Sharpe's Triumph

by Bernard Cornwell

  The Sergeant stopped in one of the grog shops and demanded arrack.

  The shop was empty, all but for himself, the owner and a legless beggar who heaved himself towards the Sergeant and received a kick in the rump for his trouble.

  "Get out of here, you scabby bastard!" Hakeswill shouted.

  "Bringing the flies in, you are. Go on! Piss off." The shop thus emptied to his satisfaction, Hakeswill sat in a dark corner contemplating life.

  "I chide myself," he muttered aloud, worrying the shop's owner who feared the look of the twitching man in the red coat.

  "Your own fault, Obadiah," Hakeswill said.

  "You should have seen it years ago! Years! Rich as a Jew, he is. Are you listening to me, you heathen darkie bastard?" The shop's owner, thus challenged, fled into the back room, leaving Hakeswill grumbling at the table.

  "Rich as a Jew, Sharpie is, only he thinks he hides it, which he don't, on account of me having tumbled to him. He don't even live in barracks! Got himself some rooms over by the Mysore Gate. Got a bleeding servant boy. Always got cash on him, always! Buys drinks."

  Hakeswill shook his head at the injustice of it all. The 33rd had spent the last four years patrolling Mysore's roads and Sharpe, all that while, had been living in Seringapatam's comforts. It was not right, not fair, not just. Hakeswill had worried about it, wondering why Sharpe was so rich. At first he had assumed that Sharpe had been fiddling the armoury stores, but that could not explain Sharpe's apparent wealth.

  "Only so much milk in a cow," Hakeswill muttered, 'no matter how hard you squeeze the teats." Now he knew why Sharpe was rich, or he thought he knew, and what he had learned had filled Obadiah Hakeswill with a desperate jealousy. He scratched at a mosquito bite on his neck, revealing the old dark scar where the hangman's rope had burned and abraded his skin. Obadiah Hakeswill had survived that hanging, and as a result he fervently believed that he could not be killed. Touched by God, he claimed he was, touched by God.

  But he was not rich. Not rich at all, and Richard Sharpe was rich.

  Rumour had it that Richard Sharpe used Lali's house, and that was an officers-only brothel, so why was Sergeant Sharpe allowed inside?

  Because he was rich, that was why, and Hakeswill had at last discovered Sharpe's secret.

  "It was the Tippoo!" he said aloud, then thumped the table with his tin mug to demand more drink.

  "And hurry up about it, you black-faced bastard!"

  It had to be the Tippoo. Had not Hakeswill seen Sharpe lurking about the area where the Tippoo had been killed? And no soldier had ever claimed the credit for killing the Tippoo. It was widely thought that one of those Suffolk bastards from the south had caught the King in the chaos at the siege's end, but Hakeswill had finally worked it out. It had been Sharpe, and the reason Sharpe had kept quiet about the killing was because he had stripped the Tippoo of all his gems and he did not want anyone, least of all the army's senior officers, to knowj that he possessed the jewels.

  "Bloody Sharpe!" Hakeswill said aloud.

  So all that was needed now was an excuse to have Sharpe brought back to the regiment. No more clean and easy duty for Sharpie! No more merry rides in Lali's house for him. It would be Obadiah Hakeswill's turn to live in luxury, and all because of a dead king's treasure.

  "Rubies," Hakeswill said aloud, lingering over the word, 'and emeralds and sapphires, and diamonds like stars, and gold thick as butter." He chuckled. And all it would need, he reckoned, was a little cunning. A little cunning, a confident lie and an arrest.

  "And that will be your end, Sharpie, that will be your end," Hakeswill said, and he could feel the beauty of his scheme unfold like a lotus blossoming in Seringapa-tam's moat. It would work! His visit to Major Stokes had established that Sharpe was in the town, which meant that the lie could be told and then, just like Major Stokes's clockwork, everything would go right. Every cog and gear and wheel and spike would slot and click and tick and tock, and Sergeant Hakeswill's face twitched and his hands contracted as though the tin mug in his grip were a man's throat. He would be rich.

  It took Major William Dodd three days to carry the ammunition back to Pohlmann's compoo which was camped just outside the Mahratta city of Ahmednuggur. The compoo was an infantry brigade of eight battalions, each of them recruited from among the finest mercenary warriors of north India and all trained and commanded by European officers.

