Authors: Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe was sitting with his back against the boxes. He shrugged. “I've been whipped before, Sergeant.”
“Not in the army, lad, not in the army. Here.” Green held out a canteen. “It's nun.”
Sharpe uncorked the canteen and drank a good slug of the liquor. “I didn't do nothing anyway,” he said sullenly.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Green said, “but the more you drink the less you'll feel. Finish it, lad.”
“Tomkins says you don't feel a damn thing after the first thirty,” Sharpe said.
“I hope he's right, lad, I hope he's right, but you drink that rum anyway.” Green took off his shako and wiped the sweat from his bald head with a scrap of rag.
Sharpe tipped the canteen again. “And where was Mister Lawford?” he asked bitterly.
“You heard, son. He was called off to see the General.” Green hesitated. “But what could he have said anyway?” he added.
Sharpe leaned his head against the box-built wall. “He could have said that Morris is a lying bastard and that Hicks will say anything to please him.”
“No, he couldn't say that, lad, and you know it.” Green filled a clay pipe with tobacco and lit it with his tinderbox. He sat on the ground opposite Sharpe and saw the fear in
the younger man's eyes. Sharpe was doing his best to hide it, but it was plainly there and so it should be, for only a fool did not fear two thousand lashes and only a lucky man came away alive. No man had ever actually walked away from such a punishment, but a handful had recovered after a month in the sick tent. “Your Mary's all right,” Green told Sharpe.
Sharpe gave a sullen grimace. “You know what Hakeswill told me? That he was going to sell her as a whore.”
Green frowned. “He won't, lad. He won't.”
“And how will you stop him?” Sharpe asked bitterly.
“She's being looked after now,” Green reassured him. “The lads are making sure of that, and the women are all protecting her.”
“But for how long?” Sharpe asked. He drank more of the rum which seemed to be having no effect that he could sense. He momentarily closed his eyes. He knew he had been given an effective death sentence, but there was always hope. Some men had survived. Their ribs might have been bared to the sun and their skin and flesh be hanging from their backs in bloody ribbons, yet they had lived, but how was he to look after Mary when he was bandaged in a bed? If he was even lucky enough to reach a sick bed instead of a grave. He felt tears pricking at his eyes, not for the punishment he faced, but for Mary. “How long can they protect her?” he asked gruffly, cursing himself for being so near to weeping.
“I tell you she'll be all right,” Green insisted.
“You don't know Hakeswill,” Sharpe said.
“Oh, but I do, lad, I do,” Green said feelingly, then paused. For a second or two he looked embarrassed, then glanced up at Sharpe. “The bastard can't touch her if she's married. Married proper, I mean, with the Colonel's blessing.”
“That's what I thought.”
Green drew on the pipe. “If the worst does happen, Sharpie” he said, then stopped in embarrassment again.
“Aye?” Sharpe prompted him.
“Not that it will, of course,” Green said hurriedly. “Billy Nixon survived a couple of thousand tickles, but you probably don't remember him, do you? Little fellow, with a wall eye. He survived all right. He was never quite the same afterward, of course, but you're a tough lad, Sharpie. Tougher than Billy.”
“But if the worst does happen?” Sharpe reminded the Sergeant.
“Well,” Green said, coloring, but then at last he summoned the courage to say what he had come to say. “I mean if it don't offend you, lad, and only if the worst does happen, which of course it won't, and I pray it won't, but if it does then I thought I might ask for Mrs. Bickerstaff's hand myself, if you follow my meaning.”
Sharpe almost laughed, but then the thought of two thousand lashes choked off even the beginnings of a smile. Two thousand! He had seen men with backs looking like offal after just a hundred lashes and how the hell was he to survive with another nineteen hundred strokes on top of that? Such survival really depended on the battalion surgeon. If Mister Micklewhite thought Sharpe was dying after five or six hundred lashes he might stop the punishment to give his back time to heal before the rest of the lashes were given, but Micklewhite was not known for stopping whippings. The rumor in the battalion was that so long as the man did not scream like a baby and thus disturb the more squeamish of the officers, the surgeon would keep the blows coming, even if they were falling onto a dead man's spine. That was the rumor, and Sharpe could only hope it was not true.
