hat and sword. ‘You think I’d share your woman, Hakeswill?’ The Captain shuddered. ‘And get your pox?’

‘Pox, sir? Me, sir?’ Hakeswill stood. ‘Not me, sir. Clean as a whistle, I am, sir. Cured, sir. Mercury.’ His face twitched. ‘Ask the surgeon, sir, he’ll tell you.’

Morris hesitated, thinking of Mary Bickerstaff. He thought a great deal about Mary Bickerstaff. Her beauty ensured that, and men on campaign were deprived of beauty and so Mary’s allure only increased with every mile the army marched westwards. Morris was not alone. On the night when Mary’s husband had died, the 33rd’s officers, at least those who had a mind for such games, had wagered which of them would first take the widow to their bed and so far none of them had succeeded. Morris wanted to win, not only for the fourteen guineas that would accrue to the successful seducer, but because he had become besotted by the woman. Soon after she had become a widow he had asked Mary to do his laundry, thinking that thereby he could begin the intimacy he craved, but she had refused him with a lacerating scorn. Morris wanted to punish her for that scorn, and Hakeswill, with his intuition for other men’s weaknesses, had sensed what Morris wanted and promised he would arrange everything. Naig, Hakeswill assured his bitter officer, had a way of breaking reluctant girls. ‘There ain’t a bibbi born that Nasty can’t break, sir,’ Hakeswill had promised Morris, ‘and he’d give a small fortune for a proper white one. Not that Mrs Bickerstaff’s proper white, sir, not like a Christian, but in the dark she’d pass well enough.’ The Sergeant needed Morris’s help in ridding Mrs Bickerstaff of Richard Sharpe and as an inducement he had offered Morris the free run of Naig’s tent. In return, Morris knew, Hakeswill would expect a lifetime’s patronage. As Morris climbed the army’s ranks, so Hakeswill would be drawn ineluctably after him and with each step the Sergeant would garner more power and influence.

‘So when will you free Mrs Bickerstaff of Sharpe?’ Morris asked, buckling his sword belt.

‘Tonight, sir. With your help. You’ll be back here by midnight, I dare say?’

‘I might.’

‘If you are, sir, we’ll do him. Tonight, sir.’

Morris clapped the cocked hat on his head, made sure his purse was in his coat-tail pocket and ducked under the muslin. ‘Carry on, Sergeant,’ he called back.

‘Sir!’ Hakeswill stood to attention for a full ten seconds after the Captain was gone, and then, with a sly grin twitching on his lumpy face, followed Morris into the night.

Nineteen miles to the south lay a temple. It was an ancient place, deep in the country, one of the many Hindu shrines where the country folk came on high days and holidays to do honour to their gods and to pray for a timely monsoon, for good crops and for the absence of warlords. For the rest of the year the temple lay abandoned, its gods and altars and richly carved spires home to scorpions, snakes and monkeys.

The temple was surrounded by a wall through which one gate led, though the wall was not high and the gate was never shut. Villagers left small offerings of leaves, flowers and food in niches of the gateposts, and sometimes they would go into the temple itself, cross the courtyard and climb to the inner shrine where they would place their small gifts beneath the image of a god, but at night, when the Indian sky lay black over a heat-exhausted land, no one would ever dream of disturbing the gods.

But this night, the night after battle, a man entered the temple. He was tall and thin, with white hair and a harsh, suntanned face. He was over sixty years old, but his back was still straight and he moved with the ease of a much younger man. Like many Europeans who had lived a long time in India he was prone to bouts of debilitating fever, but otherwise he was in sterling health, and Colonel Hector McCandless ascribed that good health to his religion and to a regimen that abjured alcohol, tobacco and meat. His religion was Calvinism for Hector McCandless had grown up in Scotland and the godly lessons that had been whipped into his young, earnest soul had never been forgotten. He was an honest man, a tough man, and a wise one.

His soul was old in experience, but even so it was offended by the idols that reflected the small light of the lantern he had lit once he was through the temple’s ever open gate. He had lived in India for over sixteen years now and he was more accustomed to these heathen shrines than to the kirks of his childhood, but still, whenever he saw these strange gods with their multiplicity of arms, their elephant heads, their grotesquely coloured faces and their cobra-hooded masks, he felt a stab of disapproval. He never let that disapproval show, for that would have imperilled his duty, and McCandless was a man who believed that duty was a master second only to God.

