‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, and hid his dismay that perhaps things were not going to be quite so easy after all. He could not just run now, not with Lawford tied to his apron strings. He glanced at the Lieutenant, who gave him a reassuring smile.
‘The thing is, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, still smiling, T’m not too certain I can pass myself off as a private. But they’ll believe you, and you can say I’m a new recruit.’
A new recruit! Sharpe almost laughed. You could no more pass the Lieutenant off as a new recruit than you could pass
Sharpe off as an officer! He had an idea then, and the idea surprised him, not because it was a good idea, but because it implied he was suddenly trying to make this idiotic scheme work. ‘Better if you said you was a company clerk, sir.’ He muttered the words too softly, made shy by the presence of so many senior officers.
‘Speak up, man!’ Wellesley snarled.
‘It would be better, sir,’ Sharpe said so loudly that he was verging on insolence, ‘if the Lieutenant said he was a company clerk, sir.’
‘A clerk?’ Baird asked. ‘Why?’
‘He’s got soft hands, sir. Clean hands, sir. Clerks don’t muck about in the dirt like the rest of us. And recruits, sir, they’re usually just as filthy-handed as the rest of us. But not clerks, sir.’ Harris, who had been writing, looked up with a faint expression of admiration. ‘Put some ink on his hands, sir,’ Sharpe still spoke to Baird, ‘and he won’t look wrong.’
‘I like it, Sharpe, indeed I do!’ Baird said. ‘Well done.’
Wellesley sneered, then pointedly stared through one of the tent openings as though he found the proceedings tiresome. General Harris looked at Lawford. ‘You could manage to play the part of a disgruntled clerk, Lieutenant?’ he asked.
‘Oh, indeed, sir. I’m sure, sir.’ Lawford at last sounded confident.
‘Good,’ Harris said, laying down his pen. The General wore a wig to hide the scar where an American bullet had torn away a scrap of his skull on Bunker Hill. Now, unconsciously, he lifted a corner of the wig and scratched at that old scar. ‘And I suppose, once you reach the city, you contact this merchant. Remind me of his name, Baird?’
‘Ravi Shekhar, sir.’
‘And what if this fellow Shekhar ain’t there?’ Harris asked. ‘Or won’t help?’ There was silence after the question. The sentries outside the tent, moved far enough away so they could not overhear the conversation, stamped up and down.
A dog barked. ‘You have to anticipate these things,’ Harris said mildly, scratching again under his wig. Wellesley offered a harsh laugh, but no suggestion.
‘If Ravi Shekhar won’t help us, sir,’ Baird suggested, ‘then Lawford and Sharpe must get themselves into McCandless’s jail, then find a way of getting themselves out. “The Scotsman turned to Sharpe. ‘Were you by any chance a thief before you joined up?’
A heartbeat’s hesitation, then Sharpe nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘What kind of a thief?’ Wellesley asked in a disgusted voice as though he was astonished to discover the ranks of his battalion contained criminals, and, when Sharpe did not answer, the Colonel became even more irritable. ‘A diver? A scamp?’
Sharpe was surprised that his Colonel even knew such slang. He shook his head indignantly, denying he had ever been a mere pickpocket or a highwayman. ‘I was a house boner, sir,’ he said. ‘And proper trained too,’ he added proudly. In fact he had done his share on the highway, not so much holding up coaches as slicing the leather straps that held the passengers’ portmanteaus on the back of coaches. The job was done while the coach was speeding along a road so that the noise of the hooves and wheels would hide the sound of the tumbling luggage. It was a job for agile youngsters and Sharpe had been good at it.
‘A house boner means he was a burglar,’ Wellesley translated for his two senior officers, unable to hide his scorn.
Baird was pleased with Sharpe’s answers. ‘Do you still have a picklock, Private?’
‘Me, sir? No, sir. But I suppose I could find one, sir, if I had a guinea.’