Sharpe swore foully, then collapsed at the foot of the tree.
There were a score of horsemen and they all now gathered around the fugitives. Two of them held their razor-sharp lances at Lawford’s neck while the officer spoke to Mary. She answered defiantly, and to Sharpe, who was struggling to stand, it seemed that the conversation went on for a long time. Nor did the lancers seem friendly. They were magnificent-looking men and Sharpe, despite his pain, noted how well they maintained their weapons. There was no rust on the lanceheads, and the shafts were oiled smooth. Mary argued with the officer, and he seemed indifferent to her pleading, but at last she must have made her point for she turned and looked at Lawford. “He wants to know if you’re willing to serve in the Tippoo’s forces,” she told the Lieutenant.
The lance tips were tickling Lawford’s neck, and as a recruiting device they worked wonders. The Lieutenant nodded eagerly. “Absolutely!” he said. “Just what we want! Volunteers! Tell him we’re ready to serve! Both of us! Long live the Tippoo!”
The officer did not need the enthusiastic reply translated. He smiled and ordered his lancers to take their weapons from the redcoat’s neck.
And thus Sharpe joined the enemy’s army.
CHAPTER 5
Sharpe was near to exhausted despair by the time he reached the city. The lancers had driven the three fugitives westward at an unrelenting pace, but had offered none of them a saddle, and so the three had walked and by the time he stumbled through the ford that took them south across the Cauvery to the island on which Seringapatam was built Sharpe’s back burned like a sheet of fire. The city itself still lay a mile to the west, but the whole island had been ringed with new earthworks inside which thousands of refugees were gathered. The refugees had brought their livestock, obedient to the Tippoo’s orders that all food stocks should be denied to the slowly advancing British army. A half-mile from the city wall a second earthwork had been thrown up to protect a sprawling encampment of thatched, mud-brick barracks in which thousands of the Tippoo’s infantry and cavalry lived. None of the troops were idle. Some were drilling, others were heightening the mud wall around the encampment, and still more were firing their muskets at targets of straw men propped against the city’s stone wall. The straw men were all dressed in makeshift red coats and Lawford watched aghast as the muskets knocked the targets over or else exploded great chunks from their straw-stuffed torsos. The soldiers’ families lived inside the encampment and the women and children flocked to see the two white men pass. They assumed Sharpe and Lawford were prisoners and some jeered as they went by and others laughed when Sharpe staggered in pain.
“Keep going, Sharpe,” Lawford said encouragingly.
“Call me Dick, for Christ’s sake,” Sharpe snapped.
“Keep going, Dick,” Lawford managed to say, albeit angrily for having been reproved by the Private.
“Not far now,” Mary said in Sharpe’s ear. She was helping Sharpe walk, though at times, when the jeering became raucous, she clung to Sharpe for support. Ahead of them were the city walls and Lawford, seeing them, wondered how anyone could hope to blast through such massive works. The great ramparts were limewashed so that they seemed to shine in the sun, and Lawford could see cannon muzzles showing in every embrasure. Cavaliers, jutting out like small square bastions, had been built everywhere along the face of the wall so that yet more guns could be brought to bear on any attacker. Above the walls, on which the Tippoo’s flags stirred in the small warm wind, the twin white minarets of the city’s mosque towered in the sunlight. Beyond the minarets Lawford could see the intricate tower of a Hindu temple, its stone layers elaborately carved and gorgeously painted, while just north of the temple there shone the gleaming green tiles of what Lawford supposed was the Tippoo’s palace. The city was all much bigger and grander than Lawford had expected, while the white-painted wall was higher and stronger than he had ever feared. He had expected a mud wall, but as he drew closer to the ramparts he could see that these eastern walls were made from massive stone blocks that would need to be chipped away by the siege guns if a breach were ever to be made. In places, where the wall had been damaged by previous sieges, there were patches where the stone had been repaired by brickwork, but nowhere did the wall look weak. It was true that the city had not had time to build itself a modern European type of defense with star-shaped walls and outlying forts and awkward bastions and confusing ravelins, but even so the place looked dauntingly strong, and even now vast ant-like gangs of laborers, some of them naked in the heat, were carrying baskets of deep-red earth on their backs and piling the soil to heighten the glacis that lay directly in front of the limewashed walls. The growing earthen glacis, that was separated from the walls by a ditch that could be flooded with river water, was designed to deflect the besiegers’ shots up and over the ramparts. Lawford consoled himself that Lord Cornwallis had managed to smash into this formidable city seven years before, but the heightening of the glacis demonstrated that the Tippoo had learned from that defeat and suggested that General Harris would not find it nearly so easy.
The lancers ducked their spired helmets as they clattered through the tunnel of the city’s Bangalore Gate and so led the fugitives into the stinking tangle of crowded streets. The spears forged the lancers’ path, driving civilians aside and forcing wagons and handcarts into hasty retreats up any convenient alley. Even the sacred cows that wandered freely inside the city were forced aside, though the lancers did it gently, not wanting to offend the sensibilities of the Hindus. They passed the mosque, then turned down a street lined with shops, their open fronts thickly hung with cloth, silk, silver jewelery, vegetables, shoes, and hides. In one alley Lawford caught a glimpse of bloodsoaked men butchering two camels and the sight almost made him gag. A naked child hurled a bloody camel’s tail at the two white men, and soon a horde of tattered, chanting children were dodging through the lancers’ horses to mock the prisoners and pelt them with animal dung. Sharpe cursed them, Lawford hunched low as he walked, and the children only ran away when two European soldiers, both dressed in blue jackets, chased them away. “Prisonniers?” one of the two men called cheerfully.
“Non, monsieur” Lawford answered in his best schoolboy French. “Nous sommes déserteurs.”
“C’est bon!” The man tossed Lawford a mango. “La femme aussi?”
“La femme est notre prisonnière.” Lawford tried a little wit and was rewarded with a laugh and a farewell shout of bonne chance.
“You speak French?” Sharpe asked.
“A little,” Lawford claimed modestly. “Really only a little.”
“Bloody amazing,” Sharpe said and Lawford was obscurely pleased that he had at last succeeded in impressing his companion. “But not many private soldiers speak Frog,” Sharpe dashed Lawford’s pleasure, “so don’t show yourself as being too good at it. Stick to bloody English.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Lawford said ruefully. He looked at the mango as though he had never seen such a piece of fruit before, and it was plain that his hunger was tempting him to bite into the sweet flesh, but then his manners prevailed and he gallantly insisted that Mary eat the fruit instead.
The lancers turned into a delicately sculpted archway where two sentries stood guard. Once inside the archway the cavalrymen slid down from their saddles and, lances in hand, led their horses down a narrow passage between two high brick walls. Sharpe, Mary, and Lawford were more or less abandoned just inside the gateway where the two sentries ignored them, but did chase away the more curious townsfolk who had gathered to stare at the Europeans. Sharpe sat on a mounting block and tried to ignore the pain in his back. Then the lancer officer returned and shouted at them to follow him. He led them through another arch, then under an arcade where flowers twined round pillars, and so to a guardroom. The officer said something to Mary, then locked the door. “He says we’re to wait,” Mary said. She still had the mango, and though the lancers had stripped Sharpe and Lawford of their coats and packs and ha
d searched the two men for coins and hidden weapons, they had not searched Mary and she took a small folding penknife from an inside pocket of her skirt and cut the fruit into three portions. 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 colored. “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 land 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 die 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 toward 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 face down 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 afterward 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 toward 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 pussycats,” 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 toward 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 mustache 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?”<
br />
“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 you?” 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, uncallused fingers. “How is it that you are in the army, Lawford?”
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress Page 15