“For a former sergeant, you mean?” Pohlmann laughed. “I do have some loot, my dear Sharpe, but not as much as I would have liked and nowhere near as much as I lost at Assaye, but I cannot complain. If I am careful I shall not need to work again.” He looked at the hem of Sharpe’s red coat where the jewels made small lumps in the threadbare cloth. “I see you did well in India too, eh?”

Sharpe was aware that the fraying, thinning cloth of his coat was increasingly an unsafe place to hide the diamonds, emeralds and rubies, but he did not want to discuss them with Pohlmann so gestured at the harp instead. “You play?”

“Mein Gott, no! Mathilde plays. Very badly, but I tell her it is wonderful.”

“She’s your wife?”

“Am I a numbskull? A blockhead? Would I marry? Ha! No, Sharpe, she was whore to a rajah and when he tired of her I took her over. She is from Bavaria and wants babies, so she is a double fool, but she will keep my bed warm till I see home and then I shall find something younger. So you killed Dodd?”

“Not me, a friend killed him.”

“He deserved to die. A very horrid man.” Pohlmann shuddered. “And you? You travel alone?”

“Yes.”

“In the rat hole, eh?” He looked at the hem of Sharpe’s coat. “You keep your jewels until you reach England and travel in steerage. But more important, my cautious friend, will you reveal who I am?”

“No,” Sharpe said with a smile. The last time he had seen Pohlmann the Hanoverian had been hiding in a peasant’s hut in the village of Assaye. Sharpe could have arrested him and gained credit for capturing the commander of the beaten army, but he had always liked Pohlmann and so he had looked the other way and let the big man escape. “But I reckon my silence is worth something, though,” Sharpe added.

“You want Mathilde every other Friday?” Pohlmann, assured that his secret was safe with Sharpe, could not hide his relief.