  Dowlut Rao Scindia, the Maharajah of Gwalior, whose land stretched from the fortress of Baroda in the north to the fastness of Gawilghur in the east and down to Ahmednuggur in the south, boasted that he led a hundred thousand men and that his army could blacken the land like a plague, yet this compoo, with its seven thousand men, was the hard heart of his army.

  One of the compoo's eight battalions was paraded a mile outside the encampment to greet Dodd. The cavalry that had accompanied the sepoys to Chasalgaon had ridden ahead to warn Pohlmann of Dodd's return and Pohlmann had organized a triumphant reception. The battalion stood in white coats, their black belts and weapons gleaming, but Dodd, riding at the head of his small column, had eyes only for the tall elephant that stood beside a yellow-and-white-striped marquee. The huge beast glittered in the sunlight, for its body and head were armoured with a vast leather cape onto which squares of silver had been sewn in intricate patterns. The silver covered the elephant's body, continued across its face and then, all but for two circles that had been cut for its eyes, cascaded on down the length of its trunk. Gems gleamed between the silver plates while ribbons of purple silk fluttered from the crown of the animal's head. The last few inches of the animal's big curved tusks were sheathed in silver, though the actual points of the tusks were tipped with needle-sharp points of steel. The elephant driver, the mahout, sweated in a coat of old-fashioned chain mail that had been burnished to the same gleaming polish as his animal's silver armour, while behind him was a howdah made of cedar wood on which gold panels had been nailed and above which fluttered a fringed canopy of yellow silk. Long files of purple-jacketed infantrymen stood to attention on either flank of the elephant. Some of the men carried muskets, while others had long pikes with their broad blades polished to resemble silver.

  The elephant knelt when Dodd came within twenty paces and the occupant of the howdah stepped carefully down onto a set of silver-plated steps placed there by one of his purple-coated bodyguards then strolled into the shade of the striped marquee. He was a European, a tall man and big, not fat, and though a casual glance might think him overweight, a second glance would see that most of that weight was solid muscle. He had a round sun-reddened face, big black moustaches and eyes that seemed to take delight in everything he saw. His uniform was of his own devising: white silk breeches tucked into English riding boots, a green coat festooned with gold lace and aiguillettes and, on the coat's broad shoulders, thick white silk cushions hung with short golden chains. The coat had scarlet facings and loops of scarlet braid about its turned-back cuffs and gilded buttons. The big man's hat was a bicorne crested with purple-dyed feathers held in place by a badge showing the white horse of Hanover; his sword's hilt was made of gold fashioned into the shape of an elephant's head, and gold rings glinted on his big fingers. Once in the shade of the open-sided marquee he settled himself on a divan where his aides gathered about him. This was Colonel Anthony Pohlmann and he commanded the compoo, together with five hundred cavalry and twenty-six field guns. Ten years before, when Scindia's army had been nothing but a horde of ragged troopers on half-starved horses, Anthony Pohlmann had been a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment of the East India Company; now he rode an elephant and needed two other beasts to carry the chests off gold coin that travelled everywhere with him.

  Pohlmann stood as Dodd climbed down from his horse.

  "Well done, Major!" the Colonel called in his German-accented English.

  "Exceedingly well done!" Pohlmann's aides, half of them European and half Indian, joined their commander in applauding the returning hero, while the bodyguard made
a double line through which Dodd could advance to meet the resplendent Colonel.

  "Eighty thousand cartridges," Pohlmann exulted, 'snatched from our enemies!"

  "Seventy-three thousand, sir," Dodd said, beating dust off his breeches.

  Pohlmann grinned.

  "Seven thousand spoiled, eh? Nothing changes."

  "Not spoiled by me, sir," Dodd growled.

  "I never supposed so," Pohlmann said.

  "Did you have any difficulties?"

  "None," Dodd answered confidently.

  "We lost no one, sir, not even a scratch, while not a single enemy soldier survived." He smiled, cracking the dust on his cheeks.

  "Not one."

  "A victory!" Pohlmann said, then gestured Dodd into the tent.

  "We have wine, of sorts. There is rum, arrack, even water! Come, Major."

  Dodd did not move.