“Did you hear me, Sharpie?” Sergeant Green interrupted Sharpe's gloomy thoughts.
“I heard you, Sergeant,” Sharpe said.
“So would you mind? If I asked her?”
“Have you asked her already?” Sharpe said accusingly.
“No!” Green said hastily. “Wouldn't be right! Not while you're still, well, you know.”
“Alive,” Sharpe said bitterly.
“It's only if the worst happens.” Green tried to sound optimistic. “Which it won't.”
“You won't need my permission when I'm dead, Sergeant.”
“No, but if I can tell Mary you wanted her to accept me, then it'll help. Don't you see that? I'll be a good man to her, Sharpie. I was married before, I was, only she died on me, but she never complained about me. No more than any woman ever complains, anyhow.”
“Hakeswill might stop you marrying her.”
Green nodded. “Aye, he might, but I can't see how. Not if we tie the knot quick. I'll ask Major Shee, and he's always fair with me. Ask him tonight, see? But only if the worst happens.”
“But you need a chaplain,” Sharpe warned the Sergeant. The 33rd's own chaplain had committed suicide on the voyage to Madras and no marriage in the army was considered official unless it had the regimental commander's permission and the blessing of a chaplain.
“The lads in the Old Dozen tell me they've got a God-walloper,” Green said, gesturing at the soldiers guarding Sharpe, “and he can do the splicing tomorrow. I'll probably have to slip the bugger a shilling, but Mary's worth a bob.”
Sharpe shrugged. “Ask her, Sergeant,” he said, “ask her.” What else could he say? And if Mary was properly married to Sergeant Green then she would be protected by the army's regulations. “But see what happens to me first,” Sharpe added.
“Of course I will, Sharpie. Hope for the best, eh? Never say die.”
Sharpe drained the canteen. “There's a couple of things in my pack, Sergeant. A good pistol I took off an Indian officer the other day and a few coins. You'll give them to Mary?”
“Of course I will,” Green said, carefully hiding the fact that Hakeswill had already plundered Sharpe's pack. “She'll be all right, Sharpie. Promise you, lad.”
“And some dark night, Sergeant, give bloody Hakeswill a kicking for me.”
Green nodded. “Be a pleasure, Sharpie. Be a pleasure.” He knocked the ashes of his pipe against the ammunition boxes, then stood. “I'll bring you some more rum, lad. The more the better.”
The preparations for Sharpe's flogging had all been made. Not that they were many, but it took a few moments to make sure everything was to the Sergeant Major's satisfaction. A tripod had been constructed out of three sergeant's halberds, their spearpoints uppermost and lashed together so that the whole thing stood two feet higher than a tall man. The three halberd butts were sunk into the dry soil, then a fourth halberd was firmly lashed crosswise on one face of the tripod at the height of a man's armpits.
Sergeant Hakeswill personally selected two of the 33rd's drummer boys. The drummer boys always administered the floggings, a small element of mercy in a bestial punishment, but Hakeswill made certain that the two biggest and strongest boys were given the task and then he collected the two whips from the Sergeant Major and made the boys practice on a tree trunk. “Put your body into it, lads,” he told them, “and keep the arm moving fast after the whip's landed. Like this.” He took one of the whips and slashed it across the bark, then showed them how to keep the lash sliding across the target by following the stroke through. “I did it often
enough when I was a drummer,” he told them, “and I always did a good job. Best flogger in the battalion, I was. Second to none.” Once he was sure their technique was sufficient for the task he warned them not to tire too quickly, and then, with a pocketknife, he nicked the edges of the leather lashes so that their abrasions would tear at the exposed flesh as they were dragged across Sharpe's back. “Do it well, lads,” he promised them, “and there's one of these for each of you.” He showed them one of the Tippoo's gold coins which had been part of the battle's loot. “I don't want this bastard walking again,” he told them. “Nor do you neither, for if Sharpie ever finds his feet he'll give you two a rare kicking, so make sure you finish the bastard off proper. Whip him bloody then put him underground, like it says in the scriptures.”
Hakeswill coiled the two whips and hung them on the halberd that was mounted crosswise on the tripod, then went to find the surgeon. Mister Micklewhite was in his tent where he was trying to tie his white silk stock in preparation for the punishment parade. He grunted when he saw Hakeswill. “You don't need more mercury, do you?” he snarled.
