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.'
