Sharpe’s Prey: The Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807. Bernard Cornwell
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of York,’ he said, ‘and His Majesty insisted they take me to the theatre. Why? I cannot tell. Have you ever been forced into a theatre, Sharpe?’
‘Once, sir.’ And everyone had stared at Grace and talked of her behind their hands and she had endured it, but wept afterwards.
‘She Stoops to Conquer, what kind of name for an entertainment is that?’ Baird asked. ‘I was asleep by the end of the prologue so I’ve no idea. But I’ve been thinking of you lately, Mister Sharpe. Thinking of you and looking for you.’
‘For me, sir?’ Sharpe could not hide his puzzlement.
‘Is that blood on your coat? It is! Good God, man, don’t tell me the bloody Frogs have landed.’
‘It was a thief, sir.’
‘Not another one? A captain of the Dirty Half Hundred was killed just two days ago, not a hundred yards from Piccadilly! It must have been footpads, the bastards. I hope you hurt the man?’
‘I did, sir.’
‘Good.’ The General sat opposite Sharpe. ‘I heard you’d been commissioned. I congratulate you. You did a fine thing in India, Sharpe.’
Sharpe blushed. ‘I did my duty, sir.’
‘But it was a hard duty, Sharpe, a very hard duty. Good God! Risking the Tippoo’s cells? I spent enough time in that black bastard’s hands not to wish it on another man. But the fellow’s dead now, God be thanked.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ Sharpe said. He had killed the Tippoo himself, though he had never admitted it, and it had been the Tippoo’s jewels that had made Sharpe a rich man. Once.
‘And I keep hearing your name,’ Baird went on with an indecent relish. ‘Making scandal, eh?’
Sharpe winced at the accusation. ‘Was that what I was doing, sir?’
Baird was not a man to be delicate. ‘You were once a private soldier and she was the daughter of an earl. Yes, Sharpe, I’d say you were making scandal. So what happened?’
‘She died, sir.’ Sharpe felt the tears threatening, so looked down at the table. The silence stretched and he felt an obscure need to fill it. ‘Childbirth, sir. A fever.’
‘And the child with her?’
‘Yes, sir. A boy.’
‘Good Christ, man,’ Baird said bluffly, embarrassed by the tears that dropped onto the table. ‘You’re young. There’ll be others.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You!’ This peremptory demand was to one of the serving girls. ‘A bottle of port and two glasses. And I’ll take some cheese if you’ve anything edible.’
‘Lady Grace’s family,’ Sharpe said, suddenly needing to tell the story, ‘claimed the child wasn’t mine. Said it had been her husband’s, and so the lawyers baked me in a pie. Took everything, they did, because the child died after its mother. They said it was the heir to her husband, see?’ His tears were flowing now. ‘I don’t mind losing everything, sir, but I do mind losing her.’
‘Pull yourself together, man,’ Baird snapped. ‘Stop snivelling.’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ Baird said, ‘and you don’t piddle away your damned life because you don’t like His dispositions.’
Sharpe sniffed and looked up into Baird’s scarred face. ‘Piddling away my life?’
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Sharpe,’ Baird said. ‘D’you know how many lives you saved by blowing that mine in Seringapatam? Scores! And my life among them. If it weren’t for you, Sharpe, I’d be dead.’ He emphasized this by stabbing Sharpe’s chest with a big forefinger. ‘Dead and buried, d’you doubt it?’
Sharpe did not, but he said nothing. Baird had led the assault on the Tippoo Sultan’s stronghold and the General had led from the front. The Scotsman would indeed be dead, Sharpe thought, if Sharpe, a private then, had not blown the mine that had been intended to trap and annihilate the storming party. Dust and stones, Sharpe remembered, and flame billowing down a sunlit street and the air filling with smoke and the noise rolling about him like a thousand trundling barrels, and then in the silence afterwards that was not silent at all, the moaning and screaming and the pale flames crackling.
‘Wellesley made you up, didn’t he?’ Baird asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Not like Wellesley to do a man a favour,’ the General observed sourly. ‘Tight-fisted, he is.’ Baird had never liked Sir Arthur Wellesley. ‘So why did he do it? For Seringapatam?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Yes, sir, no, sir, what are you, Sharpe? A bloody schoolboy? Why did the man promote you?’
Sharpe shrugged. ‘I was useful to him, sir. At Assaye.’
‘Useful?’
‘He was in trouble,’ Sharpe said. The General had been unhorsed, was surrounded and doomed, but Sergeant Sharpe had been there and it was the Indians who died instead.
‘In trouble?’ Baird sneered at Sharpe’s modesty. ‘It must have been desperate trouble if it persuaded Wellesley to do you a favour. Though how much of a favour was it?’ The question was a shrewd one and Sharpe did not try to answer it, but it seemed Baird knew the answer anyway. ‘Wallace wrote to me after you joined his regiment,’ the General went on, ‘and told me that you were a good soldier, but a bad officer.’
Sharpe bridled. ‘I tried my best, sir.’ Wallace had been the commanding officer of the 74th, a Scottish regiment, and Sharpe had joined it after he had been commissioned by Sir Arthur Wellesley. It had been Wallace who had recommended Sharpe to the 95th, but Sharpe was no happier in the new regiment. Still a failure, he thought.
‘Not easy, coming up from the ranks,’ Baird admitted. ‘But if Wallace says you’re a good soldier, then that’s a compliment. And I need a good soldier. I’ve been ordered to find a man who can look after himself in a difficult situation. Someone who ain’t afraid of a fight. I remembered you, but wasn’t sure where to find you. I should have known to look in the Frog Prick. Eat your steak, man. I can’t abide good meat getting cold.’
Sharpe finished the beef as the General’s port and cheese were put on the table. He let Baird pour him a glass before he spoke again. ‘I was thinking of leaving the army, sir,’ he admitted.
Baird looked at him in disgust. ‘To do what?’
‘I’ll find work,’ Sharpe said. Maybe he would go to Ebenezer Fairley, the merchant who had shown him friendship on the voyage home from India, or perhaps he would thieve. That was how he had started in life. ‘I’ll get by,’ he said belligerently.
Sir David Baird cut the cheese which crumbled under his knife. ‘There are three kinds of soldier, Sharpe,’ he said. ‘There are the damned useless ones, and God knows there’s an endless supply of those. Then there are the good solid lads who get the job done, but would piss in their breeches if you didn’t show them how their buttons worked. And then there’s you and me. Soldiers’ soldiers, that’s who we are.’
Sharpe looked sceptical. ‘A soldier’s soldier?’ he asked.
‘We’re the men who clean up after the parade, Sharpe. The carriages and kings go by, the bands play, the cavalry prances past like bloody fairies, and what’s left is a mess of dung and litter. We clean it up. The politicians get the world into tangles, then ask their armies to make things right. We do their dirty work, Sharpe, and we’re good at it. Very good. You might not be the best officer in King George’s army, but you’re a bloody fine soldier. And you like the life, don’t tell me you don’t.’
‘Being a quartermaster?’ Sharpe sneered.