Sharpe's Triumph s-2

by Bernard Cornwell

  "My needles were on the packhorse."

  "I've got a sewing kit," Sharpe said, and he took the broom through to the bedroom and swept up the straw and stuffed it into the slit mattress.

  Then he took the sewing kit from his pack, gave it to Simone, and told her to sew the mattress together.

  "I'll find some food while you do that," he said, and went out with his pack. The city was silent now, its survivors cowering from their conquerors, but he managed to barter a handful of cartridges for some bread, some lentil paste and some mangoes. He was stopped twice by patrolling redcoats and sepoys, but his sergeant's stripes and Colonel McCandless's name convinced the officers he was not up to mischief. He found the body of the Arab who had been shot just outside the courtyard where he had sheltered Simone and dragged the riding boots off the corpse. They were fine boots of red leather with hawk-claw steel spurs, and Sharpe hoped they would fit. Nearby, in an alley, he discovered a pile of silk saris evidently dropped by a looter and he gathered up the whole bundle before hurrying back to Simone's rooms.

  He pushed open the door.

  "Even got you some sheets," he called, then dropped the bundle of silks because Simone had screamed from the bedroom.

  Sharpe ran to the door to see her facing three Indians who now turned to confront him. One was an older man dressed in a dark tunic richly embroidered with flowers, while the younger two were in simple white robes.

  "You got trouble?" Sharpe asked Simone.

  The older man snarled at Sharpe, letting loose a stream of words in Marathi.

  "Shut your face," Sharpe said, "I was talking to the lady."

  "It is the house owner," Simone said, gesturing to the man in the embroidered tunic.

  "He wants you out?" Sharpe guessed, and Simone nodded. "Reckons he can get a better rent from a British officer, is that it?" Sharpe asked. He put his food on the floor, then walked to the landlord. "You want more rent? Is that it?"

  The landlord stepped back from Sharpe and said something to his two servants who closed in on either side of the redcoat. Sharpe slammed his right elbow into the belly of one and stamped his left foot onto the instep of the other, then grabbed both men's heads and brought them together with a crack. He let go of them and they staggered away in a daze as Sharpe pulled the bayonet from its sheath and smiled at the landlord.

  "She wants a bath, you understand? Bath." He pointed at the room where the bath stood. "And she wants it hot, you greedy bastard, hot and steaming. And she needs food." He pointed at the miserable pile of food. "You cook it, we eat it, and if you want to make any other changes, you bastard, you talk to me first. Understand?"

  One of the servants had recovered enough to intervene and was unwise enough to try to tug Sharpe away from his master. The servant was a big and young man, but he had none of Sharpe's ferocity. Sharpe hit him hard, hit him again, kneed him in the crotch, and by then the servant was halfway across the living-room floor and Sharpe pursued him, hauled him upright, hit him again and that last blow took the servant onto the small balcony at the top of the outside stairs.

  "Go and break a leg, you sod," Sharpe said, and tipped the man over the balustrade. He heard the man cry out as he fell into the alley, but Sharpe had already turned back towards the bedroom.

  "Have we still got a problem?" he demanded of the landlord.

  The man did not understand a word of English, but he understood Sharpe by now. There was no problem. He backed out of the rooms, followed by his remaining servant, and Sharpe went with them to the stairs.

  "Food," he said, pushing the bread, lentils and fruit into the hands of the cowed landlord.

  "And Madame's horse needs cleaning and watering. And feeding. Horse, there, see?" He pointed into the courtyard.

  "Feed the bugger," he ordered. The servant he had pushed over the balcony had propped himself against the alley's far wall where he was gingerly touching his bleeding nose. Sharpe spat on him for good measure, then went back inside.

  "I never did like landlords," he said mildly.

  Simone was half laughing and half afraid that the landlord would exact a terrible vengeance.

  "Pierre was afraid of him," she explained, 'and he knows we are poor."

  "You're not poor, love, you're with me," Sharpe said.

  "Rich Richard?" Simone said, pleased to have made a joke in a foreign language.

  "Richer then you know, love. How much thread is left?

  "Thread? Ah, for the needle. You have plenty, why?"

  "Because, my love, you can do me a favour," he said, and he stripped off his pack, his belt and his jacket. "I'm not that handy with a needle," he explained. "I can patch and darn, of course, but what I need now is some fine needlework. Real fine."

