“And what have we here?” a strong voice boomed from the hall door. “What has the east wind blown in today?” The children whimpered and went very still while the woman dropped another curtsey. Sharpe turned. “And who are you?” the man demanded. “Colonel of the regiment, are you?”

It was Jem Hocking. Come like the devil to the heart of hell.

He was no devil to look at. See Jem Hocking in the street and a man might take him for a prosperous farmer up from the Vale of Kent. The years had whitened his hair and stretched his checkered waistcoat taut across a bulging belly, but he was still a bull of a man with wide shoulders, stout legs and a face as flat as a shovel. Thick jowls hung beneath bushy white side whiskers, a golden watch chain held a dozen seals, his tall boots were tasseled, his dark-blue coat was edged with velvet cuffs and he carried a varnished black staff with a silver knob. He was the Master and for a moment Sharpe could not speak. He was overwhelmed by hatred, by the memories of this man’s cruelty, even by fear. Twenty years and a battlefield commission had not taken away that fear. He wanted to imitate the children; he wanted to freeze, pretend not to exist, not even breathe in case he was noticed.

“Does I know you?” Hocking demanded. The big man was frowning, trying to discern something familiar in Sharpe’s scarred face, but the memory would not come. He shook his head in puzzlement. “So who are you?”

“My name is Dunnett,” Sharpe said, using the name of an officer in the greenjackets who held a particular dislike of Sharpe. “Major Warren Dunnett,” he said, promoting Dunnett from captain.

“A major, eh? And what kind of uniform is that, Major? Red coats I know, and blue I’ve seen, but bless me, I ain’t seen green and black.” He stepped toward Sharpe, pushing the children’s skinny legs out of the way with his beadle’s staff. “Is it a new-fangled uniform, eh? Some kind of coat that gives a man the right to trespass on parish property?”