The enemy seemed to be asleep. Elliott would ride far ahead to reconnoiter the route and never once saw a Mahratta. “Stupid fools,” Elliott said one night beside the fire, “they could hold us here for months!”
“You still shouldn’t ride so far ahead of my pickets,” Simons reproved the Major.
“Stop fussing, man,” Elliott said, and next morning, as usual, he rode out in front to survey the day’s work.
Sharpe was again bringing stones up the road that morning. He was walking at the head of his ox train on the wooded stretch above the newly made artillery park. The day’s heat was growing and there was little wind in the thick woods of teak and cork trees that covered the low hills. Groups of pioneers felled trees where they might obstruct a gun carriage’s progress, and here and there Sharpe saw a whitewashed peg showing where Elliott had marked the track. Shots sounded ahead, but Sharpe took no notice. The upland valleys had become a favorite hunting ground for the shikarees who used nets, snares and ancient matchlocks to kill hares, wild pigs, deer, quail and partridge that they sold to the officers, and Sharpe assumed a party of the hunters was close to the track, but after a few seconds the firing intensified. The musketry was muffled by the thick leaves, but for a moment the sound was constant, almost at battle pitch, before, as suddenly as it had erupted, it stopped.
His bullock drivers had halted, made nervous by the firing. “Come on!” Sharpe encouraged them. None of them spoke English, and Sharpe had no idea which language they did speak, but they were good-natured men, eager to please, and they prodded their heavily laden bullocks onward. Ahmed had unslung his musket and was peering ahead. He suddenly raised the gun to his shoulder, and Sharpe pushed it down before the boy could pull the trigger. “They’re ours,” he told the lad. “Sepoys.”
A dozen sepoys hurried back through the trees. Major Simons was with them and, as they came closer, Sharpe saw the men were carrying a makeshift stretcher made from tree branches and jackets. “It’s Elliott.” Simons paused by Sharpe as his men hurried ahead. “Bloody fool got a chest wound. He won’t live. Stupid man was too far forward. I told him not to get ahead of the pickets.” Simons took a ragged red handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped the sweat from his face. “One less engineer.” Sharpe peered at Elliott who was blessedly unconscious. His face had gone pale, and pinkish blood was bubbling at his lips with every labored breath. “He won’t last the day,” Simons said brutally, “but I suppose we should get him back to the surgeons.”
“Where are the enemy?” Sharpe asked.
“They ran,” Simons said. “Half a dozen of the bastards were waiting in ambush. They shot Elliott, took his weapons, but ran off when they saw us.”
Three shikarees died that afternoon, ambushed in the high woods, and that night, when the road-builders camped in one of the grassy upland valleys, some shots were fired from a neighboring wood. The bullets hissed overhead, but none found a target. The pickets blazed back until a havildar shouted at them to hold their fire. Captain Pinckney shook his head. “I thought it was too good to last,” he said gloomily. “It’ll be slow work now.” He poked the fire around which a half-dozen officers were sitting.
Major Simons grinned. “If I was the enemy,” he said, “I’d attack Mr. Sharpe’s oxen instead of attacking engineers. If they cut our supply line they’d do some real damage.”
“There’s no point in shooting engineers,” Pinckney agreed. “We don’t need Royal Engineers anyway. We’ve been making roads for years. The fellows in the blue coats just get in the way. Mind you, they’ll still send us another.”
“If there are any left,” Sharpe said. The campaign had been fatal for the engineers. Two had died blowing up the enemy guns at Assaye, another three were fevered and now Elliott was either dying or already dead.
“They’ll find one,” Pinckney grumbled. “If there’s something the King’s army doesn’t need then you can be sure they’ve got a healthy supply of it.”
“The Company army’s better?” Sharpe asked.
“It is,” Major Simons said. “We work for a sterner master than you, Sharpe. It’s called bookkeeping. You fight for victories, we fight for profits. Leadenhall Street won’t pay for fancy engineers in blue coats, not when they can hire plain men like us at half the cost.”
“They could afford me,” Sharpe said. “Cheap as they come, I am.”
