Sharpe's Triumph (16 page)

“I'm not that handy with a needle,” he explained.

“I can patch and darn, of course, but what I need now is some fine needlework. Real fine.”
He sat, and Simone, intrigued, sat opposite and watched as he tipped out the contents of
his pack. There were two spare shirts, his spare foot cloths, a blacking ball, a brush and the
tin of flour he was supposed to use on his clubbed hair, though ever since he had ridden
from Seringapatam with McCandless he had let his hair go un powdered He took out his stock,
which he had similarly abandoned, then the copy of Gulliver's Travels that Mister
Lawford had given him so he could practise his reading. He had neglected that lately,
and the book was damp and had lost some of its pages.

“You can read?” Simone asked, touching the book with a tentative finger.

“I'm not very good.”

“I like to read.”

“Then you can help me get better, eh?” Sharpe said, and he pulled out the folded piece of
leather that was for repairing his shoes, and beneath that was a layer of sacking. He took
that out, then tipped the rest of the pack's contents onto the table. Simone gasped. There
were rubies and emeralds and pearls, there was gold and more emeralds and sapphires and
diamonds and one great ruby half the size of a hen's egg.

“The thing is,” Sharpe said, 'that there's bound to be a battle before this Scindia
fellow learns his lesson, and as like as not we won't wear packs in a battle, on account of
them being too heavy, see? So I don't want to leave this lot in my pack to be looted by some
bastard of a baggage guard."

Simone touched one of the stones, then looked up at Sharpe with wonderment in her eyes.
He was not sure that it was wise to show her the treasure, for such things were best kept very
secret, but he knew he was trying to impress her, and it was evident that he had.

“Yours?” she asked.

“All mine,” he said.

Simone shook her blonde head in amazement, then began arranging the stones into ranks
and files. She formed platoons of emeralds, platoons of rubies and another of pearls,
there was a company of sapphires and a skirmish line of diamonds, and all of them were
commanded by the great ruby.

“That belonged to the Tippoo Sultan,” Sharpe said, touching the ruby.

“He wore it in his hat.”

“The Tippoo? He's dead, isn't he?” Simone asked.

“And me it was who killed him,” Sharpe said proudly.

“It wasn't really a hat, it was a cloth helmet, see? And the ruby was right in the
middle, and he reckoned he couldn't die because the hat had been dipped in the fountain of
Zum-Zum.”

Simone smiled.

“Zum-Zum?”

“It's in Mecca. Wherever the hell Mecca is. Didn't work, though. I put a bullet in his
skull, right through the bloody hat. Might as well have dunked it in the Thames for all the
good it did him.”

“You are rich!” Simone said.

The problem was how to stay rich. Sharpe had not had time to make false compartments in
the new pack and pouch that had replaced those he had burned at Chasalgaon, and so he had
kept the stones loose in his pack. He had a layer of emeralds at the bottom of his new
cartridge pouch, where they would be safe enough, but he needed secure hiding places for
the other jewels. He gave a file of diamonds to Simone and she tried to refuse, then shyly
accepted the stones and held one against the side of her nose where fashionable Indian
women often wore just such a jewel.

“How does it look?” she asked.

“Like a piece of expensive snot.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“It's beautiful,” she said. She peered at the diamond that still had its black velvet
backing so that the stone would shine more brightly, then she opened her purse.

“Are you sure?”

“Go on, girl, take them.”

“How do I explain them to Pierre?”

“You say you found them on a dead body after the fight. He'll believe that.” He watched
her put the diamonds in the purse.

“I have to hide the rest,” he explained to her. He reckoned some of the stones could go in
his canteen, where they would rattle a bit when it was dry, and he would have to take care
when drinking in case he swallowed a fortune, but that still left a mound of gems
unhidden. He used his knife to slit open a seam of his red coat and began feeding the small
rubies into the slot, but the stones bunched along the bottom hem and the bulge was an
advertisement to every soldier that he was carrying plunder.

“See what I mean?” He showed Simone the bulging seam.

She took the coat, fetched Sharpe's sewing kit from the bedroom, and then began to trap
each gem in its own small pouch of the opened seam.

