"And nothing went wrong?"
Hakeswill's face twitched as he shrugged.
"His boy got away, but he didn't make no trouble. Just vanished. Probably went back to his mummy."
Torrance smiled. All was done, all was solved. Even better, he could resume his trade with Jama, though perhaps with a little more circumspection than in the past.
"Did Sajit go with Sharpe?" he asked, knowing he would need an efficient clerk if he was to hide the treacherous transactions in the ledger.
"No, sir. He's with me, sir, outside, sir." Hakeswill jerked his head towards the front room.
"He wanted to go, sir, but I gave him a thumping on account of us needing him here, sir, and after that he was as good as gold, sir, even if he is an heathen bit of scum."
Torrance smiled.
"I am vastly in your debt, Sergeant Hakeswill, " he said.
"Just doing my duty, sir." Hakeswill's face twitched as he grinned and gestured towards the garden window.
"And hoping for a soldier's reward, sir."
"Brick, you mean?" Torrance asked.
"Me heart's desire, sir, " Hakeswill said hoarsely.
"Her and me, sir, made for each other. Says so in the scriptures."
"Then the fruition of the prophecy must wait a while, " Torrance said, 'because I need Brick to look after me, and your duty, Sergeant, is to assume Mister Sharpe's responsibilities. We shall wait till someone notices that he's missing, then claim that he must have been ambushed by Mahrattas while on his way here. Then you'll go up the mountain to help the engineers."
"Me, sir?" Hakeswill sounded alarmed at the prospect of having to do some real work.
"Up the mountain?"
"Someone has to be there. You can't expect me to do it! " Torrance said indignantly.
"Someone must stay here and shoulder the heavier responsibilities. It won't be for long, Sergeant, not for long. And once the campaign is over I can assure you that your heart's desires will be fully met." But not, he decided, before Hakeswill paid him the money Clare owed for her passage out from England. That money could come from the cash that Jama had given Hakeswill this night which, Torrance was sure, was a great deal more than the Sergeant had admitted.
"Make yourself ready, Sergeant, " Torrance ordered.
"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 while that a man was resting his feet on the rug. Sharpe tested the assumption by trying to move and the man kicked him. He lay still again. One dog had escaped, he remembered. It had somehow slipped the rope over its neck and had paddled away downstream with the children shrieking along the bank and hurling stones at the frightened head. Did the dog die? Sharpe could not remember. God, he thought, but he had been a wild child, wild as a hawk. They had tried to beat the wildness out of him, beat him till the blood ran, then told him he would come to a bad end. They had prophesied that he would be strung up by the neck at Tyburn Hill. Dick Sharpe dangling, pissing down his legs while the rope burned into his gullet. But it had not happened. He was an officer, a gentleman, and he was still alive, and he pulled at the tether about his wrists, but it would not shift.
Was Hakeswill riding in the cart? That seemed possible, and suggested the Sergeant wanted somewhere safe and private to kill Sharpe. But how? Quick with a knife? That was a forlorn wish, for Hakeswill was not merciful. Perhaps he planned to repay Sharpe by putting him beneath an elephant's foot and he would scream and writhe until the great weight would not let him scream ever again and his bones would crack and splinter like eggshells. Be sure your sin will find you out.
How many times had he heard those words from the Bible? Usually thumped into him at the foundling home with a blow across the skull for every syllable, and the blows would keep coming as they chanted the reference. The Book of Numbers, chapter thirty-two, verse twenty-three, syllable by syllable, blow by blow, and now his sin was finding him out and he was to be punished for all the unpunished of fences So die well, he told himself. Don't cry out. Whatever was about to happen could not be worse than the flogging he had taken because of Hakeswill's lies.