Authors: Bernard Cornwell
“You won't be going alone,” Baird told Sharpe. “Lieutenant Lawford volunteered your services and he's going as well. He'll pretend to be a private and a deserter, and your job is to look after him.”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and hid his dismay that perhaps things were not going to be quite so easy after all. He could not just ru
n
now, not with Lawford tied to his apron strings. He glanced at the Lieutenant, who gave him a reassuring smile.
“The thing is, Sharpe,” Lawford said, still smiling, “I'm not too certain I can pass myself off as a private. But they'll believe you, and you can say I'm a new recruit.”
A new recruit! Sharpe almost laughed. You could no more pass the Lieutenant off as a new recruit than you could pass Sharpe off as an officer! He had an idea then, and the idea surprised him, not because it was a good idea, but because it implied he was suddenly trying to make this idiotic scheme work. “Better if you said you was a company clerk, sir.” He muttered the words too softly, made shy by the presence of so many senior officers.
“Speak up, man!” Wellesley snarled.
“It would be better, sir,” Sharpe said so loudly that he was verging on insolence, “if the Lieutenant said he was a company clerk, sir.”â
“A clerk?” Baird asked. “Why?”
“He's got soft hands, sir. Clean hands, sir. Clerks don't muck about in the dirt like the rest of us. And recruits, sir, they're usually just as filthy-handed as the rest of us. But not clerks, sir.” Harris, who had been writing, looked up with a
faint expression of admiration. “Put some ink on his hands, sir,” Sharpe still spoke to Baird, “and he won't look wrong.”
“I like it, Sharpe, indeed I do!” Baird said. “Well done.”
Wellesley sneered, then pointedly stared through one of the tent openings as though he found the proceedings tiresome. General Harris looked at Lawford. “You could manage to play the part of a disgruntled clerk, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Oh, indeed, sir. I'm sure, sir.” Lawford at last sounded confident.
“Good,” Harris said, laying down his pen. The General wore a wig to hide the scar where an American bullet had torn away a scrap of his skull on Bunker Hill. Now, unconsciously, he lifted a corner of the wig and scratched at that old scar. “And I suppose, once you reach the city, you contact this merchant. Remind me of his name, Baird?”
“Ravi Shekhar, sir.”
“And what if this fellow Shekhar ain't there?” Harris asked. “Or won't help?” There was silence after the question. The sentries outside the tent, moved far enough away so they could not overhear the conversation, stamped up and down. A dog barked. “You have to anticipate these things,” Harris said mildly, scratching again under his wig. Wellesley offered a harsh laugh, but no suggestion.
“If Ravi Shekhar won't help us, sir,” Baird suggested, “then Lawford and Sharpe must get themselves into McCandless's jail, then find a way of getting themselves out.” The Scotsman turned to Sharpe. “Were you by any chance a thief before you joined up?”
A heartbeat's hesitation, then Sharpe nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“What kind of a thief?” Wellesley asked in a disgusted voice as though he was astonished to discover the ranks of his battalion contained criminals, and, when Sharpe did not answer, the Colonel became even more irritable. “A diver? A scamp?”
Sharpe was surprised that his Colonel even knew such slang. He shook his head indignantly, denying he had ever been a mere pickpocket or a highwayman. “I was a house boner, sir,” he said. “And proper trained, too,” he added proudly. In fact he had done his share on the highway, not so much holding up coaches as slicing the leather straps that held the passengers' portmanteaus on the backs of coaches. The job was done while the coach was speeding along a road so that the noise of the hooves and wheels would hide the sound of the tumbling luggage. It was a job for agile youngsters and Sharpe had been good at it.
“A house boner means he was a burglar,” Wellesley translated for his two senior officers, unable to hide his scorn.
Baird was pleased with Sharpe's answers. “Do you still have a picklock, Private?”
“Me, sir? No, sir. But I suppose I could find one, sir, if I had a guinea.”
