Sharpe's Tiger (26 page)

It had been Lakshmi who had scolded Mary for being so dirty, had stripped her from her western clothes, forced her into a bath, and there untangled and washed her filthy hair. “You'd be beautiful if you took some trouble,” Lakshmi had said.

“I didn't want to draw attention to myself.”

“When you're my age, my dear, no one pays you any attention at all, so you should take all you can get while you're young. You say you're a widow?”

“He was an Englishman,” Mary said nervously, explaining the lack of the marriage mark on her forehead and worried lest the older woman thought she should have thrown herself onto her husband's pyre.

“Well, you're a free woman now, so let's make you expensive.” Lakshmi laughed and then, helped by her daughters, she first brushed and then combed Mary's hair, drawing it back and then gathering it into a bun at the nape of her neck. A cheerful maid brought in an armful of clothes and the women tossed
cholis
at her. “Choose one,” Lakshmi said. The
choli
was a brief blouse that covered Mary's breasts,
shoulders and upper arms, but left most of her back naked and Mary instinctively selected the most modest, but Lakshmi would have none of it. “That lovely pale skin of yours, show it off!” she said, and chose a brief
choli
patterned in extravagant swirls of scarlet flowers and yellow leaves. Lakshmi tugged the short sleeves straight. “So why did you run with those two men?” Lakshmi asked.

“There was a man back in the army. A bad man. He wanted to” Mary stopped and shrugged. “You know.”

“Soldiers!” Lakshmi said disapprovingly. “But the two men you ran away with, did they treat you well?”

“Yes, oh yes.” Mary suddenly wanted Lakshmi's good opinion, and that opinion would not be good if she thought that Mary had run from the army with a lover. “One of them”—she told the lie shyly—”is my half-brother.”

“Ah!” Lakshmi said as though everything was clear now. Her husband had told her that Mary had run with her lover, but Lakshmi decided to accept Mary's story. “And the other man?” she asked.

“He's just a friend of my brother's.” Mary blushed at the lie, but Lakshmi did not seem to notice. “They were both protecting me,” Mary explained.

“That's good. That's good. Now, this.” She held out a white petticoat that Mary stepped into. Lakshmi laced it tight at the back, then began hunting through the pile of saris. “Green,” she said, “that'll suit you,” and she unfolded a vast bolt of green silk that was four feet wide and over twenty feet long. “You know how to wear a sari?” Lakshmi asked.

“My mother taught me.”

“In Calcutta?” Lakshmi hooted. “What do they know of saris in Calcutta? Skimpy little northern things, that's all they are. Here, let me.” Lakshmi wrapped the first length of sari about Mary's slender waist and tucked it firmly into the petticoat's waistband, then she wrapped a further length about
the girl, but this she skillfully flicked into pleated folds that were again firmly anchored in the petticoat's waistband. Mary could easily have done the job herself, but Lakshmi took such pleasure in it that it would have been cruel to have denied her. By the time the pleats were tucked in about half of the sari had been used up, and the rest Lakshmi looped over Mary's left shoulder, then tugged at the silk so that it fell in graceful folds. Then she stepped back. “Perfect! Now you can come and help us in the kitchens. We'll burn those old clothes.”

In the mornings Mary taught the General's three small boys English. They were bright children and learned quickly and the hours passed pleasantly enough. In the afternoons she helped in the household chores, but in the early evening it was her job to light the oil lamps about the house and it was that duty that threw Mary into the company of Kunwar Singh who, at about the same time as the lamps were lit, went around the house ensuring that the shutters were barred and the outer doors and gates either locked or guarded. He was the chief of Appah Rao's bodyguard, but his duties were more concerned with the household than with the General who had enough soldiers surrounding him wherever he went in the city. Kunwar Singh, Mary learned, was a distant relation of the General, but there was something oddly sad about the tall young man whose manners were so courteous but also so distant.

“We don't talk about it,” Lakshmi said to Mary one afternoon when they were both hulling rice.

“I'm sorry I asked.”

