The Sergeant waited for an answer and eventually Private Mallinson offered one. ‘The officers, Sergeant.’
‘The officers! The officers!’ Hakeswill spat his disgust at the answer. ‘Officers are here to show us what we are fighting for. Gentlemen, they are. Proper gentlemen! Men of property and breeding, not broken potboys and scarlet-coated pickpockets like what you are. Sergeants give the orders. Sergeants is what the army is. Remember that, lads! You’re about to go into battle against heathens and if you ignore me then you’ll be dead men!’ The face twitched grotesquely, its jaw wrenched suddenly sideways, and Sharpe, watching the Sergeant’s face, wondered if it was nervousness that had made Hakeswill so voluble. ‘But keeps your eyes on me, lads,’ Hakeswill went on, ‘and you’ll be right as trivets. And you know why?’ He cried the last word out in a high dramatic tone as he stalked down the Light Company’s front rank. ‘You know why?’ he asked again, now sounding like some dissenting preacher ranting in a hedgerow. ‘Because I cannot die, boys, I cannot die!’ He was suddenly intense, his voice hoarse and full of fervour as he spoke. It was a speech that all the Light Company had heard many times before, but it was remarkable for all that, though Sergeant Green, who was outranked by Hakeswill, turned away in disgust. Hakeswill jeered at Green, then tugged at the tight constriction of the leather stock that circled his neck, pulling it down so that an old dark scar was visible at his throat. ‘The hangman’s noose, boys!’ he cried. ‘That’s what marked me there, the hangman’s noose! See it? See it? But I am alive, boys, alive and on two feet instead of being buried under the sod, proof as never was that you needs not die!’ His face twitched again as he released the stock. ‘Marked by God,’ he finished, his voice gruff with emotion, ‘that’s what I am, marked by God!’
‘Mad as a hare,’ Tom Garrard muttered.
‘Did you speak, Sharpie!’ Hakeswill whipped around to stare at Sharpe, but Sharpe was so palpably still and staring mutely ahead that his innocence was indisputable. Hakeswill paced back down the Light Company. ‘I have watched men die, better men than any of you pieces of scum, proper men, but God has spared me! So you do what I says, boys, or else you’ll be carrion.’ He abruptly thrust the musket back into Sharpe’s hands. ‘Clean weapon, Sharpie. Well done, lad.’ He paced smartly away and Sharpe, to his surprise, saw that the scrap of rag had been neatly retied about the lock.
The compliment to Sharpe had astonished all the Light Company. ‘He’s in a rare good mood,’ Garrard said.
‘I heard that, Private Garrard!’ Hakeswill shouted over his shoulder. ‘Got ears in the back of me head, I have. Silence now. Don’t want no heathen horde thinking you’re frit! You’re white men, remember, bleached in the cleansing blood of the bleeding lamb, so no bleeding talking in the ranks! Nice and quiet, like them bleeding nuns what never utters a sound on account of having had their papist tongues cut out.’ He suddenly crashed to attention once again and saluted by bringing his spear-tipped halberd across his body. ‘Company all present, sir!’ he shouted in a voice that must have been audible on the enemy-held ridge. ‘All present and quiet, sir! Have their backs whipped bloody else, sir.’
Lieutenant William Lawford curbed his horse and nodded at Sergeant Hakeswill. Lawford was the Light Company’s second officer, junior to Captain Morris and senior to the brace of young ensigns, but he was newly arrived in the battalion and was as frightened of Hakeswill as were the men in the ranks. ‘The men can talk, Sergeant,’ Lawford observed mildly. ‘The other companies aren’t silent.’
‘No, sir. Must save their breath, sir. Too bleeding hot to talk, sir, and besides, they got heathens to kill, sir, mustn’t waste breath on chit-chat, not when there are black-faced heathens to kill, sir. Says so in the scriptures, sir.’
‘If you say so, Sergeant,’ Lawford said, unwilling to provoke a confrontation, then he found he had nothing else to say and so, awkwardly aware of the scrutiny of the Light Company’s seventy-six men, he stared at the enemy-held ridge. But he was also conscious of having ignominiously surrendered to the will of Sergeant Hakeswill and so he slowly coloured as he gazed towards the west. Lawford was popular, but thought to be weak, though Sharpe was not so sure of that judgement. He thought the Lieutenant was still finding his way among the strange and sometimes frightening human currents that made up the 33rd, and that in time Lawford would prove a tough and resilient officer. For now, though, William Lawford was twenty-four years old and had only recently purchased his lieutenancy, and that made him unsure of his authority.
Ensign Fitzgerald, who was only eighteen, strolled back from the column’s head. He was whistling as he walked and slashing with a drawn sabre at tall weeds. ‘Off in a moment, sir,’ he called up cheerfully to Lawford, then seemed to become aware of the Light Company’s ominous silence. ‘Not frightened, are you?’ he asked.
‘Saving their breath, Mister Fitzgerald, sir,’ Hakeswill snapped.
‘They’ve got breath enough to sing a dozen songs and still beat the enemy,’ Fitzgerald said scornfully. ‘Ain’t that so, lads?’
‘We’ll beat the bastards, sir,’ Tom Garrard said.
‘Then let me hear you sing,’ Fitzgerald demanded. ‘Can’t bear silence. We’ll have a quiet time in our tombs, lads, so we might as well make a noise now.’ Fitzgerald had a fine tenor voice that he used to start the song about the milkmaid and the rector, and by the time the Light Company had reached the verse that told how the naked rector, blindfolded by the milkmaid and thinking he was about to have his heart’s desire, was being steered towards Bessie the cow, the whole company was bawling the song enthusiastically.
They never did reach the end. Captain Morris, the Light Company’s commanding officer, rode back from the head of the battalion and interrupted the singing. ‘Half-companies!’ he shouted at Hakeswill.
‘Half-companies it is, sir! At once, sir. Light Company! Stop your bleeding noise! You heard the officer!’ Hakeswill bellowed. ‘Sergeant Green! Take charge of the after ranks. Mister Fitzgerald! I’ll trouble you to take your proper place on the left, sir. Forward ranks! Shoulder firelocks! Twenty paces, forward, march! Smartly now! Smartly!’
Hakeswill’s face shuddered as the front ten ranks of the company marched twenty paces and halted, leaving the other nine ranks behind. All along the battalion column the companies were similarly dividing, their drill as crisp as though they were back on their Yorkshire parade ground. A quarter-mile off to the 33rd’s left another six battalions were going through the same manoeuvre, and performing it with just as much precision. Those six battalions were all native soldiers in the service of the East India Company, though they wore red coats just like the King’s men. The six sepoy battalions shook out their colours and Sharpe, seeing the bright flags, looked ahead to where the 33rd’s two great regimental banners were being loosed from their leather tubes to the fierce Indian sun. The first, the King’s Colour, was a British flag on which the regiment’s battle honours were embroidered, while the second was the Regimental Colour and had the 33rd’s badge displayed on a scarlet field, the same scarlet as the men’s jacket facings. The tasselled silk banners blazed, and the sight of them prompted a sudden cannonade from the ridge. Till now there had only been the one heavy gun firing, but abruptly six other cannon joined the fight. The new guns were smaller and their round shot fell well short of the seven battalions.
Major Shee, the Irishman who commanded the 33rd while its Colonel, Arthur Wellesley, had control of the whole brigade, cantered his horse back, spoke briefly to Morris, then wheeled away towards the head of the column. ‘We’re going to push the bastards off the ridge!’ Morris shouted at the Light Company, then bent his head to light a cigar with a tinderbox. ‘Any bastard that turns tail, Sergeant,’ Morris went on when his cigar was properly