“Yes, sir.” Shee was nervous, wondering if he had made some terrible mistake. “At once, sir,” he added, though he gave no orders.
“I dislike stopping a well-deserved punishment,” Wellesley said loudly enough for all the nearby officers to hear, “but Private Sharpe is to be taken to General Harris’s tent as soon as he’s recovered.”
“General Harris, sir?” Major Shee asked in astonishment. General Harris was the commander of this expedition against the Tippoo, and what possible business could the commanding General have with a half-flogged private? “Yes, sir, of course, sir,” Shee added quickly when he saw that his query had annoyed Wellesley. “At once, sir.”
“Then do it!” Wellesley snapped. The Colonel was a thin young man with a narrow face, hard eyes, and a prominently beaked nose. Many older men resented that the twenty-nine-year-old Wellesley was already a full colonel, but he came from a wealthy and titled family and his elder brother, the Earl of Mornington, was Governor-General of the East India Company’s British possessions in India, so it was hardly surprising that the young Arthur Wellesley had risen so high so fast. Any officer given the money to buy promotion and lucky enough to possess relations who could put him in the way of advancement was bound to rise, but even the less fortunate men who resented Wellesley’s privileges were forced to admit that the young Colonel had a natural and chilling authority, and maybe, some thought, even a talent for soldiering. He was certainly dedicated enough to his chosen trade if that was any sign of talent.
Wellesley nudged his horse forward and stared down as the prisoner’s bonds were cut loose. “Private Sharpe?” He spoke with utter disdain, as though he dirtied himself by even addressing Sharpe.
Sharpe looked up, blinked, then made a guttural noise. Bywaters ran forward and worked the gag out of Sharpe’s mouth. Freeing the pad took some manipulation, for Sharpe had sunk his teeth deep into the folded leather. “Good lad now,” Bywaters said softly, “good lad. Didn’t cry, did you? Proud of you, lad.” The Sergeant Major at last managed to work the gag free and Sharpe tried to spit.
“Private Sharpe?” Wellesley’s disdainful voice repeated.
Sharpe forced his head up. “Sir?” The word came out as a croak. “Sir,” he tried again and this time it sounded like a moan.
Wellesley’s face twitched with distaste for what he was doing. “You’re to be fetched to General Harris’s tent. Do you understand me, Sharpe?”
Sharpe blinked up at Wellesley. His head was spinning and the pain in his body was vying with disbelief at what he heard and with rage against the army.
“You heard the Colonel, boy,” Bywaters prompted Sharpe.
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe managed to answer Wellesley.
Wellesley turned to Micklewhite. “Bandage him, Mister Micklewhite. Put a salve on his back, whatever you think best. I want him compos mentis within the hour. You understand me?”
“Within an hour!” the surgeon said in disbelief, then saw the anger on his young Colonel’s face. “Yes, sir,” he said swiftly, “within an hour, sir.”
“And give him clean clothes,” Wellesley ordered the Sergeant Major before giving Sharpe one last withering look and spurring his horse away.
The last of the ropes holding Sharpe to the tripod were cut away. Shee and the officers watched, all of them wondering just what extraordinary business had caused a summons to General Harris’s tent. No one spoke as the Sergeant Major plucked away the last strands of rope from Sharpe’s right wrist, then offered his own hand. “Here, lad. Hold onto me. Gently now.”
Sharpe shook his head. “I’m all right, Sergeant Major,” he said. He was not, but he would be damned before he showed weakness in front of his comrades, and double damned before he showed it in front of Sergeant Hakeswill who had watched aghast as his victim was cut down from the triangle. “I’m all right,” Sharpe insisted and he slowly pushed himself away from the tripod, then, tottering slightly, turned and took three steps.
A cheer sounded in the Light Company.
“Quiet!” Captain Morris snapped. “Take names, Sergeant Hakeswill!”
“Take names, sir! Yes, sir!”
Sharpe staggered twice and almost fell, but he forced himself to stand upright and then to take some steady steps toward the surgeon. “Reporting for bandaging, sir,” he croaked. Blood had soaked his trousers, his back was carnage, but he had recovered most of his wits and the look he gave the surgeon almost made Micklewhite flinch because of its savagery.
