Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  “I mean I’ve met him, sir.”

  Torrance shook his head as though Sharpe had been wasting his time. “Do stop calling me ‘sir.’ It may be your natural subservience, Sharpe, or more likely it is the natural air of superiority that emanates from my person, but it ill becomes an officer, even one dredged up from the ranks. A search of his tents, Dilip, secured the missing items. I then, in accordance with general orders, hanged the thief as an example. I have the honor to be, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Two thousand muskets are still missing, sir,” Sharpe said. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to call you ‘sir.’”

  “If it pleases you to grovel, Sharpe, then do so. Two thousand muskets still missing, eh? I suspect the bugger sold them on, don’t you?”

  “I’m more interested in how he got them in the first place,” Sharpe said.

  “How very tedious of you,” Torrance said lightly.

  “I’d suggest talking to Sergeant Hakeswill when he gets back,” Sharpe said.

  “I won’t hear a word spoken against Obadiah,” Torrance said. “Obadiah is a most amusing fellow.”

  “He’s a lying, thieving bastard,” Sharpe said vehemently.

  “Sharpe! Please!” Torrance’s voice was pained. “How can you say such wicked things? You don’t even know the fellow.”

  “Oh, I know him, sir. I served under him in the Havercakes.”

  “You did?” Torrance smiled. “I see we are in for interesting times. Perhaps I should keep the two of you apart. Or perhaps not. Brick!” The last word was shouted toward a door that led to the back of the commandeered house.

  The door opened and the black-haired woman slipped past the muslin. “Captain?” she asked. She blushed when she saw Torrance was naked, and Torrance, Sharpe saw, enjoyed her embarrassment.

  “Brick, my dear,” Torrance said, “my hookah has extinguished itself. Will you attend to it? Dilip is busy, or I would have asked him. Sharpe? May I have the honor of naming you to Brick? Brick? This is Ensign Sharpe. Ensign Sharpe? This is Brick.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” the woman said, dropping a brief curtsy before she stooped to the hookah. She had clearly not told Torrance that she had met Sharpe earlier.

  “Ma’am,” Sharpe said.

  “Ma’am!” Torrance said with a laugh. “She’s called Brick, Sharpe.”

  “Brick, sir?” Sharpe asked sourly. The name was utterly unsuited to the delicate-featured woman who now deftly disassembled the hookah.

  “Her real name is Mrs. Wall,” Torrance explained, “and she is my laundress, seamstress and conscience. Is that not right, little Brick?”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “I cannot abide dirty clothes,” Torrance said. “They are an abomination unto the Lord. Cleanliness, we are constantly told by tedious folk, is next to godliness, but I suspect it is a superior virtue. Any peasant can be godly, but it is a rare person who is clean. Brick, however, keeps me clean. If you pay her a trifle, Sharpe, she will doubtless wash and mend those rags you are pleased to call a uniform.”

  “They’re all I’ve got, sir.”

  “So? Walk naked until Brick has serviced you, or does the idea embarrass you?”

  “I wash my own clothes, sir.”

  “I wish you would,” Torrance said tartly. “Remind me why you came here, Sharpe?”

  “Orders, sir.”

  “Very well,” Torrance said. “At dawn you will go to Colonel Butters’s quarters and find an aide who can tell you what is required of us. You then tell Dilip. Dilip then arranges everything. After that you may take your rest. I trust you will not find these duties onerous?”

  Sharpe wondered why Torrance had asked for a deputy if the clerk did all the work, then supposed that the Captain was so lazy that he could not be bothered to get up early in the morning to fetch his orders. “I get tomorrow’s orders at dawn, sir,” Sharpe said, “from an aide of Colonel Butters.”

  “There!” Torrance said with mock amazement. “You have mastered your duties, Ensign. I congratulate you.”

  “We already have tomorrow’s orders, sahib,” Dilip said from the table where he was copying a list of the recovered stores into Torrance’s report. “We are to move everything to Deogaum. The pioneers’ stores are to be moved first, sahib. The Colonel’s orders are on the table, sahib, with the chitties. Pioneers’ stores first, then everything else.”

