the proprieties!”
“Quite forgot myself, sir,” Hakeswill said, his face twitching, ‘on
account of being reunited with an old comrade. Mister Sharpe, ever so
pleased to see you, sir.”
“Lying bastard,” Sharpe said.
“Ain’t officers supposed to observe the properties, sir?” Hakeswill
demanded of Torrance, but the Captain had gone in search of his native
servant who had charge of the luggage. Hakeswill looked back to
Sharpe.
“Fated to be with you, Sharpie.”
“9
“You stay out of my light, Obadiah,” Sharpe said, ‘or I’ll slit your
throat.”
“I can’t be killed, Sharpie, can’t be killed!” Hakeswill’s face
wrenched itself in a series of twitches.
“It says so in the scriptures.” He looked Sharpe up and down, then
shook his head ruefully.
“I’ve seen better things dangling off the tails of sheep, I have. You
ain’t an officer, Sharpie, you’re a bleeding disgrace.”
Torrance backed into the house, shouting at his servant to drape the
windows with muslin, then turned and hurried to the kitchen to harry
Clare. He tripped over Sharpe’s pack and swore.
“Whose is this?”
“Mine,” Sharpe said.
“You’re not thinking of billeting yourself here, are you, Sharpe?”
“Good as anywhere, sir.”
“I like my privacy, Sharpe. Find somewhere else.” Torrance suddenly
remembered he was speaking to a man who might have influence with
Wellesley.
“If you’d be so kind, Sharpe. I just can’t abide being crowded.
An affliction, I know, but there it is. I need solitude, it’s my
nature.
Brick! Did I tell you to brush my hat? And the plume needs a
combing.”
Sharpe picked up his pack and walked out to the small garden where
Ahmed was sharpening his new tulwar. Clare Wall followed him into the
sunlight, muttered something under her breath, then sat and started to
polish one of Torrance’s boots.
“Why the hell do you stay with him?”
Sharpe asked.
She paused to look at Sharpe. She had oddly hooded eyes that gave her
face an air of delicate mystery.
“What choice do I have?” she asked, resuming her polishing.
Sharpe sat beside her, picked up the other boot and rubbed it with
blackball.
“So what’s he going to do if you bugger off?”
She shrugged.
“I owe him money.”
“Like hell. How can you owe him money?”
“He brought my husband and me here,” she said, ‘paid our passage from
England. We agreed to stay three years. Then Charlie died.” She
paused again, her eyes suddenly gleaming, then sniffed and began to
polish the boot obsessively.
Sharpe looked at her. She had dark eyes, curling black hair and a long
upper lip. If she was not so tired and miserable, he thought, she
would be a very pretty woman.
“How old are you, love?”
She gave him a sceptical glance.
“Who’s your woman in Seringapatam, then?”
“She’s a Frenchie,” Sharpe said.
“A widow, like you.”
“Officer’s widow?” Clare asked. Sharpe nodded.
“And you’re to marry her?” Clare asked.
“Nothing like that,” Sharpe said.
“Like what, then?” she asked.
“I don’t know, really.” Sharpe said. He spat on the boot’s flank and
rubbed the spittle into the bootblack.
“But you like her?” Clare asked, picking the dirt from the boot’s
spur. She seemed embarrassed to have posed the question, for she
hurried on.
“I’m nineteen,” she said, ‘but nearly twenty.”
“Then you’re old enough to see a lawyer,” Sharpe said.
“You ain’t indentured to the Captain. You have to sign papers, don’t
you? Or make your mark on a paper. That’s how it was done in the
foundling home where they dumped me. Wanted to make me into a chimney
sweep, they did! Bloody hell! But if you didn’t sign indenture
papers, you should talk to a lawyer.”
Clare paused, staring at a sad tree in the courtyard’s centre that was
dying from the drought.
“I wanted to get married a year back,” she said softly, ‘and that’s
what Tom told me. He were called Tom, see? A cavalryman, he was. Only
a youngster.”
“What happened?”
“Fever,” she said bleakly.
“But it wouldn’t have worked anyway, because Torrance wouldn’t ever let
me marry.” She began polishing the boot again.
“He said he’d see me dead first.” She shook her head.
“But what’s the point in seeing a lawyer? You think a lawyer would