“Come with me, Private,” Micklewhite said.
“Help him! Help him!” Bywaters snapped at the drummer boys and the two sweating lads dropped their whips and hurried to support Sharpe’s elbows. He had managed to remain upright, but Bywaters had seen him swaying and feared he was about to collapse.
Sharpe half walked and was half carried away. Major Shee took off his hat, scratched his graying hair, and then, unsure what he should do, looked down at Bywaters. “It seems we have no more business today, Sergeant Major.”
“No, sir.”
Shee paused. It was all so irregular.
“Dismiss the battalion, sir?” Bywaters suggested.
Shee nodded, glad to have been given some guidance. “Dismiss them, Sergeant Major.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sharpe had survived.
CHAPTER 4
It seemed airless inside General Harris’s tent. It was a large tent, as big as a parish marquee, and though both its wide entrances had been brailed back there was no wind to stir the damp air trapped under the high ridge. The light inside the big tent was yellowed by the canvas to the color of urine and gave the grass underfoot a dank, unhealthy look.
Four men waited inside the tent. The youngest and most nervous was William Lawford who, because he was a mere lieutenant and by far the most junior officer present, was sitting far off to one side on a gilt chair of such spindly and fragile construction it seemed a miracle that it had survived its transport on the army’s wagons. Lawford scarcely dared move lest he draw attention to himself, and so he sat awkward and uncomfortable as the sweat trickled down his face and dripped onto the crown of his cocked hat which rested on his thighs.
Opposite Lawford, and utterly ignoring the younger man, sat his Colonel, Arthur Wellesley. The Colonel made small talk, but gruffly, as though he resented being forced to wait. Once or twice he pulled a watch from his fob pocket, snapped open the lid, glared at the revealed face, then restored the watch to his pocket without making a comment.
General Harris, the army’s commander, sat behind a long table that was spread with maps. The commander of the allied armies was a trim, middle-aged man who possessed an uncommon measure of common sense and a great deal of practical ability, and both were qualities he recognized in his younger deputy, Colonel Wellesley. George Harris was an affable man, but now, waiting in the tent’s yellow gloom, he seemed distracted. He stared at the maps, he wiped the sweat from his face with a big blue handkerchief, but he rarely looked up to acknowledge the stilted conversation. Harris was uneasy for, like Wellesley, he did not really approve of what they were about to do. It was not so much the irregularity of the action that concerned the two men, for neither was hidebound, but rather because they suspected that the proposed operation would fail and that two good men, or rather one good man and one bad, would be lost.
The fourth man in the tent refused to sit, but instead strode up and down between the tables and the scatter of flimsy chairs. It was this man who kept alive what little conversation managed to survive the tent’s stiff, damp, and airless atmosphere. He jollied his companions, he encouraged them, he tried to amuse them, though every now and then his efforts would fail and then he would stride to one of the tent doorways and stoop to peer out. “Can’t be long now,” he would say each time and then begin his pacing again. His name was Major General David Baird and he was the senior and older of General Harris’s two deputy commanders. Unlike his colleagues he had discarded his uniform coat and waistcoat, stripp
ing down to a dirty, much-darned shirt and letting the braces of his breeches hang down to his knees. His dark hair was damp and tousled, while his broad face was so tanned that, to Lawford’s nervous gaze, Baird looked more like a laborer than a general. The resemblance was even more acute because there was nothing delicate or refined about David Baird’s appearance. He was a huge Scotsman, tall as a giant, broad-shouldered and muscled like a coal-heaver. It had been Baird who had persuaded his two colleagues to act, or rather he had persuaded General Harris to act much against that officer’s better judgement, and Baird frankly did not give a tinker’s damn whether Colonel Arthur bloody Wellesley approved or not. Baird disliked Wellesley, and bitterly resented the fact that the younger man had been made into his fellow second-in-command. Baird, never a man to let his grudges simmer unspoken, had protested Arthur Wellesley’s appointment to Harris. “If his brother wasn’t Governor-General, Harris, you’d never have promoted him.”
