he had been woken by Hakeswill who, oblivious of the stench, began to
unwrap the cloths that bound his feet. It smelt, Torrance thought,
like rotted cheese that had been stored in a corpse’s belly. He
shifted his chair slightly towards the window and pulled his dressing
gown tighter about his chest.
“I’m truly sorry about Naig,” Torrance said. Hakeswill had listened in
disbelief to the tale of Naig’s death and seemed genuinely saddened by
it, just as he had been shocked by the news that Sharpe was now
Torrance’s assistant.
“The bleeding Scotch didn’t want him, sir, did they?” Hakeswill
said.
“Never thought the Scotch had much sense, but they had wits enough to
get rid of Sharpie.” Hakeswill had uncovered his right foot and
Torrance, barely able to endure the stink, suspected there was black
fungus growing between the Sergeant’s toes.
“Now you’ve got him, sir,” Hakeswill went on, ‘and I pities you, I
does. Decent officer like you,
sir? Last thing you deserved. Bleeding Sharpie! He ain’t got no
right to be an officer, sir, not Sharpie. He ain’t a gentleman like
your good self, sir. He’s just a common toad, like the rest of us.”
“So why was he commissioned?” Torrance asked, watching as Hakeswill
tugged at the crusted cloth on his left foot.
“On account of saving the General’s life, sir. Leastwise, that’s what
is said.” Hakeswill paused as a spasm made his face twitch.
“Saved Sir Arthur’s life at Assaye. Not that I believe it, sir, but
Sir Arthur does, and the result of that, sir, is that Sir Arthur thinks
bloody Sharpie is a blue eyed boy. Sharpie farts and Sir Arthur thinks
the wind’s turned southerly.”
“Does he now?” Torrance asked. That was worth knowing.
“Four years ago, sir,” Hakeswill said, “I had Sharpie flogged. Would
have been a dead ‘un too, he would, like he deserved, only Sir Arthur
stopped the flogging after two hundred lashes. Stopped it!” The
injustice of the act still galled the Sergeant.
“Now he’s a bleedin’ officer. I tells you, sir, the army ain’t what it
was. Gone to the dogs, it has.” He pulled the cloth from his left
foot, then frowned at his toes.
“I washed them in August,” he said in wonderment, ‘but it don’t look
like it, does it?”
“It is now December, Sergeant,” Torrance said reprovingly.
“A good sluice should last six months, sir.”
“Some of us engage in a more regular toilet,” Torrance hinted.
“You would, sir, being a gentleman. Thing is, sir, I wouldn’t normally
take the toe rags off, only there’s a blister.” Hakeswill frowned.
“Haven’t had a blister in years! Poor Naig. For a blackamoor he
wasn’t a bad sort of fellow.”
Naig, Torrance believed, had been as evil a creature as any on the
surface of the earth, but he smiled piously at Hakeswill’s tribute.
“We shall certainly miss him, Sergeant.”
“Pity you had to hang him,” sir, but what choice did you have?
Between the devil and a deep blue buggeration, that’s where you were,
sir. But poor Naig.” Hakeswill shook his head in sad remembrance.
“You should have strung up Sharpie, sir, more’s the pity you couldn’t.
Strung him up proper like what he deserves. A murdering bastard, he
is, murdering!” And an indignant Hakeswill told Captain Torrance how
Sharpe had tried to kill him, first by throwing him among the Tippoo’s
tigers, then by trapping him in a courtyard with an elephant trained to
kill by crushing men with its forefoot.
“Only the tigers weren’t hungry, see, on account of being fed? And as
for the elephant, sir, I had me knife, didn’t I? I jabbed it in the
paw, I did.” He mimed the stabbing action.
“Right in its paw, deep in! It didn’t like it. I can’t die, sir, I
can’t die.” The Sergeant spoke hoarsely, believing every word. He had
been hanged as a child, but he had survived the gallows and now
believed he was protected from death by his own guardian angel.
Mad, Torrance thought, bedlam-mad, but he was nevertheless fascinated
by Obadiah Hakeswill. To look at, the Sergeant appeared the perfect
soldier; it was the twitch that suggested something more interesting