Sharpe's Triumph (27 page)

Sharpe had stopped listening. He had heard a commotion behind as a group of army wives
were thrust off the road and had turned to see who had barged the women aside and, at first,
all he had seen was a group of redcoats. Then he had recognized the red facings on the
jackets and he had wondered what on earth men of the 33rd were doing here, and then he had
recognized Sergeant Hakeswill.

Obadiah Hakeswill! Of all people, Hakeswill! Sharpe stared in horror at his long-time
enemy and Obadiah Hakeswill caught his eye and grinned maliciously and Sharpe knew that
his appearance boded no good.

Hakeswill broke into a lumbering run so that his haversack, pouches, bayonet and
musket thumped against his body.

“Sir!” he called up to Colonel McCandless.

“Colonel McCandless, sir!”

McCandless turned and frowned at the interruption, then, like Sharpe, he stared at the
Sergeant as though he did not believe his eyes.

McCandless knew Hakeswill, for Hakeswill had been imprisoned in the Tippoo Sultan's
dungeons at the same time as Sharpe and the Colonel, and what McCandless knew he did not
like. The Scotsman scowled.

“Sergeant Hakeswill? You're far from home.”

“As are we all, sir, doing our duties to King and country in an eat hen land, sir.”
Hakeswill slowed to a march, keeping pace with the Scotsman's horse.

“I'm ordered to see you, sir, by the General himself, sir. By Sir Arthur Wellesley,
sir, God bless him, sir.”

“I know who the General is, Sergeant,” McCandless said coldly.

“Glad to hear it, sir. Got a paper for you, sir. Urgent paper, sir, what needs your
urgent attention, sir.” Hakeswill gave a venomous glance at Sharpe, then held the warrant
up to McCandless.

“This paper, sir, what I've been carrying in my pouch, sir, on Colonel Gore's orders,
sir.”

McCandless unfolded the warrant. Sevajee had hurried ahead, going to find
somewhere to billet his men in the village and, while McCandless read the orders for
Sharpe's arrest, Hakeswill fell back so that he was walking beside Sharpe.

“We'll have you off that horse in a quick minute, Sharpie,” he said.

“Go and boil your head, Obadiah.”

"You always did have ideas above your station, Sharpie. Won't do!

Not in this army. We ain't the Frogs. We don't wear pretty long red boots like yours, we
don't, 'cos we don't have airs and graces, not in this army. Says so in the scriptures."

Sharpe tugged on his rein so that his small horse swerved into Hakeswill's path. The
Sergeant skipped aside.

“Under arrest, you are, Sharpie!” Hakeswill crowed.

“Under arrest! Court-martial offence. Be a shooting job, I dare say.” Hakeswill
grinned, showing his yellow teeth.

“Bang bang, you're dead. Taken me a long time, Sharpie, but I'm going to be evens with
you. All over for you, it is. Says so in the scriptures.”

“It says nothing of the sort, Sergeant!” McCandless snapped, turning in his saddle and
glaring at the Sergeant.

“I've had occasion to speak to you before about the scriptures, and if I hear you cite
their authority one more time I shall break you, Sergeant Hakeswill, I shall break you!”

“Sir!” Hakeswill acknowledged. He doubted that McCandless, a Company officer, could
break anyone in the King's army, at least not without a deal of effort, but he did not let
his scepticism show for Obadiah Hakeswill believed in showing complete subservience to
all officers.

“Never meant to upset you, sir,” he said, 'apologize, sir. No offence meant, sir."

McCandless read the warrant a third time. Something about the wording worried him, but
he could not quite place his concern.

“It says here, Sharpe,” McCandless said, 'that you struck an officer on August the
fifth this year."

“I did what, sir?” Sharpe asked, horrified.

“Assaulted Captain Morris. Here.” And McCandless thrust the warrant towards
Sharpe.

“Take it, man. Read it.”

Sharpe took the paper and while he read Sergeant Hakeswill embellished the charge to
Colonel McCandless.

“An assault, sir, with a jakes pot, sir. A full one, sir. Liquids and solids, sir, both.
Right on the Captain's head, sir.”

“And you were the only witness?” McCandless asked.

“Me and Captain Morris, sir.”

“I don't believe a word of it,” McCandless growled.

“Up to a court to decide, sir, begging your pardon. Your job, sir, is to deliver the
prisoner to my keeping.”

