“I did. I did. Kindness of my heart, and you repays it by wanting equal shares?” HakeswilPs face shuddered.
“I’ve half a mind to send you back, Lowry.” He looked aggrieved and the privates were silent.
“Ingratitude,” Hakeswill said in a hurt voice, ‘sharp as a serpent’s tooth, it is. Equal shares! Never heard the like! But I’ll see you right, don’t you worry.” He took out the precious orders for Sharpe’s arrest and smoothed the paper on the table, carefully avoiding the spills of arrack.
“Look at that, boys,” he breathed, ‘a fortune. Half for me, and you leprous toads get to share the other half. Equally.” He paused to prod in
Lowry in the chest.
“Equally. But I gets one half, like it says in the scriptures.” He folded the paper and put it carefully in his pouch.
“Shot while escaping,” Hakeswill said, and grinned.
“I’ve waited four years for this chance, lads, four bloody years.” He brooded for a few seconds.
“Put me in among the tigers, he did! Me! In a tigers’ den!” His face contorted in a rictus at the memory.
“But they spared me, they spared me. And you know why? Because I can’t die, lads! Touched by God, I am! Says so in the scriptures.”
The six privates were silent. Mad, he was, mad as a twitching hatter, and no one knew why hatters were mad either, but they were. Even the army was reluctant to recruit a hatter because they dribbled and twitched and talked to themselves, but they had taken on Hakeswill and he had survived; malevolent, powerful and apparently indestructible.
Sharpe had put him among the Tippoo’s tigers, yet the tigers were dead and Hakeswill still breathed. He was a bad man to have as an enemy, and now the piece of paper in Hakeswill’s pouch put Sharpe into his power and Obadiah could taste the money already. A fortune.
All that was needed was to travel north, join the army, produce the warrant and skin the victim. Obadiah shuddered. The money was so near he could almost spend it already.
“Got him,” he said to himself, ‘got him. And I’ll piss on his rotten corpse, I will. Piss on it good.
That’ll learn him.”
The seven men left Seringapatam in the morning, travelling north.
CHAPTER 5
Sharpe was curiously relieved when Colonel McCandless found him next morning, for the mood in the small upper rooms was awkward.
Simone seemed ashamed by what had happened in the night and, when Sharpe tried to speak to her, she shook her head abruptly and would not meet his eye. She did try to explain to him, mumbling about the arrack and the jewels, and about her disappointment in marriage, but she could not frame her words in adequate English, though no language was needed to show that she regretted what had happened, which was why Sharpe was glad to hear McCandless’s voice in the alley beyond the staircase.
“I thought I told you to let me know where you were!” McCandless complained when Sharpe appeared at the top of the steps.
“I did, sir,” Sharpe lied.
“I told an ensign of the 778th to find you, sir.”
“He never arrived!” McCandless said as he climbed the outside stairs.
“Are you telling me you spent the night alone with this woman, Sergeant?”
“You told me to protect her. sir.”
“I didn’t tell you to risk her honour! You should have sought me out.”
“Didn’t want to bother you, sir.”
“Duty is never a bother, Sharpe,” McCandless said when he reached the small balcony at the stair head.
“The General expressed a wish to dine with Madame Joubert and I had to explain she was indisposed. I lied, Sharpe!” The Colonel thrust an indignant finger at Sharpe’s chest.
“But what else could I do? I could hardly admit I’d left her alone with a sergeant!”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“There’s no harm done, I suppose,” McCandless said grudgingly, then took off his hat as he followed Sharpe into the living room where Simone sat at the table.
“Good morning, Madame,” the Colonel boomed cheerfully.
“I trust you slept well?”
“Indeed, Colonel,” Simone said, blushing, but McCandless was far too obtuse to see or to interpret the blush.