“His father was disgraced, you see,” Lakshmi went on enthusiastically. “And so the whole family was disgraced. Kunwar's father managed some of our land near Sedasseer, and he stole from us! Stole! And when he was found out, instead of throwing himself on my husband's mercy, he
became a bandit. The Tippoo's men caught him in the end and cut his head off. Poor Kunwar. It's hard to live down that sort of disgrace.”

“Is it a worse disgrace than having been married to an Englishman?” Mary asked miserably, for somehow, in this lively house, she did feel obscurely ashamed. She was half English herself, hut under Lakshmi's swamping affection, she kept remembering her mother who had been rejected by her own people for marrying an Englishman.

“A disgrace? Married to an Englishman? What nonsense you do talk, girl!” Lakshmi said, and the next day she took care to send Mary to deliver a present of food to the young deposed Rajah of Mysore who survived at the Tippoo's mercy in a small house just east of the Inner Palace. “But you can't go alone,” Lakshmi said, “not with the streets full of soldiers. Kunwar!” And Lakshmi saw the blush of happiness on Mary's face as she set off in the tall Kunwar Singh's protective company.

Mary was happy, but she felt guilty. She knew she ought to try and find Sharpe for she suspected he must be missing her, but she was suddenly so content in Appah Rao's household that she did not want to disturb that happiness by returning to her old world. She felt at home and, though the city was surrounded by enemies, she felt oddly safe. One day, she supposed, she would have to find Sharpe, and perhaps everything would turn out well on that day, but Mary did nothing to hasten it. She just felt guilty and made sure that she did not start lighting the lamps until she heard the first shutter bar fall.

And Lakshmi, who had been wondering just where she might find poor disgraced Kunwar Singh a suitable bride, chuckled.

Once the British and Hyderabad armies had made their permanent encampment to the west of Seringapatam the siege settled into a pattern that both sides recognized. The allied armies stayed well out of the range of even the largest cannon on the city's wall and far beyond the reach of any rocket, but they established a picquet line facing an earth-banked aqueduct that wended its way through the fields about a mile west of the city and there they posted some field artillery and infantry to cover the land across which they would dig their approach ditches. The sooner those ditches were begun the sooner the breaching batteries could be built, but to the south of that chosen ground the steeply banked aqueduct made a deep loop that penetrated a half-mile westward and the inside of that bend was filled by a
tope
, a thick wood, and from its leafy cover the Tippoo's men kept up a galling musket fire on the British picquet line, while his roeketmen rained an erratic but troublesome barrage of missiles onto the forward British works. One lucky rocket streaked a thousand yards to hit an ammunition limber and the resultant explosion caused a cheer to sound from the distant walls of the city.

General Harris endured the rocket bombardment for two days, then decided it was time to capture the whole length of the aqueduct and clear the
tope
. Orders were written and trickled down from general to colonel to captains, and the captains sought out their sergeants. “Get the men ready, Sergeant,” Morris told Hakeswill.

Hakeswill was sitting in his own tent, a luxury he alone enjoyed among the 33rd's sergeants. The tent had belonged to Captain Hughes and should have been auctioned with the rest of the Captain's belongings after Hughes died of the fever, but Hakeswill had simply claimed the tent and no one had liked to cross him. His servant Raziv, a miserable half-witted creature from Calcutta, was polishing Hakeswill's
boots so the Sergeant had to come barefooted from his tent to face Morris. “Ready, sir?” he said. “They are ready, sir.” He stared suspiciously about the Light Company's lines. “Better be ready, sir, or we'll have the skin off the lot of them.” His face jerked.

“Sixty rounds of ammunition,” Morris said.

“Always carry it, sir! Regulations, sir!”

Morris had drunk the best part of three bottles of wine at luncheon and was in no mood to deal with Hakeswil's equivocations. He swore at the sergeant, then pointed south to where another rocket was smoking up from the
tope
. “Tonight, you idiot, we're cleaning those bastards out of those trees.”

“Us, sir?” Hakeswill was alarmed at the prospect. “Just us, sir?”

