to do the real work. The buggers would cheat him, of course, but there
seemed plenty of money to go around so long as a man did not gamble it
away. Rule of halves, he told himself again. The golden rule of
life.
The sound of singing came from the camp beyond the village.
Torrance did not recognize the tune, which was probably some Scottish
song. The sound drifted him back to his childhood when he had sung in
the cathedral choir. He grimaced, remembering the frosty mornings when
he had run in the dark across the close and pushed open the cathedral’s
great side door to be greeted by a clout over the ear because he was
late. The choristers’ cloudy breath had mingled with the smoke of the
guttering candles. Lice under the robes, he remembered. He had caught
his first lice off a counter-tenor who had held him against a wall
behind a bishop’s tomb and hoisted his robe. I hope the bastard’s
dead, he thought.
Sajit yelped.
“Quiet!” Torrance shouted, resenting being jarred from his reverie.
There was silence again, and Torrance sucked on the hookah. He could
hear Clare pouring water in the yard and he smiled as he anticipated
the soothing touch of the sponge.
Someone, it had to be Sajit, tried to open the door from the front
room.
“Go away,” Torrance called, but then something hit the door a massive
blow. The bolt held, though dust sifted from crevices in the plaster
wall either side of the frame. Torrance stared in shock, then twitched
with alarm as another huge bang shook the door, and this time a chunk
of plaster the size of a dinner plate fell from the wall.
Torrance swung his bare legs out of the hammock. Where the devil were
his pistols?
A third blow reverberated round the room, and this time the bracket
holding the bolt was wrenched out of the wall and the door swung in
onto the muslin screen. Torrance saw a robed figure sweep the screen
aside, then he threw himself over the room and pawed through his
discarded clothes to find his guns.
A hand gripped his wrist.
“You won’t need that, sir,” a familiar voice said, and Torrance turned,
wincing at the strength of the man’s grip.
He saw a figure dressed in blood-spattered Indian robes, with a tulwar
scabbarded at his waist and a face shrouded by a head cloth. But
Torrance recognized his visitor and blanched.
“Reporting for duty, sir,” Sharpe said, taking the pistol from
Torrance’s unresisting gripTorrance gaped. He could have sworn that
the blood on the robe was fresh for it gleamed wetly. There was more
blood on a short-bladed knife in Sharpe’s hand. It dripped onto the
floor and Torrance gave a small pitiful mew.
“It’s Sajit’s blood,” Sharpe said.
“His penknife too.” He tossed the wet blade onto the table beside the
gold coins.
“Lost your tongue, sir?”
“Sharpe?”
“He’s dead, sir, Sharpe is,” Sharpe said.
“He was sold to Jama, remember, sir? Is that the blood money?” Sharpe
glanced at the rupees on the table.
“Sharpe,” Torrance said again, somehow incapable of saying anything
else.
“I’m his ghost, sir,” Sharpe said, and Torrance did indeed look as
though a spectre had just broken through his door. Sharpe tutted and
shook his head in self-reproof.
“I’m not supposed to call you “sir”, am I, sir? On account of me being
a fellow officer and a gentleman. Where’s Sergeant Hakeswill?”
“Sharpe!” Torrance said once more, collapsing onto a chair.
“We heard you’d been captured!”
“So I was, sir, but not by the enemy. Leastwise, not by any proper
enemy.” Sharpe examined the pistol.
“This ain’t loaded. What were you hoping to do, sir? Beat me to death
with the barrel?”
“My robe, Sharpe, please,” Torrance said, gesturing to where the silk
robe hung on a wooden peg.
“So where is Hakeswill, sir?” Sharpe asked. He had pushed back his
head cloth and now opened the pistol’s friz zen and blew dust off the
pan before scraping at the layer of caked powder with a fingernail.
“He’s on the road,” Torrance said.
“Ah! Took over from me, did he? You should keep this pistol clean,