Authors: Bernard Cornwell
“Some men find it hard to shoot at their old comrades,” Gudin told Lawford mildly, “and I want to make sure you're not among them.”
“Let's hope the bastards are officers,” Sharpe said, “begging your presence, sir.”
“There they are!” Gudin said, and sure enough, just beside the cistern beneath the two palm trees across the river, were a pair of red coats. The men were examining the city walls through telescopes. Their horses were picketed behind them.
Sharpe knelt in a gun embrasure. He instinctively felt that the range was much too long for any firearm, but he had heard about the miracle of rifles and he was curious to see if the rumors were true. “You take the one on the left, Bill,” he said, “and fire just after me.” He glanced at Gudin and saw that the Colonel had moved a few feet down the cavalier to watch the effect of the shots from a place where the rifles' smoke would not obscure his glass. “And aim well, Bill,” Sharpe said in a low voice. “They're probably only bloody cavalrymen, so who cares if we plug them with a pair of
bloody goolies.” He crouched behind the rifle and aligned its well-defined sights that were so much more impressive than the rudimentary stub that served a musket as a foresight. A man could stand fifty feet in front of a well-aimed musket and still stand a better than evens chance of walking away unscathed, but the delicacy of the rifles sights seemed to confirm what everyone had told Sharpe. This was a long-range killer.
He settled himself firmly, keeping the sights lined on the distant man, then gently raised the barrel so that the rifle's muzzle obscured his target but would give the ball the needed trajectory. There was no wind to speak of, so he had no need to offset his aim. He bad never fired a rifle, but it was just common sense really. Nor was he unduly worried about killing one of his own side. It was a sad necessity, something that needed to be done if he was to earn Gudin's trust and thus the freedom that might let him escape from the city. He took a breath, half let it out, then pulled the trigger. The gun banged into his shoulder, its recoil much harder than an ordinary musket's blow. Lawford fired a half-second later, the smoke of his gun joining the dense cloud pumped out by Sharpe's rifle.
“The clerk wins!” Gudin exclaimed in astonishment. He lowered his spyglass. “Yours went six inches past the man's head, Sharpe, but I think you killed your man, Lawford. Well done! Well done indeed!”
Lawford reddened, but said nothing. He looked very troubled and Gudin put his evident confusion down to a natural shyness. “Is that the first man you've ever killed?” he asked gently.
“Yes, sir,” Lawford said, truthfully enough.
“You deserve to be better than a clerk. Well done. Well done both of you.” He took the rifles from them and laughed
at Sharpe's rueful expression. “You expected to do better, Sharpe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You will. Six inches off at that distance is very good shooting. Very good indeed.” Gudin turned to watch as the uninjured redcoat dragged his companion back toward the horses. “I think, maybe,” Gudin went on, “that you have a natural talent, Lawford. I congratulate you.” The Colonel fished in his pouch and brought out a handful of coins. “An advance on your arrears of pay. Well done! Off you go, now!”
Sharpe glanced behind him, hoping to see what devilment the western walls held, but he could see nothing strange there and so he turned and followed Lawford down the ramp. Lawford was shaking. “I didn't mean to kill him!” the Lieutenant said when he was out of Gudin's earshot.
“I did,” Sharpe muttered.
“God, what have I done? I was aiming left!”
“Don't be a bloody fool,” Sharpe said, “what you've done is earned our freedom. You did bloody well.” He dragged Lawford into a tavern. The Tippoo might be a Muslim, and the Muslims might preach an extraordinary hatred of alcohol, but most of the city was Hindu and the Tippoo was sensible enough to keep the taverns open. This one, close to Gudin's barracks, was a big room, open to the street, with a dozen tables where old men played chess and young men boasted of the slaughter they would inflict on the besiegers. The tavern-keeper, a big woman with hard eyes, sold a variety of strange drinks: wine and arrack mostly, but she also kept a weird-tasting beer. Sharpe could still hardly speak a word of the local language, but he pointed to the arrack barrel and held up two fingers. Now that he and Lawford were dressed in the tiger-striped tunics and carried muskets they attracted little attention in the city and no hostility. “Here.” He put the arrack in front of Lawford. “Drink that.”
