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

by Bernard Cornwell

  Simone was half laughing and half afraid that the landlord would exact a terrible vengeance. “Pierre was afraid of him,” she explained, “and he knows we are poor.”

  “You’re not poor, love, you’re with me,” Sharpe said.

  “Rich Richard?” Simone said, pleased to have made a joke in a foreign language.

  “Richer then you know, love. How much thread is left?”

  “Thread? Ah, for the needle. You have plenty, why?”

  “Because, my love, you can do me a favor,” he said, and he stripped off his pack, his belt and his jacket. “I’m not that handy with a needle,” he explained. “I can patch and darn, of course, but what I need now is some fine needlework. Real fine.” He sat, and Simone, intrigued, sat opposite and watched as he tipped out the contents of his pack. There were two spare shirts, his spare foot cloths, a blacking ball, a brush and the tin of flour he was supposed to use on his clubbed hair, though ever since he had ridden from Seringapatam with McCandless he had let his hair go unpowdered. He took out his stock, which he had similarly abandoned, then the copy of Gulliver’s Travels that Mister Lawford had given him so he could practice his reading. He had neglected that lately, and the book was damp and had lost some of its pages. “You can read?” Simone asked, touching the book with a tentative finger.

  “I’m not very good.”

  “I like to read.”

  “Then you can help me get better, eh?” Sharpe said, and he pulled out the folded piece of leather that was for repairing his shoes, and beneath that was a layer of sacking. He took that out, then tipped the rest of the pack’s contents onto the table. Simone gasped. There were rubies and emeralds and pearls, there was gold and more emeralds and sapphires and diamonds and one great ruby half the size of a hen’s egg. “The thing is,” Sharpe said, “that there’s bound to be a battle before this Scindia fellow learns his lesson, and as like as not we won’t wear packs in a battle, on account of them being too heavy, see? So I don’t want to leave this lot in my pack to be looted by some bastard of a baggage guard.”

  Simone touched one of the stones, then looked up at Sharpe with wonderment in her eyes. He was not sure that it was wise to show her the treasure, for such things were best kept very secret, but he knew he was trying to impress her, and it was evident that he had. “Yours?” she asked.

  “All mine,” he said.

  Simone shook her blonde head in amazement, then began arranging the stones into ranks and files. She formed platoons of emeralds, platoons of rubies and another of pearls, there was a company of sapphires and a skirmish line of diamonds, and all of them were commanded by the great ruby. “That belonged to the Tippoo Sultan,” Sharpe said, touching the ruby. “He wore it in his hat.”

  “The Tippoo? He’s dead, isn’t he?” Simone asked.

  “And me it was who killed him,” Sharpe said proudly. “It wasn’t really a hat, it was a cloth helmet, see? And the ruby was right in the middle, and he reckoned he couldn’t die because the hat had been dipped in the fountain of Zum-Zum.”

  Simone smiled. “Zum-Zum?”

  “It’s in Mecca. Wherever the hell Mecca is. Didn’t work, though. I put a bullet in his skull, right through the bloody hat. Might as well have dunked it in the Thames for all the good it did him.”

  “You are rich!” Simone said.

  The problem was how to stay rich. Sharpe had not had time to make false compartments in the new pack and pouch that had replaced those he had burned at Chasalgaon, and so he had kept the stones loose in his pack. He had a layer of emeralds at the bottom of his new cartridge pouch, where they would be safe enough, but he needed secure hiding places for the other jewels. He gave a file of diamonds to Simone and she tried to refuse, then shyly accepted the stones and held one against the side of her nose where fashionable Indian women often wore just such a jewel. “How does it look?” she asked.

  “Like a piece of expensive snot.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s beautiful,” she said. She peered at the diamond that still had its black velvet backing so that the stone would shine more brightly, then she opened her purse. “Are you sure?”

  “Go on, girl, take them.”

  “How do I explain them to Pierre?”

  “You say you found them on a dead body after the fight. He’ll believe that.” He watched her put the diamonds in the purse. “I have to hide the rest,” he explained to her. He reckoned some of the stones could go in his canteen, where they would rattle a bit when it was dry, and he would have to take care when drinking in case he swallowed a fortune, but that still left a mound of gems unhidden. He used his knife to slit open a seam of his red coat and began feeding the small rubies into the slot, but the stones bunched along the bottom hem and the bulge was an advertisement to every soldier that he was carrying plunder. “See what I mean?” He showed Simone the bulging seam.

