Sharpe was not sure how far away Deogaum was, but guessed it was close to twenty miles and that was at least a seven-hour journey on foot, and so it was long before dawn when he stirred Ahmed from his sleep beside the smouldering remains of a bullock-dung fire, then set off under the stars. He tried to teach Ahmed some English.
«Stars,» Sharpe said, pointing.
«Stars,» Ahmed repeated dutifully.
«Moon,» Sharpe said.
«Moon,» Ahmed echoed.
"Sky."
"Moon?" Ahmed asked, curious that Sharpe was still pointing to the sky.
"Sky, you bugger."
"Skyoobugger?"
"Never mind, " Sharpe said. He was hungry, and he had forgotten to ask Captain Torrance where he was supposed to draw rations, but their northward route took them through the village of Argaum where the fighting battalions of the army were bivouacked. Unburied bodies still littered the battlefield, and scavenging wild dogs growled from the dark stench as Sharpe and Ahmed walked past. A picquet challenged them at the village, and Sharpe asked the man where he would find the cavalry lines. He could not imagine taking Ahmed to the 74th's mess for breakfast, but Sergeant Eli Lockhart might be more welcoming.
The reveille had sounded by the time Sharpe came to the gully where the horses were picketed and the troopers' campfires were being restored to life. Lockhart scowled at the unexpected visitor through the smoky dawn gloom, then grinned when he recognized Sharpe.
"Must be some fighting to do, lads, " he announced, 'the bleeding infantry's here. Good morning, sir. Need our help again?"
"I need some breakfast, " Sharpe admitted.
"Tea, that'll start you off. Smithers! Pork chops! Davies! Some of that bread you're hiding from me. Look lively now! " Lockhart turned back to Sharpe.
"Don't ask me where the chops come from, sir. I might have to lie." He spat in a tin mug, scoured its interior with the end of his blanket, then filled it with tea.
"There you are, sir. Does your boy want some?
Here you are, lad." Lockhart, a mug of tea in his own hand, then insisted on taking Sharpe to the picketed horses.
"See, sir?" He lifted a horse's leg to show off the new horseshoe.
"My guvnor's beholden to you. I might introduce you after breakfast."
Sharpe assumed that Lockhart was talking of his troop commander, but once the pork chops and bread had been eaten, the Sergeant led Sharpe across to the lines of the native cavalry, and then to the tent of the 7th Native Cavalry's commanding officer who, it seemed, was in charge of all the army's cavalry.
"He's called Huddlestone, " Lockhart said, 'and he's a decent fellow. He'll probably offer us another breakfast."
Colonel Huddlestone did indeed insist that both Lockhart and Sharpe join him for a breakfast of rice and eggs. Sharpe was beginning to see that Lockhart was a useful man, someone who was trusted by his officers and liked by his troopers, for Huddlestone greeted the Sergeant warmly and immediately plunged into a conversation about some local horses that had been purchased for remounts and which Huddlestone reckoned would never stand the strain of battle, though Lockhart seemed to feel that a few of them would be adequate.
"So you're the fellow who smoked out Naig?" Huddlestone said to Sharpe after a while.
"Didn't take much doing, sir."
"No one else did it, man! Don't shy away from credit. I'm damned grateful to you."
"Couldn't have done it without Sergeant Lockhart, sir."
"Damned army would come to a stop without Eli, ain't that so?" the Colonel said, and Lockhart, his mouth full of egg, just grinned.
Huddlestone turned back to Sharpe.
"So they gave you to Torrance?"
"Yes, sir."
"He's a lazy bugger, " Huddlestone said vengefully. Sharpe, astonished at the open criticism, said nothing.
"He's one of my own officers, " Huddlestone went on, 'and I confess I wasn't sorry when he asked to be given duty with the bullock train."
"He asked, sir?" Sharpe found it curious that a man would prefer to be with the baggage when he could be in a fighting unit.
"His uncle is grooming him for a career in the Company, " Huddlestone said.
"An uncle in Leadenhall Street. Know what Leaden-hall Street is, Sharpe?"
"Company offices, sir?"
"The very same. The uncle pays him an allowance, and he wants Torrance to get some experience in dealing with bhinjarries. Got it all planned out! A few years in the Company's army, another few trading in spices, then home to inherit his uncle's estate and his seat in the Court of Directors. One day we'll all be tugging our forelocks to the lazy bugger. Still, if he wants to run the baggage train it's no skin off our bums, Sharpe. No one likes the job, so Torrance is welcome to it, but my guess is that you'll be doing most of his work." The Colonel frowned.
"He arrived in India with three English servants! Can you believe it? It ain't as if servants are hard to find here, but Torrance wanted the cachet of white scullions. Two of 'em died of the fever, then Torrance had the nerve to say that one of them hadn't earned the cost of the voyage out and so he's forcing the widow to stay on and pay the debt! " Huddlestone shook his head, then gestured for his servant to pour more tea.
"So what brings you here, Ensign?"
"On my way to Deogaum, sir."
"He really came to beg his breakfast, Colonel, " Lockhart put in.
"And I've no doubt the Sergeant fed you before you came to steal my victuals?" Huddlestone asked, then grinned.
"You're in luck, Ensign.
We're moving up to Deogaum today. You can ride with us."
Sharpe blushed.
"I've no horse, sir."
"Eli?" Huddlestone looked at Lockhart.
"I've got a horse he can ride, sir."
"Good." Huddlestone blew on his tea.
"Welcome to the cavalry, Sharpe."
Lockhart found two horses, one for Sharpe and the other for Ahmed.
Sharpe, ever uncomfortable on horseback, struggled into the saddle under the cavalry's sardonic gaze, while Ahmed jumped up and kicked back his heels, revelling in being back on a horse.
They went gently northwards, taking care not to tire the horses.
Sharpe, as he rode, found himself thinking about Clare Wall, and that made him feel guilty about Simone Joubert, the young French widow who waited for him in Seringapatam. He had sent her there with a southbound convoy and a letter for his friend Major Stokes, and doubtless Simone was waiting for Sharpe to return when the campaign against the Mahrattas was over, but now he needed to warn her that he was being posted back to England. Would she come with him? Did he want her to come? He was not sure about either question, though he felt obscurely responsible for Simone. He could give her a choice, of course, but whenever Simone was faced by a choice she tended to look limp and wait for someone else to make the decision. He had to warn her, though. Would she even want to go to England? But what else could she do? She had no relatives in India, and the nearest French settlements were miles away.
His thoughts were interrupted at mid-morning when Eli Lockhart spurred alongside his horse.
"See it?"
"See what?"
"Up there! " Lockhart pointed ahead and Sharpe, peering through the dust haze thrown up by the leading squadrons, saw a range of high hills.
The lower slopes were green with trees, but above the timber line there was nothing but brown and grey cliffs that stretched from horizon to horizon. And at the very top of the topmost bluff he could just see a streak of dark wall broken by a gate-tower.
«Gawilghur!» Lockhart said.
"How the hell do we attack up there?" Sharpe asked.
The Sergeant laughed.
"We don't! It's a job for the infantry. Reckon you're better off attached to that fellow Torrance."
Sharpe shook his head.
"I have to get in there, Eli."
"Why?"
Sharpe gazed at the distant wall.
"There's a fellow called Dodd in there, and the bastard killed a friend of mine."
Lockhart thought for a second.
"Seven hundred guineas Dodd?"
"That's the fellow, " Sharpe said.
"But I'm not after the reward. I just want to see the bugger dead."
