Sharpe's Tiger (35 page)

The Tippoo nodded down to the kneeling Hakeswill. “Put that wretch back in the cells,” he ordered, “and tell Colonel Gudin to meet me at the Inner Palace.”

Guards dragged Hakeswill back to the city. “And he had a
bibbi
with him!” Hakeswill shouted as he was pulled away, but no one took any notice. The Sergeant was shedding tears of pure happiness as he was taken back through the Bangalore Gate. “Thank you, Mother,” he called to the cloudless sky, “thank you, Mother, for I cannot die!”

The twelve dead men were hidden in a makeshift grave. The troops marched back to their encampment while the Tippoo, being carried to the Inner Palace beneath the tiger-striped canopy of his palanquin, reflected that the sacrifice of the twelve prisoners had not been in vain for it had revealed the presence of enemies. Allah be thanked, he reflected, for his luck had surely turned.

“You think Mrs. Bickerstaff has gone over to the enemy?” Lawford asked Sharpe for the third or fourth time.

“She's gone to his bed,” Sharpe said bleakly, “but I reckon she'll still help us.” Sharpe had washed both his and Lawford's tunics and now he patted the cloth to see if it had dried. Looking after kit in this army, he reflected, was a deal easier than in the British. There was no pipeclay here to be caked onto crossbelts and musket slings, no blackball to be used on boots and no grease and powder to be slathered on the hair. He decided the tunics were dry enough and tossed one to the Lieutenant, then pulled his own over his head, carefully freeing the gold medallion so that it hung on his chest. His tunic also boasted a red cord on his left shoulder, the Tippoo's insignia of a corporal. Lawford seemed to resent Sharpe bearing these marks of rank that were denied to him.

“Suppose she betrays us?” Lawford asked.

“Then we're in trouble,” Sharpe said brutally. “But she won't. Mary's a good lass.”

Lawford shrugged. “She jilted you.”

“Easy come, easy go,” Sharpe said, then belted the tunic. Like most of the Tippoo's soldiers he now went bareegged beneath the knee-length garment, though Lawford insisted on keeping his old British trousers. Both men wore their old shakos, though George Ill's badge had been replaced by a tin tiger with an upraised paw. “Listen,” Sharpe said to a still worried Lawford, “I've done what you asked, and the lass says she'll find this Ravi whatever his name is, and all we have to do now is wait. And if we get a chance to run, we run like buggery. You reckon that musket's ready for inspection?”

“It's clean,” Lawford said defensively, hefting his big French firelock.

“Christ, you'd be on a charge for that musket back in the proper army. Give it here.”

Sergeant Rothière's daily inspection was not for another
half-hour, and after that the two men would be free until mid afternoon when it would be the turn of Gudin's battalion to stand guard over the Mysore Gate. That guard duty ended at midnight, but Sharpe knew there would be no chance of an escape, for the Mysore Gate did not offer an exit from the Tippoo's territory, but rather led into the city's surrounding encampment which, in turn, had a strong perimeter guard. The previous night Sharpe had experimented to see whether his red cord and gold medallion would be authority enough for him to wander through the encampment, maybe allowing him to find a shadowed and quiet stretch of its earthworks over which he could scramble in the dark, but he had been intercepted within twenty yards of the gate and politely but firmly ushered back. The Tippoo, it seemed, was taking no chances.

“I already had Wazzy clean that,” Lawford said, nodding at the musket in Sharpe's hands. Wazir was one of the small boys who hung around the barracks to earn pice for washing and cleaning equipment. “I paid him,” Lawford said indignantly.

“If you want a job done properly,” Sharpe said, “you do it yourself. Hell!” He swore because he had pinched his finger on the musket's mainspring which he had uncovered by unscrewing the lock plate. “Look at that rust!” He managed to unseat the mainspring without losing the trigger mechanism, then began to file the rust off the spring's edge. “Bloody rubbish, these French muskets,” he grumbled. “Nothing like a proper Birmingham bundook.”

“Do you clean your own musket like that?” Lawford asked, impressed that Sharpe had unscrewed the lock plate.