“The whole battalion. Night attack. Inspection at sundown. Any man who looks drunk gets flogged.”

Officers excepted, Hakeswill thought, then quivered as he offered Morris a cracking salute. “Sir! Inspection at sundown, sir. Permission to carry on, sir?” He did not wait for Morris's permission, but turned back into his tent. “Boots! Give ‘em here! Come on, you black bastard!” He gave Raziv a cuff round the ear and snatched his half-cleaned boots. He tugged them on, then dragged Raziv by the ear to where the halberd was planted like a banner in front of the tent. “Sharpen!” Hakeswill bawled in the unfortunate boy's bruised ear. “Sharpen! Understand, you toad-witted heathen? I want it sharp!” Hakeswill gave the boy a parting slap as an encouragement, then stumped off through the lines. “On your bleeding feet!” he shouted. “Look lively now! Time to earn your miserable pay. Are you drunk, Garrard? If you're drunk, boy, I'll have your bones given a stroking.”

The battalion paraded at dusk and, to its surprise, found itself being inspected by its Colonel, Arthur Wellesley. There
was a feeling of relief in the ranks when Wellesley appeared, for by now every man knew that they were due for a fight and none wished to go into battle under the uncertain leadership of Major Shee who had drunk so much arrack that he was visibly swaying on his horse. Wellesley might be a coldhearted bastard, but the men knew he was a careful soldier and they even looked cheerful as he trotted down their ranks on his white horse. Each man had to demonstrate possession of sixty cartridges, and those who failed had their names taken for punishment. Two sepoy battalions from the East India Company's forces paraded behind the 33rd and, just as the sun disappeared behind them, all three battalions marched southeastward toward the aqueduct. Their colors were flying and Colonel Wellesley led them on horseback. Other King's battalions marched to their left, going to attack the northern stretch of the aqueduct.

“So what are we doing, Lieutenant?” Tom Garrard asked the newly promoted Lieutenant Fitzgerald.

“Silence in the ranks!” Hakeswill bawled.

“He was talking to me, Sergeant,” Fitzgerald said, “and you will do me the honor of not interfering in my private conversations.” Fitzgerald's retort improved the Irishman's stock with the company twentyfold. He was popular anyway, for he was a cheerful and easygoing young man.

Hakeswill growled. Fitzgerald claimed his brother was the Knight of Kerry, whatever the holy hell that was, but the claim did not impress Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. Proper officers left discipline to sergeants, they did not curry favor with the men by telling jokes and chatting away like magpies. It was also plain that Brevet-lieutenant bloody Fitzgerald did not like Sergeant Hakeswill for he took
every
chance he could to countermand Hakeswill's authority, and Hakeswill was determined to change that. The Sergeant's face twitched. There was nothing he could do at this moment, but
Mister Fitzgerald, he told himself, would be taught his lesson, and the sooner it was taught the better.

“You see those trees ahead?” Fitzgerald explained to Garrard. “We're going to clear the Tippoo's boys out of them.”

“How many of the bastards, sir?”

“Hundreds!” Fitzgerald answered cheerfully. “And all of them quaking at the knees to think that the Havercakes are coming to give them a thrashing.”

The Tippoo's boys might be quaking, but they could clearly see the three battalions approaching and their rocketmen sent up a fiery barrage in greeting. The missiles climbed through the darkening sky, their exhaust flames unnaturally bright as they spewed volcanoes of sparks into the smoke trails that mingled as the rockets reached their apogee and then plunged toward the British and Indian infantry. “No breaking ranks!” an officer shouted, and the three battalions marched stolidly on as the opening barrage plunged down to explode all around them. Some jeers greeted the barrage's inaccuracy, but the officers and sergeants shouted for silence. More rockets climbed and fell. Most screamed erratically off course, but a few came close enough to make men duck, and one exploded just a few feet from the 33rd's Light Company so that the sharp-edged scraps of its shattered tin nose cone whistled about their ears. Men laughed at their narrow escape, then someone saw that Lieutenant Fitzgerald was staggering. “Sir!”