He wore the red coat and the tartan kilt of the King’s Scotch Brigade, a Highland regiment that had not seen McCandless’s stern features for sixteen years. He had served with the brigade for over thirty years, but lack of funds had obstructed his promotion and so, with his Colonel’s blessing, he had accepted a job with the army of the East India Company which governed those parts of India that were under British rule. In his time he had commanded battalions of sepoys, but McCandless’s first love was surveying. He had mapped the Carnatic coast, he had charted the Sundarbans of the Hoogli, and he had once ridden the length and breadth of Mysore, and while he had been so engaged he had learned a half-dozen Indian languages and met a score of princes, rajahs and nawabs. Few men understood India as McCandless did, which was why the Company had promoted him to Colonel and attached him to the British army as its chief of intelligence. It was McCandless’s task to advise General Harris of the enemy’s strength and dispositions, and, in particular, to discover just what defences waited for the allied armies when they reached Seringapatam.

It was his search for that particular answer that had brought Colonel McCandless to this ancient temple. He had surveyed the temple seven years before, when Lord Cornwallis’s army had marched against Mysore, and back then McCandless had admired the extraordinary carvings that covered every inch of the temple’s walls. The Scotsman’s religion had been offended by so much decoration, but he was too honest a man to deny that the old stoneworkers had been marvellous craftsmen, for the sculpture here was as fine, if not finer, than anything produced in medieval Europe. The wan yellow light of his lantern washed across caparisoned elephants, fierce gods and marching armies, all made of stone.

He climbed the steps to the central shrine, passed between its vast, squat pillars and so went into the sanctuary. The roof here, beneath the temple’s high carved tower, was fashioned into lotus blossoms. The idols stared blankly from their niches with flowers and leaves drying at their feet. The Colonel placed the lantern on the flagstone floor, then sat cross-legged and waited. He closed his eyes, letting his ears identify the noises of the night beyond the temple’s walls. McCandless had come to this remote temple with an escort of six Indian lancers, but he had left that escort two miles away in case their presence should have inhibited the man he was hoping to meet. So now he just waited with eyes closed and arms folded, and after a while he heard the thump of a hoof on dry earth, the chink of a snaffle chain, and then, once again, silence. And still he waited with eyes closed.

‘If you were not in that uniform,’ a voice said a few moments later, ‘I would think you were at your prayers.’

‘The uniform does not disqualify me from prayer, any more than does your uniform,’ the Colonel answered, opening his eyes. He stood. ‘Welcome, General.’

The man who faced McCandless was younger than the Scot, but every inch as tall and lean. Appah Rao was now a general in the forces of the Tippoo Sultan, but once, many years before, he had been an officer in one of McCandless’s sepoy battalions and it was that old acquaintanceship, which had verged upon friendship, that had persuaded McCandless it was worth risking his own life to talk to Appah Rao. Appah Rao had served under McCandless’s orders until his father had died, and then, trained as a soldier, he had returned to his native Mysore. Today he had watched from the ridge as the Tippoo’s infantry had been massacred by a single British volley. The experience had made him sour, but he forced a grudging courtesy into his voice. ‘So you’re still alive, Major?’ Appah Rao spoke in Kanarese, the language of the native Mysoreans.

‘Still alive, and a full colonel now,’ McCandless answered in the same tongue. ‘Shall we sit?’

Appah Rao grunted, then sat opposite McCandless. Behind him, beyond the sunken courtyard where they were framed by the temple’s gateway, were two soldiers. They were Appah Rao’s escort and McCandless knew they must be trusted men, for if the Tippoo Sultan were ever to discover that this meeting had taken place then Appah Rao and all his family would be killed. Unless, of course, the Tippoo already knew and was using Appah Rao to make some mischief of his own.

The Tippoo’s General was dressed in his master’s tiger-striped tunic, but over it he wore a sash of the finest silk and slung across his shoulder was a second silk sash from which hung a gold-hilted sword. His boots were red leather and his hat a coil of watered red silk on which a milky-blue jewel gleamed soft in the lantern’s flickering light. ‘You were at Malavelly today?’ he asked McCandless.

‘I was,’ McCandless said. Malavelly was the nearest village to where the battle had been fought.

‘So you know what happened?’

‘I know the Tippoo sacrificed hundreds of your people,’ McCandless said. ‘Your people, General, not his.’

Appah Rao dismissed the distinction. ‘The people follow him.’

‘Because they have no choice. They follow, but do they love him?’

‘Some do,’ Appah Rao answered. ‘But what does it matter? Why should a ruler want his people’s love? Their obedience, yes, but love? Love is for children, McCandless, and for gods and for women.’

