'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
