like a bunch of grapes? Grapes made him think of grapeshot and he
wondered if the bastards up ahead were equipped with canister. Well,
of course they were, but there was no point in wasting canister on a
field of bulrushes. Were they bulrushes? It seemed a strange thing
for a farmer to grow, but India was full of oddities. There were naked
sods who claimed to be holy men, snake-charmers who whistled up hooded
horrors, dancing bears draped in tinkling bells, and contortionists
draped in bugger all, a right bloody circus. And the clowns ahead
would have canister. They would wait till they saw the redcoats, then
load up the tin cans that burst like duck shot from the gun barrels.
For what we are about to receive among the bulrushes, Sharpe thought,
may the Lord make us truly thankful.
“I’ve found it,” Colquhoun said gravely.
“Found what?” Sharpe asked.
“I was fairly sure in my mind, sir, that the good book mentioned
millet. And so it does. Ezekiel, the fourth chapter and the ninth
verse.”
The Sergeant held the book close to his eyes, squinting at the text. He
had a round face, afflicted with wens, like a suet pudding studded with
currants. ‘”Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley,” he read
laboriously, ‘”and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put
them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof” Colquhoun carefully
closed his Bible, wrapped it in a scrap of tarred canvas and stowed it
in his pouch.
“It pleases me, sir,” he explained, ‘if I can find everyday things in
the scriptures. I like to see things, sir, and imagine my Lord and
Saviour seeing the selfsame things.”
“But why millet?” Sharpe asked.
“These crops, sir,” Colquhoun said, pointing to the tall stems that
surrounded them, ‘are millet. The natives call itjowari, but our name
is millet.” He cuffed the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The
red dye of his coat had faded to a dull purple.
“This, of course,” he went on, ‘is pearl millet, but I doubt the
scriptures mention pearl millet. Not specifically.”
“Millet, eh?” Sharpe said. So the tall plants were not bulrushes,
after all. They looked like bulrushes, except they were taller. Nine
or ten feet high.
“Must be a bastard to harvest,” he said, but got no response.
Sergeant Colquhoun always tried to ignore swear words.
“What are fitches?” McCallum asked.
“A crop grown in the Holy Land,” Colquhoun answered. He plainly did
not know.
“Sounds like a disease, Sergeant,” McCallum said.
“A bad dose of the fitches. Leads to a course of mercury.” One or two
men sniggered at the reference to syphilis, but Colquhoun ignored the
levity.
“Do you grow millet in Scotland?” Sharpe asked the Sergeant.
“Not that I am aware of, sir,” Colquhoun said ponderously, after
reflecting on the question for a few seconds, ‘though I daresay it
might be found in the Lowlands. They grow strange things there.
English things.”
He turned pointedly away.
And sod you too, Sharpe thought. And where the hell was Captain
Urquhart? Where the hell was anybody for that matter? The battalion
had marched long before dawn, and at midday they had expected to make
camp, but then came a rumour that the enemy was waiting ahead and so
General Sir Arthur Wellesley had ordered the baggage to be piled and
the advance to continue. The King’s 74th had plunged into the millet,
then ten minutes later the battalion was ordered to halt beside the dry
ditch while Captain Urquhart rode ahead to speak with the battalion
commander, and Sharpe had been left to sweat and wait with the
company.
Where he had damn all to do except sweat. Damn all. It was a good
company, and it did not need Sharpe. Urquhart ran it well, Colquhoun
was a magnificent sergeant, the men were as content as soldiers ever
were, and the last thing the company needed was a brand new officer, an
Englishman at that, who, just two months before, had been a sergeant.
The men were talking in Gaelic and Sharpe, as ever, wondered if they
were discussing him. Probably not. Most likely they were talking