Sharpe's Triumph: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

by Bernard Cornwell

  Simone seemed startled by the question. She blushed and looked up at Lieutenant Sillière. “I shall stay here, Colonel,” she answered in English.

  “Make sure you bring her safely home, Major,” Pohlmann said to Dodd.

  “I shall, sir.”

  Pohlmann stood. His purple-coated bodyguards, who had been standing in front of the tent, hurried to take their places on the elephant’s flanks while the mahout, who had been resting in the animal’s capacious shade, now mounted the somnolent beast by gripping its tail and clambering up its backside like a sailor swarming up a rope. He edged past the gilded howdah, took his seat on the elephant’s neck and turned the beast towards Pohlmann’s tent. “Are you sure”—Pohlmann turned back to Simone Joubert—“that you would not prefer to travel with me? The howdah is so comfortable, as long as you do not suffer from seasickness.”

  “I shall stay with my husband,” Simone said. She had stood and proved to be much taller than Dodd had supposed. Tall and somewhat gawky, he thought, but she still possessed an odd attraction.

  “A good woman should stay with her husband,” Pohlmann said, “or someone’s husband, anyway.” He turned to Dodd. “I shall see you in a few days, Major, with your new regiment. Don’t let me down.”

  “I won’t, sir, I won’t,” Dodd promised as, holding his new sword, he watched his new commander climb the silver steps to the howdah. He had a regiment to save and a reputation to make, and by God, Dodd thought, he would do both things well.

  CHAPTER•2

  Sharpe sat in the open shed where the armory stored its gun carriages. It had started to rain, though it was not the sheeting downpour of the monsoon, just a miserable steady gray drizzle that turned the mud in the yard into a slippery coating of red slime. Major Stokes, beginning the afternoon in a clean red coat, white silk stock and polished boots, paced obsessively about a newly made carriage. “It really wasn’t your fault, Sharpe,” he said.

  “Feels like it, sir.”

  “It would, it would!” Stokes said. “Reflects well on you, Sharpe, ‘pon my soul, it does. But it weren’t your fault, not in any manner.”

  “Lost all six men, sir. And young Davi.”

  “Poor Hedgehog,” Stokes said, squatting to peer along the trail of the carriage. “You reckon that timber’s straight, Sharpe? Bit hog-backed, maybe?”

  “Looks straight to me, sir.”

  “Ain’t tight-grained, this oak, ain’t tight-grained,” the Major said, and he began to unbuckle his sword belt. Every morning and afternoon his servant sent him to the armory in carefully laundered and pressed clothes, and within an hour Major Stokes would be stripped down to breeches and shirtsleeves and have his hands full of spokeshaves or saws or awls or adzes. “Like to see a straight trail,” he said. “There’s a number four spokeshave on the wall, Sharpe, be a good fellow.”

  “You want me to sharpen it, sir?”

  “I did it last night, Sharpe. I put a lovely edge on her.” Stokes unpeeled his red jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “Timber don’t season here properly, that’s the trouble.” He stooped to the new carriage and began running the spokeshave along the trail, leaving curls of new white wood to fall away. “I’m mending a clock,” he told Sharpe while he worked, “a lovely-made piece, all but for some crude local gearing. Have a look at it. It’s in my office.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “And I’ve found some new timber for axletrees, Sharpe. It’s really quite exciting!”

  “They’ll still break, sir,” Sharpe said gloomily, then scooped up one of the many cats that lived in the armory. He put the tabby on his lap and stroked her into a contented purr.

  “Don’t be so doom-laden, Sharpe! We’ll solve the axletree problem yet. It’s only a question of timber, nothing but timber. There, that looks better.” The Major stepped back from his work and gave it a critical look. There were plenty of Indian craftsmen employed in the armory, but Major Stokes liked to do things himself, and besides, most of the Indians were busy preparing for the feast of Dusshera which involved manufacturing three giant-sized figures that would be paraded to the Hindu temple and there burned. Those Indians were busy in another open-sided shed where they had glue bubbling on a fire, and some of the men were pasting lengths of pale cloth onto a wicker basket that would form one of the giants’ heads. Stokes was fascinated by their activity and Sharpe knew it would not be long before the Major joined them. “Did I tell you a sergeant was here looking for you this morning?” Stokes asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Came just before dinner,” Stokes said, “a strange sort of fellow.” The Major stooped to the trail and attacked another section of wood. “He twitched, he did.”

