Sharpe's Triumph (3 page)

“Bastards!” He said the word again and again, helplessly and furiously, then he
remembered his pack and so he stood again and went into the sunlight.

The ashes of the fire were still hot and the charred canvas remnants of his pack and
pouches glowed red as he found a stick and raked through the embers. One by one he found what
he had hidden in the fire. The rupees that had been for hiring the carts, then the rubies
and emeralds, diamonds and pearls, sapphires and gold. He fetched a sack of rice from the
cook house and he emptied the grains onto the ground and filled the sack with his treasure.
A king's ransom, it was, and it had been taken from a king four years before in the Water
Gate at Seringapatam where Sharpe had trapped the Tippoo Sultan and shot him down before
looting his corpse.

Then, with the treasure clutched to his midriff, he knelt in the stench of Chasalgaon and
felt guilty. He had survived a massacre. Anger mingled with his guilt, then he knew he had
duties to do. He must find any others who had survived, he must help them, and he must work
out how he could take his revenge.

On a man called Dodd.

Major John Stokes was an engineer, and if ever a man was happy with his avocation, it
was Major John Stokes. There was nothing he enjoyed so much as making things, whether it
was a better gun carriage, a garden or, as he was doing now, improvements to a clock that
belonged to the Rajah of Mysore. The Rajah was a young man, scarcely more than a boy
indeed, and he owed his throne to the British troops who had ejected the usurping Tippoo
Sultan and, as a result, relations between the palace and Seringapatam's small British
garrison were good. Major Stokes had found the clock in one of the palace's antechambers
and noted its appalling accuracy, which is why he had brought it back to the armoury
where he was happily taking it apart.

“It isn't signed,” he told his visitor, 'and I suspect it's local work. But a Frenchman
had his hand in it, I can tell that. See the escapement? Typical French work, that."

The visitor peered at the tangle of cogwheels.

“Didn't know the Frogs had it in them to make clocks, sir,” he said.

“Oh, indeed they do!” Stokes said reprovingly.

“And very fine clocks they make! Very fine. Think of Lepine! Think of Berthoud! How can you
ignore Montandon? And Breguet!” The Major shook his head in mute tribute to such great
craftsmen, then peered at the Rajah's sorry timepiece.

"Some rust on the mainspring, I see. That don't help. Soft metal, I suspect. It's catch
as catch can over here. I've noticed that.

Marvellous decorative work, but Indians make shoddy mechanics.

Look at that mainspring! A disgrace."

“Shocking, sir, shocking.” Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill did not know a mainspring from a
pendulum, and could not have cared less about either, but he needed information from
Major Stokes so it was politic to show an interest.

“It was striking nine when it should have struck eight,” the Major said, poking a finger
into the clock's entrails, 'or perhaps it was striking eight when it ought to have sounded
nine. I don't recall. One to seven it copes with admirably, but somewhere about eight it
becomes wayward." The Major, who was in charge of Seringapatam's armoury, was a plump,
cheerful fellow with prematurely white hair.

“Do you understand clocks, Sergeant?”

“Can't say as I does, sir. A simple soldier, me, sir, who has the sun as his clock.” The
Sergeant's face twitched horribly. It was an uncontrollable spasm that racked his face
every few seconds.

“You were asking about Sharpe,” Major Stokes said, peering into the clock.

“Well, I never! This fellow has made the bearings out of wood! Good Lord above. Wood! No
wonder she's wayward! Harrison once made a wooden clock, did you know? Even the gearings!
All from timber.”

“Harrison, sir? Is he in the army, sir?”

“He's a clock maker Sergeant, a clock maker A very fine clock maker too.”

“Not a Frog, sir?”

“With a name like Harrison? Good Lord, no! He's English, and he makes a good honest
clock.”

“Glad to hear it, sir,” Hakeswill said, then reminded the Major of the purpose of his
visit to the armoury.

“Sergeant Sharpe, sir, my good friend, sir, is he here?”

“He is here,” Stokes said, at last looking up from the clock, 'or rather he was here. I saw
him an hour ago. But he went to his quarters. He's been away, you see. Involved in that
dreadful business in Chasalgaon."

“Chiseldown, sir?”

“Terrible business, terrible! So I told Sharpe to clean himself up. Poor fellow was
covered in blood! Looked like a pirate. Now that is interesting.”

“Blood, sir?” Hakeswill asked.

