InsaneJournal

Sharpe's Lesson
Spoiler for: Sharpe's Tiger
Prompt: School


It didn’t help Sharpe’s concentration that the cell stank. With anything but a west wind, the smell of the sewage was ever-present. His back hurt and Hakeswill kept up a constant stream of jibes from the cell opposite.

The light had begun to go, rendering the single page of the Bible that remained in Lawford’s possession illegible. The two sat by the bars of the cell, occasionally watching the tiger that had been released to wander up and down the corridor, allowing their human guards to get some sleep.

“You’re doing well, Sharpe,” Lawford said.

Sharpe could never admit it, but he missed the camaraderie he and Lawford had had while on their mission before being captured, and he didn’t know how to regain it without being thought insolent. He bent again to scratch in the dirt of the cell floor.

Richard Sharp, he wrote.

Lawford smiled. “You know, Richard, that sometimes, if it’s a name, people put an E on the end of Sharp. Like this.” He showed the young soldier, who studied the result before looking up.

“Sharpe, sir?” he said, and tried it out for himself. “I like it, sir. Really.” He shifted to try and find a more comfortable position.

“Back hurting?” Lawford asked, noticing.

“Yes, sir. No worse than after the flogging, though. Not really.” Sharpe looked down again at the letters scribbled in the dust. “I never wrote my own name before.”

Lawford looked out through the bars. “What a place to learn, though. In a prison cell watched by a tiger.”

“Better late than never,” McCandless said from the back of the cell. “And that’s something nobody will be able to take away from you, Sharpe.”

The private looked from one officer to the other. Somehow, he knew that both of them saw him as a person, not just something there to obey orders, despite the fact that he had threatened to shoot one at their first meeting, and had bullied the other into living the life of a private soldier, in order to keep him alive. And now, between them, the officers had given the private a most precious gift: the ability to write his own name. It had been Sharpe's lesson.