Sharpe woke after dark. He groaned as the pains in his back registered and Mary hushed him. ‘What time is it, love?’ Sharpe asked her.
‘Late.’
‘Jesus,’ Sharpe said as a stab of agony tore down his spine. He sat up, whimpering with the effort, and tried to prop himself against the wall. A wan moonlight came through the small barred window and Mary, in its dim light, could see the bloodstains spreading through the bandages and onto Sharpe’s shirt. ‘Have they forgotten us?’ Sharpe asked.
‘No,’ Mary said. ‘They brought us some water while you were asleep. Here.’ She lifted the jug towards him. ‘And they gave us a bucket.’ She gestured across the dim cell. ‘For…’ she faltered.
‘I can smell what the bucket’s for,’ Sharpe said. He took
the jug and drank. Lawford was slumped against the far wall and there was a small open book face down on the floor beside the sleeping Lieutenant. Sharpe grimaced. ‘Glad the bugger’s brought something useful,’ he said to Mary.
‘You mean this?’ Lawford said, indicating the book. He had not been asleep after all.
Sharpe wished he had not used the insult, but did not know how to retrieve it. ‘What is it?’ he asked instead.
‘A Bible.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said.
‘You don’t approve?’ Lawford asked icily.
‘I had a bellyful of the good book when I was in the foundlings’ home,’ Sharpe said. ‘If they weren’t reading it to us they were hitting us round the head with it, and it wasn’t some litde book like that one, but a bloody great big thick thing. Could have stunned an ox, that Bible.’
‘Did they teach you to read it?’ Lawford asked.
‘We weren’t reckoned good enough to read. Good enough to pick hemp, we were, but not read. No, they just read it to us at breakfast. It was the same every morning: cold porridge, tin of water and an earful of Abraham and Isaac.’
‘So you can’t read?’ Lawford asked.
‘Of course I can’t read!’ Sharpe laughed scornfully. ‘What the bloody hell’s the use of reading?’
‘Don’t be a fool, Dick,’ Lawford said patiently. ‘Only a fool takes pride in pretending that a skill he doesn’t possess is worthless.’ For a second Lawford was tempted to launch himself on a panegyric of reading; how it would open a new world to Sharpe, a world of drama and story and information and poetry and timeless wisdom, then he thought better of it. ‘You want your sergeant’s stripes, don’t you?’ he asked instead.
‘A man doesn’t have to read to be a sergeant,’ Sharpe said stubbornly.
‘No, but it helps, and you’ll be a better sergeant if you can read. Otherwise the company clerks tell you what the reports say, and what the lists say, and what the punishment book says, and the quartermasters will rob you blind. But if you can read then you’ll know when they’re lying to you.’
There was a long silence. Somewhere in the palace a sentry’s footsteps echoed off stone, then came a sound so familiar that it almost made Lawford weep for homesickness. It was a clock striking the hour. Twelve o’clock. Midnight. ‘Is it hard?’ Sharpe finally asked.
‘Learning to read?’ Lawford said. ‘Not really.’
‘Then you and Mary had better teach me, Bill, hadn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Lawford said. ‘Yes. We had.’
They were taken out of the guardroom in the morning. Four tiger-striped soldiers fetched them and pushed them down the arcade, then into a narrow corridor that seemed to run beside the kitchens, and afterwards through a shadowed tangle of stables and storerooms that led to a double gate which opened into a large courtyard where the bright sun made them blink. Then Sharpe’s eyes adjusted to the brilliant daylight and he saw what waited for them in the courtyard, and he swore. There were six tigers, all of them huge beasts with yellow eyes and dirty teeth. The animals stared at the three newcomers, then one of the tigers rose, arched its back, shook himself, and slowly padded towards them. ‘Jesus Christ!’ Sharpe said, but just then the tiger’s chain lifted from the dusty ground, stretched taut, and the tiger, cheated of its breakfast, growled and went back to the shadows. Another beast scratched itself, a third yawned. ‘Look at the size of the bastards!’ Shaipe said.