Lawford drank it in one go. “That was the first man I've killed,” he said, blinking from the harshness of the liquor.
“Worry you?”
“Of course it does! He was British!”
“Can't skin a cat without making a bloody mess,” Sharpe said comfortingly.
“Jesus!” Lawford said angrily.
Sharpe poured half his liquor into Lawford's glass, then beckoned to one of the serving girls who circled the tables refilling glasses. “You had to do it,” he said.
“If I'd have missed like you,” Lawford said ruefully, “Gudin would have been just as impressed. That was a fine shot of yours.”
“I was aiming to kill the bugger.”
“You were?” Lawford was shocked.
“Jesus Christ, Bill! We have to convince these buggers!” Sharpe smiled as the girl poured more liquor, then he tipped a handful of small brass coins into a wooden bowl on the table. Another bowl held a strange spice which the other drinkers nibbled between sips, but Sharpe found the stuff too pungent. Once the girl was gone he looked at the troubled Lieutenant. “Did you think this was going to be easy?”
Lawford was silent for a few seconds, then gave a shrug. “In truth I thought it would be impossible.”
“So why did you come?”
Lawford cradled the glass in both hands and stared at Sharpe as if weighing up whether or not to answer. “To get away from Morris,” he finally confessed, “and for the excitement.” He seemed embarrassed to admit as much.
“Morris is a bastard,” Sharpe said feelingly.
Lawford frowned at the criticism. “He's bored,” he said chidingly, then he steered the conversation away from the danger area of criticizing a superior officer. “And I also came because I owe gratitude to my uncle.”
“And because it would get you noticed?”
Lawford looked up with some surprise on his face, then he nodded. “That too.”
“Same as me then,” Sharpe said. “Exact same as me. Except till the General said you was coming with me I had half a mind to run proper.”
Lawford was shocked by the admission. “You really wanted to desert?”
“For Christ's sake! What do you think it's like in the ranks if you've got an officer like Morris and a sergeant like Hakeswill? Those bastards think we're just bleeding cattle, but we're not. Most of us want to do a decent job. Not too decent, maybe. We want a bit of money and a
bibbi
from time to time, but we don't actually enjoy being flogged. And we can fight like the bloody devil. If you bastard lot started trusting us instead of treating us like the enemy, you'd be bloody amazed what we could do.”
Lawford said nothing.
“You've got some good men in the company,” Sharpe insisted. “Tom Garrard is a better soldier than half the officers in the battalion, but you don't even notice him. If a man can't read and doesn't speak like a bleeding choirboy you think he can't be trusted.”
“The army's changing,” Lawford said defensively.
“Like hell it is. Why do you make us powder our hair like bleeding women? Or wear that bloody stock?”
“Change takes time,” Lawford said weakly.
“Too much bloody time,” Sharpe said fervently, then leaned against the wall and eyed the girls who were cooking at the tavern's far end. Were they whores, he wondered? Hickson and Blake had told him they knew where the best whores were, then he remembered Mary and suddenly felt guilty. He had not seen her once since their arrival in Seringapatam, but nor had he thought that much about her. In
truth he was having too good a time here; the food was good, the liquor cheap, and the company acceptable, and to that was added the heady spice of danger. “After that brilliant piece of sharpshooting,” he encouraged Lawford, “we're going to be all right. We'll have a chance to get out of here.”
“What about Mrs. Bickerstaff?” Lawford asked.
“I was just thinking of her. And maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn't have brought her. Couldn't leave her with the army though, could I? Not with Hakeswill planning to sell her to a
kin.”
“A kin?”
“A pimp.”
“He really planned that?” Lawford asked.
“Him and Morris. In it together, they were. Bloody Hakeswill told me as much, the night he got me to hit him. And Morris was there with that little bastard Hicks, just waiting for me to do it. I was a bloody fool to fall for it, but there it is.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Prove it!” Sharpe asked derisively. “Of course I can't prove it, but it's true.” He blew out a rueful breath. “Just what am I going to do with Mary?”
“Take her with you, of course,” Lawford said sternly.
“Might not have a chance,” Sharpe said.