“Not true, Baird,” Harris had answered mildly. “Wellesley has ability.”
“Ability, my arse. He’s got family!” Baird spat.
“We all have family.”
“Not prinking English popinjay families with too much bloody money.”
“He was born in Ireland.”
“Poor bloody Ireland, then, but he ain’t Irish, Harris, and you know it. The man doesn’t even drink, for God’s sake! A little wine, maybe, but nothing I’d call a proper drink. Have you ever met an Irishman so sober?”
“Some, quite a few, a good number, to tell the truth,” Harris, a fair-minded man, had answered honestly, “but is inebriation such a desirable quality in a military commander?”
“Experience is,” Baird had growled. “Hell, man, you and I have seen some service! We’ve lost blood! And what has Wellesley lost? Money! Nothing but money while he purchased his way up to colonel. Man’s never been in a battle!”
“He will still make a very good second-in-command, and that’s all that matters,” Harris had insisted, and indeed Harris had been well pleased with Wellesley’s performance. The Colonel’s responsibilities lay mainly with the army of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and he had proved adept at persuading that potentate to submit to Harris’s suggestions, a task Baird could never have performed even half so well for the Scotsman was notorious for his hatred of all Indians.
That hatred went back to the years Baird had spent in the dungeons of the Tippoo Sultan in Seringapatam. Nineteen years before, in battle against the Tippoo’s fierce father, Hyder Ali, the young David Baird had been captured. He and the other prisoners had been marched to Seringapatam and there endured forty-four humiliating months of hot, damp hell in Hyder Ali’s cells. For some of those months Baird had been manacled to the wall and now the Scotsman wanted revenge. He dreamed of carrying his Scottish claymore across the city’s ramparts and cornering the Tippoo, and then, by Christ, the hell of Seringapatam’s cells would be paid back a thousandfold.
It was the memory of that ordeal and the knowledge that his fellow Scotsman, McCandless, was now doomed to endure it, that had persuaded Baird that McCandless must be freed. Colonel McCandless had himself suggested how that release might be achieved for, before setting out on his mission, he had left a letter with David Baird. The letter, which had instructions penned on its cover saying that it should only be opened if McCandless failed to return, suggested that if the Colonel should be captured, and should General Harris feel it was important to make an attempt to release him, then a trusted man should be sent secretly into Seringapatam where he should contact a merchant named Ravi Shekhar. “If any man has the resources to free me, it is Shekhar,” McCandless had written, “though I trust both you and the General will weigh well the risk of losing such a prized informant against whatever small advantages might be gained from my release.”
Baird had no doubts about McCandless’s worth. McCandless alone knew the identities of the British agents in the Tippoo’s service and no one in the army knew as much of the Tippoo as did McCandless, and Baird was aware that should the Tippoo ever discover McCandless’s true responsibilities then McCandless would be given to the tigers. It was Baird who had remembered that McCandless’s English nephew, William Lawford, was serving in the army, and Baird who had persuaded Lawford to enter Seringapatam in an effort to free McCandless, and Baird who had then proposed the mission to General Harris. Harris had initially scorned the idea, though he had unbent sufficiently to suggest that maybe an Indian volunteer could be found who would stand a much greater chance of remaining undetected in the enemy capital, but Baird had vigorously defended his choice. “This is too important to be left to some blackamoor, Harris, and besides, only McCandless knows which of the bastards can be trusted. Me, I wouldn’t trust any damned one of them.”
Harris had sighed. He led two armies, fifty thousand men, and all but five thousand of those soldiers were Indians, and if “blackamoors” could not be trusted then Harris, Baird, and everyone else was doomed, but the General knew he would make no headway against Baird’s stubborn dislike of all Indians. “I would like McCandless freed,” Harris had allowed, “but, upon my soul, Baird, I can’t see a white man living long in Seringapatam.”
