Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Fortress - The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803

So here, at last, deep inside India, the redcoats would be beaten.

Six cavalrymen in the blue and yellow coats of the 19th Light Dragoons waited outside the house where Captain Torrance was said to be billeted. They were under the command of a long-legged sergeant who was lounging on a bench beside the door. The Sergeant glanced up as Sharpe approached. ‘I hope you don’t want anything useful out of the bastards,’ he said acidly, then saw that the shabby-uniformed Sharpe, despite wearing a pack like any common soldier, also had a sash and a sabre. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Sorry, sir.’

Sharpe waved him back down onto the bench. ‘Useful?’ he asked.

‘Horseshoes, sir, that’s all we bleeding want. Horseshoes! Supposed to be four thousand in store, but can they find them?’ The Sergeant spat. ‘Tells me they’re lost! I’m to go to the bhinjarries and buy them! I’m supposed to tell my captain that? So now we have to sit here till Captain Torrance gets back. Maybe he knows where they are. That monkey in there’ – he jerked his thumb at the house’s front door – ‘doesn’t know a bloody thing.’

Sharpe pushed open the door to find himself in a large room where a half-dozen men argued with a harried clerk. The clerk, an Indian, sat behind a table covered with curling ledgers. ‘Captain Torrance is ill!’ the clerk snapped at Sharpe without waiting to discover the newcomer’s business. ‘And take that dirty Arab boy outside,’ the clerk added, jerking his chin at Ahmed who, armed with a musket he had taken from a corpse on the battlefield, had followed Sharpe into the house.

‘Muskets!’ A man tried to attract the clerk’s attention.

‘Horseshoes!’ an East India Company lieutenant shouted.

‘Buckets,’ a gunner said.

‘Come back tomorrow,’ the clerk said. ‘Tomorrow!’

‘You said that yesterday,’ the gunner said, ‘and I’m back.’

‘Where’s Captain Torrance?’ Sharpe asked.

‘He’s ill,’ the clerk said disapprovingly, as though Sharpe had risked the Captain’s fragile health even by asking the question. ‘He cannot be disturbed. And why is that boy here? He is an Arab!’

‘Because I told him to be here,’ Sharpe said. He walked round the table and stared down at the ledgers. ‘What a bleeding mess!’

‘Sahib!’ The clerk had now realized Sharpe was an officer. ‘Other side of the table, sahib, please, sahib! There is a system here, sahib. I stay this side of the table and you remain on the other. Please, sahib.’

‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked.

The clerk seemed affronted at the question. ‘I am Captain Torrance’s assistant,’ he said grandly.

‘And Torrance is ill?’

‘The Captain is very sick.’

‘So who’s in charge?’

‘I am,’ the clerk said.

‘Not any longer,’ Sharpe said. He looked up at the East India Company lieutenant. ‘What did you want?’

‘Horseshoes.’

‘So where are the bleeding horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.

‘I have explained, sahib, I have explained,’ the clerk said. He was a middle-aged man with a lugubrious face and pudgy ink-stained fingers that now hastily tried to close all the ledgers so that Sharpe could not read them. ‘Now please, sahib, join the queue.’

‘Where are the horseshoes?’ Sharpe insisted, leaning closer to the sweating clerk.

‘This office is closed!’ the clerk shouted. ‘Closed till tomorrow! All business will be conducted tomorrow. Captain Torrance’s orders!’

‘Ahmed!’ Sharpe said. ‘Shoot the bugger.’

Ahmed spoke no English, but the clerk did not know that. He held his hands out. ‘I am closing the office! Work cannot be done like this! I shall complain to Captain Torrance! There will be trouble! Big trouble!’ The clerk glanced at a door that led to the inner part of the house.

‘Is that where Torrance is?’ Sharpe asked, gesturing at the door.

‘No, sahib, and you cannot go in there. The Captain is sick.’

Sharpe went to the door and pushed it open. The clerk yelped a protest, but Sharpe ignored him. A muslin screen hung on the other side of the door and entangled Sharpe as he pushed into the room where a sailor’s hammock hung from the beams. The room seemed empty, but then a whimper made him look into a shadowed corner. A young woman crouched there. She was dressed in a sari, but she looked European to Sharpe. She had been sewing gold braid onto the outer seams of a pair of breeches, but now stared in wide-eyed fright at the intruder. ‘Who are you, Ma’am?’ Sharpe asked.

The woman shook her head. She had very black hair and very white skin. Her terror was palpable. ‘Is Captain Torrance here?’ Sharpe asked.

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘He’s sick, is that right?’

‘If he says so, sir,’ she said softly. Her London accent confirmed that she was English.

‘I ain’t going to hurt you, love,’ Sharpe said, for fear was making her tremble. ‘Are you Mrs Torrance?’

‘No!’

‘So you work for him?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you don’t know where he is?’

‘No, sir,’ she said softly, looking up at Sharpe with huge eyes. She was lying, he reckoned, but he guessed she had good reason to lie, perhaps fearing Torrance’s punishment if she told the truth. He considered soothing the truth out of her, but reckoned it might take too long. He wondered who she was. She was pretty, despite her terror, and he guessed she was Torrance’s bibbi . Lucky Torrance, he thought ruefully. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Ma’am,’ he said, then he negotiated the muslin curtain back into the front room.

The clerk shook his head fiercely. ‘You should not have gone in there, sahib! That is private quarters! Private! I shall be forced to tell Captain Torrance.’

Sharpe took hold of the clerk’s chair and tipped it, forcing the man off. The men waiting in the room gave a cheer. Sharpe ignored them, sat on the chair himself and pulled the tangle of ledgers towards him. ‘I don’t care what you tell Captain Torrance,’ he said, ‘so long as you tell me about the horseshoes first.’

‘They are lost!’ the clerk protested.

‘How were they lost?’ Sharpe asked.

The clerk shrugged. ‘Things get lost,’ he said. Sweat was pouring down his plump face as he tentatively tried to tug some of the ledgers away from Sharpe, but he recoiled from the look on the Ensign’s face. ‘Things get lost,’ the clerk said again weakly. ‘It is the nature of things to get lost.’

‘Muskets?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Lost,’ the clerk admitted.

‘Buckets?’

‘Lost,’ the clerk said.

‘Paperwork,’ Sharpe said.

The clerk frowned. ‘Paperwork, sahib?’

‘If something’s lost,’ Sharpe said patiently, ‘there’s a record. This is the bloody army. You can’t have a piss without someone making a note of it. So show me the records of what’s been lost.’

The clerk sighed and pulled one of the big ledgers open. ‘Here, sahib,’ he said, pointing an inky finger. ‘One barrel of horseshoes, see? Being carried on an ox from Jamkandhi, lost in the Godavery on November 12th.’

‘How many horseshoes in a barrel?’ Sharpe asked.

‘A hundred and twenty.’ The long-legged cavalry Sergeant had come into the office and now leaned against the doorpost.

‘And there are supposed to be four thousand horseshoes in store?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Here!’ The clerk turned a page. ‘Another barrel, see?’

Sharpe peered at the ill-written entry. ‘Lost in the Godavery,’ he read aloud.

‘And here.’ The clerk stabbed his finger again.

‘Stolen,’ Sharpe read. A drop of sweat landed on the page as the clerk turned it back. ‘So who stole it?’