Sharpe’s Prey. Bernard Cornwell

were told wrong,’ Mister Brown said.

      ‘Misinformed,’ Mister Belling added.

      ‘Grievously so,’ Mister Brown said, ‘alas.’

      ‘The regulations are plain,’ Mister Belling went on. ‘An officer who purchases a commission is free to sell it, but a man awarded a commission is not. I wish it were otherwise.’

      ‘We both do!’ Mister Brown said.

      ‘But I was told …’

      ‘You were told wrong,’ Mister Belling snapped, then wished he had not spoken so brusquely for Lieutenant Sharpe started forward in his chair as though he was going to attack the two men.

      Sharpe checked himself. He looked from the plump Mister Brown to the scrawny Mister Belling. ‘So there’s nothing you can do?’

      Mister Belling stared at the smoke-browned ceiling for a few seconds as though seeking inspiration, then shook his head. ‘There is nothing we can do,’ he pronounced, ‘but you might apply to His Majesty’s government for a dispensation. I’ve not heard of such a course ever being followed, but an exception might be made?’ He sounded very dubious. ‘There are senior officers, perchance, who would speak for you?’

      Sharpe said nothing. He had saved Sir Arthur Wellesley’s life in India, but he doubted whether the General would help him now. All Sharpe wanted was to sell his commission, take the £450 and get out of the army. But it seemed he could not sell his rank because he had not bought it.

      ‘Such an appeal would take time,’ Mister Brown warned him, ‘and I would not be sanguine about the outcome, Mister Sharpe. You are asking the government to set a precedent and governments are chary of precedents.’

      ‘Indeed they are,’ Belling said, ‘and so they should be. Though in your case … ?’ He smiled, raised his eyebrows, then sat back.

      ‘In my case?’ Sharpe asked, puzzled.

      ‘I would not be sanguine,’ Mister Brown repeated.

      ‘You’re saying I’m buggered?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘We are saying, Mister Sharpe, that we cannot assist you.’ Mister Brown spoke severely for he had been offended by Sharpe’s language. ‘Alas.’

      Sharpe gazed at the two men. Take them both down, he thought. Two minutes of bloody violence and then strip their pockets bare. The bastards must have money. And he had three shillings and threepence halfpenny in his pouch. That was it. Three shillings and threepence halfpenny.

      But it was not Brown or Belling’s fault that he could not sell his commission. It was the rules. The regulations. The rich could make more money and the poor could go to hell. He stood, and the clatter of his sabre scabbard on the chair made Mister Brown wince. Sharpe draped a damp greatcoat round his shoulders, crammed a shako onto his unruly hair and picked up his pack. ‘Good day,’ he said curtly, then ducked out of the door, letting in a gust of unseasonably cold air and rain.

      Mister Belling let out a great sigh of relief. ‘You know who that was, Mister Brown?’

      ‘He announced himself as Lieutenant Sharpe of the 95th Rifles,’ Mister Brown said, ‘and I have no reason to doubt him, do I?’

      ‘The very same officer, Mister Brown, who lived, or should I say cohabited, with the Lady Grace Hale!’

      Mister Brown’s eyes widened. ‘No! I thought she took up with an ensign!’

      Mister Belling sighed. ‘In the Rifles, Mister Brown, there are no ensigns. He is a second lieutenant. Lowest of the low!’

      Mister Brown stared at the closed door. ‘’Pon my soul,’ he said softly, ‘’pon my soul!’ Here was something to tell Amelia when he got home! A scandal in the office! It had been whispered throughout London how the Lady Grace Hale, widow to a prominent man, had moved into a house with a common soldier. True, the common soldier was an officer, but not a proper officer. Not a man who had purchased his commission, but rather a sergeant who had earned a battlefield promotion, which was, in its way, entirely admirable, but even so! Lady Grace Hale, daughter of the Earl of Selby, living with a common soldier? And not just living with him, but having his baby! Or so the gossip said. The Hale family claimed the dead husband had been the child’s father and the date of the baby’s birth was conveniently within nine months of Lord William’s death, but few believed it. ‘I thought the name was somehow familiar,’ Brown said.

      ‘I scarcely credited it myself,’ Mister Belling admitted. ‘Can you imagine her ladyship enduring such a man? He’s scarce more than a savage!’

      ‘Did you note the scar on his face?’

      ‘And when did he last shave?’ Belling shuddered. ‘I fear he is not long for the army, Mister Brown. A curtailed career, would you not say?’

      ‘Truncated, Mister Belling.’

      ‘Penniless, no doubt!’

      ‘No doubt!’ Brown said. ‘And he carried his own pack and greatcoat! An officer doesn’t carry a pack! Never seen such a thing in all my years. And he was reeking of gin.’

      ‘He was?’

      ‘Reeking!’ Brown said. ‘Well, I never! So that’s the fellow, is it? What was the Lady Grace thinking of? She must have been quite mad!’ He jumped, startled because the door had been suddenly thrown open. ‘Mister Sharpe?’ he said faintly, wondering if the tall rifleman had returned to exact vengeance for their unhelpfulness. ‘You forgot something, perhaps?’

      Sharpe shook his head. ‘Today’s Friday, isn’t it?’ he asked.

      Mister Belling blinked. ‘It is, Mister Sharpe,’ he said feebly, ‘it is indeed.’

      ‘Friday,’ Mister Brown confirmed, ‘the very last day of July.’

      Sharpe, dark-eyed, tall and hard-faced, stared suspiciously at each of the two men in turn, then nodded reluctantly. ‘I thought it was,’ he said, then left again.

      This time it was Brown who let out a sigh of relief as the door closed. ‘I cannot think,’ he said, ‘that promoting men from the ranks is a wise idea.’

      ‘It never lasts,’ Belling said consolingly, ‘they ain’t suited to rank, Mister Brown, and they take to liquor and so run out of cash. There is no prudence in the lower sort of men. He’ll be on the streets within the month, rely upon it, within the month.’

      ‘Poor fellow,’ Mister Brown said and shot the door’s bolt. It was only five o’clock in the evening, and the office was supposed to remain open until six, but somehow it seemed prudent to shut up early. Just in case Sharpe came back. Just in case.

      Grace, Sharpe thought, Grace. God help me, Grace. God help me. Three shillings, three pence and a bloody halfpenny, all the money he had left in the world. What do I do now, Grace? He often talked to her. She was not there to listen, not now, but he still talked to her. She had taught him so much, she had encouraged him to read and tried to make him think, but nothing lasts. Nothing. ‘Bloody hell, Grace,’ he said aloud and men on the street gave him room, thinking him either mad or drunk. ‘Bloody hell.’ The anger was welling inside him, thick and dark, a fury that wanted to explode in violence or else drown itself in drink. Three shillings and threepence bloody halfpenny. He could get well drunk on that, but the ale and gin he had taken at midday was already sour in his belly. What he wanted was to hurt someone, anyone. Just a blind, desperate anger.

      He had not planned it this way. He thought he would come to London, borrow an advance from an army agent, and then go away. Back to India, he had thought. Other men went there poor and came back rich. Sharpe the nabob and why not? Because he could not sell his rank, that was why not. Some snotty child with a rich father could buy and sell his rank, but a real soldier who had fought his way up the ladder could not. Bugger them all. So what now? Ebenezer Fairley, the merchant who had sailed with Sharpe from India, had offered him a job, and Sharpe supposed