“I never did like landlords,” he said mildly.
Simone was half laughing and half afraid that the landlord would exact a terrible vengeance.
“Pierre was afraid of him,” she explained, ‘and he knows we are poor.”
“You’re not poor, love, you’re with me,” Sharpe said.
“Rich Richard?” Simone said, pleased to have made a joke in a foreign language.
“Richer then you know, love. How much thread is left?
“Thread? Ah, for the needle. You have plenty, why?”
“Because, my love, you can do me a favour,” he said, and he stripped off his pack, his belt and his jacket.
“I’m not that handy with a needle,” he explained.
“I can patch and darn, of course, but what I need now is some fine needlework. Real fine.” He sat, and Simone, intrigued, sat opposite and watched as he tipped out the contents of his pack. There were two spare shirts, his spare foot cloths, a blacking ball, a brush and the tin of flour he was supposed to use on his clubbed hair, though ever since he had ridden from Seringapatam with McCandless he had let his hair go un powdered He took out his stock, which he had similarly abandoned, then the copy of Gulliver’s Travels that Mister Lawford had given him so he could practise his reading. He had neglected that lately, and the book was damp and had lost some of its pages.
“You can read?” Simone asked, touching the book with a tentative finger.
“I’m not very good.”
“I like to read.”
“Then you can help me get better, eh?” Sharpe said, and he pulled out the folded piece of leather that was for repairing his shoes, and beneath that was a layer of sacking. He took that out, then tipped the rest of the pack’s contents onto the table. Simone gasped. There were rubies and emeralds and pearls, there was gold and more emeralds and sapphires and diamonds and one great ruby half the size of a hen’s egg.
“The thing is,” Sharpe said, ‘that there’s bound to be a battle before this Scindia fellow learns his lesson, and as like as not we won’t wear packs in a battle, on account of them being too heavy, see? So I don’t want to leave this lot in my pack to be looted by some bastard of a baggage guard.”
Simone touched one of the stones, then looked up at Sharpe with wonderment in her eyes. He was not sure that it was wise to show her the treasure, for such things were best kept very secret, but he knew he was trying to impress her, and it was evident that he had.
“Yours?” she asked.
“All mine,” he said.
Simone shook her blonde head in amazement, then began arranging the stones into ranks and files. She formed platoons of emeralds, platoons of rubies and another of pearls, there was a company of sapphires and a skirmish line of diamonds, and all of them were commanded by the great ruby.
“That belonged to the Tippoo Sultan,” Sharpe said, touching the ruby.
“He wore it in his hat.”
“The Tippoo? He’s dead, isn’t he?” Simone asked.
“And me it was who killed him,” Sharpe said proudly.
“It wasn’t really a hat, it was a cloth helmet, see? And the ruby was right in the middle, and he reckoned he couldn’t die because the hat had been dipped in the fountain of Zum-Zum.”
Simone smiled.
“Zum-Zum?”
“It’s in Mecca. Wherever the hell Mecca is. Didn’t work, though. I put a bullet in his skull, right through the bloody hat. Might as well have dunked it in the Thames for all the good it did him.”
“You are rich!” Simone said.
The problem was how to stay rich. Sharpe had not had time to make false compartments in the new pack and pouch that had replaced those he had burned at Chasalgaon, and so he had kept the stones loose in his pack. He had a layer of emeralds at the bottom of his new cartridge pouch, where they would be safe enough, but he needed secure hiding places for the other jewels. He gave a file of diamonds to Simone and she tried to refuse, then shyly accepted the stones and held one against the side of her nose where fashionable Indian women often wore just such a jewel.