"Me too, " Lockhart said grimly.
"You?"
«Assaye,» Lockhart said brusquely.
"What happened?"
"We charged his troops. They were knocking seven kinds of hell out of the 74th and we caught the buggers in line. Knocked 'em hard back, but we must have had a dozen troopers unhorsed. We didn't stop, though, we just kept after their cavalry and it wasn't till the battle was over that we found our lads. They'd had their throats cut. All of them."
"That sounds like Dodd, " Sharpe said. The renegade Englishman liked to spread terror. Make a man afraid, Dodd had once told Sharpe, and he won't fight you so hard.
"So maybe I'll go into Gawilghur with you, " Lockhart said.
"Cavalry?" Sharpe asked.
"They won't let cavalry into a real fight."
Lockhart grinned.
"I couldn't let an ensign go into a fight without help. Poor little bugger might get hurt."
Sharpe laughed. The cavalry had swerved off the road to pass a long column of marching infantry who had set off before dawn on their march to Deogaum. The leading regiment was Sharpe's own, the 74th, and Sharpe moved even farther away from the road so that he would not have to acknowledge the men who had wanted to be rid of him, but Ensign Venables spotted him, leaped the roadside ditch, and ran to his side.
"Going up in the world, Richard?" Venables asked.
"Borrowed glory, " Sharpe said.
"The horse belongs to the igth."
Venables looked slightly relieved that Sharpe had not suddenly been able to afford a horse.
"Are you with the pioneers now?" he asked.
"Nothing so grand, " Sharpe said, reluctant to admit that he had been reduced to being a bullock guard.
Venables did not really care.
"Because that's what we're doing, " he explained, 'escorting the pioneers. It seems they have to make a road."
"Up there?" Sharpe guessed, nodding towards the fortress that dominated the plain.
"Captain Urquhart says you might be selling your commission, " Venables said.
"Does he?"
"Are you?"
"Are you making an offer?"
"I've got a brother, you see, " Venables explained.
"Three actually.
And some sisters. My father might buy." He took a piece of paper from a pocket and handed it up to Sharpe.
"So if you go home, why not see my pater? That's his address. He reckons one of my brothers should join the army. Ain't any good for anything else, see?"
"I'll think on it, " Sharpe said, taking the paper. The cavalry had stretched ahead and so he clapped his heels back, and the horse jerked forward, throwing Sharpe back in the saddle. For a second he sprawled, almost falling over the beast's rump, then he flailed wildly to catch his balance and just managed to grasp the saddle pommel. He thought he heard laughter as he trotted away from the battalion.
Gawilghur soared above the plain like a threat and Sharpe felt like a poacher with nowhere to hide. From up there, Sharpe reckoned, the approaching British army would look like so many ants in the dust. He wished he had a telescope to stare at the high, distant fortress, but he had been reluctant to spend money. He was not sure why. It was not that he was poor, indeed there were few soldiers richer, yet he feared that the real reason was that he felt fraudulent wearing an officer's sash, and that if he were to buy the usual appurtenances of an officer a horse and a telescope and an expensive sword then he would be mocked by those in the army who claimed he should never have been commissioned in the first place. Nor should he, he thought. He had been happier as a sergeant. Much happier. All the same, he wished he had a telescope as he gazed up at the stronghold and saw a great billow of smoke jet from one of the bastions. Seconds later he heard the fading boom of the gun, but he saw no sign of the shot falling. It was as though the cannonball had been swallowed into the warm air.
A mile short of the foothills the road split into three. The sepoy horsemen went westwards, while the igth Light Dragoons took the right hand path that angled away from the domineering fortress. The country became more broken as it was cut by small gullies and heaped with low wooded ridges thfe first hints of the tumultuous surge of land that ended in the vast cliffs. Trees grew thick in those foothills, and Deogaum was evidently among the low wooded hills. It lay east of Gawilghur, safely out of range of the fortress's guns. A crackle of musketry sounded from a timbered cleft and the igth Dragoons, riding ahead of Sharpe, spread into a line. Ahmed grinned and made sure his musket was loaded. Sharpe wondered which side the boy was on.
Another spatter of muskets sounded, this time to the west. The Mahrattas must have had men in the foothills. Perhaps they were stripping the villages of the stored grain? The sepoys of the East India Company cavalry had vanished, while the horsemen of the igth were filing into the wooded cleft. A gun boomed in the fort, and this time Sharpe heard a thump as a cannonball fell to earth like a stone far behind him. A patch of dust drifted from a field where the shot had plummeted, then he and Ahmed followed the dragoons into the gully and the leaves hid them from the invisible watchers high above.
The road twisted left and right, then emerged into a patchwork of small fields and woods. A large village lay beyond the fields Sharpe guessed it must be Deogaum then there were shots to his left and he saw a crowd of horsemen burst out of the trees a half-mile away. They were Mahrattas, and at first Sharpe thought they were intent on charging the igth Light Dragoons, then he realized they were fleeing from the Company cavalry. There were fifty or sixty of the enemy horsemen who, on seeing the blue-and-yellow-coated dragoons, swerved southwards to avoid a fight. The dragoons were turning, drawing sabres and spurring into pursuit. A trumpet sounded and the small fields were suddenly a whirl of horses, dust and gleaming weapons.
Sharpe reined in among a patch of trees, not wanting to be at the centre of a Mahratta cavalry charge. The enemy horse pounded past in a blur of hooves, shining helmets and lance points. The Company cavalry was still a quarter-mile behind when Ahmed suddenly kicked back his heels and shot out of the hiding place to follow the Mahratta cavalry.
Sharpe swore. The little bastard was running back to join the Mahrattas. Not that Sharpe could blame him, but he still felt disappointed. He knew he had no chance of catching Ahmed who had unslung his musket and now rode up behind the rearmost enemy horseman. That man looked round, saw Ahmed was not in British uniform, and so ignored him. Ahmed galloped alongside, then swung his musket by its barrel so that the heavy stock cracked into the Mahratta's forehead.
The man went off the back of his horse as though jerked by a rope.
His horse ran on, stirrups flapping. Ahmed reined in, turned and jumped down beside his victim. Sharpe saw the flash of a knife. The sepoy cavalry was closer now, and they might think Ahmed was the enemy, so Sharpe shouted at the boy to come back. Ahmed scrambled back into his saddle and kicked his horse to the trees where Sharpe waited. He had plundered a sabre, a pistol and a leather bag, and had a grin as wide as his face. The bag held two stale loaves of flat bread, some glass beads and a small book in a strange script. Ahmed gave one loaf to Sharpe, threw away the book, draped the cheap beads about his neck and hung the sabre at his waist, then watched as the dragoons cut into the rearward ranks of the fugitives. There was the blacksmith's sound of steel on steel, two horses stumbled in flurries of dust, a man staggered bleeding into a ditch, pistols banged, a lance shivered point downwards in the dry turf, and then the enemy horse was gone and the British and sepoy cavalry reined in.
"Why can't you be a proper servant?" Sharpe asked Ahmed.
"Clean my boots, wash my clothes, make my supper, eh?"
Ahmed, who did not understand a word, just grinned.
"Instead I get some murderous urchin. So come on, you bugger."
Sharpe kicked his horse towards the village. He passed a half-empty tank where some clothes lay to dry on bushes, then he was in the dusty main street which appeared to be deserted, though he was aware of faces watching nervously from dark windows and curtain-hung doorways. Dogs growled from the shade and two chickens scratched in the dust. The only person in sight was a naked holy man who sat cross legged under a tree, with his long hair cascading to the ground about him. He ignored Sharpe, and Sharpe ignored him.