Next morning Simons threw a strong picket line ahead of the work parties, but no Mahrattas opposed the pioneers who were now widening the track where it twisted up a bare and steep slope that was littered with rocks. The track was ancient, worn into the hills by generations of travelers, but it had never been used by wagons, let alone by heavy guns. Merchants who wanted to carry their goods up the escarpment had used the road leading directly to the fortress’s Southern Gate, while this track, which looped miles to the east of Gawilghur, was little more than a series of paths connecting the upland valleys where small farms had been hacked from the jungle. It was supposed to be tiger country, but Sharpe saw none of the beasts. At dawn he had returned to Deogaum to collect rice for the sepoys, and then spent the next four hours climbing back to where the pioneers were working. He was nervous at first, both of tigers and of an enemy ambush, but the worst he suffered was a series of drenching rainstorms that swept up the mountains.
The rain stopped when he reached the working parties who were driving the road through a small ridge. Pinckney was setting a charge of gunpowder that would loosen the rock and let him cut out a mile of looping track. His servant brought a mug of tea that Sharpe drank sitting on a rock. He stared southward, watching the veils of gray rain sweep across the plain.
“Did Wellesley say anything about sending a new engineer?” Major Simons asked him.
“I just collected the rice, sir,” Sharpe said. “I didn’t see the General.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a friend of his?” Simons observed sourly.
“Everyone thinks that,” Sharpe said, “except him and me.”
“But you saved his life?”
Sharpe shrugged. “I reckon so. Either that or stopped him getting captured.”
“And killed a few men doing it, I hear?”
Sharpe looked at the tall Simons with some surprise, for he had not realized that his exploit had become common knowledge. “Don’t remember much about it.”
“I suppose not. Still,” Simons said, “a feather in your cap?”
“I don’t think Wellesley thinks that,” Sharpe said.
“You’re a King’s officer now, Sharpe,” Simons said enviously. As an East India Company officer he was trapped in the Company’s cumbersome system of promotion. “If Wellesley thrives, he’ll remember you.”
Sharpe laughed. “I doubt it, sir. He ain’t the sort.” He turned southward again because Ahmed had called a warning in Arabic. The boy was pointing downhill and Sharpe stood to see over the crown of the slope. Far beneath him, where the road passed through one of the lush valleys, a small party of horsemen was approaching and one of the riders was in a blue coat. “Friends, Ahmed!” he called. “Looks like the new engineer,” Sharpe said to Simons.
“Pinckney will be delighted,” Simons said sarcastically.
Pinckney came back to inspect the approaching party through a telescope, and spat when he saw the blue coat of the Royal Engineers. “Another interfering bastard to teach me how to suck eggs,” he said. “So let’s blow the charge before he gets here, otherwise he’ll tell us we’re doing it all wrong.”
A crowd of grinning sepoys waited expectantly about the end of the fuse. Pinckney struck a light, put it to the quick-match, then watched the sparks smoke their way toward the distant charge. The smoke trail vanished in grass and it seemed to Sharpe that it must have extinguished itself, but then there was a violent coughing sound and the small ridge heaved upward. Soil and stone flew outward in a cloud of filthy smoke. The sepoys cheered. The explosion had seemed small to Sharpe, but when the smoke and dust cleared he could se
e that the ridge now had a deep notch through which the road could climb to the next high valley.
The pioneers went to shovel the loosened earth away and Sharpe sat again. Ahmed squatted beside him. “What am I going to do with you?” Sharpe asked.
“I go to England,” Ahmed said carefully.
“You won’t like it there. Cold as buggery.”
“Cold?”
“Freezing.” Sharpe mimicked a shiver, but plainly it meant nothing to the Arab boy.
“I go to England,” Ahmed insisted.
A half-hour later the new engineer appeared just beneath Sharpe. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, rode a gray horse and was trailed by three servants who led pack mules laden with luggage among which Sharpe could see a tripod, a surveyor’s level and a vast leather tube that he guessed held a telescope. The engineer took off his hat and fanned his face as he rounded the last bend. “’Pon my soul,” he said cheerfully, “but thank God the horse does the climbing and not me.”
Pinckney had come back to greet the engineer and held out his hand as the blue-coated Major slid from his saddle. “Captain Pinckney, sir,” he introduced himself.