Baird laughed, suspecting the true cost was nearer a shilling, but he still went to his coat which was hanging from a hook on one of the tent poles and fished out a guinea which he tossed onto Sharpe's lap. “Find one before tonight, Private Sharpe,” he said, “for who knows, it might be useful.” He turned to Harris. “But I doubt it will come to that, sir. I pray it doesn't come to that for I'm not sure that any man, even Private Sharpe here, can escape from the Tippoo's dungeons.” The tall General turned back to Sharpe. “I was near four years in those cells, Sharpe, and in all that time not one man escaped. Not one.” Baird paced restlessly as he remembered the ordeal. “The Tippoo's cells have barred doors with padlocks, so your picklock could take care of that, but when I was there we always had four jailers in the daytime, and some days there were
even jettis
on guard.”
“Jettis
, sir?” Lawford asked.
“Jettis
, Lieutenant. The Tippoo inherited a dozen of the
bastards from his father. They're professional strongmen and their favorite trick is executing prisoners. They have several ways of doing it, none of them pleasant. You want to know their methods?”
“No, sir,” Lawford said hurriedly, blanching at the thought. Sharpe was disappointed, but dared not ask for the details.
Baird grimaced. “Very unpleasant executions, Lieutenant,” he said grimly. “You still want to go?”
Lawford remained pale, but nodded. “I think it's worth a try, sir.”
Wellesley snorted at the Lieutenant's foolishness, but Baird ignored the Colonel. “At night the guards are withdrawn,” he went on, “but there's still a sentry.”
“Just one?” Sharpe asked.
“Just one, Private,” Baird confirmed.
“I can take care of one sentry, sir,” Sharpe boasted.
“Not this one,” Baird said grimly, “because when I was there he was eight feet long if he was an inch. He was a tiger, Sharpe. A man-eater, and the eight foot don't count his tail. He used to be put in the corridor every night, so pray you don't ever end up in the Tippoo's cells. Pray that Ravi Shekhar will know how to get McCandless out.”
“Or at the very least,” Harris intervened, “pray that Shekhar can discover what McCandless knows and that you can get that news out to us.”
“So that's what we want of you!” Baird said to Sharpe with a brusque cheerfulness. “Are you willing to go, man?”
Sharpe reckoned it was all idiocy, and he did not much like the sound of the tiger, but he knew better than to show any reluctance. “I reckon three is better than two thousand, sir,” he said.
“Three?” Baird asked, puzzled.
“Three stripes are better than two thousand lashes, sir. If
we find out what you want to know or else fetch this Colonel McCandless out of jail, sir, can I be a sergeant?” He asked the question of Wellesley.
Wellesley looked enraged at Sharpe's presumption, and for a second it was plain that he proposed to turn him down, but General Harris cleared his throat and mildly remarked that it sounded a reasonable suggestion to him.
Wellesley thought about opposing the General, then decided that it was most unlikely that Sharpe would even survive this nonsense and so, albeit reluctantly, he nodded. “A sergeant's stripes, Sharpe, if you succeed.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said.
Baird dismissed him. “Go with Lieutenant Lawford now, Sharpe, he'll tell you what to do. And one other thing The Scotsman's voice became urgent. “For God's sake, man, don't tell another soul what you're doing.”
“Wouldn't dream of it, sir,” Sharpe said, flinching as he stood up.
“Go then,” Baird said. He waited till the two men were gone, then sighed. “A bright young fellow, that Sharpe.” He spoke to Harris.
“A rogue,” Wellesley interjected. “I could provide you with a hundred others just as disreputable. Scum, all of them, and the only thing that keeps them from riot is discipline.”
Harris rapped the table to stop the squabbling of his two seconds-in-command. “But will the rogue succeed?” he asked.
“Not a chance,” Wellesley said confidently.
“A woefully small chance,” Baird admitted dourly, then added more vigorously, “but even a small chance is worth it if we can get McCandless back.”
“At the risk of losing two good men?” Harris asked.
“One man who might become a decent officer,” Wellesley
corrected the General, “and one man whose loss the world won't mourn for a second.”
“But McCandless might hold the key to the city, General,” Baird reminded Harris.
