Sharpe's Tiger (34 page)

The Daria Dowlat's garden was a wide lawn dotted with
pools, trees, shrubs, and flowers. Roses grew there, and mangoes, but there were also exotic strains of indigo and cotton mixed with pineapples from Africa and avocados from Mexico, all of them plants that the Tippoo had encouraged or imported in the hope that they would prove profitable for his country, but on this day, the day after the mill fort had been swamped with smoke, fire, and blood, the garden was filled with two thousand of the Tippoo's thirty thousand troops. The men paraded in three sides of a hollow square to the north of the palace, leaving the Daria Dowlat's shadowed facade as the fourth side of their square.

The Tippoo had ordered entertainment for his troops. There were dancers from the city, two jugglers and a man who charmed snakes, but, best of all, the Tippoo's wooden tiger organ had been fetched from the Inner Palace and the soldiers laughed as the life-size model tiger raked its claws across the redcoat's blood-painted face. The bellow-driven growl did not carry very far, any more than did the pathetic cry of the tiger's victim, but the action of the toy alone was sufficient to amuse the men.

The Tippoo arrived in a palanquin just after midday. None of his European advisers accompanied him, nor were any of his European troops present, though Appah Rao was in attendance, for two of the five
cushoons
parading in the palace gardens came from Rao's brigade, and the Hindu General stood tall and silent just behind the Tippoo on the palace's upper verandah. Appah Rao disapproved of what was about to happen, but he dared not make a protest, for any sign of disloyalty from a Hindu was enough to rouse the Tippoo's suspicions. Besides, the Tippoo could not be dissuaded. His astrologers had told him that a period of ill luck had arrived and that it could only be averted by sacrifice. Other sages had peered into the smoke-misted surface of a pot of hot oil, the Tippoo's favorite form of divination, and
had deciphered the strange-colored and slow-moving swirls to declare that they told the same grim tale: a season of bad fortune had come to Seringapatam. That bad luck had caused both the fall of the mill fort and the destruction of the guns on the outer western wall and the Tippoo was determined to avert this sudden ill fortune.

The Tippoo let his soldiers enjoy the tiger for a few moments longer, then he clapped his hands and ordered his servants to carry the model back to the Inner Palace. The tiger's place was taken by a dozen
jettis
who strode onto the forecourt with their bare torsos gleaming. For a few moments they amused the soldiers with their more commonplace tricks: they bent iron rods into circles, lifted grown men on both hands or juggled with cannonballs.

Then a goatskin drum sounded and the
jettis
, obedient to its strokes, went back to the shadows under the Tippoo's balcony. The watching soldiers fell into an expectant silence, then growled as a sorry party of prisoners was herded onto the forecourt. There were thirteen prisoners, all in red coats, all of them men of the 33rd who had been captured during the night battle at the Sultanpetah
tope
.

The thirteen men stood uncertainly amidst the ring of their enemies. The sun beat down. One of the prisoners, a sergeant, twitched as he stared at the ranks of tiger-striped soldiers, and still his face twitched as he turned around and gazed with a curious intensity when the Tippoo stepped to the rail of the upper verandah and, in a clear high voice, spoke to his troops. The enemy, the Tippoo said, had been fortunate. They had gained some cheap victories to the west of the city, but that was no reason to fear them. The British sorcerers, knowing they could not defeat the tigers of Mysore by force alone, had made a powerful spell, but with the help of Allah that spell would now be confounded. The soldiers greeted the speech with a long and approving sigh while the
prisoners, unable to understand any of the Tippoo's words, looked anxiously about, but could make no sense of the occasion.

Guards surrounded the prisoners and pushed them back to the palace, leaving just one man alone on the forecourt. That man tried to go with his companions, but a guard thrust him back with a bayonet and the uneven contest between a confused prisoner and an armed guard sparked a gust of laughter. The prisoner, driven back to the center of the forecourt, waited nervously.

