dead?’
‘Alas, no. Our Colonel arrives today. You don’t seem surprised?’
Sharpe waited for a priest, mounted on a drooping mule, to go past. ‘Should I be surprised?’
‘No.’ Leroy grinned at him. ‘But the usual reaction is to say “who, why, what, how do you know?” Then I give you all the answers, and that’s called a conversation.’
Sharpe’s depression was dissipated by Leroy. ‘So tell me.’
The thin, laconic American looked surprised. ‘I never thought you would ask. Who is he? His name is Brian Windham. I’ve never liked the name Brian, it’s the sort of name a woman gives to a boy in the hope he will grow up honest.’ He tapped ash on to the roadway. ‘Why? I think there is no answer to that. What is he? He is a mighty hunter of foxes. Do you hunt, Sharpe?’
‘You know I don’t.’
‘Then your future may be gloomy, as mine may be. And how do I know?’
He paused.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because our good Colonel, honest Brian Windham, has a forerunner, a messenger, a John the Baptist to his coming, a Paul Revere, no less.’
‘Who?’
Leroy sighed; he was being unusually loquacious. ‘You’ve never heard of Paul Revere?’
‘No.’
‘Lucky man, Sharpe. He called my father a traitor, and our family called Revere a traitor, and I rather think we lost the argument. The point is, my dear Sharpe, that he was a forerunner, an agent of warning, and our good Colonel has sent such a warning of his arrival in the shape of a new Major.’
Sharpe looked at Leroy, the American’s expression had not changed. ‘I’m sorry, Leroy. I’m sorry.’
Leroy shrugged. As the senior Captain he had been hoping for the vacant Majority in the Battalion. ‘One should expect nothing in this army. His name is Collett, Jack Collett, another honest name and another fox-hunter.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Leroy began walking again. ‘There is something else.’
‘What?’
Leroy pointed with his cigar into the courtyard of the house where the officers were billeted and Sharpe looked through the archway and, for the second time that morning, he had a sudden, unwelcome shock. A young man, in his middle twenties, stood next to a pile of luggage that his servant was unstrapping. Sharpe had never seen the officer before but the uniform was only too familiar. It was the uniform of the South Essex, complete even to the silver badge of the Eagle that Sharpe had captured, but it was a uniform only one man could wear. It had a curved sabre, slung on chains, and a silver whistle holstered on the crossbelt. The insignias of rank, denoting a Captain, were not epaulettes, but wings made from chains and decorated with a bugle horn. Sharpe was looking at a man dressed as the Captain of the South Essex Light Company. He swore.
Leroy laughed. ‘Join the downtrodden.’
No one had the guts to tell him, except Leroy! The bastards had brought in a new man, over his head, and he had never been told! He felt a huge anger, a depression, and a helplessness in the face of the army’s cumbersome machinery. He could not believe it. Hakeswill, Teresa going, and now this?
Major Forrest appeared in the archway, saw Sharpe, and came towards him. ‘Sharpe?’
‘Sir.’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ The Major sounded miserable.
‘Conclusions, sir?’
‘About Captain Rymer.’ Forrest nodded towards the new Captain who, at that moment, turned and caught Sharpe’s eye. He bowed briefly, a polite acknowledgement, and Sharpe forced himself to respond. He looked back to Forrest.
‘What happened?’
Forrest shrugged. ‘He bought Lennox’s commission.’
Lennox? Sharpe’s predecessor had died two and a half years before. ‘But that was …’
‘I know, Sharpe. His will was in the courts. The estate has only just released the commission for sale.’
‘I didn’t even know it was for sale!’ Not, Sharpe thought, that he could have afforded the fifteen hundred pounds.
Leroy lit a new cigar from the butt of his old. ‘I doubt if anyone knew it was for sale. Right, Major?’
Forrest nodded miserably. An open sale meant that the legal price had to be paid. It was far more likely that Captain Rymer was a friend of one of the lawyers who had cut out the competition, sold it to Rymer, and in return received a higher price. The Major spread his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Sharpe.’
‘So what happens?’ Sharpe’s voice was hard.
‘Nothing.’ Forrest tried to sound hopeful. ‘Major Collett, you haven’t met him, Sharpe, agrees with me. It’s a mix up. So you stay in command till Colonel Windham arrives.’
‘Later today, sir.’
Forrest nodded. ‘Everything will be all right, Sharpe. You’ll see. Everything.’
Sharpe saw Teresa walk through the courtyard, carrying her saddle, but she did not see him. He turned away and stared over the rooftops of Elvas, pink in the sunlight, and saw that a cloudbank, riding the north wind, had bisected the landscape with its shadow. Spain lay in shadow and Badajoz was a dark citadel far away. He swore again, foully and at length, as if the curses might fight for him against the ill fortune. He knew it was fanciful, stupid even, but it seemed as if the fortress that barred the eastern road, its walls high over the Guadiana, was at the centre of the evil, spreading a baleful fate over all who came near. Hakeswill, Rymer, Teresa going, all things changing, and what else, he wondered, would go wrong before they lanced the evil in Badajoz?
CHAPTER NINE
Everything about Obadiah Hakeswill was graceless and repulsive to the point of fascination. The body was huge, but any man who mistook the belly for a sign of weakness would be caught by the arms and legs that had massive strength. He was clumsy, except when performing a drill movement, though even when he was marching there was a hint that, at any moment, he might become some snarling, shambling beast; half wild, half man. His skin was yellowish, a legacy of the Fever Islands. His hair was blond, going grey, and stretched thinly over his scarred scalp, falling lank to the stretched, tensed, obscenely mutilated neck.
Some time in the past, even before the hanging, he had known he would never be liked and so, instead, determined to be feared. He had one advantage. Obadiah Hakeswill was afraid of nothing. When other men complained of hunger or cold, dampness or disease, the Sergeant simply cackled and knew that it would end. He did not care how much he was hurt in a fight; wounds mended, bruises disappeared, and he could not die. He had known that from the moment he had dangled on the rope’s end; he could not die because he was protected by a magic, his mother’s magic, and he was proud of the foul scar, the symbol of his invulnerability, and knew that it frightened other men. Officers did not cross Obadiah Hakeswill. They feared the consequences of his anger, the foulness of his looks, and so they humoured him, knowing that in return he would stick to the letter of the regulations and would support their authority against the men. Within those limits he was free to take his revenge on a world that had made him ugly, lumpen, and friendless, a world that had tried to kill him and which now, above all, feared him.
He hated Sharpe. To Hakeswill officers were officers, born, like John Morris, to their exalted station and the purveyors of reward and privilege. But Sharpe was an upstart. He came from the same gutters as Hakeswill, and the Sergeant had once tried to break him and failed. He