Sharpe's Fortress (22 page)

Just let the bastards come.

That evening Sergeant Hakeswill pushed aside the folds of muslin to enter Captain
Torrance's quarters. The Captain was lying naked in his hammock where he was being fanned
by a bamboo punk ah that had been rigged to a ceiling beam. His native servant kept the
punk ah moving by tugging on a string, while Clare Wall trimmed the Captain's
fingernails.

“Not too close, Brick,” Torrance said.

“Leave me enough to scratch with, there's a good girl.” He raised his eyes to Hakeswill.

“Did you knock, Sergeant?”

“Twice, sir,” Hakeswill lied, 'loud and clear, sir."

“Brick will have to ream out my ears. Say good evening to the Sergeant, Brick. Where are our
manners tonight?”

Clare lifted her eyes briefly to acknowledge Hakeswill's presence and mumbled
something barely audible. Hakeswill snatched off his hat.

“Pleasure to see you, Mrs. Wall,” he said eagerly, 'a proper pleasure, my jewel." He
bobbed his head to her and winked at Torrance, who flinched.

“Brick,” Torrance said, 'the Sergeant and I have military matters to discuss. So take
yourself to the garden." He patted her hand and watched her leave.

“And no listening at the window!” he added archly.

He waited until Clare had sidled past the muslin that hung over the kitchen entrance,
then leaned precariously from the hammock to pick up a green silk robe that he draped over
his crotch.

“I would hate to shock you, Sergeant.”

"Beyond shock, sir, me, sir. Ain't nothing living I ain't seen naked, sir, all of 'em
naked as needles, and never once was I shocked, sir.

Ever since they strung me up by the neck I've been beyond shock, sir."

And beyond sense, too, Torrance thought, but he suppressed the comment.

“Has Brick left the kitchen?”

Hakeswill peered past the muslin.

“She's gone, sir.”

“She's not at the window?”

Hakeswill checked the window.

“On the far side of the yard, sir, like a good girl.”

“I trust you've brought me news?”

“Better than news, sir, better than news.” The Sergeant crossed to the table and emptied
his pocket.

"Your notes to Jama, sir, all of them.

Ten thousand rupees, and all paid off. You're out of debt, sir, out of debt."

Relief seared through Torrance. Debt was a terrible thing, a dreadful thing, yet
seemingly inescapable if a man was to live to the full. Twelve hundred guineas! How could
he ever have gambled that much away? It had been madness! Yet now it was paid, and paid in
full.

“Burn the notes,” he ordered Hakeswill.

Hakeswill held the notes into a candle flame one by one, then let them shrivel and burn
on the table. The draught from the punk ah disturbed the smoke and scattered the little
scraps of black ash that rose from the small fires.

“And Jama, sir, being a gentleman, despite being an heathen bastard blackamoor,
added a thankee,” Hakeswill said, putting some gold coins on the table.

“How much?”

“Seven hundred rupees there, sir.”

“He gave us more, I know that. You're cheating me, Sergeant.”

“Sir!” Hakeswill straightened indignantly.

“On my life, sir, and I speak as a Christian, I ain't ever cheated a soul in my life,
sir, not unless they deserved it, in which case they gets it right and proper, sir, like it
says in the scriptures.”

Torrance stared at Hakeswill.

“Jama will be back in the camp in a day or two. I can ask him.”

“And you will find, sir, that I have treated you foursquare and straight, sir, on the nail,
sir, on the drumhead, as one soldier to another.”

Hakeswill sniffed.

“I'm hurt, sir.”

Torrance yawned.

“You have my sincerest, deepest and most fervent apologies, Sergeant. So tell me about
Sharpe.”

Hakeswill glanced at the punk ah boy.

“Does that heathen speak English, sir?”

“Of course not.”

“Sharpie's no more, sir.” Hakeswill's face twitched as he remembered the pleasure of
kicking his enemy.