“Pinckney, eh?” the white-haired engineer said cheerfully. “I knew a Pinckney in Hertfordshire. He made plowshares, and damn fine ones too.”
“My uncle Joshua, sir.”
“Then you must be Hugh’s boy, yes? An honor!” He shook Pinckney’s hand vigorously. “Major John Stokes, at your service, though I don’t suppose you need me, do you? You must have built more roads than I ever did.” Major Stokes looked toward Sharpe who had stood and was now smiling. “Good God in His blessed heaven,” Stokes said, “it can’t be! But it is! My dear Sharpe! My dear Mr. Sharpe. I heard all about your commission! Couldn’t be more pleased, my dear Sharpe. An officer, eh?”
Sharpe smiled broadly. “Only an ensign, sir.”
“Every ladder has a first rung, Sharpe,” Stokes said in gentle reproof of Sharpe’s modesty, then held out his hand. “We shall be mess mates, as they say in the Navy. Well, I never! Mess mates, indeed! And with a Pinckney too! Hugh Pinckney forges mill gears, Sharpe. Never seen a man make better-toothed wheels in all my life.” He clasped Sharpe’s hand in both of his. “They grubbed me out of Seringapatam, Sharpe. Can you believe that? Told me all the other engineers had the pox, and summoned me here just in time to discover that poor Elliott’s dead. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. It’s awfully good for my promotion prospects.” He let go of Sharpe’s hand. “Oh, and by the way, I traveled north with some of your old comrades! Captain Charles Morris and his company. Not the most charming creature, is he?”
“Not one of my favorites, sir,” Sharpe admitted. Good God! Bloody Morris was here? First Hakeswill, then Morris!
“He didn’t want to come,” Stokes said, “but higher powers deemed that I had to be protected from the ungodly, so they insisted on an infantry escort.” He turned as a rattle of gunfire sounded higher up the escarpment. “Bless my soul! Is that musketry?”
“Picket line, sir,” Pinckney explained. “The enemy harasses us, but they’re not thrusting home.”
“They should, they should. A battalion of skirmishers in these hills could keep us at bay for a month! Well, I never, Sharpe! An ensign!” The Major turned hack to Pinckney. “Sharpe and I ran the armory at Seringapatam for four years.”
“You ran it, sir,” Sharpe said. “I was just your sergeant.”
“Best sergeant I ever had,” Stokes told Pinckney enthusiastically. “And it’s not ‘sir’”—he turned to Sharpe—“but John.” He grinned at Sharpe. “They were four good years, eh? Best we’ll ever have, I daresay. And here you are now, an officer! My dear fellow, I couldn’t be more overjoyed.” He sniffed the air. “Been blowing things up, Pinckney?”
“Cutting through that ridge, sir. I trust you don’t mind that we didn’t wait for you?”
“Mind? Why should I mind? You go ahead, dear fellow. I’m sure you know your business better than I do. God knows why they need an engineer here at all! Probably to be decorative, eh? Still, I’ll make myself useful. I thought I might map the escarpment. Hasn’t been done, you see. Of course, Pinckney, if you need advice, just ask away, but I’ll probably be at sixes and sevens groping for an answer.” He beamed at the delighted Pinckney, then looked at the rough country through which the road led. “This is fine landscape, isn’t it? Such a relief after the plains. It reminds me of Scotland.”
“There are tigers here, Major,” Sharpe said.
“And there’s all kinds of fierce things in Scotland too, Sharpe. I was once posted to Fort William and might as well have been in darkest China! It was worse than Newfoundland. And speaking of America, Sharpe, that young lady you sent me has traveled there. Extraordinary thing to do, I thought, and I advised her to abandon the whole wretched idea. There are bears, I told her, fierce bears, but she wouldn’t be persuaded.”
“Simone, sir?” Sharpe asked, at first not believing his ears, then feeling a dreadful premonition.
“A charming creature, I thought. And to be widowed so young!” Stokes tutted and shook his head. “She went to a fortune-teller, one of those naked fellows who make funny faces in the alley by the Hindu temple, and says she was advised to go to a new world. Whatever next, eh?”
