called. The Honourable William Stewart. Capital fellow! But Willie’s
got some damned odd ideas. His fellows wear green coats. Green! And
he tells me his riflemen ain’t as rigid as he seems to think we are.”
Wallace smiled to show he had made some kind of joke.
“Thing is, Sharpe, I wondered if you wouldn’t be better suited to
Stewart’s outfit? His idea, you should understand. He wrote wondering
if I had any bright young officers who could carry some experience of
India to Shorncliffe. I was going to write back and say we do precious
little skirmishing here, and it’s skirmishing that Willie’s rogues are
being trained to do, but then I thought of you, Sharpe.”
Sharpe said nothing. Whichever way you wrapped it up, he was being
dismissed from the 74th, though he supposed it was kind of Wallace to
make the 95th sound like an interesting sort of regiment.
Sharpe guessed they were the usual shambles of a hastily raised wartime
battalion, staffed by the leavings of other regiments and composed of
gutter rogues discarded by every other recruiting sergeant. The very
fact they wore green coats sounded bad, as though the army could not be
bothered to waste good red cloth on them. They would probably dissolve
in panicked chaos in their first battle.
“I’ve written to Willie about you,” Wallace went on, ‘and I know he’ll
have a place for you.” Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the Honourable
William Stewart owed Wallace a favour.
“And our problem, frankly,” Wallace continued, ‘is that a new draft has
reached Madras. Weren’t expecting it till spring, but they’re here
now, so we’ll be back to strength in a month or so.” Wallace paused,
evidently wondering if he had softened the blow sufficiently.
“And the fact is, Sharpe,” he resumed after a while, ‘that Scottish
regiments are more like, well, families!
Families, that’s it, just it. My mother always said so, and she was a
pretty shrewd judge of these things. Like families! More so, I think,
than English regiments, don’t you think?”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, trying to hide his misery.
“But I can’t let you go while there’s a war on,” Wallace continued
heartily. The Colonel had turned to watch the cannon again. The
engineer had finished unwinding his fuse and the gunners now shouted at
everyone within earshot to stand away.
“I do enjoy this,” the Colonel said warmly.
“Nothing like a bit of gratuitous destruction to set the juices
flowing, eh?”
The engineer stooped to the fuse with his tinderbox. Sharpe saw him
strike the flint then blow the charred linen into flame. There was a
pause, then he put the fuse end into the small fire and the smoke
fizzed up.
The fuse burned fast, the smoke and sparks snaking through the dry
grass and starting small fires, then the red hot trail streaked up the
back of the gun and down into the touch-hole.
For a heartbeat nothing happened, then the whole gun just seemed to
disintegrate. The charge had tried to propel the double shot up the
wedged barrel, but the resistance was just big enough to restrict the
explosion. The touch-hole shot out first, the shaped piece of metal
tearing out a chunk of the upper breach, then the whole rear of the
painted barrel split apart in smoke, flame and whistling lumps of
jagged metal. The forward part of the barrel, jaggedly torn off,
dropped to the grass as the gun’s wheels were splayed out. The gunners
cheered.
“One less Mahratta gun,” Wallace said. Ahmed was grinning broadly.
“Did you know Mackay?” Wallace asked Sharpe.
“No, sir.”
“Captain Mackay. Hugh Mackay. East India Company officer. Fourth
Native Cavalry. Very good fellow indeed, Sharpe. I knew his father
well.
Point is, though, that young Hugh was put in charge of the bullock
train before Assaye. And he did a very good job! Very good. But he
insisted on joining his troopers in the battle. Disobeyed orders,
d’you see?
Wellesley was adamant that Mackay must stay with his bullocks, but
young Hugh wanted to be on the dance floor, and quite right too, except
that the poor devil was killed. Cut in half by a cannonball!” Wallace