“No, sir. Cured, sir. Thanks to your worship's skill, sir. Clean as a whistle I am, sir.”
Micklewhite swore as the knot in the damned stock loosened. He did not like Hakeswill, but like everyone else in the regiment he feared him. There was a wildness in the back of Hakeswill's childlike eves that spoke of terrible mischief, and, though the Sergeant was always punctilious in his dealings with officers, Micklewhite still felt obscurely threatened. “So what do you want, Sergeant?”
“Major Shee asked me to say a word, sir.”
“Couldn't speak to me himself?”
“You know the Major, sir. No doubt he's thirsty. A hot day.” Hakeswill's face quivered in a series of tremors. “It's about the prisoner, sir.”
“What about him?”
“Troublemaker, sir. Known for it. A thief, a liar, and a cheat.”
“So he's a redcoat. So?”
“So Major Shee ain't keen to see him back among the living, sir, if you follow my meaning. Is this what I owe you for the mercury, sir?” Hakeswill held up a gold coin, a
haideri
, which was worth around two shillings and sixpence. The coin was certainly not payment for the cure of his pox, for that cost had already been deducted from the Sergeant's pay, so Micklewhite knew it was a bribe. Not a great bribe, but half a crown could still go a long way. Micklewhite glanced at it, then nodded. “Put it on the table, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Micklewhite tugged the silk stock tight, then waved Hakeswill off. He pulled on his coat and pocketed the gold coin. The bribe had not been necessary, for Micklewhite's opposition to the coddling of flogging victims was well enough known in the battalion. Micklewhite hated caring for men who had been flogged, for in his experience they almost always died, and if he did stop a punishment then the recovering victim only cluttered up his sick cots. And if, by some miracle, the man was restored to health, it was only so he could be strapped to the triangle to be given the rest of his punishment and that second dose almost always proved fatal and so, all things considered, it was more prudent to let a man die at the first flogging. It saved money on medicine and, in Micklewhite's view, it was kinder too. Micklewhite buttoned his coat and wondered just why Sergeant Hakeswill wanted this particular man dead. Not that Micklewhite really cared, he just wanted the bloody business over and done.
The 33rd paraded under the afternoon's burning sun. Four companies faced the tripod, while three were arraigned at either side so that the battalion's ten companies formed a
hollow oblong with the tripod standing in the one empty long side. The officers sat on their horses in front of their companies while Major Shee, his aides, and the adjutant stood their horses just behind the tripod. Mister Micklewhite, his head protected from the sun by a wide straw hat, stood to one side of the triangle. Major Shee, fortified by arrack and satisfied that everything was in proper order, nodded to Bywaters. “You will begin punishment, Sergeant Major.”
“Sir!” Bywaters acknowledged, then turned and bellowed for the prisoner to be fetched. The two drummer boys stood nervously with their whips in hand. They alone of the parading soldiers were in shirtsleeves, while everyone else was in full wool uniform. Women and children peered between the company intervals. Mary Bickerstaff was not there. Hakeswill had looked for her, wanting to enjoy her horror, but Mary had stayed away. The women who had come for the spectacle, like their men, were silent and sullen. Sharpe was a popular man, and Hakeswill knew that everyone here was hating him for engineering this flogging, but Obadiah Hakeswill had never been concerned by such enmity. Power did not lie in being liked, but in being feared.
Sharpe was brought to the triangle. He was bareheaded and already stripped to the waist. The skin of his chest and back were as white as his powdered hair and contrasted oddly with his darkly tanned face. He walked steadily, for though he had the best part of a pint of rum in his belly, the liquor had not seemed to have the slightest effect. He did not look at either Hakeswill or Morris as he walked to the tripod.
“Arms up, lad,” the Sergeant Major said quietly. “Stand against the triangle. Feet apart. There's a good lad.”
Sharpe obediently stepped up to the triangular face of the tripod. Two corporals knelt at his feet and lashed his ankles to the halberds, then stood and pushed his arms over the
crosswise halberd. They pulled his hands down and tied them to the uprights, thus forcing his naked back up and outward. That way he could not sag between the triangle and so hope to exhaust some of the blows on the halberd staffs. The corporals finished their knots, then stepped back.