The job took her all afternoon, and when she was finished the red coat was twice as
heavy. The most difficult stone to hide was the huge ruby, but Sharpe solved that by
unwinding his long hair from the shot weighted bag that clubbed it, then slitting open the
bag and emptying the shot. He filled the bag with the ruby and with whatever small stones
were left, then Simone rewound his hair about the bag. By nightfall the jewels had
vanished.

They ate by lamplight. The bath had never been filled, but Simone said she had taken one
a week before so it did not matter. Sharpe had made a brief excursion in the dusk and had
returned with two clay bottles filled with arrack, and they drank the liquor in the gloom.
They talked, they laughed, and at last the oil in the lamp ran dry and the flame flickered out
to leave the room lit by shafts of moonlight coming through the filigree shutters. Simone
had fallen silent and Sharpe knew she was thinking of bed.

“I brought you some sheets.” He pointed to the saris.

She looked up at him from under her fringe.

“And where will you sleep, Sergeant Sharpe?”

“I'll find a place, love.”

It was the first time he had slept in silk, not that he noticed, so showing her the gems
had not been such a bad idea after all.

He woke to the crowing of cockerels and the bang of a twelve pounder gun, a reminder that
the world and the war went on.

Major Stokes had decided that the real problem with the Rajah's clock was its wooden
bearings. They swelled in damp weather, and he was happily contemplating the problem of
making a new set of bearings out of brass when the twitching Sergeant reappeared in his
office.

“You again,” the Major greeted him.

“Can't remember your name.”

“Hakeswill, sir. Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.”

“Punishment on Edom, eh?” the Major said, wondering whether to cast or drill the
brass.

“Edom, sir? Edom?”

“The prophet Obadiah, Sergeant, foretells punishment on Edom,” the Major said.

“He threatened it with fire and captivity, as I recall.”

“He doubtless had his reasons, sir,” Hakeswill said, his face jerking in its
uncontrollable spasms, 'like I have mine. It's Sergeant Sharpe I'm after, sir."

“Not here, Sergeant, alas. The place falls apart!”

“He's gone, sir?” Hakeswill demanded.

“Summoned away, Sergeant, by higher authority. Not my doing, not my doing at all. If
it was up to me I'd keep Sharpe here for ever, but a Colonel McCandless demanded him and
when colonels demand, mere majors comply. So far as I know, which isn't much, they went to
join General Wellesley's forces.” The Major was now rummaging through a wooden
chest.

“We had some fine augers, I know. Same ones we use on touch-holes. Not that we ever did.
Haven't had to rebore a touch-hole yet.”

“McCandless, sir?”

“A Company colonel, but still a colonel. I'll need a round-file too, I suspect.”

“I knows Colonel McCandless, sir,” Hakeswill said gloomily. He had shared the Tippoo's
dungeons with McCandless and Sharpe, and he knew the Scotsman disliked him. Which did not
matter by itself, for Hakeswill did not like McCandless either, but the Scotsman was a
colonel and, as Major Stokes had intimated, when colonels demand, other men obey. Colonel
McCandless, Hakeswill decided, could be a problem. But a problem that could wait. The
urgent need was to catch up with Sharpe.

“Do you have any convoys going north, sir? To the army, sir?”

“One leaves tomorrow,” Stokes said helpfully, 'carrying ammunition.

But have you authority to travel?"

“I have authority, sir, I have authority.” Hakeswill touched the pouch where he kept the
precious warrant. He was angry that Sharpe had gone, but knew there was little point in
displaying the anger. The thing was to catch up with the quarry, and then God would smile on
Obadiah Hakeswill's fortunes.

He explained as much to his detail of six men as they drank in one of Seringapatam's
soldiers' taverns. So far the six men only knew that they were ordered to arrest Sergeant
Sharpe, but Hakeswill had long worked out that he needed to share more information with his
chosen men if they were to follow him enthusiastically, especially if they were to
follow him northwards to where Wellesley was fighting the Mahrattas. Hakeswill
considered them all good men, by which he meant that they were all cunning, violent and
biddable, but he still had to make sure of their loyalty.

“Sharpie's rich,” he told them.

“Drinks when he likes, whores when he likes. He's rich.”

“He works in the stores,” Private Kendrick explained.