McCandless smiled, tacitly yielding the argument which was not important. He did not have to persuade Appah Rao to treachery, the very presence of the Mysorean General was proof that he was already halfway to betraying the Tippoo, but McCandless did not expect the General to yield gracefully. There was pride at stake here, and Appah Rao’s pride was great and needed to be handled as gently as a cocked duelling pistol. Appah Rao had always been thus, even when he was a young man in the Company’s army, and McCandless approved of that pride. He had always respected Appah Rao, and still did, and he believed Appah Rao returned the respect. It was in that belief that the Colonel had sent a message to Seringapatam. The message was carried by one of the Company’s native agents who wandered as a naked fakir through southern India. The message had been concealed in the man’s long greasy hair and it had invited Appah Rao to a reunion with his old commanding officer. The reply had specified this temple and this night as the rendezvous. Appah Rao was flirting with treachery, but that did not mean he was finding it either easy or pleasant.

‘I have a gift,’ McCandless said, changing the subject, ‘for your Rajah.’

‘He is in need of gifts.’

‘Then this comes with our most humble duty and high respect.’ McCandless took a leather bag from his sporran and placed it beside the lantern. The bag chinked as it was laid down and, though Appah Rao glanced at it, he did not take it. ‘Tell your Rajah,’ McCandless said, ‘that it is our desire to place him back on his throne.’

‘And who will stand behind his throne?’ Appah Rao demanded. ‘Men in red coats?’

‘You will,’ McCandless said, ‘as your family always did.’

‘And you?’ the General asked. ‘What do you want?’

‘To trade. That is the Company’s business: trade. Why should we become rulers?’

Appah Rao sneered. ‘Because you always do. You come as merchants, but you bring guns and use them to make yourselves into taxmen, judges and executioners. Then you bring your churches.’ He shuddered.

‘We come to trade,’ McCandless insisted equably. ‘And what would you prefer, General? To trade with the British or be ruled by Muslims?’

And that, McCandless knew, was the question that had brought Appah Rao to this temple in the dark night. Mysore was a Hindu country and its ancient rulers, the Wodeyars, were Hindus like their people, but the Tippoo’s father, the fierce Hyder Ali, had come from the north and conquered their state and the Tippoo had inherited his father’s stolen throne. To give himself a shred of legality the Tippoo, like his father before him, kept the old ruling family alive, but the Wodeyars were now reduced to poverty and to ceremonial appearances only. The new Rajah was scarce more than a child, but to many of Mysore’s Hindus he was still their rightful monarch, though that was an opinion best kept secret from the Tippoo.

Appah Rao had not answered the Scotsman’s question, so McCandless phrased it differently. ‘Are you the last Hindu senior officer in the Tippoo’s army?’

‘There are others,’ Appah Rao said evasively.

‘And the rest?’

Appah Rao paused. ‘Fed to his tigers,’ he eventually admitted.

‘And soon, General,’ McCandless said softly, ‘there will be no more Hindu officers in Mysore and some very fat tigers. And if you defeat us you will still not be safe. The French will come.’

Appah Rao shrugged. ‘There are already Frenchmen in Seringapatam. They demand nothing of us.’

‘Yet,’ McCandless said ominously. ‘But let me tell you what stirs in the wide world, General. There is a new French general named Bonaparte. His army sits on the Nile now, but there is nothing in Egypt that interests Bonaparte or the French. They have their eyes farther east. They have their eyes on India. Bonaparte wrote to the Tippoo earlier this year. Did the Tippoo show you his letter?’ Appah Rao said nothing and McCandless took the silence to mean that Rao knew nothing of the French General’s letter and so he took from his sporran a piece of paper. ‘Do you speak French, General?’

‘No.’

‘Then let me translate for you. One of our agents copied the letter before it was sent and it reads, “le sept pluviôse, l’an six de la République Française.” That’s the twenty-seventh of January this year to the rest of us, and it says, “I have reached the borders of the Red Sea with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire to deliver you from the yoke of England.” Here.’ McCandless offered Appah Rao the letter. ‘There’s plenty more in the letter like that. Take it back with you and find someone who will translate it.’

‘I believe you,’ Appah Rao said, ignoring the proffered letter. ‘But why should I fear this French General?’

‘Because Bonaparte’s ally is the Tippoo and Bonaparte’s ambition is to take away the Company’s trade. His victory will strengthen the Muslims and weaken the Hindus. But if he sees Mysore defeated, and if he sees your Rajah back on his ancestor’s throne, and if he sees a Hindu army led by General Appah Rao then he will think twice before he takes ship. Bonaparte needs allies in this land, and without Mysore he will have none.’

