Sharpe's Tiger

by Bernard Cornwell

  Lawford ate his share, then wiped juice from his chin. 'Did you ever get that picklock, Sharpe?' he asked, saw Sharpe's furious glare, and coloured. 'Dick,' he corrected himself.

  'Had it all along,' Sharpe said. 'Mary's got it. And she's got the guinea.' He grinned despite his pain.

  'You mean you lied to General Baird?' Lawford asked sternly.

  ''Course I bloody lied!' Sharpe snarled. 'What kind of a fool admits to having a picklock?'

  For a moment Lawford looked as though he would reprove Sharpe for dishonesty, but the Lieutenant controlled the urge. He merely shook his head in mute disapproval, then sat with his back against the bare brick wall. The floor was made of small green tiles on which Sharpe lay on his belly. In minutes he was asleep. Mary sat beside him, sometimes stroking his hair and Lawford found himself embarrassed by her display of affection. He felt he ought to talk with Mary, but found he had nothing to say and so decided it was better not to speak in case he woke Sharpe. He waited. Somewhere deep in the palace a fountain splashed. Once there was a great clatter of hooves as cavalrymen led their horses out from the inner stables, but most of the time it was quiet in the room. It was also blessedly cool.

  Sharpe woke after dark. He groaned as the pains in his back registered and Mary hushed him. 'What time is it, love?' Sharpe asked her.

  'Late.'

  'Jesus,' Sharpe said as a stab of agony tore down his spine. He sat up, whimpering with the effort, and tried to prop himself against the wall. A wan moonlight came through the small barred window and Mary, in its dim light, could see the bloodstains spreading through the bandages and onto Sharpe's shirt. 'Have they forgotten us?' Sharpe asked.

  'No,' Mary said. 'They brought us some water while you were asleep. Here.' She lifted the jug towards him. 'And they gave us a bucket.' She gestured across the dim cell. 'For . . .' she faltered.

  'I can smell what the bucket's for,' Sharpe said. He took the jug and drank. Lawford was slumped against the far wall and there was a small open book facedown on the floor beside the sleeping Lieutenant. Sharpe grimaced. 'Glad the bugger's brought something useful,' he said to Mary.

  'You mean this?' Lawford said, indicating the book. He had not been asleep after all.

  Sharpe wished he had not used the insult, but did not know how to retrieve it. 'What is it?' he asked instead.

  'A Bible.'

  'Bloody hell,' Sharpe said.

  'You don't approve?' Lawford asked icily.

  'I had a bellyful of the good book when I was in the foundlings' home,' Sharpe said. 'If they weren't reading it to us they were hitting us round the head with it, and it wasn't some little book like that one, but a bloody great big thick thing. Could have stunned an ox, that Bible.'

  'Did they teach you to read it?' Lawford asked.

  'We weren't reckoned good enough to read. Good enough to pick hemp, we were, but not read. No, they just read it to us at breakfast. It was the same every morning: cold porridge, tin of water and an earful of Abraham and Isaac.'

  'So you can't read?' Lawford asked.

  'Of course I can't read!' Sharpe laughed scornfully. 'What the bloody hell's the use of reading?'

  'Don't be a fool, Dick,' Lawford said patiently. 'Only a fool takes pride in pretending that a skill he doesn't possess is worthless.' For a second Lawford was tempted to launch himself on a panegyric of reading; how it would open a new world to Sharpe, a world of drama and story and information and poetry and timeless wisdom, then he thought better of it. 'You want your sergeant's stripes, don't you?' he asked instead.

  'A man doesn't have to read to be a sergeant,' Sharpe said stubbornly.

  'No, but it helps, and you'll be a better sergeant if you can read. Otherwise the company clerks tell you what the reports say, and what the lists say, and what the punishment book says, and the quartermasters will rob you blind. But if you can read then you'll know when they're lying to you.'

  There was a long silence. Somewhere in the palace a sentry's footsteps echoed off stone, then came a sound so familiar that it almost made Lawford weep for homesickness. It was a clock striking the hour. Twelve o'clock. Midnight. 'Is it hard?' Sharpe finally asked.

  'Learning to read?' Lawford said. 'Not really.'

  'Then you and Mary had better teach me, Bill, hadn't you?'

  'Yes,' Lawford said. 'Yes. We had.'

