Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  The reed glowed and smoked for a second as the fire dashed down to the charge, then the vast cannon crashed back, the teak runners sliding up the timber ramp that formed the lower half of the carriage. Smoke jetted out into the chasm as a hundred startled birds flapped from their nests on the rock faces and circled in the warm air.

  Dodd had been standing to one side, watching the engineer through his glass. For a second he actually saw the great round shot as a flicker of gray in the lower right quadrant of his lens, then he saw a boulder close to the engineer shatter into scraps. The engineer fell sideways, his sketch pad falling, but then he picked himself up and scrambled up the slope to where his horse was being guarded by the cavalrymen.

  Dodd took a single gold coin from his pouch and tossed it to the gunner. “You missed,” he said, “but it was damned fine shooting.”

  “Thank you, sahib.”

  A whimper made Dodd turn. Beny Singh had handed his dog to a servant and was staring through an ivory-barreled telescope at the enemy horsemen. “What is it?” Bappoo asked him.

  “Syud Sevajee,” Singh said in a small voice.

  “Who’s Syud Sevajee?” Dodd asked.

  Bappoo grinned. “His father was once killadar here, but he died. Was it poison?” he asked Beny Singh.

  “He just died,” Singh said. “He just died!”

  “Murdered, probably,” Bappoo said with amusement, “and Beny Singh became killadar and took the dead man’s daughter as his concubine.”

  Dodd turned to see the enemy horsemen vanishing among the trees beyond the far cliff. “Come for revenge, has he? You still want to leave?” he demanded of Beny Singh. “Because that fellow will be waiting for you. He’ll track you through the hills, Killadar, and slit your throat in the night’s darkness.”

  “We shall stay here and fight,” Beny Singh declared, retrieving the dog from his servant.

  “Fight and win,” Dodd said, and he imagined the British breaching batteries on that far cliff, and he imagined the slaughter that would be made among the crews by this one vast gun. And there were fifty other heavy guns waiting to greet the British approach, and hundreds of lighter pieces that fired smaller missiles. Guns, rockets, canister, muskets and cliffs, those were Gawilghur’s defenses, and Dodd reckoned the British stood no chance. No chance at all. The big gun’s smoke drifted away in the small breeze. “They will die here,” Dodd said, “and we shall chase the survivors south and cut them down like dogs.” He turned and looked at Beny Singh. “You see the chasm? That is where their demons will die. Their wings will be scorched, they will fall like burning stones to their deaths, and their screams will lull your children to a dreamless sleep.” He knew he spoke true, for Gawilghur was impregnable.

  “I take pleasure, no, Dilip, make that I take humble pleasure in reporting the recovery of a quantity of stolen stores.” Captain Torrance paused. Night had just fallen and Torrance uncorked a bottle of arrack and took a sip. “Am I going too fast for you?”

  “Yes, sahib,” Dilip, the middle-aged clerk, answered. “Humble pleasure,” he said aloud as his pen moved laboriously over the paper, “in reporting the recovery of a quantity of stolen stores.”

  “Add a list of the stores,” Torrance ordered. “You can do that later. Just leave a space, man.”

  “Yes, sahib,” Dilip said.

  “I had suspected for some time,” Torrance intoned, then scowled as someone knocked on the door. “Come,” he shouted, “if you must.”

  Sharpe opened the door and was immediately entangled in the muslin. He fought his way past its folds.

  “It’s you,” Torrance said unpleasantly.

  “Me, sir.”

  “You let some moths in,” Torrance complained.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “That is why the muslin is there, Sharpe, to keep out moths, ensigns and other insignificant nuisances. Kill the moths, Dilip.”

  The clerk dutifully chased the moths about the room, swatting them with a roll of paper. The windows, like the door, were closely screened with muslin on the outside of which moths clustered, attracted by the candles that were set in silver sticks on Torrance’s table. Dilip’s work was spread on the table, while Captain Torrance lay in a wide hammock slung from the roof beams. He was naked. “Do I offend you, Sharpe?”

  “Offend me, sir?”

  “I am naked, or had you not noticed?”

  “Doesn’t bother me, sir.”

  “Nudity keeps clothes clean. You should try it. Is the last of the enemy dead, Dilip?”

