house, stripping a hambone with his fingernails and cramming the scraps into an open, churning mouth, he took pleasure at remembering their meeting. Hakeswill had recognized the officer’s embarrassment and chalked it up as a small victory to be followed and exploited. There was the Sergeant too, the Irishman who would be worth baiting, and he cackled as he stuffed the food into his mouth and scratched the flea-bites in his armpit. There was profit in fear, none in harmony. Hakeswill had made himself comfortable by reducing companies into divided camps; those for him and those against. Those he disliked would be forced to pay money, or services, so that the Sergeant’s life would be bearable. Hakeswill had a shrewd idea that Patrick Harper would not allow it to happen easily, nor Sharpe, but he laughed out loud. He had not re-enlisted in an active service battalion, one that would lead to the rich pickings of a war, to be thwarted by those two.
He fished in his ammunition pouch and came up with a handful of coins. It was not much, a few shillings, but all he had managed to steal in the chaos of the arrival. He had come to the stable to count his gains and to hide them deep in his pack. He preferred services to money. Soon he would discover which soldiers in the Light Company were married, and which had the prettiest wives. Those were the ones to go for, the ones who would be reduced to quaking misery by Hakeswill’s battery of weapons till they would offer anything for a release from his torment. Their wives were his usual price. He knew that, on average, two or three would give in; would bring their women in tears to some straw-filled stable like this and, after a while, the women surrendered. Some came drunk, but he never minded that, and one had tried to rip him with a bayonet and he had killed her, and blamed the husband for her death, and he laughed as he remembered the man’s execution, hung from a high tree. It would take time to become comfortable in this new battalion, to root around in it like a beast settling in its lair, but he would do it. And, just like an animal slumping into rest, he would first claw out the rocks that would be uncomfortable beneath his yellow hide, rocks like Sharpe and Harper.
He had the stable to himself. A horse moved in the stall behind him, light chinked between the thick, curved roof tiles, and the Sergeant was glad of the time to be alone, to think. Stealing equipment was a good beginning. Pick your men, steal from them, then report the loss and have them charged, hoping that the new Colonel was a flogging man. It was extraordinary what a man would do to avoid a flogging, and what a woman would give to save her man from the lashes! It was so easy, and he laughed again. Two or three savage floggings and the Company would be eating out of his hand! There was even a rumour, that had flashed through the Battalion like wildfire, that Sharpe had lost the Company. That was good news; it removed an obstacle, and Hakeswill had judged that Price would be no great problem. The new Ensign, Matthews, was a mere boy, and the only problem was Patrick Harper. His fault was probably excessive honesty, and Hakeswill grinned. It was so easy!
The door of the stable opened and Hakeswill froze. He liked to stay unseen; to watch without being watched. One person entered, he could tell by the footsteps, and walked to the row of stalls behind Hakeswill as the big, wooden door closed under its own ponderous weight. The newcomer was hidden from him and he moved, infinitely slowly, timing his movements so that the rustle of straw should seem like the stirrings of a draught and then, thankfully, a horse staled noisily and the splashing covered the sound of him kneeling up to peer through a chink in the boards.
He almost crowed with delight. It was a girl; a girl with the kind of beauty a man might dream of, but know he could never possess. She was a native, too, he could see that by the clothes and by her dark skin and hair, and native girls were always fair game. He tensed himself. He wanted this girl. He forgot everything; Sharpe, Harper, his plans, everything, for he was suddenly swamped with lust for this girl and he began to edge the bayonet from its scabbard.
Teresa heaved the saddle on to her horse, pulled the blanket straight beneath the leather, and pulled the girth through its thick buckle. She spoke to the horse in Spanish, murmuring to it, and heard nothing strange in the stable. She did not want to leave Sharpe, to return to the Afrancesados, the French-lovers, in the city, but Antonia was there, and ill, and Teresa had to go back to protect her child through the siege. After that, pray God, the child would be well enough to be moved.
And marriage? She sighed and looked up to the roof. It was not right that Antonia should be a bastard, yet Teresa could not see herself following this army like a puppy behind a pack, and she knew Richard Sharpe would not leave to live in Casatejada. Marry anyway? At least the baby would have a name, a good name, and there was no shame for a child to carry the name of an unknown, absent father. She sighed again. It would all have to wait until the siege was done, or the child better, and suddenly, like a dark cloud, she wondered what might happen if Sharpe died in the siege. She shrugged. She would tell everyone that he had married her before the siege, and no one would be any the wiser.
Hakeswill waited till her hands were full, bridling the horse, and then he rolled over the partition, the bayonet bright in his hand, and grabbed her hair and pulled her down with his lumbering weight. She lashed at him, hopelessly falling, and then he had the needle-point of the slim bayonet at her throat and was kneeling at her head. ‘Hello, missy.’ She said nothing. She was flat on her back, beside the horse, and his face was upside down above her. Hakeswill licked his lips. ‘Portuguese, are we?’
The Sergeant laughed. This was a gift from the gods, a present on his first day with his new Company. He kept the bayonet at her throat and edged his way round so he could see her properly. The horse stirred, but he was not afraid of horses, and then his knees were beside her waist and he laughed aloud. This one was beautiful, even more beautiful than she had looked through the gap in the stalls. This one he would remember for ever. ‘Speak English?’ The girl said nothing. He pressed with the bayonet, the slightest fraction, not breaking the skin. ‘D’you speak English, missy?’
Probably not, which did not matter much, because there was no chance that she would live to tell any tales, in any language. The provosts would hang a man for rape so the girl would have to die, unless she liked him, of course, which he conceded was not likely. It was not impossible. There had been that bitch in the Fever Islands, the blind girl, but there was no sign that this little beauty was exactly welcoming his attentions.
She did not seem frightened either, which was puzzling and distressing. He expected them to scream, they usually did, but she was watching him calmly with big, dark, long-lashed eyes. The scream might come later, but he was ready for it. In a moment he would hold her throat and move the bayonet into her mouth. He would force the blade down till she was on the point of gagging, so all she could see was the seventeen inches of edged metal protruding from her mouth, gripped in his fist and, in that position, Hakeswill knew, they neither moved, nor screamed, and it was so easy to kill them at the end with one brief, convulsive plunge. Her body could be pushed under straw at the back of the stable and, even if she was found, no one would know it was him. He cackled. ‘Obadiah Hakeswill, missy, at your service.’
She smiled at him, transfixing, unexpected. ‘Obber-dyer?’
He paused. He had been about to transfer the bayonet. He was suspicious, but he nodded. ‘Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, missy, and in a hurry, if you don’t mind.’
Her eyes, large already, widened as if impressed. ‘Sarj-ent? Si?’ She smiled again. ‘Sarj-ent Obber-dyer Hag-swill? Si?’ She caressed the words, lingered on them.
Hakeswill was puzzled. It was dark enough in the stable, to be sure, but not so dark that she could not see his face. Yet she seemed to like him. It was not impossible, he supposed, but even if she did like him that was no reason to linger. Reason, indeed, to make haste. ‘That’s right, dearie, a Sergeant. Mucha Importante.’ He was short of room, the damned horse was too close, but then the girl smiled again and patted the straw on her other side. ‘Importante?’
He grinned at her, glad she was impressed, and eased the bayonet back a trifle. ‘Move over, then.’
She nodded, smiled again, and her hands went to the back of her neck, and she licked her lips, and Hakeswill’s eyes moved to watch her draw up her long, slim, trousered legs, and he never saw the blade that she took from the sheath that hung at the top of her spine. He was fumbling with his buttons when the knife sliced at his face, sprang blood, and the knees