  They were taken out of the guardroom in the morning. Four tiger-striped soldiers fetched them and pushed them down the arcade, then into a narrow corridor that seemed to run beside the kitchens, and afterwards through a shadowed tangle of stables and storerooms that led to a double gate which opened into a large courtyard where the bright sun made them blink. Then Sharpe's eyes adjusted to the brilliant daylight and he saw what waited for them in the courtyard, and he swore. There were six tigers, all of them huge beasts with yellow eyes and dirty teeth. The animals stared at the three newcomers, then one of the tigers rose, arched its back, shook himself, and slowly padded towards them. 'Jesus Christ!' Sharpe said, but just then the tiger's chain lifted from the dusty ground, stretched taut, and the tiger, cheated of its breakfast, growled and went back to the shadows. Another beast scratched itself, a third yawned. 'Look at the size of the bastards!' Sharpe said.

  'Just big pussy cats,' Lawford said with an insouciance he did not entirely feel.

  'Then you go and scratch their chins,' Sharpe said, 'and see if they purr. Bugger off, you.' This was to another curious beast that was straining towards him from the end of its chain. 'Need a big mouse to feed one of those bastards.'

  'The tigers can't reach you.' A voice spoke in English from behind them. 'Unless their keepers release them from their chains. Good morning.' Sharpe turned. A tall, middle-aged officer with a black moustache had come into the courtyard. He was a European and wore the blue uniform of France. 'I am Colonel Gudin,' the officer said, 'and you are?'

  For a moment none of them spoke, then Lawford straightened to attention. 'William Lawford, sir.'

  'His name's Bill,' Sharpe said. 'I'm called Dick, and this is my woman.' He put an arm round Mary's shoulder.

  Gudin grimaced as he looked at Mary's swollen black eye and her filthy skirts. 'You have a name'—he paused—'Mademoiselle?' He finally decided that was the most appropriate way to address Mary.

  'Mary, sir.' She made a small curtsey and Gudin returned the courtesy with an inclination of his head. 'And your name?' he asked Sharpe.

  'Sharpe, sir. Dick Sharpe.'

  'And you are deserters?' the Colonel asked with a measure of distaste.

  'Yes, sir,' Lawford said.

  'I am never certain that deserters are to be trusted,' Gudin said mildly. He was accompanied by a burly French sergeant who kept giving the tigers nervous glances. 'If a man can betray one flag,' Gudin observed, 'why not another?'

  'A man might have good reason to betray his flag, sir,' Sharpe said defiantly.

  'And your reason, Sharpe?'

  Sharpe turned round so that the blood on his back was visible. He let Gudin stare at the stains, then turned back. 'Is that good enough, sir?'

  Gudin shuddered. 'I never understand why the British flog their soldiers. It is barbarism.' He waved irritably at the flies which buzzed about his face. 'Sheer barbarism.'

  'You don't flog in the French army, sir?'

  'Of course not,' Gudin said scornfully. He put a hand on Sharpe's shoulder and turned him around again. 'When was this done to you?'

  'Couple of days ago, sir.'

  'Have you changed the bandages?'

  'No, sir. Wetted them, though.'

  'You'll still be dead in a week unless we do something,' Gudin said, then turned and spoke to the sergeant who walked briskly out of the courtyard. Gudin turned Sharpe around again. 'So what had you done to deserve such barbarism, Private Sharpe?'

  'Nothing, sir.'

  'Beyond nothing,' Gudin said tiredly, as though he had heard every excuse imaginable.

  'I hit a sergeant, sir.'

  'And y
ou?' Gudin challenged Lawford. 'Why did you run?'

  'They were going to flog me, sir.' Lawford was nervous telling the lie, and the nervousness intrigued Gudin.

  'For doing nothing?' Gudin asked with amusement.

  'For stealing a watch, sir.' Lawford reddened as he spoke. 'Which I did steal,' he added, but most unconvincingly. He had made no effort to hide the accent that betrayed his education, though whether Gudin's ear was sufficiently attuned to English to detect the nuance was another matter.

  The Frenchman was certainly intrigued by Lawford. 'What did you say your name was?' the Colonel asked.

  'Lawford, sir.'