“Stripped the bastard naked, sir, gave him a headache he won't ever forget, not that he's
got long to remember anything now on account of him being on his way to meet his
executioner, and I kept him trussed up till Jama's men came to fetch him. Which they did,
sir, so now he's gone, sir. Gone for bleeding ever, just as he deserves.”

“You stripped him?” Torrance asked, puzzled.

“Didn't want the bastards dropping off a body all dressed up in an officer's coat, sir,
even though the little bleeder should never have worn one, him being nothing more than a
jumped-up dribble of dried toad spittle sir. So we stripped him and burned the uniform,
sir.”

“And nothing went wrong?”

Hakeswill's face twitched as he shrugged.

“His boy got away, but he didn't make no trouble. Just vanished. Probably went back to
his mummy.”

Torrance smiled. All was done, all was solved. Even better, he could resume his trade
with Jama, though perhaps with a little more circumspection than in the past.

“Did Sajit go with Sharpe?” he asked, knowing he would need an efficient clerk if he was
to hide the treacherous transactions in the ledger.

“No, sir. He's with me, sir, outside, sir.” Hakeswill jerked his head towards the front
room.

“He wanted to go, sir, but I gave him a thumping on account of us needing him here, sir,
and after that he was as good as gold, sir, even if he is an heathen bit of scum.”

Torrance smiled.

“I am vastly in your debt, Sergeant Hakeswill,” he said.

“Just doing my duty, sir.” Hakeswill's face twitched as he grinned and gestured towards
the garden window.

“And hoping for a soldier's reward, sir.”

“Brick, you mean?” Torrance asked.

“Me heart's desire, sir,” Hakeswill said hoarsely.

“Her and me, sir, made for each other. Says so in the scriptures.”

“Then the fruition of the prophecy must wait a while,” Torrance said, 'because I need
Brick to look after me, and your duty, Sergeant, is to assume Mister Sharpe's
responsibilities. We shall wait till someone notices that he's missing, then claim that
he must have been ambushed by Mahrattas while on his way here. Then you'll go up the
mountain to help the engineers."

“Me, sir?” Hakeswill sounded alarmed at the prospect of having to do some real work.

“Up the mountain?”

“Someone has to be there. You can't expect me to do it!” Torrance said
indignantly.

“Someone must stay here and shoulder the heavier responsibilities. It won't be for
long, Sergeant, not for long. And once the campaign is over I can assure you that your
heart's desires will be fully met.” But not, he decided, before Hakeswill paid him the
money Clare owed for her passage out from England. That money could come from the cash that
Jama had given Hakeswill this night which, Torrance was sure, was a great deal more than the
Sergeant had admitted.

“Make yourself ready, Sergeant,” Torrance ordered.

“Doubtless you will be needed up the road tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Hakeswill said sullenly.

“Well done, good and faithful Hakeswill,” Torrance said grandly.

“Don't let any moths in as you leave.”

Hakeswill went. He had three thousand three hundred rupees in his pocket and a fortune
in precious stones hidden in his cartridge box. He would have liked to have celebrated
with Clare Wall, but he did not doubt that his chance would come and so, for the moment, he
was a satisfied man. He looked at the first stars pricking the sky above

Gawilghur's plateau and reflected that he had rarely been more content.

He had taken his revenge, he had become wealthy, and thus all was well in Obadiah
Hakeswill's world.

Sharpe knew he was in an ox cart. He could tell that from the jolting motion and from the
terrible squeal of the ungreased axles. The ox carts that followed the army made a noise
like the shrieking of souls in perdition.

He was naked, bruised and in pain. It hurt even to breathe. His mouth was gagged and his
hands and feet were tied, but even if they had been free he doubted he could have moved for he
was wrapped in a thick dusty carpet. Hakeswill! The bastard had ambushed him, stripped him
and robbed him. He knew it was Hakeswill, for Sharpe had heard the Sergeant's hoarse voice as
he was rolled into the rug.

