Sharpe's Company

by Bernard Cornwell

  He nodded at Harper. ‘Carry on, Sergeant.’

  The Irishman’s eyes flicked towards Hakeswill, still facing the wall, and Sharpe pretended not to see. Damn Hakeswill, he could stay there, but then he relented. ‘Sergeant Hakeswill!’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Dismiss!’

  Sharpe walked into the street, wanting to be alone, but Leroy was leaning on the gatepost and the American lifted an amused eyebrow. ‘Is that how the Hero of the Field of Talavera welcomes recruits? No calls to glory? No bugles?’

  ‘They’re lucky to get a welcome at all.’

  Leroy drew on his cigar and fell into step beside Sharpe. ‘I suppose this unhappiness is caused by your lady leaving us?”

  Sharpe shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Then shall I share other news?’

  Leroy had stopped and his dark eyes seemed to be amused.

  ‘Napoleon’s 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 foxhunter.’

  ‘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 cross belt. 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 8

  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 humored 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 a
ll, 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 would not fail again. Now, sitting in the stable behind the officers’ 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 rumor, 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 Anfrancesados, 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 kept coming and slammed him against the horse’s rear legs. He bellowed, swung the bayonet, but the knife was faster and cut at his wrist, so he dropped the blade, screaming at her, and she kicked at it as she scrambled, fast as a hare, under the belly of her horse.

  ‘Whore!’ He reached for her under the horse, but the bitch had his bayonet and stabbed at him, so he was forced back, and then she swore at him in fast, fluent English, and he wiped blood from his face and spat at her.

  She laughed, crouching beyond the horse, and she leveled the blade at him. ‘Come and get it, Obadiah. ‘

  He stood up and backed into the passageway between the stalls. He was still between her and the door, and there were more ways than one of skinning a cat. He felt his face. The wound was small enough, and his wrist was usable. He grinned at her. ‘I’ll have you, missy, then I’ll carve you into little pieces. ‘ He cackled, feeling his head twitch. ‘Bloody little Portuguese whore!’ She was still between the horse and the wooden partition and he went forward as she stood up, his bayonet still in her hand, and she was smiling.