They would suit each other, Sharpe thought.
She was crying very softly.
"Torrance said he'd pay my way home when I'd paid off the debt, " she said.
"Why would he make you work for one passage, then give you another?" Sharpe asked.
"He was a lying bastard."
"He seemed so kind at first."
"We're all like that, " Sharpe said.
"Soft as lights when you first meet a woman, then you get what you want and it changes. I don't know.
Maybe not every time."
"Charlie wasn't like that, " Clare said.
"Charlie? Your husband?"
"He was always good to me."
Sharpe lay back. The light of the dying fires nickered in the tent's loose weave. If it rained, he thought, the cloth would leak like a pepper pot.
"There are good men and bad, " he said.
"What are you?" Clare asked.
"I think I'm good, " he said, 'but I don't know. All the time I get into trouble, and I only know one way out. I can fight. I can do that all right."
"Is that what you want? To fight?"
"God knows what I want." He laughed softly.
"I wanted to be an officer more than I'd wanted anything in my life! I dreamed of it, I did. I wanted it so bad that it hurt, and then the dream came true and it woke me up and I wondered why I'd wanted it so much." He paused.
Syud Sevajee's horses stamped their feet softly behind the tent.
"Some buggers are trying to persuade me to leave the army. Sell the commission, see? They don't want me."
"Why not?"
"Because I piss in their soup, lass."
"So will you leave?"
He shrugged.
"Don't want to." He thought about it.
"It's like a club, a society. They don't really want me, so they chuck me out, and then I have to fight my way back in. But why do I do it if they don't want me? I don't know. Maybe it'll be different in the Rifles. I'll try 'em, anyway, and see if they're different."
"You want to go on fighting?" Clare asked.
"It's what I'm good at, " Sharpe said.
"And I do enjoy it. I mean I know you shouldn't, but there ain't any other excitement like it."
"None?"
"Well, one." He grinned in the dark.
There was a long silence, and he thought Clare had fallen asleep, but then she spoke again.
"How about your French widow?"
"She's gone, " Sharpe said flatly.
"Gone?"
"She buggered off, love. Took some money of mine and went. Gone to America, I'm told."
Clare lay in silence again.
"Don't you worry about being alone?" she asked after a while.
"No."
"I do."
He turned towards her, propped himself on an elbow and stroked her hair. She stiffened as he touched her, then relaxed to the gentle pressure of his hand.
"You ain't alone, lass, " Sharpe said.
"Or only if you want to be. You got trapped, that's all. It happens to everyone. But you're out now. You're free." He stroked her hair down to her neck and felt warm bare skin under his hand. She did not move and he softly stroked farther down.
"You're undressed, " he said.
"I was warm, " she said in a small voice.
"What's worse?" Sharpe asked.
"Being warm or being lonely?"
He thought she smiled. He could not tell in the dark, but he thought she smiled.
"Being lonely, " she said very softly.
"We can look after that, " he said, lifting the thin blanket and moving to her side.
She had stopped crying. Somewhere outside a cock crowed and the eastern cliffs were touched with the first gold of the day. The fires on the rocky neck of land flickered and died, their smoke drifting like patches of thin mist. Bugles called from the main encampment, summoning the redcoats to the morning parade. The night picquets were relieved as the sun rose to flood the world with light.
Where Sharpe and Clare slept.
"You abandoned the dead men?" Wellesley growled.
Captain Morris blinked as a gust of wind blew dust into one of his eyes.
"I tried to bring the bodies in, " he lied, 'but it was dark, sir. Very dark. Colonel Kenny can vouch for that, sir. He visited us."
"I visited you?" Kenny, lean, tall and irascible, was standing beside the General.
"I visited you?" he asked again, his inflection rising to outrage.
"Last night, sir, " Morris answered in plaintive indignation.
"On the picquet line."
"I did no such thing. Sun's gone to your head." Kenny glowered at Morris, then took a snuff box from a pocket and placed a pinch on his hand.
"Who the devil are you, anyway?" he added.
"Morris, sir. 33rd."
"I thought we had nothing but Scots and sepoys here, " Kenny said to Wellesley.
"Captain Morris's company escorted a convoy here, " Wellesley answered.
"A light company, eh?" Kenny said, glancing at Morris's epaulettes.
"You might even be useful. I could do with another company in the assault party." He snorted the snuff, stopping one nostril at a time.
"It cheers my boys up, " he added, 'seeing white men killed." Kenny commanded the first battalion of the tenth Madrassi Regiment.
"What's in your assault unit now?" Wellesley asked.
"Nine companies, " Kenny said.
"The grenadiers and two others from the Scotch Brigade, the flankers from my regiment and four others.
Good boys, all of them, but I daresay they won't mind sharing the honours with an English light company."
"And I've no doubt you'll welcome a chance to assault a breach, Morris?" Wellesley asked drily.
"Of course, sir, " Morris said, cursing Kenny inwardly.
"But in the meantime, " Wellesley went on coldly, 'bring your men's bodies in."
"Yes, sir."
"Do it now."
Sergeant Green took a half-dozen men down the neck of land, but they only found two bodies. They were expecting three, but Sergeant Hakeswill was missing. The enemy, seeing the redcoats among the rocks above the reservoir, opened fire and the musket balls smacked into stones and ricocheted up into the air. Green took a bullet in the heel of his boot. It did not break the skin of his foot, but the blow hurt and he hopped on the short, dry grass.
"Just grab the buggers and drag them away, " he said. He wondered why the enemy did not fire their cannon, and just then a gun discharged a barrel of canister at his squad.
The balls hissed all about the men, but miraculously none was hit as the soldiers seized Kendrick and Lowry by their feet and ran back towards the half-completed battery where Captain Morris waited. Both the dead men had slit throats.
Once safe behind the gab ions the corpses were treated more decorously by being placed on makeshift stretchers. Colonel Kenny intercepted the stretcher-bearers to examine the corpses which were already smelling foul.
"They must have sent a dozen cut-throats out of the fort, " he reckoned.
"You say there's a sergeant missing?"
"Yes, sir, " Morris answered.
"Poor fellow must be a prisoner. Be careful tonight, Captain! They'll probably try again. And I assure you, Captain, if I decide to take a stroll this evening, it won't be to your picquet line."
That night the 33rd's Light Company again formed a screen in front of the new batteries, this time to protect the men dragging up the guns. It was a nervous night, for the company was expecting throat-slitting Mahrattas to come silently through the darkness, but nothing stirred.
The fortress stayed silent and dark. Not a gun fired and not a rocket flew as the British cannon were hauled to their new emplacements and as powder charges and round shot were stacked in the newly made ready magazines.
Then the gunners waited.
The first sign of dawn was a grey lightening of the east, followed by the flare of reflected sun as the first rays lanced over the world's rim to touch the summit of the eastern cliffs. The fortress walls showed grey black Still the gunners waited. A solitary cloud glowed livid pink on the horizon. Smoke rose from the cooking fires inside the fortress where the flags hung limp in the windless air. Bugles roused the British camp which lay a half-mile behind the batteries where officers trained telescopes on Gawilghur's northern wall.