Free Sharpe's Fortress by Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe

    thought. Urquhart had been nagging Sharpe to find a servant, implying that Sharpe's clothes

    were in need of cleaning and pressing, which they were, but as he only owned the clothes he

    wore, he could not really see the point in being too finicky.
    "I
    hadn't really thought what to do with the lad, sir," Sharpe admitted.
    Wallace turned and spoke to the boy in an Indian language, and Ahmed stared up at the

    Colonel and nodded solemnly as though he understood what had been said. Perhaps he did,

    though Sharpe did not.
    “I've told him he's to serve you properly,” Wallace said, 'and that you'll pay him

    properly." The Colonel seemed to disapprove of Ahmed, or maybe he just disapproved of

    everything to do with Sharpe, though he was doing his best to be friendly. It had been

    Wallace who had given Sharpe the commission in the 74th, and Wallace had been a close

    friend of Colonel McCandless, so Sharpe supposed that the balding Colonel was, in his way,

    an ally. Even so, Sharpe felt awkward in the Scotsman's company. He wondered if he would

    ever feel relaxed among officers.
    “How's that woman of yours, Sharpe?” Wallace asked cheerfully.
    “My woman, sir?” Sharpe asked, blushing.
    “The Frenchwoman, can't recall her name. Took quite a shine to you, didn't she?”
    “Simone, sir? She's in Seringapatam, sir. Seemed the best place for her, sir.”
    “Quite, quite.”
    Simone Joubert had been widowed at Assaye where her husband, who had served Scindia,

    had died. She had been Sharpe's lover and, after the battle, she had stayed with him. Where

    else, she asked, was she to go? But Wellesley had forbidden his officers to take their

    wives on the campaign, and though Simone was not Sharpe's wife, she was white, and so she had

    agreed to go to Seringapatam and there wait for him. She had carried a letter of

    introduction to Major Stokes, Sharpe's friend who ran the armoury, and Sharpe had given

    her some of the Tippoo's jewels so that she could find servants and live comfortably.
    He sometimes worried he had given her too many of the precious stones, but consoled

    himself that Simone would keep the surplus safe till he returned.
    “So are you happy, Sharpe?” Wallace asked bluffly.
    “Yes, sir,” Sharpe said bleakly.
    “Keeping busy?”
    “Not really, sir.”
    “Difficult, isn't it?” Wallace said vaguely. He had stopped to watch the gunners

    loading one of the captured cannon, a great brute that looked to take a ball of twenty or

    more pounds. The barrel had been cast with an intricate pattern of lotus flowers and

    dancing girls, then painted with garish colours. The gunners had charged the gaudy barrel

    with a double load of powder and now they rammed two cannonballs down the blackened

    gullet. An engineer had brought some wedges and a gunner sergeant pushed one down the

    barrel, then hammered it home with the rammer so that the ball would jam when the gun was

    fired.
    The engineer took a ball of fuse from his pocket, pushed one end into the touch-hole,

    then backed away, uncoiling the pale line.
    “Best if we give them some space,” Wallace said, gesturing that they should walk south a

    small way.
    “Don't want to be beheaded by a scrap of gun, eh?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Very difficult,” Wallace said, picking up his previous thought.
    “Coming up from the ranks? Admirable, Sharpe, admirable, but difficult, yes?”
    “I suppose so, sir,” Sharpe said unhelpfully.
    Wallace sighed, as though he was finding the conversation unexpectedly hard

    going.
    “Urquhart tells me you seem' the Colonel paused, looking for the tactful word

    'unhappy?”
    “Takes time, sir.”
    “Of course, of course. These things do. Quite.” The Colonel wiped a hand over his bald pate,

    then rammed his sweat-stained hat back into place.
    “I remember when I joined. Years ago now, of course, and I was only a little chap.

    Didn't know what was going on! They said turn left, then turned right.