Appah Rao frowned. ‘This Bonaparte, he is a Muslim?’

‘He’s friendly to Muslims, but he has no religion that we know of.’

‘If he’s friendly to Muslims,’ Appah Rao observed, ‘why should he not be friendly to Hindus also?’

‘Because it is to the Muslims that he looks for allies. He will reward them.’

Appah Rao shifted on the hard floor. ‘Why should we not let this Bonaparte come and defeat you?’

‘Because then he will have made the Tippoo all powerful, and after that, General, how long will there be any Hindus in his service? And how long will the surviving Wodeyars live? The Tippoo keeps the Wodeyar family alive for he needs Hindu infantry and cavalry, but if he no longer has enemies, why will he need reluctant friends?’

‘And you will restore the Wodeyars?’

‘I promise it.’

Appah Rao looked past McCandless, gazing up at the small light reflecting off the serene image of a Hindu goddess. The temple was still here, as were all Mysore’s temples, for though the Tippoo was a Muslim he had not torn down the Hindu sanctuaries. Indeed, like his father, the Tippoo had restored some of the temples. Life was not hard under the Tippoo, but all the same the Tippoo was not the ancestral ruler of Appah Rao’s country. That ruler was a boy kept in poverty in a small house in a back alley of Seringapatam, and Appah Rao’s hidden loyalty was to the Wodeyar dynasty, not to the Muslim interlopers. The General’s dark eyes shifted to McCandless. ‘You British captured the city seven years ago. Why didn’t you replace the Tippoo then?’

‘A mistake,’ McCandless admitted candidly. ‘We thought he could be trusted to keep his promises, but we were wrong. This time, if God wills it, we shall replace him. A man bitten by a snake once does not let the snake live a second time.’

Appah Rao brooded for a while. Bats flickered in the courtyard. The two men in the gateway watched as McCandless let the silence stretch. The Colonel knew it would not serve to pressure this General too hard, but McCandless also knew he did not need to press. Appah Rao might not be certain that a British victory would be in Mysore’s best interest, but what would serve that interest in these hard, confusing times? Appah Rao’s choice lay between the Muslim usurpers and foreign domination, and McCandless knew only too well of the simmering distrust that lay between Hindus and Muslims. It was that breach that the Scotsman was assaulting in the hope that he could widen the rift into full betrayal.

Appah Rao finally shook his head, then raised an arm and beckoned. One of the two men in the gateway came running forward and knelt beside the General. He was a young man of startling good looks, black-haired and with a fine long face of strong bones and defiant eyes. Like Appah Rao he wore the tiger tunic and had a gold-hilted sword slung at his hip. ‘This is Kunwar Singh,’ Appah Rao introduced the young man. ‘He is the son of a cousin of mine’ – he announced the relationship vaguely, intimating that it was not close – ‘and the commander of my bodyguard.’

McCandless looked into Kunwar Singh’s eyes. ‘Do your job well, my friend. Your master is valuable.’

Kunwar Singh smiled and then, at a signal from Appah Rao, he took a roll of paper from inside his tunic. He unrolled the sheet and weighted its corners with a pistol, a knife, a handful of bullets and the lantern.

McCandless leaned forward. The scroll was a map and it showed the big island in the River Cauvery on which the Tippoo’s capital of Seringapatam was built. The fortress town occupied the island’s western tip, while beyond its walls, to the east, were pleasure gardens, suburbs, the Tippoo’s summer palace and the mausoleum where the fearsome Hyder Ali was entombed.

Appah Rao drew a knife from his belt. He tapped the island’s northern bank where it fronted the Cauvery’s main channel. ‘That is where General Cornwallis crossed. But since then the walls have been strengthened. The French advised us how to do it. There are new guns on the walls, hundreds of them.’ He looked up into McCandless’s eyes. ‘I mean hundreds, McCandless. That is not an exaggeration. The Tippoo is fond of cannon and rockets. He has thousands of rocketmen and deep arsenals crammed with weapons. All this’ – he swept the knife’s tip around the walls that faced the river – ‘has been rebuilt, refortified and given cannon and rockets.’

‘We have cannon too,’ McCandless said.

