Sharpe's Fortress Part 53

"Not the darned one?"

"No, sir."

He turned his head to stare at the coins which glittered so prettily in the smoky lamplight. In funds again! Winning! Perhaps his luck had turned. It seemed so. He had lost so much money at cards in the last month that he had thought nothing but ruin awaited him, but now the G.o.ddess of fortune had turned her other cheek. Rule of halves, he told himself as he sucked on the hookah. Save half, gamble the other half.

Halve the winnings and save half again. Simple really. And now that Sharpe was gone he could begin some careful trading once more, though how the market would hold up once the Mahrattas were defeated he could not tell. Still, with a slice of luck he might make sufficient money to set himself up in a comfortable civilian life in Madras. A carriage, a dozen horses and as many women servants. He would have an harem.

He smiled at the thought, imagining his father's disgust. An harem, a courtyard with a fountain, a wine cellar deep beneath his house that should be built close to the sea so that cooling breezes could waft through its windows. He would need to spend an hour or two at the office each week, but certainly not more for there were always Indians to do the real work. The b.u.g.g.e.rs would cheat him, of course, but there seemed plenty of money to go around so long as a man did not gamble it away. Rule of halves, he told himself again. The golden rule of life.

The sound of singing came from the camp beyond the village.

Torrance did not recognize the tune, which was probably some Scottish song. The sound drifted him back to his childhood when he had sung in the cathedral choir. He grimaced, remembering the frosty mornings when he had run in the dark across the close and pushed open the cathedral's great side door to be greeted by a clout over the ear because he was late. The choristers' cloudy breath had mingled with the smoke of the guttering candles. Lice under the robes, he remembered. He had caught his first lice off a counter-tenor who had held him against a wall behind a bishop's tomb and hoisted his robe. I hope the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's dead, he thought.

Sajit yelped.

"Quiet!" Torrance shouted, resenting being jarred from his reverie. There was silence again, and Torrance sucked on the hookah. He could hear Clare pouring water in the yard and he smiled as he antic.i.p.ated the soothing touch of the sponge.

Someone, it had to be Sajit, tried to open the door from the front room.

"Go away," Torrance called, but then something hit the door a ma.s.sive blow. The bolt held, though dust sifted from crevices in the plaster wall either side of the frame. Torrance stared in shock, then twitched with alarm as another huge bang shook the door, and this time a chunk of plaster the size of a dinner plate fell from the wall.

Torrance swung his bare legs out of the hammock. Where the devil were his pistols?

A third blow reverberated round the room, and this time the bracket holding the bolt was wrenched out of the wall and the door swung in onto the muslin screen. Torrance saw a robed figure sweep the screen aside, then he threw himself over the room and pawed through his discarded clothes to find his guns.

A hand gripped his wrist.

"You won't need that, sir," a familiar voice said, and Torrance turned, wincing at the strength of the man's grip.

He saw a figure dressed in blood-spattered Indian robes, with a tulwar scabbarded at his waist and a face shrouded by a head cloth. But Torrance recognized his visitor and blanched.

"Reporting for duty, sir," Sharpe said, taking the pistol from Torrance's unresisting gripTorrance gaped. He could have sworn that the blood on the robe was fresh for it gleamed wetly. There was more blood on a short-bladed knife in Sharpe's hand. It dripped onto the floor and Torrance gave a small pitiful mew.

"It's Sajit's blood," Sharpe said.

"His penknife too." He tossed the wet blade onto the table beside the gold coins.

"Lost your tongue, sir?"

"Sharpe?"

"He's dead, sir, Sharpe is," Sharpe said.

"He was sold to Jama, remember, sir? Is that the blood money?" Sharpe glanced at the rupees on the table.

"Sharpe," Torrance said again, somehow incapable of saying anything else.

"I'm his ghost, sir," Sharpe said, and Torrance did indeed look as though a spectre had just broken through his door. Sharpe tutted and shook his head in self-reproof.

"I'm not supposed to call you "sir", am I, sir? On account of me being a fellow officer and a gentleman. Where's Sergeant Hakeswill?"

"Sharpe!" Torrance said once more, collapsing onto a chair.

"We heard you'd been captured!"

"So I was, sir, but not by the enemy. Leastwise, not by any proper enemy." Sharpe examined the pistol.

"This ain't loaded. What were you hoping to do, sir? Beat me to death with the barrel?"

"My robe, Sharpe, please," Torrance said, gesturing to where the silk robe hung on a wooden peg.

"So where is Hakeswill, sir?" Sharpe asked. He had pushed back his head cloth and now opened the pistol's friz zen and blew dust off the pan before sc.r.a.ping at the layer of caked powder with a fingernail.

"He's on the road," Torrance said.

"Ah! Took over from me, did he? You should keep this pistol clean, sir. There's rust on the spring, see? Shame to keep an expensive gun so shabbily. Are you sitting on your cartridge box?"

Torrance meekly raised his bottom to take out his leather pouch which held the powder and bullets for his pistols. He gave the bag to Sharpe, thought about fetching the robe himself, then decided that any untoward move might upset his visitor.

"I'm delighted to see you're alive, Sharpe," he said.

"Are you, sir?" Sharpe asked.

"Of course."

"Then why did you sell me to Jama?"

"Sell you? Don't be ridiculous, Sharpe. No!" The cry came as the pistol barrel whipped towards him, and it turned into a moan as the barrel slashed across his cheek. Torrance touched his face and winced at the blood on his fingers.

"Sharpe' he began.

"Shut it, sir," Sharpe said nastily. He perched on the table and poured some powder into the pistol barrel.

"I talked to Jama last night. He tried to have me killed by a couple ofjettis. You know what jet tis are, sir?

Religious strongmen, sir, but they must have been praying to the wrong G.o.d, for I cut one's throat and left the other b.u.g.g.e.r blinded." He paused to select a bullet from the pouch.

"And I had a chat with

Jama when I'd killed his thugs and he told me lots of interesting things. Like that you traded with him and his brother. You're a traitor, Torrance."

"Sharpe-' "I said shut it!" Sharpe snapped. He pushed the bullet into the pistol's muzzle, then drew out the short ramrod and shoved it down the barrel.

"The thing is, Torrance," he went on in a calmer tone, "I know the truth. All of it. About you and Hakeswill and about you and Jama and about you and Naig." He smiled at Torrance, then slotted the short ramrod back into its hoops.

"I used to think officers were above that sort of crime. I knew the men were crooked, because I was crooked, but you don't have much choice, do you, when you've got nothing?

But you, sir, you had everything you wanted. Rich parents, proper schooling." Sharpe shook his head.