LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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 defence 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 labourers, 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 lime-washed 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 jewellery, 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 prisonniére.’ 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 had 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 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 face down on the floor beside the sleeping Lieutenant. Sharpe grimaced. ‘Glad the

Скачать книгу