‘Pox, sir? Me, sir?’ Hakeswill stood. ‘Not me, sir. Clean as
a whistle, I am, sir. Cured, sir. Mercury.’ His face twitched. ‘Ask the surgeon, sir, he’ll tell you.’
Morris hesitated, thinking of Mary Bickerstaff. He thought a great deal about Mary Bickerstaff. Her beauty ensured that, and men on campaign were deprived of beauty and so Mary’s allure only increased with every mile the army marched westwards. Morris was not alone. On the night when Mary’s husband had died, the 33rd’s officers, at least those who had a mind for such games, had wagered which of them would first take the widow to their bed and so far none of them had succeeded. Morris wanted to win, not only for the fourteen guineas that would accrue to the successful seducer, but because he had become besotted by the woman. Soon after she had become a widow he had asked Mary to do his laundry, thinking that thereby he could begin the intimacy he craved, but she had refused him with a lacerating scorn. Morris wanted to punish her for that scorn, and Hakeswill, with his intuition for other men’s weaknesses, had sensed what Morris wanted and promised he would arrange everything. Naig, Hakeswill assured his bitter officer, had a way of breaking reluctant girls. ‘There ain’t a bibbi born that Nasty can’t break, sir,’ Hakeswill had promised Morris, ‘and he’d give a small fortune for a proper white one. Not that Mrs Bickerstaff’s proper white, sir, not like a Christian, but in the dark she’d pass well enough.’ The Sergeant needed Morris’s help in ridding Mrs Bickerstaff of Richard Sharpe and as an inducement he had offered Morris the free run of Naig’s tent. In return, Morris knew, Hakeswill would expect a lifetime’s patronage. As Morris climbed the army’s ranks, so Hakeswill would be drawn ineluctably after him and with each step the Sergeant would garner more power and influence.
‘So when will you free Mrs Bickerstaff of Sharpe?’ Morris asked, buckling his sword belt.
‘Tonight, sir. With your help. You’ll be back here by midnight, I dare say?’
‘I might.’
‘If you are, sir, we’ll do him. Tonight, sir.’
Morris clapped the cocked hat on his head, made sure his purse was in his coat-tail pocket and ducked under the muslin. ‘Carry on, Sergeant,’ he called back.
‘Sir!’ Hakeswill stood to attention for a full ten seconds after the Captain was gone, and then, with a sly grin twitching on his lumpy face, followed Morris into the night.
Nineteen miles to the south lay a temple. It was an ancient place, deep in the country, one of the many Hindu shrines where the country folk came on high days and holidays to do honour to their gods and to pray for a timely monsoon, for good crops and for the absence of warlords. For the rest of the year the temple lay abandoned, its gods and altars and richly carved spires home to scorpions, snakes and monkeys.
The temple was surrounded by a wall through which one gate led, though the wall was not high and the gate was never shut. Villagers left small offerings of leaves, flowers and food in niches of the gateposts, and sometimes they would go into the temple itself, cross the courtyard and climb to the inner shrine where they would place their small gifts beneath the image of a god, but at night, when the Indian sky lay black over a heat-exhausted land, no one would ever dream of disturbing the gods.
But this night, the night after battle, a man entered the temple. He was tall and thin, with white hair and a harsh, suntanned face. He was over sixty years old, but his back was still straight and he moved with the ease of a much younger man. Like many Europeans who had lived a long time in India he was prone to bouts of debilitating fever, but otherwise he was in sterling health, and Colonel Hector McCandless ascribed that good health to his religion and to a regimen that abjured alcohol, tobacco and meat. His religion was Calvinism for Hector McCandless had grown up in Scotland
and the godly lessons that had been whipped into his young, earnest soul had never been forgotten. He was an honest man, a tough man, and a wise one.