"We have to find a house, " Sharpe told the uncomprehending Ahmed.
"House, see? House."
The village headman, the naique, ventured into the street. At least Sharpe assumed he was the naique, just as the naique assumed that the mounted soldier was the leader of the newly arrived cavalrymen. He clasped his hands before his face and bowed to Sharpe, then clicked his fingers to summon a servant carrying a small brass tray on which stood a little cup of arrack. The fierce liquor made Sharpe's head feel suddenly light. The naique was talking ten to the dozen, but Sharpe quietened him with a wave.
"No good talking to me, " he said, "I'm nobody. Talk to him." He pointed to Colonel Huddlestone who was leading his Indian cavalrymen into the village. The troopers dismounted as Huddlestone talked to the headman. There was a squawk as the two chickens were snatched up. Huddlestone turned at the sound, but his men all looked innocent.
High above Sharpe a gun banged in the fortress. The shot seared out to fall somewhere in the plain where the British infantry marched.
The dragoons came into the village, some with bloodied sabres, and Sharpe surrendered the two horses to Lockhart. Then he searched the street to find a house for Torrance. He saw nothing which had a walled garden, but he did find a small mud-walled home that had a courtyard and he dropped his pack in the main room as a sign of ownership. There was a woman with two small children who shrank away from him.
"It's all right, " Sharpe said, 'you get paid. No one will hurt you." The woman wailed and crouched as though expecting to be hit.
"Bloody hell, " Sharpe said, 'does no one in this bleeding country speak English?"
He had nothing to do now until Torrance arrived. He could have hunted through the village to discover paper, a pen and ink so he could write to Simone and tell her about going to England, but he decided that chore could wait. He stripped off his belt, sabre and jacket, found a rope bed, and lay down.
Far overhead the fortress guns fired. It sounded like distant thunder.
Sharpe slept.
Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill tugged off his boots, releasing a stench into the room that caused Captain Torrance to close his eyes.
"Good God, " Torrance said weakly. The Captain felt ill enough already. He had drunk the best part of a bottle of arrack, had woken in the night with gripes in the belly, and then slept unevenly until dawn when someone had scratched at his door and Torrance had shouted at, the pest to go away, after which he had at last fallen into a deeper sleep. Now he had been woken by Hakeswill who, oblivious of the stench, began to unwrap the cloths that bound his feet. It smelt, Torrance thought, like rotted cheese that had been stored in a corpse's belly. He shifted his chair slightly towards the window and pulled his dressing gown tighter about his chest.
"I'm truly sorry about Naig, " Torrance said. Hakeswill had listened in disbelief to the tale of Naig's death and seemed genuinely saddened by it, just as he had been shocked by the news that Sharpe was now Torrance's assistant.
"The bleeding Scotch didn't want him, sir, did they?" Hakeswill said.
"Never thought the Scotch had much sense, but they had wits enough to get rid of Sharpie." Hakeswill had uncovered his right foot and Torrance, barely able to endure the stink, suspected there was black fungus growing between the Sergeant's toes.
"Now you've got him, sir, " Hakeswill went on, 'and I pities you, I does. Decent officer like you,
sir? Last thing you deserved. Bleeding Sharpie! He ain't got no right to be an officer, sir, not Sharpie. He ain't a gentleman like your good self, sir. He's just a common toad, like the rest of us."
"So why was he commissioned?" Torrance asked, watching as Hakeswill tugged at the crusted cloth on his left foot.
"On account of saving the General's life, sir. Leastwise, that's what is said." Hakeswill paused as a spasm made his face twitch.
"Saved Sir Arthur's life at Assaye. Not that I believe it, sir, but Sir Arthur does, and the result of that, sir, is that Sir Arthur thinks bloody Sharpie is a blue eyed boy. Sharpie farts and Sir Arthur thinks the wind's turned southerly."
"Does he now?" Torrance asked. That was worth knowing.
"Four years ago, sir, " Hakeswill said, "I had Sharpie flogged. Would have been a dead 'un too, he would, like he deserved, only Sir Arthur stopped the flogging after two hundred lashes. Stopped it! " The injustice of the act still galled the Sergeant.
"Now he's a bleedin' officer. I tells you, sir, the army ain't what it was. Gone to the dogs, it has." He pulled the cloth from his left foot, then frowned at his toes.
"I washed them in August, " he said in wonderment, 'but it don't look like it, does it?"
"It is now December, Sergeant, " Torrance said reprovingly.
"A good sluice should last six months, sir."
"Some of us engage in a more regular toilet, " Torrance hinted.
"You would, sir, being a gentleman. Thing is, sir, I wouldn't normally take the toe rags off, only there's a blister." Hakeswill frowned.
"Haven't had a blister in years! Poor Naig. For a blackamoor he wasn't a bad sort of fellow."
Naig, Torrance believed, had been as evil a creature as any on the surface of the earth, but he smiled piously at Hakeswill's tribute.
"We shall certainly miss him, Sergeant."
"Pity you had to hang him, " sir, but what choice did you have?
Between the devil and a deep blue buggeration, that's where you were, sir. But poor Naig." Hakeswill shook his head in sad remembrance.
"You should have strung up Sharpie, sir, more's the pity you couldn't. Strung him up proper like what he deserves. A murdering bastard, he is, murdering! " And an indignant Hakeswill told Captain Torrance how Sharpe had tried to kill him, first by throwing him among the Tippoo's tigers, then by trapping him in a courtyard with an elephant trained to kill by crushing men with its forefoot.
"Only the tigers weren't hungry, see, on account of being fed? And as for the elephant, sir, I had me knife, didn't I? I jabbed it in the paw, I did." He mimed the stabbing action.
"Right in its paw, deep in! It didn't like it. I can't die, sir, I can't die." The Sergeant spoke hoarsely, believing every word. He had been hanged as a child, but he had survived the gallows and now believed he was protected from death by his own guardian angel.
Mad, Torrance thought, bedlam-mad, but he was nevertheless fascinated by Obadiah Hakeswill. To look at, the Sergeant appeared the perfect soldier; it was the twitch that suggested something more interesting lay behind the bland blue eyes. And what lay behind those childish eyes, Torrance had decided, was a breathtaking malevolence, yet one that was accompanied by an equally astonishing confidence. Hakeswill, Torrance had decided, would murder a baby and find justification for the act.
"So you don't like Mister Sharpe?" Torrance asked.
"I hates him, sir, and I don't mind admitting it. I've watched him, I have, slither his way up the ranks like a bleeding eel up a drain."
Hakeswill had taken out a knife, presumably the one which he had stabbed into the elephant's foot, and now cocked his right heel on his left knee and laid the blade against the blister.
Torrance shut his eyes to spare himself the sight of Hakeswill performing surgery.
"The thing is, Sergeant, " he said, 'that Naig's brother would rather like a private word with Mister Sharpe."
"Does he now?" Hakeswill asked. He stabbed down.
"Look at that, sir.
Proper bit of pus. Soon be healed. Ain't had a blister in years! Reckon it must be the new boots." He spat on the blade and poked the blister again.
"I'll have to soak the boots in vinegar, sir. So Jama wants Sharpe's goo lies does he?"
"Literally, as it happens. Yes."
"He can join the bleeding queue."
«No!» Torrance said sternly.
"It is important to me, Sergeant, that Mister Sharpe is delivered to Jama. Alive. And that his disappearance occasions no curiosity."
