halted, not because of any orders, but rather because the cannon shot had unnerved the officer leading the front company who was no longer sure exactly where he was supposed to lead the battalion. ‘Hakeswill wasn’t born of a mother,’ Garrard said vehemently. He took off his shako and used his sleeve to wipe the dust and sweat from his face. The woollen sleeve left a faint trace of red dye on his forehead. ‘Hakeswill was spawned of the devil,’ Garrard said, jamming the shako back on his white-powdered hair.
Sharpe wondered whether Tom Garrard would run with him. Two men might survive better than one. And what about Mary? Would she come? He thought about Mary a lot, when he was not thinking about everything else, except that Mary was inextricably twisted into everything else. It was confusing. She was Sergeant Bickerstaff’s widow and she was half Indian and half English and she was twenty-two, which was the same age as Sharpe, or at least he thought it was the same age. It could be that he was twenty-one, or twenty-three; he was not really sure on account of not ever having had a mother to tell him. Of course he did have a mother, everyone had a mother, but not everyone had a Cat Lane whore for a mother who disappeared just after her son was born. The child had been named for the wealthy patron of the foundling home that had raised him, but the naming had not brought Richard Sharpe any patronage, only brought him to the reeking bottom of the army’s dungheap. Still, Sharpe reckoned, he could have a future, and Mary spoke one or two Indian languages which could be useful if he and Tom did run.
The cavalry off to Sharpe’s right spurred into a trot again and disappeared beyond the red-blossomed trees, leaving only a drifting cloud of dust behind. Two galloper guns, light six-pounder cannons, followed them, bouncing dangerously on the uneven ground behind their teams of horses. Every other cannon in the army was drawn by oxen, but the galloper guns had horse teams that were three times as fast as the plodding draught cattle. The lone enemy cannon fired again, its brutal sound punching the warm air with an almost palpable impact. Sharpe could see more enemy guns on the ridge, but they were smaller than the gun that had just fired and Sharpe presumed they did not have the long range of the bigger cannon. Then he saw a trace of grey in the air, a flicker like a vertical pencil stroke drawn against the pale blue sky and he knew that the big gun’s shot must be coming straight towards him, and he knew too that there was no wind to carry the heavy ball gently aside, and all that he realized in the second or so that the ball was in the air, too short a time to react, only to recognize death’s approach, but then the ball slammed into the ground a dozen paces short of him and bounced on up over his head to run harmlessly into a field of sugar cane. ‘I reckon the bastards have got your mother laying the gun now, Dick,’ Garrard said.
‘No talking now!’ Sergeant Hakeswill’s voice screeched suddenly. ‘Save your godless breath. Was that you talking, Garrard?’
‘Not me, Sarge. Ain’t got the breath.’
‘You ain’t got the breath?’ Sergeant Hakeswill came hurrying down the company’s ranks and thrust his face up towards Garrard. ‘You ain’t got the breath? That means you’re dead, Private Garrard! Dead! No use to King or country if you’s dead, but you never was any bleeding use anyway.’ The Sergeant’s malevolent eyes flicked to Sharpe. ‘Was it you talking, Sharpie?’
‘Not me, Sarge.’
‘You ain’t got orders to talk. If the King wanted you to have a conversation I’d have told you so. Says so in the scriptures. Give me your firelock, Sharpie. Quick now!’
Sharpe handed his musket to the Sergeant. It was Hakeswill’s arrival in the company that had persuaded Sharpe that it was time to run from the army. He had been bored anyway, but Hakeswill had added injustice to boredom. Not that Sharpe cared about injustice, for only the rich had justice in this world, but Hakeswill’s injustice was touched with such malevolence that there was hardly a man in the Light Company not ready to rebel, and all that kept them from mutiny was the knowledge that Hakeswill understood their desire, wanted it and wanted to punish them for it. He was a great man for provoking insolence and then punishing it. He was always two steps ahead of you, waiting round a corner with a bludgeon. He was a devil, was Hakeswill, a devil in a smart red coat decorated with a sergeant’s badges.
