that? Birmingham! Says so on the blade, see? “Made in Birmingham.”’
Hakeswill dutifully examined the legend on the blade, then fingered the sabre’s pommel which was elegantly set with a ring of seven small rubies. ‘Looks like glass to me, sir,’ he said dismissively, hoping he could somehow persuade Fitzgerald to relinquish the blade.
‘Nonsense!’ Fitzgerald said cheerfully. ‘Best rubies! Bit small, maybe, but I doubt the ladies will mind that. Seven pieces of glitter? That adds up to a week of sin, Sergeant. It was worth killing the rascal for that.’
If you did kill him, Hakeswill thought sourly as he stumped away from the exuberant Ensign. More likely picked it up off the ground. And Fitzgerald was right; seven rubies, even small ones, would buy a lot of Naig’s ladies. ‘Nasty’ Naig was a merchant from Madras, one of the many travelling with the army, and he had brought his brothel with him. It was an expensive brothel, officers only, or at least only those who could pay an officer’s price, and that made Hakeswill think of Mary Bickerstaff. Mrs Mary Bickerstaff. She was a half and half, half Indian and half British, and that made her valuable. Very valuable. Most of the women who followed the army were dark as Hades, and while Obadiah Hakeswill had no distaste for dark skin he did miss the touch of white flesh. So did many of the officers, and there was a guinea or two to be made out of that lust. Naig would pay well for a skin as pale as Mary Bickerstaff’s.
She was a rare beauty, Mary Bickerstaff. A beauty amongst a pack of ugly, rancid women. Hakeswill watched as a group of the battalion’s wives ran to take part in the plundering and almost shuddered as he contemplated their ugliness. About two thirds of the wives were bibbis, Indians, and most of those, Hakeswill knew, were not properly married with the Colonel’s permission, while the rest were those lucky British women who had won the brutal lottery that had taken place on the night before the battalion had sailed from England. The wives had been gathered in a barrack room, their names had been put into ten shakos, one for each company, and the first ten names drawn from each hat were allowed to accompany their husbands. The rest had to stay in Britain, and what happened to them there was anybody’s guess. Most went on the parish, but parishes resented feeding soldiers’ wives, so as like as not they were forced to become whores. Barrack-gate whores, for the most part, because they lacked the looks for anything better. But a few, a precious few, were pretty, and none was prettier than Sergeant Bickerstaff’s half and half widow.
The women spread out among the dead and dying Mysoreans. If anything they were even more efficient than their men at plundering the dead, for the men tended to hurry and so missed the hiding places where a soldier secreted his money. Hakeswill watched Flora Placket strip the body of a tall tiger-striped corpse whose throat had been slashed to the backbone by the slice of a cavalryman’s sabre. She did not rush her work, but searched carefully, garment by garment, then handed each piece of clothing to one of her two children to fold and stack. Hakeswill approved of Flora Placket for she was a large and steady woman who kept her man in good order and made no fuss about a campaign’s discomforts. She was a good mother too, and that was why Obadiah did not care that Flora Placket was as ugly as a haversack. Mothers were sacred. Mothers were not expected to be pretty. Mothers were Obadiah Hakeswill’s guardian angels, and Flora Placket reminded Obadiah of his own mother who was the only person in all his life who had shown him kindness. Biddy Hakeswill was long dead now, she had died a year before the twelve-year-old Obadiah had dangled on a scaffold for the trumped-up charge of sheep stealing and, to amuse the crowd, the executioner had not let any of that day’s victims drop from the gallows, but had instead hoisted them gently into the air so that they choked slowly as their piss-soaked legs jerked in the death dance of the gibbet. No one had taken much notice of the small boy at the scaffold’s end and, when the heavens had opened and the rain come down in bucketfuls to scatter the crowd, no one had bothered when Biddy Hakeswill’s brother had cut the boy down and set him loose. ‘Did it for your mother,’ his uncle had snarled. ‘God rest her soul. Now be off with you and don’t ever show your face in the dale again.’ Hakeswill had run south, joined the army as a drummer boy, had risen to sergeant and had never forgotten his dying mother’s words. ‘No one will ever get rid of Obadiah,’ she had said, ‘not my Obadiah. Death’s too good for him.’ The gallows had proved that. Touched by God, he was, indestructible!
A groan sounded near Hakeswill and the Sergeant snapped out of his reverie to see a tiger-striped Indian struggling to turn onto his belly. Hakeswill scurried over, forced the man onto his back again and placed his halberd’s spear point at the man’s throat. ‘Money?’ Hakeswill snarled, then held out his left hand and motioned the counting of coins. ‘Money?’
The man blinked slowly, then said something in his own language.
‘I’ll let you live, you bugger,’ Hakeswill promised, leering at the wounded man. ‘Not that you’ll live long. Got a goolie in your belly, see?’ He pointed at the wound in the man’s belly where the bullet had driven home. ‘Now where’s your money? Money! Pice? Dan? Pagodas? Annas? Rupees?’
The man must have understood for his hand fluttered weakly towards his chest.
‘Good boy, now,’ Hakeswill said, smiling again, then his face jerked in its involuntary spasms as he pushed the spear point home, but not too quickly for he liked to see the realization of death on a man’s face. ‘You’re a stupid bugger, too,’ Hakeswill said when the man’s death throes had ended, then he cut open the tunic and found that the man had strapped some coins to his chest with a cotton sash. He undid the sash and pocketed the handful of copper change. Not a big haul, but Hakeswill was not dependent on his own plundering to fill his purse. He would take a cut from whatever the soldiers of the Light Company found. They knew they would have to pay up or else face punishment.
He saw Sharpe kneeling beside a body and hurried across. ‘Got a sword there, Sharpie?’ Hakeswill asked. ‘Stole it, did you?’
‘I killed the man, Sergeant.’ Sharpe looked up.
‘Doesn’t bleeding matter, does it, lad? You ain’t permitted to carry a sword. Officer’s weapon, a sword is. Mustn’t get above your station, Sharpie. Get above yourself, boy, and you’ll be cut down. So I’ll take the blade, I will.’ Hakeswill half expected Sharpe to resist, but the Private did nothing as the Sergeant picked up the silver-hilted blade. ‘Worth a few bob, I dare say,’ Hakeswill said appreciatively, then he laid the sword’s tip against the stock at Sharpe’s neck. ‘Which is more than you’re worth, Sharpie. Too clever for your own good, you are.’
Sharpe edged away from the sword and stood up. ‘I ain’t got a quarrel with you, Sergeant,’ he said.
‘But you do, boy, you do.’ Hakeswill grimaced as his face went into spasm. ‘And you know what the quarrel’s about, don’t you?’
Sharpe backed away from the sword. ‘I ain’t got a quarrel with you,’ he repeated stubbornly.
‘I think our quarrel is called Mrs Bickerstaff,’ Hakeswill said, and grinned when Sharpe said nothing. ‘I almost got you with that flint, didn’t I? Would have had you flogged raw, boy, and you’d have died of a fever within a week. A flogging does that in this climate. Wears a man down, a flogging does. But you got a friendly officer, don’t you? Mister Lawford. He likes you, does he?’ He prodded Sharpe’s chest with the sword’s tip. ‘Is that what it is? Officer’s pet, are you?’
‘Mister Lawford ain’t nothing to me,’ Sharpe said.
‘That’s what you say, but my eyes tell different.’ Hakeswill giggled. ‘Sweet on each other, are you? You and Mister Lawford? Ain’t that nice, Sharpie, but it don’t make you much use to Mrs Bickerstaff, does it? Reckon she’d be better off with a real man.’
‘She ain’t