  “Obadiah Hakeswill,” Sharpe said.

  “I think that was his name. Didn’t seem very important,” Stokes said. “Said he was just visiting town and looking up old companions. D’you know what I was thinking?”

  “Tell me, sir,” Sharpe said, wondering why in holy hell Obadiah Hakeswill had been looking for him. For nothing good, that was certain.

  “Those teak beams in the Tippoo’s old throne room,” Stokes said, “they’ll be seasoned well enough. We could break out a half-dozen of the things and make a batch of axletrees from them!”

  “The gilded beams, sir?” Sharpe asked.

  “Soon have the gilding off them, Sharpe. Plane them down in two shakes!”

  “The Rajah may not like it, sir,” Sharpe said.

  Stokes’s face fell. “There is that, there is that. A fellow don’t usually like his ceilings being pulled down to make gun carriages. Still, the Rajah’s usually most obliging if you can get past his damned courtiers. The clock is his. Strikes eight when it should ring nine, or perhaps it’s the other way around. You reckon that quoin’s true?”

  Sharpe glanced at the wedge which lowered and raised the cannon barrel. “Looks good, sir.”

  “I might just plane her down a shade. I wonder if our templates are out of true? We might check that. Isn’t this rain splendid? The flowers were wilting, wilting! But I’ll have a fine show this year with a spot of rain. You must come and see them.”

  “You still want me to stay here, sir?” Sharpe asked.

  “Stay here?” Stokes, who was placing the quoin in a vice, turned to look at Sharpe. “Of course I want you to stay here, Sergeant. Best man I’ve got!”

  “I lost six men, sir.”

  “And it wasn’t your fault, not your fault at all. I’ll get you another six.”

  Sharpe wished it was that easy, but he could not chase the guilt of Chasalgaon out of his mind. When the massacre was finished he had wandered about the fort in a half-daze. Most of the women and children still lived, but they had been frightened and had shrunk away from him. Captain Roberts, the second in command of the fort, had returned from patrol that afternoon and he had vomited when he saw the horror inside the cactus-thorn wall.

  Sharpe had made his report to Roberts who had sent it by messenger to Hurryhur, the army’s headquarters, then dismissed Sharpe. “There’ll be an inquiry, I suppose,” Roberts had told Sharpe, “so doubtless your evidence will be needed, but you might as well wait in Seringapatam.” And so Sharpe, with no other orders, had walked home. He had returned the bag of rupees to Major Stokes, and now, obscurely, he wanted some punishment from the Major, but Stokes was far more concerned about the angle of the quoin. “I’ve seen screws shatter because the angle was too steep, and it ain’t no good having broken screws in battle. I’ve seen Frog guns with metaled quoins, but they only rust. Can’t trust a Frog to keep them greased, you see. You’re brooding, Sharpe.”

  “Can’t help it, sir.”

  “Doesn’t do to brood. Leave brooding to poets and priests, eh? Those sorts of fellows are paid to brood. You have to get on with life. What could you have done?”

  “Killed one of the bastards, sir.”

  “And they’d have killed you, and you wouldn’t have liked that and nor would I. Look at that angl
e! Look at that! I do like a fine angle, I declare I do. We must check it against the templates. How’s your head?”

  “Mending, sir.” Sharpe touched the bandage that wrapped his forehead. “No pain now, sir.”

  “Providence, Sharpe, that’s what it is, providence. The good Lord in His ineffable mercy wanted you to live.” Stokes released the vice and restored the quoin to the carriage. “A touch of paint on that trail and it’ll be ready. You think the Rajah might give me one roof beam?”

  “No harm in asking him, sir.”

  “I will, I will. Ah, a visitor.” Stokes straightened as a horseman, swathed against the rain in an oilcloth cape and with an oilcloth cover on his cocked hat, rode into the armory courtyard leading a second horse by the reins. The visitor kicked his feet from the stirrups, swung down from the saddle, then tied both horses’ reins to one of the shed’s pillars. Major Stokes, his clothes just in their beginning stage of becoming dirty and disheveled, smiled at the tall newcomer whose cocked hat and sword betrayed he was an officer. “Come to inspect us, have you?” the Major demanded cheerfully. “You’ll discover chaos! Nothing in the right place, records all muddled, woodworm in the timber stacks, damp in the magazines and the paint completely addled.”

