‘Anything I should know?’
‘Not a thing, sir. Just like last week’s, sir. Ensign Hicks made up the roster, sir. A good man, sir, Ensign Hicks. Knows his place.’
‘You mean he does what you tell him to do?’ Morris asked drily.
‘Learning his trade, sir, learning his trade, just like a good little ensign should. Unlike some as I could mention.’
Morris ignored the sly reference to Fitzgerald and instead dipped his quill in ink and scrawled his name at the foot of the rosters. ‘I assume Ensign Fitzgerald and Sergeant Green have been assigned all the night duty?’ he asked.
‘They needs the practice, sir.’
‘And you need your sleep, Sergeant?’
‘Punishment book, sir,’ Hakeswill said, offering the leather-bound ledger and taking back the guard roster without acknowledging Morris’s last comment.
Morris leafed through the book. ‘No floggings this week?’
‘Will be soon, sir, will be soon.’
‘Private Sharpe escaped you today, eh?’ Morris laughed. ‘Losing your touch, Obadiah.’ There was no friendliness in his use of the Christian name, just scorn, but Sergeant Hakeswill took no offence. Officers were officers, at least those above ensigns were proper officers in Hakeswill’s opinion, and such gentlemen had every right to be scornful of lesser ranks.
‘I ain’t losing nothing, sir,’ Hakeswill answered equably. ‘If the rat don’t die first shake, sir, then you puts the dog in again. That’s how it’s done, sir. Says so in the scriptures. Sick report, sir. Nothing new, except that Sears has the fever, so he won’t be with us long, but he won’t be no loss, sir. No good to man or beast, Private Sears. Better off dead, he is.’
‘Are we done?’ Morris asked when he had signed the sick report, but then a tactful cough sounded at the tent’s opening and Lieutenant Lawford ducked under the flap and pushed through the muslin screen.
‘Busy, Charles?’ Lawford asked Morris.
‘Always pleased to see you, William,’ Morris said sarcastically, ‘but I was about to go for a stroll.’
‘There’s a soldier to see you,’ Lawford explained. ‘Man’s got a request, sir.’
Morris sighed as though he was too busy to be bothered with such trifles, but then he shrugged and waved a hand as if to suggest he was making a great and generous gesture by giving the man a moment of his precious time. ‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Private Sharpe, sir.’
‘Troublemaker, sir,’ Hakeswill put in.
‘He’s a good man,’ Lawford insisted hotly, but then decided his small experience of the army hardly qualified him to make such judgements and so, diffidendy, he added that it was only his opinion. ‘But he seems like a good man, sir,’ he finished.
‘Let him in,’ Morris said. He sipped from a tin mug of arrack while Sharpe negotiated the muslin screen and then
stood to attention beneath the ridge pole. ‘Hat off, boy!’ Hakeswill snapped. ‘Don’t you know to take your hat off in the presence of an officer?’
Sharpe snatched off his shako.
‘Well?’ Morris asked.
For a second it seemed that Sharpe did not know what to say, but then he cleared his diroat and, staring at the tent wall a few inches above Captain Morris’s head, he at last found his voice. ‘Permission to marry, sir.’
Morris grinned. ‘Marry! Found yourself a bibbi, have you?’ He sipped more arrack, then looked at Hakeswill. ‘How many wives are on the company strengdi now, Sergeant?’
‘Full complement, sir! No room for more, sir! Full up, sir. Not a vacancy to be had. Shall I dismiss Private Sharpe, sir?’
‘This girl’s on the complement,’ Lieutenant Lawford intervened. ‘She’s Sergeant Bickerstaff’s widow.’
Morris stared up at Sharpe. ‘Bickerstaff,’ he said vaguely as though the name was strange to him. ‘Bickerstaff. Fellow who died of a fever on the march, is that right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hakeswill answered.
‘Didn’t know the man was even married,’ Morris said. ‘Official wife, was she?’
‘Very official, sir,’ Hakeswill answered. ‘On the company strength, sir. Colonel’s signature on the certificate, sir. Proper married before God and the army, sir.’
Morris sniffed and looked up at Sharpe again. ‘Why on earth do you want to marry, Sharpe?’
Sharpe looked embarrassed. ‘Just do, sir,’ he said lamely.