“Always on the fiddle, the stores.”

“And he never gets caught? He can't be fiddling that much,” Hakeswill said, his face
twitching.

“You want to know the truth of Dick Sharpe? I'll tell you. He was the lucky bugger what
caught the Tippoo at Seringapatam.” “Course he weren't!” Flaherty said.

“So who was it?” Hakeswill challenged them.

“And why was Sharpie made up into a sergeant after the battle? He shouldn't be a
sergeant! He ain't experienced.”

“He fought well. That's what Mister Lawford says.”

no

“Mister bloody Lawford,” Hakeswill said scathingly.

“Sharpie didn't get noticed for fighting well! Bleeding hell, boys, I'd be a
major-general if that's all it took! No, it's my belief he paid his way up to the
stripes.”

“Paid?” The privates stared at Hakeswill.

"Stands to reason. No other way. Says so in the scriptures! Bribes, boys, bribes, and I
knows where he got the money. I know 'cos I followed him once. Here in Seringapatam. Down to
the goldsmiths' street, he went, and he did his business and after he done it I went to see
the fellow he did it with. He didn't want to tell me what the business was, but I thumped him
a bit, friendly like, and he showed me a ruby.

Like this it was!" The Sergeant held a finger and thumb a quarter-inch apart.

“Sharpie was selling it, see? And where does Sharpie get a prime bit of glitter?”

“Off the Tippoo?” Kendrick said wonderingly.

“And do you know how much loot the Tippoo had? Weighed down with it, he was! Had more
stones on him than a Christmas whore, and you know where those stones are?”

“Sharpe,” Flaherty breathed.

“Right, Private Flaherty,” Hakeswill said.

“Sewn into his uniform seams, in his boots, hidden in his pouches, tucked away in his
hat. A bloody fortune, lads, which is why when we gets him, we don't want him to get back to
the battalion, do we?”

The six men stared at Hakeswill. They knew they were his favourites, and all of them were in
his debt, but now they realized he was giving them even more reason to be grateful.

“Equal shares, Sergeant?” Private Lowry asked.

“Equal shares?” Hakeswill exclaimed.

“Equal? Listen, you horrid toad, you wouldn't have no chance of any share, not one, if it
wasn't for my loving kindness. Who chose you to come on this parish outing?”

“You did, Sergeant.”

“I did. I did. Kindness of my heart, and you repays it by wanting equal shares?”
HakeswilPs face shuddered.

“I've half a mind to send you back, Lowry.” He looked aggrieved and the privates were
silent.

“Ingratitude,” Hakeswill said in a hurt voice, 'sharp as a serpent's tooth, it is. Equal
shares! Never heard the like! But I'll see you right, don't you worry." He took out the
precious orders for Sharpe's arrest and smoothed the paper on the table, carefully
avoiding the spills of arrack.

“Look at that, boys,” he breathed, 'a fortune. Half for me, and you leprous toads get to
share the other half. Equally." He paused to prod in

Lowry in the chest.

“Equally. But I gets one half, like it says in the scriptures.” He folded the paper and
put it carefully in his pouch.

“Shot while escaping,” Hakeswill said, and grinned.

“I've waited four years for this chance, lads, four bloody years.” He brooded for a few
seconds.

“Put me in among the tigers, he did! Me! In a tigers' den!” His face contorted in a
rictus at the memory.

“But they spared me, they spared me. And you know why? Because I can't die, lads! Touched
by God, I am! Says so in the scriptures.”

The six privates were silent. Mad, he was, mad as a twitching hatter, and no one knew why
hatters were mad either, but they were. Even the army was reluctant to recruit a hatter
because they dribbled and twitched and talked to themselves, but they had taken on
Hakeswill and he had survived; malevolent, powerful and apparently
indestructible.

Sharpe had put him among the Tippoo's tigers, yet the tigers were dead and Hakeswill still
breathed. He was a bad man to have as an enemy, and now the piece of paper in Hakeswill's
pouch put Sharpe into his power and Obadiah could taste the money already. A
fortune.

All that was needed was to travel north, join the army, produce the warrant and skin the
victim. Obadiah shuddered. The money was so near he could almost spend it already.

