“You’ve ridden a long way, Colonel,” Pohlmann said to McCandless, ‘so let me offer you refreshment. You too, Sergeant,” he included Sharpe in his invitation.
“You must be tired.”
“I’m sore after that ride, sir,” Sharpe said, dropping clumsily and gratefully from the saddle.
“You’re not used to horses, eh?” Pohlmann crossed to Sharpe and draped a genial arm about his shoulders.
“You’re an infantryman, which means you’ve got hard feet and a soft bum. Me, I never like being on a horse. You know how I go to battle? On an elephant.
That’s the way to do it, Sergeant. What’s your name?”
“Sharpe, sir.”
“Then welcome to my headquarters, Sergeant Sharpe. You’re just in time for supper.” He steered Sharpe into the tent, then stopped to let his guests stare at the lavish interior which was carpeted with soft rugs, hung with silk drapes, lit with ornate brass chandeliers and furnished with intricately carved tables and couches. McCandless scowled at such luxury, but Sharpe was impressed.
“Not bad, eh?” Pohlmann squeezed Sharpe’s shoulders.
“For a former sergeant.”
“You, sir?” Sharpe asked, pretending not to know Pohlmann’s history.
“I was a sergeant in the East India Company’s Hanoverian Regiment,” Pohlmann boasted, ‘quartered in a rat hole in Madras. Now I command a king’s army and have all these powdered fops to serve me.” He gestured at his attendant officers who, accustomed to Pohlmann’s insults, smiled tolerantly.
“Need a piss, Sergeant?” Pohlmann asked, taking his arm from Sharpe’s shoulders.
“A wash?”
“Wouldn’t mind both, sir.”
“Out the back.” He pointed the way.
“Then come back and drink with me.”
McCandless had watched this bonhomie with suspicion. He had also smelt the reek of strong liquor on Pohlmann’s breath and suspected he was doomed to an evening of hard drinking in which, even though
McCandless himself would refuse all alcohol, he would have to endure the drunken badinage of others. It was a grim prospect, and one he did not intend to endure alone.
“Not you, Sharpe,” he hissed when Sharpe returned to the tent.
“Not me what, sir?”
“You’re to stay sober, you hear me? I’m not mollycoddling your sore head all the way back to the army.”
“Of course not, sir,” Sharpe said, and for a time he tried to obey McCandless, but Pohlmann insisted Sharpe join him in a toast before supper.
“You’re not an abstainer, are you?” Pohlmann demanded of Sharpe in feigned horror when the Sergeant tried to refuse a beaker of brandy.
“You’re not a Bible-reading abstainer, are you? Don’t tell me the British army is becoming moral!”
“No, sir, not me, sir.”
“Then drink with me to King George of Hanover and of England!”
Sharpe obediently drank to the health of their joint sovereign, then to Queen Charlotte, and those twin courtesies emptied his beaker of brandy and a serving girl was summoned to fill it so that he could toast His Royal Highness George, Prince of Wales.
“You like the girl?” Pohlmann asked, gesturing at the serving girl who swerved lithely away from a French major who was trying to seize her said.
“She’s pretty, sir,” Sharpe said.
“They’re all pretty, Sergeant. I keep a dozen of them as wives, another dozen as servants, and God knows how many others who merely aspire to those positions. You look shocked, Colonel McCandless.”
“A man who dwells among the tents of the ungodly,” McCandless said, ‘will soon pick up ungodly ways.”
“And thank God for it,” Pohlmann retorted, then clapped his hands to summon the supper dishes.
A score of officers ate in the tent. Half a dozen were Mahrattas, the rest Europeans, and just after the bowls and platters had been placed on the tables, Major Dodd arrived. Night was falling and candles illuminated the tent’s shadowed interior, but Sharpe recognized Dodd’s face instantly. The sight of the long jaw, sallow skin and bitter eyes brought back sharp memories of Chasalgaon, of flies crawling on Sharpe’s eyes and in his gullet, and of the staccato bangs as men stepped over the dead to shoot the wounded. Dodd, oblivious of Sharpe’s glare, nodded to Pohlmann.
“I apologize, Colonel Pohlmann, for being late,” he announced with stiff formality.