“Horseshoes, sir, that’s all we bleeding want. Horseshoes! Supposed
to be four thousand in store, but can they find them?” The Sergeant
spat.
“Tells me they’re lost! I’m to go to the bhinjarries and buy them!
I’m supposed to tell my captain that? So now we have to sit here till
Captain Torrance gets back. Maybe he knows where they are. That
monkey in there’ he jerked his thumb at the house’s front door’ doesn
know a bloody thing.”
Sharpe pushed open the door to find himself in a large room where a
half-dozen men argued with a harried clerk. The clerk, an Indian, sat
behind a table covered with curling ledgers.
“Captain Torrance is ill!”
the clerk snapped at Sharpe without waiting to discover the newcomer’s
business.
“And take that dirty Arab boy outside,” the clerk added, jerking his
chin at Ahmed who, armed with a musket he had taken from a corpse on
the battlefield, had followed Sharpe into the house.
“Muskets!” A man tried to attract the clerk’s attention.
“Horseshoes!” an East India Company lieutenant shouted.
“Buckets,” a gunner said.
“Come back tomorrow,” the clerk said.
“Tomorrow!”
“You said that yesterday,” the gunner said, ‘and I’m back.”
“Where’s Captain Torrance?” Sharpe asked.
“He’s ill,” the clerk said disapprovingly, as though Sharpe had risked
the Captain’s fragile health even by asking the question.
“He cannot be disturbed. And why is that boy here? He is an Arab!”
“Because I told him to be here,” Sharpe said. He walked round the
table and stared down at the ledgers.
“What a bleeding mess!”
“Sahib!” The clerk had now realized Sharpe was an officer.
“Other side of the table, sahib, please, sahib! There is a system
here, sahib. I stay this side of the table and you remain on the
other. Please, sahib.”
“What’s your name?” Sharpe asked.
The clerk seemed affronted at the question.
“I am Captain Torranee’s assistant,” he said grandly.
“And Torrance is ill?”
“The Captain is very sick.”
“So who’s in charge?”
“I am,” the clerk said.
“Not any longer,” Sharpe said. He looked up at the East India Company
lieutenant.
“What did you want?”
“Horseshoes.”
“So where are the bleeding horseshoes?” Sharpe asked the clerk.
“I have explained, sahib, I have explained,” the clerk said. He was a
middle-aged man with a lugubrious face and pudgy ink-stained fingers
that now hastily tried to close all the ledgers so that Sharpe could
not read them.
“Now please, sahib, join the queue.”
“Where are the horseshoes?” Sharpe insisted, leaning closer to the
sweating clerk.
“This office is closed!” the clerk shouted.
“Closed till tomorrow! All business will be conducted tomorrow.
Captain Torrance’s orders!”
“Ahmed!” Sharpe said.
“Shoot the bugger.”
Ahmed spoke no English, but the clerk did not know that. He held his
hands out.
“I am closing the office! Work cannot be done like this! I shall
complain to Captain Torrance! There will be trouble! Big trouble!”
The clerk glanced at a door that led to the inner part of the house.
“Is that where Torrance is?” Sharpe asked, gesturing at the door.
“No, sahib, and you cannot go in there. The Captain is sick.”
Sharpe went to the door and pushed it open. The clerk yelped a
protest, but Sharpe ignored him. A muslin screen hung on the other
side of the door and entangled Sharpe as he pushed into the room where
a sailor’s hammock hung from the beams. The room seemed empty, but
then a whimper made him look into a shadowed corner. A young woman
crouched there. She was dressed in a said, but she looked European to
Sharpe. She had been sewing gold braid onto the outer seams of a pair
of breeches, but now stared in wide-eyed fright at the intruder.
“Who are you, Ma’am?” Sharpe asked.
The woman shook her head. She had very black hair and very white skin.
Her terror was palpable.
“Is Captain Torrance here?” Sharpe asked.
“No,” she whispered.
“He’s sick, is that right?”
“If he says so, sir,” she said softly. Her London accent confirmed
that she was English.
“I ain’t going to hurt you, love,” Sharpe said, for fear was making her
tremble.
“Are you Mrs. Torrance?”