General Harris endured the rocket bombardment for two days, then decided it was time to capture the whole length of the aqueduct and clear the tope. Orders were written and trickled down from general to colonel to captains, and the captains sought out their sergeants. ‘Get the men ready, Sergeant,’ Morris told Hakeswill.
Hakeswill was sitting in his own tent, a luxury he alone enjoyed among the 33rd’s sergeants. The tent had belonged
to Captain Hughes and should have been auctioned with the rest of the Captain’s belongings after Hughes died of the fever, but Hakeswill had simply claimed the tent and no one had liked to cross him. His servant Raziv, a miserable half-witted creature from Calcutta, was polishing Hakeswill’s boots so the Sergeant had to come bare-footed from his tent to face Morris. ‘Ready, sir?’ he said. ‘They are ready, sir.’ He stared suspiciously about the Light Company’s lines. ‘Better be ready, sir, or we’ll have the skin off the lot of them.’ His face jerked.
‘Sixty rounds of ammunition,’ Morris said.
‘Always carry it, sir! Regulations, sir!’
Morris had drunk the best part of three bottles of wine at luncheon and was in no mood to deal with Hakeswill’s equivocations. He swore at the Sergeant, then pointed south to where another rocket was smoking up from the tope. ‘Tonight, you idiot, we’re cleaning those bastards out of those trees.’
‘Us, sir?’ Hakeswill was alarmed at the prospect. ‘Just us, sir?’
‘The whole battalion. Night attack. Inspection at sundown. Any man who looks drunk gets flogged.’
Officers excepted, Hakeswill thought, then quivered as he offered Morris a cracking salute. ‘Sir! Inspection at sundown, sir. Permission to carry on, sir?’ He did not wait for Morris’s permission, but turned back into his tent. ‘Boots! Give ’em here! Come on, you black bastard!’ He gave Raziv a cuff round the ear and snatched his half-cleaned boots. He tugged them on, then dragged Raziv by the ear to where the halberd was planted like a banner in front of the tent. ‘Sharpen!’ Hakeswill bawled in the unfortunate boy’s bruised ear. ‘Sharpen! Understand, you toad-witted heathen? I want it sharp!’ Hakeswill gave the boy a parting slap as an encouragement, then stumped off through the lines. ‘On your bleeding feet!’ he shouted. ‘Look lively now! Time to earn your miser-
able pay. Are you drunk, Garrard? If you’re drunk, boy, I’ll have your bones given a stroking.’
The battalion paraded at dusk and, to its surprise, found itself being inspected by its Colonel, Arthur Wellesley. There was a feeling of relief in the ranks when Wellesley appeared, for by now every man knew that they were due for a fight and none wished to go into battle under the uncertain leadership of Major Shee who had drunk so much arrack that he was visibly swaying on his horse. Wellesley might be a cold-hearted bastard, but the men knew he was a careful soldier and they even looked cheerful as he trotted down their ranks on his white horse. Each man had to demonstrate possession of sixty cartridges, and those who failed had their names taken for punishment. Two sepoy battalions from the East India Company’s forces paraded behind the 33rd and, just as the sun disappeared behind them, all three battalions marched south-eastwards towards the aqueduct. Their colours were flying and Colonel Wellesley led them on horseback. Other King’s battalions marched to their left, going to attack the northern stretch of the aqueduct.
‘So what are we doing, Lieutenant?’ Tom Garrard asked the newly promoted Lieutenant Fitzgerald.
‘Silence in the ranks!’ Hakeswill bawled.
‘He was talking to me, Sergeant,’ Fitzgerald said, ‘and you will do me the honour of not interfering in my private conversations.’ Fitzgerald’s retort improved the Irishman’s stock with the company twentyfold. He was popular anyway, for he was a cheerful and easy-going young man.
Hakeswill growled. Fitzgerald claimed his brother was the Knight of Kerry, whatever the holy hell that was, but the claim did not impress Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. Proper officers left discipline to sergeants, they did not curry favour with the men by telling jokes and chatting away like magpies. It was also plain that Brevet-Lieutenant bloody Fitzgerald did not like Sergeant Hakeswill for he took every chance he could