LITMIR.BIZ

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he deserves. He’s up to no good, sir, I can feel it in my waters, and a bugger up to no good is a bugger better off dead. Says so in the scriptures, sir.’

      ‘I’m sure it does, Sergeant, I’m sure it does,’ Morris said, then closed the Punishment Book. ‘You must do whatever you think is best, Sergeant. I know I can trust you.’

      ‘You do me honour, sir,’ Hakeswill said with feigned emotion. ‘You do me honour. And I’ll have the bastard for you, sir, have him proper dead.’

      In Seringapatam.

      ‘What in God’s name did you think you were doing, Sharpe?’ Lawford demanded furiously. The Lieutenant was much too angry to go along with the pretence of being a private, and, besides, the two men were now alone for the first time that day. Alone, but not unguarded, for though they were standing sentry in one of the south wall cavaliers there were a dozen men of Gudin’s battalion within sight, including the burly Sergeant, called Rothière, who watched the two newcomers from the next cavalier along. ‘By God, Private,’ Lawford hissed, ‘I’ll have you flogged for that display when we’re back! We’re here to rescue Colonel McCandless, not to kill him! Are you mad?’

      Sharpe stared south across the landscape, saying nothing. To his right the shallow river flowed between shelving green banks. Once the monsoon came the river would swell and spread and drown the wide flat rocks that dotted its bed. He was feeling more comfortable now, for Doctor Venkatesh had placed some salve on his back which had taken away a lot of the pain. The doctor had then put on new bandages and warned Sharpe that they must not be dampened, but ought to be changed each day until the wounds healed.

      Colonel Gudin had then taken the two Englishmen to a barracks room close by the city’s south-western corner. Every man in the barracks was a European, most of them French, but with a scattering of Swiss, Germans and two Britishers. They all wore the blue coats of French infantry, but there were none to spare for the two new men, and so Sergeant Rothière had issued Sharpe and Lawford with tiger tunics like those the Tippoo’s men wore. The tunics did not open down the front like a European coat, but had to be pulled over the head. ‘Where you boys from?’ an English voice asked Sharpe as he pulled down the dyed cotton tunic.

      ‘33rd,’ Sharpe had said.

      ‘The Havercakes?’ the man said. ‘Thought they were up north, in Calcutta?’

      ‘Brought down to Madras last year,’ Sharpe said. He gingerly sat on his cot, an Indian bed made from ropes stretched between a simple wooden frame. It proved surprisingly comfortable. ‘And you?’ he asked the Englishman.

      ‘Royal bleeding Artillery, mate, both of us. Ran three months back. Name’s Johnny Blake and that’s Henry Hickson.’

      ‘I’m Dick Sharpe and that’s Bill Lawford,’ Sharpe said, introducing the Lieutenant who looked desperately awkward in his knee-length tunic of purple and white stripes. Over the tunic he wore two crossbelts and an ordinary belt from which hung a bayonet and a cartridge pouch. They had been issued with heavy French muskets and warned they would have to do their share of sentry duty with the rest of the small battalion.

      ‘Used to be a lot more of us,’ Blake told Sharpe, ‘but men die here like flies. Fever mostly.’

      ‘But it ain’t bad here,’ Henry Hickson offered. ‘Food’s all right. Plenty of bibbis and Gudin’s a real decent officer. Better than any we ever had.’

      ‘Right bastards we had,’ Blake agreed.

      ‘Aren’t they all?’ Sharpe had said.

      ‘And the pay’s good, when you get it. Five months overdue now, but maybe we’ll get it when we beat the stuffing out of the British.’ Blake laughed at the suggestion.

      Blake and Hickson were not required to stand guard, but instead manned one of the big tiger-mouthed guns that crouched behind a nearby embrasure. Sharpe and Lawford stood their watch alone and it was that privacy which had encouraged Lawford into his furious attack. ‘Have you got nothing to say for yourself, Private?’ he challenged Sharpe who still stared serenely over the green landscape through which the river curled south about the city’s island. ‘Well?’ Lawford snapped.

      Sharpe looked at him. ‘You loaded the musket, didn’t you, Bill?’

      ‘Of course!’

      ‘You ever felt gunpowder that smooth and fine?’ Sharpe gazed into the Lieutenant’s face.

      ‘It could have been gunpowder dust!’ Lawford insisted angrily.

      ‘That shiny?’ Sharpe said derisively. ‘Gunpowder dust is full of rat shit and sawdust! And did you really think, Bill’ – he pronounced the name sarcastically – ‘that the bleeding Tippoo would let us have loaded guns before he was sure he could trust us? And with him standing not six feet away? And did you bother to taste the powder? I did, and it weren’t salty at all. That weren’t gunpowder, Lieutenant, that were either ink powder or black pigment, but whatever it was it was never going to spark.’

      Lawford gaped at Sharpe. ‘So you knew all along the gun wouldn’t fire?’

      ‘Of course I bloody knew! I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger else. You mean you didn’t realize that weren’t powder?’

      Lawford turned away. Once again he had been made to look like a fool and he blushed at the realization. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He was crestfallen, and again he felt a galling sense of inadequacy compared to this common soldier.

      Sharpe stared at a patrol of the Tippoo’s lancers who were riding back towards the city. Three of them were wounded and were being supported in their saddles by their comrades, which suggested the British were not so very far away now. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said very softly, and deliberately using the word ‘sir’ to mollify Lawford, ‘but I’m not trying to be insolent. I’m just trying to keep you and me alive.’

      ‘I know. I’m sorry too. I should have known it wasn’t powder.’

      ‘It was confusing, weren’t it?’ Sharpe said, trying to console his companion. ‘What with the Tippoo being there. Fat little bugger, ain’t he? But you’re doing all right, sir.’ Sharpe spoke feelingly, knowing that the young Lieutenant desperately needed encouragement. ‘And you were clever as hell, sir, saying you wore an apron. I should have splashed some ink on your uniform, shouldn’t I? But I never thought of it, but you got us out of that one.’

      ‘I was thinking of Private Brookfield,’ Lawford said, not without some pride at the memory of his inspired lie. ‘You know Brookfield?’

      ‘The clerk of Mister Stanbridge’s company, sir? Fellow who wears spectacles? Does he wear a pinny?’

      ‘He says it keeps the ink off him.’

      ‘He always was an old woman,’ Sharpe said scornfully, ‘but you did well. And I’ll tell you something else. We have to get out of here soon because I know why we came now. We don’t have to find your merchant fellow, we just have to get out. Unless you think we ought to rescue your uncle, but if you don’t, then we can just run, because I know why we came now.’

      Lawford gaped at him. ‘You know?’

      ‘The Colonel spoke to me, sir, while we was going through that pantomime back there in the palace. He says we’re to tell General Harris to avoid the west wall. Nothing else, just that.’

      Lawford stared at Sharpe, then glanced across the angle of the city walls towards the western defences, but nothing he could see there looked strange or suspicious. ‘You’d better stop calling me “sir”,’ he said. ‘Are you sure about what he said?’

      ‘He said it twice. Avoid the west wall.’

      A bellow from the next cavalier made them turn. Rothière was pointing south, suggesting that the two Englishmen watch that direction as they were supposed to instead of gaping like yokels towards the west. Sharpe obediently stared southwards, though there was nothing to be

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