"You mean no one must notice?" HakeswilPs face twitched while he thought, then he shrugged.
"Ain't difficult, sir."
"It isn't?"
"I'll have a word with Jama, sir. Then you can give Sharpie some orders, and I'll be waiting for him. It'll be easy, sir. Glad to do it for you."
"You are a comfort to me, Sergeant."
"That's my job, sir, " Hakeswill said, then leered at the kitchen door where Clare Wall had appeared.
"Sunshine of my life, " he said in what he hoped was a winning tone.
"Your tea, sir, " Clare said, offering Torrance a cup.
"A mug for the Sergeant, Brick! Where are your manners?"
"She don't need manners, " Hakeswill said, still leering at the terrified Clare, 'not with what she's got. Put some sugar in it, darling, if the Captain will spare me some."
"Give him sugar, Brick, " Torrance ordered.
Hakeswill watched Brick go back to the kitchen.
"A proper little woman, that, sir. A flower, that's what she is, a flower!»
"No doubt you would like to pluck her?"
"It's time I was married, " Hakeswill said.
"A man should leave a son, sir, says so in the scriptures."
"You want to do some begetting, eh?" Torrance said, then frowned as someone knocked on the outer door.
«Come!» he called.
An infantry captain whom neither man recognized put his head round the door.
"Captain Torrance?"
"That's me, " Torrance said grandly.
"Sir Arthur Wellesley's compliments, " the Captain said, his acid tone suggesting that the compliments would be remarkably thin, 'but is there any reason why the supplies have not moved northwards?"
Torrance stared at the man. For a second he was speechless, then he cursed under his breath.
"My compliments to the General, " he said, 'and my assurances that the bullock train will be on its way immediately."
He waited until the Captain had gone, then swore again.
"What happened, sir?" Hakeswill asked.
"The bloody chitties Torrance said.
"Still here. Dilip must have come for them this morning, but I told him to bugger off." He swore again.
"Bloody Wellesley will pull my guts out backwards for this."
Hakeswill found the chitties on the table and went to the door, leaving small bloody marks on the floor from his opened blister.
"Dilly!
Dilly! You black bastard heathen swine! Here, take these. On your way!»
no
«Damn!» Torrance said, standing and pacing the small room.
"Damn, damn, damn."
"Nothing to worry about, sir, " Hakeswill said.
"Easy for you to say, Sergeant."
Hakeswill grinned as his face was distorted by twitches.
"Just blame someone else, sir, " he said, 'as is usually done in the army."
"Who? Sharpe? You said yourself he's Wellesley's blue-eyed boy.
I'm supposed to blame him? Or you, perhaps?"
Hakeswill tried to calm the Captain down by giving him his cup of tea.
"Blame Dilly, sir, on account of him being a heathen bastard as black as my new boots."
"He'll simply deny everything when questioned! " Torrance protested.
Hakeswill smiled.
"Won't be in a position to deny anything, sir, will he? On account of being.. " He paused, stuck his tongue out, opened his eyes wide and made a choking noise.
"Good God, Sergeant, " Torrance said, shuddering at the horrid picture suggested by Hakeswill's contorted face.
"Besides, he's a good clerk!
It's damned difficult to replace good men."
"It's easy, sir. Jama will give us a man. Give us a good man." Hakeswill grinned.
"It'll make things much easier, sir, if we can trust the clerk as well as each other."
Torrance flinched at the thought of being in league with Obadiah Hakeswill, yet if he was ever to pay off his debts he needed the Sergeant's cooperation. And Hakeswill was marvellously efficient. He could strip the supplies bare and not leave a trace of his handiwork, always making sure someone else took the blame. And doubtless the Sergeant was right. If Jama could provide a clerk, then the clerk could provide a false set of accounts. And if Dilip was blamed for the late arrival of the pioneers' stores, then Torrance would be off that particularly sharp and nasty hook. As ever, it seemed as though Hakeswill could find his way through the thorniest of problems.
Just leave it to me, sir, " Hakeswill said.
"I'll look after everything, sir, I will." He bared his teeth at Clare who had brought his mug of tea.
"You're the flower of womanhood, " he told her, then watched appreciatively as she scuttled back to the kitchen.
"Her and me, sir, are meant for each other. Says so in the scriptures."
"Not till Sharpe's dead, " Torrance said.
"He'll be dead, sir, " Hakeswill promised, and the Sergeant shivered in as he anticipated the riches that would follow that death. Not just Clare Wall, but the jewels. The jewels! Hakeswill had divined that it had been Sharpe who had killed the Tippoo Sultan in Seringapatam, and Sharpe who must have stripped the ruler's body of its diamonds and emeralds and sapphires and rubies, and Sharpe, Hakeswill reckoned, was still hiding those stones. From far away, dulled by the heat of the day, came the sound of artillery firing. Gawilghur, Hakeswill thought, where Sharpe should not reach, on account of Sharpe being Hakeswill's business, and no one else's. I will be rich, the Sergeant promised himself, I will be rich.
Colonel William Dodd stood on the southernmost battlements of Gawilghur with his back against the parapet so that he was staring down into a palace courtyard where Beny Singh had erected a striped pavilion.
Small silver bells that tinkled prettily in the small breeze were hung from the pavilion's fringed hem, while under the canopy a group of musicians played the strange, long-necked stringed instruments which made a music that, to Dodd's ears, sounded like the slow strangulation of cats. Beny Singh and a dozen pretty creatures in saris were playing some form of Blind Man's Buff, and their laughter rose to the ramparts, making Dodd scowl, though if truth were told he was inordinately jealous of Beny Singh. The man was plump, short and timid, yet he seemed to work some magical spell on the ladies, while Dodd, who was tall, hard and scarred to prove his bravery, had to make do with a whore.
Damn the Killadar. Dodd turned sharply away and stared over the heat-baked plain. Beneath him, and just far enough to the east to be out of range of Gawilghur's largest guns, the edge of the British encampment showed. From this height the rows of dull white tents looked like speckles. To the south, still a long way off, Dodd could see the enemy baggage train trudgiilg towards its new encampment. It was odd, he thought, that they should make the oxen carry their burdens through the hottest part of the day. Usually the baggage marched just after midnight and camped not long after dawn, but today the great herd was stirring the dust into the broiling afternoon air and it looked, Dodd thought, like a migrating tribe. There were thousands of oxen in the army's train, all loaded with round shot, powder, tools, salt beef, arrack, horseshoes, bandages, flints, muskets,
spices, rice, and with them came the merchants' beasts and the merchants' families, and the ox herdsmen had their own families and they all needed more beasts to carry their tents, clothes and food. A dozen elephants plodded in the herd's centre, while a score of dromedaries swayed elegantly behind the elephants. Mysore cavalry guarded the great caravan, while beyond the mounted picquets halfnaked grass-cutters spread into the fields to collect fodder that they stuffed into nets and loaded onto yet more oxen.
Dodd glanced at the sentries who guarded the southern stretch of Gawilghur's walls and he saw the awe on their faces as they watched the enormous herd approach. The dust from the hooves rose to smear the southern skyline like a vast sea fog.
"They're only oxen! " Dodd growled to the men.
"Only oxen! Oxen don't fire guns. Oxen don't climb walls."
None of them understood him, but they grinned dutifully.
Dodd walked eastwards. After a while the wall ended, giving way to the bare lip of a precipice. There was no need for walls around much of the perimeters of Gawilghur's twin forts, for nature had provided the great cliffs that were higher than any rampart a man could make, but Dodd, as he walked to the bluff's edge, noted places here and there where an agile man could, with the help of a rope, scramble down the rock face.