“‘Course I do! Not that Hakeswill ever cares. He only looks at the outside.” Sharpe grinned. “You remember that day you saved my skin with the flint? Hakeswill had changed
it for a bit of stone, but I caught it before he could do any damage. He's a fly bastard, that one.”

“He changed it?” Lawford seemed shocked.

“Bloody snake, that Obadiah. How much did you pay

Wazzy?”

“An anna.”

“He robbed you. You want to pass me that oil bottle?”

Lawford obliged, then settled back against the stone water trough in which Sharpe had washed the tunics. He felt strangely content, despite the apparent failure of his mission. There was a pleasure in sharing this intimacy with Sharpe, indeed it felt oddly like a privilege. Many young officers were frightened of the men they commanded, fearing their scorn, and they concealed their apprehension with a display of careless arrogance. Lawford doubted he could ever do that now, for he no longer felt any fear of the crude, hard men who formed the ranks of Britain's army. Sharpe had cured him of that by teaching him that the crudity was unthinking and the hardness a disguise for conscientiousness. Not that every man was conscientious, any more than all Britain's soldiers were crude, but too many officers assumed they were all brutes and treated them as such. Now Lawford watched as Sharpe's capable fingers forced the cleaned mainspring back into its cavity, using his picklock as a lever.

“Lieutenant?” a voice called respectfully across the yard. “Lieutenant Lawford?”

“Sir?” Lawford responded without thinking, turning toward the voice and rising to his feet. Then he realized what he had done and blanched.

Sharpe swore.

Colonel Gudin walked slowly across the yard, rubbing his long face as he approached the two Englishmen. “Lieutenant William Lawford,” he enquired gently, “of His Majesty's 33rd Regiment of Foot?”

Lawford said nothing.

Gudin shrugged. “Officers are supposedly men of honor, Lieutenant. Are you going to continue to lie?”

“No, sir,” Lawford said.

Gudin sighed. “So are you a commissioned officer or not?”

“I am, sir.” Lawford sounded ashamed, though whether it was because he had been accused of dishonorable behavior or because he had betrayed his true rank, Sharpe could not tell.

“And yon,
Caporal
Sharpe?” Gudin asked sadly. “I ain't an officer, Colonel.”

“No,” Gudin said, “I did not think you were. But are you a true deserter?”

“Of course I am, sir!” Sharpe lied.

Gudin smiled at Sharpe's confident tone. “And you, Lieutenant,” he asked Lawford, “are you truly a deserter?” Lawford made no reply and Gudin sighed. “Answer me on your honor, Lieutenant, if you would be so kind.”

“No, sir,” Lawford admitted. “Nor is Private Sharpe, sir.”

Gudin nodded. “That is what the sergeant said.”

“The Sergeant, sir?” Lawford asked.

Gudin grimaced. “I fear the Tippoo executed the prisoners taken the other night. He spared just one, because that man told him of you.”

“The bastard!” Sharpe said, throwing the musket down in disgust. Bloody Hakeswill! He swore again, far more viciously.

“Sir?” Lawford said to Gudin, ignoring Sharpe's anger.

“Lieutenant?” Gudin responded courteously.

“We were captured by the Tippoo's men while wearing our red coats, sir. That means we should be protected as legitimate prisoners of war.”

Gudin shook his head. “It means nothing of the sort, Lieutenant, for you lied about your rank and your intentions.” He
sounded disapproving. “But I shall still plead for your lives.” Gudin sat on the water trough's edge and flapped a hand at a persistent fly. “Will you tell me why you came here?”

“No, sir,” Lawford said.

“I suppose not, but I warn you that the Tippoo will want to know.” Gudin smiled at Sharpe. “I had come to the conclusion, Sharpe, that you are one of the best soldiers I have ever had the pleasure to command. But only one thing worried me about you, and that was why a good soldier would desert from his allegiance, even if he had been flogged, but now I see you are a better man than I thought.” He frowned because Sharpe, while this elegant compliment was being paid, had lifted the back of his tunic and seemed to be scratching his bottom.

“Sorry, sir,” Sharpe said, noticing the Colonel's distaste and dropping his tunic's hem.

