“So what do you intend to do with Sergeant Sharpe?” McCandless asked.
“Do, sir? Do my duty, of course, sir. Escort the prisoner back to battalion, sir, as is ordered.” Hakeswill gestured at his six men who marched a few paces behind.
“We’ll guard him nice and proper, sir, all the way home and then have him stand trial for his filthy crime.”
McCandless bit his right thumb and shook his head. He rode in silence for a few paces, and when Sharpe protested he ignored the indignant words. He put the warrant in his right hand again and seemed to read it yet another time. Far off to the east, at least a mile away, there was a sudden flurry of dust and the sparkle of sword blades catching the sun. Some enemy horsemen had been waiting in a grove of trees from where they had been watching the British march, but now they were flushed out by a troop of Mysore horsemen who pursued them northwards. McCandless glanced at the distant action.
“So they’ll know we’re here now, more’s the pity. How do you spell your name, Sharpe?
With or without an “e”?”
“With, sir.”
“You will correct me if I’m wrong,” McCandless said, ‘but it seems to me that this is not your name.” He handed the warrant back to Sharpe who saw that the ‘e’ at the end of his name had been smeared out.
There was a smudge of black ink there, and beneath it the impression of the ‘e’ made by the steel nib in the paper, but the ink had been diluted and nearly erased.
Sharpe hid his astonishment that McCandless, a stickler for honesty and straight-dealing, had resorted to such a subterfuge.
“Not my name, sir,” Sharpe said woodenly.
Hakeswill looked from Sharpe to McCandless, then back to Sharpe and finally at McCandless again.
“Sir!” The word exploded from him.
“You’re out of breath, Sergeant,” McCandless said, taking the warrant back from Sharpe.
“But you will see here that you are expressly ordered to arrest a sergeant whose name is Richard Sharp. No “e”, Sergeant. This Sergeant Sharpe uses an “e” on his name so he cannot be the man you want, and I certainly cannot release him to your custody on the authority of this piece of paper. Here.” McCandless held the warrant out, letting it drop a heartbeat before Hakeswill could take it.
The paper fluttered down to the dusty road.
Hakeswill snatched the warrant up and peered at the writing.
“Ink’s run, sir!” he protested.
“Sir?” He ran after McCandless’s horse, stumbling on the uneven road.
“Look, sir! Ink’s run, sir.”
McCandless ignored the offered warrant.
“It is clear, Sergeant Hakeswill, that the spelling of the name has been corrected. In all conscience I cannot act upon that warrant. What you must do, Sergeant, is send a message to Lieutenant Colonel Gore asking him to clear up the confusion. A new warrant, I think, would be best, and until such time as I see such a warrant, legibly written, I cannot release Sergeant Sharpe from his present duties. Good day, Hakeswill.”
“You can’t do this, sir!” Hakeswill protested.
McCandless smiled.
“You fundamentally misunderstand the hierarchy of the army, Sergeant. It is I, a colonel, who define your duties, not you, a sergeant, who define mine.
“I say to a man, go, and he goeth.” It says so in the scriptures. I bid you good day.” And with that the Scotsman touched his spurs to the gelding’s flanks.
Hakeswill’s face twitched as he turned on Sharpe.
“I’ll have you, Sharpie, I will have you. I ain’t forgotten nothing.”
“You ain’t learned nothing either,” Sharpe said, then spurred after the Colonel. He lifted two fingers as he passed Hakeswill, then left him behind in the dust.
He was, for the moment, free.
Simone Joubert placed the eight diamonds on the window ledge of the tiny house where the wives of Scindia’s European officers had been quartered. She was alone for the moment, for the other women had gone to visit the three compoos that were stationed on the Kaitna’s northern bank, but Simone had not wanted their company and so she had pleaded a turbulent stomach, though she supposed she ought to visit Pierre before the battle, if indeed there was to be a fight. Not that Simone cared much. Let them have their battle, she thought, and at the end of it, when the river was dark with British blood, her life would be no better. She gazed at the diamonds again, thinking about the man who had given them to her. Pierre would be angry if he learned she was concealing such wealth, but once his anger had passed he would sell the stones and send the money back to his rapacious family in France.