racing saddle on a cart horse Captain Urquhart had said one night in
the ragged tent which passed for the officers’ mess, but that don’t
make the beast quick. He had not been talking about Sharpe, not
directly, but all the other officers glanced at him.
The battalion had stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was hot as hell
and no wind alleviated the sodden heat. They were surrounded by tall
crops that hid everything except the sky. A cannon fired somewhere to
the north, but Sharpe had no way of knowing whether it was a British
gun or an enemy cannon.
A dry ditch ran through the tall crops and the men of the company sat
on the ditch lip as they waited for orders. One or two lay back and
slept with their mouths wide open while Sergeant Colquhoun leafed
though his tattered Bible. The Sergeant was short-sighted, so had to
hold the book very close to his nose from which drops of sweat fell
onto the pages. Usually the Sergeant read quietly, mouthing the words
and sometimes frowning when he came across a difficult name, but today
he was just slowly turning the pages with a wetted finger.
“Looking for inspiration, Sergeant?” Sharpe asked.
“I am not, sir,” Colquhoun answered respectfully, but somehow managed
to convey that the question was still impertinent. He dabbed a finger
on his tongue and carefully turned another page.
So much for that bloody conversation, Sharpe thought. Somewhere ahead,
beyond the tall plants that grew higher than a man, another cannon
fired. The discharge was muffled by the thick stems. A horse neighed,
but Sharpe could not see the beast. He could see nothing through the
high crops.
“Are you going to read us a story, Sergeant?” Corporal McCallum asked.
He spoke in English instead of Gaelic, which meant that he wanted
Sharpe to hear.
“I am not, John. I am not.”
“Go on, Sergeant,” McCallum said.
“Read us one of those dirty tales about tits.”
The men laughed, glancing at Sharpe to see if he was offended.
One of the sleeping men jerked awake and looked about him, startled,
then muttered a curse, slapped at a fly and lay back. The other
soldiers of the company dangled their boots towards the ditch’s crazed
mud bed that was decorated with a filigree of dried green scum. A dead
lizard lay in one of the dry fissures. Sharpe wondered how the carrion
birds had missed it.
“The laughter of fools, John McCallum,” Sergeant Colquhoun said, ‘is
like the crackling of thorns under the pot.”
“Away with you, Sergeant!” McCallum said.
“I heard it in the kirk once, when I was a wee kid, all about a woman
whose tits were like bunches of grapes.” McCallum twisted to look at
Sharpe.
“Have you ever seen tits like grapes, Mister Sharpe?”
“I never met your mother, Corporal,” Sharpe said.
The men laughed again. McCallum scowled. Sergeant Colquhoun lowered
his Bible and peered at the Corporal.
“The Song of Solomon, John McCallum,” Colquhoun said, ‘likens a woman’s
bosom to clusters of grapes, and I have no doubt it refers to the
garments that modest women wore in the Holy Land. Perhaps their
bodices possessed balls of knotted wool as decoration? I cannot see it
is a matter for your merriment.” Another cannon fired, and this time a
round shot whipped through the tall plants close to the ditch. The
stems twitched violently, discharging a cloud of dust and small birds
into the cloudless sky. The birds flew about in panic for a few
seconds, then returned to the swaying seed heads
“I knew a woman who had lumpy tits,” Private Hollister said. He was a
dark-jawed, violent man who spoke rarely.
“Lumpy like a coal sack, they were.” He frowned at the memory, then
shook his head.
“She died.”
“This conversation is not seemly,” Colquhoun said quietly, and the men
shrugged and fell silent.
Sharpe wanted to ask the Sergeant about the clusters of grapes, but he
knew such an enquiry would only cause ribaldry among the men and, as an
officer, Sharpe could not risk being made to look a fool. All the
same, it sounded odd to him. Why would anyone say a woman had tits