“We can’t send a blackamoor,” Baird had insisted. “They’ll take money from us, then go straight to the Tippoo and get more money from him. Then you can kiss farewell to McCandless and to this Shekhar fellow.”
“But why send this young man Lawford?” Harris had asked.
“Because McCandless is a secretive fellow, sir, more cautious than most, and if he sees Willie Lawford then he’ll know that we sent him, but if it’s some other British fellow he might think it’s some deserter sent to trap him by the Tippoo. Never underestimate the Tippoo, Harris, he’s a clever little bastard. He reminds me of Wellesley. He’s always thinking.”
Harris had grunted. He had resisted the idea, but it had still tempted him, for the Havildar who had survived McCandless’s ill-starred expedition had returned to the army, and his story suggested that McCandless had met with the man he hoped to meet, and, though Harris did not know who that man was, he did know that McCandless had been searching for the key to the Tippoo’s city. Only a mission so important, a mission that could guarantee success, had persuaded Harris to allow McCandless to risk himself, and now McCandless was taken and Harris was being offered a chance to fetch him back, or at least to retrieve McCandless’s news, even if the Colonel himself could not be fetched out of the Tippoo’s dungeons. Harris was not so confident of British success in the campaign that he could disregard such a windfall. “But how in God’s name is this fellow Lawford supposed to survive inside the city?” Harris had asked.
“Easy!” Baird had answered scornfully. “The Tippoo’s only too damned eager for European volunteers, so we dress young Lawford in a private’s uniform and he can pretend to be a deserter. He’ll be welcomed with open arms! They’ll be hanging bloody flowers round his neck and giving him first choice of the bibbis.”
Harris had slowly allowed himself to be persuaded, though Wellesley, once introduced to the idea, had advised against it. Lawford, Wellesley insisted, could never pass himself off as an enlisted man, but Wellesley had been overruled by Baird’s enthusiasm and so Lieutenant Lawford had been summoned to Harris’s tent where he had complicated matters by agreeing with his Colonel. “I’d dearly like to help, sir,” he had told Harris, “but I’m not sure I’m capable of the pretence.”
“Good God, man,” Baird intervened, “spit and swear! It ain’t difficult!”
“It will be very difficult,” Harris had insisted, staring at the diffident Lieutenant. He was doubtful whether Lawford had the resources to carry off the deception, for the Lieutenant, while plainly a decent man, seemed guileless.
Then Lawford had complicated matters still further. “I think it would be more plausible, sir,” he suggested respectfully, “if I could take another man with me. Deserters usually run in pairs, don’t they? And if the man is the genuine article, a ranker,
it’ll be altogether more convincing.”
“Makes sense, makes sense,” Baird had put in encouragingly.
“You have a man in mind?” Wellesley had asked coldly.
“His name is Sharpe, sir,” Lawford said. “They’re probably about to flog him.”
“Then he’ll be no damned use to you,” Wellesley said in a tone which suggested the matter was now closed.
“I’ll go with no one else, sir,” Lawford retorted stubbornly, addressing himself to General Harris rather than to his Colonel, and Harris was pleased to see this evidence of backbone. The Lieutenant, it seemed, was not quite so diffident as he appeared.
“How many lashes is this fellow getting?” Harris asked.
“Don’t know, sir. He’s standing trial now, sir, and if I wasn’t here I’d be giving evidence on his behalf. I doubt his guilt.”
The argument over whether to employ Sharpe had continued over a midday meal of rice and stewed goat. Wellesley was refusing to intervene in the court martial or its subsequent punishment, declaring that such an act would be prejudicial to discipline, but William Lawford stubbornly and respectfully refused to take any other man. It had, he said, to be a man he could trust. “We could send another officer,” Wellesley had suggested, but that idea had faltered when the difficulties of finding a reliable volunteer were explored. There were plenty of men who might go, but few were steady, and the steady ones would be too sensible to risk their precious commissions on what Wellesley scathingly called a fool’s errand. “So why are you willing to go?” Harris had asked Lawford. “You don’t look like a fool.”
“I trust I’m not, sir. But my uncle gave me the money to purchase my commission.”
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress Page 11