  "My men are tired, sir," he pointed out.

  "Then dismiss them, Major. They can take refreshment at my cook tent."

  Dodd went to dismiss his men. He was a gangling Englishman with a long sallow face and a sullen expression. He was also that rarest of things, an officer who had deserted from the East India Company, and deserted moreover with one hundred and thirty of his own sepoy troops.

  He had come to Pohlmann just three weeks before and some of Pohlmann's European officers had been convinced that Lieutenant Dodd was a spy sent by the British whose army was readying to attack the Mahratta Confederation, but Pohlmann had not been so sure. It was true that no other British officer had ever deserted like Dodd, but few had reasons like Dodd, and Pohlmann had also recognized Dodd's hunger, his awkwardness, his anger and his ability. Lieutenant Dodd's record showed he was no mean soldier, his sepoys liked him, and he had a raging ambition, and Pohlmann had believed the Lieutenant's defection to be both wholehearted and real. He had made Dodd into a major, then given him a test. He had sent him to Chasalgaon. If Dodd proved capable of killing his old comrades then he was no spy, and Dodd had passed the test triumphantly and Scindia's army was now better off by seventy-three thousand cartridges.

  Dodd came back to the marquee and was given the chair of honour on the right side of Pohlmann's divan. The chair on the left was occupied by a woman, a European, and Dodd could scarcely keep his eyes from her, and no wonder, for she was a rare-looking woman to discover in India.

  She was young, scarce more than eighteen or nineteen, with a pale face and very fair hair. Her lips were maybe a trifle too thin and her forehead perhaps a half inch too wide, yet there was something oddly attractive about her. She had a face, Dodd decided, in which the imperfections added up to attractiveness, and her appeal was augmented by a timid air of vulnerability. At first Dodd assumed the woman was Pohlmann's mistress, but then he saw that her white linen dress was frayed at the hem and some of the lace at its modest collar was crudely darned, and he decided that Pohlmann would never allow his mistress to appear so shabbily.

  "Let me introduce Madame Joubert to you," Pohlmann said, who had noticed how hungrily Dodd had stared at the woman.

  "This is Major William Dodd."

  "Madame Joubert?" Dodd stressed the "Madame', half rising and bowing from his chair as he acknowledged her.

  "Major," she said in a low voice, then smiled nervously before looking down at the table that was spread with dishes of almonds.

  Pohlmann snapped his fingers for a servant, then smiled at Major Dodd.

  "Simone is married to Captain Joubert, and that is Captain Joubert." He pointed into the sunlight where a short captain stood to attention in front of the paraded battalion that stood so stiff and still in the biting sun.

  Joubert commands the battalion, sir?" Dodd asked.

  "No one commands the battalion," Pohlmann answered.

  "But until three weeks ago it was led by Colonel Mathers. Back then it had five European officers; now it has Captain Joubert and Lieutenant Silliere."

  He pointed to a second European, a tall thin young man, and Dodd, who was observant, saw Simone Joubert blush at the mention of Silliere's name. Dodd was amused. Joubert looked at least twenty years older than his wife, while Silliere was only a year or two her senior.

  "And we must have Europeans," Pohlmann went on, stretching back on the divan that creaked under his weight.

  "The Indians are fine soldiers, but we need Europeans who understand European tactics."

  "How many European officers have you lost, sir?" Dodd asked.

  "From this compoo? Eighteen," Pohlmann said.

  "Too many." The men who had gone were the British officers, and all had possessed contracts with Scindia that excused them from fighting against their own countrymen, and to make matters worse the East India Company had offered a bribe to any British officer who deserted the Mahrattas and, as a result, some of Pohlmann's best men were gone. It was true that he still had some good officers left, most of them French, with a handful of Dutchmen, Swiss and Germans, but Pohlmann knew he could ill afford the loss of eighteen European officers. At least none of his artillerymen had deserted and Pohlmann put great faith in the battle-winning capacity of his guns. Those cannon were served by Portuguese, or by half-breed Indians from the Portuguese colonies in India, and those professionals had stayed loyal and were awesomely proficient.

  Pohlmann drained a glass of rum and poured himself another. He had an extraordinary capacity for alcohol, a capacity Dodd did not share, and the Englishman, knowing his propensity for getting drunk, restrained himself to sips of watered wine.