“A six-toothed scape wheel With a bifurcated locking piece! Well, I never! That is
enriching the pudding with currants. Rather like putting an Egg lock on a common pistol!
I'm sure if you wait. Sergeant, Sharpe will be back soon. He's a marvelous fellow. Never
lets me down.”

Hakeswill forced a smile for he hated Sharpe with a rare and single minded venom.

“He's one of the best, sir,” he said, his face twitching.

“And will he be leaving Seringapatam soon, sir? Off on an errand again, would he be?”

“Oh no!” Stokes said, picking up a magnifying glass to look more closely into the
clock.

"I need him here, Sergeant. That's it, you see!

There's a pin missing from the strike wheel. It engages the cogs here, do you see, and the
gearing does the rest. Simple, I suppose." The Major looked up, but saw that the strange
Sergeant with the twitching face was gone. Never mind, the clock was far more
interesting.

Sergeant Hakeswill left the armoury and turned left towards the barracks where he had
temporary accommodation. The King's 33rd was quartered now in Hurryhur, a hundred and
fifty miles to the north, and their job was to keep the roads of western Mysore clear of
bandits and so the regiment ranged up and down the country and, finding themselves close
to Seringapatam where the main armoury was located, Colonel Gore had sent a detachment
for replacement ammunition. Captain Morris of the Light Company had drawn the duty,
and he had brought half his men and Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill to protect the shipment
which would leave the city next morning and be carried on ox carts to Arrakerry where the
regiment was currently camped. An easy task, but one that had offered Sergeant Hakeswill an
opportunity he had long sought.

The Sergeant stopped in one of the grog shops and demanded arrack.

The shop was empty, all but for himself, the owner and a legless beggar who heaved
himself towards the Sergeant and received a kick in the rump for his trouble.

“Get out of here, you scabby bastard!” Hakeswill shouted.

“Bringing the flies in, you are. Go on! Piss off.” The shop thus emptied to his
satisfaction, Hakeswill sat in a dark corner contemplating life.

“I chide myself,” he muttered aloud, worrying the shop's owner who feared the look of
the twitching man in the red coat.

“Your own fault, Obadiah,” Hakeswill said.

“You should have seen it years ago! Years! Rich as a Jew, he is. Are you listening to me,
you heathen darkie bastard?” The shop's owner, thus challenged, fled into the back room,
leaving Hakeswill grumbling at the table.

“Rich as a Jew, Sharpie is, only he thinks he hides it, which he don't, on account of me
having tumbled to him. He don't even live in barracks! Got himself some rooms over by the
Mysore Gate. Got a bleeding servant boy. Always got cash on him, always! Buys drinks.”
Hakeswill shook his head at the injustice of it all. The 33rd had spent the last four years
patrolling Mysore's roads and Sharpe, all that while, had been living in Seringapatam's
comforts. It was not right, not fair, not just. Hakeswill had worried about it, wondering
why Sharpe was so rich. At first he had assumed that Sharpe had been fiddling the armoury
stores, but that could not explain Sharpe's apparent wealth.

“Only so much milk in a cow,” Hakeswill muttered, 'no matter how hard you squeeze the
teats." Now he knew why Sharpe was rich, or he thought he knew, and what he had learned had
filled Obadiah Hakeswill with a desperate jealousy. He scratched at a mosquito bite on his
neck, revealing the old dark scar where the hangman's rope had burned and abraded his skin.
Obadiah Hakeswill had survived that hanging, and as a result he fervently believed that
he could not be killed. Touched by God, he claimed he was, touched by God.

But he was not rich. Not rich at all, and Richard Sharpe was rich.

Rumour had it that Richard Sharpe used Lali's house, and that was an officers-only
brothel, so why was Sergeant Sharpe allowed inside?

Because he was rich, that was why, and Hakeswill had at last discovered Sharpe's
secret.

“It was the Tippoo!” he said aloud, then thumped the table with his tin mug to demand
more drink.

“And hurry up about it, you black-faced bastard!”

It had to be the Tippoo. Had not Hakeswill seen Sharpe lurking about the area where the
Tippoo had been killed? And no soldier had ever claimed the credit for killing the Tippoo.
It was widely thought that one of those Suffolk bastards from the south had caught the King
in the chaos at the siege's end, but Hakeswill had finally worked it out. It had been Sharpe,
and the reason Sharpe had kept quiet about the killing was because he had stripped the
Tippoo of all his gems and he did not want anyone, least of all the army's senior
officers, to knowj that he possessed the jewels.

“Bloody Sharpe!” Hakeswill said aloud.