“True,” Harris said heavily, then unrolled a map that had lain scrolled on the edge of his table. The map showed Seringapatam and whenever he gazed at it he wondered how he was to set about besieging the city. Lord Cornwallis, who had captured the city seven years before, had assaulted the north side of the island and then attacked the eastern walls, but Harris doubted that he would be given that route again. The Tippoo would have been forewarned by that earlier success, which meant this new assault must come from either the south or the west. A dozen deserters from the enemy's forces had all claimed that the west wall was in bad repair, and maybe that would give Harris his best chance. “South or west,” he said aloud, reiterating the problem he had already discussed a score of times with his two deputies. “But either way, gentlemen, the place is crammed with guns, thick with rockets and filled with infantry. And we'll have only the one chance before the rains come. Just one. West or south, eh?” He stared at the map, hoping against hope that McCandless could be fetched from his dungeon to offer some guidance, but that, he admitted to himself, was a most unlikely outcome, which meant the decision would inevitably be all his to make. The final decision could wait till the army was close to the city and Harris had been given a chance to view the Tippoo's defenses, but once the army was ready to make camp the choice would have to be made swiftly and, all things being equal, Harris was fairly sure which route he would choose. For weeks now his instinct had been telling him where to attack, but he worried that the Tippoo might have foreseen the weakness in his city's defences. But there was no point in wondering whether the Tippoo was outfoxing
him, that way lay indecision, and so Harris tapped his quill on the map. “My instincts tell me to attack here, gentlemen, right here.” He was indicating the west wall. “Across the river shallows and right through the weakest stretch of the walls. It seems the obvious place.” He tapped the map again. “Right here, right here.”
Right where the Tippoo had set his trap.
Allah, in His infinite mercy, had been good to the Tippoo Sultan, for Allah, in His immeasurable wisdom, had revealed the existence of a merchant who was sending information to the British army. The man dealt in common metals, in copper, tin, and brass, and his wagons frequently passed through one of the city's two main gates loaded with their heavy cargoes. God alone knows how many such cargoes had passed out of Seringapatam in the last three months, but at least the gate guards had searched the right wagon, the one that carried a coded letter which, under interrogation, the wretched merchant had admitted contained a report of the strange work that was being done in the old closed gateway of the western wall. That work should have been a close secret, for the only men allowed near the gateway were Gudin's reliable European troops and a small band of the Tippoo's Muslim warriors whom he regarded as utterly trustworthy. The merchant, not surprisingly, was a Hindu, but when his wife was brought into the interrogation room and threatened with the red-hot pincers, the merchant had confessed the name of the Muslim soldier who had allowed himself to be suborned by the merchant's gold. And so much gold! A strongroom filled with the metal, far more than the Tippoo suspected could be earned from trading in tin, brass, and copper. It was British gold, the merchant confessed, given him so he could raise rebellion inside Seringapatam.
The Tippoo did not consider himself a cruel man, but nor,
indeed, did he think of himself as a gentle one. He was a ruler, and cruelty and mercy were both weapons of rulers. Any monarch who flinched from cruelty would not rule long, just as any ruler who forgot mercy would soon earn hatred, and so the Tippoo tried to balance mercy with cruelty. He did not want the reputation of being lenient any more than he wanted to be judged a tyrant, and so he tried to use both mercy and cruelty judiciously. The Hindu merchant, his confession made, had pleaded for mercy, but the Tippoo knew this was no time to show weakness. This was the time to let a shudder of horror ripple through the streets and alleys of Seringapatam. It was a time to let his enemies know that the price for treason was death, and so both the merchant and the Muslim soldier who had taken the merchant's gold were now standing on the hot sand of the Inner Palace's courtyard where they were being guarded by two of the Tippoo's favored
jettis
.
The
jettis
were Hindus, and their strength, which was remarkable, was devoted to their religion. That amused the Tippoo. Some Hindus sought the rewards of godliness by growing their hair and fingernails, others by denying themselves food, still others by abjuring all earthly pleasures, but the
jettis
did it by developing their muscles, and the results, the Tippoo admitted, were extraordinary. He might disagree with their religion, but he encouraged them all the same and like his father he had hired a dozen of the most impressive strongmen to amuse and serve him. Two of the finest now stood beneath the throne-room balcony, stripped to their waists and with their vast chests oiled so that their muscles shone dark in the early-afternoon sun. The six tigers, restless because they had been denied their midday meal of freshly slaughtered goat meat, glared with yellow eyes from the courtyard's edges.