"Cornwell, Bernard - Sharpe 00 - Sharpe's Fortress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornwell Bernard)

He turned pointedly away.

And sod you too, Sharpe thought. And where the hell was Captain
Urquhart? Where the hell was anybody for that matter? The battalion
had marched long before dawn, and at midday they had expected to make
camp, but then came a rumour that the enemy was waiting ahead and so
General Sir Arthur Wellesley had ordered the baggage to be piled and
the advance to continue. The King's 74th had plunged into the millet,
then ten minutes later the battalion was ordered to halt beside the dry
ditch while Captain Urquhart rode ahead to speak with the battalion
commander, and Sharpe had been left to sweat and wait with the
company.

Where he had damn all to do except sweat. Damn all. It was a good
company, and it did not need Sharpe. Urquhart ran it well, Colquhoun
was a magnificent sergeant, the men were as content as soldiers ever
were, and the last thing the company needed was a brand new officer, an
Englishman at that, who, just two months before, had been a sergeant.

The men were talking in Gaelic and Sharpe, as ever, wondered if they
were discussing him. Probably not. Most likely they were talking
about the dancing girls in Ferdapoor, where there had been no mere
clusters of grapes, but bloody great naked melons. It had been some
sort of festival and the battalion had marched one way and the
half-naked girls had writhed in the opposite direction and Sergeant
Colquhoun had blushed as scarlet as an unfaded coat and shouted at the
men to keep their eyes front. Which had been a pointless order, when a
score of undressed bibb is were hobbling down the highway with silver
bells tied to their wrists and even the officers were staring at them
like starving men seeing a plate of roast beef. And if the men were
not discussing women, they were probably grumbling about all the
marching they had done in the last weeks, crisscrossing the Mahratta
countryside under a blazing sun without a sight or smell of the enemy.
But whatever they were talking about they were making damn sure that
Ensign Richard Sharpe was left out.

Which was fair enough, Sharpe reckoned. He had marched in the ranks
long enough to know that you did not talk to officers, not unless you
were spoken to or unless you were a slick-bellied crawling bastard
looking for favours. Officers were different, except Sharpe did not
feel different. He just felt excluded. I should have stayed a
sergeant, he thought. He had increasingly thought that in the last few
weeks, wishing he was back in the Seringapatam armoury with Major
Stokes. That had been the life! And Simone Joubert, the Frenchwoman
who had clung to Sharpe after the battle at Assaye, had gone back to
Seringapatam to wait for him. Better to be there as a sergeant, he
reckoned, than here as an unwanted officer.

No guns had fired for a while. Perhaps the enemy had packed up and