LITMIR.BIZ

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      A second redcoat was driven to the jettis, and this man was forced to kneel. He did not move as the nail was placed on his head. He uttered one curse, then died in seconds as his blood spurted out onto the gravel forecourt. A third man was killed with a single punch to his chest, a blow so massive that it drove him back a full twelve paces before, shuddering, his ruptured heart gave up. The watching soldiers shouted that they wanted to see another man’s neck wrung like a chicken, and the jettis obliged. And so, one by one, the prisoners were forced to their killers. Three of the men died abjectly, calling for mercy and weeping like babes. Two died saying prayers, but the rest died defiantly. Three put up a fight, and one tall grenadier raised an ironic cheer from the watching troops by breaking a jetti’s finger, but then he too died like the rest. One after the other they died, and those who came last were forced to watch their comrades’ deaths and to wonder how they would be sent to meet their Maker; whether they would be spiked through the skull or have their necks twisted north to south or simply be beaten to bloody death. And all of the prisoners, once dead, were decapitated by a sword blow before the two parts of their bodies were wrapped in reed mats and laid aside.

      The jettis saved the Sergeant till last. The watching soldiers were in a fine mood now. They had been nervous at first, apprehensive of cold-blooded death on a sun-drenched afternoon, but the strength of the jettis and the desperate antics of the doomed men trying to escape had amused them and now they wanted to enjoy this last victim who promised to provide the finest entertainment of the day. His face was twitching in what the spectators took to be uncontrollable fear, but despite that terror he proved astonishingly agile, forever scuttling out of the jettis’ way and shouting up towards the Tippoo. Again and again he would appear to be cornered, but somehow he would always slide or twist or duck his way free and, with his face shuddering, would call desperately to the Tippoo. His shouts were drowned by the cheers of the soldiers who applauded every narrow escape. Two more jettis came to help catch the elusive man and, though he tried to twist past them, they at last had the Sergeant trapped. The jettis advanced in a line, forcing him back towards the palace, and the watching soldiers fell silent in expectation of his death. The Sergeant feinted to his left, then suddenly twisted and ran from the advancing jettis towards the palace. The guards moved to drive him back towards his executioners, but the man stopped beneath the verandah and stared up at the Tippoo. ‘I know who the traitors are here!’ he shouted in the silence. ‘I know!’

      A jetti caught the Sergeant from behind and forced him to his knees.

      ‘Get these black bastards off me!’ the Sergeant screamed. ‘Listen, Your Honour, I know what’s going on here! There’s a British officer in the city wearing your uniform! For God’s sake! Mother!’ This last cry was torn from Obadiah Hakeswill as a second jetti placed his hands on the Sergeant’s head. Hakeswill wrenched his face round and bit down hard on the ball of the jetti’s thumb and the astonished man jerked his hands away, leaving a scrap of flesh in the Sergeant’s mouth.

      Hakeswill spat the morsel out. ‘Listen, Your Grace! I know what the bastards are up to! Traitors. On my oath. Get away from me, you heathen black bastard! I can’t die! I can’t die! Mother!’ The jetti with the bitten hand had gripped the Sergeant’s head and begun to turn it. Usually the neck was wrung swiftly, for a huge explosion of energy was needed to break a man’s spine, but this time the jetti planned a slow and exquisitely painful death in revenge for his bitten hand. ‘Mother!’ Hakeswill screamed as his face was forced farther around, and then, just as it was twisted back past his shoulder, he made one last effort. ‘I saw a British officer in the city! No!’

      ‘Wait,’ the Tippoo called.

      The jetti paused, still holding Hakeswill’s head at an unnatural angle.

      ‘What did he say?’ the Tippoo asked one of his officers who spoke some English and who had been translating the Sergeant’s desperate words. The officer translated again.

      The Tippoo waved one of his small delicate hands and the aggrieved jetti let go of Hakeswill’s head. The Sergeant cursed as the agonizing tension left his neck, then rubbed at the pain. ‘Bleeding heathen bastard!’ he said. ‘You murdering black bugger!’ He spat at the jetti, shook himself out of the grip of the man holding him, then stood and walked two paces towards the palace. ‘I saw him, didn’t I? With my own eyes! In a frock, like them.’ He gestured at the watching soldiers in their tiger-striped tunics. ‘A lieutenant, he is, and the army says he went back to Madras, but he didn’t, did he? ’Cos he’s here. ’Cos I saw him. Me! Obadiah Hakeswill, Your Highness, and keep that bleeding heathen darkie away from me.’ One of the jettis had come close and Hakeswill, his face twitching, turned on the looming man. ‘Go on, bugger off back to your sty, you bloody great lump.’

      The officer who spoke English called down from the verandah. ‘Who did you see?’ he asked.

      ‘I told you, Your Honour, didn’t I?’

      ‘No, you didn’t. Give us a name.’

      Hakeswill’s face twitched. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he wheedled, ‘if you promise to let me live.’ He dropped to his knees and stared up at the verandah. ‘I don’t mind being in your dungeons, my Lord, for Obadiah Hakeswill never did mind a rat or two, but I don’t want these bleeding heathens screwing me neck back to front. It ain’t a Christian act.’

      The officer translated for the Tippoo who, at last, nodded and so prompted the officer to turn back to Hakeswill. ‘You will live,’ he called down.

      ‘Word of honour?’ Hakeswill asked.

      ‘Upon my honour.’

      ‘Cross your heart and hope to die? Like it says in the scriptures?’

      ‘You will live!’ the officer snapped. ‘So long as you tell us the truth.’

      ‘I always do that, sir. Honest Hakeswill, that’s my name, sir. I saw him, didn’t I? Lieutenant Lawford, William he’s called. Tall lanky fellow with fair hair and blue eyes. And he ain’t alone. Private bleeding Sharpe was with him.’

      The officer had not understood everything that Hakeswill had said, but he had understood enough. ‘You are saying this man Lawford is a British officer?’ he asked.

      ‘’Course he is! In my bleeding company, what’s more. And they said he’d gone back to Madras on account of carrying despatches, but he never did, ’cos there weren’t no despatches to be carried. He’s here, Your Grace, and up to no bleeding good and, like I said, dolled up in a stripy frock.’

      The officer seemed sceptical. ‘The only Englishmen we have here, Sergeant, are prisoners or deserters. You’re lying.’

      Hakeswill spat on the gravel that was soaked with the blood from the decapitated prisoners. ‘How can he be a deserter? Officers don’t desert! They sell their commissions and bugger off home to Mummy. I tell you, sir, he’s an officer! And the other one’s a right bastard! Flogged, he was, and quite right too! He should have been flogged to bleeding death, only the General sent for him.’

      The mention of the flogging woke a memory in the Tippoo. ‘When was he flogged?’ The officer translated the Tippoo’s question.

      ‘Just before he ran, sir. Raw, he must have been, but not raw enough.’

      ‘And you say the General sent for him?’ The officer sounded disbelieving.

      ‘Harris, sir, the bugger what lost a lump out of his skull in America. He sent our Colonel, he did, and Colonel Wellesley stopped the flogging. Stopped it!’ Hakeswill’s indignation was still keen. ‘Stopping a flogging what’s been properly ordered! Never seen anything so disgraceful in all me born days! Going to the dogs, the army is, going to the dogs.’

      The Tippoo listened to the translation, then stepped back from the railing. He turned to Appah Rao who had once served in the East India Company’s army. ‘Do British officers desert?’

      ‘None that I’ve ever heard of, Your Majesty,’ Appah

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