“Stare away, Hickey,” Harry Price said, “I do! Damned watchable is Mrs Sharpe, if you’ll forgive me saying so, Ma’am.”
“I forgive you, Harry.” Teresa said.
“The first woman who ever has,” Sharpe said.
“Not fair, Richard,” Price said, “I’m forever being forgiven by women.”
Hickey was again gazing at Teresa and, realising that Sharpe was looking at him, he tried to make conversation. “You really do fight, Ma’am?”
“When I have to,” Teresa said.
“Against the French, Ma’am?” Hickey suggested.
“Who the hell else?” Sharpe growled.
“Against all men who are rude,” Teresa said, dazzling Hickey with a smile.
“But I have fought the French, Mister Hickey, since the day they killed my family.”
“Oh, my Lord,” Hickey said. Such things did not happen in Danbury, Essex, where his family farmed three hundred placid acres.
“And I am at San Miguel to fight them again,” Teresa said.
“No French here, Ma’am,” Major Tubbs said happily. “Not a frog within hopping distance.”
“And if one does come within hopping distance,” Teresa said, “then my men will see them coming. We are your cavalry scouts.”
“And glad we are to have you, Ma’am,” Tubbs said gallantly.
John MacKeon, who until now had stayed silent, suddenly looked at Sharpe, and the fierceness of the Scotsman’s gaze was so intense that it brought an awkward silence to the cramped table. “You no remember me?” He said to Sharpe.
Sharpe looked at the craggy face with its thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes. “Should I, Mister MacKeon?”
“I was with you, Sharpe, when you crossed the wall at Gawilghur.”
“Then I should remember you,” Sharpe said.
“Ah, no,” MacKeon said dismissively. “I was just another soldier. One of Campbell’s men in the 96th, ye remember them?”
Shape nodded. “I remember them. I remember Captain Campbell too.”
“There’s a laddie who’s done well for himself,” MacKeon said, “and no more than he’s deserved, I dare say. It was a great day’s work ye both did.”
“We all did it,” Sharpe said.
“But you were first across the wall, man. I remember seeing you climb and I thought to myself, there’s a dead man if ever I did see one!”
“What happened?” Teresa asked.
Sharpe shrugged. “It was in India. A battle. We won.”
Teresa raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “What a wonderful story teller you are, Richard. A battle. In India. We won.”
“Aye,” MacKeon said, shaking his head. “Gawilghur! A rare fight, that one.
A rare fight. A horde of heathen, there were, a horde! And this wee laddie,” he gestured at Sharpe, “scrambled up a cliff like a monkey. A dead man if ever I did see one. Aye,” he nodded at Sharpe, “I thought it was you.”
“So what did happen?” Tubbs demanded, echoing Teresa’s earlier plea.
“It was a battle,” Sharpe said, getting to his feet. “In India.”
“And you won?” Teresa asked earnestly.
“We did,” Sharpe said, “we did.” He paused, thinking, and it almost seemed he was going to tell the story, but instead he touched a finger to the long scar that ran up one cheek and which gave him such a grim appearance.
“I fetched this scar in that fight,” he said, then shook his head, “but if you’ll forgive me, it’s time to check the sentries.” He picked up his shako, rifle and sword belt and ducked out the door.
“It was a battle,” Teresa said, imitating Sharpe, “in India. We won. So what really happened, Mister MacKeon?”
“He just told you, didn’t he? It was a battle in India, and we won it.”
The Scotsman scowled and lapsed into his previous silence.
Sharpe crossed the bridge, spoke to the two men who stood guard at the southern end, then went back to the picquets at the northern side, and afterwards he climbed the wooden ladders in the fortress, past the room where Hickey still stared forlornly at Teresa, and found Patrick Harper on the southern parapet. Harper nodded a greeting, then passed his canteen to Sharpe.
“I’m not thirsty, Pat.”
“That’s medicine in there, so it is.”
“Ah,” Sharpe tipped the canteen and drank some of the red wine. “So how many bottles did you keep back?”