“Doubtless you will be needed up the road tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” Hakeswill said sullenly.
“Well done, good and faithful Hakeswill,” Torrance said grandly.
“Don’t let any moths in as you leave.”
Hakeswill went. He had three thousand three hundred rupees in his
pocket and a fortune in precious stones hidden in his cartridge box. He
would have liked to have celebrated with Clare Wall, but he did not
doubt that his chance would come and so, for the moment, he was a
satisfied man. He looked at the first stars pricking the sky above
Gawilghur’s plateau and reflected that he had rarely been more
content.
He had taken his revenge, he had become wealthy, and thus all was well
in Obadiah Hakeswill’s world.
CHAPTER 6
Sharpe knew he was in an ox cart. He could tell that from the jolting
motion and from the terrible squeal of the ungreased axles. The ox
carts that followed the army made a noise like the shrieking of souls
in perdition.
He was naked, bruised and in pain. It hurt even to breathe. His mouth
was gagged and his hands and feet were tied, but even if they had been
free he doubted he could have moved for he was wrapped in a thick dusty
carpet. Hakeswill! The bastard had ambushed him, stripped him and
robbed him. He knew it was Hakeswill, for Sharpe had heard the
Sergeant’s hoarse voice as he was rolled into the rug.
Then he had been carried out of the tent and slung into the cart, and
he was not sure how long ago that had been because he was in too much
pain and he kept slipping in and out of a dreamlike daze. A nightmare
daze. There was blood in his mouth, a tooth was loose, a rib was
probably cracked and the rest of him simply ached or hurt. His head
throbbed. He wanted to be sick, but knew he would choke on his vomit
because of the gag and so he willed his belly to be calm.
Calm! The only blessing was that he was alive, and he suspected that
was no blessing at all. Why had Hakeswill not killed him? Not out of
mercy, that was for sure. So presumably he was to be killed somewhere
else, though why Hakeswill had run the terrible risk of having a
British officer tied hand and foot and smuggled past the picquet line
Sharpe could not tell. It made no sense. All he did know was that by
now Obadiah Hakeswill would have teased Sharpe’s gems from their hiding
places. God damn it all to hell. First Simone, now Hakeswill, and
Hakeswill, Sharpe realized, could never have trapped Sharpe if Torrance
had not helped.
But knowing his enemies would not help Sharpe now. He knew he had as
much hope of living as those dogs who were hurled onto the mud flats
beside the Thames in London with stones tied to their necks.
The children used to laugh as they watched the dogs struggle. Some of
the dogs had come from wealthy homes. They used to be snatched and if
their owners did not produce the ransom money within a couple of days,
the dogs were thrown to the river. Usually the ransom was paid,
brought by a nervous footman to a sordid public house near the docks,
but no one would ransom Sharpe. Who would care? Dust from the rug was
thick in his nose. Just let the end be quick, he prayed.
He could hear almost nothing through the rug. The axle squealing was
the loudest noise, and once he heard a thump on the cart’s side and
thought he heard a man laugh. It was night-time. He was not sure how
he knew that, except that it would make sense, for no one would try to
smuggle a British officer out in daylight, and he knew he had lain in
the tent for a long time after Hakeswill had hit him. He remembered
ducking under the tent’s canvas, remembered a glimpse of the
brass-bound musket butt, and then it was nothing but a jumble of pain
and oblivion. A weight pressed on his waist, and he guessed after a