Sharpe sat in silence for a while, daunted by the obstacles that lay in the way of his daydream’s fulfilment.
“Do they give him a test, sir?” he asked.
“In reading?” That thought worried him for, although his reading was improving night by night, he still stumbled over quite simple words. He claimed that the Bible’s print was too small, and McCandless was kind enough to believe the excuse.
“A test in reading? Good Lord, no! For an officer!” McCandless smiled tiredly.
“They take his word, of course.” The Colonel paused for a second.
“But I’ve often wondered, Sharpe,” he went on, ‘why a man from the ranks would want to be an officer?”
So he could go back to Brewhouse Lane, Sharpe thought, and kick some teeth in.
“I was just wondering about it, sir,” he said instead.
“Just thinking, sir.”
“Because in many ways,” McCandless said, ‘sergeants have more influence with the men. Less formal prestige, perhaps, but certainly more influence than any junior officer. Ensigns and lieutenants, Sharpe, are very insignificant creatures. They’re really of very little use most of the time. It’s not till a man reaches his captaincy that he begins to be valuable.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir,” Sharpe said lamely.
“I was just thinking.” That night the Colonel relapsed into fever, and Sharpe sat in the hut doorway and listened to the rain beat on the land. He could not shake the daydream, could not drive away the picture of him ducking through the gate in Brewhouse Lane and seeing the faces he hated. He wanted it, he wanted it terribly, and so he dreamed on, dreaming the impossible, but unable to check the dream. He did not know how, but he would somehow make the leap. Or else die in the attempt.
CHAPTER 7
Dodd called his new gelding Peter.
“Because it’s got no balls, Monsewer,” he informed Pierre Joubert, and he repeated the poor joke a dozen times in the next two days just to make certain that its insult was understood. Joubert smiled and said nothing, and the Major would launch himself into a panegyric on Peter’s merits. His old horse had whistling lungs, while this one could be ridden all day and still had its head up and a spring in its long stride.
“A thoroughbred, Captain,” he told Joubert, ‘an English thoroughbred. Not some screw-backed old French nag, but a proper horse.”
The men in Dodd’s Cobras liked to see their Major on his fine big horse. It was true that one man had died in the beast’s acquisition, yet the theft had still been a fine piece of banditry, and the men had laughed to see the English Sergeant searching the camp while all the while Major Dodd’s jemadar, Gopal, was hiding the horses a long way to the north.
Colonel Pohlmann was less amused.
“I promised McCandless safe conduct, Major,” he growled at Dodd the first time he saw the Englishman on his new gelding.
“Quite right, sir.”
“And you’ve added horse-thieving to your catalogue of crimes?”
“I can’t think what you mean, sir,” Dodd protested in mock innocence.
“I purchased this beast off a horse trader yesterday, sir.
Gypsy-looking fellow from Korpalgaon. Took the last of my savings.”
“And your jemadar’s new horse?” Pohlmann asked, pointing to Gopal who was riding Colonel McCandless’s mare.
“He bought her from the same fellow,” Dodd said.
“Of course he did, Major,” Pohlmann said wearily. The Colonel knew it was pointless to chide a man for theft in an army that was encouraged to steal for its very existence, yet he was offended by
Dodd’s abuse of the hospitality that had been extended to McCandless.
The Scotsman was right, Pohlmann thought, Dodd was a man without honour, yet the Hanoverian knew that if Scindia employed none but saints then he would have no European officers.
The theft of McCandless’s horses only added more reason for Pohlmann to dislike William Dodd. He found the Englishman too dour, too jealous and too humourless, yet still, despite his dislike, he recognized that the Major was a fine soldier. His rescue of his regiment from Ahmednuggur had been an inglorious operation executed superbly, and Pohlmann, at least, understood the achievement, just as he appreciated that Dodd’s men liked their new commanding officer. The Hanoverian was not certain why Dodd was popular, for he was not an easy man; he had no small talk, he smiled rarely, and he was punctilious about details that other officers might let pass, yet still the men liked him. Maybe they sensed that he was on their side, wholly on their side, recognizing that nothing is achieved in war by officers without men, and a good deal by men without officers, and for that reason, if no other, they were glad he was their commanding officer. And men who like their commanding officer are more likely to fight well than men who do not, and so Pohlmann was glad that he had William Dodd as a regimental commander even if he did disdain him as little better than a common thief.