Two
jettis
walked toward him. They were big men, formidably bearded, tall and with their long hair bound and tied about their heads. The prisoner licked his lips, the
jettis
smiled, and suddenly the redcoat sensed his fate and took two or three hurried steps away from the strongmen. The watching soldiers laughed as the redcoat tried to escape, but he was penned in by three walls of tiger-striped infantry and there was nowhere to run. He tried to dodge past the two
jettis
, but one of them reached out and snatched a handful of his red coat. The prisoner beat at the
jetti
with his fists, but it was like a rabbit cuffing at a wolf. The watching soldiers laughed again, though there was a nervousness in their amusement.

The
jetti
drew the soldier in to his body, then hugged him in a terrible last embrace. The second
jetti
took hold of the redcoat's head, paused to take breath, then twisted.

The prisoner's dying scream was choked off in an instant. For a second his head stared sightlessly backward, then the
jettis
released him and, as the twisted neck grotesquely righted itself, the man collapsed. One of the
jettis
picked up the corpse in one huge hand and contemptuously tossed it high into the air like a terrier tossing a dead rat. The watching soldiers were silent for a second, then cheered. The Tippoo smiled.

A second redcoat was driven to the
jettis
, and this man was forced to kneel. He did not move as the nail was placed on his head. He uttered one curse, then died in seconds as his blood spurtet! out onto the gravel forecourt. A third man was killed with a single punch to his chest, a blow so massive that it drove him back a full twelve paces before, shuddering, his ruptured heart gave up. The watching soldiers shouted that they wanted to see another man's neck wrung like a chicken, and the
jettis
obliged. And so, one by one, the prisoners were forced to their killers. Three of the men died abjectly, calling for mercy and weeping like babes. Two died saying prayers, but the rest died defiantly. Three put up a fight, and one tall grenadier raised an ironic cheer from the watching troops by breaking a
jetti's
finger, but then he too died like the rest. One after the other they died, and those who came last were forced to watch their comrades' deaths and to wonder how they would be sent to meet their Maker; whether they would be spiked through the skull or have their necks twisted north to south or simply be beaten to bloody death. And all of the prisoners, once dead, were decapitated by a sword blow before the two parts of their bodies were wrapped in reed mats and laid aside.

The
jettis
saved the Sergeant till last. The watching soldiers were in a fine mood now. They had been nervous at first, apprehensive of cold-blooded death on a sun-drenched afternoon, but the strength of the jettis and the desperate antics of the doomed men trying to escape had amused them and now they wanted to enjoy this last victim who promised to provide the finest entertainment of the day. His face was twitching in what the spectators took to be uncontrollable fear, but despite that terror he proved astonishingly agile, forever scuttling out of the
jettis'
way and shouting up toward the Tippoo. Again and again he would appear to be cornered, but somehow he would always slide or twist or duck his way
free and, with his face shuddering, would call desperately to the Tippoo. His shouts were drowned by the cheers of the soldiers who applauded every narrow escape. Two
more jettis
came to help catch the elusive man and, though he tried to twist past them, they at last had the Sergeant trapped. The
jettis
advanced in a line, forcing him back toward the palace, and the watching soldiers fell silent in expectation of his death. The Sergeant feinted to his left, then suddenly twisted and ran from the advancing
jetti
toward the palace. The guards moved to drive him back toward his executioners, but the man stopped beneath the verandah and stared up at the Tippoo. “I know who the traitors are here!” he shouted in the silence. “I know!”

A
jetti
caught the Sergeant from behind and forced him to his knees.

“Get these black bastards off me!” the Sergeant screamed. “Listen, Your Honor, I know what's going on here! There's a British officer in the city wearing your uniform! For God's sake! Mother!” This last cry was torn from Obadiah Hakeswill as a second
jetti
placed his hands on the Sergeant's head. Hakeswill wrenched his face round and bit down hard on the ball of
the jetti's
thumb and the astonished man jerked his hands away, leaving a scrap of flesh in the Sergeant's mouth.

Hakeswill spat the morsel out. “Listen, Your Grace! I know what the bastards are up to! Traitors. On my oath. Get away from me, you heathen black bastard! I can't die! I can't die! Mother!”
The jetti
with the bitten hand had gripped the Sergeant's head and begun to turn it. Usually the neck was wrung swiftly, for a huge explosion of energy was needed to break a man's spine, but this time
the jetti
planned a slow and exquisitely painful death in revenge for his bitten hand. “Mother!” Hakeswill screamed as his face was forced farther around, and then, just as it was twisted back past his shoulder,
he made one last effort. “I saw a British officer in the city! No!”