  “Well, I never!” Torrance said. “See? Your first day’s work is done, Sharpe.” He drew on the hookah which the woman had relit. “Excellent, my dear,” he said, then held out a hand to stop her from leaving. She crouched beside the hammock, averting her eyes from Torrance’s naked body. Sharpe sensed her unhappiness, and Torrance sensed Sharpe’s interest in her. “Brick is a widow, Sharpe,” he said, “and presumably looking for a husband, though I doubt she’s ever dared to dream of marrying as high as an ensign. But why not? The social ladder is there to be climbed and, low a rung as you might be, Sharpe, you still represent a considerable advancement for Brick. Before she joined my service she was a mop-squeezer. From mop-squeezer to an officer’s wife! There’s progress for you. I think the two of you would suit each other vastly well. I shall play Cupid, or rather Dilip will. Take a letter to the chaplain of the 94th, Dilip. He’s rarely sober, but I’m sure he can waddle through the marriage ceremony without falling over.”

  “I can’t marry, sir!” Sharpe protested.

  Torrance, amused at himself, raised an eyebrow. “You are averse to women? You dislike dear Brick? Or you’ve taken an oath of celibacy, perhaps?”

  Sharpe blushed. “I’m spoken for, sir.”

  “You mean you’re engaged? How very touching. Is she an heiress, perhaps?”

  Sharpe shrugged. “She’s in Seringapatam,” he said lamely. “And we’re not engaged.”

  “But you have an understanding,” Torrance said, “with this ravishing creature in Seringapatam. Is she black, Sharpe? A black bibbi? I’m sure Clare wouldn’t mind, would you? A white man in India needs a bibbi or two as well as a wife. Don’t you agree, Brick?” He turned to the woman, who ignored him. “The late Mr. Wall died of the fever,” Torrance said to Sharpe, “and in the Christian kindness of my heart I continue to employ his widow. Does that not speak well of my character?”

  “If you say so, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “I see my attempt to play Cupid is not meeting with success,” Torrance said. “So, Sharpe, to business. Tomorrow morning I suggest you go to Deogaum, wherever the hell that is.”

  “With the bullocks, sir?”

  Torrance raised his eyebrows in exasperation. “You are an officer, Sharpe, not a bullock driver. You don’t prod rumps, you leave that to the natives. Go early. Ride there at dawn, and your first duty will be to find me quarters.”

  “I don’t have a horse,” Sharpe said.

  “You don’t have a horse? Don’t have a horse? Good God alive, man, what bloody use are you? You’ll just have to bloody well walk then. I shall find you in Deogaum tomorrow afternoon and God help you if you haven’t found me decent quarters. A front room, Sharpe, where Dilip can conduct business. A large room for me, and a hole for Brick. I would also like to have a walled garden with adequate shade trees and a small pool.”

  “Where is Deogaum?” Sharpe asked.

  “Northwards, sahib,” Dilip answered. “Close to the hills.”

  “Beneath Gawilghur?” Sharpe guessed.

  “Yes, sahib.”

  Sharpe looked back to Torrance. “Can I ask a favor of you, sir?”

  Torrance sighed. “If you insist.”

  “At Gawilghur, sir, I’d like permission to join the assault party.”

  Torrance stared at Sharpe for a long time. “You want what?” he finally asked.

  “I want to be with the attack, sir. There’s a fellow inside, see, who killed a friend of mine. I want to see him dead.”

  Torrance blinked at Sharpe. “Don’t tell me you’re enthusiastic! Good God!” A sudden look of terror
came to the Captain’s face. “You’re not a Methodist, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Torrance pointed the hookah’s mouthpiece toward a corner of the room. “There is a linen press, Sharpe, d’you see it? Inside it are my clothes. Amidst my clothes you will find a pistol. Take the pistol, remove yourself from my presence, apply the muzzle to your head and pull the trigger. It is a much quicker and less painful way of dying.”

  “But you won’t mind if I join the attack?”

  “Mind? You’re not, surely, laboring under the misapprehension that I care about your existence? You think I might mourn you, even after such a short acquaintance? My dear Sharpe, I fear I shall not miss you at all. I doubt I’ll even remember your name once you’re dead. Of course you can join the assaulting party. Do what you like! Now I suggest you get some sleep. Not here, though, I like my privacy. Find a tree, perhaps, and slumber beneath its sheltering branches. Good night to you, Sharpe.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “And don’t let any moths in!”

  Sharpe negotiated the muslin and slipped out of the door. Torrance listened to the footsteps go away, then sighed. “A tedious man, Dilip.”