“Got him,” he said to himself, 'got him. And I'll piss on his rotten corpse, I will. Piss
on it good.

That'll learn him."

The seven men left Seringapatam in the morning, travelling north.

Sharpe was curiously relieved when Colonel McCandless found him next morning, for the
mood in the small upper rooms was awkward.

Simone seemed ashamed by what had happened in the night and, when Sharpe tried to speak to
her, she shook her head abruptly and would not meet his eye. She did try to explain to him,
mumbling about the arrack and the jewels, and about her disappointment in marriage, but
she could not frame her words in adequate English, though no language was needed to show
that she regretted what had happened, which was why Sharpe was glad to hear McCandless's
voice in the alley beyond the staircase.

“I thought I told you to let me know where you were!” McCandless complained when Sharpe
appeared at the top of the steps.

“I did, sir,” Sharpe lied.

“I told an ensign of the 778th to find you, sir.”

“He never arrived!” McCandless said as he climbed the outside stairs.

“Are you telling me you spent the night alone with this woman, Sergeant?”

“You told me to protect her. sir.”

“I didn't tell you to risk her honour! You should have sought me out.”

“Didn't want to bother you, sir.”

“Duty is never a bother, Sharpe,” McCandless said when he reached the small balcony at
the stair head.

“The General expressed a wish to dine with Madame Joubert and I had to explain she was
indisposed. I lied, Sharpe!” The Colonel thrust an indignant finger at Sharpe's chest.

“But what else could I do? I could hardly admit I'd left her alone with a sergeant!”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“There's no harm done, I suppose,” McCandless said grudgingly,

then took off his hat as he followed Sharpe into the living room where Simone sat at the
table.

“Good morning, Madame,” the Colonel boomed cheerfully.

“I trust you slept well?”

“Indeed, Colonel,” Simone said, blushing, but McCandless was far too obtuse to see or
to interpret the blush.

“I have good news, Madame,” the Scotsman went on.

“General Wellesley is agreeable that you should rejoin your husband. There is,
however, a difficulty.” It was McCandless's turn to blush.

“I can provide no chaperone, Madame, and you do not possess a maid. I assure you that
you may rely utterly upon my honour, but your husband might object if you lack a female
companion on the journey.”

Tierre will have no objection, Colonel," Simone said meekly.

“And I warrant Sergeant Sharpe will behave like a gentleman,” McCandless said with a
fierce look at Sharpe.

“He does, Colonel, he does,” Simone said, offering Sharpe a very shy glance.

“Good!” McCandless said, relieved to be done with such a delicate topic. He slapped his
cocked hat against his leg.

“No rain again,” he declared, 'and I dare say it'll be a hot day. You can be ready to ride
in an hour, Madame?"

“In less, Colonel.”

“One hour will suffice, Madame. You will do me the honour, perhaps, of meeting me by the
north gate? I'll have your horse ready, Sharpe.”

They left promptly, riding northwards past the battery that had been dug to hammer the
fort's big walls. The battery's four guns were mere twelve-pounders, scarce big enough to
dent the fort's wall, let alone break it down, but General Wellesley reckoned the
garrison would be so disheartened by the city's swift defeat that even a few twelve-pound
shots might persuade them into surrender. The four guns had opened fire at dawn, but their
firing was sporadic until McCandless led his party out of the city when they suddenly
all fired at once and Simone's horse, startled by the unexpected noise, skittered
sideways. Simone rode side-saddle just behind the Colonel, while Sevajee and his men
brought up the rear. Sharpe was wearing boots at last; the tall red leather boots with steel
spurs that he had dragged from the body of an Arab.

He glanced back as they rode away. He saw the huge jet of smoke burst from a
twelve-pounder's muzzle and a second later heard the percussive thump of the exploding
charge and, just as that sound faded, a crack as the ball struck the wall of the fort. Then
the other three guns fired and he imagined the steam hissing into the air as the gunners
poured water on the overheated barrels. The fort's red walls blossomed with smoke as the
defenders' cannon replied, but the pioneers had dug the gunners a deep battery and
protected it with a thick wall of red earth, and the enemy's fire wasted itself in those
de fences Then Sharpe rode past a grove of trees and the distant fight was hidden and the
sound of the guns grew fainter and fainter as they rode farther north until, at last, the
sound of the cannonade was a mere grumbling on the horizon. Then they dropped down the
escarpment and the noise of the guns faded away altogether.