  "I promised you a reward, Major, if you succeeded in rescuing the cartridges," Pohlmann said genially.

  "Knowing I've done my duty is reward enough," Dodd said. He felt shabby and ill-uniformed among Pohlmann's gaudy aides and had decided that it was best to play the bluff soldier, a role he thought would appeal to a former sergeant. It was said that Pohlmann kept his old East India Company uniform as a reminder of just how far he had risen.

  "Men do not join Scindia's army merely for the pleasures of doing their duty," Pohlmann said, 'but for the rewards such service offers. We are here to become rich, are we not?" He unhooked the elephant-hilted sword from his belt. The scabbard was made of soft red leather and was studded with small emeralds.

  "Here." Pohlmann offered the sword to Dodd.

  "I can't take your sword!" Dodd protested.

  "I have many, Major, and many finer. I insist."

  Dodd took the sword. He drew the blade from the scabbard and saw that it was finely made, much better than the drab sword he had worn as a lieutenant these last twenty years. Many Indian swords were made of soft steel and broke easily in combat, but Dodd guessed this blade had been forged in France or Britain, then given its beautiful elephant hilt in India. That hilt was of gold, the elephant's head made the pommel, while the handguard was the beast's curved trunk. The grip was of black leather bound with gold wire.

  "Thank you, sir," he said feelingly.

  "It is the first of many rewards," Pohlmann said airily, 'and those rewards will shower on us when we beat the British. Which we shall, though not here." He paused to drink rum.

  "The British will attack any day now," he went on, 'and they doubtless hope I'll stay and fight them here, but I don't have a mind to oblige them. Better to make the bastards march after us, eh? The rains may come while they pursue us and the rivers will hold them up. Disease will weaken them. And once they are weak and tired, we shall be strong. All Scindia's compoos will join together and the Rajah of Berar has promised his army, and once we are all gathered we shall crush the British. But that means I have to give up Ahmednuggur."

  "Not an important city," Dodd commented. He noticed that Simone Joubert was sipping wine. She kept her eyes lowered, only occasionally glancing up at her husband or at Lieutenant Silliere. She took no notice of Dodd, but she would, he promised himself, she would. Her nose was too small, he decided, but even so she was a thing of pale and fragile wonder in this hot, dark-skinned land. Her blonde hair, which
was hung with ringlets in a fashion that had prevailed ten years before in Europe, was held in place by small mother-of-pearl clips.

  "Ahmednuggur is not important," Pohlmann agreed, 'but Scindia hates losing any of his cities and he stuffed Ahmednuggur full of supplies and insisted I post one regiment inside the city." He nodded towards the white-coated troops.

  "That regiment, Major. It's probably my best regiment, but I am forced to quarter it in Ahmednuggur."

  Dodd understood Pohlmann's predicament.

  "You can't take them out of the city without upsetting Scindia," he said, 'but you don't want to lose the regiment when the city falls."

  "I can't lose it!" Pohlmann said indignantly.

  "A good regiment like that? Mathers trained it well, very well. Now he's gone to join our enemies, but I can't lose his regiment as well, so whoever takes over from Mathers must know how to extricate his men from trouble."

  Dodd felt a surge of excitement. He liked to think that it was not just for the money that he had deserted the Company, nor because of his legal troubles, but for the long overdue chance of leading his own regiment. He could do it well, he knew that, and he knew what Pohlmann was leading up to.

  Pohlmann smiled.

  "Suppose I give you Mathers's regiment, Major?

  Can you pull it out of the fire for me?"

  "Yes, sir," Dodd said simply. Simone Joubert, for the first time since she had been introduced to Dodd, looked up at him, but without any friendliness.

  "All of it?" Pohlmann asked.

  "With its cannon?"

  "All of it," Dodd said firmly, 'and with every damned gun."

  "Then from now it is Dodd's regiment," Pohlmann said, 'and if you lead it well, Major, I shall make you a colonel and give you a second regiment to command."

  Dodd celebrated by draining his cup of wine. He was so overcome with emotion that he hardly dared speak, though the look on his face said it all. His own regiment at last! He had waited so long for this moment and now, by God, he would show the Company how well their despised officers could fight.