  Gudin gave Lawford a long scrutiny. The Frenchman was tall and thin, with a lugubrious and tired face, but his eyes, Sharpe decided, were shrewd and kind. Gudin, Sharpe reckoned, was a gentleman, a proper type of officer. Like Lawford, really, and maybe that was the trouble. Maybe Gudin had already seen through Lawford's disguise. 'You do not seem to me, Private Lawford, to be a typical British soldier,' Gudin said, thus fulfilling Sharpe's fears. 'In France, now, you would be nothing strange for we must insist that every young man serve his country, but in Britain, am I not right, you only accept the dregs of the streets? Men from the gutter?'

  'Men like me,' Sharpe said.

  'Quiet,' Gudin reproved Sharpe with a sudden authority. 'I did not speak to you.' The Frenchman took one of Lawford's hands and mutely inspected the soft uncalloused fingers. 'How is it that you are in the army, Lawford?'

  'Father went bankrupt, sir,' Lawford said, conjuring the worst disaster that he could ever imagine.

  'But the son of a bankrupt father can take employment, can he not?' Gudin looked again at the soft fingers, then released Lawford's hand. 'And any job, surely, is better than the life of a British soldier?'

  'I got drunk, sir,' Lawford said miserably, 'and I met a recruiting sergeant.' The Lieutenant's misery was not at the imagined memory, but at the difficulty he was having in telling the lie, but his demeanour impressed Gudin. 'It was in a pub, sir, in Sheffield,' Lawford went on. 'The Hawse in the Lake, sir. In Sheffield, sir. In Pond Lane

  , sir, on market day.' His voice tailed away as he suddenly realized he did not know which day of the week the market was held.

  'In Sheffield?' Gudin asked. 'Is that not where they make iron? And—what is the word?—cutlery! You don't look like a cutler, Lawford.'

  'I was a lawyer's apprentice, sir.' Lawford was blushing violently. He knew he had mixed up the name of the pub, though it was doubtful that Colonel Gudin would ever know the difference, but the Lieutenant was certain his lies were as transparent as a pane of glass.

  'And your job in the army?' Gudin asked.

  'Company clerk, sir.'

  Gudin smiled. 'No ink on your breeches, Lawford! In our army the clerks spatter ink everywhere.'

  For a moment it seemed as though Lawford was about to abandon his lie and, in his misery, confess the whole truth to the Frenchman, but then the Lieutenant had a sudden inspiration. 'I wear an apron, sir, when I'm writing. I don't want to be punished for a dirty uniform, sir.'

  Gudin laughed. In truth he had never doubted Lawford's story, mistaking the Lieutenant's embarrassment for shame at his family's bankruptcy. If anything, the Frenchman felt sorry for the tall, fair-haired and fastidious young man who should plainly never have become a soldier, and that, to Gudin, was enough to explain Lawford's nervousness. 'You're a clerk, eh? So does that mean you see paperwork?'

  'A lot, sir.'

  'So do you know how many guns the British are bringing here?' Gudin asked. 'How much ammunition?'

  Lawford shook his head in consternation. For a few seconds he was speechless, then managed to say that he never saw that sort of paperwork. 'It's just company papers I see, sir. Punishment books, that sort of thing.'

  'Bloody thousands,' Sharpe interjected. 'Beg pardon for speaking, sir.'

  'Thousands of what?' Gudin asked.

  'Bullocks, sir. Six eighteen-pounder shot strapped on apiece, sir, and some of the buggers have got eight. But it's thousands of round shot.'

  'Two thousand? Three?' Gudin asked.

  'More than that, sir. I ain't seen a herd the size of it, not even when the Scots drive the beeves down from Scotland to London.'

  Gudin shrugged. He very much doubted whether these two could tell him anything useful, certainly nothing that the Tippoo's scouts and spies had not already discovered, but the questions had to be asked. Now, waving flies from his face, he told the two deserters what they might expect. 'His Majesty the Tippoo Sultan will decide your fate, and if he is merciful he will want you to serve in his forces. I assume you are willing?'

  'Yes, sir,' Sharpe said eagerly. 'It's why we came, sir.'

  'Good,' Gudin said. 'The Tippoo might want you in one of his own cushoons. That's the word they use for a regiment here, a cushoon. They're all good soldiers and well trained, and you'll be made welcome, but there is one disadvantage. You will both have to be circumcised.'

  Lawford went pale, while Sharpe just shrugged. 'Is that bad, sir?'

  'You know what circumcision is, Private?'

  'Something the army does to you, sir? Like swear you in?'