Then he had been carried out of the tent and slung into the cart, and he was not sure how
long ago that had been because he was in too much pain and he kept slipping in and out of a
dreamlike daze. A nightmare daze. There was blood in his mouth, a tooth was loose, a rib was
probably cracked and the rest of him simply ached or hurt. His head throbbed. He wanted to
be sick, but knew he would choke on his vomit because of the gag and so he willed his belly
to be calm.

Calm! The only blessing was that he was alive, and he suspected that was no blessing at
all. Why had Hakeswill not killed him? Not out of mercy, that was for sure. So presumably he
was to be killed somewhere else, though why Hakeswill had run the terrible risk of having a
British officer tied hand and foot and smuggled past the picquet line Sharpe could not
tell. It made no sense. All he did know was that by now Obadiah Hakeswill would have teased
Sharpe's gems from their hiding places. God damn it all to hell. First Simone, now Hakeswill,
and Hakeswill, Sharpe realized, could never have trapped Sharpe if Torrance had not
helped.

But knowing his enemies would not help Sharpe now. He knew he had as much hope of living
as those dogs who were hurled onto the mud flats beside the Thames in London with stones
tied to their necks.

The children used to laugh as they watched the dogs struggle. Some of the dogs had come
from wealthy homes. They used to be snatched and if their owners did not produce the ransom
money within a couple of days, the dogs were thrown to the river. Usually the ransom was
paid, brought by a nervous footman to a sordid public house near the docks, but no one
would ransom Sharpe. Who would care? Dust from the rug was thick in his nose. Just let the end
be quick, he prayed.

He could hear almost nothing through the rug. The axle squealing was the loudest noise,
and once he heard a thump on the cart's side and thought he heard a man laugh. It was
night-time. He was not sure how he knew that, except that it would make sense, for no one
would try to smuggle a British officer out in daylight, and he knew he had lain in the tent
for a long time after Hakeswill had hit him. He remembered ducking under the tent's
canvas, remembered a glimpse of the brass-bound musket butt, and then it was nothing but
a jumble of pain and oblivion. A weight pressed on his waist, and he guessed after a while
that a man was resting his feet on the rug. Sharpe tested the assumption by trying to move
and the man kicked him. He lay still again. One dog had escaped, he remembered. It had
somehow slipped the rope over its neck and had paddled away downstream with the children
shrieking along the bank and hurling stones at the frightened head. Did the dog die? Sharpe
could not remember. God, he thought, but he had been a wild child, wild as a hawk. They had
tried to beat the wildness out of him, beat him till the blood ran, then told him he would
come to a bad end. They had prophesied that he would be strung up by the neck at Tyburn Hill.
Dick Sharpe dangling, pissing down his legs while the rope burned into his gullet. But it
had not happened. He was an officer, a gentleman, and he was still alive, and he pulled at
the tether about his wrists, but it would not shift.

Was Hakeswill riding in the cart? That seemed possible, and suggested the Sergeant
wanted somewhere safe and private to kill Sharpe. But how? Quick with a knife? That was a
forlorn wish, for Hakeswill was not merciful. Perhaps he planned to repay Sharpe by
putting him beneath an elephant's foot and he would scream and writhe until the great weight
would not let him scream ever again and his bones would crack and splinter like eggshells. Be
sure your sin will find you out.

How many times had he heard those words from the Bible? Usually thumped into him at the
foundling home with a blow across the skull for every syllable, and the blows would keep
coming as they chanted the reference. The Book of Numbers, chapter thirty-two, verse
twenty-three, syllable by syllable, blow by blow, and now his sin was finding him out
and he was to be punished for all the unpunished of fences So die well, he told himself.
Don't cry out. Whatever was about to happen could not be worse than the flogging he had
taken because of Hakeswill's lies.

That had hurt. Hurt like buggery, but he had not cried out. So take the pain and go like a
man. What had Sergeant Major Bywaters said as he had thrust the leather gag into Sharpe's
mouth?

“Be brave, boy. Don't let the regiment down.” So he would be brave and die well, and then
what?

Hell, he supposed, and an eternity of torment at the hands of a legion of Hakeswills.
Just like the army, really.

