Sharpe's Fortress (15 page)

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.