  Gudin smiled. 'Not quite, Sharpe. The Tippoo is a Muslim and he likes his foreign volunteers to join his religion. It means one of his holy men will cut your foreskin off. It's quite quick, just like slicing the top from a soft-boiled egg, really.'

  'My prick?' Sharpe was as aghast as Lawford now.

  'It's over in seconds,' Gudin reassured them, 'though the bleeding can last for a while and you cannot, how shall I say . . . ?' He glanced at Mary, then back to Sharpe. 'You can't let the egg become hard boiled for a few weeks.'

  'Bloody hell, sir!' Sharpe said. 'For religion? They do that?'

  'We Christians sprinkle babies with water,' Gudin said, 'and the Muslims chop off foreskins.' The Frenchman paused, then smiled. 'However, I cannot think that a man with a bleeding prick will make a good soldier, and your armies will be here in a few days, so I will suggest to His Majesty that the two of you serve with my men. We are few, but none of us are Muslims, and all of our soft-boiled eggs retain their full shells.'

  'Quite right too, sir,' Sharpe said enthusiastically. 'And it'll be an honour to serve you, sir,' he added.

  'In a French battalion?' Gudin teased him.

  'If you don't flog, sir, and you don't carve up pricks, then it'll be more than an honour.'

  'If the Tippoo allows it,' Gudin warned them, 'which he may not. But I think he might. I have other Britishers in the battalion, and some Germans and Swiss. I'm sure you will be happy there.' He looked at Mary. 'But what of you, Mademoiselle?'

  Mary touched Sharpe's elbow. 'I came with Richard, sir.'

  Gudin inspected her black eye. 'How did that happen, Mademoiselle?'

  'I fell, sir,' Mary said.

  Gudin's face flickered with a smile. 'Or did Private Sharpe hit you? So that you would not appear attractive?'

  'I fell over, sir.'

  Gudin nodded. 'You hit hard, Private Sharpe.'

  'No point else, sir.'

  'That is true,' Gudin said, then shrugged. 'My men have their women. If His Majesty allows it I don't see why the two of you should not stay together.' He turned as his sergeant reappeared, bringing with him an elderly Indian who carried a cloth-covered basket. 'This is Doctor Venkatesh,' Gudin said, greeting the doctor with a bow, 'and he is quite as good as any physician I ever found in Paris. I imagine, Sharpe, that removing those filthy bandages will hurt?'

  'Not as much as circumcising, sir.'

  Gudin laughed. 'All the same, I think you had better sit down.'

  Removing the bandages hurt like buggery. Mister Micklewhite, the surgeon, had put a salve on the lashes, but no army surgeon ever wasted too much precious ointment on a common soldier, and Micklewhite had not used enough salve to stop the bandages from crusting to the wounds and so the cloth had become one clotted mass of linen and dried blood that tore t
he scabs away from the wounds as the Indian peeled the bandages away. Doctor Venkatesh was indeed skilful and gentle and his voice was ever soothing in Sharpe's ear as he delicately prised the horrid mess away from the torn flesh, but even so Sharpe could not forbear from whimpering as the bandages were lifted. The tigers, smelling fresh blood, lunged at their chains so that the courtyard was filled with the clank and snap of stretching links.

  The Indian doctor plainly disapproved of both the injury and the treatment. He tutted and muttered and shook his head as the carnage was revealed. Then, when he had picked the last filthy scrap of bandage away with a pair of ivory tweezers, he poured an unguent over Sharpe's back and the cool liquid was wonderfully soothing. Sharpe sighed with relief, then suddenly the doctor sprang away from him, stood, clasped his hands and bowed low.

  Sharpe twisted round to see that a group of Indians had come into the courtyard. At their head was a shortish plump man, maybe fifty years old, with a round face and a neatly trimmed black moustache. He was dressed in a white silk tunic above white silk leggings and black leather boots, but the simple clothes glittered with jewels. He wore rubies on his turban, diamond-studded bangles on his arms, and pearls were sewn onto his blue silk sash from which there hung a sapphire-studded scabbard in which rested a sword with a golden hilt fashioned into the face of a snarling tiger. Doctor Venkatesh backed hurriedly away, still bowing, while Gudin stood respectfully at attention. 'The Tippoo!' Gudin warned Sharpe and Lawford in a whisper, and Sharpe struggled to his feet and, like the Frenchman, stood to attention.