Lawford stared at him for a few seconds. “God, you're ruthless,” he finally said.
“I'm a soldier. It fits.” Sharpe said it proudly, but he was not proud, merely defiant. What was he to do with Mary? And where was she? He drank the rest of his arrack and clapped his hands for more. “You want to find a
bibbi
tonight?” he asked Lawford.
“A whore?” Lawford asked in horror.
“I don't suppose a respectable woman will help us out much. Not unless you want a spot of polite conversation.”
Lawford stared aghast at Sharpe. “What we should do,” the Lieutenant said softly, “is find this man Ravi Shekhar. He may have a way of getting news out of the city.”
“And how the hell are we supposed to find him?” Sharpe asked defiantly. “We can't wander the bloody streets asking for this fellow in English. No one will know what the heck we're doing! I'll ask Mary to find him when we see her.” He grinned. “Bugger Shekhar. How about a
bibbi
instead?”
“Maybe I'll read.”
“Your choice,” Sharpe said carelessly.
Lawford hesitated, his face reddening. “It's just that I've seen men with the pox,” he explained.
“Christ! You've seen men vomit, but it don't stop you drinking. Besides, don't worry about the pox. That's why God gave us mercury. The stuff worked for bloody Hakeswill, didn't it? Though God knows why. Besides, Harry Hickson says he knows some clean girls, but of course they always say that. Still, if you want to ruin your eyes reading the Bible, go ahead, but there ain't no mercury that will give you your sight back.”
Lawford said nothing for a few seconds. “Maybe I will come with you,” he finally said shyly, staring down at the table.
“Learning how the other half lives?” Sharpe asked with a grin.
“Something like that,” Lawford mumbled.
“Well enough, I tell you. Give us some cash and a willing couple of frows and we can live like kings. We'll make this the last drink, eh? Don't want to lower the flag, do we?”
Lawford was now deep red. “You won't, of course, tell anyone about this when we're back?”
“Me?” Sharpe pretended to be astonished at the very idea. “My lips are gummed together. Not a word, promise.”
Lawford worried that he was letting his dignity slide, but
he did not want to lose Sharpe's approval. The Lieutenant was becoming fascinated by the younger man's confidence, and envied the way in which Sharpe so instinctively negotiated a wicked world and he wished he could find the same easy ability in himself. He thought briefly of the Bible waiting back in the barracks, and of his mother's advice to read it diligently, but then he decided to hell with them both. He drained his arrack, picked up his musket, and followed Sharpe into the dusk.
Every house in the city was prepared for the siege. Storehouses were filled with food and valuables were being hastily concealed in case the enemy armies broke through the wall. Holes were dug in gardens and filled with coins and jewelry, and in some of the wealthier houses whole rooms were concealed by false walls so that the women could be hidden away when the invaders rampaged through the streets.
Mary helped General Appah Rao's household prepare for that ordeal. She felt guilty, not because she came from the army that was imposing this threatened misery on the city, but because she had unexpectedly found herself happy in Rao's sprawling home.
When General Appah Rao had first taken her away from Sharpe she had been frightened, but the General had taken her to his own house and there reassured her of her safety. “We must clean you,” the General told her, “and let that eye heal.” He treated her gently, but with a measure of reserve that sprang from her disheveled looks and her presumed history. The General did not believe that Mary was the most suitable addition to his household, but she spoke English and Appah Rao was shrewd enough to reckon that a command of English would be a profitable accomplishment in Mysore's future and he had three sons who would have to survive in
that future. “In time,” Rao told Mary, “you can join your man, but it's best he should settle in first.”
But now, after a week in the General's household, Mary did not want to leave. For a start the house was filled with women who had taken her into their care and treated her with a kindness that astonished her. The General's wife, Lakshmi, was a tall plump woman with prematurely gray hair and an infectious laugh. She had two grown unmarried daughters and, though there was a score of female servants, Mary was surprised to discover that Lakshmi and her daughters shared the work of the big house. They did not sweep it or draw waterâthose tasks were for the lowest of the servantsâbut Lakshmi loved to be in the kitchen from where her laughter rippled out into the rest of the house.