It was a disconsolate expedition. Colonel McCandless had nothing to say to Simone
who was still withdrawn. Sharpe tried to cheer her up, but his clumsy attempts only made
her more miserable and after a time he too fell silent. Women were a mystery, he thought.
During the night Simone had clung to him as though she were drowning, but since the dawn it
had seemed as if she would prefer to be drowned.

“Horsemen on our right, Sergeant!” McCandless said, his tone a reproof that Sharpe had
not spotted the cavalry first.

“Probably ours, but they could be enemy.”

Sharpe stared eastwards.

“They're ours, sir,” he called, kicking his horse to catch up with McCandless. One of the
distant horsemen carried the new Union flag and Sharpe's good eyes had spotted the banner.
The flag was easier to recognize at a distance these days, for since the incorporation
of Ireland into the United Kingdom a new red diagonal cross had been added to the flag,
and though the new-faingled design looked odd and unfamiliar, it did make the banner
stand out.

The cavalry left a plume of dust as they rode to intercept McCandless's party.
Sevajee and his men cantered to meet them and Sharpe saw the two groups of horsemen greet
each other warmly. The strangers turned out to be bnndarries from the Mahratta states who,
like Sevajee, had sided with the British against Scindia. These mercenaries were under
the command of a British officer and, like Sevajee's men, they carried lances, tulwars,
matchlock guns, flintlocks, pistols and bows and arrows.

They wore no uniform, but a handful of the sixty men possessed breastplates and most
had metal helmets that were crested with feathers or horsehair plumes. Their officer, a
dragoon captain, fell in alongside

McCandless and reported seeing a white-coated battalion on the far side of the
River Godavery.

“I didn't try and cross, sir,” the Captain said, 'for they weren't exactly
friendly."

“But you're sure they had white coats?”

“No doubts at all, sir,” the Captain said, thus confirming that Dodd must have crossed
the river already. He added that he had questioned some grain merchants who had travelled
south across the Godavery and those men had told him that Pohlmann's compoo was camped close
to Aurungabad. That city belonged to Hyderabad, but the merchants had seen no evidence
that the Mahrattas were preparing to besiege the city walls. The Captain tugged his reins,
turning his horse southwards so he could carry his news to Wellesley.

“Bid you good day, Colonel. Your servant, Ma'am.” The dragoon officer touched his hat to
Simone, then led his brigands away.

McCandless decreed that they would camp that night on the south bank of the River
Godavery where Sharpe rigged two horse blankets as a tent for Simone. Sevajee and his men
made their beds on the bluff above the river, a score of yards from the tent, and McCandless
and Sharpe spread their blankets alongside. The river was high, but it had still not filled
the steep-sided ravine that successive monsoons had scarred into the flat earth and
Sharpe guessed that the river was only at half flood. If the belated monsoon did arrive
the Godavery would swell into a swirling torrent a full quarter-mile wide, but even half
full the river looked a formidable obstacle as it surged westwards with its burden of
flotsam.

“Too deep to wade,” McCandless said as the sun fell.

“Current looks strong, sir.”

“It'll sweep you to your death, man.”

“So how's the army to cross it, sir?”

“With difficulty, Sharpe, with difficulty, but discipline always overcomes
difficulty. Dodd got across, so we surely can.” McCandless had been reading his Bible,
but the falling dark now obscured the pages and so he closed the book. Simone had eaten with
them, but she had been uncommunicative and McCandless was glad when she withdrew behind
her blankets.

“Women upset matters,” the Scotsman said unhappily.

“They do, sir?”

“Perturbations,” McCandless said mysteriously, 'perturbations." The small flames
of the campfire made his already gaunt face seem skeletal.

He shook his head.

“It's the heat, Sharpe, I'm convinced of it. The further south you travel, the more sin
is provoked among womankind. It makes sense, of course. Hell is a hot place, and hell is
sin's destination.”

“So you think that heaven's cold, sir?”

“I like to think it's bracing,” the Colonel answered seriously.