Appah Rao ignored the comment. Instead he tapped the knife against the western ramparts that overlooked the Cauvery’s smaller channel. ‘At this time of year, McCandless, the river here is shallow. The crocodiles have gone to the deeper pools and a man can walk across the river with dry knees. And when your army reaches Seringapatam they will see that these walls’ – he tapped the western fortifications again – ‘have not been rebuilt. They are made of mud bricks and the rains have crumbled the rampart. It looks like a weak place and you will be tempted to attack there. Do not, for that is where the Tippoo wants you to attack.’ A beetle flew onto the map and crawled along the line marking the western walls. Appah Rao gently swept the insect aside. ‘There is another wall there, a new wall, hidden behind that rampart, McCandless, and when your men get through the first wall they will be in a trap. Here’ – he pointed to a bastion that connected the outer and inner walls – ‘that used to be a water gate, but it’s been blocked up and there are hundreds of pounds of gunpowder inside. Once your men are trapped between the two walls the Tippoo plans to blow the mine.’ Appah Rao shrugged. ‘Hundreds of pounds of powder, McCandless, just waiting for you. And when that attack has failed you will have no time to make another before the monsoon comes, and when the rains do come the river will rise and the roads will turn to mud and you will be forced to retreat, and every foot of your way back to Madras will be dogged by the Tippoo’s cavalry. That is how he plans to beat you.’

‘So we must attack anywhere but in the west?’

‘Anywhere but from the west,’ Appah Rao said. ‘The new inner wall’ – he demonstrated on the map with the tip of his knife – ‘extends all the way round the north. These other walls’ – he tapped the southern and eastern ramparts – ‘look stronger, but don’t be deceived. The west wall is a trap, and if you fall into it, it will be your death.’ He moved the weights off the corners of the map and let it roll itself up. Then he unshielded McCandless’s lantern and held one end of the scroll in the candle flame. The paper blazed, lighting the intricate carvings of the shrine. The three men watched as the paper burned to ash. ‘Anywhere but from the west,’ Appah Rao said, then, after a moment’s hesitation, he lifted the bag of gold coins from beside the lantern. ‘All this will go to my Rajah,’ he said. ‘I shall keep none.’

‘I never expected you to,’ McCandless said. ‘You have my thanks, General.’

‘I don’t want your thanks. I want my Rajah back. That is why I came. And if you disappoint me, then you English will have a new enemy.’

‘I’m a Scot.’

‘But you would still be my enemy,’ Appah Rao said, then turned away, but paused and looked back from the inner shrine’s threshold. ‘Tell your General that his men should be gentle with the people of the city.’

‘I will tell General Harris.’

‘Then I shall look to see you in Seringapatam,’ Appah Rao said heavily.

‘Me and thousands of others,’ McCandless said.

‘Thousands!’ Appah Rao’s tone mocked the claim. ‘You may have thousands, Colonel, but the Tippoo has tigers.’ He turned and walked to the temple’s outer gateway, followed by Kunwar Singh.

McCandless burned the copy of Bonaparte’s letter, waited another half-hour and then, as silently as he had come to the temple, he left it. He would join his escort, sleep a few hours, then ride with his precious secret to the waiting army.

Few men of the 33rd slept that night for the excitement of fighting and beating the Tippoo’s vaunted troops had filled them with a nervous energy. Some spent their loot on arrack, and those fell asleep soon enough, but the others stayed around their fires and relived the day’s brief excitement. For most of the troops it had been their first battle, and on its slim evidence they built a picture of war and their own valour.

Mary Bickerstaff sat with Sharpe and listened patiently to the tales. She was accustomed to soldiers’ stories and shrewd enough to know which men exaggerated their prowess and which pretended not to have been nauseated by the horrors of the dead and wounded. Sharpe, after he returned from Captain Morris’s tent with the news that the Captain would ask Major Shee’s permission for them to marry, was silent and Mary sensed he was not really listening to the tales, not even when he pretended to be amused or amazed. ‘What is it?’ she asked him after a long while.

‘Nothing, lass.’

‘Are you worried about Captain Morris?’

‘If he says no, we just ask Major Shee,’ Sharpe said with a confidence he did not entirely feel. Morris was a bastard, but Shee was a drunk, and in truth there was little to choose between them. Sharpe had an idea that Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the 33rd’s real commanding officer, was a man who might be reasonable, but Wellesley had been temporarily appointed as one of the army’s two deputy commanders and had thus shrugged off all regimental business. ‘We’ll get our permission,’ he told Mary.

‘So what’s worrying you?’

‘I told you. Nothing.’

‘You’re miles away, Richard.’

He hesitated. ‘Wish I was.’

Mary tightened the grip of her hand on his fingers, then lowered her voice to something scarce above a whisper. ‘Are you thinking of running, Richard Sharpe?’

He leaned away from the fire, trying to make a small private space where they could talk without being overheard. ‘Got to be a better life than this, love,’ he said.

