Sharpes Devil   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

"I thought slavery had been abolished?" commented Harper, who had evidently forgiven Sharpe for the remarks about his fatness.

"In Britain, yes," Sharpe said, "but this isn't British territory."

"It isn't? What the hell is it then?" Harper asked indignantly. And indeed, if the island did not belong to Britain then it seemed ridiculous for it to be so thickly inhabited with British troops. Off to their left was a barrack where three companies of redcoats were being drilled on the parade ground, to their right a group of scarlet-coated officers were exercising their horses on a hill slope, while ahead, where the valley climbed out of the thick flax into the bare uplands, a guardpost straddled the road beside an idle semaphore station. The flag above the guardpost was the British union flag. "Are you telling me this might be Irish land?" Harper asked with heavy sarcasm.

"It belongs to the East India Company," Sharpe explained patiently. "It's a place where they can supply their ships."

"It looks bloody English to me, so it does. Except for them black fellows. You remember that darkle we had in the grenadier company? Big fellow? Died at Toulouse?"

Sharpe nodded. The black fellow had been one of the battalion's few casualties at Toulouse, killed a week after the peace treaty had been signed, only no one at the time knew of it.

"I remember he got drunk at Burgos," Harper said. "We put him on a charge and he still couldn't stand up straight when we marched him in for punishment next morning. What the hell was his name? Tall fellow, he was. You must remember him. He married Corporal Roe's widow, and she got pregnant and Sergeant Finlayson was taking bets on whether the nipper would be white or black. What was his name, for Christ's sake?" Harper frowned in frustration. Ever since he had met Sharpe in France they had held conversations like this, trying to flesh out the ghosts of a past that was fast becoming attenuated.

"Bastable," the name suddenly shot into Sharpe's head, "Thomas Bastable."

"Bastable! That was him, right enough. He used to close his eyes whenever he fired a musket, and I never could get him out of the habit. He probably put more bullets into more angels than any soldier in history, God rest his soul. But he was a terror with the bayonet. Jesus, but he could be a terror with a spike!"

"What color was the baby?" Sharpe asked.

"Bit of both, far as I remember. Like milky tea. Finlayson wouldn't pay out till we had a quiet word with him behind the lines, but he was always a slippery bugger, Finlayson. I never did understand why you gave him the stripes.