talk to me? They like money, lawyers do, and do you know a lawyer in
India that ain’t in the Company’s pocket? Mind you’ she glanced
towards the house to make sure she was not being overheard ‘he hasn’t
got any money either. He gets an allowance from his uncle and his
Company pay and he gambles it all away, but he always seems to find
more.” She paused.
“And what would I do if I walked away?” She left the question hanging
in the warm air, then shook her head.
“I’m miles from bleeding home. I don’t know. He was good to me at
first. I liked him! I didn’t know him then, you see.” She half
smiled.
“Funny, isn’t it? You think because someone’s a gentleman and the son
of a clergyman that they have to be kind? But he ain’t.” She
vigorously brushed the boot’s tassel.
“And he’s been worse since he met that Hakeswill. I do hate him.” She
sighed.
“Just fourteen months to go,” she said wearily, ‘and then I’ll have
paid the debt.”
“Hell, no,” Sharpe said.
“Walk away from the bugger.”
She picked up Torrance’s hat and began brushing it.
“I don’t have family,” she said, ‘so where would I go?”
“You’re an orphan?”
She nodded.
“I got work as a house girl in Torrance’s uncle’s house.
That’s where I met Charlie. He were a footman. Then Mr. Henry,
that’s his uncle, see, said we should join the Captain’s household.
Charlie became Captain Torrance’s valet. That was a step up. And the
money was better, only we weren’t paid, not once we were in Madras. He
said we had to pay our passage.”
“What the devil are you doing, Sharpe?” Torrance had come into the
garden.
“You’re not supposed to clean boots! You’re an officer!”
Sharpe tossed the boot at Torrance. “I keep forgetting, sir.”
If you must clean boots, Sharpe, start with your own. Good God, man!
You look like a tinker!”
“The General’s seen me looking worse,” Sharpe said.
“Besides, he never did care what men looked like, sir, so long as they
do their job properly.”
“I do mine properly!” Torrance bridled at the implication.
“I just need more staff. You tell him that, Sharpe, you tell him! Give
me that hat, Brick! We’re late.”
In fact Torrance arrived early at the General’s tent and had to kick
his heels in the evening sunshine.
“What exactly did the General say when he summoned me?” he asked
Sharpe.
“He sent an aide, sir. Captain Campbell. Wanted to know where the
supplies were.”
“You told him they were coming?”
“Told him the truth, sir.”
“Which was?”
“That I didn’t bloody well know where they were.”
“Oh, Christ! Thank you, Sharpe, thank you very much.” Torrance
twitched at his sash, making the silk fall more elegantly.
“Do you know what loyalty is?”
Before Sharpe could answer the tent flaps were pushed aside and Captain
Campbell ducked out into the sunlight.
“Wasn’t expecting you, Sharpe!” he said genially, holding out his
hand.
Sharpe shook hands.
“How are you, sir?”
“Busy,” Campbell said.
“You don’t have to go in if you don’t want.”
“He does,” Torrance said.
Sharpe shrugged.
“Might as well,” he said, then ducked into the tent’s yellow light as
Campbell pulled back the flap.
The General was in his shirtsleeves, sitting behind a table that was
covered with Major Blackiston’s sketches of the land bridge to
Gawilghur. Blackiston was beside him, travel-stained and tired, while
an irascible-looking major of the Royal Engineers stood two paces
behind the table. If the General was surprised to see Sharpe he showed
no sign of it, but instead looked back to the drawings.
“How wide is the approach?” he asked.
“At its narrowest, sir, about fifty feet.” Blackiston tapped one of
the sketches.
“It’s wide enough for most of the approach, two or three hundred yards,
but just here there’s a tank and it squeezes the path cruelly. A
ravine to the left, a tank to the right.”
“Fall to your death on one side,” the General said, ‘and drown on the
other. And doubtless the fifty feet between is covered by their
guns?”
“Smothered, sir. Must be twenty heavy cannon looking down the throat