Yet to look at Hakeswill was to see the perfect soldier. It was true that his oddly lumpy face twitched every few seconds as though an evil spirit was twisting and jerking just beneath his sun-reddened skin, but his eyes were blue, his hair was powdered as white as the snow that never fell on this land, and his uniform was as smart as though he stood guard at Windsor Castle. He performed drill like a Prussian, each movement so crisp and clean that it was a pleasure to watch, but then the face would twitch and his oddly childlike eyes would flicker a sideways glance and you could see the devil peering out. Back when he had been a recruiting sergeant Hakeswill had taken care not to let the devil show, and that was when Sharpe had first met him, but now, when the Sergeant no longer needed to gull and trick young fools into the ranks, Hakeswill did not care who saw his malignancy.
Sharpe stood motionless as the Sergeant untied the scrap of rag that Sharpe used to protect his musket’s lock from the insidious red dust. Hakeswill peered at the lock, found nothing wrong, then turned away from Sharpe so that the sun could fall full on the weapon. He peered again, cocked the gun, dry-fired it, then seemed to lose interest in the musket as a group of officers spurred their horses towards the head of the stalled column. ‘Company!’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Company! ’Shun!’
The men shuffled their feet together and straightened as the three officers galloped past. Hakeswill had stiffened into a grotesque pose; his right boot tucked behind his left, his legs straight, his head and shoulders thrown back, his belly thrust forward and his bent elbows straining to meet in the concavity at the small of his back. None of the other companies of the King’s 33rd Regiment had been stood to attention in honour of the passing officers, but Hakeswill’s gesture of respect was nevertheless ignored. The neglect had no effect on the Sergeant who, when the trio of officers had gone past, shouted at the company to stand easy and then peered again at Sharpe’s musket.
‘You’ll not find ’owt wrong with it, Sarge,’ Sharpe said.
Hakeswill, still standing at attention, did an elaborate about turn, his right boot thumping down to the ground. ‘Did I hear me give you permission to speak, Sharpie?’
‘No, Sarge.’
‘No, Sarge. No, you did not. Flogging offence that, Sharpie.’ Hakeswill’s right cheek twitched with the involuntary spasm that disfigured his face every few seconds and the vehement evil of the face was suddenly so intense that the whole Light Company momentarily held its breath in expectation of Sharpe’s arrest, but then the thumping discharge of the enemy cannon rolled across the countryside and the heavy ball splashed and bounced and tore its way through a bright-green patch of growing rice, and the violence of the harmless missile served to distract Hakeswill who turned to watch as the ball rolled to a stop. ‘Poor bloody shooting,’ Hakeswill said scathingly. ‘Heathens can’t lay guns, I dare say. Or maybe they’re toying with us. Toying!’ The thought made him laugh. It was not, Sharpe suspected, the anticipation of excitement that had brought Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill to this state of near joviality, but rather the thought that a battle would cause casualties and misery, and misery was the Sergeant’s delight. He liked to see men cowed and frightened, for that made them biddable, and Sergeant Hakeswill was always at his happiest when he was in control of unhappy men.
The three officers had stopped their horses at the head of the column and now used telescopes to inspect the distant ridge which was clouded by a ragged fringe of smoke left from the last discharge of the enemy cannon. ‘That’s our Colonel, boys,’ Hakeswill announced to the 33rd’s Light Company, ‘Colonel Arthur Wellesley himself, God bless him for a gentleman, which he is and you ain’t. He’s come to see you fight, so make sure you do. Fight like the Englishmen you are.’
‘I’m a Scot,’ a sour voice spoke from the rear rank.
‘I heard that! Who said that?’ Hakeswill glared at the company, his face twitching uncontrollably. In a less blithe mood the Sergeant would have ferreted out the speaker and punished him, but the excitement of pending battle persuaded him to let the offence pass. ‘A Scot!’ he said derisively instead.