A few men deserted Gawilghur's garrison every day, and Dodd did not doubt that this was how they escaped, but he did not understand why they should want to go. The fort was impregnable! Why would a man not wish to stay with the victors?
He reached a stretch of wall at the fort's southeastern corner and there, high up on a gun platform, he opened his telescope and stared down into the foothills. He searched for a long time, his glass skittering over trees, shrubs and patches of dry grass, but at last he saw a group of men standing beside a narrow path. Some of the men were in red coats and one was in blue.
"What are you watching, Colonel?" Prince Manu Bappoo had seen Dodd on the rampart and had climbed to join him.
«British,» Dodd said, without taking his eye from the telescope.
"They're surveying a route up to the plateau."
Bappoo shaded his eyes and stared down, but without a telescope he could not see the group of men.
"It will take them months to build a road up to the hills."
"It'll take them two weeks, " Dodd said flatly.
"Less. You don't know how their engineers work, sahib, but I do. They'll use powder to break through obstacles and a thousand axe men to widen the tracks. They'll start their work tomorrow and in a fortnight they'll be running guns up to the hills." Dodd collapsed the telescope.
"Let me go down and break the bastards, " he demanded.
«No,» Bappoo said. He had already had this argument with Dodd who wanted to take his Cobras down into the foothills and there harass the road-makers. Dodd did not want a stand-up fight, a battle of musket line against musket line, but instead wanted to raid, ambush and scare the enemy. He wanted to slow the British work, to dishearten the sappers and, by such delaying tactics, force Wellesley to send forage parties far into the countryside where they would be prey to the Mahratta horsemen who still roamed the Deccan Plain.
Bappoo knew Dodd was right, and that the British road could be slowed by a campaign of harassment, but he feared to let the white coated Cobras leave the fortress. The garrison was already nervous, awed by the victories of Wellesley's small army, and if they saw the Cobras march out of the fort then many would think they were being abandoned and the trickle of deserters would become a flood.
"We have to slow them! " Dodd snarled.
"We shall, " Bappoo said.
"I shall send silladars, Colonel, and reward them for every weapon they bring back to the fort. But you will stay here, and help prepare the de fences He spoke firmly, showing that the subject was beyond discussion, then offered Dodd a gap-toothed smile and gestured towards the palace at the centre of the Inner Fort.
"Come, Colonel, I want to show you something."
The two men walked through the small houses that surrounded the palace, past an Arab sentry who protected the palace precincts, then through some flowering trees where monkeys crouched. Dodd could hear the tinkle of the bells where Beny Singh was playing with his women, but that sound faded as the path twisted deeper into the trees.
The path ended at a rock face that was pierced by an arched wooden door. Dodd looked up while Bappoo unlocked the door and saw that the great rock slab formed the palace foundations and, when Bappoo thrust back the creaking door, he understood that it led into the palace cellars.
A lantern stood on a shelf just inside the door and there was a pause while Bappoo lit its wick.
«Come,» Bappoo said, and led Dodd into the marvelous coolness of the huge low cellar.
"It is rumoured, " Bappoo said, 'that we store the treasures of Berar in here, and in one sense it is true, but they are not the treasures that men usually dream of." He stopped by a row of barrels and casually knocked off their lids, revealing that the tubs were filled with copper coins.
"No gold or silver, " Bappoo said, 'but money all the same. Money to hire new mercenaries, to buy new weapons and to make a new army." Bappoo trickled a stream of the newly minted coins through his fingers.
"We have been lax in paying our men, " he confessed.
"My brother, for all his virtues, is not generous with his treasury."
Dodd grunted. He was not sure what virtues the Rajah of Berar did possess. Certainly not valour, nor generosity, but the Rajah was fortunate in his brother, for Bappoo was loyal and evidently determined to make up for the Rajah's shortcomings.
"Gold and silver, " Dodd said, 'would buy better arms and more men."
"My brother will not give me gold or silver, only copper. And we must work with what we have, not with what we dream of." Bappoo put the lids back onto the barrels, then edged between them to where rack after rack of muskets stood.
"These, Colonel, " he said, 'are the weapons for that new army."
There were thousands of muskets, all brand new, and all equipped with bayonets and cartridge boxes. Some of the guns were locally made copies of French muskets, but several hundred looked to Dodd to be of British make. He lifted one from the racks and saw the Tower mark on its lock.
"How did you get these?" he asked, surprised.
Bappoo shrugged.
"We have agents in the British camp. They arrange it. We meet some of their supply convoys well to the south and pay for their contents. It seems there are traitors in the British army who would rather make money than seek victory."
"You buy guns with copper?" Dodd asked scathingly. He could not imagine any man selling a Tower musket for a handful of copper.
«No,» Bappoo confessed.
"To buy the weapons and the cartridges we need gold, so I use my own. My brother, I trust, will repay me one day."
Dodd frowned at the hawk-faced Bappoo.
"You're using your money to keep your brother on the throne?" he asked and, though he waited for an answer, none came. Dodd shook his head, implying that "5
Bappoo's nobility was beyond understanding, then he cocked and fired the unloaded musket. The spark of the flint flashed a sparkle of red light against the stone ceiling.
"A musket in its rack kills no one, " he said.
"True. But as yet we don't have the men to carry these muskets. But we will, Colonel. Once we have defeated the British the other kingdoms will join us." That, Dodd reflected, was true enough. Scindia, Dodd's erstwhile employer, was suing for peace, while Holkar, the most formidable of the Mahratta monarchs, was staying aloof from the contest, but if Bappoo did win his victory, those chieftains would be eager to share future spoils.
"And not just the other kingdoms, " Bappoo went on, 'but warriors from all India will come to our banner. I intend to raise a compoo armed with the best weapons and trained to the very highest standard. Many, I suspect, will be sepoys from Wellesley's defeated army and they will need a new master when he is dead. I thought perhaps you would lead them?"
Dodd returned the musket to its rack.
"You'll not pay me with copper, Bappoo."
Bappoo smiled.
"You will pay me with victory, Colonel, and I shall reward you with gold."
Dodd saw some unfamiliar weapons farther down the rack. He lifted one and saw it was a hunting rifle. The lock was British, but the filigree decoration on the stock and barrel was Indian.
"You're buying rifles?"
he asked.
"No better weapon for skirmishing, " Bappoo said.
«Maybe,» Dodd allowed grudgingly. The rifle was accurate, but slow to load.
"A small group of men with rifles, " Bappoo said, 'backed up by muskets, could be formidable."
«Maybe,» Dodd said again, then, instead of putting the rifle back onto the rack, he slung it on his shoulder.
"I'd like to try it, " he explained.
"You have ammunition?"
Bappoo gestured across the cellar, and Dodd went and scooped up some cartridges.
"If you've got the cash, " he called back, 'why not raise your new army now. Bring it to Gawilghur."
"There's no time, " Bappoo said, 'and besides, no one will join us now. They think the British are beating us. So if we are to make our new army, Colonel, then we must first win a victory that will ring through India, and that is what we shall do here at Gawilghur." He spoke very confidently, for Bappoo, like Dodd, believed Gawilghur to be unassailable. He led the Englishman back to the entrance, blew out the lantern and carefully locked the armoury door.
The two men climbed the slope beside the palace, passing a line of servants who carried drinks and sweetmeats to where Beny Singh whiled away the afternoon. As ever, when Dodd thought of the Killa-dar, he felt a surge of anger. Beny Singh should have been organizing the fortress's de fences but instead he frittered away his days with women and liquor. Bappoo must have divined Dodd's thoughts, for he grimaced.