‘Don’t do it!’ Mary said fiercely, but laying a hand on his cheek as she spoke. Some of the men on the other side of the fire saw the tender gesture and greeted it with a chorus of jeers and whistles. Mary ignored them. ‘They’ll catch you, Richard,’ she insisted, ‘catch you and shoot you.’

‘Not if we run far enough.’

‘We?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I’d want you, lass.’

Mary took hold of one of his hands and squeezed it. ‘Listen,’ she hissed. ‘Work to become a sergeant! Once you’re a sergeant, you’re made. You could even become an officer! Don’t laugh, Richard! Mister Lambert in Calcutta, he was a sergeant once, and he was a private before that. They made him up to ensign.’

Sharpe smiled and traced a finger down her cheek. ‘You’re mad, Mary. I love you, but you’re mad. I couldn’t be an officer! You have to know how to read!’

‘I can teach you,’ Mary said.

Sharpe glanced at her with some surprise. He had never known she could read and the knowledge made him somewhat nervous of her. ‘I wouldn’t want to be an officer anyway,’ he said scathingly. ‘Stuck-up bastards, all of them.’

‘But you can be a sergeant,’ Mary insisted, ‘and a good one. But don’t run, love. Whatever you do, don’t run.’

‘Is that the lovebirds?’ Sergeant Hakeswill’s mocking voice cut through their conversation. ‘Ah, it’s sweet, isn’t it? Good to see a couple in love. Restores a man’s faith in human nature, it does.’

Sharpe and Mary sat up and disentangled their fingers as the Sergeant stalked through the ring of men beside the fire. ‘I want you, Sharpie,’ Hakeswill said when he reached their side. ‘Got a message for you, I have.’ He touched his hat to Mary. ‘Not you, Ma’am,’ he said as she stood to accompany Sharpe. ‘This is men’s business, Mrs Bickerstaff. Soldiers’ business. No business for bibbis. Come on, Sharpie! Ain’t got all night! Look lively now!’ He strode away, thumping the ground with the butt of his halberd as he threaded his way between the fires. ‘Got news for you, Sharpie,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘good news, lad, good news.’

‘I can marry?’ Sharpe asked eagerly.

Hakeswill threw a sly glance over his shoulder as he led Sharpe towards the picketed lines of officers’ horses. ‘Now why would a lad like you want to marry? Why throw all your spunk away on one bibbi, eh? And that one used goods, too? Another man’s leavings, that’s all Mary Bickerstaff is. You should spread it about, boy. Enjoy yourself when you’re still young.’ Hakeswill pushed his way between the horses to reach the dark space between the two picketed lines where he turned and faced Sharpe. ‘Good news, Sharpe. You can’t marry. Permission is refused. You want to know why, boy?’

Sharpe felt his hopes crumbling. At that moment he hated Hakeswill more than ever, but his pride forced him not to show that hate, nor his disappointment. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘I’ll tell you why, Sharpie,’ Hakeswill said. ‘And stand still, boy! When a sergeant condescends to talk to you, you stand still! ’Tenshun! That’s better, lad. Bit of respect, like what is proper to show to a sergeant.’ His face twitched as he grinned. ‘You want to know why, boy? Because I don’t want you to marry her, Sharpie, that is why. I don’t want little Mrs Bickerstaff married to anyone. Not to you, not to me, not even to the King of England himself, God bless him.’ He was circling Sharpe as he talked. ‘And do you know why, boy?’ He stopped in front of Sharpe and pushed his face up towards the younger man. ‘Because that Mrs Bickerstaff is a bibbi, Sharpie, with possibilities. Possibibbibilities!’ He giggled at his joke. ‘Got a future, she has.’ He grinned again, and the grin was suddenly twisted as his face shuddered with its distorting rictus. ‘You familiar with Naig? Nasty Naig? Answer me, boy!’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ Sharpe said.

‘Fat bugger, Sharpie, he is. Fat and rich. Rides a helephant, he does, and he’s got a dozen green tents. One of the army’s followers, Sharpie, and rich as a rich man can be. Richer than you’ll ever be, Sharpie, and you know why? ’Cos Nasty Naig provides the officers with their women, that’s why. And I’m not talking about those rancid slags the other heathens hires out to you nasty common soldiers, I’m talking about the desirable women, Sharpie. Desirable.’ He lingered on the word. ‘Nasty’s got a whole herd of expensive whores, Sharpie, he does, all riding in those closed wagons with the coloured curtains. Full of officers’ meat, those wagons are, fat ones, skinny ones, dark ones, light ones, dirty ones, clean ones, tall ones, short ones, all sorts of ones, and all of ’em are prettier than you could ever dream of, but there ain’t one of them as pretty as little Mrs Bickerstaff, and there ain’t one who looks as white as pretty little Mary does, and if there’s one thing an English officer abroad wants once in a while, Sharpie, it’s a spot of the white meat. That’s the itch Morris has got, Sharpie, got it bad, but he ain’t no different from the others. They get bored with the dark meat, Sharpie. And the Indian officers! Naig tells me they’ll pay a month’s wages for a white. You following me, Sharpie? You and me marching in step, are we?’