The cart stopped. He heard feet thump on the wagon boards, the murmur of voices, then
hands seized the rug and dragged him off. He banged hard down onto the ground, then the rug
was picked up and carried. Die well, he told himself, die well, but that was easier said
than done. Not all men died well. Sharpe had seen strong men reduced to shuddering despair
as they waited for the cart to be run out from under the gallows, just as he had seen
others go into eternity with a defiance so brittle and hard that it had silenced the
watching crowd. Yet all men, the brave and the cowardly, danced the gallows dance in the
end, jerking from a length of Bridport hemp, and the crowd would laugh at their twitching
antics. Best puppet show in London, they said. There was no good way to die, except in bed,
asleep, unknowing. Or maybe in battle, at the cannon's mouth, blown to kingdom come in an
instant of oblivion.

He heard the footsteps of the men who carried him slap on stone, then heard a loud murmur
of voices. There were a lot of voices, all apparently talking at once and all excited,
and he felt the rug being jostled by a crowd and then he seemed to be carried down some
steps and the crowd was gone and he was thrown onto a hard floor. The voices seemed louder
now, as if he was indoors, and he was suddenly possessed by the absurd notion that he had
been brought into a cock-fighting arena like the one off Vinegar Street where, as a child,
he had earned farthings by carrying pots of porter to spectators who were
alternatively morose or maniacally excited.

He lay for a long time. He could hear the voices, even sometimes a burst of laughter. He
remembered the fat man in Vinegar Street, whose trade, rat-catching, took him to the great
houses in west London that he reconnoitred for his thieving friends.

“You'd make a good snaffler, Dicky,” he'd say to Sharpe, then he would clutch Sharpe's arm
and point to the cockerels waiting to fight.

“Which one'll win, lad, which one?”

And Sharpe would make a haphazard choice and, as often as not, the bird did win.

“He's a lucky boy,” the rat-catcher would boast to his friends as he tossed Sharpe a
farthing.

“Nipper's got the luck of the devil!”

But not tonight, Sharpe thought, and suddenly the rug was seized, unwound, and Sharpe was
spilt naked onto hard stones. A cheer greeted his appearance. Light flared in Sharpe's
eyes, dazzling him, but after a while he saw he was in a great stone courtyard lit by the
flames of torches mounted on pillars that surrounded the yard. Two white-robed men seized
him, dragged him upright and pushed him onto a stone bench where, to his surprise, his hands
and feet were loosed and the gag taken from his mouth. He sat flexing his fingers and
gasping deep breaths of humid air. He could see no sign of Hakeswill.

He could see now that he was in a temple. A kind of cloister ran around the courtyard
and, because the cloister was raised three or four feet, it made the stone-paved floor into
a natural arena. He had not been so wrong about the cock-fighting pit, though Vinegar
Street had never aspired to ornately carved stone arches smothered with writhing gods and
snarling beasts. The raised cloister was packed with men who were in obvious good humour.
There were hundreds of them, all anticipating a night's rare entertainment. Sharpe
touched his swollen lip and winced at the pain. He was thirsty, and with every deep breath his
bruised or broken ribs hurt. There was a swelling on his forehead that was thick with dried
blood. He looked about the crowd, seeking one friendly face and finding none. He just saw
Indian peasants with dark eyes that reflected the flame light. They must have come from
every village within ten miles to witness whatever was about to happen.

In the centre of the courtyard was a small stone building, fantastically carved with
elephants and dancing girls, and crowned by a stepped tower that had been sculpted with yet
more gods and animals painted red, yellow, green and black. The crowd's noise subsided as
a man showed at the doorway of the small shrine and raised his arms as a signal for silence.
Sharpe recognized the man. He was the tall, thin, limping man in the green and black striped
robe who had pleaded with Torrance for Naig's life, and behind him came a pair ofjettis.
So that was the sum of it. Revenge for Naig, and Sharpe realized that Hakeswill had never
intended to kill him, only deliver him to these men.

