Colonel Pohlmann went to McCandless’s tent and confessed that the horses had vanished.
“I shall pay you their value, of course,” he added.
“I won’t take it!” McCandless snapped back. The Colonel was still pale, and shivering despite the heat. His wound was bandaged, and the doctor reckoned it should heal swiftly enough, but there was a danger that the Colonel’s recurrent fever might return.
“I won’t take my enemy’s gold,” McCandless explained, and Sharpe reckoned it must be the pain speaking for he knew the two missing horses must have cost the Colonel dearly.
“I shall leave you the money,” Pohlmann insisted anyway, ‘and this afternoon we shall execute the prisoner.”
“Do what you must,” McCandless grumbled.
“Then we shall carry you northwards,” the Hanoverian promised, ‘for you must stay under Doctor Viedler’s care.”
McCandless levered himself into a sitting position.
“You’ll not take me anywhere!” he insisted angrily.
“You leave me here, Pohlmann. I’ll not depend on your care, but on God’s mercy.” He let himself drop back onto the bed and hissed with pain.
“And Sergeant Sharpe can tend me.”
Pohlmann glanced at Sharpe. The Hanoverian seemed about to say that Sharpe might not wish to stay with McCandless, but then he just nodded his acceptance of McCandless’s decision.
“If you wish to be abandoned, McCandless, so be it.”
‘1 have more faith in God than in a faithless mercenary like you, Pohlmann.”
“As you wish, Colonel,” Pohlmann said gently, then backed from the tent and gestured for Sharpe to follow.
“He’s a stubborn fellow, isn’t he?” The Hanoverian turned and looked at Sharpe.
“So, Sergeant? Are you coming with us?”
“No, sir,” Sharpe said. Last night, he reflected, he had very nearly decided to accept the Hanoverian’s offer, but the theft of the horses and the single shot fired by the sepoy had served to change Sharpe’s mind.
He could not leave McCandless to suffer and, to his surprise, he felt no great disappointment in thus having the decision forced on him. Duty dictated he should stay, but so did sentiment, and he had no regret.
“Someone has to look after Colonel McCandless, sir,” Sharpe explained, ‘and he’s looked after me in the past, so it’s my turn now.”
I’m sorry,” Pohlmann said, ‘truly I am. The execution will be in one hour. I think you should see it, so you can assure your Colonel that justice was done.”
“Justice, sir?” Sharpe asked scornfully.
“It ain’t justice, shooting that fellow. He was put up to it by Major Dodd.” Sharpe had no proof of that, but he suspected it strongly. Dodd, he reckoned, had been hurt by McCandless’s insults and must have decided to add horse-thieving to his catalogue of crimes.
“You have questioned your prisoner, haven’t you, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“Because he must know that Dodd was up to his neck in the business.”
Pohlmann smiled wearily.
“The prisoner told us everything, Sergeant or I assume he did, but what use is that? Major Dodd denies the man’s story, and a score of sepoys swear the Major was nowhere near McCandless’s tent when the shots were fired. And who would the British army believe? A desperate man or an officer?” Pohlmann shook his head.
“So you must be content with the death of one man, Sergeant.”
Sharpe expected that the captured sepoy would be shot, but there was no sign of any firing squad when the moment arrived for the man’s death. Two companies from each of Pohlmann’s eight battalions were paraded, the sixteen companies making three sides of a hollow square with Pohlmann’s striped marquee forming the fourth side. Most of the other tents had already been struck ready for the move northwards, but the marquee remained and one of its canvas walls had been brailed up so that the compoo’s officers could witness the execution from chairs set in the tent’s shade. Dodd was not there, nor were any of the regiment’s wives, but a score of officers took their places and were served sweetmeats and drink by Pohlmann’s servants.
The prisoner was fetched onto the makeshift execution ground by four of Pohlmann’s bodyguards. None of the four carried a musket, instead they were equipped with tent pegs, mallets and short lengths of rope. The prisoner, who wore nothing but a strip of cloth around his loins, glanced from side to side as if trying to find an escape route, but, on a nod from Pohlmann, the bodyguards kicked his feet out from beneath him and then knelt beside his sprawling body and pinioned it to the ground by tying the ropes to his wrists and ankles, then fastening the bonds to the tent pegs. The condemned man lay there, spreadeagled gazing up at the cloudless sky as the mallets banged the eight pegs home.