  “Better that paint is addled than wits,” the newcomer said, then took off his cocked hat to reveal a head of white hair.

  Sharpe, who had been sitting on one of the finished gun carriages, shot to his feet, tipping the surprised cat into the Major’s wood shavings. “Colonel McCandless, sir!”

  “Sergeant Sharpe!” McCandless responded. The Colonel shook water from his cocked hat and turned to Stokes. “And you, sir?”

  “Major Stokes, sir, at your service, sir. Horace Stokes, commander of the armory and, as you see, carpenter to His Majesty.”

  “You will forgive me, Major Stokes, if I talk to Sergeant Sharpe?” McCandless shed his oilskin cape to reveal his East India Company uniform. “Sergeant Sharpe and I are old friends.”

  “My pleasure, Colonel,” Stokes said. “I have business in the foundry. They’re pouring too fast. I tell them all the time! Fast pouring just bubbles the metal, and bubbled metal leads to disaster, but they won’t listen. Ain’t like making temple bells, I tell them, but I might as well save my breath.” He glanced wistfully towards the happy men making the giant’s head for the Dusshera festival. “And I have other things to do,” he added.

  “I’d rather you didn’t leave, Major,” McCandless said very formally. “I suspect what I have to say concerns you. It is good to see you, Sharpe.”

  “You, too, sir,” Sharpe said, and it was true. He had been locked in the Tippoo’s dungeons with Colonel Hector McCandless and if it was possible for a sergeant and a colonel to be friends, then a friendship existed between the two men. McCandless, tall, vigorous and in his sixties, was the East India Company’s head of intelligence for all southern and western India, and in the last four years he and Sharpe had talked a few times whenever the Colonel passed through Seringapatam, but those had been social conversations and the Colonel’s grim face suggested that this meeting was anything but social.

  “You were at Chasalgaon?” McCandless demanded.

  “I was, sir, yes.”

  “So you saw Lieutenant Dodd?”

  Sharpe nodded. “Won’t ever forget the bastard. Sorry, sir.” He apologized because McCandless was a fervent Christian who abhorred all foul language. The Scotsman was a stern man, honest as a saint, and Sharpe sometimes wondered why he liked him so much. Maybe it was because McCandless was always fair, always truthful and could talk to any man, rajah or sergeant, with the same honest directness.

  “I never met Lieutenant Dodd,” McCandless said, “so describe him to me.”

  “Tall, sir, and thin like you or me.”

  “Not like me,” Major Stokes put in.

  “Sort of yellow-faced,” Sharpe went on, “as if he’d had the fever once. Long face, like he ate something bitter.” He thought for a second. He had only caught a few glimpses of Dodd, and those had been sideways. “He’s got lank hair, sir, when he took off his hat. Brown hair. Long nose on him, like Sir Arthur’s, and a bony chin. He’s calling himself Major Dodd now, sir, not Lieutenant. I heard one of his men call him Major.”

  “And he killed every man in the garrison?” McCandless asked.

  “He did, sir. Except me. I was lucky.”

  “Nonsense, Sharpe!” McCandless said. “The hand of the Lord was upon you.”

  “Amen,” Major Stokes intervened.

  McCandless stared broodingly at Sharpe. The Colonel had a hard-planed face with oddly blue eyes. He was forever claiming that he wanted to retire to his native Scotland, but he always found some reason to stay on in India. He had spent much of his life riding the states that bordered the land administered by the Company, for his job was to explore those lands and report their threats and weaknesses to his masters. Little happened in India that escaped McCandless, but Dodd had escaped him, and Dodd was now McCandless’s concern. “We have placed a price on his head,” the Colonel said, “of five hundred guineas.”

  “Bless me!” Major Stokes said in astonishment.

  “He’s a murderer,” McCandless went on. “He killed a goldsmith in Seedesegur, and he should be facing trial, but he ran instead and I want you, Sharpe, to help me catch him. And I’m not pursuing the rogue because I want the reward money; in fact I’ll refuse it. But I do want him, and I want your help.”

  Major Stokes began to protest, saying that Sharpe was his best man and that the armory would go to the dogs if the Sergeant was taken away, but McCandless shot the amiable Major a harsh look that was sufficient to silence him.