  She took the coat, fetched Sharpe’s sewing kit from the bedroom, and then began to trap each gem in its own small pouch of the opened seam. The job took her all afternoon, and when she was finished the red coat was twice as heavy. The most difficult stone to hide was the huge ruby, but Sharpe solved that by unwinding his long hair from the shot-weighted bag that clubbed it, then slitting open the bag and emptying the shot. He filled the bag with the ruby and with whatever small stones were left, then Simone rewound his hair about the bag. By nightfall the jewels had vanished.

  They ate by lamplight. The bath had never been filled, but Simone said she had taken one a week before so it did not matter. Sharpe had made a brief excursion in the dusk and had returned with two clay bottles filled with arrack, and they drank the liquor in the gloom. They talked, they laughed, and at last the oil in the lamp ran dry and the flame flickered out to leave the room lit by shafts of moonlight coming through the filigree shutters. Simone had fallen silent and Sharpe knew she was thinking of bed. “I brought you some sheets.” He pointed to the saris.

  She looked up at him from under her fringe. “And where will you sleep, Sergeant Sharpe?”

  “I’ll find a place, love.”

  It was the first time he had slept in silk, not that he noticed, so showing her the gems had not been such a bad idea after all.

  He woke to the crowing of cockerels and the bang of a twelve-pounder gun, a reminder that the world and the war went on.

  Major Stokes had decided that the real problem with the Rajah’s clock was its wooden bearings. They swelled in damp weather, and he was happily contemplating the problem of making a new set of bearings out of brass when the twitching Sergeant reappeared in his office. “You again,” the Major greeted him. “Can’t remember your name.”

  “Hakeswill, sir. Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.”

  “Punishment on Edom, eh?” the Major said, wondering whether to cast or drill the brass.

  “Edom, sir? Edom?”

  “The prophet Obadiah, Sergeant, foretells punishment on Edom,” the Major said. “He threatened it with fire and captivity, as I recall.”

  “He doubtless had his reasons, sir,” Hakeswill said, his face jerking in its uncontrollable spasms, “like I have mine. It’s Sergeant Sharpe I’m after, sir.”

  “Not here, Sergeant, alas. The place falls apart!”

  “He’s gone, sir?” Hakeswill demanded.

  “Summoned away, Sergeant, by higher authority. Not my doing, not my doing at all. If it was up to me I’d keep Sharpe here for ever, but a Colonel McCandless demanded him and when colonels demand, mere majors comply. So far as I know, which isn’t much, they went to join General Wellesley’s forces.” The Major was now rummaging through a wooden chest. “We had some fine augers, I know. Same ones we use on touch-holes. Not that we ever did. Haven’t had to rebore a touch-hole yet.”

  “McCandless, sir?”

  “A Company colonel, but still a colonel. I’ll need a round-file, too, I suspect.”

  “I knows Colonel McCandless, sir,” Hakeswill said gloomily. He had shared the Tippoo’s dungeon
s with McCandless and Sharpe, and he knew the Scotsman disliked him. Which did not matter by itself, for Hakeswill did not like McCandless either, but the Scotsman was a colonel and, as Major Stokes had intimated, when colonels demand, other men obey. Colonel McCandless, Hakeswill decided, could be a problem. But a problem that could wait. The urgent need was to catch up with Sharpe. “Do you have any convoys going north, sir? To the army, sir?”

  “One leaves tomorrow,” Stokes said helpfully, “carrying ammunition. But have you authority to travel?”

  “I have authority, sir, I have authority.” Hakeswill touched the pouch where he kept the precious warrant. He was angry that Sharpe had gone, but knew there was little point in displaying the anger. The thing was to catch up with the quarry, and then God would smile on Obadiah Hakeswill’s fortunes.

  He explained as much to his detail of six men as they drank in one of Seringapatam’s soldiers’ taverns. So far the six men only knew that they were ordered to arrest Sergeant Sharpe, but Hakeswill had long worked out that he needed to share more information with his chosen men if they were to follow him enthusiastically, especially if they were to follow him northwards to where Wellesley was fighting the Mahrattas. Hakeswill considered them all good men, by which he meant that they were all cunning, violent and biddable, but he still had to make sure of their loyalty. “Sharpie’s rich,” he told them. “Drinks when he likes, whores when he likes. He’s rich.”