“You do not instruct me in my duties, Sergeant!” McCandless said angrily.

“I just knows you will do your duty, sir, like we all does. Except for some as I could
mention.” Hakeswill smiled at Sharpe.

“Finding the long words difficult, are we, Sharpie?”

McCandless reached over and took the warrant back from Sharpe, who had, indeed, been
finding some of the longer words difficult. The Colonel had expressed his disbelief in
the charge, but that was more out of loyalty to Sharpe than from any conviction, though
there was still something out of kilter in the warrant.

“Is it true, Sharpe?” McCandless now asked.

“No, sir!” Sharpe said indignantly.

“He was always a good liar, sir,” Hakeswill said helpfully.

“Lies like a rug, sir, he does. Famous for it.” The Sergeant was becoming breathless as
he hurried to keep pace with the Scotsman's horse.

“So what do you intend to do with Sergeant Sharpe?” McCandless asked.

“Do, sir? Do my duty, of course, sir. Escort the prisoner back to battalion, sir, as
is ordered.” Hakeswill gestured at his six men who marched a few paces behind.

“We'll guard him nice and proper, sir, all the way home and then have him stand trial for
his filthy crime.”

McCandless bit his right thumb and shook his head. He rode in silence for a few paces,
and when Sharpe protested he ignored the indignant words. He put the warrant in his right
hand again and seemed to read it yet another time. Far off to the east, at least a mile away,
there was a sudden flurry of dust and the sparkle of sword blades catching the sun. Some
enemy horsemen had been waiting in a grove of trees from where they had been watching the
British march, but now they were flushed out by a troop of Mysore horsemen who pursued them
northwards. McCandless glanced at the distant action.

"So they'll know we're here now, more's the pity. How do you spell your name, Sharpe?

With or without an “e”?"

“With, sir.”

“You will correct me if I'm wrong,” McCandless said, 'but it seems to me that this is not
your name." He handed the warrant back to Sharpe who saw that the 'e' at the end of his name
had been smeared out.

There was a smudge of black ink there, and beneath it the impression of the 'e' made by
the steel nib in the paper, but the ink had been diluted and nearly erased.

Sharpe hid his astonishment that McCandless, a stickler for honesty and
straight-dealing, had resorted to such a subterfuge.

“Not my name, sir,” Sharpe said woodenly.

Hakeswill looked from Sharpe to McCandless, then back to Sharpe and finally at
McCandless again.

“Sir!” The word exploded from him.

“You're out of breath, Sergeant,” McCandless said, taking the warrant back from
Sharpe.

“But you will see here that you are expressly ordered to arrest a sergeant whose name is
Richard Sharp. No ”e“, Sergeant. This Sergeant Sharpe uses an ”e“ on his name so he cannot be
the man you want, and I certainly cannot release him to your custody on the authority of
this piece of paper. Here.” McCandless held the warrant out, letting it drop a heartbeat
before Hakeswill could take it.

The paper fluttered down to the dusty road.

Hakeswill snatched the warrant up and peered at the writing.

“Ink's run, sir!” he protested.

“Sir?” He ran after McCandless's horse, stumbling on the uneven road.

“Look, sir! Ink's run, sir.”

McCandless ignored the offered warrant.

“It is clear, Sergeant Hakeswill, that the spelling of the name has been corrected. In all
conscience I cannot act upon that warrant. What you must do, Sergeant, is send a message
to Lieutenant Colonel Gore asking him to clear up the confusion. A new warrant, I think,
would be best, and until such time as I see such a warrant, legibly written, I cannot
release Sergeant Sharpe from his present duties. Good day, Hakeswill.”

“You can't do this, sir!” Hakeswill protested.

McCandless smiled.

"You fundamentally misunderstand the hierarchy of the army, Sergeant. It is I, a
colonel, who define your duties, not you, a sergeant, who define mine.

“I say to a man, go, and he goeth.” It says so in the scriptures. I bid you good day." And
with that the Scotsman touched his spurs to the gelding's flanks.

Hakeswill's face twitched as he turned on Sharpe.

“I'll have you, Sharpie, I will have you. I ain't forgotten nothing.”

“You ain't learned nothing either,” Sharpe said, then spurred after the Colonel. He
lifted two fingers as he passed Hakeswill, then left him behind in the dust.

He was, for the moment, free.