A murmur ran through the spectators as they admired the jet tis Vast brutes, they were,
who dedicated their extraordinary strength to some strange Indian god. Although Sharpe
had met jet tis before and had killed some in Seringapatam, he did not fancy his chances
against these two bearded brutes. He was too weak, too thirsty, too bruised, too hurt, while
these two fanatics were tall and hugely muscled. Their bronze skin had been oiled so that
it gleamed in the flame light. Their long hair was coiled about their skulls, and one had red
lines painted on his face, while the other, who was slightly shorter, carried a long
spear. Each man wore a loincloth and nothing else. They glanced at Sharpe, then the taller
man prostrated himself before a small shrine. A dozen guards came from the courtyard's
rear and lined its edge.

They carried muskets tipped with bayonets.

The tall man in the striped robe clapped his hands to silence the crowd's last murmurs. It
took a while, for still more spectators were pushing into the temple and there was scarce
room in the cloister.

Somewhere outside a horse neighed. Men shouted protests as the newcomers shoved their
way inside, but at last the commotion ended and the tall man stepped to the edge of the
stone platform on which the small shrine stood. He spoke for a long time, and every few
moments his words would provoke a growl of agreement, and then the crowd would look at
Sharpe and some would spit at him. Sharpe stared sullenly back at them. They were getting a
rare night's amusement, he reckoned. A captured Englishman was to be killed in front of
them, and Sharpe could not blame them for relishing the prospect. But he was damned if he
would die easy. He could do some damage, he reckoned, maybe not much, but enough so that the
jet tis remembered the night they were given a redcoat to kill.

The tall man finished his speech, then limped down the short flight of steps and
approached Sharpe. He carried himself with dignity, like a man who knows his own worth to
be high. He stopped a few paces from Sharpe and his face showed derision as he stared at the
Englishman's sorry state.

“My name,” he said in English, 'is Jama."

Sharpe said nothing.

“You killed my brother,” Jama said.

“I've killed a lot of men,” Sharpe said, his voice hoarse so that it scarcely carried the
few paces that separated the two men. He spat to clear his throat.

“I've killed a lot of men,” he said again.

“And Naig was one,” Jama said.

“He deserved to die,” Sharpe said.

Jama sneered at that answer.

“If my brother deserved to die then so did the British who traded with him.”

That was probably true, Sharpe thought, but he said nothing. He could see some pointed
helmets at the back of the crowd and he guessed that some of the Mahratta horsemen who still
roamed the Deccan Plain had come to see his death. Maybe the same Mahrattas who had bought
the two thousand missing muskets, muskets that Hakeswill had supplied and Torrance had
lied about to conceal the theft.

“So now you will die,” Jama said simply.

Sharpe shrugged. Run to the right, he was thinking, and grab the nearest musket, but he
knew he would be slowed by the pain. Besides, the men on the cloister would jump down to
overpower him. But he had to do something. Anything! A man could not just be killed like a
dog.

“You will die slowly,”Jama said, 'to satisfy the debt of blood that is owed to my
family."

“You want a death,” Sharpe asked, 'to balance your brother's death?"

“Exactly so,”Jama said gravely.

“Then kill a rat,” Sharpe said, 'or strangle a toad. Your brother deserved to die. He was
a thief."

“And you English have come to steal all India,” Jama said equably.

He looked again at Sharpe's wounds, and seemed to get satisfaction from them.

“You will soon be pleading for my mercy,” he said.

“Do you know what jet tis are?”

“I know,” Sharpe said.

“Prithviraj,” Jama said, gesturing towards the taller jetti who was bowing before
the small altar, 'has castrated a man with his bare hands.

He will do that to you and more, for tonight I have promised these people they will see the
death of a hundred parts. You will be torn to pieces, Englishman, but you will live as your
body is divided, for that is a jettfs skill. To kill a man slowly, without weapons,
tearing him piece by piece, and only when your screams have assuaged the pain of my
brother's death will I show you mercy. "Jama gave Sharpe one last look of disdain, then
turned and walked back to the shrine's steps.