  “I want Lieutenant Dodd captured,” McCandless said implacably, “and I want him tried, and I want him executed, and I need someone who will know him by sight.”

  Major Stokes summoned the courage to continue his objections. “But I need Sergeant Sharpe,” he protested. “He organizes everything! The duty rosters, the stores, the pay chest, everything!”

  “I need him more,” McCandless snarled, turning on the hapless Major. “Do you know how many Britons are in India, Major? Maybe twelve thousand, and less than half of those are soldiers. Our power does not rest on the shoulders of white men, Major, but on the muskets of our sepoys. Nine men out of every ten who invade the Mahratta states will be sepoys, and Lieutenant Dodd persuaded over a hundred of those men to desert! To desert! Can you imagine our fate if the other sepoys follow them? Scindia will shower Dodd’s men with gold, Major, with lucre and with spoil, in the hope that others will follow them. I have to stop that, and I need Sharpe.”

  Major Stokes recognized the inevitable. “You will bring him back, sir?”

  “If it is the Lord’s will, yes. Well, Sergeant? Will you come with me?”

  Sharpe glanced at Major Stokes who shrugged, smiled, then nodded his permission. “I’ll come, sir,” Sharpe said to the Scotsman.

  “How soon can you be ready?”

  “Ready now, sir.” Sharpe indicated the newly issued pack and musket that lay at his feet.

  “You can ride a horse?”

  Sharpe frowned. “I can sit on one, sir.”

  “Good enough,” the Scotsman said. He pulled on his oilcloth cape, then untied the two reins and gave one set to Sharpe. “She’s a docile thing, Sharpe, so don’t saw on her bit.”

  “We’re going right now, sir?” Sharpe asked, surprised by the suddenness of it all.

  “Right now,” McCandless said. “Time waits for no man, Sharpe, and we have a traitor and a murderer to catch.” He pulled himself into his saddle and watched as Sharpe clumsily mounted the second horse.

  “So where are you going?” Stokes asked McCandless.

  “Ahmednuggur first, and after that God will decide.” The Colonel touched his horse’s flanks with his spurs and Sharpe, his pack hanging from one shoulder and his musket slung on the other, followed.

  He would redeem himself for the failu
re at Chasalgaon. Not with punishment, but with something better: with vengeance.

  Major William Dodd ran a white-gloved finger down the spoke of a gunwheel. He inspected his fingertip and nearly nine hundred men, or at least as many of the nine hundred on parade who could see the Major, inspected him in return.

  No mud or dust on the glove. Dodd straightened his back and glowered at the gun crews, daring any man to show pleasure in having achieved a near perfect turn-out. It had been hard work, too, for it had rained earlier in the day and the regiment’s five guns had been dragged through the muddy streets to the parade ground just inside Ahmednuggur’s southern gate, but the gunners had still managed to clean their weapons meticulously. They had removed every scrap of mud, washed the mahogany trails, then polished the barrels until their alloy of copper and tin gleamed like brass.

  Impressive, Dodd thought, as he peeled off the glove. Pohlmann had left Ahmednuggur, retreating north to join his compoo to Scindia’s gathering army, and Dodd had ordered this surprise inspection of his new command. He had given the regiment just one hour’s notice, but so far he had found nothing amiss. They were impressive indeed; standing in four long white-coated ranks with their four cannon and single howitzer paraded at the right flank. The guns themselves, despite their gleam, were pitiful things. The four field guns were mere four-pounders, while the fifth was a five-inch howitzer, and not one of the pieces fired a ball of real weight. Not a killing ball. “Peashooters!” Dodd said disparagingly.

  “Monsieur?” Captain Joubert, the Frenchman who had desperately hoped to be given command of the regiment himself, asked.

  “You heard me, Monsewer. Peashooters!” Dodd said as he lifted a limber’s lid and hoisted out one of the four-pounder shots. It was half the size of a cricket ball. “You might as well spit at them, Monsewer!”

  Joubert, a small man, shrugged. “At close range, Monsieur . . .” he began to defend the guns.

  “At close range, Monsewer, close range!” Dodd tossed the shot to Joubert who fumbled the catch. “That’s no use at close range! No more use than a musket ball, and the gun’s ten times more cumbersome than a musket.” He rummaged through the limber. “No canister? No grape?”