Colour Sergeant Silas Wormwood (generally referred to as Colour Wormwood or simply Wormwood) is the secondary antagonist of the miniseries Sharpe's Peril.
He was played by Steve Speirs, who also played Assistant Commissioner Strickland in Doctor Who and Flatnose in Inkheart.
Biography[]
Colour Wormwood was a soldier in the British King's Army serving in India in 1818. With two other soldiers, Quilter and Croup, he robbed a merchant. Wormwood then murdered the man and framed Corporal Barabbas Hakeswill. The three of them and another soldier, Deever, were assigned to escort Barabbas to headquarters under the nominal command of the young Ensign Beauclere, who deferred to Wormwood because of his inexperience. They joined with a convoy of other soldiers and civilians.
When Colonel Richard Sharpe and his friend Patrick Harper joined the column, Wormwood was initially respectful to them. However, when the commander of the sepoy soldiers, Subedar Pillai, was mortally wounded during a bandit attack, he turned command over to Sharpe, which Beauclere supported, telling Wormwood to obey his orders. Wormwood chafed against Sharpe's discipline, being reluctant to lead a foraging party or burial detachment. Arriving at the fortress of Kalimgong, they found the garrison had been massacred, with the only survivor being a delirious Sir Henry Simmerson, who Wormwood advocated putting out of his misery. It was quickly deduced that the massacre was the work of the renegade Count Dragomirov, who had stolen the opium crop.
Quilter and Croup were stopped from raping a servant of Princess Maharani Padmini by another soldier, Lance Singh. Wormwood's response was to knock Singh out and try and blame the attempted rape on him. Both Sharpe and Major Tredinnick, Singh's commanding officer, instantly saw through the lie but Sharpe was unable to punish the group because he still needed them, instead telling Wormwood his section was one of the worst he'd ever seen and he meant to train and drill them.
Wormwood convinced his section to draw lots to see who would kill Sharpe. When the group were ambushed by Dragomirov while crossing a river, Wormwood tried to kill Sharpe in the confusion but only wounded him. Sharpe left to rescue Marie-Angelique Bonnet, who had been captured during the confusion, leaving Harper in charge. Wormwood tried to argue that Sharpe was dead and they should make a deal with Dragomirov, but Harper ended the conversation by punching him, making it clear Dragomirov would kill them all to cover up his crime.
When Sharpe returned and decided to make a stand against Dragomirov at a nearby village, Wormwood tried to get Quilter and Croop to desert with him but they chose to fight with Sharpe. Instead, he freed Barabbas and told him Sharpe intended to have him killed before the battle, encouraging him to flee and then riding from camp himself on the pretext of pursuing him. He then went to Dragomirov and told him where Sharpe was. Wormwood joined Dragomirov in the attack on the village, where he killed Quilter. He ended up fighting Harper, who slit his throat with a scythe.