"My brother likes Beny Singh. They amuse each other."
"Do they amuse you?" Dodd asked.
Bappoo paused at the northern side of the palace and there he gazed across the ravine to the Outer Fort which was garrisoned by his Lions of Allah.
"I swore an oath to my brother, " he answered, 'and I am a man who keeps my oaths."
"There must be those, " Dodd said carefully, 'who would rather see you as Rajah?"
"Of course, " Bappoo answered equably, 'but such men are my brother's enemies, and my oath was to defend my brother against all his enemies." He shrugged.
"We must be content, Colonel, with what fate grants us. It has granted me the task of fighting my brother's wars, and I shall do that to the best of my ability." He pointed to the deep ravine that lay between the Outer and the Inner Forts.
"And there, Colonel, I shall win a victory that will make my brother the greatest ruler of all India.
The British cannot stop us. Even if they make their road, even if they haul their guns up to the hills, even if they make a breach in our walls and even if they capture the Outer Fort, they must still cross that ravine, and they cannot do it. No one can do it." Bappoo stared at the steep gorge as if he could already see its rocks soaked in enemy blood.
"Who rules that ravine, Colonel, rules India, and when we have our victory then we shall unlock the cellar and raise an army that will drive the redcoats not just from Berar, but from Hyderabad, from Mysore and from Madras. I shall make my brother Emperor of all southern India, and you and I, Colonel, shall be his warlords." Bappoo turned to gaze into the dust smeared immensity of the southern sky.
"It will all belong to my brother, " he said softly, 'but it will begin here. At Gawilghur."
And here, Dodd suddenly thought, it would end for Bappoo. No man who was willing to endure a feeble wretch like Beny Singh, or protect a cowardly libertine like the Rajah, deserved to be a warlord of all India.
No, Dodd thought, he would win his own victory here, and then he would strike against Bappoo and against Beny Singh, and he would raise his own army and use it to strike terror into the rich southern kingdoms. Other Europeans had done it. Benoit de Boigne had made himself richer than the kings of all Christendom, while George Thomas, an illiterate Irish sailor, had risen to rule a princedom for his widowed mistress. Dodd saw himself as a new Presterjohn. He would make a kingdom from the rotting scraps of India, and he would rule from a new palace in Gawilghur that would be like no other in the world. He would have roofs of gold, walls of white marble and garden paths made from pearls, and men from all India would come to pay him homage. He would be Lord of Gawilghur, Dodd thought, and smiled. Not bad for a miller's son from Suffolk, but Gawilghur was a place to stir dreams for it lifted men's thoughts into the heavens, and Dodd knew that India, above all the lands on God's earth, was a place where dreams could come true.
Here a man was either made rich beyond all desire, or else became nothing.
And Dodd would not be nothing. He would be Lord of Gawilghur and the terror of India.
Once the redcoats were defeated.
"Is this the best you could manage, Sharpe?" Torrance enquired, looking about the main room of the commandeered house.
"No, sir, " Sharpe said.
"There was a lovely house just up the road. Big shady courtyard, couple of pools, a fountain and a gaggle of dancing girls, but I thought you might prefer the view from these windows."
"Sarcasm ill becomes an ensign, " Torrance said, dropping his saddlebags on the earthen floor.
"Indeed, very little becomes ensigns, Sharpe, except a humble devotion to serving their betters. I suppose the house will have to suffice. Who is that?" He shuddered as he stared at the woman whose house he was occupying.
"She lives here, sir."
"Not now, she doesn't. Get rid of the black bitch, and her foul children. Brick!»
Clare Wall came in from the sunlight, carrying a sack.
"Sir?"
"I'm hungry, Brick. Find the kitchen. We made a late start, Sharpe, " Torrance explained, 'and missed dinner."
"I imagine that's why the General wants to see you, sir, " Sharpe said.
"Not because you missed dinner, but because the supplies weren't here on time."
Torrance stared at Sharpe in horror.
"Wellesley wants to see me?"
"Six o'clock, sir, at his tent."
"Oh, Christ! " Torrance threw his cocked hat across the room. Just because the supplies were a little late?"
"Twelve hours late, sir."
Torrance glared at Sharpe, then fished a watch from his fob.
"It's half past five already! God help us! Can't you brush that coat, Sharpe?"
"He don't want to see me, sir. Just you."
"Well, he's bloody well going to see both of us. Clean uniform, Sharpe, hair brushed, paws washed, face scrubbed, Sunday best."
Torrance frowned suddenly.
"Why didn't you tell me you saved Wellesley's life?"
"Is that what I did, sir?"
"I mean, good God, man, he must be grateful to you?" Torrance asked. Sharpe just shrugged.
"You saved his life, " Torrance insisted, 'and that means he's in your debt, and you must use the advantage. Tell him we don't have enough men to run the supply train properly. Put in a good word for me, Sharpe, and I'll repay the favour. Brick! Forget the food! I need a clean stock, boots polished, hat brushed. And give my dress coat a pressing!»
Sergeant Hakeswill edged through the door.
"Your am mock sir, " he said to Torrance, then saw Sharpe and a slow grin spread across his face.
"Look who it isn't. Sharpie!»
Torrance wheeled on the Sergeant.
"Mister Sharpe is an officer, Hakeswill! In this unit we do observe the proprieties!»
"Quite forgot myself, sir, " Hakeswill said, his face twitching, 'on account of being reunited with an old comrade. Mister Sharpe, ever so pleased to see you, sir."
"Lying bastard, " Sharpe said.
"Ain't officers supposed to observe the properties, sir?" Hakeswill demanded of Torrance, but the Captain had gone in search of his native servant who had charge of the luggage. Hakeswill looked back to Sharpe.
"Fated to be with you, Sharpie."
"9
"You stay out of my light, Obadiah, " Sharpe said, 'or I'll slit your throat."
"I can't be killed, Sharpie, can't be killed! " Hakeswill's face wrenched itself in a series of twitches.
"It says so in the scriptures." He looked Sharpe up and down, then shook his head ruefully.
"I've seen better things dangling off the tails of sheep, I have. You ain't an officer, Sharpie, you're a bleeding disgrace."
Torrance backed into the house, shouting at his servant to drape the windows with muslin, then turned and hurried to the kitchen to harry Clare. He tripped over Sharpe's pack and swore.
"Whose is this?"
«Mine,» Sharpe said.
"You're not thinking of billeting yourself here, are you, Sharpe?"
"Good as anywhere, sir."
"I like my privacy, Sharpe. Find somewhere else." Torrance suddenly remembered he was speaking to a man who might have influence with Wellesley.
"If you'd be so kind, Sharpe. I just can't abide being crowded.
An affliction, I know, but there it is. I need solitude, it's my nature.
Brick! Did I tell you to brush my hat? And the plume needs a combing."
Sharpe picked up his pack and walked out to the small garden where Ahmed was sharpening his new tulwar. Clare Wall followed him into the sunlight, muttered something under her breath, then sat and started to polish one of Torrance's boots.
"Why the hell do you stay with him?"
Sharpe asked.
She paused to look at Sharpe. She had oddly hooded eyes that gave her face an air of delicate mystery.
"What choice do I have?" she asked, resuming her polishing.
Sharpe sat beside her, picked up the other boot and rubbed it with blackball.
"So what's he going to do if you bugger off?"
She shrugged.