  “He works in the stores,” Private Kendrick explained. “Always on the fiddle, the stores.”

  “And he never gets caught? He can’t be fiddling that much,” Hakeswill said, his face twitching. “You want to know the truth of Dick Sharpe? I’ll tell you. He was the lucky bugger what caught the Tippoo at Seringapatam.”

  “’Course he weren’t!” Flaherty said.

  “So who was it?” Hakeswill challenged them. “And why was Sharpie made up into a sergeant after the battle? He shouldn’t be a sergeant! He ain’t experienced.”

  “He fought well. That’s what Mister Lawford says.”

  “Mister bloody Lawford,” Hakeswill said scathingly. “Sharpie didn’t get noticed for fighting well! Bleeding hell, boys, I’d be a major-general if that’s all it took! No, it’s my belief he paid his way up to the stripes.”

  “Paid?” The privates stared at Hakeswill.

  “Stands to reason. No other way. Says so in the scriptures! Bribes, boys, bribes, and I knows where he got the money. I know ‘cos I followed him once. Here in Seringapatam. Down to the goldsmiths’ street, he went, and he did his business and after he done it I went to see the fellow he did it with. He didn’t want to tell me what the business was, but I thumped him a bit, friendly like, and he showed me a ruby. Like this it was!” The Sergeant held a finger and thumb a quarter-inch apart. “Sharpie was selling it, see? And where does Sharpie get a prime bit of glitter?”

  “Off the Tippoo?” Kendrick said wonderingly.

  “And do you know how much loot the Tippoo had? Weighed down with it, he was! Had more stones on him than a Christmas whore, and you know where those stones are?”

  “Sharpe,” Flaherty breathed.

  “Right, Private Flaherty,” Hakeswill said. “Sewn into his uniform seams, in his boots, hidden in his pouches, tucked away in his hat. A bloody fortune, lads, which is why when we gets him, we don’t want him to get back to the battalion, do we?”

  The six men stared at Hakeswill. They knew they were his favorites, and all of them were in his debt, but now they realized he was giving them even more reason to be grateful. “Equal shares, Sergeant?” Private Lowry asked.

  “Equal shares?” Hakeswill exclaimed. “Equal? Listen, you horrid toad, you wouldn’t have no chance of any share, not one, if it wasn’t for my loving kindness. Who chose you to come on this parish outing?”

  “You did, Sergeant.”

  “I did. I did. Kindness of my heart, and you repays it by wanting equal shares?” Hakeswill’s face shuddered. “I’ve half a mind to send you back, Lowry.” He looked aggrieved and the privates were silent. “Ingratitude,” Hakeswill said in a hurt voice, “sharp as a serpent’s tooth, it is. Equal shares! Never heard the like! But I’ll see you right, don’t you worry.” He took out the precious orders for Sharpe’s arrest and smoothed the paper on the table, carefully avoiding the spills of arrack. “Look at that, boys,” he breathed, “a fortune. Half for me, and you leprous toads get to share the other half. Equally.” He paused to prod Lowry in the chest. “Equally. But I gets one half, like it says in the scriptures.” He folded the paper and put it carefully in his pouch. “Shot while escaping,” Hakeswill said, and grinned. “I’ve waited four years for this chance, lads, four bloody years.” He brooded for a few seconds. “Put me in among the tigers, he did! Me! In a tigers’ den!” His face contorted in a rictus at the memory. “But they spared me, they spared me. And you know why? Because I can’t die, lads! Touched by God, I am! Says so in the scriptures.”

  The six privates were silent. Mad, he was, mad as a twitching hatter, and no one knew why hatters were mad either, but they were. Even the army was reluctant to recruit a hatter because they dribbled and twitched and talked to themselves, but they had taken on Hakeswill and he had survived; malevolent, powerful and apparently indestructible. Sharpe had put him among the Tippoo’s tigers, yet the tigers were dead and Hakeswill still breathed. He was a bad man to have as an enemy, and now the piece of paper in Hakeswill’s pouch put Sharpe into his power and Obadiah could taste the money already. A fortune. All that was needed was to travel north, join the army, produce the warrant and skin the victim. Obadiah shuddered. The money was so near he could almost spend it already. “Got him,” he said to himself, “got him. And I’ll piss on his rotten corpse, I will. Piss on it good. That’ll learn him.”