“I thought she was waiting for me, sir,” Sharpe said.
“Waiting for you? Good Lord, no. Gone to Louisiana, she says. She stayed in my house for a week—I moved out, of course, to stop any scandal—and then she traveled to Madras with Mrs. Pennington. Remember Charlotte Pennington? The clergyman’s widow? I can’t think the two of them will get along, but your friend said the fortuneteller was adamant and so she chose to go.” The Major was eager to give Sharpe the rest of the news from Seringapatam. The armory was closing down, he said, now that the frontier of the British-held territory was so much farther north, but Stokes had kept himself busy dismantling the town’s inner fortifications. “Very ill made, Sharpe, disgraceful work, quite disgraceful. Walls crumbled to the touch.”
But Sharpe was not listening. He was thinking of Simone. She had gone! By now she was probably in Madras, and maybe already on board a ship. And she had taken his jewels. Only a few of them, true, but enough. He touched the seam of his jacket where a good many of the Tippoo’s other jewels were hidden.
“Did Madame Joubert leave any message?” he asked Stokes when the Major paused to draw breath. What did he hope, Sharpe wondered, that Simone would want him to join her in America?
“A message? None, Sharpe. Too busy to write, I daresay. She’s a remarkably wealthy woman, did you know? She bought half the raw silk in town, hired a score of bearers and off she went. Every officer in town was leaving a card for her, but she didn’t have the time of day for any of them. Off to Louisiana!” Stokes suddenly frowned. “What is the matter, Sharpe? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. You’re not sickening, are you?”
“No, no. It’s just I thought she might have written.”
“Oh! I see! You were sweet on her!” Stokes shook his head. “I feel for you, Sharpe, ’pon my soul, I do, but what hope could you have? A woman with her sort of fortune doesn’t look at fellows like us! ’Pon my soul, no. She’s rich! She’ll marry high, Sharpe, or as high as a woman can in French America.”
Her sort of fortune indeed! Simone had no fortune, she had been penniless when Sharpe met her, but he had trusted her. God damn the Frog bitch! Stolen a small fortune. “It doesn’t matter,” he told Stokes, but somehow it did. Simone’s betrayal was like a stab to the belly. It was not so much the jewels, for he had kept the greater part of the plunder, but the broken promises. He felt anger and pity and, above all, a fool. A great fool. He turned away from Stokes and stared down the track to where a dozen oxen escorted by two companies of sepoys were trudging towards him. “I’ve got work coming,” he said, not wanting to discuss Simone any further.
“I passed those fellows on my way,” Stokes said, “carrying powder, I think. I do like bl
owing things up. So just what do you do here, Sharpe?”
“I keep the pioneers supplied with material, sir, and sign in all the convoys.”
“Hope it leaves you time to “help me, Sharpe. You and me together again, eh? It’ll be like the old days.”
“That’d be good, sir,” Sharpe said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, then he walked down the track and pointed to where the ox-drivers should drop their barrels of gunpowder. The men crowded about him with their chitties, and he pulled out a pencil and scrawled his initials in the corner of each one, thus confirming that they had completed and were owed for one journey.
The last man also handed Sharpe a sealed paper with his name written in a fine copperplate hand. “From the clerk, sahib,” the man said, the phrase plainly much practiced for he spoke no other English.
Sharpe tore the seal off as he walked back up the hill. The letter was not from the clerk at all, but from Torrance. “Bloody hell!” he cursed.
“What is it?” Stokes asked.
“A man called Torrance,” Sharpe complained. “He’s in charge of the bullocks. He wants me back at Deogaum because he reckons there are forged chitties in the camp.”
“In the far south of India,” Stokes said, “they call them shits.”
Sharpe blinked at the Major. “Sorry, sir?”
“You mustn’t call me ‘sir,’ Sharpe. ’Pon my soul, yes. I had a Tamil servant who was forever asking me to sign his shits. Had me all in a dither at first, I can tell you.”
Sharpe crumpled Torrance’s note into a ball. “Why the hell can’t Torrance sort out his own shits?” he asked angrily. But he knew why. Torrance was scared of another meeting with Wellesley, which meant the Captain would now follow the rules to the letter.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress Page 89