"I owe him money."
"Like hell. How can you owe him money?"
"He brought my husband and me here, " she said, 'paid our passage from England. We agreed to stay three years. Then Charlie died." She paused again, her eyes suddenly gleaming, then sniffed and began to polish the boot obsessively.
Sharpe looked at her. She had dark eyes, curling black hair and a long upper lip. If she was not so tired and miserable, he thought, she would be a very pretty woman.
"How old are you, love?"
She gave him a sceptical glance.
"Who's your woman in Seringapatam, then?"
"She's a Frenchie, " Sharpe said.
"A widow, like you."
"Officer's widow?" Clare asked. Sharpe nodded.
"And you're to marry her?" Clare asked.
"Nothing like that, " Sharpe said.
"Like what, then?" she asked.
"I don't know, really." Sharpe said. He spat on the boot's flank and rubbed the spittle into the bootblack.
"But you like her?" Clare asked, picking the dirt from the boot's spur. She seemed embarrassed to have posed the question, for she hurried on.
"I'm nineteen, " she said, 'but nearly twenty."
"Then you're old enough to see a lawyer, " Sharpe said.
"You ain't indentured to the Captain. You have to sign papers, don't you? Or make your mark on a paper. That's how it was done in the foundling home where they dumped me. Wanted to make me into a chimney sweep, they did! Bloody hell! But if you didn't sign indenture papers, you should talk to a lawyer."
Clare paused, staring at a sad tree in the courtyard's centre that was dying from the drought.
"I wanted to get married a year back, " she said softly, 'and that's what Tom told me. He were called Tom, see? A cavalryman, he was. Only a youngster."
"What happened?"
«Fever,» she said bleakly.
"But it wouldn't have worked anyway, because Torrance wouldn't ever let me marry." She began polishing the boot again.
"He said he'd see me dead first." She shook her head.
"But what's the point in seeing a lawyer? You think a lawyer would talk to me? They like money, lawyers do, and do you know a lawyer in India that ain't in the Company's pocket? Mind you' she glanced towards the house to make sure she was not being overheard 'he hasn't got any money either. He gets an allowance from his uncle and his Company pay and he gambles it all away, but he always seems to find more." She paused.
"And what would I do if I walked away?" She left the question hanging in the warm air, then shook her head.
"I'm miles from bleeding home. I don't know. He was good to me at first. I liked him! I didn't know him then, you see." She half smiled.
"Funny, isn't it? You think because someone's a gentleman and the son of a clergyman that they have to be kind? But he ain't." She vigorously brushed the boot's tassel.
"And he's been worse since he met that Hakeswill. I do hate him." She sighed.
"Just fourteen months to go, " she said wearily, 'and then I'll have paid the debt."
"Hell, no, " Sharpe said.
"Walk away from the bugger."
She picked up Torrance's hat and began brushing it.
"I don't have family, " she said, 'so where would I go?"
"You're an orphan?"
She nodded.
"I got work as a house girl in Torrance's uncle's house.
That's where I met Charlie. He were a footman. Then Mr. Henry, that's his uncle, see, said we should join the Captain's household. Charlie became Captain Torrance's valet. That was a step up. And the money was better, only we weren't paid, not once we were in Madras. He said we had to pay our passage."
"What the devil are you doing, Sharpe?" Torrance had come into the garden.
"You're not supposed to clean boots! You're an officer!»
Sharpe tossed the boot at Torrance. "I keep forgetting, sir."
If you must clean boots, Sharpe, start with your own. Good God, man! You look like a tinker!»
"The General's seen me looking worse, " Sharpe said.
"Besides, he never did care what men looked like, sir, so long as they do their job properly."
"I do mine properly! " Torrance bridled at the implication.
"I just need more staff. You tell him that, Sharpe, you tell him! Give me that hat, Brick! We're late."
In fact Torrance arrived early at the General's tent and had to kick his heels in the evening sunshine.
"What exactly did the General say when he summoned me?" he asked Sharpe.
"He sent an aide, sir. Captain Campbell. Wanted to know where the supplies were."
"You told him they were coming?"
"Told him the truth, sir."
"Which was?"
"That I didn't bloody well know where they were."
"Oh, Christ! Thank you, Sharpe, thank you very much." Torrance twitched at his sash, making the silk fall more elegantly.
"Do you know what loyalty is?"
Before Sharpe could answer the tent flaps were pushed aside and Captain Campbell ducked out into the sunlight.
"Wasn't expecting you, Sharpe! " he said genially, holding out his hand.
Sharpe shook hands.
"How are you, sir?"
«Busy,» Campbell said.
"You don't have to go in if you don't want."
"He does, " Torrance said.
Sharpe shrugged.
"Might as well, " he said, then ducked into the tent's yellow light as Campbell pulled back the flap.
The General was in his shirtsleeves, sitting behind a table that was covered with Major Blackiston's sketches of the land bridge to Gawilghur. Blackiston was beside him, travel-stained and tired, while an irascible-looking major of the Royal Engineers stood two paces behind the table. If the General was surprised to see Sharpe he showed no sign of it, but instead looked back to the drawings.
"How wide is the approach?" he asked.
"At its narrowest, sir, about fifty feet." Blackiston tapped one of the sketches.
"It's wide enough for most of the approach, two or three hundred yards, but just here there's a tank and it squeezes the path cruelly. A ravine to the left, a tank to the right."
"Fall to your death on one side, " the General said, 'and drown on the other. And doubtless the fifty feet between is covered by their guns?"
"Smothered, sir. Must be twenty heavy cannon looking down the throat of the approach, and God knows how much smaller metal.
Plenty."
Wellesley removed the inkwells that had been serving as weights so that the drawings rolled up with a snap.
"Not much choice, though, is there?" he asked.
"None, sir."
Wellesley looked up suddenly, his eyes seeming very blue in the tent's half light.
"The supply train is twelve hours late, Captain. Why?"
He spoke quietly, but even Sharpe felt a shiver go through him.
Torrance, his cocked hat held beneath his left arm, was sweating.
"I. I.. " he said, too nervous to speak properly, but then he took a deep breath.
"I was ill, sir, and unable to supervise properly, and my clerk failed to issue the chitties It was a most regrettable occurrence, sir, and I can assure you it will not happen again."
The General stared at Torrance in silence for a few seconds.
"Colonel Wallace gave you Ensign Sharpe as an assistant? Did Sharpe also fail to obey your orders?"
"I had sent Mister Sharpe ahead, sir, " Torrance said. The sweat was now pouring down his face and dripping from his chin.
"So why did the clerk fail in his duties?"
"Treachery, sir, " Torrance said.
The answer surprised Wellesley, as it was meant to. He tapped his pencil on the table's edge.
"Treachery?" he asked in a low voice.
"It seemed the clerk was in league with a merchant, sir, and had been selling him supplies. And this morning, sir, when he should have been issuing the chitties he was employed on his own business."
"And you were too ill to detect his treachery?"
"Yes, sir, " Torrance said almost pleadingly.
"At first, sir, yes, sir."
Wellesley gazed at Torrance for a few silent seconds, and the Captain had the uncomfortable feeling that the blue eyes saw right into his soul.
"So where is this treacherous clerk now, Captain?" Wellesley asked at last.
"We hanged him, sir, " Torrance said and Sharpe, who had not heard of Dilip's death, stared at him in astonishment.
The General slapped the table, making Torrance jump in alarm.
"You seem very fond of hanging, Captain Torrance?"
"A necessary remedy for theft, sir, as you have made plain."
