“Hakeswill,” the cavalry Sergeant said laconically.
“He’s the bugger we usually deal with, on account of Captain Torrance
always being ill.”
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said, and pushed the chair back. Hakeswill!
Obadiah bloody Hakeswill!
“Why wasn’t he sent back to his regiment?”
Sharpe asked.
“He isn’t supposed to be here at all!”
“He knows the system,” the clerk explained.
“Captain Torrance wanted him to stay, sahib.”
And no bloody wonder, Sharpe thought. Hakeswill had worked himself
into the army’s most profitable billet! He was milking the cow, but
making sure it was the clerk’s handwriting in the ledger. No flies on
Obadiah.
“How does the system work?” he asked the clerk.
“Chitties,” the clerk said.
“Chitties?”
“An ox driver is given a chitty, sahib, and when he has delivered his
load the chitty is signed and brought here. Then he is paid. No
chitty, no money. It is the rule, sahib. No chitty, no money.”
“And no bloody horseshoes either,” put in the lean Sergeant of the “And
Sergeant Hakeswill pays the money?” Sharpe asked.
“If he is here, sahib,” the clerk said.
“That doesn’t get me my damned horseshoes,” the Company Lieutenant
protested.
“Or my buckets,” the gunner put in.
“The bhinjarries have all the essentials,” the clerk insisted. He made
shooing gestures.
“Go and see the bhinjarriesl They have necessaries!
This office is closed till tomorrow.”
“But where did the bhinjarries get their necessaries, eh? Answer me
that?” Sharpe demanded, but the clerk merely shrugged. The
bhinjarries were merchants who travelled with the army, contributing
their own vast herds of pack oxen and carts. They sold food, liquor,
women and luxuries, ar’.d now, it seemed, they were offering military
supplies as well, which meant that the army would be paying for things
that were normally issued free, and doubtless, if bloody Hakeswill had
a finger in the pot, things which had been stolen from the army in the
first place.
“Where do I go for horseshoes?” Sharpe asked the clerk.
The clerk was reluctant to answer, but he finally spread his hands and
suggested Sharpe ask in the merchants’ encampment.
“Someone will tell you, sahib.”
“You tell me,” Sharpe said.
“I don’t know!”
“So how do you know they have horseshoes?”
“I hear these things!” the clerk protested.
Sharpe stood and bullied the clerk back against the wall.
“You do more than hear things,” he said, leaning his forearm against
the clerk’s neck, ‘you know things. So you bloody well tell me, or
I’ll have my Arab boy chop off your goo lies for his breakfast. He’s a
hungry little bugger.”
The clerk fought for breath against the pressure of Sharpe’s arm.
“Naig.” He offered the name plaintively when Sharpe relaxed his arm.
“Naig?” Sharpe asked. The name rang a distant bell. A long-ago
bell.
Naig? Then he remembered a merchant of that name who had followed the
army to Seringapatam.
“Naig?” Sharpe asked again.
“A fellow with green tents?”
“The very one, sahib.” The clerk nodded.
“But I did not tell you this thing! These gentlemen are witnesses, I
did not tell you!”
“He runs a brothel!” Sharpe said, remembering, and he remembered too
how Naig had been a friend to Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill four years
before. Sharpe had been a private then and Hakeswill had trumped up
charges that had fetched Sharpe a flogging.
“Nasty Naig’ had been the man’s nickname, and back then he had sold
pale-skinned whores who travelled in green-curtained wagons.
“Right!” Sharpe said.
“This office is closed!” The gunner protested and the cavalry Sergeant
looked disappointed.
“We’re going to see Naig,” Sharpe announced.
“No!” the clerk said too loud.
“No?” Sharpe asked.
“He will be angry, sahib.”
“Why should he be angry?” Sharpe demanded.
“I’m a customer, ain’t I?
He’s got horseshoes, and we want horseshoes. He should be delighted to
see us.”
“He must be treated with respect, sahib,” the clerk said nervously.
“He is a powerful man, Naig. You have money for him?”
“I just want to look at his horseshoes,” Sharpe said, ‘and if they’re
army issue then I’ll ram one of them down his bloody throat.”
The clerk shook his head.
“He has guards, sahib. He has jettisl’ “I think I might let you go on