“Wait,” the Tippoo called.

The
jetti
paused, still holding Hakeswill's head at an unnatural angle.

“What did he say?” the Tippoo asked one of his officers who spoke some English and who had been translating the Sergeant's desperate words. The officer translated again.

The Tippoo waved one of his small delicate hands and the aggrieved
jetti
let go of Hakeswill's head. The Sergeant cursed as the agonizing tension left his neck, then rubbed at the pain. “Bleeding heathen bastard!” he said. “You murdering black bugger!” He spat at
the jetti
, shook himself out of the grip of the man holding him, then stood and walked two paces toward the palace. “I saw him, didn't I? With my own eyes! In a frock, like them.” He gestured at the watching soldiers in their tiger-striped tunics. “A lieutenant, he is, and the army says he went back to Madras, but he didn't, did he? ‘Cos he's here. ‘Cos I saw him. Me! Obadiah Hakeswill, Your Highness, and keep that bleeding heathen darkie away from me.” One of the
jettis
had come close and Hakeswill, his face twitching, turned on the looming man. “Go on, bugger off back to your sty, you bloody great lump.”

The officer who spoke English called down from the verandah. “Who did you see?” he asked.

“I told you, Your Honor, didn't I?”

“No, you didn't. Give us a name.”

Hakeswill's face twitched. “I'll tell you,” he wheedled, “if you promise to let me live.” He dropped to his knees and stared up at the verandah. “I don't mind being in your dungeons, my Lord, for Obadiah Hakeswill never did mind a rat or two, but I don't want these bleeding heathens screwing me neck back to front. It ain't a Christian act.”

The officer translated for the Tippoo who, at last, nodded
and so prompted the officer to turn hack to Hakeswill. “You will live,” he called down.

“Word of honor?” Hakeswill asked.

“Upon my honor.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die? Like it says in the scriptures?”

“You will live!” the officer snapped. “So long as you tell us the truth.”

“I always do that, sir. Honest Hakeswill, that's my name, sir. I saw him, didn't I? Lieutenant Lawford, William he's called. Tall lanky fellow with fair hair and blue eves. And he ain't alone. Private bleeding Sharpe was with him.”

The officer had not understood everything that Hakeswill had said, but he had understood enough. “You are saying this man Lawford is a British officer?” he asked.

“‘Course he is! In my bleeding company, what's more. And they said he'd gone back to Madras on account of carrying dispatches, but he never did, ‘cos there weren't no dispatches to be carried. He's here, Your Grace, and up to no bleeding good and, like I said, dolled up in a stripy frock.”

The officer seemed sceptical. “The only Englishmen we have here, Sergeant, are prisoners or deserters. You're lying.”

Hakeswill spat on the gravel that was soaked with the blood from the decapitated prisoners. “How can he be a deserter? Officers don't desert! They sell their commissions and bugger off home to Mummy. I tell you, sir, he's an officer! And the other one's a right bastard! Flogged, he was, and quite right too! He should have been flogged to bleeding death, only the General sent for him.”

The mention of the flogging woke a memory in the Tippoo. “When was he flogged?” The officer translated the Tippoo's question.

“Just before he ran, sir. Raw, he must have been, but not raw enough.”

“And you say the General sent for him?” The officer sounded disbelieving.

“Harris, sir, the bugger what lost a lump out of his skull in America. He sent our Colonel, he did, and Colonel Wellesley stopped the flogging. Stopped it!” Hakeswill's indignation was still keen. “Stopping a flogging what's been properly ordered! Never seen anything so disgraceful in all me bom days! Going to the dogs, the army is, going to the dogs.”

The Tippoo listened to the translation, then stepped back from the railing. He turned to Appah Rao who had once served in the East India Company's army. “Do British officers desert?”

“None that I've ever heard of, Your Majesty,” Appah Rao said, glad that the shadows of the balcony were hiding his pale and worried face. “They might resign and sell their commission, but desert? Never.”