  The seven men left Seringapatam in the morning, traveling north.

  CHAPTER•5

  Sharpe was curiously relieved when Colonel McCandless found him next morning, for the mood in the small upper rooms was awkward. Simone seemed ashamed by what had happened in the night and, when Sharpe tried to speak to her, she shook her head abruptly and would not meet his eye. She did try to explain to him, mumbling about the arrack and the jewels, and about her disappointment in marriage, but she could not frame her words in adequate English, though no language was needed to show that she regretted what had happened, which was why Sharpe was glad to hear McCandless’s voice in the alley beyond the staircase. “I thought I told you to let me know where you were!” McCandless complained when Sharpe appeared at the top of the steps.

  “I did, sir,” Sharpe lied. “I told an ensign of the 78th to find you, sir.”

  “He never arrived!” McCandless said as he climbed the outside stairs. “Are you telling me you spent the night alone with this woman, Sergeant?”

  “You told me to protect her, sir.”

  “I didn’t tell you to risk her honor! You should have sought me out.”

  “Didn’t want to bother you, sir.”

  “Duty is never a bother, Sharpe,” McCandless said when he reached the small balcony at the stair head. “The General expressed a wish to dine with Madame Joubert and I had to explain she was indisposed. I lied, Sharpe!” The Colonel thrust an indignant finger at Sharpe’s chest. “But what else could I do? I could hardly admit I’d left her alone with a sergeant!”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “There’s no harm done, I suppose,” McCandless said grudgingly, then took off his hat as he followed Sharpe into the living room where Simone sat at the table. “Good morning, Madame,” the Colonel boomed cheerfully. “I trust you slept well?”

  “Indeed, Colonel,” Simone said, blushing, but McCandless was far too obtuse to see or to interpret the blush.

  “I have good news, Madame,” the Scotsman went on. “General Wellesley is agreeable that you should rejoin your husband. There is, however, a difficulty.” It was McCandless’s turn to blush. “I can provide no chaperone, Madame, and you do not
possess a maid. I assure you that you may rely utterly upon my honor, but your husband might object if you lack a female companion on the journey.”

  “Pierre will have no objection, Colonel,” Simone said meekly.

  “And I warrant Sergeant Sharpe will behave like a gentleman,” McCandless said with a fierce look at Sharpe.

  “He does, Colonel, he does,” Simone said, offering Sharpe a very shy glance.

  “Good!” McCandless said, relieved to be done with such a delicate topic. He slapped his cocked hat against his leg. “No rain again,” he declared, “and I dare say it’ll be a hot day. You can be ready to ride in an hour, Madame?”

  “In less, Colonel.”

  “One hour will suffice, Madame. You will do me the honor, perhaps, of meeting me by the north gate? I’ll have your horse ready, Sharpe.”

  They left promptly, riding northwards past the battery that had been dug to hammer the fort’s big walls. The battery’s four guns were mere twelve-pounders, scarce big enough to dent the fort’s wall, let alone break it down, but General Wellesley reckoned the garrison would be so disheartened by the city’s swift defeat that even a few twelve-pound shots might persuade them into surrender. The four guns had opened fire at dawn, but their firing was sporadic until McCandless led his party out of the city when they suddenly all fired at once and Simone’s horse, startled by the unexpected noise, skittered sideways. Simone rode side-saddle just behind the Colonel, while Sevajee and his men brought up the rear. Sharpe was wearing boots at last; the tall red leather boots with steel spurs that he had dragged from the body of an Arab.

  He glanced back as they rode away. He saw the huge jet of smoke burst from a twelve-pounder’s muzzle and a second later heard the percussive thump of the exploding charge and, just as that sound faded, a crack as the ball struck the wall of the fort. Then the other three guns fired and he imagined the steam hissing into the air as the gunners poured water on the overheated barrels. The fort’s red walls blossomed with smoke as the defenders’ cannon replied, but the pioneers had dug the gunners a deep battery and protected it with a thick wall of red earth, and the enemy’s fire wasted itself in those defenses. Then Sharpe rode past a grove of trees and the distant fight was hidden and the sound of the guns grew fainter and fainter as they rode farther north until, at last, the sound of the cannonade was a mere grumbling on the horizon. Then they dropped down the escarpment and the noise of the guns faded away altogether.