Sharpe said nothing. It had taken all his self discipline not to hit the Sergeant, and Hakeswill knew it and mocked him for it. ‘Go on, Sharpie! Hit me!’ Hakeswill taunted him, and when Sharpe did not move, the Sergeant laughed. ‘You ain’t got the guts, have you?’

‘I’ll find a place and time,’ Sharpe said angrily.

‘Place and time! Listen to him!’ Hakeswill chuckled, then began pacing around Sharpe once again. ‘We’ve made a deal, Nasty and me. Like brothers, we are, me and him, just like brothers. We understand each other, see, and Nasty’s right keen on your little Mary. Profit there, you see, boy. And I’ll get a cut of it.’

‘Mary stays with me, Sarge,’ Sharpe said stubbornly, ‘married or not.’

‘Oh, Sharpie, dear me. You don’t understand, do you? You didn’t hear me, boy, did you? Nasty and me, we’ve made a bargain. Drunk to it, we did, and not in arrack, neither, but in proper gentlemen’s brandy. I give him little Mrs Bickerstaff and he gives me half the money she earns. He’ll cheat me, of course he’ll cheat me, but she’ll make so much that it won’t signify. She won’t have a choice, Sharpie. She’ll get snatched on the march and given to one of Nasty’s men. One of the ugly buggers. She’ll be raped wicked for a week, whipped every night, and at the end of it, Sharpie, she’ll do whatever she’s told. That’s the way the business works, Sharpie, says so in the scriptures, and how are you going to stop it? Answer me that, boy. Are you going to pay me more than Nasty will?’ Hakeswill stopped in front of Sharpe where he waited for an answer and, when none came, he shook his head derisively. ‘You’re a boy playing in men’s games, Sharpie, and you’re going to lose unless you’re a man. Are you man enough to fight me here? Put me down? Claim I was kicked by a horse in the night? You can try, Sharpie, but you’re not man enough, are you?’

‘Hit you, Sergeant,’ Sharpe said, ‘and be put on a flogging charge? I’m not daft.’

Hakeswill made an elaborate charade of looking right and left. ‘Ain’t no one here but you and me, Sharpie. Nice and private!’

Sharpe resisted the urge to lash out at his persecutor. ‘I’m not daft,’ he said again, stubbornly remaining at attention.

‘But you are, boy. Daft as a bucket. Don’t you understand? I’m offering you the soldier’s way out! Forget the bloody officers, you daft boy. You and me, Sharpie, we’re soldiers, and soldiers settle their arguments by fighting. Says so in the scriptures, don’t it? So beat me now, lad, beat me here and now, beat me in a square fight and I warrant you can keep Mrs Bickerstaff all to your little self.’ He paused, grinning up into Sharpe’s face. ‘That’s a promise, Sharpie. Fight me now, fair and honest, and our argument’s over. But you’re not man enough, are you? You’re just a boy.’

‘I’m not falling for your tricks, Sergeant,’ Sharpe said.

‘There ain’t no trick, boy,’ Hakeswill said hoarsely. He stepped two paces away from Sharpe, reversed his halberd and thrust its steel point hard into the turf. ‘I can beat you, Sharpie, that’s what I’m reckoning. I’ve been around a bit. Know how to fight. You might be taller than me, and you might be stronger, but you ain’t as quick as me and you ain’t half as dirty. I’m going to pound the bloody guts out of you, and when I’ve finished with you I’ll take little Mary down to Nasty’s tents and earn my money. But not if you beat me, boy. You beat me, and on a soldier’s honour, I’ll persuade Captain Morris to let you marry. You’ve got my word on it, boy. A soldier’s honour.’ He waited for an answer. ‘You ain’t a soldier,’ he said scornfully when Sharpe still kept quiet. ‘You ain’t got the guts!’ He stepped up to Sharpe and slapped him hard across the face. ‘Nothing but a lily, ain’t you? Lieutenant Lawford’s lily-boy. Maybe that’s why you ain’t got the guts to fight for your Mary!’

