“So I surmised, Madame, so I surmised,” the Colonel said unhappily, implying that Sharpe had been wasting his time. More smuts swirled in the smoke down to the yard, while in the street beyond the gateway the picquets were hauling looters from the shops and houses. McCandless stared irritably at Simone who gazed placidly back. The Scotsman was a gentleman and knew the woman was now his responsibility, but he resented the duty. He cleared his throat, then found he still had nothing to say.
“Madame Joubert’s husband, sir,” Sharpe said, ‘serves in Dodd’s regiment.”
“He does, does he?” McCandless asked, showing sudden interest.
“My husband hoped to take command of the regiment when Colonel Mathers left,” Simone explained, ‘but, alas, Major Dodd arrived.” She shrugged.
The Colonel frowned.
“Why didn’t you leave with your husband?” he demanded sternly.
“That is what I was trying to do, Colonel.”
“And you were caught, eh?” The Colonel patted his horse which had been distracted by one of the burning scraps of straw.
“Tell me, Ma’am, do you have quarters in the city?”
“I did, Colonel, I did. Though if anything is left now… ?” Simone shrugged again, implying that she expected to find the quarters ransacked.
“You have servants?”
“The landlord had servants and we used them. My husband has a groom, of course.”
“But you have somewhere to stay, Ma’am,” McCandless demanded.
“I suppose so, yes.” Simone paused.
“But I am alone, Colonel.”
“Sergeant Sharpe will look after you, Ma’am,” McCandless said, then a thought struck him forcibly.
“You don’t mind doing that, do you, Sharpe?” he enquired anxiously.
“I’ll manage, sir,” Sharpe said.
“And I am just to stay here?” Simone demanded fiercely.
“Nothing else? That is all you propose, Colonel?”
“I propose, Ma’am, to reunite you with your husband,” McCandless said, ‘but it will take time. A day or two. You must be patient.”
“I am sorry, Colonel,” Simone said, regretting the tone of the questions she had shot at McCandless.
“I’m sorry to give you so unfortunate a duty, Sharpe,” McCandless said, ‘but keep the lady safe till we can arrange things. Send word to me where you are, and I’ll come and find you when everything’s arranged.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Colonel turned and spurred out of the courtyard. His spirits, which had collapsed when Dodd had marched out of the city’s northern gate, were reviving again for he saw in Simone Joubert a God-sent opportunity to ride into the heart of his enemy’s army. Restoring the woman to her husband might do nothing to visit the vengeance of the Company on Dodd, but it would surely be an unparalleled opportunity to scout Scindia’s forces and so McCandless rode to fetch Wellesley’s permission for such an excursion, while Simone led Sharpe through the exhausted streets to find her house. On their way they passed an ox cart that had been tipped backwards and weighted down with stones so that its single shaft pointed skywards. A sepoy hung from the shaft’s tip by his neck. The man was not quite dead yet and so made small spasmodic motions, and officers, both Scottish and Indian, were forcing sheepish and half-drunken men to stare at the dying sepoy as a reminder of the fate that awaited plunderers. Simone shuddered and Sharpe hurried her past, her horse’s reins in his left hand.
“Here, Sergeant,” she said, leading him into an alley that was littered with discarded plunder. Above them smoke drifted across a city where women wept and redcoats patrolled the walls. Ahmednuggur had fallen.
Major Dodd had misjudged Wellesley, and that misjudgement shook him. An escalade seemed too intrepid, too headstrong, for the man Dodd derided as Boy Wellesley. It was neither what Dodd had expected nor what he had wanted from Wellesley. Dodd had wanted caution, for a cautious enemy is more easily defeated, but instead Wellesley had shown a scathing contempt for Ahmednuggur’s defenders and launched an assault that should have been easily beaten back. If Dodd’s men had been on the ramparts directly in the path of the assault then the attack would have been defeated, of that Dodd had no doubt, for there had only been four ladders deployed and that small number made the ease and swiftness of the British victory even more humiliating. It suggested that General Sir Arthur Wellesley possessed a confidence that neither his age nor experience should have provided, and it also suggested that Dodd might have underestimated Wellesley, and that worried him. Dodd’s decision to desert to Pohlmann’s army had been forced on him by circumstance, but he had not regretted the decision, for European officers who served the Mahratta chiefs were notorious for the riches they made, and the Mahratta armies far outnumbered their British opponents and were thus likely to be the winners of this war, but if the British were suddenly to prove invincible there would be no riches and no victory. There would only be defeat and ignominious flight.