  “The moths are all deceased, sahib.”

  “Then we shall continue. Where were we?”

  “‘I had suspected for some time,’” Dilip read back the report.

  “Surmised is better, I think. I had surmised for some time.” Torrance paused to draw on the mouthpiece of a silver-bellied hookah. “What are you doing here, Sharpe?”

  “Come to get orders, sir.”

  “How very assiduous of you. I had surmised for some time that depredations—I can spell it if you cannot, Dilip—were being made upon the stores entrusted to my command. What the devil were you doing, Sharpe, poking about Naig’s tents?”

  “Just happened to be passing them, sir,” Sharpe said, “when they caught fire.”

  Torrance gazed at Sharpe, plainly not believing a word. He shook his head sadly. “You look very old to be an ensign, Sharpe?”

  “I was a sergeant two months ago, sir.”

  Torrance adopted a look of pretended horror. “Oh, good God,” he said archly, “good God alive. May all the spavined saints preserve us. You’re not telling me you’ve been made up from the ranks?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sweet suffering Jesus,” Torrance said. He lay his head back on the hammock’s pillow and blew a perfect smoke ring that he watched wobble its way up toward the ceiling. “Having confidential information as to the identity of the thief, I took steps to apprehend him. You will notice, Sharpe, that I am giving you no credit in this report?”

  “No, sir?”

  “Indeed I am not. This report will go to Colonel Butters, an appallingly bombastic creature who will, I suspect, attempt to take some of the credit for himself before passing the papers on to Arthur Wellesley who, as you may know, is our commander. A very stern man, our Arthur. He likes things done properly. He plainly had a very stern governess in his nursery.”

  “I know the General, sir.”

  “You do?” Torrance turned his head to look at Sharpe. “Socially, perhaps? You and he dine together, do you? Pass the time of day, do you? Hunt together, maybe? Drink port? Talk about old times? Whore together, perhaps?” Torrance was mocking, but there was just an edge of interest in his voice in case Sharpe really did know Sir Arthur.

  “I mean I’ve met him, sir.”

  Torrance shook his head as though Sharpe had been wasting his time. “Do stop calling me ‘sir.’ It may be your natural subservience, Sharpe, or more likely it is the natural air of superiority that emanates from my person, but it ill becomes an officer, even one dredged up from the ranks. A search of his tents, Dilip, secured the missing items. I then, in accordance with general orders, hanged the thief as an example. I have the honor to be, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Two thousand muskets are still missing, sir,” Sharpe said. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to call you ‘sir.’”

  “If it pleases you to grovel, Sharpe, then do so. Two thousand muskets still missing, eh? I suspect the bugger sold them on, don’t you?”

  “I’m more interested in how he got them in the first place,” Sharpe said.

  “How very tedious of you,” Torrance said lightly.

  “I’d suggest talking to Sergeant Hakeswill when he gets back,” Sharpe said.

  “I won’t hear a word spoken against Obadiah,” Torrance said. “Obadiah is a most amusing fellow.”

  “He’s a lying, thieving bastard,” Sharpe said vehemently.

  “Sharpe! Please!” Torrance’s voice wa
s pained. “How can you say such wicked things? You don’t even know the fellow.”

  “Oh, I know him, sir. I served under him in the Havercakes.”

  “You did?” Torrance smiled. “I see we are in for interesting times. Perhaps I should keep the two of you apart. Or perhaps not. Brick!” The last word was shouted toward a door that led to the back of the commandeered house.

  The door opened and the black-haired woman slipped past the muslin. “Captain?” she asked. She blushed when she saw Torrance was naked, and Torrance, Sharpe saw, enjoyed her embarrassment.

  “Brick, my dear,” Torrance said, “my hookah has extinguished itself. Will you attend to it? Dilip is busy, or I would have asked him. Sharpe? May I have the honor of naming you to Brick? Brick? This is Ensign Sharpe. Ensign Sharpe? This is Brick.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” the woman said, dropping a brief curtsy before she stooped to the hookah. She had clearly not told Torrance that she had met Sharpe earlier.

  “Ma’am,” Sharpe said.

  “Ma’am!” Torrance said with a laugh. “She’s called Brick, Sharpe.”