So all that was needed now was an excuse to have Sharpe brought back to the regiment. No
more clean and easy duty for Sharpie! No more merry rides in Lali's house for him. It would
be Obadiah Hakeswill's turn to live in luxury, and all because of a dead king's
treasure.

“Rubies,” Hakeswill said aloud, lingering over the word, 'and emeralds and sapphires,
and diamonds like stars, and gold thick as butter." He chuckled. And all it would need, he
reckoned, was a little cunning. A little cunning, a confident lie and an arrest.

“And that will be your end, Sharpie, that will be your end,” Hakeswill said, and he could
feel the beauty of his scheme unfold like a lotus blossoming in Seringapa-tam's moat. It
would work! His visit to Major Stokes had established that Sharpe was in the town, which
meant that the lie could be told and then, just like Major Stokes's clockwork, everything
would go right. Every cog and gear and wheel and spike would slot and click and tick and tock,
and Sergeant Hakeswill's face twitched and his hands contracted as though the tin mug in his
grip were a man's throat. He would be rich.

It took Major William Dodd three days to carry the ammunition back to Pohlmann's
compoo which was camped just outside the Mahratta city of Ahmednuggur. The compoo was an
infantry brigade of eight battalions, each of them recruited from among the finest
mercenary warriors of north India and all trained and commanded by European
officers.

Dowlut Rao Scindia, the Maharajah of Gwalior, whose land stretched from the fortress of
Baroda in the north to the fastness of Gawilghur in the east and down to Ahmednuggur in
the south, boasted that he led a hundred thousand men and that his army could blacken the
land like a plague, yet this compoo, with its seven thousand men, was the hard heart of his
army.

One of the compoo's eight battalions was paraded a mile outside the encampment to
greet Dodd. The cavalry that had accompanied the sepoys to Chasalgaon had ridden ahead
to warn Pohlmann of Dodd's return and Pohlmann had organized a triumphant reception. The
battalion stood in white coats, their black belts and weapons gleaming, but Dodd, riding at
the head of his small column, had eyes only for the tall elephant that stood beside a
yellow-and-white-striped marquee. The huge beast glittered in the sunlight, for its body
and head were armoured with a vast leather cape onto which squares of silver had been sewn
in intricate patterns. The silver covered the elephant's body,

continued across its face and then, all but for two circles that had been cut for its
eyes, cascaded on down the length of its trunk. Gems gleamed between the silver plates
while ribbons of purple silk fluttered from the crown of the animal's head. The last few
inches of the animal's big curved tusks were sheathed in silver, though the actual points
of the tusks were tipped with needle-sharp points of steel. The elephant driver, the
mahout, sweated in a coat of old-fashioned chain mail that had been burnished to the same
gleaming polish as his animal's silver armour, while behind him was a howdah made of
cedar wood on which gold panels had been nailed and above which fluttered a fringed canopy of
yellow silk. Long files of purple-jacketed infantrymen stood to attention on either
flank of the elephant. Some of the men carried muskets, while others had long pikes with
their broad blades polished to resemble silver.

The elephant knelt when Dodd came within twenty paces and the occupant of the howdah
stepped carefully down onto a set of silver-plated steps placed there by one of his
purple-coated bodyguards then strolled into the shade of the striped marquee. He was a
European, a tall man and big, not fat, and though a casual glance might think him
overweight, a second glance would see that most of that weight was solid muscle. He had a
round sun-reddened face, big black moustaches and eyes that seemed to take delight in
everything he saw. His uniform was of his own devising: white silk breeches tucked into
English riding boots, a green coat festooned with gold lace and aiguillettes and, on the
coat's broad shoulders, thick white silk cushions hung with short golden chains. The coat
had scarlet facings and loops of scarlet braid about its turned-back cuffs and gilded
buttons. The big man's hat was a bicorne crested with purple-dyed feathers held in place
by a badge showing the white horse of Hanover; his sword's hilt was made of gold fashioned
into the shape of an elephant's head, and gold rings glinted on his big fingers. Once in
the shade of the open-sided marquee he settled himself on a divan where his aides
gathered about him. This was Colonel Anthony Pohlmann and he commanded the compoo,
together with five hundred cavalry and twenty-six field guns. Ten years before, when
Scindia's army had been nothing but a horde of ragged troopers on half-starved horses,
Anthony Pohlmann had been a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment of the East India
Company; now he rode an elephant and needed two other beasts to carry the chests off gold
coin that travelled everywhere with him.