Sharpes Siege   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

“I think,” Sharpe said it with some misgivings, “that asSergeant Harper and I have been together so long, I ought to do the deed. Push, twist, and pull?”

“Precisely, sir.”

It took five minutes to persuade and prepare Harper. The Irishman showed no fear in battle; he had gone grim-faced into the carnage of a dozen battlefields and come out victorious, but now, faced with the little business of having a tooth pulled, he sat terrified and shaking. He clung to Frederickson’s brandy as if it alone could console him in this dreadful ordeal.

“Show me the tooth.” Sharpe spoke solicitously.

Harper eventually opened his mouth and pointed to an upper tooth that was surrounded by inflamed gum. “There.”

Sharpe used a handle of the pincers and, as gently as he could, tapped the tooth. “That one?”

“Jesus Christ!” Harper bellowed and jerked away. “Bloody kill me, you will!”

“Language, Sergeant!” Frederickson was trying not to laugh while the other Riflemen were grinning with keen enjoyment.

Sharpe reversed the pincers. The jaws, somewhat battered and rusted, were saw-toothed for better purchase. It was a handy instrument for burglary and doubtless ideal for the procurement of false teeth from mangled corpses, but whether it was truly suitable for a surgical operation Sharpe could not yet say. “It can’t be worse than having a baby,” he said to Harper. “And Isabella didn’t make this fuss.”

“Women don’t mind pain,” the Irishman said. “I do.”

“Don’t grip the fang too hard,” Frederickson observed helpfully, “or you might smash it, sir. It’s the devil of a job to fetch out the remnants of a broken tooth. I saw it happen to Jock Callaway before Salamanca and it quite spoilt Jock’s battle. You remember Jock, sir?”

“The 61st?” Sharpe asked.

“Died of the fever next winter, poor fellow.” Frederickson stooped to see what was happening.

The word ‘fever’ shot through Sharpe’s head like a death-knell, but this was no time for such thoughts. “Open-your mouth, Sergeant.”

“You’ll be gentle?” Harper’s voice was sullen and mutinous.

“I will be as gentle as a new-born lamb. Now open your bloody gob.”

The huge mouth with its yellowed teeth opened. The Irishman’s eyes were wary and a faint groan, half a moan, escaped as Sharpe brought the pincers up.

Slowly, very slowly, doing his utmost not to jar the offending tooth, Sharpe closed the vicious jaws on that part of the tooth not hidden by the swollen gum-tissue.