“Where do we lack men, Barclay?”
The aide considered for a moment.
“Captain Mackay could certainly use some assistance, sir.”
“Very well.” Wellesley pointed the pen’s steel nib at Hakeswill.
“You’ll attach yourself to Captain Mackay. Captain Mackay commands our bullock train and you will do whatever he desires until Colonel McCandless relieves you of that duty. Dismissed.”
“Sir!” Hakeswill said dutifully, but inwardly he was furious that the General had not shared his indignation about Sharpe. He about-turned, stamped from the tent, and went to find his men.
“Going to the dogs,” he said bitterly.
“Sergeant?” Flaherty asked.
“The dogs. Time was in this army when even a general officer respected sergeants. Now we’re to be bullock guards. Pick up your bleeding fire locks
“Sharpe ain’t here, Sergeant?”
“Of course he ain’t here! If he was here we wouldn’t be ordered to wipe bullocks’ arses, would we? But he’s coming back. General’s word on it. Just a few days, lads, just a few days and he’ll be back with all his glittering stones hidden away.” Hakeswill’s fury was abating. At least he had not been ordered to attach himself to a fighting battalion, and he was beginning to realize that any duty attached to the baggage animals would give him a fine chance to fillet the army stores. Pickings were to be made there, and more than just the pickings of stores, for the baggage always travelled with the army’s tail of women and that meant more opportunity. It could be worse, Hakeswill thought, so long as this Captain Mackay was no martinet.
“You know what the trouble is with this army?” Hakeswill demanded.
“What?” Lowry asked.
“Full of bleeding Scotchmen.” Hakeswill glowered.
“I hates Scotchmen. Not English, are they? Peasant bleeding Scotchmen.
Sawney creatures, they are, sawney! Should have killed them all when we had the chance, but we takes pity on them instead. Scorpions in our bosoms, that’s what they are. Says so in the scriptures. Now get a bleeding move on!”
But it would only be a few days, the Sergeant consoled himself, only a few days, and Sharpe would be finished.
Colonel Pohlmann’s bodyguard carried McCandless to a small house that lay at the edge of the encampment. A widow and three children lived there, and the woman shrank away from the Mahratta soldiers who had raped her, stolen all her food and fouled her well with their sewage. The Swiss doctor left Sharpe with strict instructions that the dressing on the Colonel’s leg was to be kept damp.
“I’d give you some medicine for his fever, but I have none,” the doctor said, ‘so if the fever gets worse just keep him warm and make him sweat.” The doctor shrugged.
“It might help.”
Pohlmann left food and a leather bag of silver coins.
“Tell McCandless that’s for his horses,” he told Sharpe.
“Yes, sir.”
“The widow will look after you,” Pohlmann said, ‘and when the Colonel’s well enough you can move him to Aurungabad. And if you change your mind, Sharpe, you know I’ll welcome you.” The Colonel shook Sharpe’s hand, then mounted the silver steps to his howdah. A horseman unfurled his banner of the white horse of Hanover.
“I’ll spread word that you’re not to be molested,” Pohlmann called back, then his mahout tapped the elephant’s skull and the great beast set off northwards.
Simone Joubert was the last to say farewell.
“I wish you were staying with us,” she said unhappily.
“I can’t.”
“I know, and maybe it’s for the best.” She looked left and right to make certain no one was watching, then leaned swiftly forward and kissed Sharpe on the cheek.
“Au revoir, Richard.”
He watched her ride away, then went back into the hovel which was nothing but a palm thatch roof set above walls made of decayed reed mats. The interior of the hut was blackened by years of smoke, and its only furniture was the rope cot on which McCandless lay.
“She’s an outcast,” the Colonel told Sharpe, indicating the woman.
“She refused to jump onto her husband’s funeral fire, so her family sent her away.” The Colonel flinched as a stab of pain scythed through his thigh.