  “Brick, sir?” Sharpe asked sourly. The name was utterly unsuited to the delicate-featured woman who now deftly disassembled the hookah.

  “Her real name is Mrs. Wall,” Torrance explained, “and she is my laundress, seamstress and conscience. Is that not right, little Brick?”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “I cannot abide dirty clothes,” Torrance said. “They are an abomination unto the Lord. Cleanliness, we are constantly told by tedious folk, is next to godliness, but I suspect it is a superior virtue. Any peasant can be godly, but it is a rare person who is clean. Brick, however, keeps me clean. If you pay her a trifle, Sharpe, she will doubtless wash and mend those rags you are pleased to call a uniform.”

  “They’re all I’ve got, sir.”

  “So? Walk naked until Brick has serviced you, or does the idea embarrass you?”

  “I wash my own clothes, sir.”

  “I wish you would,” Torrance said tartly. “Remind me why you came here, Sharpe?”

  “Orders, sir.”

  “Very well,” Torrance said. “At dawn you will go to Colonel Butters’s quarters and find an aide who can tell you what is required of us. You then tell Dilip. Dilip then arranges everything. After that you may take your rest. I trust you will not find these duties onerous?”

  Sharpe wondered why Torrance had asked for a deputy if the clerk did all the work, then supposed that the Captain was so lazy that he could not be bothered to get up early in the morning to fetch his orders. “I get tomorrow’s orders at dawn, sir,” Sharpe said, “from an aide of Colonel Butters.”

  “There!” Torrance said with mock amazement. “You have mastered your duties, Ensign. I congratulate you.”

  “We already have, tomorrow’s orders, sahib,” Dilip said from the table where he was copying a list of the recovered stores into Torrance’s report. “We are to move everything to Deogaum. The pioneers’ stores are to be moved first, sahib. The Colonel’s orders are on the table, sahib, with the chitties. Pioneers’ stores first, then everything else.”

  “Well, I never!” Torrance said. “See? Your first day’s work is done, Sharpe.” He drew on the hookah which the woman had relit. “Excellent, my dear,” he said, then held out a hand to stop her from leaving. She crouched beside the hammock, averting her eyes from Torrance’s naked body. Sharpe sensed her unhappiness, and Torrance sensed Sharpe’s interest in her. “Brick is a widow, Sharpe,” he said, “and presumably looking for a husband, though I doubt she’s ever dared to dream of marrying as high as an ensign. But why not? The social ladder is there to be climbed and, low a rung as you might be, Sharpe, you still represent a considerable advancement for Brick. Before she joined my service she was a mop-squeezer. From mop-squeezer to an officer’s wife! There’s progress for you. I think the two of you would suit each other vastly well. I shall play Cupid, or rather Dilip will. Take a letter to the chaplain of the 94th, Dilip. He’s rarely sober, but I’m sure he can waddle through the marriage ceremony without falling over.”

  “I can’t marry, sir!” Sharpe protested.

  Torrance, amused at himself, raised an eyebrow. “You are averse to women? You dislike dear Brick? Or you’ve taken an oath of celibacy, perhaps?”

  Sharpe blushed. “I’m spoken for, sir.”

  “You mean you’re engaged? How very touching. Is she an heiress, perhaps?”

  Sharpe shrugged. “She’s in Seringapatam,” he said lamely. “And we’re not engaged.”

  “But you have an understanding,” Torrance said, “with this ravishing creature in Seringapatam. Is she black, Sharpe? A black bibbi? I’m sure Clare wouldn’t mind, would you? A white man in India needs a bibbi or two as well as a wife. Don’t you agree, Brick?” He turned to the woman, who ignored him. “The late Mr. Wall died of the fever,” Torrance said to Sharpe, “and in the Christian kindness of my heart I continue to employ his widow. Does that not speak well of my character?”

  “If you say so, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “I see my attempt to play Cupid is not meeting with success,” Torrance said. “So, Sharpe, to business. Tomorrow morning I suggest you go to Deogaum, wherever the hell that is.”

  “With the bullocks, sir?”

  Torrance raised his eyebrows in exasperation. “You are an officer, Sharpe, not a bullock driver. You don’t prod rumps, you leave that to the natives. Go early. Ride there at dawn, and your first duty will be to find me quarters.”