Simone Joubert placed the eight diamonds on the window ledge of the tiny house where the
wives of Scindia's European officers had been quartered. She was alone for the moment,
for the other women had gone to visit the three compoos that were stationed on the
Kaitna's northern bank, but Simone had not wanted their company and so she had pleaded a
turbulent stomach, though she supposed she ought to visit Pierre before the battle, if
indeed there was to be a fight. Not that Simone cared much. Let them have their battle, she
thought, and at the end of it, when the river was dark with British blood, her life would be
no better. She gazed at the diamonds again, thinking about the man who had given them to
her. Pierre would be angry if he learned she was concealing such wealth, but once his anger
had passed he would sell the stones and send the money back to his rapacious family in
France.

“Madame Joubert!” A voice hailed her from outside the window and Simone guiltily swept
the diamonds into her small purse, though, because she was on an upper floor, no one could
see the gems. She peered down from the window and saw a cheerful Colonel Pohlmann in
shirtsleeves and braces standing among the straw in the courtyard of the neighbouring
house.

“Colonel,” she responded dutifully.

“I am hiding my elephants,” the Colonel said, gesturing at the three beasts which were
being led into the courtyard. The tallest carried Pohlmann's howdah, while the other two
were burdened with the wooden chests in which the Colonel was reputed to keep his gold.

“Might I leave you to guard my menagerie?” the Colonel asked.

“From what?” Simone asked.

“From thieves,” the Colonel said happily.

“Not the British?”

“They will never reach this far, Madame,” Pohlmann said, 'except as prisoners." And
Simone had a sudden vision of Sergeant Richard Sharpe again. She had been raised to believe
that the British were a piratical race, a nation without a conscience who mindlessly
impeded the spread of French enlightenment, but perhaps, she thought, she liked
pirates.

“I will guard your elephants, Colonel,” she called down.

“And have some dinner with me?” Pohlmann asked.

“I have some cold chicken and warm wine.”

“I have promised to join Pierre,” Simone said, dreading the two-mile ride across the drab
fields to where Dodd's Cobras waited beside the Kaitna.

“Then I shall escort you to his side, Madame,” Pohlmann said courteously. Once the
battle was over he reckoned he might mount an assault on Madame Joubert's virtue. It would
be an amusing diversion, but not, he thought, an especially difficult campaign.
Unhappy women yielded to patience and sympathy, and there would be plenty of time for
both once Wellesley and Stevenson had been destroyed. And there would be a pleasure, too,
in beating Major Dodd to the prize of Simone's virtue.

Pohlmann detailed twenty of his bodyguard to guard the three elephants. He never rode
one of the beasts in battle, for an elephant became the target of every enemy gunner,
but he looked forward to mounting the howdah for a great victory parade after the
campaign. And victory would leave Pohlmann rich, rich enough to start building his great
marble palace in which he planned to hang the captured banners of his enemy. From sergeant
to princeling in ten years, and the key to that princedom was the gold that he was storing in
Assaye. He ordered his bodyguard that no one, not even the Rajah of Berar whose troops
were garrisoning the village, should be allowed into the courtyard, then he instructed
his servants to detach the golden panels from the howdah and add them to the boxes of
treasure.

“If the worst should happen,” he told the sub adar who was in charge of the men guarding
the treasure, “I'll join you here. Not that it will,” he added cheerfully.

A clatter of hooves in the alley outside the courtyard announced the arrival of a
patrol of horsemen returning from a foray south of the Kaitna. For three days Pohlmann
had kept his cavalry on a tight rein, not wanting to alarm Wellesley as the British
General marched north towards the trap, but that morning he had released a few patrols
southwards and one of those now returned with the welcome news that the enemy was only
four miles south of the Kaitna. Pohlmann already knew that the second British army, that of
Colonel Stevenson, was still ten miles off to the west, and that meant that the British had
blundered.

Wellesley, in his eagerness to reach Borkardan, had brought his men to the waiting arms
of the whole Mahratta army.

The Colonel thought about waiting for Madame Joubert, then decided he could not afford
the time and so he mounted the horse he rode in battle and, with those of his bodyguard not
deputed to guard his gold, and with a string of aides surrounding him, he galloped south
from Assaye to the Kaitna's bank where his trap was set. He passed the news to Dupont and
Saleur, then rode to prepare his own troops. He spoke with his officers, finishing with
Major William Dodd.