He turned to the passageway and kept his voice low. ‘We’re going round the cloister, lads. Walk slowly. Go in twos and threes. There’s a view you’ll like as you go round.’ Harper walked just behind Sharpe, both men clinging to the shadows by the wall. The huge Irishman watched the couples by the fire and his voice was cheerful. ‘Just like the officers’ mess on a Friday night, eh?’Every night, Patrick, every night.’ And what, he wondered, was to stop his own men going to join those in the courtyard? To be offered drink and women instead of work and discipline was the avowed dream of every soldier, so why did they not just go now? Kill him and Harper and take their freedom? He did not know the answer. He just knew that he trusted them. And where, more importantly, were the hostages kept? He pushed open the doors that he passed, but the rooms were either empty or inhabited by sleeping people. None were guarded. Once a man growled in protest from the darkness and two women giggled. Sharpe closed the door. The flames of the great fire were warm on the left side of his face.
He turned the corner and now he could see into the great hall. A hundred men and as many women crowded the floor. There was a kind of platform at the far end, a raised dais, and a staircase went from the dais to a gallery above that spanned the width of the hall. Sharpe could see two doorways leading from the gallery into corridors or rooms behind. There was easy access to the gallery through the tall, empty windows. A man could simply step from the cloister onto the gallery.
The men and the women were shouting, the shouting orchestrated from the dais. There sat Hakeswill. He had a chair that rose high above his head, like a throne, a chair with decorated armrests. He was dressed in the priest’s finery, the robes too short for him so that his boots were visible almost to his knees. Beside him, leaning on the armrest, Hakeswill’s hand about her waist, was a small, thin girl. She was dressed in brilliant red, a white scarf about her waist, long black hair falling below the scarf.
A woman stood on the dais. She was grinning. She was dressed in a shift over which she wore a vest and a shirt. She had a dress in her right hand and, to the crowd’s roar, she hurled the dress towards a man in the crowd who caught it and waved. Hakeswill held up his hand. The face twitched. ‘Shirt! Come on, then! How much? Shilling?’
It was an auction. She had sold the dress, presumably, and Sharpe saw two small grinning children picking up coins from the floor beneath the dais and carry them to an upturned shako. The shouts came from the hall, two shillings, three, and Hakeswill whipped them up and his eyes looked into the hat to see the takings.
They cheered and screamed as the shirt came off.
The vest went for four shillings. The coins rattled on the stones. Sharpe wondered how many minutes had passed.
The yellow face grinned. The hand jerked up and down on the small girl’s ribcage. ‘Her shift! Make it good. Ten shillings?’ No one answered. ‘You lousy bleeders! You think she’s not as pretty as Sally? Christ! You paid her two quid, now come on!’ He beat them up, higher and higher, and to a great cheer and thrown coins she peeled herself naked for one pound and eighteen shillings. She stood there grinning, hand on hip, and Hakeswill lurched upright and sidled towards her, his gold and white robes ridiculous in the flamelight, and his blue bright eyes leered at the people in the hall as he slid his right arm across the woman’s shoulders. ‘Now then. Who wants her? You’re going to pay! Half to her, half to us, so come on!’
Bids came and to some the woman stuck out her tongue, others she laughed, and Hakeswill egged them on. A consortium of Frenchmen bought her in the end, their price four pounds, and they came to fetch her and the crowd cheered louder as one of them carried the woman sitting on his shoulders towards the fire in the courtyard.