  He sat, and Simone, intrigued, sat opposite and watched as he tipped out the contents of his pack. There were two spare shirts, his spare foot cloths, a blacking ball, a brush and the tin of flour he was supposed to use on his clubbed hair, though ever since he had ridden from Seringapatam with McCandless he had let his hair go unpowdered. He took out his stock, which he had similarly abandoned, then the copy of Gulliver's Travels that Mister Lawford had given him so he could practise his reading. He had neglected that lately, and the book was damp and had lost some of its pages.

  "You can read?" Simone asked, touching the book with a tentative finger.

  "I'm not very good."

  "I like to read."

  "Then you can help me get better, eh?" Sharpe said, and he pulled out the folded piece of leather that was for repairing his shoes, and beneath that was a layer of sacking. He took that out, then tipped the rest of the pack's contents onto the table.

  Simone gasped. There were rubies and emeralds and pearls, there was gold and more emeralds and sapphires and diamonds and one great ruby half the size of a hen's egg.

  "The thing is," Sharpe said, "that there's bound to be a battle before this Scindia fellow learns his lesson, and as like as not we won't wear packs in a battle, on account of them being too heavy, see? So I don't want to leave this lot in my pack to be looted by some bastard of a baggage guard."

  Simone touched one of the stones, then looked up at Sharpe with wonderment in her eyes. He was not sure that it was wise to show her the treasure, for such things were best kept very secret, but he knew he was trying to impress her, and it was evident that he had.

  "Yours?" she asked.

  "All mine," he said.

  Simone shook her blonde head in amazement, then began arranging the stones into ranks and files. She formed platoons of emeralds, platoons of rubies and another of pearls, there was a company of sapphires and a skirmish line of diamonds, and all of them were commanded by the great ruby.

  "That belonged to the Tippoo Sultan," Sharpe said, touching the ruby. "He wore it in his hat."

  "The Tippoo? He's dead, isn't he?" Simone asked.

  "And me it was who killed him," Sharpe said proudly. "It wasn't really a hat, it was a cloth helmet, see? And the ruby was right in the middle, and he reckoned he couldn't die because the hat had been dipped in the fountain of Zum-Zum."

  Simone smiled.

  "Zum-Zum?"

  "It's in Mecca. Wherever the hell Mecca is. Didn't work, though. I put a bullet in his skull, right through the bloody hat. Might as well have dunked it in the Thames for all the good it did him."

  "You are rich!" Simone said.

  The problem was how to stay rich. Sharpe had not had time to make false compartments in the new pack and pouch that had replaced those he had burned at Chasalgaon, and so he had kept the stones loose in his pack. He had a layer of emeralds at the bottom of his new cartridge pouch, where they would be safe enough, but he needed secure hiding places for the other jewels. He gave a file of diamonds to Simone and she tried to refuse, then shyly accepted the stones and held one against the side of her nose where fashionable Indian women often wore just such a jewel.

  "How does it look?" she asked.

  "Like a piece of expensive sn
ot."

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  "It's beautiful," she said. She peered at the diamond that still had its black velvet backing so that the stone would shine more brightly, then she opened her purse. "Are you sure?"

  "Go on, girl, take them."

  "How do I explain them to Pierre?"

  "You say you found them on a dead body after the fight. He'll believe that."

  He watched her put the diamonds in the purse.

  "I have to hide the rest," he explained to her.

  He reckoned some of the stones could go in his canteen, where they would rattle a bit when it was dry, and he would have to take care when drinking in case he swallowed a fortune, but that still left a mound of gems unhidden. He used his knife to slit open a seam of his red coat and began feeding the small rubies into the slot, but the stones bunched along the bottom hem and the bulge was an advertisement to every soldier that he was carrying plunder.

  "See what I mean?" He showed Simone the bulging seam.

  She took the coat, fetched Sharpe's sewing kit from the bedroom, and then began to trap each gem in its own small pouch of the opened seam.

  The job took her all afternoon, and when she was finished the red coat was twice as heavy. The most difficult stone to hide was the huge ruby, but Sharpe solved that by unwinding his long hair from the shot weighted bag that clubbed it, then slitting open the bag and emptying the shot. He filled the bag with the ruby and with whatever small stones were left, then Simone rewound his hair about the bag. By nightfall the jewels had vanished.