  “I don’t have a horse,” Sharpe said.

  “You don’t have a horse? Don’t have a horse? Good God alive, man, what bloody use are you? You’ll just have to bloody well walk then. I shall find you in Deogaum tomorrow afternoon and God help you if you haven’t found me decent quarters. A front room, Sharpe, where Dilip can conduct business. A large room for me, and a hole for Brick. I would also like to have a walled garden with adequate shade trees and a small pool.”

  “Where is Deogaum?” Sharpe asked.

  “Northwards, sahib,” Dilip answered. “Close to the hills.”

  “Beneath Gawilghur?” Sharpe guessed.

  “Yes, sahib.”

  Sharpe looked back to Torrance. “Can I ask a favor of you, sir?”

  Torrance sighed. “If you insist.”

  “At Gawilghur, sir, I’d like permission to join the assault party.”

  Torrance stared at Sharpe for a long time. “You want what?” he finally asked.

  “I want to be with the attack, sir. There’s a fellow inside, see, who killed a friend of mine. I want to see him dead.”

  Torrance blinked at Sharpe. “Don’t tell me you’re enthusiastic! Good God!” A sudden look of terror came to the Captain’s face. “You’re not a Methodist, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Torrance pointed the hookah’s mouthpiece toward a corner of the room. “There is a linen press, Sharpe, d’you see it? Inside it are my clothes. Amidst my clothes you will find a pistol. Take the pistol, remove yourself from my presence, apply the muzzle to your head and pull the trigger. It is a much quicker and less painful way of dying.”

  “But you won’t mind if I join the attack?”

  “Mind? You’re not, surely, laboring under the misapprehension that I care about your existence? You think I might mourn you, even after such a short acquaintance? My dear Sharpe, I fear I shall not miss you at all. I doubt I’ll even remember your name once you’re dead. Of course you can join the assaulting party. Do what you like! Now I suggest you get some sleep. Not here, though, I like my privacy. Find a tree, perhaps, and slumber beneath its sheltering branches. Good night to you, Sharpe.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “And don’t let any moths in!”

  Sharpe negotiated the muslin and slipped out of the door. Torrance listened to the footsteps go away, then sighed. “A tedious man, Dilip.”

  “Yes, sahib.”

  “I wo
nder why he was made an officer?” Torrance frowned as he sucked on his hookah, then shook his head. “Poor Naig! Sacrificed to a mere ensign’s ambition. How did that wretched Sharpe even know to look in Naig’s tent? Did he talk to you?”

  “Yes, sahib,” Dilip admitted.

  Torrance stared at him. “Did you let him look at the ledgers?”

  “He insisted, sahib.”

  “You’re a bloody fool, Dilip! A bloody, bloody fool. I should thrash you if I wasn’t so tired. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “No, sahib, please.”

  “Oh, just bugger away off, Dilip,” Torrance snarled. “And you can go too, Brick.”

  The girl fled to the kitchen door. Dilip collected his ink bottle and sand-sprinkler. “Shall I take the chitties now, sahib, for the morning?”

  “Go!” Torrance roared. “You bore me! Go!” Dilip fled to the front room, and Torrance lay back in the hammock. He was indeed bored. He had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Most nights he would go to Naig’s tents and there drink, gamble and whore, but he could hardly visit the green pavilion this night, not after stringing Naig up by the neck. Damn it, he thought. He glanced at the table where a book, a gift from his father, lay unopened. The first volume of Some Reflections on Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians by the Reverend Courtney Mallison, and it would be a frigid day in the devil’s house before Torrance read that turgid tome. The Reverend Mallison had been Torrance’s childhood tutor, and a vicious beast he had been. A whipper, that was Mallison. Loved to whip his pupils. Torrance stared at the ceiling. Money. It was all down to money. Everything in the damned world was down to money. Make money, he thought, and he could go home and make Courtney Mallison’s life a misery. Have the bastard on his knees. And Mallison’s daughter. Have that prim bitch on her back.

  There was a knock on the door. “I said I didn’t want to be disturbed!” Torrance shouted, but despite his protest the door opened and the muslin billowed inward, letting in a flutter of moths. “For Christ’s sake,” Torrance cursed, then fell abruptly silent.