The last insult provoked Sharpe to hit Hakeswill. He did it hard and fast. He slammed a low blow into Hakeswill’s belly that folded the Sergeant over, then cut his other hand hard up into the Sergeant’s face to split open Hakeswill’s nose and jerk his head back up. Sharpe brought up his knee, missed the Sergeant’s crotch, but his left hand had hold of Hakeswill’s clubbed hair now and he was just feeling with his right fingers for the squealing Sergeant’s eyeballs when a voice was suddenly shouting close behind him.

‘Guard!’ the voice called. ‘Guard!’

‘Jesus!’ Sharpe let go of his enemy, turned and saw Captain Morris standing just beyond the picketed horses. Ensign Hicks was with him.

Hakeswill had sunk onto the ground, but now hauled himself upright on the staff of his halberd. ‘Assaulted me, sir, he did!’ The Sergeant could scarcely speak for the pain in his belly. ‘He went mad, sir! Just mad, sir!’

‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, Hicks and I both saw it,’ Morris said. ‘Came to check on the horses, ain’t that right, Hicks?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hicks said. He was a small young man, very officious, who would never contradict a superior. If Morris claimed the clouds were made of cheese Hicks would just stand to attention, twitch his nose, and swear blind he could smell Cheddar. ‘Plain case of assault, sir,’ the Ensign said. ‘Unprovoked assault.’

‘Guard!’ Morris shouted. ‘Here! Now!’

Blood was pouring down Hakeswill’s face, but the Sergeant managed a grin. ‘Got you, Sharpie,’ he said softly, ‘got you. Flogging offence, that.’

‘You bastard,’ Sharpe said softly, and wondered if he should run. He wondered if he would stand any chance of making it safely away if he just sprinted into the dark, but Ensign Hicks had drawn his pistol and the sound of the hammer being cocked stilled Sharpe’s tiny impulse to flee.

A panting Sergeant Green arrived with four men of the guard and Morris pushed the horses aside to let them through. ‘Arrest Private Sharpe, Sergeant,’ he told Green. ‘Close arrest. He struck Sergeant Hakeswill, and Hicks and I witnessed the assault. Ensign Hicks will do the paperwork.’

‘Gladly, sir,’ Hicks agreed. The Ensign was slurring his words, betraying that he had been drinking.

Morris looked at Sharpe. ‘It’s a court martial offence, Sharpe,’ the Captain said, then he turned back to Green who had not moved to obey his orders. ‘Do it!’

‘Sir!’ Green said, stepping forward. ‘Come on, Sharpie.’

‘I didn’t do nothing, Sergeant,’ Sharpe protested.

‘Come on, lad. It’ll sort itself out,’ Green said quietly, then he took Sharpe’s elbow and led him away. Hicks went with them, happy to please Morris by writing up the charge.

Morris waited until the prisoner and his escort had gone, then grinned at Hakeswill. ‘The boy was faster than you thought, Sergeant.’

‘He’s a devil, that one, sir, a devil. Broke my nose, he did.’ Hakeswill gingerly tried to straighten the cartilage and the bleeding nose made a horrible crunching noise. ‘But his woman’s ours.’

‘Tonight?’ Morris could not keep the eagerness from his voice.

‘Not tonight, sir,’ Hakeswill said in a tone that suggested the Captain had made a foolish suggestion. ‘There’ll be enough trouble in the company with Sharpe arrested, sir, and if we go after his bibbi tonight there’ll be a rare brawl. Half the bastards are full of arrack. No, sir. Wait till the bastard’s flogged to death. Wait for that, sir, and then they’ll all be meek as lambs. Meek as lambs. Flogging does that to men. Quietens them down something proper, a good whipping does. All be done in a couple of days, sir.’

Morris flinched as Hakeswill tried to straighten his nose again. ‘You’d better see Mister Micklewhite, Hakeswill.’

‘No, sir. Don’t believe in doctors, sir, except for the pox. I’ll strap it up, sir, and soon be right as rain. Besides, watching Sharpie flogged will be treatment enough. I reckon we done him, sir. You won’t have long to wait, sir, not long at all.’

Morris found Hakeswill’s intimate tone unseemly, and stepped stiffly back. ‘Then I’ll wish you a good night, Sergeant.’

‘Thank you kindly, sir, and the same to you, sir. And sweet dreams too, sir.’ Hakeswill laughed. ‘Just as sweet as sweet can ever be, sir.’

For Sharpie was done.