  They ate by lamplight. The bath had never been filled, but Simone said she had taken one a week before so it did not matter. Sharpe had made a brief excursion in the dusk and had returned with two clay bottles filled with arrack, and they drank the liquor in the gloom. They talked, they laughed, and at last the oil in the lamp ran dry and the flame flickered out to leave the room lit by shafts of moonlight coming through the filigree shutters. Simone had fallen silent and Sharpe knew she was thinking of bed.

  "I brought you some sheets." He pointed to the saris.

  She looked up at him from under her fringe.

  "And where will you sleep, Sergeant Sharpe?"

  "I'll find a place, love."

  It was the first time he had slept in silk, not that he noticed, so showing her the gems had not been such a bad idea after all.

  He woke to the crowing of cockerels and the bang of a twelve-pounder gun, a reminder that the world and the war went on.

  * * *

  Major Stokes had decided that the real problem with the Rajah's clock was its wooden bearings. They swelled in damp weather, and he was happily contemplating the problem of making a new set of bearings out of brass when the twitching Sergeant reappeared in his office.

  "You again," the Major greeted him. "Can't remember your name."

  "Hakeswill, sir. Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill."

  "Punishment on Edom, eh?" the Major said, wondering whether to cast or drill the brass.

  "Edom, sir? Edom?"

  "The prophet Obadiah, Sergeant, foretells punishment on Edom," the Major said. "He threatened it with fire and captivity, as I recall."

  "He doubtless had his reasons, sir," Hakeswill said, his face jerking in its uncontrollable spasms, "like I have mine. It's Sergeant Sharpe I'm after, sir."

  "Not here, Sergeant, alas. The place falls apart!"

  "He's gone, sir?" Hakeswill demanded.

  "Summoned away, Sergeant, by higher authority. Not my doing, not my doing at all. If it was up to me I'd keep Sharpe here for ever, but a Colonel McCandless demanded him and when colonels demand, mere majors comply. So far as I know, which isn't much, they went to join General Wellesley's forces." The Major was now rummaging through a wooden chest. "We had some fine augers, I know. Same ones we use on touch-holes. Not that we ever did. Haven't had to rebore a touch-hole yet."

  "McCandless, sir?"

  "A Company colonel, but still a colonel. I'll need a round-file too, I suspect."

  "I knows Colonel McCandless, sir," Hakeswill said gloomily. He had shared the Tippoo's dungeons with McCandless and Sharpe, and he knew the Scotsman disliked him. Which did not matter by itself, for Hakeswill did not like McCandless either, but the Scotsman was a colonel and, as Major Stokes had intimated, when colonels demand, other men obey. Colonel McCandless, Hakeswill decided, could be a problem.

  But a problem that could wait. The urgent need was to catch up with Sharpe.

  "Do you have any convoys going north, sir? To the army, sir?"

  "One leaves tomorrow," Stokes said helpfully, "carrying ammunition. But have you authority to travel?"

  "I have authority, sir, I have authority." Hakeswill touched the pouch where he kept the precious warrant. He was angry that Sharpe had gone, but knew there was little point in displaying the anger. The thing was to catch up with the quarry, and then God would smile on Obadiah Hakeswill's fortunes.

  He explained as much to his detail of six men as they drank in one of Seringapatam's soldiers' taverns. So far the six men only knew that they were ordered to arrest Sergeant Sharpe, but Hakeswill had long worked out that he needed to share more information with his chosen men if they were to follow him enthusiastically, especially if they were to follow him northwards to where Wellesley was fighting the Mahrattas.

  Hakeswill considered them all good men, by which he meant that they were all cunning, violent and biddable, but he still had to make sure of their loyalty.

  "Sharpie's rich," he told them. "Drinks when he likes, whores when he likes. He's rich."

  "He works in the stores," Private Kendrick explained. "Always on the fiddle, the stores."

  "And he never gets caught? He can't be fiddling that much," Hakeswill said, his face twitching. "You want to know the truth of Dick Sharpe? I'll tell you. He was the lucky bugger what caught the Tippoo at Seringapatam."

  "Course he weren't!" Flaherty said.

  "So who was it?" Hakeswill challenged them. "And why was Sharpie made up into a sergeant after the battle? He shouldn't be a sergeant! He ain't experienced."