“I'm sorry to be losing you, Sharpe,” Gudin went on. “I'm afraid there is an escort waiting for you outside the barracks. You're to be taken to the palace.” Gudin paused, but must have decided there was nothing he could add that might ameliorate the implied threat of his words. Instead he turned and snapped his fingers to bring a disapproving Sergeant Rothière into the courtyard. Rothière carried their red coats and Sharpe's white trousers. “They may help a little,” Gudin said, though without any real hope in his voice. The Colonel watched as they discarded their newly cleaned tunics and pulled on their red coats. “About your woman,” he said to Sharpe, then hesitated.

“She had nothing to do with this, sir,” Sharpe said hurriedly as he pulled on the trousers. He buttoned his old jacket and the red coat felt strangely confining after the looser tunic. “On my honor, sir. And besides,” he added, “she gave me the push.”

“Twice unlucky, Sharpe. Bad in a soldier, that.” Gudin
smiled and reached out a hand. “Your muskets, gentlemen, if you please.”

Sharpe handed over both guns. “Sir?”

“Private Sharpe?”

Sharpe reddened and became awkward. “It was an honor to serve you, sir. I mean that. I wish we had more like you in our army.”

“Thank you, Sharpe,” Gudin gravely acknowledged the compliment. “Of course,” he added, “if you tell me now that your experiences here have changed your loyalties and that you would truly like to continue serving the Tippoo, then you might be spared whatever is in store for you. I think I could persuade His Majesty of your change of heart, but you'd need to tell me why you came here in the first place.”

Lawford stiffened as this offer was made to Sharpe. Sharpe hesitated, then shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “I reckon I'm a proper redcoat.”

Gudin had expected the reply. “Good for you, Sharpe. And by the way, Private, you might as well hang the medallion around your neck. They'll find it anyway.”

“Yes, sir,” Sharpe retrieved the gold from his trouser pocket where he had optimistically concealed it, and looped the chain over his head.

Gudin stood and gestured toward the barracks room. “This way, gentlemen.”

That was the end of the pleasantries.

And Sharpe suspected it would be the last pleasantry for a very long time.

For now they were the Tippoo's prisoners.

Appah Rao had Mary fetched to a room off the courtyard of his house. Kunwar Singh was waiting there, but Mary was frightened and dared not look at Kunwar Singh for fear of seeing a hint of bad news on his handsome face. Mary had
no particular reason to expect bad news, but she was ever wary, and something about Appall Rao's stiff demeanor told her that her presentiments were justified. “Your companions,” Appah Rao told her when the servant had closed the door behind her, “have been arrested. Lieutenant Lawford and Private Sharpe, the one you say is your brother.”

“My half-brother, sir,” Mary whispered.

“If you say so,” Appah Rao conceded. Kunwar Singh spoke a little English, though not enough to follow the conversation, which was why Appall Rao had chosen to question Mary in that language even though his mastery of it was uncertain. Appah Rao doubted whether Sharpe and Mary were related, but he liked the girl nevertheless and he approved of her as Kunwar Singh's bride. The gods alone knew what the future would bring to Mysore, but it was likely that the British would be involved, and if Kunwar Singh had a wife who spoke English there would be an advantage for him. Besides, Appah Rao's wife Lakshmi was convinced that the girl was a good modest creature and that her past, like the past of Kunwar Singh's family, was best forgotten. “Why did they come here?” the General asked.

“I don't know, sir.”

Appah Rao took a pistol from his belt and began loading it. Both Mary and Kunwar Singh watched with alarm as the General carefully measured powder from a silver horn into the pistol's chased barrel. “Aruna,” he said, using the name Mary had taken from her mother, “let me tell you what will happen to Lieutenant Lawford and Private Sharpe.” He paused to tap the horn's spout against the pistol's muzzle to shake loose the last specks of powder. “The Tippoo will have them questioned and doubtless the questioning will be painful. In the end, Aruna, they will confess. All men do. Maybe they will live, maybe not, I cannot tell.” He looked up at her, then pushed a scrap of wadding into the pistol. “The Tippoo,
” he went on as he selected a bullet from the pistol's wooden case, “will want to know two things. First, why they came here, and, second, whether they were told to make contact with any person inside the city. Do you understand me?”