  “Yes, sahib.”

  “I wonder why he was made an officer?” Torrance frowned as he sucked on his hookah, then shook his head. “Poor Naig! Sacrificed to a mere ensign’s ambition. How did that wretched Sharpe even know to look in Naig’s tent? Did he talk to you?”

  “Yes, sahib,” Dilip admitted.

  Torrance stared at him. “Did you let him look at the ledgers?”

  “He insisted, sahib.”

  “You’re a bloody fool, Dilip! A bloody, bloody fool. I should thrash you if I wasn’t so tired. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “No, sahib, please.”

  “Oh, just bugger away off, Dilip,” Torrance snarled. “And you can go too, Brick.”

  The girl fled to the kitchen door. Dilip collected his ink bottle and sand-sprinkler. “Shall I take the chitties now, sahib, for the morning?”

  “Go!” Torrance roared. “You bore me! Go!” Dilip fled to the front room, and Torrance lay back in the hammock. He was indeed bored. He had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Most nights he would go to Naig’s tents and there drink, gamble and whore, but he could hardly visit the green pavilion this night, not after stringing Naig up by the neck. Damn it, he thought. He glanced at the table where a book, a gift from his father, lay unopened. The first volume of Some Reflections on Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians by the Reverend Courtney Mallison, and it would be a frigid day in the devil’s house before Torrance read that turgid tome. The Reverend Mallison had been Torrance’s childhood tutor, and a vicious beast he had been. A whipper, that was Mallison. Loved to whip his pupils. Torrance stared at the ceiling. Money. It was all down to money. Everything in the damned world was down to money. Make money, he thought, and he could go home and make Courtney Mallison’s life a misery. Have the bastard on his knees. And Mallison’s daughter. Have that prim bitch on her back.

  There was a knock on the door. “I said I didn’t want to be disturbed!” Torrance shouted, but despite his protest the door opened and the muslin billowed inward, letting in a flutter of moths. “For Christ’s sake,” Torrance cursed, then fell abruptly silent.

  He fell silent, for the first man through the door was a jetti, his bare torso gleaming with oil, and behind him came the tall man with a limp, the same man who had pleaded for Naig’s life. His name was Jama, and he was Naig’s brother, and his presence made Torrance acutely aware of his nudity. He swung off the hammock and reached for his dressing gown, but Jama twitched the silk garment off the chair back. “Captain Torrance,” he said with a bow.

  “Who let you in?” Torrance demanded.

  “I expected to see you in our small establishment tonight, Captain,” Jama said. Where his brother had been plump, noisy and a braggart, Jama was lean, silent and watchful.

  Torrance shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow night?”

  “You will be welcome, Captain, as always.” Jama took a small sheaf of papers from his pocket and fanned his face with them. “Ten thousand welcomes, Captain.”

  Ten thousand rupees. That was the value of the papers in Jama’s hand, all of them notes signed by Torrance. He had signed far more, but the others he had paid off with supplies niched from the convoys. Jama was here to remind Torrance that his greatest debts remained unpaid. “About today ... “ Torrance said awkwardly.

  “Ah, yes!” Jama said, as though he had momentarily forgotten the reason for his visit. “About today, Captain. Do tell me about today.” The jetti said nothing, just leaned against the wall with folded arms, his oiled muscles shining in the candlelight and his dark eyes fixed immovably on Torrance.

  “I’ve already told you. It wasn’t of my doing,” Torrance said with as much dignity as a naked man could muster.

  “You were the one who demanded my brother’s death,” Jama said.

  “What choice did I have? Once the supplies were found?”

  “But perhaps you arranged for them to be found?”

  “No!” Torrance protested. “Why the hell would I do that?” Jama was silent a moment, then indicated the huge man at his side. “His name is Prithviraj. I once saw him castrate a man with his bare hands.” Jama mimed a pulling action, smiling. “You’d be astonished at how far a little skin can stretch before it breaks.”

  “For God’s sake!” Torrance had gone pale. “It was not my doing!”

  “Then whose doing was it?”

  “His name is Sharpe. Ensign Sharpe.”

  Jama walked to Torrance’s table where he turned the pages of Some Reflections on Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. “This Sharpe,” he asked, “he was not obeying your orders?”

  “Of course not!”