  "He fought well. That's what Mister Lawford says."

  "Mister bloody Lawford," Hakeswill said scathingly. "Sharpie didn't get noticed for fighting well! Bleeding hell, boys, I'd be a major-general if that's all it took! No, it's my belief he paid his way up to the stripes."

  "Paid?" The privates stared at Hakeswill.

  "Stands to reason. No other way. Says so in the scriptures! Bribes, boys, bribes, and I knows where he got the money. I know 'cos I followed him once. Here in Seringapatam. Down to the goldsmiths' street, he went, and he did his business and after he done it I went to see the fellow he did it with. He didn't want to tell me what the business was, but I thumped him a bit, friendly like, and he showed me a ruby. Like this it was!" The Sergeant held a finger and thumb a quarter-inch apart. "Sharpie was selling it, see? And where does Sharpie get a prime bit of glitter?"

  "Off the Tippoo?" Kendrick said wonderingly.

  "And do you know how much loot the Tippoo had? Weighed down with it, he was! Had more stones on him than a Christmas whore, and you know where those stones are?"

  "Sharpe," Flaherty breathed.

  "Right, Private Flaherty," Hakeswill said. "Sewn into his uniform seams, in his boots, hidden in his pouches, tucked away in his hat. A bloody fortune, lads, which is why when we gets him, we don't want him to get back to the battalion, do we?"

  The six men stared at Hakeswill. They knew they were his favourites, and all of them were in his debt, but now they realized he was giving them even more reason to be grateful.

  "Equal shares, Sergeant?" Private Lowry asked.

  "Equal shares?" Hakeswill exclaimed. "Equal? Listen, you horrid toad, you wouldn't have no chance of any share, not one, if it wasn't for my loving kindness. Who chose you to come on this parish outing?"

  "You did, Sergeant."

  "I did. I did. Kindness of my heart, and you repays it by wanting equa
l shares?" Hakeswill's face shuddered. "I've half a mind to send you back, Lowry." He looked aggrieved and the privates were silent. "Ingratitude," Hakeswill said in a hurt voice, "sharp as a serpent's tooth, it is. Equal shares! Never heard the like! But I'll see you right, don't you worry." He took out the precious orders for Sharpe's arrest and smoothed the paper on the table, carefully avoiding the spills of arrack. "Look at that, boys," he breathed, "a fortune. Half for me, and you leprous toads get to share the other half. Equally." He paused to prod in Lowry in the chest. "Equally. But I gets one half, like it says in the scriptures." He folded the paper and put it carefully in his pouch. "Shot while escaping," Hakeswill said, and grinned. "I've waited four years for this chance, lads, four bloody years." He brooded for a few seconds. "Put me in among the tigers, he did! Me! In a tigers' den!" His face contorted in a rictus at the memory. "But they spared me, they spared me. And you know why? Because I can't die, lads! Touched by God, I am! Says so in the scriptures."

  The six privates were silent. Mad, he was, mad as a twitching hatter, and no one knew why hatters were mad either, but they were. Even the army was reluctant to recruit a hatter because they dribbled and twitched and talked to themselves, but they had taken on Hakeswill and he had survived; malevolent, powerful and apparently indestructible.

  Sharpe had put him among the Tippoo's tigers, yet the tigers were dead and Hakeswill still breathed. He was a bad man to have as an enemy, and now the piece of paper in Hakeswill's pouch put Sharpe into his power and Obadiah could taste the money already. A fortune.

  All that was needed was to travel north, join the army, produce the warrant and skin the victim. Obadiah shuddered. The money was so near he could almost spend it already.

  "Got him," he said to himself, 'got him. And I'll piss on his rotten corpse, I will. Piss on it good. That'll learn him."

  The seven men left Seringapatam in the morning, travelling north.

  Chapter 5

  Sharpe was curiously relieved when Colonel McCandless found him next morning, for the mood in the small upper rooms was awkward.

  Simone seemed ashamed by what had happened in the night and, when Sharpe tried to speak to her, she shook her head abruptly and would not meet his eye. She did try to explain to him, mumbling about the arrack and the jewels, and about her disappointment in marriage, but she could not frame her words in adequate English, though no language was needed to show that she regretted what had happened, which was why Sharpe was glad to hear McCandless's voice in the alley beyond the staircase.