"I, sir? I?" The General's voice, when he became angry, did not become louder, but more precise and, therefore, more chilling.
"The general order mandating summary death by hanging for thievery, Captain, applies to men in uniform. King's and Company men only. It does not apply to civilians. Does the dead man have family?"
"No, sir, " Torrance said. He did not really know the answer, but decided it was better to say no than to prevaricate.
"If he does, Captain, " Wellesley said softly, 'and if they complain, then I shall have no choice but to put you on trial, and depend upon it, sir, that trial will be in the civilian courts."
"I apologize, sir, " Torrance said stiffly, 'for my over-zealousness."
The General stayed silent for a few seconds.
"Supplies were missing, " he said after a while.
"Yes, sir, " Torrance agreed weakly.
"Yet you never reported the thefts?" Wellesley said.
"I did not believe you wished to be troubled by every mishap, sir, " Torrance said.
«Mishap!» Wellesley snapped.
"Muskets are stolen, and you call that a mishap? Such mishaps, Captain Torrance, lose wars. In future you will inform my staff when such depredations are made." He stared at
Torrance for a few seconds, then looked at Sharpe.
"Colonel Huddlestone tells me it was you, Sharpe, who discovered the missing supplies?"
"All but the muskets, sir. They're still missing."
"How did you know where to look?"
"Captain Torrance's clerk told me where to buy supplies, sir." Sharpe shrugged.
"I guessed they were the missing items, sir."
Wellesley grunted. Sharpe's answer appeared to confirm Torrance's accusations, and the Captain gave Sharpe a grateful glance. Wellesley saw the glance and rapped the table, demanding Torrance's attention.
"It is a pity, Captain, that we could not have questioned the merchant before you so summarily executed him. May I presume you did interrogate the clerk?"
"My sergeant did, sir, and the wretch confessed to having sold items to Naig." Torrance blushed as he told the lie, but it was so hot in the tent and he was sweating so heavily that the blush went unnoticed.
"Your sergeant?" Wellesley asked.
"You mean your havildar?"
"Sergeant, sir, " Torrance said.
"I inherited him from Captain Mackay, sir. Sergeant Hakeswill."
«Hakeswill!» the General said in astonishment.
"What's he still doing here? He should be back with his regiment!»
"He stayed on, sir, " Torrance said, 'with two of his men. His other two died, sir, fever. And he had no alternative orders, sir, and he was too useful to let go, sir."
«Useful!» Wellesley said. He had been the commanding officer of the 33rd, Hakeswill's regiment, and he knew the Sergeant well. He shook his head.
"If you find him useful, Torrance, then he can stay till Gawilghur's fallen. But then he returns to his regiment. You'll make sure of that, Campbell?"
"Yes, sir, " the aide said.
"But I believe some of the 33rd are on their way here, sir, so the Sergeant can return with them."
"The 33rd coming here?" Wellesley asked in surprise. "I ordered no such thing."
"Just a company, sir, " Campbell explained.
"I believe headquarters detailed them to escort a convoy."
"Doubtless we can make use of them, " the General said grudgingly.
"Is it awkward for you, Sharpe? Serving with Hakeswill?" Officers who were promoted from the ranks were never expected to serve with their old regiments, and Wellesley was plainly wondering whether Sharpe found his old comrades an embarrassment.
"I daresay you'll get by, " the General said, not waiting for an answer.
"You usually do. Wallace tells me he's recommended you for the Rifles?"
"Yes, sir."
"That could suit you, Sharpe. Suit you very well. In the meantime, the more you learn about supplies, the better." The cold eyes looked back to Torrance, though it appeared the General was still talking to Sharpe.
"There is a misapprehension in this army that supplies are of small importance, whereas wars are won by efficient supply, more than they are won by acts of gallantry. Which is why I want no more delays."
"There will be none, sir, " Torrance said hastily.
"And if there are, " Wellesley said, 'there will be a court martial. You may depend upon that, Captain. Major Elliott?" The General spoke to the engineer who until now had been a spectator of Torrance's discomfiture.
"Tell me what you need to build our road, Major."
"A hundred bullocks, " Elliott said sourly, 'and none of your spavined beasts, Torrance. I want a hundred prime Mysore oxen to carry timber and road stone. I'll need rice every day for a half-battalion of sepoys and an equivalent number of pioneers."
"Of course, sir, " Torrance said.
"And I'll take him' Elliott stabbed a finger at Sharpe 'because I need someone in charge of the bullocks who knows what he's doing."
Torrance opened his mouth to protest, then sensibly shut it.
Wellesley glanced at iSharpe.
"You'll attach yourself to Major Elliott, Sharpe. Be with him at dawn tomorrow, with the bullocks, and you, Captain Torrance, will ensure the daily supplies go up the road every dawn. And I want no more summary hangings."
"Of course not, sir." Torrartce, relieved to be let off so lightly, ducked his head in an awkward bow.
"Good day to you both, " the General said sourly, then watched as the two officers left the tent. He rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn.
"How long to drive the road, Elliott?"
"Two weeks?" the Major suggested.
"You've got one week. One week! " The General forestalled Elliott's protest.
"Good day to you, Elliott."
The engineer grumbled as he ducked out into the fading light.
Wellesley grimaced. "Is Torrance to be trusted?" he asked.
"Comes from a good family, sir, " Blackiston said.
"So did Nero, as I recall, " Wellesley retorted.
"But at least Torrance has got Sharpe, and even if Sharpe won't make a good officer, he's got the makings of a decent sergeant. He did well to find those supplies."
"Very well, sir, " Campbell said warmly.
Wellesley leaned back in his chair. A flicker of distaste showed on his face as he recalled the terrible moment when he had been unhorsed at Assaye. He did not remember much of the incident for he had been dazed, but he did recall watching Sharpe kill with a savagery that had astonished him. He disliked being beholden to such a man, but the General knew he would not be alive if Sharpe had not risked his own life.
"I should never have given Sharpe a commission, " he said ruefully.
"A
man like that would have been quite content with a fiscal reward. A fungible reward. That's what our men want, Campbell, something that can be turned into rum or arrack."
"He appears to be a sober man, sir, " Campbell said.
"Probably because he can't afford the drink! Officers' messes are damned expensive places, Campbell, as you well know. I reward Sharpe by plunging him into debt, eh? And God knows if the Rifles are any cheaper. I can't imagine they will be. He needs something fungible, Campbell, something fungible." Wellesley turned and rummaged in the saddlebags that were piled behind his chair. He brought out the new telescope with the shallow eyepiece that had been a gift from the merchants of Madras.
"Find a goldsmith in the camp followers, Campbell, and see if the fellow can replace that brass plate."
"With what, sir?"
Nothing too flowery, the General thought, because the glass was only going to be pawned to pay mess bills or buy gin.
"In gratitude, AW, " he said, 'and add the date of Assaye. Then give it to Sharpe with my compliments."
"It's very generous of you, sir, " Campbell said, taking the glass, 'but perhaps it would be better if you presented it to him?"
"Maybe, maybe. Blackiston! Where do we site guns?" The General unrolled the sketches.
«Candles,» he ordered, for the light was fading fast.
The shadows stretched and joined and turned to night around the British camp. Candles were lit, lanterns hung from ridge-poles and fires fed with bullock dung. The picquets stared at shadows in the darkness, but some, lifting their gaze, saw that high above them the tops of the cliffs were still in daylight and there, like the home of the gods, the walls of a fortress showed deadly black where Gawilghur waited their coming.