Morris, slouching in a chair in front of Gore’s table with a thick bandage on his head, seemed surprised to be asked, but he straightened himself and offered the Colonel a feeble shrug.
“I don’t really recall, sir.
It was two nights ago, in Seringapatam, and I was hit, sir.”
Gore brushed the spider aside and made a note.
“Hit,” he said as he wrote the word in his fine copperplate hand.
“Where exactly?”
“On the head, sir,” Morris answered.
Gore sighed.
“I see that, Captain. I meant where in Seringapatam?”
“By the armoury, sir.”
“And this was at night?”
Morris nodded.
“Black night, sir,” Hakeswill put in helpfully, ‘black as a blackamoor’s backside, sir.”
The Colonel frowned at the Sergeant’s indelicacy. Gore was resisting the urge to push a hand inside his coat and scratch his belly. He feared he had caught the Malabar Itch, a foul complaint that would condemn him to weeks of living with a salve of lard on his skin, and if the lard failed he would be reduced to taking baths in a solution of nitric acid.
“If it was dark,” he said patiently, ‘then surely you had no chance to see your assailant?”
“I didn’t, sir,” Morris replied truthfully.
“But I did, sir,” Hakeswill said, ‘and it was Sharpie. Saw him clear as daylight, sir.”
“At night?” Gore asked sceptic ally
“He was working late, sir,” Hakeswill said, ‘on account of him not having done his proper work in the daylight like a Christian should, sir, and he opened the door, sir, and the lantern was lit, sir, and he came out and hit the Captain, sir.”
“And you saw that?”
“Clear as I can see you now, sir,” Hakeswill said, his face racked with a series of violent twitches.
Gore’s hand strayed to his coat buttons, but he resisted the urge.
“If you saw it, Sergeant, why didn’t you have Sharpe arrested? There were sentries present, surely?”
“More important to save the Captain’s life, sir. That’s what I deemed, sir. Get him back here, sir, into Mister Micklewhite’s care. Don’t trust other surgeons, sir. And I had to clean up Mister Morris, sir, I did.”
“The blood, you mean?”
Hakeswill shook his head.
“The substances, sir.” He stared woodenly over Colonel Gore’s head as he spoke.
“Substances?”
Hakeswill’s face twitched.
“Begging your pardon, sir, as you being a gentleman as won’t want to hear it, sir, but Sergeant Sharpe hit Captain Morris with a jakes pot, sir. A full Jakes pot, sir, liquid and solids.”
“Oh, God,” Gore said, laying down his pen and trying to ignore the fiery itch across his belly.
“I still don’t understand why you did nothing in Seringapatam,” the Colonel said.
“The Town Major should have been told, surely?”
“That’s just it, sir,” Hakeswill said enthusiastically, ‘on account of there not being a Town Major, not proper, seeing as Major Stokes does the duties, sir, and the rest is up to the Rajah’s hlladar and I don’t like seeing a redcoat being arrested by a darkie, sir, not even Sharpe. It ain’t right, that. And Major Stokes, he won’t help, sir. He likes
Sharpe, see? He lets him live comfortable, sir. Off the fat of the land, sir, like it says in the scriptures. Got himself a set of rooms and a bibbi, he has, and a servant, too. Ain’t right, sir. Too comfortable, sir, whiles the rest of us sweats like the soldiers we swore to be.”
The explanation made some sort of sense, or at least Gore appreciated that it might convince Sergeant Hakeswill, yet there was still something odd about the whole tale.
“What were you doing at the armoury after dark, Captain?”
“Making certain the full complement of wagons was there, sir,” Morris answered.
“Sergeant Hakeswill informed me that one was missing.”
“And was it?”
“No, sir,” Morris said.
“Miscounted, sir,” Hakeswill said, ‘on account of it being dark, sir.”
Hakeswill had indeed summoned Morris to the armoury after dark, and there he had hit the Captain with a baulk of timber and, for good measure, had added the contents of a chamber pot that Major Stokes had left outside his office. The sentries had been sheltering from the rain in the guardhouse and none had questioned the sight of Hakeswill dragging the recumbent Morris back to his quarters, for the sight of drunken officers being taken home by sergeants or privates was too common to be remarkable. The important thing was that Morris had not seen who assaulted him and was quite prepared to believe Hakes-will’s version, for Morris relied utterly on Hakeswill in everything.