  Jama shrugged. “My brother was careless,” he admitted, “overconfident. He believed that with your friendship he could survive any inquiry.”

  “We were doing business,” Torrance said. “It was not friendship. And I told your brother he should have hidden the supplies.”

  “Yes,” Jama said, “he should. And so I told him also. But even so, Captain, I come from a proud family. You expect me to watch my brother killed and do nothing about it?” He fanned out the notes of Torrance’s debts. “I shall return these to you, Captain, when you deliver Ensign Sharpe to me. Alive! I want Prithviraj to take my revenge. You understand?”

  Torrance understood well enough. “Sharpe’s a British officer,” he said. “If he’s murdered there’ll be an inquiry. A real inquiry. Heads will be broken.”

  “That is your problem, Captain Torrance,” Jama said. “How you explain his disappearance is your affair. As are your debts.” He smiled and pushed the notes back into the pouch at his belt. “Give me Sharpe, Captain Torrance, or I shall send Prithviraj to visit you in the night. In the meantime, you will please continue to patronize our establishment.”

  “Bastard,” Torrance said, but Jama and his huge companion had already gone. Torrance picked up Some Reflections on Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians and slammed the heavy book down on a moth. “Bastard,” he said again. But on the other hand it was Sharpe who would suffer, not him, so it did not really matter. And what was Sharpe anyway? Nothing but an upstart from the ranks, so who would care if he died? Torrance killed another moth, then opened the kitchen door. “Come here, Brick.”

  “No, sir, please?”

  “Shut up. And come here. You can kill these damn moths while I get drunk.”

  Filthy drunk, he reckoned, for he had been scared today. He knew he had very nearly got caught when Sharpe had stripped the tent away from the purloined supplies, but by killing Naig quickly Torrance had protected himself, and now the price of his continued survival was Sharpe’s death. Arrange that, he thought, and all his troubles would be past. He forced Brick to drink some arrack, knowing how she hated it. Then he drank some himself. Damn Sharpe to hell, he thought, damn the interfering bastard to hell, which was wh
ere Sharpe was going anyway so Torrance drank to that happy prospect. Farewell, Mr. Sharpe.

  Chapter 4

  Sharpe was not sure how far away Deogaum was, but guessed it was close to twenty miles and that was at least a seven-hour journey on foot, and so it was long before dawn when he stirred Ahmed from his sleep beside the smoldering remains of a bullock-dung fire, then set off under the stars. He tried to teach Ahmed some English. “Stars,” Sharpe said, pointing.

  “Stars,” Ahmed repeated dutifully.

  “Moon,” Sharpe said.

  “Moon,” Ahmed echoed.

  “Sky.”

  “Moon?” Ahmed asked, curious that Sharpe was still pointing to the sky.

  “Sky, you bugger.”

  “Skyoobugger? “

  “Never mind,” Sharpe said. He was hungry, and he had forgotten to ask Captain Torrance where he was supposed to draw rations, but their northward route took them through the village of Argaum where the fighting battalions of the army were bivouacked. Unburied bodies still littered the battlefield, and scavenging wild dogs growled from the dark stench as Sharpe and Ahmed walked past. A picket challenged them at the village, and Sharpe asked the man where he would find the cavalry lines. He could not imagine taking Ahmed to the 74th’s mess for breakfast, but Sergeant Eli Lockhart might be more welcoming.

  The reveille had sounded by the time Sharpe came to the gully where the horses were picketed and the troopers’ campfires were being restored to life. Lockhart scowled at the unexpected visitor through the smoky dawn gloom, then grinned when he recognized Sharpe.

  “Must be some fighting to do, lads,” he announced, “the bleeding infantry’s here. Good morning, sir. Need our help again?”

  “I need some breakfast,” Sharpe admitted.

  “Tea, that’ll start you off. Smithers! Pork chops! Davies! Some of that bread you’re hiding from me. Look lively now!” Lockhart turned back to Sharpe. “Don’t ask me where the chops come from, sir. I might have to lie.” He spat in a tin mug, scoured its interior with the end of his blanket, then filled it with tea. “There you are, sir. Does your boy want some? Here you are, lad.” Lockhart, a mug of tea in his own hand, then insisted on taking Sharpe to the picketed horses. “See, sir?” He lifted a horse’s leg to show off the new horseshoe. “My guvnor’s beholden to you. I might introduce you after breakfast.”