“Tell me, sir,” Sharpe said, wondering why in holy hell Obadiah Hakeswill had been looking for him. For nothing good, that was certain.
“Those teak beams in the Tippoo’s old throne room,” Stokes said, ‘they’ll be seasoned well enough. We could break out a half-dozen of the things and make a batch of axletrees from them!”
“The gilded beams, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“Soon have the gilding off them, Sharpe. Plane them down in twof shakes!”
“The Rajah may not like it, sir,” Sharpe said.
Stokes’s face fell.
“There is that, there is that. A fellow don’t usually like his ceilings being pulled down to make gun carriages. Still, the Rajah’s usually most obliging if you can get past his damned courtiers.
The clock is his. Strikes eight when it should ring nine, or perhaps it’s the other way round. You reckon that quoin’s true?”
Sharpe glanced at the wedge which lowered and raised the cannon barrel.
“Looks good, sir.”
“I might just plane her down a shade. I wonder if our templates are out of true? We might check that. Isn’t this rain splendid? The flowers were wilting, wilting! But I’ll have a fine show this year with a spot of rain. You must come and see them.”
“You still want me to stay here, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“Stay here?” Stokes, who was placing the quoin in a vice, turned to look at Sharpe.
“Of course I want you to stay here, Sergeant. Best man I’ve got!”
“I lost six men, sir.”
“And it wasn’t your fault, not your fault at all. I’ll get you another six.”
Sharpe wished it was that easy, but he could not chase the guilt of Chasalgaon out of his mind. When the massacre was finished he had wandered about the fort in a half-daze. Most of the women and children still lived, but they had been frightened and had shrunk away from him. Captain Roberts, the second in command of the fort, had returned from patrol that afternoon and he had vomited when he saw the horror inside the cactus-thorn wall.
Sharpe had made his report to Roberts who had sent it by messenger to Hurryhur, the army’s headquarters, then dismissed Sharpe.
“There’ll be an enquiry, I suppose,” Roberts had told Sharpe, ‘so doubtless your evidence will be needed, but you might as well wait in Seringapatam.”
And so Sharpe, with no other orders, had walked home. He had returned the bag of rupees to Major Stokes, and now, obscurely, he wanted some punishment from the Major, but Stokes was far more concerned about the angle of the quoin.
“I’ve seen screws shatter because the angle was too steep, and it ain’t no good having broken screws in battle. I’ve seen Frog guns with metal led quoins, but they only rust. Can’t trust a Frog to keep them greased, you see. You’re brooding, Sharpe.”
“Can’t help it, sir.”
“Doesn’t do to brood. Leave brooding to poets and priests, eh? Those sorts of fellows are paid to brood. You have to get on with life. What could you have done?”
“Killed one of the bastards, sir.”
“And they’d have killed you, and you wouldn’t have liked that and nor would I. Look at that angle! Look at that! I do like a fine angle, I declare I do. We must check it against the templates. How’s your head?”
“Mending, sir.” Sharpe touched the bandage that wrapped his forehead.
“No pain now, sir.”
“Providence, Sharpe, that’s what it is, providence. The good Lord in His ineffable mercy wanted you to live.” Stokes released the vice and restored the quoin to the carriage.
“A touch of paint on that trail and it’ll be ready. You think the Rajah might give me one roof beam?”
“No harm in asking him, sir.”
“I will, I will. Ah, a visitor.” Stokes straightened as a horseman, swathed against the rain in an oilcloth cape and with an oilcloth cover on his cocked hat, rode into the armoury courtyard leading a second horse by the reins. The visitor kicked his feet from the stirrups, swung down from the saddle, tiien tied both horses’ reins to one of the shed’s pillars.
Major Stokes, his clothes just in their beginning stage of becoming dirty and dishevelled, smiled at the tall newcomer whose cocked hat and sword betrayed he was an officer.