“Something like Scotland, I imagine. Certainly not as hot as India, and the heat here
has a very bad effect on some women. It releases things in them.” He paused, evidently
deciding he risked saying too much.

“I'm not at all convinced India is a place for European women,” the Colonel went on,
'and I shall be very glad when we're rid of Madame Joubert.

Still, I can't deny that her predicament is propitious. It enables us to take a look at
Lieutenant Dodd."

Sharpe poked a half-burned scrap of driftwood into the hottest part of the fire,
provoking an up draught of sparks.

“Are you hoping to capture Lieutenant Dodd, sir? Is that why we're taking Madame back to
her husband?”

McCandless shook his head.

"I doubt we'll get the chance, Sharpe.

No, we're using a heaven-sent opportunity to take a look at our enemy.

Our armies are marching into dangerous territory, for no place in India can raise
armies the size of the Mahratta forces, and we are precious few in number. We need
intelligence, Sharpe, so when we reach them, watch and pray! Keep your eyes skinned. How
many battalions? How many guns? What's the state of the guns? How many limbers? Look hard at
the infantry. Matchlocks or fire locks In a month or so we'll be fighting these rogues, so
the more we know of them the better." The Colonel scuffed earth onto the fire, dousing the
last small flames that Sharpe had just provoked.

“Now sleep, man. You'll be needing all your strength and wits in the morning.”

Next morning they rode downstream until they found a village next to a vast empty
Hindu temple, and in the village were small basket boats that resembled Welsh coracles
and McCandless hired a half-dozen of these as ferries. The unsaddled horses were made to
swim behind the boats. It was a perilous crossing, for the brown current snatched at the
light vessels and whirled them downstream. The horses, white-eyed, swam desperately
behind the reed boats that Sharpe noted had no caulking of any kind, but depended on
skilful close weaving to keep the water out, and the tug of the horses' leading reins
strained the light wooden frames and stretched the weave so that the boats let in water
alarmingly. Sharpe used his shako to bail out his coracle, but the boatmen just grinned at
his futile efforts and dug their paddles in harder. Once a half-submerged tree almost
speared Sharpe's boat, and if the trunk had struck them the boat must surely have been tipped
over, but the two boatmen skilfully spun the coracle away, let the tree pass, then paddled
on.

It took half an hour to land and saddle the horses. Simone had shared a coracle with
McCandless and the brief voyage had soaked the bottom half of her thin linen dress so that
the damp weave clung to her legs. McCandless was embarrassed, and offered her a horse
blanket for modesty's sake, but Simone shook her head.

“Where do we go now, Colonel?” she asked.

“Towards Aurungabad, Ma'am,” McCandless said gruffly, keeping his eyes averted from
her beguiling figure, 'but doubtless we shall be intercepted long before we reach that
city. You'll be with your husband by tomorrow night, I don't doubt."

Sevajee's men rode far ahead now, spread into a picquet line to give warning of any
enemy. This land all belonged to the Rajah of Hyderabad, an ally of the British, but it
was frontier land and the only friendly troops now north of the Godavery were the
garrisons of Hyderabad's isolated fortresses. The rest were all Mahrattas, though Sharpe
saw no enemies that day. The only people he saw were peasants cleaning out the
irrigation channels in their stubble fields or tending the huge brick kilns that smoked
in the sunlight. The brick-workers were all women and children, greasy and sweaty, who
gave the travellers scarcely a glance.

“It's a hard life,” Simone said to Sharpe as they passed one half-built kiln where an
overseer lazed under a woven canopy and shouted at the children to work faster.

“All life's hard unless you've got money,” Sharpe said, grateful that Simone had at last
broken her silence. They were riding a few paces behind the Colonel and kept their voices
low so he could not hear them.

“Money and rank,” Simone said.

“Rank?” Sharpe asked.

“They're usually the same thing,” Simone said.

“Colonels are richer than captains, are they not?” And captains are generally richer
than sergeants, Sharpe thought, but he said nothing. Simone touched the pouch at her
waist.

“I should give you back your diamonds.”

“Why?”

“Because .. .” she said, but then fell silent for a while.

“I do not want you to think.. .” she tried again, but the words would not come.

Sharpe smiled at her.